We had rain last night and this morning. The town is always beautiful after the rain. I was out earlier (finally getting my California license and registration) but I didn’t take any pictures until I came home. Here is one of the olive trees in our front yard:

My mom always tried to limit the olives […]

I’ve been reading Dr. Johnson lately. He has some wonderful essays, written for The Rambler and other periodicals. They are short, amusing, and often edifying. If I were teaching prose composition, I would use them as models. It is easy to see how they move.
Right now I’m in the middle of The History of Rasselas, […]

I was curious enough about my family’s abacus to do a little research. It seemed like a silly abacus to me, the sort of thing someone would make who didn’t really understand abaci. I figured it was a typical faux antique, the sort of thing you see in Pottery Barn catalogs: the furniture version of […]

In college I studied Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. One of the math professors helped me work through the proof, and eventually I gave a public presentation on it. A couple years later a thought struck me. His theorem seemed to imply that the human mind could not be merely material. It could not be just a […]

I saw some apple trees blossoming the other day. I didn’t know we had apple trees here in southern California. Now they are predicting 90-degree highs. Does that mean spring is here?
All five of my remaining rose plants have sprouted: one bud eye each. The one that sprouted before winter hasn’t really moved, but […]

This Saturday morning I spent the early hours on the back porch with a book, a cat, and a pair of binoculars. It was overcast, and the birds were everywhere. They especially liked our big bougainvillea. It is overgrown, and the recent frosts have left it dry and brittle. It is more imposing than two […]

A while back I came across two tough passages in the Bible. The first is 2 Corinthians 4:15:
τὰ γὰρ πάντα δι᾽ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα ἡ χάρις πλεονάσασα διὰ τῶν πλειόνων τὴν εὐχαριστίαν περισσεύσῃ εἰς τὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦ.
The first part I translate, “All things are for your sakes.” The second part is trickier. Here is the […]

A long time ago I wondered about translating ἀνασταυροῦντας as “crucify again.” I’m gratified to see that BDAG expresses similar thoughts:

Always simply crucify (ἀνά=up); hence Hb 6:6 ἀνασταυροῦντας ἑαυτοῖς τὸν υἱὸν τ. θεοῦ may mean “since, to their own hurt, they crucify the Son of God,” of apostate Christians; but the context seems to require […]

My grandfather Milton Jungwirth passed away when I was very young. I know him from an old Christmas photo taken in my grandmother’s living room. The whole family is there. I am sitting on the floor with a golden retriever, who must have been Bucky. My brother Phillip is in my father’s arms, not […]

This last month I’ve started tutoring Greek. I love Greek and I love teaching, so it is great fun. At first it was just my friend D and his wife E, but after the first session, someone asked if I could also tutor her twelve-year-old daughter V. I was glad to include her. E sadly […]