Rainey Blogs on Some Days

I recently sat down and quickly came up with the ten books (and one article) that has affected me personally over my life (and that I can actually remember something about). Here they are. I think they reflect the arc of my life.  The list is in alphabetical order by author last name. Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains." The Atlantic Monthly (July-Aug 2008. Collins, Jim. Good to Great. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink. Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. Kushner, Lawrence. Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians. Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. The NIV Study Bible.

I have spent most of the past twelve years commuting at least one hour a day: 30 minutes to work, and usually 40 minutes to return home. I have tried a number of things to avoid monotony, such as taking as many different routes as possible. I may be the only person in the world who uses a GPS to commute home from work because I try new routes and end up in unfamiliar places. To make the most of the commuting time, I have tried a number of things. I have listened to the Bible and prayed, although it seems a little irreverent to interrupt the prayer yelling at someone who has cut me off. I have listened to Christian radio, which means I have heard the song " I Could Only Imagine " over 5,000 times. I have listened to pop radio. I have listened to the music of my youth to somehow re-energize portions of the brain and keep my mind sharp. Sometimes, I switch back and forth between Christian and pop radio, alternating between joy and guilt. I have listened to talk radio and sports ...

A recent Saturday morning, Marcia and I had not even gotten out of bed and we had started a conversation about the Winter Olympics, which has sentimental value to us because our first baby's morning sickness period occurred during the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville. And for some reason, during that conversation, I started rattling off the location of every Winter Olympics since 1980. I was a little uncertain about the order of Albertville ('92) and Lillehammer('94), but I later checked and found out I was correct. Even after nearly 30 years of marriage, this seemed to impress Marcia. I told her this was my gift, that I was Google before there was Google. I was the person who could produce reams of useless information just off the top of my head. For those of us with the gift, the smart phone—that disruptive technology—has all but displaced the Google-minded us. I'm now wondering why I was born in such a time as this. I'm also noticing that as I push age 50,...

Truth is, I have struggled with self-esteem issues all of my life. High self-esteem. I know, I know. Sounds counterintuitive but it is the truth. I first remember being in sixth grade in about 1976 and had gone to a Mount Vernon Rams high school basketball game with Becky, who was in high school. She was my, well, I‘m not sure if she was actually related to me or not. She was my grandpa’s (who was technically my great uncle) cousin‘s daughter. We went to the games together that year. It was at one of those games that I knew I was different. I had left to go to the bathroom all by myself and then to get popcorn and a soda. Looking back, it was a little scary for a sixth grader to go to the bathroom all by himself. I had gone during the third quarter to avoid a big crowd, but there were still plenty of people in the men’s room. Somehow I did it, even though there were old white men with slicked back oily hair going to the bathroom and smoking at the same time. There were also young ...

I will be reading this Sunday , October 20, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. in the Leonia Library Poetry Festival with Fred Stern , an event that will feature some of Northeastern New Jersey’s best poets reading from their works. (I am grateful that Mr. Stern lets me read in these events. I am uncertain if the $26 bill I always mail him when I find out there is an event influences him or not.) I plan to read a few new, unpublished poems written over the past year that I hope to publish in a forthcoming collection whose working title is Passages of Time . Open microphone will follow if time allows.

Recently I picked a little French restaurant in the NoHo section of New York City for us to go to on my birthday called Le Philosophe . It turned out to be quite an ironic choice, albeit an accidental one. Earlier in the same week, I had attended my daughter's middle school soccer game in Haledon, New Jersey. I arrived in the second half to find our team well ahead and to find the other team with two players on the other wearing Islamic headscarves, including the goalkeeper. (I am uncertain if there is any connection to the headscarves and our soccer victory.) I do not recall thinking to myself, "Well, if we were in France, I don't think they would be doing that!" although earlier in the year I had read the first chapter of a book called Why the French Don't Like Headscarves , which is about the ban on Islamic women from wearing the hijab , or headscarves, in France. I guess it turns out that having a secular society doesn't necessarily correspond to havin...

When a person’s last living parent dies, there is not only a profound sense of loss and finality, but also another aspect of the grief that may not be so readily apparent: the end of being someone’s child. After waiting in the family line for a lifetime, the grieving son or daughter now moves to the front of the line. And it is as this point that he or she realizes that the next train into the station will be coming for them. I think the grief of losing a parent is not just the pain of losing a mother or father, but it is also grief at the loss of one’s own youth to the throes of advancing age. The mist of our lives is evaporating, and nothing like the loss of a parent can make it any more apparent. Mortality is on full display when our last living parent departs because each of us knows our own death must also be lurking out there in the murky waters somewhere. I am not yet fifty, yet I have been standing at the head of my family line now for several years. It is a burden that has...