Tom Swift » Swift Boat

Slurpees Sold Separately

Tom Swift — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:19:51 +0000

My brother’s band was flown to Chicago over the weekend, where they played in the House of Blues. In order to reach the next round in this cross-country battle of the bands, they need you to vote early and often.

My name is Tom Swift and I approve this message.

Find ‘Salvation’

Tom Swift — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:26:43 +0000

A frightening memory from childhood: sitting alone in my room at night worrying that if the supernatural being who could read my thoughts did not approve of those thoughts He might sentence me to an eternity on a barbecue skewer. Oh, the guilt! (And we weren’t Catholic — or even all that religious.) So, although I never had an experience like the one Langston Hughes describes, his essay really speaks to me.

A Honey Not-Do List?

Tom Swift — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:47:52 +0000

Good idea, Judith Shulevitz. I want at least one day a week of the “sweetness and the slowness” of which you speak.

But what does that mean? What should that mean? I don’t want rules because if I make rules, I’ll break rules, and when I break rules I feel guilt, which causes the very sort of anxiety I want a Sabbath to help me keep under wraps. Yet there has to be something that makes the day different than every other one.

A work-in-progress list:

• No Internet
• No cell phone
• No clock-watching
• Act deliberately
• Read widely and slowly
• Spend time with family and friends

And about that whole big meal thing … when do we eat?

Last Lovely Light

Tom Swift — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:42:25 +0000

Yellow. Blue. Pink. Sky layered and light. Soft breeze — just enough to make a pot of flowers slowly dance. Two kids in the park across the street squeeze in the day’s last laughs. Final call for bird chirps. A small animal — was that a gopher? — scurries from tree to bush. My eyes are tired. Possibly because they have spent too much time today looking at the wrong things.

Only Six Years Behind the Times

Tom Swift — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:26:55 +0000

So, apparently, there is a way to read blogs and web sites other than by visiting each of those blogs and web sites directly. That’s like so cool. What will they come up with next — a way to read those same blogs and web sites on your cell phone? Shut UP! And what do you mean no one calls it a cell phone anymore? Anyway, if you are so inclined, you can click this button and add my blog to your reader. Now, take me to your leader.

Also Communing With Raccoons

Tom Swift — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:22:59 +0000

Quit Facebook and suddenly it becomes the only topic. On the street, people look at you funny. Funnier, I mean. They ask you Why? But you can tell they really want to ask you Are you going to move to a cabin in the woods to be closer to the squirrels who now presumably constitute your social circle? You open the inbox and still find messages (even though you’re quite certain you opted out on that one). You open the newspaper on the secular sabbath, the day you stay offline (if you can help it), and there are thirteen-fourteen hundred words staring at you. Apparently, you can deactivate but you cannot hide.

Another Option for Death

Tom Swift — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:31:10 +0000

As sure-fire candidate for future enshrinement in the National Worrier Hall of Fame (in Nut Plains, Conn.), I’ll admit I’ve never considered that my cause of death might be “summer storm.” Death by wood tick, yes. Death by stove-oven mishap, sure. But, while I have never stood in the thunderstorm with a golf club held high above my head and yelled rat farts, I just haven’t taken the lightning bolt threat all that seriously. Thanks for planting that seed, Paul Douglas. Sure, you say the odds are in my favor. However, you also say fifty percent of such light-up-your-life incidents come about after the storm has already passed. And, well, that’s not how I wanted to start my day, thank you very much.

Sunday Sermon

Tom Swift — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:42:25 +0000

For the first time since the George Bush I administration, I opened that leather-bound Bible that had been ceremonially placed in my hands all those years ago, back when I was a Thomas who not so much as doubted as resisted Sunday School weekly like some people resist power tools pressed to their flesh. There, on the first page, is the verse inscribed especially for me — II Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”