In IT terms, I am an asynchronous reader. I frequently read two or three books simultaneously, and that can sometimes lead to strange juxtapositions. I’m currently reading Kathleen Norris’s Acedia and Me and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. It’s the monastic tradition and seedy L.A. detective grit. And it’s creating some fairly bizarre cognitive dissonance…

Last weekend I found myself having breakfast at the Sorrento Hotel in Seattle with Kathleen Norris and Scott Cairns. That Kathleen Norris was there was no surprise to me—she was in town to give a reading at Seattle University, and Greg Wolfe and I had met her to talk about Image’s Oahu Seminar. Scott Cairns…