A friend's death

Matt, a friend from my days at IBM, passed away.  He was forty years old.  While I was a rookie salesman, he was constantly willing to lend advice, help, and his greatest skill, humor to any situation.  His magnanimity and zeal for life were infectious.  I learned much from Matt and shared many good times with him.  I am deeply saddened by his departure.  Matt leaves behind his two sons, eight and three, and his widow, who is due to deliver their third son in three weeks.  God help that family.


Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low;

also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 12:1-8

Pencils down... almost

Over the weekend, I finished the latest and, I hope, last draft of my Master's thesis.  I also finished the latest but certainly not the last draft of my Bronzino paper.  These are the last remains of a stillborn career in art history.  I went through the labor only to find the corpus devoid of breath.  Nevertheless, I have taken pleasure in writing again and inserting things into my paper that will upset academics.  For example, capitalizing He when using the pronoun for Jesus Christ.  I like putting in minute points of style or content like this to which academics are often more attune than the greater patterns of human heart and history. In a university, you could say, "My foreskin needs liberating!" and an academic would nod their head knowingly, but if you capitalize He for Christ, they might rupture a sphincter.