David McLauchlan

What does a life add up to? Reflections on The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind by Mark Abley

I just finished reading The Organist by Mark Abley, a memoir about music, memory, and a complicated father-son relationship. It struck a chord—especially the ending. Here are my reflections.

davomatic.substack.com/p/what-does-...

The view from my office yesterday. On a clear day, you can see the Adirondacks to the south. Yesterday, you couldn’t even see the river. It’s probably too soon to say for sure if the wildfires were the result of climate change. Nonetheless: our house is on fire!

Just noticing that my list skews pretty heavily toward white men. If you have suggestions by women, BIPOC writers, or thinkers from outside the straight/cis mainstream, I'd especially appreciate them.

Here it is. My stack of reading material, from Abley to Wittgenstein via Haidt, Lewis, and Taylor. Why would I do this to myself, you ask? It's for a memoir I’m working on, tentatively titled Make Believe: An Elegy for Faith, part deconstruction, part remembrance.
Any books I should add to the pile?

The Valley of Dry Bones “Perhaps you could tell me a bit about yourself before we get into last Sunday’s incident.

My first foray into fiction. Let me know what you think, good folks of Bluesky. davomatic.substack.com/p/the-valley...

Briarwood “Did you sing ‘Jesus Loves Me?’” Lloyd Shimotakahara asked me one Sunday when we got home from church.

I wrote a thing. I'd welcome any feedback the good people of Bluesky might have, whether on the style, the content, or anything else.
open.substack.com/pub/davomati...

Book Review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver According to a blurb on the back, “Novelists like Kingsolver have a particular knack for making us empathize with lives that may bear little resemblance to our own.”

As I continue to explore the "Other America", I turned to Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver's Dickensian story of a boy growing up in Appalachia amid the opioid crisis. Read my review here. open.substack.com/pub/davomati...

Gone to Look for America This is March Break 2025 and we’re visiting New York City and Washington D.C.

I wrote a travelogue about our trip to New York and DC. Check it out here:
davomatic.substack.com/p/gone-to-lo...

idk Have you seen Montreal February?

At the risk of putting the train before the tracks, I, for one, am excited about this announcement.

I had a 2 hour and 45 minute delay this morning… on Montreal’s commuter train. On the way home, they were cancelled outright.

Outro to the work week…

Sorry - I misread the original post. That said, A Children’s Bible is short and (bitter) sweet.

Hi! Can I recommend some “cli-fi” - fiction dealing with climate themes? Some of my favorites are The Deluge (Stephen Markley), The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson), and A Children’s Bible (Lydia Millet). As a Christian, you might especially enjoy the last one.

Climate change target of 2C is ‘dead’, says renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, though other scientists disagree

Sorry kids - we burned the house down and we’re leaving you the ashes. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

For me it’s really just the one.

Sorry about that. They must’ve just got a bit carried away, eh. 🇨🇦

Idk what you’re into, but I recently read The Women by Kristin Hannah and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. I highly recommend both, though the latter was a tougher read.

January 2025 was quite unexpectedly the warmest January on record at 1.75C above preindustrial, beating the prior record set in 2024.

This is despite the presence of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific, with the El Niño event of 2023/2024 long faded. www.theclimatebrink....

Hey EU, UK, Mexico etc you guys seem smart, funny and reliable trading partners who don’t illegally break relatively recent trade agreements by imposing ridiculously high tariffs to start a trade war against long-time partners & allies while plunging your nation into fascism.

Wanna do more trade?

WTF did they think was going to happen?

Grab some WAT-R Something New Under the Sun is happening IRL.

David McLauchlan's review of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory 4/5: What Happened to the Evangelical Church in America? With Donald Trump’s re-election in November, and 80% of white evangelicals voting for him, I’ve been asking myself that question a lot. My impr...

Have you been wondering what happened to the evangelical church in America? Read my review of Tim Alberta's "The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism" and find out. www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

This should keep me busy for a while. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

Oh good. That definitely hasn’t happened.

I got one for “Silver Singles” once.

Have you read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind? It’s a pretty deep dive into the psychology of political polarization.

Don’t let it get you down.

Sounds like an addendum to House Divided.

Tried to read, but it’s behind a paywall. I’m happy she’s changed her tune, but why on earth would an environment minister think oil sands could save the planet?