Chandler's Notes

Roughly one hundred years ago, if you wanted to hear a piece of music, the best thing was to go to a live performance and give your full attention to it for a solid hour. Today, we can play music in the background. What happened with music is now somewhat analogous to what's happening with books.  Listening to audiobooks has become a big deal these days. It's great in many ways because it takes a lot less focus and time. You can do it while driving; you can do it while washing the dishes or hiking a trail, you can do it while doing a million other things. Of course, when you read a book, you have to read a book.  That's where the problem comes for me. The ability to listen to audiobooks while doing a million other things fits too nicely into our overall consumer mentality. We like to consume things just to consume them, and we prefer the consumption process not to take a lot of time, energy, or really even much of our attention because we just don't have a lot of those ...

I wasn't going to write again for a while, but I find myself compelled to write about this news story in TMZ. The title is Naked Knockout: Dude Gets Clocked... for Blocking Traffic.  Basically, some nude white "dude" was protesting and what TMZ calls a "Vin Diesel lookalike" hit him in the face for blocking traffic. Now, it's striking that Matt Walsh on Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire just a few weeks ago reported on what the media, I believe the NYT, was calling a "Naked Athena." This "goddess" was a Portland protestor who was allowed to protest  in the nude by Portland police. In fact, she danced around and struck poses. Now, I remember Matt Walsh saying a naked guy would not have been so well-treated or have received such glowing reviews. At the time, I was thinking that Matt Walsh had slightly overdone it by talking about this issue at all, but now it looks like he was right on point and really on to something. Granted, this male pro...

Recent polls have pointed to a lot of loneliness. In January 2020, NPR reported that three out of five Americans said they were lonely. There have been other reports which have focused on specific age groups. To find other signs that Americans are lonely, try looking up keywords in Youtube like “no friends.” One video that pops up has the title “ 21 Years Old: I Have No Friends .” This video is not quite a year old and has 3 million views. But why are these people so lonely? Is it our use of social media? In fact, the NPR article suggests some accuracy to this claim. Is it the fracturing family? There’s evidence for this as well. Just a couple months away from my birthday, I could start making my own video called “33 Years-old: No (Close) Friends.”  Looking at my life, I think I see some clues as to why I’m lonely and maybe why other people are. Early moves as a homeschooler Like the 21-year-old girl in the video I mentioned, I was homeschooled. When I was turning 13,...

Recently, I heard a homily in which the priest said that going to the beach was a near occasion of sin. First, let's be careful. He didn't say it is a sin. He said it's a near occasion. Ok. That seems reasonable, doesn't it? Going to the beach involves seeing people VERY scantily clad. Still, I don't like the idea that Catholics can't enjoy the beach during summer. So, I've been looking for other answers to this question on the internet.  Someone called Jim answered this question very well on the Catholic Answers Forum. It depends. Seeing and being attracted to a beautiful person of the opposite sex in a bathing suit is not necessarily a sin. It’s a sin when you begin to lust for that person and lust means desiring to have sex with them for your own pleasure and dwelling on the possibility of having that opportunity, which you would take if you had the chance. Lust is an extension of the ego onto the other person. It disregards the person and object...