Tarpon Spring Sponge Docks

A Map or Chart of the Road of Love, and Harbour of Marriage - Thomas Sayer - 1748 A New Map of the Land of Matrimony, Drawn From the Latest Surveys - Anna Laetitia Barbauld - 1772 Geographical Guide to a Man’s Heart, Geographical Guide to a Woman’s Heart - Jo Lowery - 1960 Happy …

Ursula Franklin is my homegirl, for Josh Brake. Get yours at Stickermule.

Ted Balaker re-ran my college advice on his blog. Welcome to y’all who’re arriving via Ted! 👋

I’m editing a book of King family history, and @ayjay’s Breaking Bread With The Dead has been a welcome companion. It’s yielded a few quotes that may find their way to the top of a chapter: LP Hartley in The Go-Between: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently …

Meet Joseph Ducreux, diplomat-turned-meme-lord. If you’ve spent time on the internet, you’ve seen his “Self-Portrait of the Artist in the Guise of a Mocker:” But I bet you haven’t seen his other oddball gems: “The Silence” “Self-Portrait, …

Wendell Berry, in Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition: It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines. Berry, who’s 90 now, wrote this almost two and a …

“I need a logo for my website!” WRONG.

“I found him beneath a tree” from William Blake’s The Gates of Paradise

When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five. from Simple Sabotage, a now-declassified CIA field manual:

On Choosing A College: I was invited to be part of a panel about college choices at my alma mater. Not knowing how much time I’d have to share, I decided to write up my thoughts. I’ve got strong opinions about this. Why should you care what I think? I’ve plowed a lot of ground with my chin. Twenty one years ago, I …

Johnson Creek Marsh, by Jay Fleming. I licensed it for use in my cover design for the Mudbound Books edition of Tales of the Chesapeake.

🌱 Season/Change: This will be a short one, and the last one until I get the itch to write it again. Perhaps it seems strange... but I felt the need to shrink my prospects, narrow my horizons, and move on to smaller endeavors. --Tom Horton in An Island Out Of Time Last June, Joanna and I moved from Baltimore to …

💥 Explosion-Powered Chariots: It's 2023. Bit by bit, the days are getting longer again. Welcome to winter's issue of This Mortal Portal, and Happy New Year! I've been living, even more than usual, in the land of poetry. The third volume of HUM poems is so close to ready that I dragged my feet sending this newsletter, hoping to …

🪓 Lifehacked To Bits: It’s the eighth day of fall, and the eighth quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal. I didn’t write a summer newsletter; I was still in turmoil after my friend Dave's death, and I didn't have the energy to write something real. So I skipped it rather than forcing it. Now I’m back, with: A …

⌛️ 1,825 Weeks: Welcome to the sixth day of spring, and the seventh quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal. It’s a shorter one. -V 1,825 WeeksThis week I’m grieving my friend. Back at the start of this newsletter, I promised life updates in the good times and the hard. This week has been one of the hard times. I …

🌊 Do You Haiku?: Welcome to the sixth quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal, coming to you on the second day of winter. A microessay feat. original poems (!) Vic's Picks (fall faves) For the Record (things done) Plus an apple-jugglin’ GIF and a strange cartoon. Merry Christmas and happy holi-days to you and yours! …

🌎 Stay here on earth with me: Welcome to the second day of autumn, and the fourth quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal. It includes: A short story based on true stories of people with suicidal thoughts Vic's Picks For the Record Plus the perfect summer GIF and a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. -V (I switched to a new email provider, …

☠️ Never start a funeral with logistics: Welcome to the fifth day of summer, and the fourth quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal. An essay on lessons learned in making friends in 2021 Vic's Picks For the Record Plus a cartoon and the strangest slapstick GIF I've ever seen. -V Never Start A Funeral With LogisticsAnd Other Lessons …

📅 Don't just do something, stand there!: Adventures in becoming a non-anxious presence. Welcome to the fourth day of spring, and the third quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal. It's best read out of doors. -V Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!Adventures in becoming a non-anxious presence“Dad.” My 3 year old was annoyed, and I was not …

🔥 What do you see in the fire?: On bonfires and desires. Issue #2 // Winter 2020 Welcome to the third day of winter, and the second quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal. As you read this, Jupiter and Saturn are closer than they've been in 800 years. Christmas and 2021 are around the corner. Jump right in with me, will you? Oh, …

🚂 Breaking bread with the dead: Pickin' Fights With Mennonites - On what I learned from my great grandpa’s 1901 journal. Here we are at the first day of autumn 2020, and the first quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal. This issue has 3 parts: Pickin' Fights With Mennonites - On what I learned from my great grandpa’s 1901 journal …

A Visual Timeline of American Presbyterianism, 1706-2019: Update: a black-and-white version of my diagram appears as an appendix in the scholarly historical tome Reformed and Evangelical Across Four Centuries. If you've found your way to this blog post, you might dig the book. A few years back, I was in seminary and pursuing ordination in the PCA. …

Thus Always To Dragons : Sic Semper Draconis and the fight of faith: Have you read The Drowned Vault by ND Wilson? There’s an intriguing Latin family motto hidden in there: sic semper draconis. It’s a play on the Latin phrase sic semper tyrannis, which has a strange and storied history. Update on 16 July 2021: NDW explained his thinking behind the motto on his …

How we made Color Me Chincoteague: It's been a few years in the making.Here's an abridged timeline. (For more detail, at least from July 2015 - May 2016, you can read all of our Kickstarter updates.) August 2014While vacationing with our extended family, we (Vic and Joanna) search in vain for a Chincoteague coloring book for our …