This is a rather marvelous picture of the old days. I like sending the messages via pneumatic tube.

Times have changed. Alas.

After cricket, I had some lunch, black beans, frijoles negros, and fresh fruit with Greek yoghurt.

Trains are on. A big freight, with double stacked containers just passed through Ashland.

J wants to eat $1 tacos at Rico’s tonight. Fine by me.

Am I the only person out there who has loneliness hit him like a punch in the gut and the feeling is completely debilitating? I just want to stay in the recliner.

I miss my children, adults though they are now.

I might sleep some more.

One can easily infer from the title that I am listening to Russian Orthodox Chant at three o’clock in the morning. I missed Mass on Sunday. Shoulder pain was raging and sitting in a low-backed pew would have been difficult. Still I should have gone. Recovery is never easy, as I have written before.

I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with chastity. I want to think I am entitled to have sex in whatever iteration of sexuality I choose, such as sex with any partner who will have sex with me. Every sexual fantasy I have or write about is OK to act out. I can write erotica that contradicts Catholic teaching on sexual conduct. And I can point to the moral sexual decay of the Catholic clergy and religious, brothers and sisters, to rationalize my own sin. Let me make it clear. I don’t commit adultery, but I am a rat’s nest of impure thoughts. If I walk away from my current state, I will walk toward God.

Poverty. Choosing poverty is absolutely counterintuitive to how we live our lives. Yet John The Baptist chose poverty, for starters. The Dominicans and Franciscans are mendicant orders. They ask for money from us to get by. Choosing poverty in our culture is even more of a contradiction of its values than choosing chastity.

Obedience. This is the hardest thing to ask of a human being. Obeying authority figures does not come naturally

OK. I’m tired again. I’ve probably lost a few followers of this blog. If that is the case, so be it. I will be sorry if you leave.

I never that I would become a cricket slug, but here I am. Bangladesh and South Africa are going at it. Bangladesh has the lead and South Africa is playing catch-up or whatever they call it in cricket, Knowing what SA has to do to win is giving sense to the game.

Brits dressed in white in the country, say Kent, on a Summer’s day playing on a Sunday is the idyllic picture of the game. That certainly is a lovely, if incomplete, image of the game.

The fans are, well, fans. They remind of American baseball fans, rowdy, flamboyant, yet law-abiding. They don’t appear to be hooligans. Then again, if you can afford to go from Johannesburg or Dhaka to London, you probably aren’t a rowdy.

The South African team and its fans attest that the apartheid era is over.