Archive: ‘Thinking About’

Every year as Christmas draws near I hear bah-humbug arguments insisting that the Church’s Christmas celebration is non-historical. It’s just a selling out, they say, concocted to compete with pagan winter festivals. Well, it’s time to bah-humbug the bah-humbugs.

The mortar between some of the bricks of our house near our back door was falling out and I was sure our kids were to blame. They’d been out there, I assumed, picking at loose mortar, spraying it with the hose, jamming in foreign objects. I had my discipline speech ready. I was contemplating the right punishment to mete out. But it wasn’t the kids’ fault. It turns out house sparrows have been pecking at our mortar as a source of dietary grit.

Thirteen summers ago, I packed up my college dorm room only to unpack in another rather Spartan apartment near my graduate school of choice. Meanwhile, the roommate with whom I exchanged goodbyes headed off to Westport, Connecticut to work at a financial company called Bridgewater Associates. We’ve stayed in touch as our lives have developed and as our families have grown. This weekend I picked up the New Yorker and saw an article about Bridgewater. It got me thinking about “the world’s biggest hedge fund” where my college roommate works and its corporate culture.

If I were more savvy to the Internets, I would have posted this last week to coincide with July 4th. But my reflections are slow and it takes awhile for thoughts to form. You see, over the last week, I’ve been thinking about finales.

Our kids love swimming pools. They splash contentedly for hours in heavily-chlorinated water. I, too, am fond of swimming, but my real love is sitting in the sun and reading. Therefore, I place great value on my kids ability to floating without my immediate physical presence—whether through their own prowess or through the use of artificial floatation. Our floatation device of choice is water wings.