A quick Lazy Sunday today, dear readers, looking back at the recent Spring Concert. I’m looking forward to (God Willing) a relatively normal week of work!
Rock on—and Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
The 2026 Spring Concert is in the books! It was my “swan song,” featuring a total of twenty-six (26) pieces: ten selections from the Middle School Music Ensemble; three solo pieces; one small group performance; and twelve tunes from the High School Music Ensemble.
Before the concert, I estimated a total runtime of about two hours. It was slightly more, clocking in a bit closer to two hours, ten minutes. That was a bit longer than I prefer, but it was worthwhile to get in all of the performances. Yes, I could have shaved at least one tune from each Ensemble (and I know the ones I would have cut), but the sets ended up being very nicely balanced.
My High School Music Ensemble in particular had a good mix between the various singers in class. It’s a blessing to have several singers, and it allows for the blending of voices in fun ways, but I like to make sure every singer who wants to sing lead gets a roughly equal proportion, with heavier weight towards seniors. I think I achieved that, with every singer getting at least two songs. For the Middle School Music Ensemble, I had one young lady who took lead on most tunes, but I had quite a few boys sing solos or with one another. Another young lady sang our concert opener, “Eye of the Tiger.”
Overall, the concert went very well. Even with the length, students and parents were thrilled. Several parents expressed dismay post-concert that it would be my last. The kids maintained an impressive degree of stamina throughout the experience. There were naturally a few flubs, but even those the students handled like pros.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
The last Spring Concert of yours portly career (at least in its current iteration) is coming up this Tuesday, 28 April 2026. It’s my swan song as the music teacher at my little school, so I’m going out big.
This concert will be the biggest, most stacked concert I’ve ever programmed. It will feature a total of twenty-six (26) pieces (appropriate, since it’s 2026, but I did not plan it that way; I just realized the connection while typing this post)—ten selections from the Middle School Music Ensemble; three solo pieces; one small group performance; and twelve tunes from the High School Music Ensemble.
The Middle School Music Ensemble’s set takes about forty minutes from top to bottom, and they’ve played it all the way through every day this past week. The High School Set is a bit longer, and we have not been able to play the entire program in a single class period. A class period at my school is about fifty-six minutes; by the time we get through attendance and tuning, we have maybe fifty minutes remaining. Our best run yet was getting through ten of the twelve pieces.
As such, I’m estimating that the total performance time of the concert will be about two hours—100 minutes between the two Ensembles, and about twenty minutes for the solo and small group pieces. That’s about the upper limit of where I (and, I imagine, my administration) would like to go. Factor in some shuffling between pieces and what not, as well as transitioning students on and off the stage, and we’re probably looking at around two hours and fifteen minutes.
There’s always this weird pressure to rush on through these concerts. My point (and the one I’ll make to my admin if they object to the length) is that we routinely have sporting events that last three or more hours. Baseball frequently has double-headers on school nights, which can easily run until 9 or even 10 PM. Us wrapping up around 8:15 or 8:30 PM is not going to ruin anyone’s ability to come to school the next day. Frankly, if the admin doesn’t want to stick around (understandable—they have to make an appearance at a lot of events), I don’t mind. I can lock up the building myself (as I have done many times before)!
Ahem—but I digress. No need to get defensive on the front end. That said, it’s going to be a pretty awesome concert. It’s not just two hours of lame filler. We’re going to rock—and pop, and soft rock, and so on—and it’s going to be a fitting display of my students’ talents.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
Reaccreditation is the process that private schools go through periodically to assure they’re meeting minimum education standards. As I explain it to my students, having accreditation gives their diploma value in the eyes of colleges, universities, and employers. The reaccreditation team makes sure that the school is still meeting and/or exceeding those standards, so that the diploma from those institutions will still mean something.
There are different accrediting cycles. My school (accredited through the Southern Association of Independent Schools [SAIS], which shares accrediting standards with the National Association of Independent Schools [NAIS]; we’re part of SCISA for academic, athletic, and fine arts events) goes through reaccreditation every five years. SCISA offers three-year and five-year options, with slightly different standards for the longer term. SCISA also has separate reaccrediting standards for different types of schools; for example, Montessori schools have their own set of standards, because the Montessori approach is quite different from typical educational approaches. In the world of independent schools, there is, not surprisingly, a great deal of independence.
That’s something worth bearing in mind, too: reaccreditation does not mean standardization. Yes, there is a certain baseline, such as schools needing to maintain adequate safety protocols, or keeping immunization records on file, but the how of teaching and curriculum is left up to the schools. The reaccrediting team offers recommendations for a school, but the main point is accountability—are the schools delivering what they promise their stakeholders, or making steps to do so?
I am usually not one for bureaucratic paper-shuffling, but apparently I’m good at it, as I take lots of notes and can figure out how to optimize a system fairly quickly. I possess, too, the capacity for consuming large amounts of information quickly, which includes scanning files for necessary documents and information. I also love education (even though I have my issues with it), so it was really cool being part of this visiting team. I’ve heard some horror stories about schools that lacked even basic documentation and that have actively avoided reaccreditation (which is, ultimately, self-defeating, because it likely means you aren’t delivering on your promises to parents and students).
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
This post contains a handful of Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you. —TPP
Dr. Wife is visiting a friend this weekend, so I’m dog and koi duty. It’s a pretty easy duty, so I’ve been playing lots of video games.
It’s rare that I spend extended periods gaming. When I did have the free time to do so, my pattern was to play a game obsessively for about a week or two, then not touch it (or most other games) for months. It’s one reason it took me four years to beat the main quest in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (and because I snuck everywhere and spent most of the time exploring outside of the main quest). Every time exam week would roll around in college, I’d have several days of unlimited, unstructured time, during which I’d play for four-to-six hours at a stretch—then I’d barely touch the game until the next exam week.
It’s a testament to how easy college was that I was able to do that and still graduate magna cum laude (I was a mere three-thousandths of a point away from summa). I don’t think it’s that I was particularly smart; I just knew how to take notes and study, and my mind for historical minutiae is like a Venus fly trap, absorbing and dissolving the meaty goodness into a nutritious synthesis of knowledge.
But I digress—that gaming pattern has persisted well into adulthood. Now the time horizons are both more constricted and more expanded. If I’m way ahead of work and composing and writing, I might play a game a couple of hours at night before bed for one-week period, but sleep deprivation hits hard and fast at forty-one, and I soon mend my ways as my gaming sessions creep beyond 10 PM. On the other hand, the periods of fallow gaming time grow longer, where I might not touch any game (beyond a time-wasting phone puzzle game or the like) for months and months, other than an occasional round of Civilization VII with my boy Justin.
That’s all a long way of saying that—finally—conditions were ripe for an extended gaming session. Dr. Wife is living it up in Charleston; the Internet is installed in the new house; packing continues, but we’ve put a huge dent into it; and I’m on Spring Break. And way back in January I purchased the deep 4X game Old World.
Old World is from one of the guys who worked on Civilization IV, which is considered one of the best installments in the storied franchise (I agree). The game’s composer is Christopher Tin, the guy who wrote the Grammy-winning “Baba Yetu,” the title music from Civ IV:
“4X” stands for “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate”—the pattern that such games follow. Players start in a wreathed in darkness, and must explore it. As promising spots for new cities are found, players expand to them, exploiting the valuable resources of those locations in the process. Finally, players—either through direct conquest or some other means—must exterminate their opponents (or out-compete them) to achieve victory. Each “X” builds upon the one that came before. Explore well, expand well; expand well, exploit well; exploit well, and—well, you get the idea.
Old World follows that pattern, one familiar to legions of Civilization fans, but deepens the experience. Like my exam week Morrowind adventures, the timeframe of the game is shorter than Civ—it’s just the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, not the entire world from 4000 B.C. to the distant future—but the focus is deeper. Instead of an immortal leader, the game introduces mortal rulers and complex family dynamics, the likes of which Paradox Interactive games like Crusader Kings III feature prominently. Instead of all of your cities remaining loyal because you keep the “happiness” at or above zero, cities are ruled by different aristocratic families within your kingdom, with whom you must curry favor. Even your wife can get made at you, which has direct repercussions on the effectiveness of how you govern (“happy wife, happy life” is now gamified).
There’s way more to it than that, but just from playing through the tutorial—which I highly recommend to new players—I am hooked. I started a semi-guided “learn by playing” game (a sort of self-guided tutorial after the more on-the-rails, five-part tutorial) as Babylon last night around 9 PM; the next thing I knew it was 2 AM!
Here’s how it all went down.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
After probably twenty hours and redoing our FY2025 taxes four times across four different software systems, each with their own distinct, labyrinthian logic, I finally filed our federal and State income taxes.
In the process, our balance due to the federal government swung wildly as I tried (in vain) to get Form 8962 to work correctly, which resulted in our federal return being denied—like Christ Being Denied by Peter—three times.
Finally, however, the cock crowed, and we coughed up our pound of flesh (and then some) to Uncle Sam and the States of North and South Carolina.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
Consider every broad claim about men and women in this post to contain the qualifier, “in general.” Obviously, “Not All Women/Men Are Like That.” That’s why these are generalities. I’m sure you’re the exception to these general rules/statements, dear reader. —TPP
Women in the modern West have it hard, maybe even harder than men.
No, I haven’t suddenly become a cuck or a simp or whipped or anything like that. Regular readers know that I believe men in the modern West have it pretty hard, too. There’s a widening gulf between men and women that is demoralizing and sad, and threatens our very civilization. After all, if we don’t get together, we’re not going to have children, and the future belongs to those who show up for it.
But as much as women do (and probably should) catch the blame for our present ills, they are themselves victims of those ills. The systemic and social forces that have dominated the West since at least the First World War place tremendous strain on women.
Consider: women are hardwired to crave social unity. If every piece of media, every piece of pop culture, every piece of advertising, every piece of celebrity news, every piece of mommy blog “wisdom” is shouting the same messages, it’s incredible hard to resist, even for men. For women, it requires a truly herculean effort to overcome, and they are (in general) not programmed to handle it.
Living in the American South, the counterexample is true: in a social and cultural environment that encourages a more traditional and a more (at least nominally) Protestant Christian viewpoint, women are (overall) more traditionally, Protestant Christian. Unfortunately, even down here we’re seeing the influence of the broader American culture, which is implicitly progressive and transgressive in its social mores. Women might be more reluctant to “shout their abortion” because there’s a strong social and religious stigma against infanticide (as their should be), but they’re still happening, albeit illegally.
Obviously, the Truth is the Truth, and that comes from Christ. For men, it’s easier to follow through the logical consequences of one’s actions, both because we’re wired this way and because we have to face real consequences for our actions. We also reason more linearly, and are (generally) better at compartmentalizing. Our brains are organized in boxes. Getting to the Truth is a spiritual experience, yes, and it is full of emotion, but it’s also often a matter of following the breadcrumbs in a logical sequence.
Women’s minds, on the other hand, are piles of rational and irrational thoughts blobbing about in an amorphous stew. I suspect the reason women like their homes and work spaces so tidy and so decorated is because it allows them to exercise some external order and control (and similarly why men can tolerate disorganization or messiness a bit better). Women’s judgments are often based on intuition and “vibes” more than following a sequential trail of logic. Further, their judgments are socially reinforced by other women—and women do so viciously. Having worked in education—a female-dominated field—for so long, believe me, women are incredibly vindictive with each other.
To be clear, I’m not denouncing this way of thinking, or implying (intentionally or otherwise) that it’s inferior to the way men think. It’s merely different. And, of course, the obvious disclaimers: women can think rationally; women can control their emotions; women can understand moral concepts like “right” and “wrong.” However, it’s easy to see why women depend so much on the external validation of social uniformity and cohesion relative to men.
In that context, women have it very hard compared to men, and it likely accounts for the wild drift to the Left among women, while men move further to the Right. Leftism runs on emotions and collectivism; the Right runs on protection (against physical and moral threats) and reason. Women allocate the resources that men (traditionally) earn; in the absence of healthy marriages, women reallocate government resources (which are really taxes it has stripped from its citizens) to fulfill the nurturing role. Thus we see the bizarre, misplaced toxic empathy of the Left.
The advantages of being a man in any system or society are clear: you’re not as worried about agreeableness, so you don’t mind challenging the system as much; you’re more able to put aside your emotions to look at the second, third, and fourth order consequences of a decision; and you’re better equipped to buck trends that are wicked or, at best, ill-advised.
To be clear, as a conservative Christian man who possesses some of these qualities, I struggle mightily to stay on the straight and narrow. Indeed, my mind certainly possesses feminine elements (like the bleeding together of my compartments into a more chaotic-but-vibrant slurry). Being an elder Millennial who came of age during the high point of “Nice Guy, Be Yourself” social programming, and having dated many women before finally marrying Dr. Wife, I experienced a taste of the female mind first-hand.
How much harder, then, is it for women who lack a religious foundation and a social network to reinforce it to stay the course?
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
One morning while driving into work I started thinking about short stories. The Based Book Sale is running a sale on short stories and short story collections this week. My book The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot is one of the collections in the sale, and I’ve purchased a couple of works from other authors (and will likely buy more). $0.99 for a Kindle eBook is excellent.
Here’s the problem: I don’t like reading anything over about 2000 words on a screen. I will, but if I have the option to purchase a $10 paperback over an eBook, I almost always will, unless the work is fairly short and I can read it on the toilet (lol). I don’t have a Kindle device, which might make the reading experience more pleasant, but I suspect I am a physical media man when it comes to long-form writing (a bit of an irony, considering I write almost exclusively for an online audience).
That got me thinking: what if I created a fifty-page monthly fiction magazine in the spirit of the old pulps? Something about 4″x6″ that could be carried in a bag or a large pocket, packed with short stories of various genres from up-and-coming authors?
Further, what if I paid those authors decent money, not just “exposure”—$50 at least per story, and preferably $100. I could always toss in some stories of my own to keep my costs down, and it would be printed very cheaply on pulp-grade paper, probably entirely in black and white. I’d commission artists to design the covers, which would be eye-catching (and possibly in color). Then I’d mail copies to paid subscribers and distribute others through independent bookstores, comic bookstores, etc., on a consignment basis.
I asked Microsoft’s AI, CoPilot, how feasible it would be, and its answer surprised me.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
Another SCISA Music Festival is in the books, and it’s a bittersweet occasion for yours portly, as it’s the last one as a music teacher at my current school. I’ve been taking kids to Columbia, South Carolina for the SCISA Music Festival every year since 2012 (except for one year when I had to stay on campus for our reaccreditation visit, and during the COVID year, when we hired a judge to adjudicate our pianists on campus). My Instrumental Ensembles, whether in the “Small” or “Large” categories, and either High School or Middle School, have earned Gold medals every year since 2013 (the High School Small Instrumental Ensemble in 2012 earned a Silver for an instrumental rendition of “The Circle of Life”).
It all fell into place from there. One thing I will miss about teaching music in a group is that very process of collaborative creation. The molding of our arrangement felt like a musical conversation that unfolded gradually, each element falling into place at its appointed time. The process was truly magical.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
On Wednesday, 4 March 2026 I led the men’s devotional, Master’s Men, at my church. Master’s Men meets the first Wednesday of each month, and men in the congregation take turns leading.
I wasn’t sure what to discuss, so I turned to a devotional my late paternal grandmother gave me many years ago. I flipped to the verses for 4 March, and it prominently featured James 5:10. The other verses emphasized how Christ Will Bear our burdens. Given that my wife and I are in the midst of moving while she’s finishing her residency and I’m entering the busiest part of the school year, that seemed like the natural direction to take.
However, as I dove deeper into James 5 itself, I realized there was so much more to discuss. I came away with a very different message (although it does, of course, touch upon how Christ Bears our burdens). The result is included below. —TPP
1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. 4 Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.
7 Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. 8 You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
9 Do not grumble against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned. Behold, the Judge is standing at the door! 10 My brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and patience. 11 Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.
12 But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No,” lest you fall into judgment.
13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
19 Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, 20 let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.
Let us pray.
The Book of James is, perhaps, one of the most challenging books of the New Testament. James does not pull any punches, but exhorts believers to be doers of the Word, not merely hearers of it in James 1:22—and to take joy in our strife and suffering in James 1:2.
Indeed, each chapter of this short book offers up warnings for the reader. James 2:20 tells us that “faith without works is dead.” James 3:1-8 always convicts me; I have set far too much ablaze with an unruly tongue in my life. James 4 cautions against pride and encourages humility, reminding us that we cannot boast about tomorrow because God Controls and Numbers our days.
I think part of the appeal of James, particularly for men, is that it calls us to action—that our faith, if it is true faith at all, will show itself through our actions. If the faith we claim we have is true, then our deeds will reflect our faith. We are not saved by works, but works are evidence of our faith. As Christ Says in Matthew 7:16a: “You will know them by their fruits.”
So it is that we come to James 5, the final chapter in this useful little book. This chapter strikes me as a culmination of everything before it. So much of James is a reminder of our own limitations as fallen, sinful humans, and how dependent we are upon Christ’s Grace. James 5 demonstrates this dependence upon Christ by emphasizing God’s Judgment, God’s Timing, and God’s Provision.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
