partsofspeaking

I don't know what kind of a person he was.  But his music was great.  Yesterday I Listened to his breakout concern at Filmore East in 1971   Good stuff.  

A few years back I watched the excellent version of Bleak House on PBS, starring Anna Maxwell Martin and Carey Mulligan and Gillian Anderson.  Since Dickens’ novels are just about free for Kindle, I downloaded it and finished it.  It is quite long, of course, and has at least 30 characters and subplots galore, but I enjoyed it and was so disheartened when it was over. Bleak House is the story of, well, many people, but the main character and one of the two narrators is Esther Summerson, who would be a little too good to be true if she didn’t have a sense of irony and a sense of humor, especially when it comes to the men who want to marry her.  Esther narrates maybe 40%of the book, and Dickens does a great job with the woman’s voice.  I felt consistently that her voice is sustained and he doesn’t digress from it.  The other narrator is an omniscient third person one who writes in present tense.  I’m indifferent to that method, though I have used it m...

I am going to start a regular feature here where I comment upon the daily quotations that the Franklin Covey people put in their planners.  Some of them I love. Some are way dumb. Today is this gem from Joseph Campbell.  "A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." Well, let's unpack this.  On the surface, it sounds good.  However, . . . After two tragic terrorist attacks last week, I beg to differ.  Those young men, in Manchester and in Egypt ( actually, according to this website, there were many more last week ), had given themselves to something bigger than themselves, radical Islamic-motivated terrorism.  I don't think they qualify as heroes. (Note:  the website link may be controversial, so this is not an endorsement of it.) Seems to me we have to ascribe positive output, constructive results to a hero somewhere. Now who exactly is Joseph Campbell?  Literary types love to quote him.  He was ...

In Alice Walker's The Color Purple , she has Celie say a line that paraphrases to "I think God is upset when we pass by the color purple and don't notice it."  Obviously, it is said a little different from that but I'll forego the strong language. However, I take that line to heart, and I don't like to walk by purple flowers (which are always better than fake purple anything) like lilacs or these wildflowers and not notice them.  So I share. I also like the color of eggplant, the color of coral, and the color of babies' eyes. 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/26/gunmen-fire-on-bus-containing-coptic-christians-in-egypt-several-reported-dead.html

Yesterday was an interesting day for me.  I even cleaned my house-- I even cleaned baseboards --which ends up with a  wonderful feeling.  I am trying to hire a new faculty member, and that is working out.  After I brought the dog back from our walk, my husband was watching a Disney movie, Brave, so I got sucked into it because I am proud of my Scottish heritage (which also involves 3/8 of my genetics being Scandinavian, oddly). The animated movie starts out charmingly enough, with a wild child princess enjoying a horseback ride and archery excursion with flowing red locks. Her mother is traditional and wants her to help keep the clans together by marrying one of her suitors.  The princess rebels at this, and one day in the forest meets a witch who agrees to cast a spell on her mother that doesn't turn out so well.  I'll leave it at that, not because I am afraid of spoilers but because I got tired of it and don't care to go on. As the commenters on imdb...

Below I have posted the outline for my Life Group lesson tomorrow on Luke 4, so if someone is scurrying through the Internet on a Saturday and needs help with the lesson, go for it.  But I'll start with some observations. I really believe that ultimately, rejection by the world is part of being a Christian.  No matter how successful one is becomes at his or her career, profession, art, or work, there will be a time when the "crowd" just dismisses that person for his/her commitment to Christ.  It might be small, or it might be large. It might be snarky comments about a sexual ethic such as Mike Pence mentioned (not being alone with a woman other than his wife, which makes perfect sense to most of us in a public position) or rejection over the stance on marriage as heterosexual (Chik-Fil-A) or rejection of materialism as a world view, or anything.  I just think we need to accept it that there will be a glass ceiling for most of us who want to put devotion to Christ...

--> This year being the 500 th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, I have turned my attention to Luther’s 95 Theses, which got it all started. I just read them for the first time, and they are not what I expected.  They are statements and in some ways, pointed questions directed at the Pope mostly about indulgences. The list is not a full attack on Catholic theology, but almost entirely on the indulgences.  He accepts the office of Pope as valid (at least at this point in time) but not the actions of this one. Although these 95 Theses are the foundation of the Protestant church, they are not a completed theology, either.  I think he was trying to start a fight, which he sure did, and which I am glad about. That is not to say these go without scrutiny, only that he got something started, thankfully.  And I was a huge Luther fan until I heard how anti-semitic he was, and read it for myself, so he’s problematic, to say the least. ...

Why do we approach communication, and the teaching and study of it as a tic-tac-toe match rather than positively? A quotation from an online course in professional communication that I am assigned to teach this summer: "When you are in the workplace, you will communicate and interact with many people with a variety of personality traits and cultural differences.  Being able to work together well will help you succeed in workplace projects and teams, and understanding your customers will ensure that you don't alienate them!"  Too often I have heard or read this type of thing, and probably said it myself years ago.  It is really a faulty view of communication and teaching communication, that is, the main reason we study it is "to do no harm."  When I was a kid playing tic-tac-toe, my only strategy was to keep the other person from getting three across, but never to get three across myself.  Therefore, my games ended in "ti...

My sweet son brought us dinner for Mother's Day.  Although I have gone off sugar and desserts, I did eat some pie.   My son is a miracle. I do not tell him that on a regular basis, although he knows it, I think.  It's not something we talk about, that for him to be conceived I went through an interesting series of shots and scans and procedures.  He was not supposed to be, not from a natural point of view.  As I have written before, I have Kallmann's Syndrome, a condition that means much less to me now than it did when I was younger but which still casts a shadow over my life.  Kallmann's has many ramifications, but the real prospect of not having a child is the hardest. In that light, calling my son a miracle is not a big exaggeration, and the fact that he grew up, survived  pyloric stenosis as an infant, several years of seizure disorder from 4-11, and then grew up to be a taxpayer who likes to cook for his parents.  Considering a...

Spring semester is over and I am entering a new phase of my life (more on that below).  For the first time in my life I have strep infection and am home from work for three days.  The illness isn't fun but being home is a blessing, because I am able to separate myself from the demands of work and reflect. I put the number 1701 above because this is my 1701st post on this blog, and there are about 160 on my other blog.  Due to work constraints I was not able to write much in the last month or so and I plan for that to change, and I want to re-ignite this blog and its mission now. But, WHY? Christianity Today is running a series on this subject, more or less, and there was a link to this article by Beth Moore:  https://blog.lproof.org/2017/04/personal-branding-conversation.html    It's worthy reading, whether you are a Beth fan or not.  I go back and forth, but she is the hottest and biggest thing around so she has a lot of wisdom here.  She s...