Sixty-four years ago, the number one song in the nation was a simple thing sung by the Kingston Trio. It was called “Tom Dooley.” The performance, coming at the height of the great folk scare of the 1950s and early 60s, began with Bob Shane’s banjo riff, played on a plectrum banjo like — maybe the same as — the one I have upstairs in the banjo locker.
I see it on the faces of everyone I talk to. The war wearied look of two years and three months since life changed. As we peer into a fall in which COVID continues to roar along and many I know who had dodged it are now catching it, life-February-2020-style feels more distant than ever.
Livestreaming is all around us. Between streams on Facebook, YouTube Live, Twitch and the like, alongside ubiquitous video conferenced meetings have become a normal part of life. For the most part, we’ve reached a point this works well… until the Internet goes down and it doesn’t. Speedify is an affordable tool that aims to overcome that issue.
It is accurately said that pride goeth before a fall. Please make no mistake: What follows is not written out of pride, nor some desire to say, “See? I told you so.” Quite the opposite. I possess no special gift of prophecy. I have no access to inside information. I guess I have wits enough to survive — made it this far, anyway — but nothing much beyond that. Yet somehow I was able to predict a lot of what has happened in the last year or so.
The Boys are back with talk of the continued political tensions around the Russo-Ukrainian War, the coming SCOTUS decisions, violent political rhetoric in the coming midterm elections, Shakespeare and hope in Psalm 136.
It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that the electric bass guitar is an instrument designed so that music-ish sounds can be made by creatures who lack opposable thumbs.
Rafael Nadal has now won the French Open—-one of tennis’s major championships—-a mind-boggling 14 times. No other man has won an individual major more than 9 times. In this era of the “Big Three” —- Nadal, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic —- the trio have captured an absurd 62 major championships. Recall that there are 4 major championship tournaments in a calendar year. Nadal is now two majors clear of both rivals for the most career majors among men.
It’s something that I’m sure crops up from time to time in all our lives: Is it about time to build a banjo?
A few months ago, I found myself in a debate with a self-styled theological expert who made a stunning claim: sharing one’s faith wasn’t the duty of every Christian. That’s certainly what our squishy on truth society believes, but increasingly, it seems, so do the culture warrior Christians.