My latest drive-time listen was A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines. This novel portrays the complexity of social and racial interactions in post-WW II Louisiana. The protagonist, a college-educated black man, struggles to come to terms with his faith and his place in his community and the world.
I really enjoyed listening to this novel and I highly recommend it. As I was listening, it struck me that this novel could be easily adapted to the screen, and sure enough, it has been. I’ve set my DVR to record it if it is ever shown on a cable channel that we get.

A little blasphemy is good for the soul: Jesus of the week, Dress up Jesus.

Newsweek just released its list of the top 100 U.S. high schools, and it’s been all over the local news that two Austin area schools, Westlake HS and Westwood HS, made the list.
There is a strong consensus among Austinites that these are both very good schools, but I have no idea how they stack up nationally.
I am generally very skeptical of such lists–or at least of their value–but Ed Felten goes a step further: he questions the methodology used to compile the list.

We have a dewberry patch not far from the house (sorry, I can’t reveal its exact location), and today we had our first picking of the season. We had a very wet winter, but we haven’t had hardly any rain the last month or so (until today), so the berries are quite small compared to last year.
Hannah, Samuel and I picked for maybe 20 minutes and got 3-4 cups, which we ate tonight with some fresh strawberries and a little sugar (and a little Bailey’s for Katie and me). It was a nice dessert for our mother’s day dinner.
Last year, I must have made six or seven big cobblers, but not so this year, unless today’s rain showers make the next round of ripening berries much larger than the ones we picked today–which I doubt.

I just finished listening to the audio edition of Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride. It certainly wasn’t my typical read. I don’t think I would have ever picked up the print edition of the book, and if I had, I may not have finished it. But since I was a captive audience in traffic, I stuck it out and I’m really glad that I did. I would recommend this book.

On of Katie’s wealthy foreign college students told her that he went to buy a car in Austin–no financing needed–and the dealer would not sell it to him without a credit check. Problem is, this foreign student does not have a social security number, which is necessary for the credit check. The student told Katie he was arranging to give the dealer the SSN of some relative who lives in the U.S.
Any idea why the dealer insists on running a credit check if the buyer isn’t applying for, uh, credit?

Make Easter bunny ears from items found around the house–in this case, from items found in the bathroom cabinet (from the photo archives, Easter, 2003):

I’m putting this photo in the file with the naked bathtub photos, to show to the boyfriend when she’s a teenager!

This is awesome:

Satanists, apocalypse watchers and heavy metal guitarists may have to adjust their demonic numerology after a recently deciphered ancient biblical text revealed that 666 is not the fabled Number of the Beast after all.
A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.
Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, said the discovery appears to spell the end of 666 as the devil’s prime number.
“This is a very nice piece to find,” Dr. Aitken said. “Scholars have argued for a long time over this, and it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast.”

I would like to offer a sincere, heart-felt apology to all those people who have recently offered me an innocuous ‘Hi. How you doing?’, expecting an equally innocuous ‘Fine, and you?’, but who, instead, received a 10 minute exhortation on my recent weight loss and exercise successes (currently 30 pounds, and running 6-10 miles 3 times per week, respectively). I’m afraid I’ve become an even more insufferable boor than previously.
I’m understandably excited about my diet and exercise, but I realize that you may not share my enthusiasm–or no longer share it, having heard about it day after day. Again, I apologize; I’ll try to do better.

When he was a child, Ron Hudson’s family ran a store and restaurant along a busy highway in North Carolina. In his blog, Ron reminisces about the accidents and deaths that he and his family members witnessed on the highway in their little town. Sounds like it was an odd family bonding experience.