On Monday, February 15, our beloved Esther the Escort, the first (and only) new car that Sherry and I ever purchased met her final demise. The Teenager was driving the vehicle in downtown Lima, OH. The roads were icy, and when she went around a turn, the car kept going somewhat straight. She ran right into a police cruiser.

No one was injured.

On Friday, we received the news that the insurance company declared the vehicle a total loss. Today, I drove out to Lima to retrieve our personal effects and snap these last photos of dear Esther.

Some interesting facts:

*The final odometer reading is 152911. Yes, the mileage ends in “911.”
*This is the fifth crash for the car. One in Chicago, one in Toccoa, one about 7 months ago in Bellvue, one about 2 months ago, and now this.
*Esther went out in style: new tires, one new wheel, and a full tank of gas. It’s possible that I had just refilled with windshield washer fluid.

Esther was a fine, dependable automobile. The only problem that we ever had with her was when we moved to GA and the horn stuck. Other than that, the only issues were created by people smashing into her.

R.I.P.

In her last years with us, Granny used talk about the Sweet By and By. Today, I was listening to a collection of old American gospel tunes when I caught the phrase. I looked up the whole song to see the context. Here are comforting words:

There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

Refrain:
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blessed;
And our spirits shall sorrow no more,
Not a sigh for the blessing of rest.

To our bountiful Father above,
We will offer our tribute of praise
For the glorious gift of His love
And the blessings that hallow our days.

Batykefer, Erinn. Allegheny, Monongahela. Los Angeles, CA: Red Hen Press, 2009.

Erinn Batykefer’s Allegheny, Monongahela may be her first collection of poetry, but it displays a mastery of form and content that underscores the awards and publications listed in the book’s acknowledgements. “Dog Poem” begins the collection with an image of what it means to be a poet: “I’ve been known to drag old bones with me for miles./If I bury them, the only question is how long/ till I’m clawing the ground to feel them under my teeth again.” From there Batykefer launches into explorations of death, love, and identity. While the collection features some more open poetry, Batykefer’s talents shine brightest when working in the formal modes. The sonnets “Red Hills with White Cloud,” “Pittsburgh as Self-Portrait I & II,” and “Haute Couture” demonstrate that the poet is comfortable working within the strictures of the form but also feeling the freedom to stretch the edges of the form to meet the poetic needs of the material. “Allegheny Love Letter” teems with earthy anthropomorphic imagery that sketches not only the many moods of the mighty river but also provides a chilling profile of the kind of love that cannot help but destroy the beloved. The most successful of the free verse works dwells on an extended anatomical metaphor to describe the speaker’s experience with opera—“The palate lifts like a curtain; the skull a dome for resonance.” This is not the only poem to dwell on what is going on under the skin of the body. “X-Ray” describes the portrait produced by the medical device, while “Horizontal Horse’s or Mule’s Skull with Feather” evisions a future “When my face is scoured clean, sun-whitened, / when my vulgar skin has been stripped / from my body.” “Egyptology” outlines the mummification process “because grief requires compartmentalization.” Lest you think that Batyfefer’s collection is nothing but dark tropes, “Heirloom Recipe” provides a touching—not sentimental—tribute to the power of a peach cake to remind us of our history. While Allegheny, Monongahela does have its weak spots, the delights far outweigh them.

Today’s Daily Office includes reading Psalm 72. It’s only 19 verses, but the repetition of a certain theme in 5 of those verses is unmistakeable:

1 Give the King your justice, O God, *
and your righteousness to the King’s son;
2 That he may rule your people righteously *
and the poor with justice.
3 That the mountains may bring prosperity to the people, *
and the little hills bring righteousness.
4 He shall defend the needy among the people; *
he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor.
5 He shall live as long as the sun and moon endure, *
from one generation to another.
6 He shall come down like rain upon the mown field, *
like showers that water the earth.
7 In his time shall the righteous flourish; *
there shall be abundance of peace till the moon shall be no more.
8 He shall rule from sea to sea, *
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
9 His foes shall bow down before him, *
and his enemies lick the dust.
10 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute, *
and the kings of Arabia and Saba offer gifts.
11 All kings shall bow down before him, *
and all the nations do him service.
12 For he shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress, *
and the oppressed who has no helper.
13 He shall have pity on the lowly and poor; *
he shall preserve the lives of the needy.
14 He shall redeem their lives from oppression and violence, *
and dear shall their blood be in his sight.
15 Long may he live!
and may there be given to him gold from Arabia; *
may prayer be made for him always,
and may they bless him all the day long.
16 May there be abundance of grain on the earth,
growing thick even on the hilltops; *
may its fruit flourish like Lebanon,
and its grain like grass upon the earth.
17 May his Name remain for ever
and be established as long as the sun endures; *
may all the nations bless themselves in him and call him blessed.

18 Blessed be the Lord GOD, the God of Israel, *
who alone does wondrous deeds!
19 And blessed be his glorious Name for ever! *
and may all the earth be filled with his glory.

Quite possibly a new series of creations to appear on truffin.com. Superheroes acting out song lyrics. Here’s the first attempt: Sam Phillips’s “Taking Pictures” from the Fan Dance album.

Enjoy.

Been awhile since I posted. Excuses? We don’t need no steenkin excuses.

At work I’ve taken to signing certain emails “TcT” instead of using my full email signature. (I think my dean knows who I am. As do people with whom I’m having a lengthy email conversation.) I thought today that folks unfamiliar with my employment and family history may not know what “TcT” means. It’s even possible that my family doesn’t really know how it got started.

It all got started in the yellow-walled backroom of The Good Book Shoppe in North Olmsted, Ohio. I was a youngin’, 14 maybe, when I started working for an actual wage doing actual work at the stores my family owned. Previously I had been handed a quarter to go dust books or straighten pencils, but I was now being trained in actual bookstore operations and being paid hourly. My grandfather was teaching me the shipping/receiving procedures. At some point, there was some confusion over a packing slip or something that I had initialled. I was supposed to initial the paper, but the problem was that my father and I have the same first/last initials: TT. Also, in typical son-copying-father tradition, I was even making my initials in the same fashion as he; I made something that looked like the Greek letter pi, or stonehenge. Obviously, having both of us making the same sign was going to get confusing, and equally obviously my dad was not going to be the one to change since he did have the very true claim of having “done it first.” So, I decided that I would continue making the TT like a “pi” but I would insert a “C” (my middle initial) between the uprights. I’ve continued to initial items this way ever since, even when one around could ever confuse who TT is.

When I handwrite the initials, the “C” sinks a bit, the “C” beginning half to all the way down the stem of the “T”. When it came time to start doing this electronically, I thought the lower-case “c” hinted at the stylishness of the handwritten version. Is that vain? Yes. Probably.

Now you know not only who TcT is, but why it’s TcT.

And knowing’s half the battle.

Sara Zarr recently wrote about “listening to whole CDs at a time again, not as background music but as a discrete activity that involves full engagement.” She’s not the only one re-discovering the joy of the artistic whole represented by a well-crafted album of songs. In the last eight days I’ve seen Guster play in Cleveland and Bruce Springsteen totally tear up the joint in Auburn Hills. What does a small Boston band playing the HOB in Cleveland have to do with a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer lighting up an arena? Like Zarr, they’re exploring the impact of a song collection listened to attentively as a whole. Instead of laying on the floor between stereo speakers, the bands invite their audiences to experience their full albums in order in concert. Guster celebrated the 10th anniversary of their breakout album Lost and Gone Forever by playing the whole thing. Bruce, well it didn’t seem that Bruce had any real reason except that it’s a good idea. In Auburn Hills, he played Born to Run, and at other stops on the tour he’s playing other albums from his formidable catalog.

Back in the day when albums were thought about and crafted as a cohesive unit, song order and what not was carefully planned to provide thoughtful pacing and content. The best albums were collections with great songs, yes, but also a gestalt in which the collective power soared. You can think of U2’s Joshua Tree, the slowly building intro to “Where the Streets Have No Name”, the powerful whallop of “Still Haven’t Found”, the intense but subdued “With or Without You” providing a bit of a breather before the torrent of “Bullet the Blue Sky”.

It should then be no surprise then that playing an album through in concert would provide a meaningful concert experience. The other benefit is that the band is forced/gets to play tunes that may have fallen out of the live repertoire. Guster commented that some of the songs hadn’t been played since the original supporting tour. What a treat for committed fans to hear deep catalog cuts. And for concert goers who aren’t obsessed fans, it’s a chance perhaps to hear a side of the artist not usually seen.

So, Long Live the Long Play. May the power of the album not be entirely stripped away by the fragmented iTunes download and MP3 player random play.

This past weekend I celebrated Fall Break by asking Ted to join me on a quick brewery/disc golf tour of southwest Michigan. We visited New Holland Brewing Company in Holland, MI as well as Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids. In between, we shot up to Silver Lake, a place I hadn’t been since high school. On the way back, we stopped in South Bend, IN to play some disc golf (and get IN off my to-do list), but, according to a local, all the baskets were taken down for the winter. Didn’t realize one couldn’t play DG in the winter. Guess those Hoosiers don’t believe in Ice Bowls or other manly things.

Below are two slideshows: one of New Holland Brewing and one of Little Sable Point Lighthouse.

In late August, on a visit to Tiffin University’s Toledo Academic Center, I swung by the Toledo Zoo to exercise my membership card. I was there for just an hour, but had lots of fun with the seals and taking pictures.

Little kids love to hear the same story over and over again. Even when they know the words by heart, they cry out for some beloved adult to read some treasured narrative over and over, and woe be unto anyone who forgets a word or tries out a new version. Growing up in church, we also read the same thing over and over. Let’s face it, we’ve got one book, and if you’re in church long enough, you’re going to have time to read or hear about just about every part of it. And, let’s also be honest, there are some bits in there that are not really all that conducive to out-loud reading or study. (I’m looking at you Numbers!) So that reduces the raw amount of readable material even more. But, as we know, that repetition is not boring. We come to these well-known passages at different times in our lives, from differing perspectives throughout our maturation, and the word speaks to us afresh again and again.

That phenomenon is also true with the books we read. When I was what would now be called a “tweener”, I read Old Yeller at least three dozen times. I first read Frank Herbert’s Dune in high school and still find it interesting 20 years later. Just last summer, I re-read another sci-fi book I first discovered as a teen, Robert Forward’s Dragon’s Egg.

But more than just re-reading a book, I’ve found that there are certain works that I feel compelled to re-read on a somewhat regular basis. It might be yearly, or every other year, or even at longer periods, but there is still something that regularly calls me back to these works, something that the work does to me that I need. For these works, it’s more than just that I re-read them, but that I feel a “need” to re-read them. I know I’m not alone in this. I have a friend who reads Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings every year. So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to list those works that I find myself drawn back to on a regular basis. I’m not going to rank them or offer any explanation. And I won’t ask you for any explanation either, but I do think it would be fun if you listed some of the works that you find yourself “having” to re-read on a somewhat regular basis. Oh, and since I’m going to assume that all you good people are reading your Bible quite regularly, you don’t need to list it here. And for now, let’s limit ourselves to books.

• Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
• Melville’s Moby Dick
• Eco’s The Name of the Rose
• Sayers’s Gaudy Night
• Miller’s Death of a Salesman