MOVING to markhulsether.com!

After a longish run (at least in online "dog-years") as Mark's Blogging Experiment, or MBE, this project is moving to a different website with a new name. Click on markhulsether.com. The new site has a nicer layout and much improved searching, both by themes and more generally. MBE content outgrew the structure for this sort …

Beauty Surrounds Us

I've done earlier posts on this, so this will be short and sweet. I made some key revisions to my translation/paraphrase of a beautiful Danish hymn lyric (nearly unknown in the US) and I have a not-too-terrible recording to share. I plan to record something better soon, if I can ever manage to stop tinkering …

A New Lyric for a Classic Hymn

A year ago, I published an earlier version of this essay. Since then I've revised significantly, so I'm going back to the well for Christmas 2021. Most of this reworked version also appears here. [Note: I subsequently updated these lyrics to make them better for singing (somewhat less literal in paraphrasing the Danish, but with …

Out Here in the Middle

While talking with my friend Ron as he drove through Nebraska, I quoted him a James McMurtry song: “Out here in the middle where the buffalo roam/we're putting up towers for your cell phones.” If you don’t know how that sounds and can't place it within his critique of politics in "flyover country," stop what …

Carolyn Wedin, Beloved Friend and Mentor, 1940-2021

I wrote these comments for the funeral of my aunt Carolyn, which took place two days ago. I share them here with a few hyperlinks and some light edits to clarify things that were clearer in the immediate context. Carolyn died suddenly a week ago at 81. Her enormous and gracious spirit, and her powerful …

Beautiful is the Earth/Dejlig er Jorden: New Lyrics for the Tune to “Beautiful Savior”

Last week my beloved aunt Carolyn Wedin died. Today at her funeral, we are singing a hymn that she helped me translate. I wrote about the song before on this blog, but that was part of a train of thought linking back to this one and this one as well as forward to this one. …

A Brief History of the Study of Religion at the University of Tennessee

I wrote this history of changes in the academic study of religion at the University of Tennessee: both macro changes in the climate where we worked and internal transformations within that climate.   The department faculty voted not to publish it, so I am posting it here.  I do so primarily to share the fruits of my labor with …

Dog! How F*cked Up Is You?

This is to share and make a smallish comment about a jaw-droppingly powerful image that I have just seen, disseminated to my newsfeed today by Nation magazine. I’m not sure if I should directly feature the work of the Australian painter, lushsux, licensable by Getty images— but, after all, lushsux hopes go viral as a …

P.S: Another Note to My Senators

Reading my news feeds today, two things struck me as noteworthy and somewhat related to this and this recent posts. First, amid the current stress on "When will Trump loyalists acknowledge that he lost?" -- and that refusing to acknowledge it means at minimum flirting with complicity in, if not actively fomenting, a literal fascist …

Attempting to Talk to My Republican Senator

Counting my home in East Tennessee and a small summer cabin in Wisconsin in an old pasture where my Mom grew up, I have four Senators and two Congressional Representatives. By extension I have skin in the game in one swing state (where I wish I could vote) and another state that one day might …

Another Day in America

"Ah, America. We saw it. We tipped it over, and then we sold it." One of many unforgettable lines burned into my soul by this Laurie Anderson song from Homeland. Here's another: "And you, who can be silent in four languages; your silence will be considered your consent." That one tells the actual story of today's …