A few somewhat muddled thoughts on religion and church as Lent winds down: ***** It’s been a fascinating Lent, which started, of course, with Ash Wednesday. We went to the service at church, which in included the solemn, sobering ash ritual. I’d never gotten ashes before, and hadn’t even known Protestant churches did that....
Not Gonna Do It
Nope. I’m not going to post today. I’m not going to challenge the orthodoxy and post something on April first, because half the readers will think, wrongly, I’m trying to pull some kind of prank or something, and the other half won’t get the prank that I’m trying to pull on them. Oh, sure,...
The Arch At Sunrise
Spring Break for my family meant that I could leave home early this morning; a clear sky meant that I was able to do something I’ve never done before, which is to stroll around the Gateway Arch grounds at sunrise. It was a combination of my favorite photographic subject and my favorite time of...
List: Top Five Crushing Disappointments For St. Louis Sports Fans
This is going to hurt a while. It was supposed to be Mizzou’s year: a team full of seniors who played above expectations all season, ranked No. 3 nationally going into the NCAA Basketball Tournament. They were poised to become the first Missouri team to make it to the Final Four. But it didn’t...
City Garden
In the middle of downtown St. Louis, just a half-mile or so directly west of the Gateway Arch, sits City Garden. Completed in 2009, it is both a traditional horticultural garden with more than 100 species of flora, and a sculpture garden with all kinds of whimsical statues and works sprinkled throughout. When...
The Dilemma
The last few years, I’ve been attending quite a few of Washington University’s basketball games. My dad’s a fan and has gone to almost every game for years; my brother goes to most. The coach is a member of their our church. And for the last three years, the son of my good friends...
My Favorite Year
Today is “Leap Day,” that day in which we celebrate the failure of the earth to adequately synchronize its rotation and revolution cycles. Because if this, it takes us just a little more than a five hours more than exactly 365 days to get around the sun. This schedule sloppiness means that we have...
About That Statue…
Note: This statue has been moved. You can read a June 2016 update to this post here. Just downriver from Eads Bridge in St. Louis, on the St. Louis riverfront, is a statue called The Captains’ Return. It depicts the return of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, along with their dog, Scout, from their...
Shoulblog Turns Two!
It’s Shoulblog’s birthday! Two years ago today (OK, not exactly two years, but it was two Fat Tuesdays ago), this thing launched. This was the first post; you can judge for yourself if I’ve made any progress in that time. With the anniversary, the blog has a new look. I adopted a new WordPress...
List: Top Five Musical Crimes Against Humanity
Perhaps I’m still a little cranky about the state of music these days. (That always seems to happen after one of those Super Bowl halftime shows.) But as great as rock music can be, the extraordinary heights it can deliver us to, there are also plenty of “what were they thinking” moments. Here are...