Saturday on Substack 15.IV.2023

April 15 is traditionally the day federal income taxes are due. However, due to Washington D.C.’s “Emancipation Day” holiday on April 16, the years on which April 15th are the actual deadline are fewer and fewer. This year’s deadline is Tuesday, April 18th. (Tax Day will never be a Saturday or Sunday, and D.C.’s holiday is observed on the 17th, so hence, why this year it is the 18th.)

Tomorrow we Eastern Orthodox celebrate Easter, which we usually call Pascha, and although it’s been a crazy week, the Resurrection still needs to be properly observed and celebrated. For us, the holiday is bigger than Christmas, and we’ll go around until Ascension greeting each other “Christ is Risen” to which the other person will reply “Indeed He is risen” (or “Truly He is Risen”). This is linked closely with spreading the Gospels to all nations and so in church, at least in the US, it’s typical that these greetings will be proclaimed in different languages.

We also went from winter to summer in one fell swoop. Milwaukee broke a temperature record last week that had been in place 1899! After so many months of cold, this was really weird:

Writing

Unfortunately, I didn’t write much this week. I didn’t even check my email. It’s been insane. I did post the following though:

• Sunday Gratitude 9.IV.2023

• Wordless Wednesday #26 - Unexpectedly

Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the death of Breyon Hunter. Hopefully, I’ll have something written about that on Monday. May his memory be eternal!

Reading/Listening

Brandon Sanderson is a Fantasy novelist who is a passionate and driven writer. His life is also quite “normal” - which is pretty boring to journalists, I guess. A few days ago, Rod Dreher wrote a piece on Substack which talks a good bit about it here (subscription only): https://roddreher.substack.com/p/brandon-sanderson-normie-king . I have a passing interest in fantasy, so I found it interesting (and a motivator to reading the Sanderson books sitting unread on my shelf) but Ace of Spades wrote about him yesterday as well. https://ace.mu.nu/archives/403808.php .

Why does this matter? Because living a grounded, faithful life is viewed by the media as boring and fake. Sanderson is Mormon, he’s got a wife and kids, a house in the suburbs, is absolutely passionate about writing, and seems to be a genuinely nice person. He’s also making a ton of money, and he’s doing so in ways that bypass the normal “gatekeepers” of publishing, to some degree.

This is a video of one of his lectures on “worldbuilding”. It’s done in the realm of building fantasy worlds, but what he’s saying isn’t strictly limited to the fantasy genre.

I’ve been keeping up with

Rod Dreher

and commenting there.

There’s some stuff about AI that has been written (and I haven’t even completely gone through) that I’d like to write about, but I haven’t completely gone through. https://ace.mu.nu/archives/403988.php

Laughing

Desigining frustrating volume controls: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1642554817590566915.html

Music

Again, too busy to be listening to much of anything. A friend of mine sent me this: (Philippe Jaroussky & Julia Lezhneva - Pergolesi: “Stabat Mater dolorosa”

This got mentioned in a thread: (Barry McGuire - Eve of Destruction)

I read quickly that St. Nikolai Velmirovich wrote a setting to “Christ is Risen” but the video that was attached to the article didn’t work anymore. Searching in Youtube gave me this version by Vladimir Morosan in the “Appalachian” style, which is beautiful and was in my head all week anyway:

Miscellaneous

The Saturday Ace of Spades weekly prayer thread: https://ace.mu.nu/archives/403988.php

Following this is just a section of “personal notes” for paid subscribers.