February Frenzy
(Sent on February 20, 2023)
Greetings, A happy Quinquagesima to you all. (Though you'll probably get this tomorrow, so . . . Happy Monday!)
I have been meaning to write a little 2023 "hello" and update for a while now, but I've been waiting for some unknowns to settle, particularly with work. I know that this would seem to be coming to you a little late, but in my defense, the "new year" for me did not exactly coincide with the crossover into January. It's actually been much closer to coinciding with Lent.
The beast, Jack, and I are currently getting settled into Bozeman, MT. My contract here starts tomorrow with a 2.5-hour drive east to Billings for some orientation and onboarding. After that, I won't have to drive more than 5 minutes for work.
Last November, Jack, Meghan, and I left Oregon for a pedal-to-the-metal drive back to Maine for a very brief visit, during which time Jack got diarrhea, we ate at Scales, we watched a local Sound of Music play in Waterville, caught up with a few friends and family, and relaxed on the lake. After the visit, Meghan and Jack headed down to Georgia for a new contract in Savannah. I left from PWM to work again at a field hospital with Samaritan's Purse, this time in eastern Ukraine. The trip was very different from the one in March, and while I can't say much about what we were doing or where, catch me in person sometime and I'd love to tell you more.
I got back in mid December, flew into Savannah and immediately came down with a cold. Then I got better, then I got Covid (first time officially testing positive). Then I got better, then I got another cold. So the entire holiday season was a bust, but I can't complain. Savannah is a beautiful city. (It supposedly used to be called the Forest City—even though there is a Forest City in North Carolina, and one in Iowa, and it's also the nickname for Cleveland.) Almost every street is covered by a canopy of Live Oak branches and Spanish moss, there are no skyscrapers, you can wear shorts most days in January—all this while an air of pleasantness just wafts up from the Marsh Island Channel. Seriously, it's a weirdly pleasant city to be in. All that said, however, I did get something very much like the Island Fever I got in Hawaii. As beautiful as Savannah is, I need mountains in my life, and I would like some snow in my winter.
I spent January looking for a job, applying to half a dozen or so. But January is a notoriously difficult time to find new contracts and I heard nothing all month. The delay worked for good reason, however. There was a follow-up Ukraine meeting for a group of us in Boone at the end of January. I didn't think I was going to be able to attend, since I figured I'd be starting a new job by then. But jobless me was happily able to go, so I made the 5-hour drive north. I rarely get to see the folks I travel with overseas back in the states, and most of the team that I worked with in Ukraine was there, so that alone was worth the drive and the job-delay. And the timing turned out to be perfect: I had a zoom interview with Bozeman at the hotel the afternoon of the Boone meeting and had a contract signed before dinner was over. I headed back to Savannah to start packing the car.
So here we are. I have mountains now and plenty of snow. Jack is taking a little longer to settle in. He's currently under the desk I'm typing on, staying close by just to make sure that I don't go to the next room without him. Meghan finishes her contract in Savannah this week and will fly out to join us on Saturday. The skis are downstairs and ready to go! We'll be here in Montana at least until the end of May. There's a chance I'll extend the stay in Bozeman a little into the summer if possible, but I expect our next stop will be very close to, if not in, the great state of Maine.
For now, the blog sites remain the same, though I'm still feeling these things out slowly, and I'm hoping to make some changes to them in the near future.
-
You can find see some social posting, pictures, and reading lists at tinyroofnail.micro.blog.
-
And you can find other blog posts and quotes at tinyroofnail.com.
If you are interested in an email- or zoom-based book club or just want to catch up, I would love to write or to spend time with you any way I can.
Also, if you are interested, there are a few things that I think are worth attempting to spread around.
Some good online reading sources:
-
As a news source, I thoroughly recommend The Dispatch. They are, I think, the best general news source that I have ever found. I mostly just read their weekday news email, but they have a lot more going on, and more all the time.
-
My favorite publication is probably Comment magazine. It's a quarterly newsletter from Cardus, a North American Christian conservative group based in Canada. (If you can see this link, there is a great breakdown from their Editor-in-Chief of the things they currently have going on.)
-
Also, for good academic reading on culture, The Hedgehog Review is remarkable. And for more focus on technology and science, The New Atlantis.
-
If you're going to pick any of these, I would recommend subscribing in that order, but you can't go wrong with any of them. (These three also have great printed magazines if you want to go that route!)
I'm spending more time on the road these days, which means filling that time with good voices (which is rarely the one in my head). I have not been able to get back into audio books, so I've been trying out the "graffiti with a microphone" known as podcasts. (I put quotes because I can't remember if I'm making that part up or if I heard it somewhere.) Here are a few that I have found worthwhile:
-
For updates on Ukraine, I cannot too highly or overemphatically recommend Ukraine: The Latest, from The Telegraph. This is reporting at its absolute finest. (And as a bonus, you get to hear it in pretty much all British accents.)
-
The #1 overall, at least for the past year, has been a podcast called On Script. "Engaging conversations on Bible and theology"—that says it all. I enjoy pretty much every episode of this, and it's my first go-to for running or driving. They also have a Biblical World podcast which is worth checking out, though I almost never do. (My number one used to be Yale Divinity's For the Life of the World podcast, but they seem to have dropped off the radar and don't post much anymore. But they still have good archive content spread out over the last few years.)
-
A couple others in the same vein: Curtis Chang's Good Faith podcast on faith and politics (still good since David French left); Zealots at the Gate is a great one hosted together by a Christian and a Muslim; Dangerous Dogma is a new one I've started listening to, and I think each of their episodes is an interview with a recent author about his or her book. (This one with Robin Lovin and this one with Daniel Buttry were very encouraging.)
-
For what I would call really healthy political banter, I like Jonah Goldburg's podcast, The Remnant. And for really good interpretation on law and Supreme Court stuff, Advisory Opinions with David French and Sarah Isgur is solid.
I am quite sure that there are other things that I thought of sharing but never made a note to remind myself about. So that's all for now.
Wishing you all a good 2023, and hoping you find some joy and peace in it.
Donny
Thanks for reading! For more commonplace stuff, you can go to tinyroofnail.micro.blog. Or you can email me at tinyroofnail@hey.com. Or you can just wait for next month's newsletter.