Monthly archive

May 2019

Lend me your ears, and I’ll share the tale of mine

Published on

At the risk of navel- (or earhole-) gazing, my inability to find reliable first-person narrative on my specific hearing issues leads me to believe there’s value in sharing the odyssey that recently led me to becoming a “relatively young” person with hearing aids.

No, I’m not “going deaf.” To the contrary, my hearing is mostly normal and has been relatively unchanged over the years. The issue is that there is a very specific frequency group at which everything goes akimbo:

My recent hearing test, which looks like every other hearing test I’ve done.
Keep Reading

Friday spins: Lee Moses, The Lee Boys, Amyl, Not-Elton-John, Aretha Franklin

Published on

As part of my resolution to write more, I’ve set up some specific intervals to write about particular passions. The first of these is a weekly look at new music based on Friday’s new releases.

As an initial aside, I really miss the weekly Tuesday release that was prominent in the days of physical media. There was something nice about the regular not-quite-midweek gift of new tunes (and video, and games, etc.).

The way I tend to listen to music, perhaps because of the old schedule, is to heavy up om my newer picks earlier in the week and favorite mixes on the weekend. So the Friday drops have tended to languish a few days in my queue.

For this first entry, I’ll also note that my tastes are fairly eclectic; and that I use several different tools to keep up with the latest releases. Increasingly, just the “For You” tab on Apple Music (my preferred service) is enough, catching 90% of what I’m seeking. (The algorithm has gotten significantly better just in the past month. I supplement with the app MusicHarbor, and a weekly newsletter from AllMusic.

So with that prelude, this week’s picks:

Keep Reading

Haven’t heard of Texas’ colonias? Neither had I before a mission trip showed me a Third-World American enclave

Published on

Flying back from South Texas yesterday, I found myself vacillating between anger and contentment. Contentment came from service work that my 28:1 men’s group brothers and I had done alongside a men’s group from Park Cities Baptist Church. Anger rose from the poverty, inequality, and squalor we saw in our own state.

Odds are, you’ve never heard of the colonias before. I hadn’t until we lined up this trip. In an informal social media survey last night, once I filtered out friends who grew up on the border, it looked like less than a third of Texans I know are aware of them. Keep Reading

Go to Top