Thankls so much for all the kind words, folks! They bring a little warmth to what feels like a very empty house right now….

We said goodbye to our best friend this morning after fourteen years of endlessly delightful companionship. Thanks for being you, Malcolm. We don’t know what we’ll do without you.

Malcolm has become increasingly contemplative in his old age.

My newsletter seems not to have gone out this morning, so while I’m trying to find out what went wrong you can see the issue here.

Currently reading: At Home by Bill Bryson 📚

Currently reading: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life by Soren Kierkegaard 📚

Currently reading: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf 📚

Currently reading: The Epistle to the Romans by Karl Barth 📚

Much-used books are beautiful books.

For Malcolm, affection is like being groomed: something to tolerate if there’s a biscuit at the end of it.

Well, it’s nice to see how much more peaceful and orderly things are now that we’ve flipped the calendar to 2021.

I wrote about a new kind of school: The School for Scale.

My newsletter features Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman.

Malcolm wishes you a Happy New Year.

H. Jack Geiger, RIP: “The clinic ‘prescribed’ food for families with malnourished children — to be purchased from Black-owned groceries — and the bills were paid out of the center’s pharmacy budget. The governor complained, and a federal official was sent to Mound Bayou to scold Dr. Geiger for misusing pharmacy funds, which, the official said, were meant to cover drugs to treat disease. ‘Yeah,’ Dr. Geiger replied, ‘well, the last time I looked in my medical textbooks, they said the specific therapy for malnutrition was food.’

Wesley Hill: Christ our salvation.

Jessica Martin: “That is the great mystery we ponder on this day, the day of the remembrance of his birth. Why did God confine himself?”

No þinge is meriar þen Ihesu to synge. — Richard Rolle

Gjertrud Schnackenberg, “Advent Calendar”

Currently reading: God’s Hotel by Victoria Sweet 📚