Here’s what happened to me last week. I quit my job. I moved into a new house. I started the hockey season. I got sick. And today I start school. It was probably the most stressful week of my life. I was working at a church that has a lot of problems and I finally [...]
Entries from September 2008
September 20, 2008
Indignation by Philip Roth
Indignation by Philip Roth is set in the early 50′s with the Korean War waging across the sea and the threat of the draft looming over young men like Marcus Messner, the son of the kosher-buthcher in Newark, New Jersey, who attends the city college across town and plays on the baseball team and works [...]
September 19, 2008
Why Playing is Biblical
I saw this picture in the school bathroom and liked it. I liked it enough to take a picture of it which isn’t a smart thing to do. That is, taking pictures in a school bathroom. I’d advise against it, but I made sure the bathroom was empty. I don’t like that the picture [...]
September 17, 2008
Elsewhere, Perhaps by Amoz Oz
Amoz Oz wrote Elsewhere, Perhaps when he was 27. It was his second novel. Set in the fictional town of Metsudat Ram, an Israeli Kibbutz, in a valley near a disputed border. If the desert heat doesn’t threaten their way of life than the enemies in the mountains do. The people of the kibbutz believe [...]
September 16, 2008
Why You Should Never Write A Political Blog
Ever since I wrote a couple of political blogs last week I’ve had people from Washington reading up on me. And the other day I was driving down the road and I changed into the middle lane and someone in a black sedan three cars behind me changed into the middle lane also. So I [...]
September 13, 2008
Rob Bell Likes Art Chocolate
Jake Dockter talks with Rob Bell about art and faith (here). Here’s a quote from Rob: People have to ask themselves questions about what they even want or desire. Because it all begins with a deep dissatisfaction of how things are. And we do not change without pain. So a person would have to be in [...]
September 9, 2008
Writers, Readers, and Everyone Else 010
Larry Shallenberger has interesting article “When I Become Autistic” over at the BWC. He discusses William Stillman who has Asperger’s Syndrome and is a speaker and author about autism. Stillman says that the autism experience seems much like a paranormal episode. “For Stillman, autism is not a disease needing a cure, but an alternate human [...]
September 8, 2008
For Writers, Readers, and Everyone Else 009
Image Journal has a couple of short-stories that impressed me. Tony Woodlief‘s “Name” is about a Vietnamese prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, who is thought to be a spy. The other is Geoff Wyss‘ “Child of God” about a Catholic high school teacher who is upset about the dismissal of a student for being pregnant. [...]
September 6, 2008
Home by Marilynne Robinson
Home by Marilynne Robinson is the same setting from her Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead, but told from a different perspective. This time from John Ames’ good friend the Reverend Boughton’s daughter Glory. A woman who has returned to Gilead, Iowa to take care of her ailing father. Her delinquent older brother Jack soon returns home for the [...]
September 6, 2008
Confessions of a Republican National Convention Security Guard
Avi Steinberg wrote an interesting and humorous article for Slate, “Confessions of an RNC Security Guard” (here) which details his experience being a security guard during the Republican National Convention. His observation of the late night Republicans is wry and witty and I want to share the last few lines: All the hotels in the [...]
