I'm away from my computer right now.

Tomorrow he has two choices: get his car washed and park somewhere else or park facing the other direction and even it out.
But it could be worse. It was only his car.



Note: I wrote the first half of this post last night and then began to feel sick. Was in bed by 8:30. Finished it just now and plan on posting again tonight.

We're fans of the show NCIS. We're watching reruns on USA Network even as I type this. Gibbs, the main character (Mark Harmon) has rules that he identifies by number. "Rule number 4: Never let someone else set the meeting place." (I made that one up.)

I have rules, too, and today I figured I should give them numbers so that I'm as cool as Mark Harmon.
One of my rules - one old enough that I can't remember when I established it - is now known as Rule #7: always have work with you.
Unlike Gibbs I sometimes forget my own rules, but because unexpected delays are so common (does that mean I should expect them?) I try to take along reading if my schedule includes any potential for waiting. Sometimes it's a small notebook and commentary, sometimes just a photocopy of the page from my Bible that Sunday's sermon comes from, and sometimes a magazine.

All of that to explain that I read a couple of lines that caught my brain as I waited this afternoon. The first one:

"The muscular Christianity of the past has kicked off its running shoes and gone for an iced latte." (Janie B. Cheaney in World Magazine).

The second, also in World, wasn't a single sentence but a thought. In an article by Mindy Belz, "Patronizing the Arts," she writes about spending time in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Elizabeth Lev, an art historian.

Lev points out that artists used to produce art for people. Sometimes it was for whoever commissioned the work, like the Michelangelo working for the Pope. Other times they created their work for the populus. That's not to say they pulled a Thomas Kinkead and put out whatever kitsch would sell. They painted, or sculpted or wrote to share with people their understanding and perception of life, their vision. In that sense it was true art in that it took people to a place they would not otherwise go (vs. pop art which comes to where people are).

Lev goes on to say that most contemporary artists don't have patrons (wealthy individuals who not only commissioned work but provided for the mentoring of the artist) and don't create for the populus. They create art for other artists, to establish their reputation in the club. At the upper end they also create for the economic gain they realize when their works, sometimes almost laughable tripe, sell for ridiculous sums to the idle rich who want the status that comes with paying too much money for what they've been convinced is art.

I like:

• World Magazine
• Studying the Bible
• The Lakers over the Magic in seven
  
• Riding downhill with a tailwind
• Reading or hearing something that makes me think about new things or old things in new ways.