Signify

Fringe Benefits

2012-02-09T13:38:00.000-05:00

I was watching an episode of Fringe. During this episode (from the second season) there was a piece of dialogue that clarified for me why I like the show so much, and how absolutely, astonishingly brave the people who do this show are.

One character says:

“Why are shape shifting soldiers from another universe stealing frozen heads?”

To which the other character responded:

“The most likely explanation we can think of is that they’re looking for a specific head.”

Um. Wow.

And what’s sooooo nutty about this is how perfectly these bizarre lines are delivered and crafted into one of the weirdest (and best) shows in TV history.

How did the actor even get through these lines without laughing at the audacity of it? How do you even say “...shape shifting soldiers” without flubbing the line 20 times? Go ahead, try to say it five times fast. It’s a serious tongue twister. It’s funny. It’s sci fi. It’s nutty. And yet it completely works in the context of the show. The actors pull it off.

Stunning. Simply stunning.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

It Drive Me Crazy

2012-02-02T11:08:00.000-05:00

I’ve been watching Jack Bauer, on the TV show “24." He keeps saying, “Nukuler materials.” It’s almost ruined the show for me, but I’m trying to let it go because it’s so completely great otherwise. I have to wonder: Is he mispronouncing it on purpose? Is it an oversight? (And how exactly does that well worn word even make sense? “Oversight?” Isn’t it a lack of oversight that’s the problem? How many people over sighted it?) Presidents Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush all commonly made the same mistake. The presidents of the United States of America. If this keeps up, the dictionaries will give up and say it’s okay.

It drive me crazy.

And I’m really starting to wonder what it would be like to get a shopping cart at the grocery store that isn’t broken and deformed in some way. What do I get? Broken squeaky wheels. Carts that pull to one side or the other, causing me to keep almost running into people and shelves. Handles that are broken and disfigured and bite into your hand as you push the cart. I went grocery shopping this week, and the wheel on my cart made so much noise, AFTER it was half full, too late to change it without a big hassle. So everyone, and I mean everyone in the store, stared at me while I did my shopping. Kind of like a one man parade.

It drive me crazy.

And what is it with girls and what they tell me are called “bobby pins” all over the house? They look like this:

Let me tell you, they are everywhere. Every where this is a there, there seems to be one of these things taking up space. It’s like a plague. I can’t vacuum the floor without them getting into the brush, making loud clacking noises, tearing up the vacuum. I can’t walk through the house barefoot without them digging into my feet. They appear in the washer and the dryer. Click click click. Caught up in rugs. Hugging the edges of the wall on the floor. Evvvv-ry-where.

It drive me crazy.

It just do.

© LW Publishing 2011

Unfinished

2012-01-26T12:35:00.000-05:00

Okay. I’m a little ashamed to admit it. But there are some books I haven’t finished. Books that are supposed to be “classics,” part of the pantheon of supposed greats. And yet, I’ve found them very hard to finish. I keep trying. I hit a page or two every few months or years. I don’t get rid of them. In fact, they sit on the shelf, mocking me with their density and agonizingly slow prose. They baffle me with the fact that there are people out there who believe these are great books. I agree that they are incredibly complex, and they work to tackle questions about identity, faith, free will (or the lack there of), and the nature of good and evil, and so on. I get it. I can see that much in short order as I’m slugging my way through them. But I just haven’t been able to appreciate these books. Or finish them. Or, sadly, even really want to finish them. For instance:

Moby Dick.

If you haven’t read it, then you don’t know that there are large sections of this book that completely abandon the narrative and focus on details of whales and the whaling trade that are more appropriate for an entry in an encyclopedia than a “novel.” At least in my opinion. If it were done as a movie, then the screen would go black for long periods of time while a voice read information to you about whales from an encyclopedia. Yep. Time to go get some popcorn.

To be honest, as I read Moby Dick, I feel like I’m simply being toyed with by an intellectual who likes to make other people feel stupid. The imagery and symbolism are everywhere, with no real clues or keys as to what any of it is supposed to mean. And, in fact, it’s hard to care anyway. At least that's how it reads for me. So I haven’t finished it, and I’m not sure I ever will. But I will try. And hopefully I’ll eventually get what all the hub bub is about.

And then there is Ulysses, by James Joyce.

Ah yes. I have my obligatory English major copy of Ulysses. I found it for a quarter in hard back years ago and began working my way through it. And almost from the very beginning I was asking myself, “Why?” Why are you reading this? It is purposely obtuse and distant. It is more like an experiment of a novel than a genuine attempt at trying to write something anyone would actually want to read.” Sort of like Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water” was an experimental film, about film and story telling, that is interesting and even entertaining for people who are into the craft side of those things, but it fails miserably to actually be a meaningful film in it’s own right. It’s too clever for it’s own good, so it ends up being kind of stupid, if that makes any sense. And it’s all in spite of Paul Giamatti, who is always great.

I have never met anyone who finished Ulysses. And it's telling that there are lots of "guides" available for a tidy sum to help you make any sense of the book as you read it. Please. I know some people have finished it, and they are the ones writing the books, trying to explain to the rest of us why it’s a good book. But it’s frankly just too much work.

And there are others as well. I’m still picking my way, page at a time, through a history of the Civil War. It’s good. But too much detail. It’s like reading an encyclopedia. Melville would have loved it, I’m sure.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

By the Numbers

2012-01-19T11:09:00.000-05:00

If you point at something, a dog will have a hard time realizing you are pointing to something. Have you ever noticed that? The dog keeps looking at your hand. They have a hard time making the connection between your pointing hand and the thing you are pointing at. The thing you really want them to see. They have a hard time making the mental jump.

So, math, science, and even religion. Sometimes it makes me feel like a dog.

We have to remember that numbers are a language, not a reality. And so is language.

Sometimes I think people forget this. As if numbers and words are the things they describe. It’s like saying the word “elephant” is an elephant.

But behind those equations and syllables are a reality that the equations and phrases can only point to. A reality that exists. And who really knows how much of the reality is not adequately described by the expressions? Just consider the weakness of the word “love.” Does it even come close?

Of course not.

Language, whether letters or numbers, is only a pointing hand. And we need to keep that in mind when it comes to math and science and faith. They are pointing to things. If you forget that you are only looking at the hand, if you start thinking that the hand is the thing, then you miss the point.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Busy?

2012-01-09T14:31:00.000-05:00

Wow. Almost forgot about the blog thing.

I’ve been so active.

Does that word work? “Active?” It doesn’t really work, but I’m a little tired of the word “busy.” Everyone says they are “busy.” It can mean anything. Watching TV. Playing video games for hours on end. Whatever leaves us out of time is what makes us busy. “I’ve been so busy.”

Doing what?

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been playing video games or goofing around. I’ve been active. Which, it dawns on me, is a word often used for old people who aren’t bed ridden.

Hmmm.

I’ve been doing stuff on the house, accomplishing the holiday festivities, gearing things up for the coming year by getting new calenders going and plans in place. I have seen a few movies to try to relax.

Drinking coffee.

There’s just so much to do these days.

And I don’t think it’s going to let up for quite a while. But I’m okay with that. I like being...

Non sedentary?

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T23:07:00.000-05:00

Hey!
Happy New Year!
It's 11:01, according to the clock on my computer. We're doing New Year's Eve with our kids and some of their friends. We've got food. We've got Family Game Night games on the wii. Everyone is pretty happy here, and I'm glad.

I hope you're having a good time right now without being to stupid about it. Stupid drives much of the behavior that happens on New Years Eve, and I seriously hope for better with you.

I want to say, right now, for the record, that I am very thankful. I'm thankful for today. I'm thankful for my friends and family. I'm thankful for all the blessings I have and most assuredly don't deserve.

I hope that you will treasure every moment that you have in this new year. There's no way to know how many moments any of us have left. So treasure them. Make the most of them. Make them count. And remember:

God loves you.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Christmas Time Is Here

2011-12-19T14:33:00.000-05:00

I am trying to have a good week before Christmas. Like, on purpose.

Does anyone else have bad weeks before Christmas?

I have this history of not having a good week before Christmas. Frankly, it’s a little weird, but it happens. In fact, it has so routinely been a not good week, and I seriously mean “not good,” that I have come to somewhat dread this time period. But I have tried to set things up this year, on purpose, in a way that will reduce the odds of having such a not good week. I want to break the cycle, so to speak.

Don’t ask for details. I won’t be forthcoming. The reasons are too many. The details too personal. But I have tried to head things off at the pass by arranging things and stepping back from things to keep the pressure off and stay at peace.

If you have a tough time with the holidays, please know that you aren’t alone. A lot of us struggle because the idealistic nature of the celebrations don’t really match up with so much of the reality that we have to deal with each day. I don’t know how to solve all your problems. Only God, in Christ, can help you with that. But I do know that most of us are simply trying to do too much and it’s making us crazy.

I can only suggest that you trim some things off the edges. Think about what’s really important. Try to make better choices about what you do with your time and money. Don’t fill up every moment on the calender. Leave some breathing room in there. Yeah, I know. It’s hard to do that. But if the way you are doing things now is making you miserable, then you need to change they way you’re doing things.

Don’t lose sight of what the holidays are. They are meant to be holy days. Days we set apart to focus on spiritual things. Sometimes we set them apart on our calenders, but not in our hearts. And that’s where things start going bad.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Almighty Christmas Dollars

2011-12-09T12:08:00.001-05:00

Homer: I love you Marge.

Marge: I know that. You tell me that all the time.

Homer: Oh? Good. ‘Cause I do love you Marge. And I don’t deserve you as much as a guy with a fat wallet and a credit card that won’t set off that horrible beeping.

$$$$$$$$$$$$

Here’s the thing. Christmas costs too much. Not a little too much. A lot too much. Massively too much. It just does. All the way around. I know our economy depends on it. I get that. Whoda thunk that the birth of God into the world as a human would become the linchpin of western financial stability?

But it costs too much. It’s insane really. It's some form of cultural insanity. And the pressure on people who simply don’t have the money is immense. They have kids too. They have friends with all of the cultural expectations about gift giving. People say "It's the thought that counts." But they are lying. No one cares about thoughts.

I don’t know what to do about it. We try to cut back, but it's not as easy as you'd think. It really is bigger than all of us. It has very little to do with the real deal of Christmas, and I’m not saying it’s all bad.

It just costs too much.

That’s all I’m saying.

© LW Publishing 2011

LW Christmas Updated Update

2011-12-08T12:59:00.001-05:00

It has been fun hearing different people talk about the songs they like on the Christmas recording. Women and young children seem to particularly like Away In A Manger. The teens and twenty somethings like O Come Emmanuel. And a lot of the 40 and 50 somethings seem to really like It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. It’s interesting to see what strikes different people.

I’ve listened to the recording now about 7.5 million times. I had to play each song over and over and over and over and over again while recording, mixing and mastering with the other guys. And I’ve had in on in the car. As of today, I think I like listening to Coventry Carol the most. It might be a different one tomorrow. But Coventry Carol turned out like a little chamber orchestra piece, in a way. It’s simple, but I think it’s cool how it turned out.

Some people have asked if In the Bleak Midwinter is an original song. It’s not. Coventry Carol and In the Bleak Midwinter are both standard carols in England/Europe. A friend of mine is from Scotland and he said he grew up singing those songs as a child. The only original music on the recording is By The Fire, which is based on a poem by Longfellow, and the bridge to Away In A Manger. Everything else is a traditional piece from the Public Domain.

It was very hard to get done, but now that it’s done and I get to sit in the car and listen to it while I do other things, it’s kind of fun to listen to it. You sort of forget that it’s your own thing. It just becomes its own thing. The music of the spheres.

Anyhow. It’s been doing well for the church. It’s helping a lot. And our musicians are pretty proud of it, which makes me happy. Now they’re talking about recording a worship set of original songs for summer, and then another Christmas one for next year. It makes me a little tired to even think of doing it, but we’ll see.

I’ll mention again that you can get the download for a donation of 10 bucks or more at the church website. If you want a CD you’ll have to contact me. We appreciate, seriously, how kind and generous everyone has been with this. You are a wonderfully amazing people out there.

Yep. This is the Link.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Like Hotcakes

2011-12-03T12:38:00.001-05:00

I thought I’d share the good news that the LivingWater Christmas Vol. 01 CD and download is on it’s second print run today. Yep. We’ve gone through the first print, so if you want one of those, you’ll have to get one from the second print run because they are identical. No special editions here. Or you can get the identical digital download on our church website with a donation of 10 or more smackaroos.

Also, I’m happy to say that no one has had the courage to tell me they hate the recording yet. Or perhaps they are just being kind. Either way, I’m happy not to know if you hate it.

But I think you’ll like it if you don’t already. There’s a lot of different kinds of things on there. No two songs are really alike. Different styles, different singers, different musicians. It’s a cornucopia of music, you could say, if you use the word “cornucupia.” It’s not as common as it used to be.

Anyway. IF you want in on the fun, here’s the link to the download. If you want it on CD, pick it up at the church or contact me through the comments here or on Facebook or on the church website and we can figure something out.

All proceeds go to the church to help us find a home. I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a good deed of some kind. So, thanks. And don't forget to like us on Facebook.

YES, THIS IS THE LINK TO THE DOWNLOAD!

© LW Publishing 2011

Where Are The Chestnuts?

2011-12-01T09:44:00.001-05:00

People are asking questions about the new LW Christmas Vol. 1 recording. Here are some answers.

1. No, it is not me singing on all those songs. (And ha ha, by the way.) Those are women on some of those songs. My friends Katie and Janel sing the ones that sound like women are singing them. And the songs that are sung by a guy with a really great, very cool voice with a bit of an edge: that’s my young Padawan Jereme. He’s the bomb. But thanks for thinking I sing like a woman. And thanks for thinking I could possibly sing as well as Jereme. But I can’t.

2. We don’t have that “chestnuts” song on the recording, and many others that we might have liked to do, because we had to do original or public domain songs to avoid copyright infringement issues. We’re going to look into getting license to do some other things next year, but we thought the limitation actually helped us to produce a Christmas recording that was a little less trite than is usual these days.

3. Yes, that “first song” is one of mine. The song “By the Fire” is an original, based on an old poem by Longfellow. Another song writer did this with another Longfellow poem. It’s the song “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day,” which we did not record, by the way. And the bridge on “Away In A Manger” is also original. Everything else on the recording is traditional Christmas stuff arranged by our team of musicians.

4. The cover artwork for the recording was done by a local artist named Jim Pappas. He doesn’t have a website yet, but he’s wanting to get one going. If he does, I’ll let you know about it on my blog.

5. Yes, there are a lot of different musicians on different songs. We got as many involved from the church as we could with the time we had. And the kids singing on Jingle Bells are from our church. I used a hand held field recorder to record them at church then dropped the track into the mix, along with recording some of the kids in the studio. We plan to get even more of our people on the next one next year (if we do one, which we might). It was a pretty big group of people overall laying down tracks and getting it finished. They all rock. Mightily.

6. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

LW Christmas Vol. 01

2011-11-26T10:30:00.001-05:00

I know, I haven't been very vigilant with the blog. I haven't lost interest, I've just been otherwise occupied.

I've been doing my first full production job for a Christmas recording. Using my small studio set up, I and a group of intrepid ar teests have been producing a set of songs to help raise money for our church. And it's finally FINISHED!! It is a grass roots production, but not as grass roots as you might think. We've got CD's and there is a download option at our church website. It's a ten dollar donation thing.

In case you don't realize it yet, today's blog is the first of many shameless promotions that I'm going to be involved with over the next few weeks.

Hundreds of hours of time and labor and kindness have been poured into this thing at zero cost for our church (dollar wise) and every single penny we manage to gather is going to the church to help get a decent building fund up and running. An artist/art teacher at the church did the cover art for us. Some of our musicians helped me get the mastering done. A bunch of people put their voices and musical ability on it, and we even have the kids from church singing on it. If we do another one, we're going to get more people on it next time. We just ran out of time this year.

Like I said, it's to help raise much needed funds. If you want a copy on CD you'll have to contact me, or better yet, show up at church and get one there. The easiest thing would be to get the download, which you will find at the following link on our church website:

LIVINGWATER CHRISTMAS V1

I thank you in advance for your support, and I hope you enjoy the songs. Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Missing Surprises

2011-11-17T11:18:00.001-05:00

I recently read a movie review. It was like many modern film reviews. It was annoying. I’m not talking about whether or not the reviewer liked the movie. I’m talking about this trend to do a long Cliffs Note on a movie, followed by a short, perfunctory explanation about how the movie did or didn’t “impress” the reviewer in the way the reviewer wanted the film to. They can tell you if they liked it. They can tell you what kind of bugged them about the film. But they can't much tell you why.

This is the trend. It's been going on for a while. Out of six paragraphs, four are spent recounting the film, followed by a mindless blurb about whether or not the movie made a good impression. Was it too gory or too silly or too whatever? Theme? What's that? Cinematography? What's that? Subtext? What's that?

And the teasers for the films are the same. Mindless. These advertisements for the movies that reveal the entire, tired, plot in 30 seconds, leaving you no real reason to actually see the movie. Gotta review that movie. Don’t have much to say. Guess I’ll spend a bunch of time spoiling the thing with a pointless description of the plot so I can get this review over with and get to what I really want to do.

The reviewers spend more time talking about the plot of the film than the merits/weaknesses of the film. It happens all the time these days. And they seem to be operating under the assumption that you won’t understand their review unless, what? Unless you’ve already seen the movie? Which you haven’t? So they have to tell you all about the movie so you can understand their shallow review?

And books are the same these days. A lady gave my wife some books she thought I would like. Some paperback “thrillers” which is a genre spearheaded by Tom Clancy and John Grisham. Some people call them “suspense” novels. Military thrillers. Medical suspense.Whatever. So I have this “thriller/suspense” book in my hand, I’m looking it over, and on the back it says this:

“As Tony and Anne begin to peel back the layers of Marissa Fordham’s life, they find a clue fragment here, another there. And just when it seems Marissa has taken her secrets to the grave, they uncover a fact that puts Anne and Haley directly in the sights of a killer: Marissa Fordham never existed.”

Oh. Really. And this element was so non essential to the enjoyment of this “suspense” story and how it played out that we could reveal it on the back of the book? And how long do we have to wait for the people in the story to find out this little tidbit? Well. Even if it's unimportant to the plot, it's dumb to print what even looks like a major plot point on the cover of a book. Especially a “suspense” book. It makes you feel like there’s not going to be any suspense.

It seems to me that the people promoting these movies and books and such either think we’re really stupid and need to be led along on a string, or they are the ones who are really stupid and somehow, unaccountably, don’t realize that they are ruining the experience for a lot of us. But, whichever it is, there is definitely some stupid going on somewhere.

Anyway. Bye now, and...

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Piles

2011-11-10T12:54:00.001-05:00

I’ve been very busy. Nuttily busy. Life makes piles, miles and miles of piles, and I try to clean them up.

Verily.

Working on a big music project. Trying to get some preplanning for my work and family done for the coming months. Trying to do waaaaaay overdue cleaning and organizing. Trying to figure out how we’re going to get through the Christmas season without losing my mind.

It’s hard to keep track of things. And I don’t really like having so much on the table at once. It unsettles me. But what can you do?

Jesus said, “Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

As always. He’s right.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Grimm

2011-11-03T14:36:00.002-04:00

Speaking of monsters, I hesitate to mention this, but I saw the premiere of a new TV show called “Grimm.” I hesitate to mention it because it’s on opposite of Fringe, and I really like Fringe. It’s one of my favorite shows in a long, long time. I don’t want anything getting in the way of Fringe, but Grimm, man, it is good. Police procedural, forensics, monster show. The bad guy on this one creeps you out, makes you laugh at the same time. Not since X Files have I seen bad guys like this.

If these two shows were on the same channel, one right after the other, it would be a good reason to stay home and watch TV.

I don’t know how the show will turn out overall, but this first Grimm episode was an absolute blast, in my humble opinion. Creepy, funny, unpredictable, goofy, serious, the whole package worked for me.

I also watched that other show that’s supposed to be like it. It’s called “Once Upon A Time.” Let me just say: they are NOTHING alike. Once Upon A Time was NOT scary, funny, unpredictable, or serious. It is pretty much just goofy, but kind of okay in a chick flick sort of fashion. It’s better for a family audience, though not little kids oddly enough. Teenage girls will probably like it a lot. And, who knows, they might manage to make something good out of it over time. I don’t know. For that matter, they might ruin Grimm in short order.

But the first one was really, really good. I’m telling you. It totally modern, and yet it has the feel of a Spielberg movie from the 80's, with the smarts of a J. J. Abrams thing, yada yada yada. I could go on. But it’s just kind of cool to find a show this fun in the morass of all that they release year after year that is almost unbearable to watch.

I highly recommend the first episode. We’ll see about the rest. If you want to watch it, you can see it on HULU here:

GRIMM ON HULU

Let me know what you think...

Peace to you.
© LW Publishing 2011

Monsters

2011-10-31T14:15:00.000-04:00

I really, really, really like monsters. Really.

More than anything else, I like the design and the creativity of them. Someone had to come up with that thing, whatever the monster is. Some prefer to call them “creatures” these days, but I like the word “monster.” Monsters literally have to be created by an artist of some kind. An author, a graphic artist, a film maker. It’s really amazing when you stop and think about it. If you think it’s easy to do, step away from the computer right now and go draw an original, cool monster. I dare you.

Trust me, it’s not easy. Especially the “original” part.

I like how creepy some of the monsters are, but only if there is some kind of fun through line in the story surrounding them. I don’t much like movies that only scare. GOTCHA. They’re fine, but that’s not really my cup of ectoplasm.

I like the idea of monsters, the notion, mostly because I know they aren’t real. The more real something is, the less you actually want to be scared by it. That’s my hypothesis anyway. If you think that death in a movie is anything like the real thing, then you are deceived. And monsters are the same way. Real monsters, which are almost always human (or, perhaps, an illness), are not something we really want to toy with. Some human beings are much more genuinely frightening than anything anyone has ever managed to put on a movie screen. Trust you me.

Much better, or at least much more fun, are the monsters we create with our imaginations. The ones who say something about the nature of being human. The ones that creatively reflect the things we feel inside, good and bad, but have a hard time expressing. I think the pretend monsters help us, in a small way, to cope with the threat of the real ones.

And, even if they don’t, they’re fun, plain and simple.

© LW Publishing 2011

Cheap Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-10-22T12:38:00.001-04:00

I finally saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It was at the dollar show. I almost never go to see a first run film anymore. The prices have gotten outright stupid. So, I know this is old news for a lot of people, but I also know that a lot of people, like me, don’t see movies until they come out on DVD or Blu Ray. If you’re patient, you can see movies on the cheap. Used DVDs, cheap rentals, dollar shows and the like. That’s how we roll here in Money Doesn’t Grow On Treesville..

So. Back to the movie.

It was pretty good. Not a great film, but a well done film. It was entertaining and had a good energy to it, with a fairly compelling plot line. It dealt with questions of “science gone wrong,” and it was interesting because the motive of the scientist (at least the main one) is a good one, but it still produces catastrophe, partly due to the efforts of opportunistic investors and partly due to the passion of the scientist. Just this simple theme of motive not equaling out to good results is an interesting cautionary premise that has some moral weight and gives you a little something to think about when you leave the show.

The acting was good. John Lithgow is always good. But I’ve always felt like he wasn’t quite as on as he could be. Don’t know why. It’s just an impression from years of watching him in movies. But he’s a good actor. My only complaint might be James Franco, who isn’t a bad actor. He’s just not an especially expressive one. His face just doesn’t emote like some of the great actors. You spend time wondering what the guy is thinking and feeling when you know the director wants you to know. If you want an example of someone doing it right, watch Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland. He says so little with his mouth, but masterfully speaks volumes with his face and eyes.

The effects for ROTPOTA were good, but not great over all. In some set pieces they were phenomenal. In others, they seemed a bit rushed and shoddy. It was a big task that probably should have cost more time and money than it did. The main ape character, “Caesar,” has two or three basic phases in the film. He is shown as a baby chimp, as a young chimp and then as a full grown chimpanzee. Once he’s full grown, he looks pretty darn good. You can forget, for the most part, that he’s an animated piece of art. They had Andy Serkis (aka Gollum) do the motion capture acting. That was a good idea. But the earlier image incarnations are not nearly as well done as the final one. They come off plastic and stiff. I was worried about this from the trailers and they didn’t fix it. You really have to make an extra effort to suspend your disbelief for the “young” Caesar. I usually able to do that, for the most part, but it was a little tough with this one. It “pushes the bounds of credulity,” as they should say.

Anyway. Did I like it? Yes. It was fun. It was entertaining and had good pacing and acting. Was it a truly great film? No. Those have become more and more rare these days. If you like Sci Fi at all, you’ll probably enjoy this. Watch it for fun. Don't take it too seriously.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Time Pieces

2011-10-20T10:42:00.000-04:00

I was so small that I could hide under the end table in the living room, next to the couch. I’d lay under the table and watch feet go by. My mom would play Marty Robbins’ Greatest Hits on our long stereo/TV unit. I was very impressed by this media device. It took up an entire wall and served as a table to put food on when guests were over. I stared at the speakers on the thing, with the green carpet soft beneath me. The green curtains flowing in the breeze. I could smell Windex in the air mixed with the smell of spaghetti sauce or some other thing going in the kitchen. It seemed that my mom was always cooking or cleaning. Washing clothes. Doing something in the yard. I’d sit under that table and watch the feet and listen to the voices. Hearing what happened in the house without me in the mix. Amazed sometimes at how long it took someone to ask where I was. I remember the light, the cast of it. There are many different kinds of light. Morning light, afternoon, evening. The light of bulbs in dark rooms. The light changes the colors. Deepens them or flattens them. Some days are days of deep color. Some days are grey. I remember.

The scene shifts and I am slightly older. I’m sitting on the inside of the house, looking out the window at the rain. I’m watching it trickle down the window. I’m impressed at how well the window keeps the rain out. It makes me feel more safe. I like the way the water looks, the way the light bounces off of it, as it rolls down the outside of the window. I like the sound of the rain on the window.

The scene shifts and I’m walking out the front door, completely encased in clothes and a coat and gloves and the snow is piled very high. The sun is bright and it is so, completely, white out there. It hurts your eyes to look at it. And I dive into that light and make tunnels in the bright snow. I want to be an Eskimo until I get too cold. I hate being too cold. It upsets my insides.

The scene shifts and I’m laying on my new bunk bed, staring at the slats above my head, holding up my brothers mattress. My brother is sleeping above me. Just before the light was turned off, I slid my glasses onto one of those slats, thinking that it’s great to have that little shelf there just for my glasses. The light is off. I stare at the light coming in from under the door. I listen to the voices outside my room. I can’t make out what they’re saying. I stare at that light until I fall into sleep.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Adventures with Joe - The Bubble Edition

2011-10-17T17:57:00.000-04:00

My buddy Joe got tickets for the kids and dads (and grandpa Joe) to see Fan Yang, the amazing bubble man, who puts on his Gazillion Bubble show. And it really was a gazillion. The kids loved it, even thought it was a little hard to see the creations because they are made out of, well, bubbles. Which are, for the most part, transparent. He did add colored lights and smoke and some other things, and it was all pretty amazing.

On the way out, Joe commented on how impressive it was that this guy had managed to make a “thing” out of bubbles. In other words, a show and a lively-hood. Most people trying this kind of thing would end up doing it at birthday parties for little kids, but this guy is the big league of bubbles.

The bubble stuff was very impressive. But what impressed me more is the amount of air this guy had to blow into those bubbles, almost all with his mouth. I would have passed out. Seriously.

If you’re at all curious, you can see him on his website here:

Gazillion Bubbles

© LW Publishing 2011

Don't Get Me Started

2011-10-11T14:10:00.000-04:00

I am dealing with some genuine, real anger, and it has to do with my experiences over the past few days with businesses. I have been trying to find out what’s going on with a package that is coming through both UPS and the Post Office. It’s like a double whammy of “Oh no. Please no.” And I have been trying to buy groceries and do the normal things of life. But things have decayed to the point that you almost don’t want to leave the house or ever talk to one of these companies ever again. It is more becoming more true than ever before in human history that people are just numbers.

The only thing worse, these days, than not getting any customer service is actually getting it. Through the use of our wondrous technology, every company in the world is eliminating that dreaded problem of actually having to talk to the actual customers who are actually trying to use their actual products and services. For the customer it’s all actual. For the companies, it’s becoming more and more virtual. They put a virtual human beings voice on an answering machine, and if you don’t tell that virtual voice what it wants to hear, it says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.” And they try to make the voice sound really sorry that it “doesn’t get that.” But the reality is that you either do it their way or you don’t do it all.

I have found that if you scream really loud at the virtual voice, “I want to talk to a real person!!!” then that sometimes trips a menu that they don’t tell you is there and a real person comes on the line. And this is where your problems really begin.

This real person does NOT want to talk to you. They know you were not happy with the virtual voice, they know your problem has some actual complexity to it, and they are now a mediator between you and their virtual, computer based problem solving information systems. Now it’s their job to deal with the virtual voice and they don’t like it. When you tell them what your problem is, they click on the virtual voice on their own little computer. The virtual voice tells them “I didn’t get that,” and so the real person says to you, “Hmmm. Well, that’s not supposed to happen.” So now you’re dealing with both the annoying virtual voice and an employee of some big company who is working hard to get you off the phone without really helping you, but hoping to make you feel better about it somehow than you did with the virtual voice.

And don’t get me started on the grocery stores (too late), where you are expected, more and more, to behave as if you are an employee of the store. Last night I was at Meijers grocery, and as I was walking to the one and only human operated checkout, the girl turned off her light. When she saw me, two seconds later, she just shrugged her shoulders like, “Oh well.” I said, can’t someone ring these up for me?” I had quite a few groceries. But she just shrugged. Do it their way or you can just leave. You get to ring up your own groceries, solve pricing issues, bag your groceries and do it all with a disinterested employee watching from a distance, treating you like an idiot if you have a problem with their computer system. Pretty soon they’ll have us stocking the shelves and sweeping the floors for them and they’ll still act like they’re doing us a favor. And don’t think for a second that this is just at Meijers. K-Mart, Walmart, restaurants, gas stations, it’s all becoming the same beast.

Whatever. I’ve complained enough. But, seriously, it’s about to put me out of my mind.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Dark Water

2011-10-10T14:06:00.000-04:00

We slept in the car, on the road between here and that place of loss. To view empty bodies. Broken. I was empty headed and too young for my own good. Talking stupid came easy to me. But he was wise beyond his years. And kind. He took me to the door of death and stood with me while I peeked in. I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t know how to process it.

I had seen the cost of this over the years, had lived with the cost, endured it, but I was too young to feel the pull of the waves. I was farther down the stream, where you can imagine waterfalls and oceans, instead of the dark flow from hard rock on the side of a moss covered mountain that no one can stop up.

Later, I saw the water rise, flood the hospital room where my grandmother was drowning in her mortality. It didn’t scare me but it disturbed me. It shook my spirit. And I have seen this wash of mortality again and again since. I have held the hand of people, soaking in it, waiting for the waves to take them under.

It makes me wonder how well I will tread this awful, dark water myself. How will I handle it as it fills my lungs. As I’m reaching for that strong hand on the other side to pull me up to safety.

© LW Publishing 2011

Here

2011-10-08T14:42:00.000-04:00

I’ve been trying to not think about God in an abstract way. I mean, very purposefully trying to not think of God in the abstract and, instead, think about God as the very present reality that God is.

I find this hard to do to some degree.

It’s so much easier to think about God as “out there” somewhere, or to think of God as an idea, driven by a set of definitions.

Not that these ways of thinking are totally wrong. God is out there. But God is also here, and it doesn’t matter where here is, he’s there. And God is definable to some degree because God has chosen to reveal some things about himself that are definable. But the fullness of God is more than we could ever imagine, and God’s fullness is present everywhere.

So, what if you considered the presence of God as just that? As just what it is? God is present where you are, right now, and where everyone is, right now, and he’s God. Everything that God is, God is that, right there with you, right now where you are. God is aware. God is present. Not ambivalent. Not unconcerned. Not apart, but present and active, right where you are. Where we are.

Does that change anything for you?

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Things That Happen Too Often

2011-10-04T14:52:00.000-04:00

I call someone.

They don’t answer their phone.

They say to leave a message.

I’m leaving a message.

While I’m leaving a message my call waiting beeps.

They are calling me back while I’m leaving them a message.

I flip over to them calling me back and tell them I’m leaving them a message.

They say, “Hmmm.”

Then we talk about what we needed to talk about.

Then we hang up.

Then my phone rings.

It’s the call waiting calling me back from when I was leaving them a message.

I realize what it is and I hang up the phone.

Fifteen minutes later the phone rings.

It’s the number of the person who I called before.

I answer the phone.

“Hello?”

They don’t answer, but I can hear them talking, to someone else, because they have accidentally hit the redial button on their phone.

I listen to hear if they are cussing anyone out.

I get bored and hang up.

The end.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

I Think I'll Pass

2011-09-30T14:08:00.000-04:00

Some things that I recently checked out, gave a shot, patiently tried out, but I didn’t care for and am giving a pass:

1. Modest Mouse.

In case you don’t know, this is a band. You know how you kind of hear about this or that band? I’d heard a few people mention this band over the years. So I gave a listen. What I heard, and I listened to quite a bit, sounded like a not so polished garage band trying too hard to be the Rolling Stones with stream of consciousness lyrics that make you bored before the songs end.

2. The “Dots” game.

This is a pencil and paper game, maybe you’ve played it, where there are dots all over the page. You take turns trying to make squares out of the connected dots, and whoever makes the most squares wins. Me and my kids have never finished a game. Ever. After many tries. It’s just too boring and repetitive. Maybe if you were stuck on an elevator you could have fun with this game by comparison to what else you have to do, but otherwise...

3. Marinated Mushrooms

I like mushrooms. Not the psychedelic kind, but the kind you eat because you like the taste, if you like the taste. And I like the IDEA of marinated mushrooms. Seems to make sense. So I bought some marinated with garlic, which were so garlicky that they were practically inedible. I tried cutting them up and putting them in very small doses in some things and they stood out like pieces of glass in a mouthful of egg whites. But maybe that was just a bad batch? So I tried some other marinated mushrooms, marinated in I don’t remember what, but it was the same kind of thing: over powering scent and flavor. So I’m thinking this just isn’t meant to be.

4. REALLY Cheap Toilet Paper

Cheap toilet paper. You need it after the bad marinated mushrooms and, well, it gets the job done. But REALLY cheap toilet paper? Tried it. It didn’t work out. ‘nuff said.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Sick

2011-09-28T09:43:00.000-04:00

I’m sick.

I have one of those nasty, in your bones, muddle headed colds that invades and takes over. I felt it coming on Monday morning. It was giving me headaches Tuesday afternoon. By Tuesday night (last night) I was sneezing and hacking and now I’m in the numb, sore throat and body, runny nose phase.

I advise you to stay clear of me.

I spent some time studying the common cold once. It is a virus, hence it has no cure. No virus has a cure. If anyone tells you different, they’re lying. Viruses are like mosquitos. You can’t (or at least I can’t) explain them apart from the Fall of mankind and the corruption that followed the fall into the creation.

Mosquitos and viruses are a curse. A blight. And a nuisance. I hate ‘em both. Along with flies.

This summer was a big mosquito summer. I’m surprised there weren’t any West Nile outbreaks. Well. Maybe there were, but you didn’t hear much about it. That kind of thing stirs up a lot of noise when it first comes on the scene, then everyone realizes it’s not the end of the world (most likely), and they get back to watching TV. Which is what we all really want to do, isn’t it?

I’m sorry, am I wandering? I do that when I’m sick.

Did I mention I’m sick?

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

The Reckoning

2011-09-21T10:47:00.000-04:00

NEEDTOBREATHE''s new release, The Reckoning, came out yesterday. I normally buy the CD of my favorite bands, but I couldn't resist the price and simplicity of the digital download, so that's what I went with this time. Though I'm kind of sorry that I don't have the CD insert to hold in my hands and read through. I like the details. I'm going to look later and see if they posted it on their website to look at.

One thing about the album art. If you don't know the band, I think you would easily assume that this is a band called "The Reckoning. The band name is almost impossible to see in any online image you find. It's in the bottom right corner, saying "needtobreath no.4" because it's their fourth release. They seem to have done this on purpose, but it might not be a good idea in the long run.

Anyway. I thought it would be interesting to talk about the recording after only hearing it one time. Things change after listening to it a few times. You start to get it. But I was considering my first impression, and here's what I think.

It's very good. It has a more accomplished feel to it musically and the lyrics seem more complex, both in structure and in imagery. But at the same time, these same things make it less immediately accessible. It's not as hooky or radio ready as the last few releases. That can be good because you can listen to it more and it can stay with you longer. It can be bad because it might not grab you and make you want to keep listening.

Some of the best recordings, in my opinion, are a collection of some songs that work to draw you in quick, matched with some songs that draw you in deeper. This release has that immediate draw, I think, with songs like "Slumber" and "Able" and the opening song "Oohs and Ahhs" while other songs run a little deeper. So it's there. But it's not as bright as it might have been. So we'll see how I like it in a week or so.

On the very first listen, the song "Able" was the most intriguing to me. It made me want to stop and really listen and figure it out. But the recording as a whole is excellent, which is no surprise because this band is phenomenal.

I suppose in the end it comes down to this: It's got a good beat and you can dance to it.

© LW Publishing 2011

Rain

2011-09-19T09:02:00.001-04:00

Woke up this morning to rain, with cool breezy winds blowing in the windows.

This kind of weather makes some people depressed, but not me. Too much sun and dry heat, with the grass turning into brown hay is what gets me down. Rainy days like this make me feel nostalgic and peaceful for some reason.

I love the smell of the air when it’s been raining. I like the way things look shiny.

I feel like a kid when I write the word "shiny."

It’s like God runs the world through a car wash to clean it up a little.

And it could use some cleaning up, don’t you think?

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Overwhelmed

2011-09-17T23:13:00.000-04:00

Everyday this past week, I’d get up and tell myself that I would post something here.

Shows you what I know.

I have been feeling kind of overwhelmed lately. Can’t get things done. Can’t concentrate very well. And I hate feeling this way.

I wrote a song called “Overwhelmed” a while back about being overwhelmed by the glory and beauty of God. That song was a bit of a response to feeling overwhelmed by lesser things and recognizing my need to be focused on the Creator.

Stuff just piles up. Too many projects and tasks and plans. All good and important. Everything seems important.

And people have very real needs and troubles. I feel so much sorrow and pain for the hurting people God has in my life. I want to take them and hold them tight until it starts to feel awkward. Not to feel awkward, but simply so that I’ll know I’ve held them long enough. But I realize that they need to know God is holding them much more. That’s what I want to communicate to them.

To you.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Days with Disney pt05

2011-09-10T11:34:00.000-04:00

As would be expected, I spent a lot of time waiting while at Walt Disney World. Waiting in lines for rides. Waiting in lines for food. Waiting in lines for buses and monorails. But there was this one particular kind of waiting that was really tough to deal with: the waiting for my kids to come out of the facilities (a.k.a. “the toilet”).

I don’t get to go in there with them, being of masculine descent, so I can’t say with certainty what they do when they go in there, but I have some ideas. I’m thinking:

1. Secret planning for world domination.
or, perhaps...
2. Long conversations about the meaning of life.

I’m just saying that with the amount of time they spend in there, it breeds big expectations. But, while waiting, I had a little time to consider some things that you consider while you’re in Walt Disney World. For instance, what’s my favorite thing in Walt Disney World? That’s a question we ask the kids, “So what was your favorite thing?” “What was your favorite ride?” And I think I know what my favorite is.

My favorite thing is the architecture and design of the Disney Hollywood Studios Park. I know there were probably hundreds of people involved in this, but from what I’ve been able to find out, it started out as an expansion of Epcot, under the direction of Marty Sklar, a gifted and creative leader at Disney, and then Michael Eisner suggested starting the new park and putting the ideas in place there, which is what they did. The Disney employees I’ve talked to and read about over the years didn’t seem to like Michael Eisner very much, but this new park was a great idea. They used to call it “Disney MGM Studios,” but something didn’t pan out and they changed the name. My guess is that money didn’t pan out, as that’s what really drives Hollywood above all other things.

But when you walk into the Hollywood Studios, the buildings along the avenue and even the layout of most of the ride exteriors – like the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror – they all have a kind of fantasy Hollywood of the 40's and 50's vibe going on with touches of Art Deco mixed in and very California color schemes.

I wish the real world looked like that section of the park. Well, not exactly. But I wish that in our towns and cities we did things with the same sense of energy and design and attention to detail. Of course, we could never afford it, given the way we do things in the world, but it would be great if we could. They say that’s how Paris, France is. But I’ll probably never make it there.

So, call me weird, but that’s my favorite thing. Something about that environment just clicks with me. Don’t know why. It just do.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Days with Disney pt04

2011-09-09T12:50:00.000-04:00

On almost every ride we went on at Walt Disney World, the moment we’d get off the ride, my youngest daughter would say, “Can we go again?” She had, and I think still has, no concept of the size of the parks and how many things there are to do and see. This is true of all of my kids. They had no idea of the potential, and it created a kind of tension that I didn’t handle very well. I wanted them to see as much as possible, to whiz around and laugh and try to take it all in, like the kids you see in the commercials, which makes sense when you consider the cost of the venture and the quality of the attractions. But they just wanted to do whatever struck their fancy, which doesn’t work out well. You end up crisscrossing the parks, using up their limited energy and time. And when you add in all the bathroom breaks, food breaks, and all the rest, including simply getting them up and into the parks in the morning, you wonder how you manage to see much of anything while you’re there.

The sheer size of the Walt Disney World complex is staggering. It’s about 50 square miles of stuff. Just for comparison, the suburb I live south of Detroit is only about 7 square miles, and it's considered a fair sized city around here. The city of Detroit, which is the 11th largest city in the U.S., and just north of our city, is around 140 square miles. So the Walt Disney World properties in Florida are about 1/3 the size of Detroit.

Yow.

And there was me, with my wife and my sister, trying to rush three young girls through it all in a few days.

I must be crazy.

© LW Publishing 2011

Days with Disney pt03

2011-09-08T12:08:00.000-04:00

It was dinner time. We were at one of the nice, sit down restaurants in the Animal Kingdom park and, when we finished eating, everyone went to use the facilities (a.k.a. “the toilet”). It’s all very clean and nice. They had those nice paper covers for the toilets. And very modern. The toilets have those nice automatic flushers that flush for you when you stand up. So I put down the nice paper toilet seat cover and turned around, but before I could sit down, the automatic flusher flushed away my nice paper toilet seat cover.

Which leaves me, you know, thinking.

So I put down another nice paper toilet seat cover and turned around, but before I could sit down, it did it again. It flushed my nice paper toilet seat cover right down the drain. Which made me laugh. Which made me feel weird. You don’t normally laugh in the toilet of an amusement park. Well, maybe you do, but I don’t. So I went through it all again, but this time I moved very fast, trying to outwit the toilet, and it worked. Going fast apparently confuses the very nice, very modern Walt Disney World toilets.

And all was right with the world.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Days with Disney pt02

2011-09-07T09:39:00.000-04:00

A man and woman were in line behind me as we moved through the Swiss Family Robinson Tree house exhibit in Adventure Land at the Magic Kingdom. They spoke with a Brooklyn, New York accent, which immediately drew my attention. Yes, I was kind of eavesdropping on their conversation, but not really because they were talking very loudly. I think it's actually part of the accent. But, anyway, in case you don’t know, the Swiss Family Robinson movie, based on a book, is about a family who are shipwrecked on a tropical island in the early 1800's.

Woman: So this was the kitchen?

Man: Yeah.

Woman: So how would they keep their ice from melting?

Man: Ice? They wouldn’t need any ice on a tropical island. They could get everything, fresh every day, right from the jungle!

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Days with Disney pt01

2011-09-06T16:29:00.000-04:00

Me and the fam just got back from the always great Walt Disney World. Did you know that it’s very specifically “Walt Disney World,” not “Disney World.” Roy Disney, Walt’s brother, wanted to be sure Walt’s name was on it as a tribute because Walt had passed away with cancer before they could finish the park.

My sister went with us and put up with our insanity. For that she deserves a medal.

We spent a week seeing things, and I thought I’d do some posts on the experience, from my slightly twisted perspective. So that’s what you’ll see here for the next few posts. Our Days with Disney.

If you hate Walt Disney World, then you go on vacation for a while and when you get back, maybe I’ll be finished with this. Then you can post about some place I hate if you want.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Me and Mr. Poe

2011-08-26T16:05:00.000-04:00

And so, in the darkest of dark nights, I stood at the precipice, leaning over the abyss, like Sisyphus at the base of his hill, mightily inverted, knowing this expanse must be mastered, but to what purpose? Another expanse arises. Always arises. And yet, in the dim twilight of my discontented musings, I knew that onward was the only way. Onward, on the way to the next onward, and the next. And, as she fluttered her ebony wings of misfortune, the bride of the darkest ruminate clouds, overshadowing my soul, she called out to me in silent prayers, like angels of anguish over the battlefield vanquished. She called to prayers the lonely moments of my wandering heart, and I heard in those dulcet tones the expanse, calling me again. Onward. Only onward.

***

Honestly, I’m sorry, sort of, a little, but I’ve been reading a bit of Poe, you see, and it just erupted onto the page. I’ve got this large, two volume set with everything he wrote, and I dip into it on occasion. And this is one of those occasions.

Have you ever read any Poe? Have you seen the Roger Corman “Poe” movies that have almost nothing to do with the writings they are based on? Some of the movies are pretty good. But Poe they aint.

Poe, by the way, was not just a writer of little horror pieces. He wrote a lot of things: fantasy, romance, myth and humor. He liked writing suspense and mystery too. He was a fairly well respected critic and editor, though he had a hard time putting food on the table with his writing.

So did van Gogh. And Mozart. And Schubert.

Oh, what Bedlam is art?

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Progeny 2

2011-08-24T13:24:00.000-04:00

Went out on the town with progeny number 2. My middle daughter has always been an interesting kid. She has a strong personality and a huge heart. It was her turn, so we spent the day together, just me and her.

I try to plan something I think each kid will like when we do these daddy/daughter outings. And for her, the Detroit Science Center seemed like the right thing to do. So that’s where we went. And we had a great time too. Not that they made it easy. They wouldn’t accept my discounts, which I spent some significant time finding, for no good reason. The more you want to do, the less they’re willing to work with you on the discounts. Which is as stupid as you can get. And they have what could best be described as a lack-luster general presentation of things. Employees who reek of an “I don’t really want to be here” aura. So on and so forth.

But in the end, none of that mattered. We were there to have a good time and we did. When you’re with someone you love, that’s how it works sometimes. It’s amazing how you can be in some pretty nutty situations, but if you’re there with people you love, it just doesn’t matter as much.

So we looked at the dinosaurs and the exhibits and we watched an IMAX movie and we made these pop bottle rockets shoot up to the ceiling. It was great.

It was great because she is great.

And on the way home we ate at Applebee’s Restaurant. It’s not the greatest, but I like it. They have a tendency to way over season their food. Very salty. And if you start sending it back you’ll be there all day. But it’s better than a lot of other joints around here. And you can kind of tailor what you order a bit. They’re good about substitutions.

The Beauty had chicken strips and fries. And an ice cream with a brownie.

Then we picked up her sisters from grandma’s house and went to see a dollar show together. Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Which was okay. Not the greatest.

But who cares.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

The Crwth

2011-08-19T14:50:00.000-04:00

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before, and I’m too lazy to check. But I was doing some research into my last name and I found out that my last name means something close to “the player of the Crwth.” The Crwth? Never heard of it. It sounds like something made up by Lovecraft, but it’s a real thing. Turns out a Crwth is a musical instrument. It kind of looks like a lute, or a guitar, depending on how you want to stretch it. It looks like this:

According to some of the things I've read, it’s a Welsh instrument, popularly used in music for about a thousand years. It was played with a bow, like a violin, but it had a flat bridge, so you couldn't play it one note at a time like a violin. That means it was probably used primarily to accompany a singer or another instrument. It’s probably the violin that killed off the Crwth because you could play melodic lines, so it was a more versatile instrument.

I thought I’d buy a Crwth and learn to play it. Makes sense, right? But the cheapest one I could find is a box Crwth for about $500 dollars. A real Crwth, carved out of a large piece of wood, can run you about $3000, and usually has to be ordered from England.

Yikes.

If you don’t know me personally, it is fitting that my name is about a person who plays a musical instrument. I have been involved with music almost my entire life. And it’s a big part of my heritage. My grandfather was a string player. He played violin, or “fiddle” as he would have called it, as well as guitar and banjo. The story goes, in the family, that he tried out for the Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee, but the pay wasn’t enough so he refused and took a job at the factories in Detroit instead. It’s stunningly frustrating to think about. I can totally relate to his situation. Music don’t much pay de bills.

So I’m thinking about taking my name back to the original. It would be something like “McCrwther.” I love that. But I wouldn’t really change my name. Another way of pronouncing it is the last name “Crowder,” which is from the same root, so David Crowder and myself might be related. Ya know. Talent running in the family and all. Heh heh. Maybe I can use that as a cheap excuse to get him to record one of my songs.

I’m reminded at this point of sir Michael Jackson, who said, and I quote: “You keep dreamin’”

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

How To Avoid Exploding

2011-08-16T10:20:00.000-04:00

Suddenly I’m feeling creative. Not that I have time for it. The reality is that you make time, or your head might explode.

I’ve been writing some new songs, and I’ve got some story ideas. I’ve had an idea for a screenplay for quite a while that I’ll probably never get done. Who knows. I have a friend who has written a screenplay. I told him about the idea and he seems to think it’s a good one.

There is this weird energy that I feel when I’ve got the creative going on. My head buzzes with thoughts which it always does, but instead of having it all bottled up inside, causing distress, it’s like someone turns on the faucet, and you get to fill those glasses with nice, cool, clean water.

I realize that when I start to use these similies and metaphors, it can make some people scratch their heads in wonder. One time I was at a pastors meeting and I was trying to describe the process of getting ideas down on paper and I remember describing it as being like “bees buzzing around your head, and you’re trying to grab one.” That, to me, is actually a perfect image, but they just stared at me like I was crazy, and I get that. If I wasn’t me, I’d think I was a little nuts.

But what is creativity if it isn’t going a little nuts?

I’m a firm believer that everyone is creative. Some people have had it beaten down so they suppress it. Some people decided that someone else was better at something they liked to do, so they gave up on it. You see that a lot. Some kid decides that they like to draw. They draw everything in sight. Their parents and family notice and tell them how good they can draw. But then they get to school and some kid in their class can draw “better,” so they give up the idea of drawing because someone else is “better.” Which is extremely sad in every way.

There is competition in life, but life is not a competition.

Most people who say they “can’t” draw or paint or sing or write, simply won’t. It's not that they "can't." They spend too much time judging themselves, condemning their own efforts. Somewhere along the line someone made fun of them or they realized they weren’t the “best” singer in the room and they gave up on it altogether. Some people sing out of key, so they don't sing. Not even in the car by themselves. And that’s just sad. I’m not saying you should do it professionally, whatever it is, singing, dancing, drawing, basket weaving. Whatever. But why abandon it completely? Why not just enjoy your own experience. Stop worrying about how “good” it is and just enjoy the experience of doing that thing.

If you don’t your head might explode. And you’ll never catch one of those bees.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

So Tired

2011-08-12T11:58:00.000-04:00

I’m so tired right now. It’s crazy. I couldn’t fall asleep last night. When I finally did, in the wee hours, I didn’t sleep well at all. I feel like I’ve been up all night. And I’ve got a lot to do today and tomorrow. And the next day.

I feel really drained. “Running on empty,” as Jackson Browne said. I think I might have to lay down for an hour or so and see if I can get back a little gusto. I’d probably save time in the end because when I get this tired I have a hard time thinking clearly.

There’s a Beatles song called “I’m So Tired.” I always thought it was kind of dumb. But on days like today, I get it. Sometimes you just can’t sleep, or you can’t sleep right and you stumble around half awake.

I find sleep to be a very weird thing to begin with. Why in the world do we have to go under like that? Do you realize how much time is wasted sleeping? And it’s kind of creepy being unconscious when you stop and think about it. You just lay there, unaware, doing nothing. Maybe you roll over a few times and dream things you can’t usually remember when you wake up. A Charles Manson wannabe could have been standing over you for an hour, holding a knife, grinning maniacally, considering his options with the light of the moon gleaming in his eye, and you’d never know it.

See what I mean? I’m drifting here.

Wannabes or no wannabes. I really need some sleep.

Not that I’ll get it.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

The Whitney & Such

2011-08-11T13:58:00.000-04:00

I was at a wedding reception this past weekend at the Whitney in Detroit, on Woodward Avenue. It’s an old mansion turned restaurant that was originally built in the late 1800's. They say that Thomas Edison may have personally installed the electrical on the house. So there ya go.

We asked our waiter if we could look around and he gave us permission. They let us look in the different rooms at all the art and wall hangings and wood carvings and fireplaces. It’s a beautiful place, and it was a reminder of how much change has come into the world.

I checked into eating dinner at the Whitney and it’s not for the faint of heart. A couple could easily spent $100 to $150 to eat there. It’s supposed to be great food, but it better be for that kind of money. I could eat at a Chef Ramsay restaurant in New York for that kind of money.

They have a picture tour on their website, which you can see here if you’re interested:

The Whitney

Detroit has a lot of interesting places that are kind of incongruous. There’s this building a little west of Woodward that looks like a castle, with stone walls and turrets. It was apparently a war memorial built in the late 1800's or early 1900's for Civil War vets to spend time together and remember their losses. They’d hang out at the castle and play cards and checkers and spit their chew into spittoons. So on and so forth. No one is doing anything with it right now. There’s no parking and it’s all boarded up. It’s a shame, but finding people to invest is hard to do right now. It’s apparently not an easy thing to do. I took this picture of the castle on one of my photo jaunts downtown a few years ago:

When you walk through the Downtown Detroit area, you see lots of theaters and restaurants and office buildings, some of them towering into the sky. But here and there you also find small little surprises, like Harmonie Park, where there is a fountain and memorials in the pavement in honor of African American heroes. A little while back a friend and I were in that spot when we saw them filming for the TV show Detroit 1-8-7. Never saw the show, but it was cool seeing the set up and all that. Here’s a pic I took of Harmonie Park:

Detroit has some cool spots that you might not know about. It’s worth exploring on a summer day to see what you can find. There’s a lot more there than you might imagine.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Juggling

2011-08-09T14:31:00.000-04:00

One of my kids, last Christmas, received a kit for learning how to juggle. It has a book and different items for juggling. Scarfs, small cloth balls, that kind of thing. I started reading the book and trying to show the kids how to juggle. And here’s what we’ve learned so far:

Juggling is hard.

Juggling is a set of learned motions that have to be repeated over and over again. It’s the routine that makes it work. The routine of the motions and the routine of the things you’re trying to juggle with. You get used to that thing, the shape, the feel, which is what makes it work. This is why it’s so amazing to see someone juggling different items with different shapes and weights. Sometimes you see a pro juggler juggling a bowling pin with a cup and some other odd weight thing, and it’s pretty impressive because we all seem to know that the imbalance is what makes it tough.

I’ve found that I’m not very good at juggling. I work hard at it, but it doesn't come naturally to me. Which is no surprise. I’m simply not good at it. Literally and figuratively. At least, not with the amount of things I’m constantly trying to juggle. Too many things, too many shapes, too many weights. People toss things up in the air with the full expectation that I will somehow just take it into my loop. And when I start dropping things I can feel pretty guilty. It’s difficult to juggle all of the things life throws at us. But juggling is necessary if we're going to live life.

When I see people who are good at juggling, it’s often true that they’re good at it because they juggle the right things. They’re selective. Balanced. They know the feel of what they’re keeping up in the air. They have the motions down pat. And it impresses me. But I can’t seem to narrow things down like that. It’s a weakness. There’s so much that needs to be done and it’s hard to be at peace when things are incomplete.

Sometimes you’ll see two people juggling together. It’s really amazing. One time I saw three or four jugglers all together. They can keep so much up in the air. It’s such a clear image of teamwork. There’s so much skill in passing things off from one person to another. But most people never think of stepping in like that. They look at you, juggling your heart out, with an empty expression and basically say, “Sorry. I don’t juggle. I just don’t. But I like watching you do it!”

Juggling really is hard. And it can be a lonely business.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

On the Town

2011-08-04T12:31:00.000-04:00

I had a “date night” with my youngest daughter last night. I’m trying to do at least one night out with each of them, exclusively, over the summer. Only problem is that money is so tight it’s hard to do much. I’d like to have done something a little more elaborate, but we’re saving for our vacation, so there ya go.

We went to the dollar show.

The good thing about my youngest is that she doesn’t care about any of that. She just likes hanging out with dad. We watched Kung Fu Panda 2 with her cuddled up on my arm. What could be better than that, right? I got her a popcorn and pop and we had a good time.

We talked about stuff on the way there and the way home. She’s a pretty good conversationalist. She doesn’t just ask a lot of questions, like a lot of kids do. She has ideas and things she likes to talk about. Things she likes. Things she’s done or wants to do.

She thinks she might like to be a singer some day.

In case you don’t know, I have three daughters and no sons. Which is an interesting place to find yourself in life. It is very challenging sometimes. But there is this He Man thing some guys attach to having sons, which I find to be stupid. And not just because I don’t have sons. I’ve always felt that much of what passes for “masculine” in our culture is pretty stupid. What if the truth is that a “real” man knows how to raise daughters? What if the truth is that a “real” man knows how to humble himself and serve? I have daughters and I LOVE having daughters. If I had boys I’d love that too. But, as it stands, I wouldn’t change anything. My daughters are great.

My youngest is one of the most kind, fun loving, enjoyable people you could ever meet. She is a very straightforward person. She makes me proud. Like all my kids do. And if you want to know what kind of humor she has, just look at the picture on the top of the Blog. That’s her.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Motown Museum

2011-08-02T13:47:00.002-04:00

So, as I was saying a while back, the Motown Museum leaves a lot to be desired. And it’s a downright dirty shame. It’s still a fun place to check out simply because of the history. If you admire the different artists, the history and the Funk Brothers, like I do, then going there is a very humbling experience. But the reality is that the place is deplorably lacking in funds. There is no energy or seriousness about it as an experience.

It’s inexcusable when you consider the people and the money that passed through the place. You could hand pick several individual Motown artists of the past or present who could single handedly amp up the place to something much more presentable. Not to mention the Gordy family. What about the Jacksons? Stevie Wonder? The list is huge.

The Motown museum should be a MAJOR attraction in the city of Detroit. It should have been for years. If it had been done right, and marketed right, the Baby Boomers would have flocked to it, bringing their kids. It could have been bringing massive amounts of income to the city, if handled right.

The biggest problem with the city of Detroit is not what has been done, it’s what hasn’t been done. The same is true in a lot of businesses and churches. It’s the missed opportunities. And Detroit has missed a lot with their failure to attract businesses and entertainment.

Mike Ilitch is the obvious exception to all of this. I know people have different opinions about him. I don’t know anything about him personally. But he and his wife have certainly invested heavily in the city of Detroit. They’re from the Detroit area and obviously have a personal passion for making the city shine while pursuing their business interests. It’s a great thing.

But where are the others? Are people being chased off by the city government? All of those Motown artists, producers and executives who moved west when Motown did and never looked back? I know that a lot of the artists were shafted by the payment system. Royalties were rare. But others have made massive incomes. And with a well planned effort, I think they could make even more with a carefully put together and promoted Motown.

And say none of that works out?

How about this? Find a way, whatever it takes, to move the Motown Museum, piece by piece if necessary, and set it up at the Henry Ford Museum complex. It could be a whole new section, with the history of Detroit tied into it. 12th street, with the positives of the clubs and other record companies, as well as the reality of the riots and their connection to it. Old Tiger Stadium. Sports in Detroit. Classic Jazz clubs. The theaters and Woodward Avenue. The possibilities are endless. It would draw the Baby Boomers. It would add huge value to the Henry Ford experience. And it might just help draw some people from Detroit to the Henry Ford.

What it comes down to is Motown deserves better. The historical impact of Motown records is both musical and cultural and political. It is massive and it needs to be promoted and respected.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

21 Years

2011-07-30T12:04:00.000-04:00

For twenty one years her light has fought my darkness. Her flesh has healed my hurts. Her eyes are the skies that keep hope breathing. We rise again to the surface for another breath of cool, clean air. And she laughs anyway.

For twenty one years she did. And she still does. Having and holding is second nature now. It’s where we are. With three glowing gifts slowly reaching out, with beauty, into the world. They reach out with the same quiet fire that she possesses. The spirit of perseverance.

For twenty one years we have been carried across impossible places, through empty, lonely spaces, against the crowd and a world of growing discontent. We hold tightly, like a little child, to the hand of the Holy One. Trusting.

He has us. He will not let go.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

McCartney in Detoit

2011-07-25T12:46:00.000-04:00

My brother in-law, Dan, called a while back to have us set aside the night because he had gotten tickets to McCartney at Comerica Park in Detroit. This is the same bro in-law that got tickets for the Rolling Stones a few years ago. Yes. Dan is awesome.

I’ve never been much of a Stones fan, but I recognize the talent and the influence.They are a piece of history from a musical perspective, so it was fun to see them and be able to say, “I’ve seen the Stones.” I can also say, “I’ve seen Stevie Ray.” “I’ve seen Queen.” (Yes, the Freddie Mercury Queen.) “I’ve seen E.L.O.” “I’ve seen Buddy Rich.” “I’ve seen Chick Corea.” "I've seen B.B. King." I could go on, but the point is that I've seen a lot of elemental, essential musical acts over the years. And now I can say, “I’ve seen McCartney.”

And boy have I. This show, I have to say, was unbelievable. Paul is in his late sixties, but he kept going and going like the Energizer bunny. It had a kind of Springsteen gung ho about the whole thing. And he took the time to talk to the crowd. He had gone to see the Motown museum during the day. Which, I have to say, is a bit embarrassing to me because the Motown Museum should be a huge, well put together, amazing attraction. Instead, it’s a bit of a dreary and uninspiring thing, almost entirely because no one seems to want to invest any real money into it. But I digress. I’ll post about that tomorrow so I can finish getting it off my chest. McCartney was kind in not saying anything bad about the museum. He just went on to play hit after hit after hit after hit after hit after...

I’m not kidding. He had a very tight band that played with a lot of energy. And I think he could have still been playing his hits as I write this the next day, but he had to stop because he had played for three hours and people had to get up for work in the morning.

It was interesting to me that people really enjoyed this show on a purely visceral level. It was an event. It was packed with, I don’t know, around 70,000 people? The atmosphere was up and expectant. And the sound, compared to the Stones a few years ago, was great. The Stones show was kind of cavernous and muddy, which I wrote off to the huge outdoor venue. But McCartney’s crew demonstrated clearly that you can produce good sound in the stadium. Not great, but good. I’m not sure great is even possible. They played their butts off and they played all these great songs that most everyone knew. People sang together and laughed at his every little joke and when he did the song “Live and Let Die,” with fireworks popping off all over the place, people were really charged up, and it was all a lot of fun.

But let me tell you what got to me.

Here’s this guy. His name is Paul. He’s a middle class kid living in a middle class town in England. And he really likes pop music. Buddy Holly. The Motown sound. Elvis. That kind of thing. One day he gets a guitar and starts to learn how to play. Then he meets a friend named John and they start writing songs together. John is extremely talented. A little more serious. Paul has better chops but he likes John and John is more of a push things ahead kind of guy. Together, they really have an ear for chord changes and the blending of different genres. They get a band together and play everywhere they can. They start putting a few of their own songs in with the covers at their shows. Eventually, some guy sees them playing, and while they’re pretty rough, not very accomplished, they have a certain energy that he likes, and their songs do have a sense of craft about them. So they get a manager, then a record deal and they release an album that in it’s day, market wise, was the equivalent of the Jonas Brothers releasing an album. They were a “boy band.” But within a few months, their song writing chops, their blending of styles and harmony, all of the careful listening and emulating, started to pay off. Their songs began to take on a very high quality of craftsmanship, lifting them out of the boy band crowd. And, for six years, they recorded those songs. Six years of massive output.

Then McCartney and the others went on to keep writing and recording. And they all had their strengths and weaknesses. But, from a craft standpoint, from the standpoint of being a dedicated and careful writer of popular songs, none of the others came close to McCartney. And the concert last night confirmed this in a huge way. People can argue about this, but the evidence is clear.

As a song writer, it is very humbling to sit through hour after hour of such craft and dedication and talent. And then, when it’s over, you realize he could have kept going with his songs, for many hours. Some lighthearted melodic writing with simple words. Some complex, movement oriented pieces with cryptic lyrics. Some very poetic things with strong counter point and thoughtfulness. All written by an extremely talented songwriter who never learned to read melodic music notation.

There is a reason Paul McCartney is the most successful and wealthy song writer in history. Some estimates are that he is “worth” around 1.5 billion dollars. Which is no fluke, it’s no accident. It’s easy to see that, as an artist, he doesn’t care so much about the money. In the end, it’s the songs that matter to him. The man can write songs that stick to people like BBQ sauce sticks to ribs.

I enjoyed the show a lot. But, more than anything, I was moved by the sheer song writing talent. This is what can happen when a person, any person, gets passionate about art, develops it and respects it as a craft, and shares it with others.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Losses

2011-07-23T11:50:00.000-04:00

My youngest daughter still has a few words that she gets wrong, and we’ve learned not to make a big deal out of this kind of thing. I actually enjoy it. They get it figured out in the long run. But when they do, when the particulars of childhood are left behind, it makes me sad sometimes.

The current word that I love, that she gets wrong, is when something grosses her out. She says, “That’s exgusting.”

Frankly, I think it’s a better word than the original. It has a little more bite to it.

There are lots of things that you hate to see go with the kids as time passes on. The way you can hold them when they’re really small. The way they mangle certain words and make faces and laugh about certain things. The moments when they first try to be funny. Those cute little baby teeth, all lined up so perfectly straight and even, which get ejected and replaced by over sized, out of place teeth that are way too big for their current faces. And sometimes it seems to take forever for some of the gaps to fill in their smile.

You realize that kids lose so much as time goes by. Sweet things, like the ability to hide under small tables and watch the feet of the grown ups go by or fitting completely in the arms of your mom or dad, wrapped up with your head tucked under, feeling safe. Or the simple joy of playing with an empty card board box or the feeling of running on the grass, barefooted, with the belief that you are the fastest creature on the planet.

Sometimes we also lose trust in the people we look up to at way too young an age, which can be very hard to get back. And sometimes, unfortunately, we lose our innocence.

When I stop to consider all of the loss, all of the things we can lose as we leave childhood behind, frankly it’s kind of...

exgusting.

Matthew 18:2-4

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Squishing Out Songs

2011-07-19T11:40:00.001-04:00

Late last night I was in the basement mixing a song that I’ve been working on. It’s a painful process in some ways. Some people compare it to giving birth, but that’s stupid. I have watched my wife give birth and suggesting that writing a song is comparable to that effort is the height of ignorance. But there is a kind of squishing, pushing, shoving, working to get this thing out of your mind and have it “work.” That’s my word for it. Some things “work” and some don’t. They fit, they click, they fill in the missing pieces: however you want to put it. There is this element of craft that is built on discipline, but it really blooms with the heart.

As I work on my songs, I have to compensate a lot for my weaknesses, and that can take up a lot of time. But things still come together. And when I hear them coming together, it makes me weep. I’m not kidding. I know it’s pathetic, but I have been a long time getting to this place.

Crafting songs is a challenge. I don’t think I would ever be totally satisfied, no matter what. I suppose I could have a world class producer, a multimillion dollar studio and a lot more ability than I have, and I’d still find things that just aren’t what they need to be. It’s kind of a curse. But I’m trying hard to learn to be satisfied, especially with my radically low end set up.

So far, I have three church songs that are basically finished. They need to be mastered, which I don’t know how to do. I also have a country song that’s been done for a while, but I frankly am not sure what to do with it. People I play it for like it, but I know nothing about the country market. And I have about 6 songs in the pipe, being developed and chipped away at, along with about 30 demos and some other pieces of things that aren’t whole yet. And then there's the backlog of probably 40 or 50 more songs that I haven't even started getting organized. Interestingly, so far they are all very different in a lot of ways. I don’t have a “sound” but I don’t especially want one. I’m not particularly looking to perform these myself. I’m hoping to have others do that.

When I say “craft” I really mean it. Not in the Harry Potter sense, but in the skilled trades sense. Like a carpenter. Like an artist who carves statues. Like a teacher trying to shape the mind of a student. Music and writing and a lot of other arts are, at their core, a craft that has to be developed and nurtured. Which takes time and patience and massive amounts of commitment.

Even the most absolutely pathetic pop stars are usually surrounded by excellent craftspeople. They wouldn’t ever release any music if they weren’t. I’ve got some people helping me that are way more than I deserve. Very gifted and willing to be there to get things done. Without them I’d probably only have one song up by now. And even with the great musicians, few of them have it all in themselves to get great things done.

Squishing out songs is a team effort.

Peace to you.
© LW Publishing 2011

Relevance

2011-07-12T11:30:00.002-04:00

Everyone says it, everyone seems to believe it, in business, church work, teaching and communications: relevance is what matters. And it seems clear they’re right. If you aren’t relevant, then what are you?

Irrelevant.

Webster’s defines “irrelevant” as: not important or relating to what is being discussed right now.

All well and good. But the problem is, this is often used in a completely shallow and subjective manner, as if we’re discussing relevance on the Jerry Springer show. Businesses, churches, schools and non profits of every stripe sense that they need to be relevant. But there are some questions we should ask if this is going to get us anywhere. The first being...

1. Relevant to who? And why?

Relevance is extremely relative, and can be horribly short sighted. For example: A lot of younger people today have a hard time watching older, black and white movies. They think these films are irrelevant and, on a surface level, they make it true by their own preferences. It’s not intrinsically true, it is practically true for them. And the result? They miss out on over fifty years of film history, including some of what are arguably the best films ever made. It’s like going into an art gallery and saying, “I don’t like photos that are in black and white. Ansel Adams sucks.” Many things these days are dismissed out of hand, with no thought for, or serious attempt at, appreciation. And the individual responses must be what? Fate? Destiny? How about stupidity? I do know this: dismissing things out of hand because they don’t fit your narrow paradigm is a clear path to ignorance and mediocrity. And we can feed that mediocrity with blind catering to relevance.

And there are other related questions:

2. What if “what is being discussed right now” is a self indulgent, self aggrandizing pulp of cheap values? What if “what is being discussed right now” completely misses the point of life? What if we mistake relevance for meaning or value?

Trust me, you are surrounded by people who mistake relevance for meaning and value. It is how too many people do life right now. Paired with Materialism, it is the curse of the modern world.

The concept of relevance can be a powerful tool, or a very destructive force. Relevance can help you be heard, but it can also cause people to stop thinking. When you only hear what you want to hear, you stop thinking. Relevance is often the realm of the incorrigibly incurious.

And beyond these things, what if what matters to the Creator is not relevant to us anymore because we simply don’t care? What if what could really make a difference, to make the world a better place, isn’t accomplished in the world because no one thinks it’s important? What if we fill our lives with what we think is relevant – so much of which is driven by selfishness or self pity or hedonism or pettiness – and it ends up being a path to...

irrelevance?

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Eastern Market

2011-07-09T18:16:00.003-04:00

Went with my buddy, Joe, down to the Eastern Market today in Detroit. If you’re not from around here, the Eastern Market is one of those big outdoor set-ups for the sale of produce, flowers, meats, and all kinds of things. An over sized farmers market, with lots of restaurants and street musicians and so on. I mostly go there for spices and coffees, and sometimes a few veggies. It’s pretty cool.

It’s kind of changing though. It’s becoming more and more like a specialty market, where things don’t necessarily cost less, but they’re supposed to be better for you or better quality. A guy was selling some mushrooms for twenty two dollars a pound. They were Morels, so I get it, but still, twenty two dollars? Someone else was selling organic chickens for around sixteen dollars a pop. But the prices start to drop at the end of the day, of course. Sometimes drastically.

There is this lady there who sells corn on the cob. She calls herself the “Crazy Corn Lady.” She doesn’t act very crazy, but that corn, man, you have to taste it to believe it. It is so tender and juicy you could literally, and I do mean literally, eat it without cooking it. It’s about four bucks for five ears, but it’s mighty good stuff. Mighty mighty.

I also picked up some coffee, some berries and some specialty cooking oils. And some onions. And some smoked trout. And that’s it. Honest. Unless I'm forgetting something.

The Eastern Market is a good reminder that Detroit is still a very cool city in many ways. It has huge problems, but it also has some amazing stuff going on all the time. The area surrounding the Fox Theater, with the ball park and all of the show theaters, it’s all great. The waterfront area at the end of Woodward Avenue is great. The area surrounding Wayne State University is great.

It’s all great, and it all seems so divorced from the madness going on politically in Detroit. The politicians would like to take all the credit for what’s going well, but the fact is that most of the good stuff is happening in spite of them.

But good stuff it is.

Peace to you.
© LW Publishing 2011

200

2011-07-05T16:08:00.000-04:00

I just noticed that I’ve done around 200 posts. Yikes. This is getting serious. I must be really, really seriously serious about this. Which is funny because I don’t feel all that serious about it. It’s just something fun I like to do that helps a few people get to know me a little better. Seems to me that 200 is kind of a lot, considering I don't really write about anything in particular. Or non particular, for that matter. This isn't exactly what you could easily call a "definable" blog.

Like I’ve said before, I’m hoping that, someday, my kids will have this to read, and maybe even grand kids, who can say. I hope it helps them to understand me in some ways. I’m hoping it will show them my heart to some degree. There’s a lot more of me in these posts than you might guess at first.

I don’t know. Maybe my kids will find some encouragement here. Maybe they’ll be a little less critical about me when they realize I’m just a well meaning schmo doing what I can to love God and love people and make some kind of meaningful difference in this world.

Maybe.

Let me just say this to be clear.

I love you.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Influence

2011-07-05T08:58:00.002-04:00

When I was working on my undergraduate degree at Eastern Michigan University, I had a writing class with a lit prof who was from Trinidad named Brenda Flanagan. She was an artistic type, a bit scattered, unpredictable, which goes with the territory, but she was also good at inspiring students to write something creative and real.

By “real” I don’t necessarily mean a heartrending saga of hopeless heroism. That’s what most people seem to think of these days when you say “real.” To be taken seriously you must be some kind of tortured soul. Which is fine, but it’s also very limiting. There is so much more to “real” than that. The word “authentic” is better. Joy, curiosity, laughter, simplicity, and so on and so forth. It’s all real, as long as it’s . . . authentic.

When we would present stories in class, Dr. Flanagan would listen, and she would comment in the margins of her copy, with simple words like “yes,” or “”what?” or “I don’t believe it.” The point was that it was either connecting with her or it wasn’t. It was seeming “real” to her or it wasn’t.

The thing I remember most about this prof was her love for the sound of words. She heard the spoken word, I think, like some of us hear music. And that was inspirational to me. I had already had a taste of this mind-set with the writings of Ray Bradbury, when I was younger, as well as Toni Morrison and E.L. Doctorow. Dr. Flanagan introduced me to Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. It was like discovering treasure. She showed me that “real” is about the totality of a person coming out in what they write. It’s about the characters not being true to the author, but being true to themselves.

The reason she has come to mind is because, a while back, I stumbled onto some videos of her on youtube. She was doing some cultural exchange trips for the state department in former Soviet controlled countries, reading some of her poetry and I suppose doing workshops on African American lit. It was cool to see her doing her thing. After that, I went on Amazon and found a copy of her first book. When I knew her, it had been published in England, but not the States. I found a copy printed by the University of Michigan and I’m reading it now.

It has lots of flave-ah. The words roll around in your head. Smooth like.

And it has all made me think about how someone who is passionate can influence others in so many ways. It all adds up, these people who care enough to talk things through and make us think outside the box.

I’ve known people who kept spouting off about how they were going to change the world, but they were not doing much to change the life of one single person for the better. Helping one person seemed to be beneath them in some way. At least according to their own way of thinking.

I’d trade a dozen of those arrogant, so called “world changers” for one or two humble and influential life changers any day.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Freedom and the 4th

2011-07-02T15:49:00.000-04:00

Almost everyone I talk to is going away for the weekend. I guess that’s what the 4th of July is kind of about these days. Getting away. Spending time with family. Maybe seeing some fireworks. It’s all good.

Hopefully we can remember that we have the freedom to do these things because we live in a country that embraces the God given right to freedom. Which is the third of the inalienable rights, you know, that our nation is founded on. First is right to life. After that is the right to liberty (freedom). Third is the right to pursue happiness. The second and third rights make no sense without the first. The third makes no sense without the first two.

I hope you really understand the implications of that.

I remember when I was a kid, they would set off fireworks for the 4th at the Jolly Roger Drive In, which was just a few blocks from our house. We’d sit in our front yard and watch them go off in the distance over our house. It reminded me of the Disney World commercials that you’d see on TV at the time, that always had fireworks going off as they told you about this wonderful place that you weren’t sure you’d ever get to see.

Just because you were free to see it didn’t mean you had the money to go there.

Freedom is complicated. When we over simplify it, or over complicate it, we do stupid things.

My family is not going away for the weekend. We’re staying right where we are. There’s a lot to do. And we have a vacation planned for end of summer that we’re saving for anyway. We’ve skipped every other thing this summer so we can go there. We’ve been doing garage sales to help raise money for it. Saving every penny we can.

It’s a place where they have fireworks.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Owl City at the Fillmore

2011-06-30T15:15:00.001-04:00

So my twelve year old Beauteous Maximus and I went to see Owl City last night at the Fillmore in Downtown Detroit. This was after a day spent together at the Get Motivated seminar in the Palace (where the Detroit Pistons play) with some other leaders from my church. We saw Bill Cosby. It was cool.

But Owl City was cooler. Unwed Sailor and Mat Kearney opened, US was interesting. Mat Kearney was superb. I have to look into his music a little more. But the sound was great at the Fillmore, except for the sound guy pushing the db’s on occasion to the point of distorting some of the speakers, and some poor mixing here and there as well. And the house music between sets was some of the worst ever played and completely out of place at the show. Still, the Fillmore was good. It was once the State Theater, and before that it was the Palms Theater. It’s one of those movie palaces born in the early 1900's that’s now used for concerts. I saw Travis there a while back and some other artists over the years.

Owl City is very sweet, bright music. It’s not for people who like to be depressed. And some would consider it a kind of bubble gum music, which it is, except that the lyrics are much more interesting and complex than typical bubble gum pop stuff. Adam Young is a bit of a poet in that he likes the sounds of words and the individual images that words can bring to mind. That’s what he plays with, and he has a pretty good sense of humor about the whole thing. He writes songs about anything and everything from getting pepper sprayed in a parking lot by an paranoid but beautiful girl to expressions about God and faith to songs filled with simple imagery of summer or outer space or you name it.

Owl City is an interesting case, music wise, in the sense of what works live and what goes on in the studio. Owl City is actually an individual named Adam Young who does musical “projects.” Owl City is one of those projects, which happened to take off and sell millions of recordings. So there ya go. But in the studio, which is in his parents house, or was, or still is, I’m not sure – in the studio Owl City is pretty much an electonica “band.” Almost everything is done with keys and sequencers and vocoders and software. And that accounts for the techno quality of the music, which is very polished and fun to listen to, especially with headphones.

But live it’s a whole different ball game. He certainly has a lot of keyboards on the stage, and almost every musician on the stage plays one from time to time. But Adam himself mostly plays guitars and a few leads on a keyboard. He has a live drummer who is pretty intense, but more importantly is spot on tempo and beat wise, and he carries a lot of energy onto the stage. There are also a couple of string players who are excellent, a talented main keyboardist/vocalist/female singer, and another guy who does all kinds of things, guitar, keys, acoustic drums, electronic drums, and he occasionally sports a Darth Vader mask.

The thing is, the live band is very good. They aren’t the tightest band in the world, but his vocals are better than one might expect given all the treatment they get in the studio. He’s a very good singer with a sweet, high range, who is obviously good natured and a bit of a nerd. He seems to be having the time of his life, which is always fun to witness. Some day I’ll tell you about when I first saw Bruce Hornsby. Similar kind of thing. But, anyway, the live band was pretty good and they sort of did “versions” of what is on the studio recordings. Some of the loops and key parts were obviously still there, but a lot of the rest was filled in with the live instruments and it gave the whole things a much more organic feel. I really enjoyed it, but you had to adjust a bit to the fact that it was quite different than the recordings. And it left me wondering what his philosophy about live versus studio are.

The twelve year old and the dad had a blast. We ate at a BBQ joint. We talked about stuff and we rocked with Owl City, even though she is a bit more reserved than I am. Go figure. I faithfully embarrassed her in front of the whole place.

Not really. The truth is she loves me. And I love her.

Peace to you.
© LW Publishing 2011

Massively Massive

2011-06-27T12:24:00.000-04:00

From what I’ve read, the amount of atoms in one molecule of DNA is pretty close to the same as the number of stars in a typical galaxy.

Is there any way at all to actually understand that reality? I don’t think so.

Creation is massive, both in the macro and the micro sense. Massive, massive, massive. Mind bogglingly massive.

There’s something about the scale of the Universe that messes with my mind. And it keeps messing with my mind. Not just that it’s so big or so small, but that it’s so big AND so small. Like, on any beach, there are countless grains of sand, but there are also these single grains of sand that make up the whole thing. The single grain has its complexities, and the whole beach has it’s complexities. It seems to me that being human isn’t much different in some ways. It’s estimated that there are nearly 7 billion people on the earth. I am 1 of 7 billion.

Seven. Billion.

And how many mosquitoes are there? And how many ants? And how many birds? And leaves? And flowers?

In my front yard there is some grass. It’s not the nicest grass in the neighborhood. That award would go to my next door neighbor, Jerry. But it is a marvelous layer of grass, nevertheless, simply because it is massive in it’s way. How many blades of grass are there out there? A million? Who knows. And yet, each blade has it’s own beauty and complexity. The whole thing boggles the mind. At least it boggles my mind.

And then there is space. Outer space. The galaxy. The Universe. It is massively massive. How many rocks are there in the universe? How many packets of light? How many stars?

Just our galaxy, the Milky Way, if you were to drive across it at around 60 MPH, it would take you about a million billion years to cross it. It is approximately 620 million billion miles across. Million billion? But the universe makes that look like a drop in the bucket. They say it’s around 90 billion trillion miles across (if “across” even makes any sense with curved space).

So. Why do I mention all this?

Just because.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Lama Sabachthani?

2011-06-25T12:19:00.003-04:00

Do you have problems and challenges and personal issues that make you crawl?

I know I do.

I have some pretty good days. I have some not so good days. And the bad days can be really bad. Only God and my wife know exactly how bad. But even on the worst days, when I feel abandoned and alone, I know I’m not.

Jesus said this thing on the cross that is often quoted but not really thought through. He quoted King David from Psalm 22:1. He was claiming the words for his own life. He said, “"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In a very real way, Jesus was experiencing the tortures of Hell in that moment. If Hell is anything, it is a place that is God forsaken. And the point of the cross was for Jesus to take things on himself so we wouldn’t have to have those things put on us. Things like the wrath and punishment of God. But, also, I think, is this thing about being forsaken.

We have every reason to feel forsaken sometimes. We do things wrong. We cling to sins. We make huge mistakes. We hurt the people we love. We do things and we can’t even figure out why we’re doing them half the time. And I think we realize that these things rob us of our innocence.

Or other people rob us of our innocence.

And we feel forsaken because that’s the feeling that goes with these things. Sin should cause God to turn his face away...

But...

If sin is taken care of – if what is broken is made whole – then there’s no reason for God to turn his face away. This is one of the reasons I trust Christ. Jesus has taken care of things. He took God’s wrath so I wouldn’t have to. He was forsaken by God so I wouldn’t have to be. He said he could do this and I believe him. I can accept that some people don’t want to believe him, but I do. And, because of this, no matter how I feel, I can know that I am not alone. I am not abandoned. I am not forgotten.

Ever.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

POTA Redux

2011-06-24T13:15:00.001-04:00

My brother, Dan, told me that there is a new Planet of the Apes movie in the works and that I should check it out. Which I did.

I’m an invested Planet of the Apes fan. It all started in my elementary school days. Get out of school, grab some grub and hit the floor in front of the TV for Planet of the Apes week on “The Channel 7 4:30 movie (I think they changed it to 4:00 at some point, I’m not sure). Sometimes you’d get Elvis Presley week or Monster week or Vincent Price week. Dinosaur week. It was great, and if the theme was something you didn’t like (think Jane Fonda week) you could take the week off and find some trouble in the neighborhood.

But, the point is, I’ve been a fan for a long, long time, and any news of something that might be good is always welcome. And this time around, my first question was what I’d been thinking for a while: will they do makeup effects for the apes or will they do computer graphics? And the winner is? Computer graphics. Which is troublesome.

Hair, fur, call it what you will: it’s very hard to do correctly with computers. It just is. And then there is the issue of “intelligent” apes. In what way does intelligence affect physiognomy? Getting that right is anyone’s guess. But I bet you know when they get it wrong.

I’ve watched the film trailers and there is much left to be desired in this film that is supposed to be released in just a few weeks. In some of the shots, the apes look pretty good. But in others they have a quality, especially in the faces, not much different than the apes in Jumanji. And that’s not a compliment. Of course, story can win out if it’s done exceedingly well. But, if you’re going to do a CGI movie, it needs to look very good or everyone walks out of the theater with that bad CGI taste in their mouth, where the brain is trying to reconcile how everything sort of kind of almost looked real. Sort of. Kind of.

Anyhyoo. It’s out on August 5. If you want to see some of the trailers for yourself, go here:

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

© LW Publishing 2011

In Common

2011-06-23T23:13:00.000-04:00

I’ve actually found some music that both I and my 12 year old like.

Owl City.

The new CD just came out, and we’re going to see the concert together this coming Wednesday, just us, as we’re the only real fans in the house. And the tickets cost too much for the whole clan to go anyway.

Thing is, we’re going to share something we both enjoy and we’re both looking forward to it.

I’m just trying to enjoy this while it lasts.

And the new CD, All Things Bright and Beautiful, is great.

So...

I’ll tell you about the show next Thursday.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Emancipation

2011-06-21T13:37:00.001-04:00

My buddy Joe called yesterday. “Hey, what do you think about going to the Henry Ford at midnight?” Which is not a question you normally hear around here. The place normally closes at five. The Henry Ford used to be referred to as Greenfield Village, but now that’s part of the larger Henry Ford complex, and at the Museum they were featuring, for thirty six hours straight, one of the very rare public displays of a few pages of the original Emancipation Proclamation. By rare, I mean, it’s only out around forty to sixty hours a year. Period. So this was it. This was the annual display, and it was in Michigan, and it was near our house. Unlikely to ever be repeated. So we went.

There were people everywhere. It was crazy.

We waited in line for five and a half hours (yes, five and a half hours) with a lot of other people wanting to feast their eyes on a piece of history. And this being such a rare display, everyone had a pretty good attitude, even thought there were a lot of people laying around on the floor sleeping, waiting as the line crept forward.

Joe and I were in line between two very nice women, one was named Liona and the other Bonnie. You could say that the Emancipation had special meaning for them, given their heritage. And they were great to talk with for 5 hours. Also, about a hundred feet behind us in line was our friend Hazel and some of her family. Joe, being Joe, set up one of the security people to confront Hazel and tell her she had to leave the museum for cutting in line.

It was priceless.

We laughed with our Junior High maturity for about ten minutes while Hazel threatened to kill us, which we deserved.

The clock kept ticking past. We shuffled along. We finally made it up to the door where a man dutifully asked everyone to move quickly through the exhibit that they had stood in line for five hours to see. No irony there. But it was hard to move quickly. Looking at the amazingly straight lines of text, trying to read some of the old script as quickly as you could, it was kind of mesmerizing. At that moment, Bonnie looked at me and said, “Don’t those words just give you a chill?” And she was right.

Pages two and five were original, pages one, three and four were facsimiles. But page five is the home run anyway because that has Lincoln’s signature on it. Cool stuff, to say the least.

Those of us who were of European descent walked through the exhibit with those of African descent, and Eastern and so on, at peace, on equal terms, observing many of the documents that made it possible for us to do so.

Once again my buddy Joe opened the door for a great experience.

Thanks Joe.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

I Missed What?

2011-06-16T13:22:00.001-04:00

I’m pretty sure I was fifteen years old. My drum teacher, Jim, offered to take me to see this new movie that’s supposed to be pretty good. The movie is called “Alien.” Science fiction mixed with a monster movie mixed with a horror story, or so people said. How could it lose, right?

We ran a little bit late and got there just as the movie was starting, so we went in without popcorn and such. The movie started off okay. Dark and moody, but a bit slow. People rambling about a ship. There was this brief thing where the little long tailed creature was captured. But it seemed like I just had time to get some popcorn and pop.

So I head out to the lobby and get my stuff, and go back into the theater. As I’m walking in, I can just tell, somehow, that the mood of the entire room has changed. It was weird. So I take my seat and Jim says, very quietly, but with a lot of energy, “I can’t believe you missed it! This thing busted out of that guys stomach and ran across the room! It was wild! I can’t believe you missed it!”

Ahhh, but I could. And it was very disheartening.

I missed a lot of things. Not just movies, but lots of different experiences and events. It was a kind of talent. The “you shoulda” and “you coulda” moments have been many. So when I hear people say, “Timing is everything,” it strikes a chord with me. It might not be everything, but it seems to really matter a lot. And it’s hard to be at peace about this sometimes. There’s a part of me, an immature part, that always feels like I might be missing something important or that I might be doing the wrong things.

You can see how this might be a challenge for a person of faith.

I have gained a kind of peace over all of this. It’s less about me and more about trusting that God knows what he’s doing. But sometimes I still imagine I’ll get to the afterlife and there will be this room where you can watch film clips of what life would have been like if you had been at this place or that place at a certain time instead of where you were, or what directions life would have taken if you had made this choice or that choice instead of the one you did. Perhaps it will be called the potentiality multiverse viewing room, or something, I don’t know. But, in that room, people would sit and watch, some with a sense of relief and others with a sense of regret.

I think I’ll stop now before I get any more stupid. But I’m sure this reveals some flaw in my psyche. And yet, it’s not really about my beliefs. It’s more about my feelings. Feelings are hard to make sense of some times. They tend to do what they want to.

And, by the way, I eventually saw the part of Alien I missed, but by that time I had already heard what happened and the experience was gone. There was no getting it back.

Sad but true.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

It Sounds Like...

2011-06-14T16:39:00.000-04:00

So I was working on some songs with some musicians and one of them sent me a note saying that the tag on this one song of mine reminded him of the Raconteurs. I’d heard of the Raconteurs but I’d never heard the Raconteurs, at least not while knowing it was them. So I picked up a Raconteurs CD and he’s right, it does sound a bit like that.

Come to find out, Jack White is in this band, the guy from the White Stripes, which I am pretty familiar with. Think heavy Robert Plant influenced singer, filtered through Detroit scene, swirled around in a little punk and avant garde and there you go.

I remember the first time I saw Jack White live was on this sort of “command performance” thing that Obama put on in honor of Paul McCartney. It was different artists playing Beatles and Wings songs, that kind of thing, then Paul came up at the end and played a few things.

Jack White was way out of place in this gathering. He’s extremely talented, but not in conventional ways, except for, maybe, his guitar playing, which is pretty amazing if you ask me. But he seemed shy and uncomfortable, and his scratchy off kilter rock voice was quickly followed up by some country singer who had pitch perfect pipes. It just wasn’t a good showcase.

But, so far, I like this Raconteurs stuff. Maybe better than White Stripes. I don’t know. I haven’t listened to it enough yet.

Jack White is actually from the Detroit area. And it’s weird how that gives musicians in this area a little hope. “If he can do it, maybe...” But this is Motown, baby. That alone makes me feel part of an important tradition as a musician. And if you’re born anywhere near it, you can claim it. Stevie Wonder was born in Saginaw, but he’s from Motown. Bob Seger was born in Dearborn, but he’s Motown too. Jackie Wilson, like Jack White, was actually born in Detroit. Now that’s Motown.

And now, back to our sponsor...

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

What To Do?

2011-06-11T11:40:00.000-04:00

I wanted to take the kids to the movies the other day to see Kung Fu Panda 2. But the timing didn’t work out to go to the early show, which is the only one I’m willing to pay for, and I'm only willing to pay that price because it’s 3D. So we skipped that and I thought we’d go to the dollar show, which costs more than a dollar now. It’s a dollar fifty or two dollars, I’m not sure. But the only movie showing that was kid friendly was one my oldest daughter had already seen with a friend, so that was a no.

As for me, I have been entrenched in deep study. I’m preparing some stuff for church that is labor intensive and it’s eating my days alive, so I just wanted to get out and breathe a little. But it was soooo hot outside, in the high nineties, which meant we had to go somewhere indoors. I was getting tired of trying to figure out what to do. It was too late for the zoo and that kind of thing.

Spur of the moment adventures are hard to muster up with a big family.

So this is where I made my mistake. I said, “How about we go walk around the mall, not to buy stuff, but just to look around. Maybe we can get an ice cream or something!” Which sounds great on paper, but in real life it’s a fantasy. My four fems don’t do the “look but not buy.” At least not very well. And they always have a good reason to buy whatever they want to buy. Clothes for summer. Things they really need. And they probably do. Money is tight around here and we’ve been cutting back a lot.

But, see, if I hadn’t taken us to the mall in the first place, there wouldn’t have been this urgent need to get that stuff. The option wouldn’t have been on the table. They would have been blissfully unaware of how unhappy they would be without buying that stuff.

This conundrum is lost on them like water through a screen door.

Right now they’re in their room with their mom organizing and putting away their new summer clothes and putting away the winter stuff. They’re all chatty and girly and at one with the universe.

I don’t know. Maybe it was worth it.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Flat

2011-06-09T13:10:00.001-04:00

I haven’t had much to laugh at lately. I’m not down or depressed, but everything has been kind of flat.

I’ve done some work with bipolar people in the past, and some of them have really hungered for some flat emotions. Most of the time they were either going through the roof or the floor. But then, after getting on some decent meds and leveling out, it's common for them to start missing the strong emotions they had before. As a result, they're tempted to go off their meds, which leads them back into the vicious up and down cycles.

But I understand the conflict. I don’t much like feeling flat all the time. After a while, it's like you’re just floating along, pushed by whatever currents happen to be around you.

It’s also not a very good frame of mind for creativity. Most good art arises out of strong emotion, one way or another, so being “even keeled,” as they say, is kind of an enemy of the creative. At least according to most of the people I’ve talked to.

Some creative people appear to be even keeled, and I think the reason why is that they work out their emotions through their art and craft. If they didn’t have an outlet, many of them would probably have to be institutionalized.

But, whatever. I can’t say I’m feeling particularly strong about it either way. Which makes sense because I’m feeling flat.

Flat as a pancake.
Flat as the bread on a falafel.
Flat as a cat on a hot tin roof.

Sorry. Just trying to be creative. See how bad it is?

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Interplay

2011-06-07T12:21:00.000-04:00

I’ve been listening to a lot of different music lately and have been trying to pay attention to what grabs me while I’m listening.

You’d think the words would be the thing, but the words have more potential to push me away than draw me in. As long as the words aren’t so stupid or corrupt that they drive me away from a song, I find that I’m looking for something more complex.

Even in the simplest songs that have more than one instrument, there is a combining of rhythms and tones that are crisscrossing, moving and changing. And I find that this causes a really strong response in me both emotional and, I think, physical.

It can be something classical, like Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I have a recording by Dmitry Sitkovetsky where he arranges this keyboard music for strings. It is, in my opinion, some of the best music ever recorded. Hearing it on strings is almost like hearing it move from two dimensions into three. I always go back to listening to it over and over again because the interplay in the music is endlessly compelling and profound.

But it doesn’t have to be classical. The music of James Brown or Tower of Power, Thelonius Monk or Chick Corea. The complexities of the drum programming that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produce. David Crowder’s melodic twists, stringing out against changing patterns. The counter melodies that some country and folk and pop artists craft between the instruments and voice.

There is a math to all of this that rises above numbers on a page or musical notes on a staff. It’s like finding the answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.

There’s an old hymn from the 1800's called “This Is My Father’s World.” And there’s a line in the song that says, "This is my Father's world, and to my list'ning ears all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.”

This “music of the spheres” is a very old idea, basically that the planets and universe figuratively “sing” with their interplay throughout creation. And I find a similarity there, between how I feel when I look up at the night sky and see the stars and planets, and how I feel when I hear the interplay of music.

I don’t know if you can relate to any of this, but I felt like trying to express it. I think I have not done it very well, but some things are not done much justice with words.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

For Your Consideration

2011-06-01T13:34:00.000-04:00

Has anyone else noticed how almost everything in life these days is up for critical review? Seems like everyone has their own score card at the ready. Thumbs up. Thumbs down.

People like things. Why? Well, they just do. They can’t really explain it. It’s usually more of a feeling, sort of, you know, an emotional response. They don’t like to think about the details of why they like something. And that’s fine. I get that. I’m the same way sometimes. But it’s also true that...

People dislike things. Why? Hold onto your butts. If you open the door to it, they’ll spend hours and hours telling you why. They have lists. They have categories. They have euphemisms and metaphors and griefs and grudges. They are suddenly articulate and emotional. You can tell they’ve really thought about the things they dislike. They’ve thought about it a lot.

A LOT.

Why do you like this person or that person? [I don’t know. They’re just nice. We just clicked. It was fate.] Why do you dislike this other person? [How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. Let me show you how many adjectives and adverbs I have memorized. Let me enumerate their worthless attributes.]

We need to ask ourselves why it’s so easy for us to condemn, and so hard for us to praise. Why is it so easy to see what’s wrong and so difficult to see what’s right? Why are we so willing to tear down, and so uninterested in building up?

Ephesians 4:29
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Relics

2011-05-31T15:32:00.000-04:00

Today, for no particular reason, I was remembering how, over the years, usually when traveling, I’ve come across little country churches that were built years and years ago. Some as far back as the seventeen hundreds. And what you find is that it was common for a graveyard to be attached to the church, or very close by, especially in smaller rural communities, with ancient looking headstones lined up in rows.

Some people hate seeing these headstones. I’ve talked to people who get creeped out by them. But I enjoy reading them and imagining the lives of the people whose bodies were put into the ground in that spot at some time in the long past. With the oldest graves, the people who lived those lives did it without television or even radio. Most lived without phones or electricity or plumbing. It was a very different world, and most of them died pretty young. In fact, it is a bit troubling sometimes to read how many of those tombstones were carved out for babies who didn’t last even one year. It was a hard world to live in, especially before antibiotics became readily available, which was less than 100 years ago. Prior to that, a small cut could take your life if it became infected..

But the grave stones that impact me the most on an emotional level are the ones where the writing on them has been washed away by erosion. You might see part of a date, a few letters of the name, but not much more than that. And some of them have literally crumbled into pebbles and dust.

There was this one time when I was in Tennessee, I was walking through a woodsy area and I came across some headstones that you could barely see. They were covered in ivy and weeds and grass and there were trees grown up all around them, some of them had actually been broken up by the roots of trees. It took me a moment to realize that it was a forgotten cemetery. So much time had passed that there was no one left to care for it.

Give it enough time and we all become relics. At least our physical bodies do. Stuff for future generations to dig up and display in museums. And this can be kind of depressing, I suppose. But it doesn’t depress me. It just makes me think.

It makes me consider how little time we really have here on this planet. And it makes me want to spend the time I have wisely. Not in fear, but with purpose. I have confidence that there’s more to this life than . . . this life. So, for me, my life and the lives of everyone else on this planet, they’re all part of a big picture, like patterns on a quilt being made in the hand of God. It's a part of what keeps me warm when the world goes cold.

Psalm 90:12
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Anti-ist Art

2011-05-28T13:36:00.001-04:00

I have, for many years now, enjoyed the writing of author Toni Morrison. Her work, in general, is powerful stuff. It’s not for wimps. It is visceral and visual and challenging. It provokes the reader in complex ways. I could read her novel Beloved over and over. Reading this book is like watching a great dancer, at the top of their craft, or like listening to a great musician who plays effortlessly, demonstrating years of care and dedication.

The only book of hers I haven’t read yet is a book called “Paradise.” I was looking to find out a little about it online and came across an interview at Salon. The interviewer says: "Paradise" has been called a "feminist" novel. Would you agree with that?

Her response was this: Not at all. I would never write any "ist." I don't write "ist" novels.

I’m sure she would add -ism, -ian, and a few other suffixes to the list as well.

For me, that is one of the best responses she could have possibly given. And it’s true. While others have continuously tried to categorize and package her writing, to claim it for some cause, she forges ahead, past preconceptions, to speak with a totally original voice in a way that begs questions and makes the reader think. That is, if they are willing to think.

If only more artists would try to do the same.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

I'm Baaaaaaack

2011-05-26T21:33:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know. It’s been a while. I’ve been busy getting sliced and diced again. Went through the surgery for my other hand, my right hand, and it’s been a lot more difficult. I’m right-handed, which has complicated everything. It really is true that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. But the cast comes off a week from Monday, so I’m getting there.

I’m actually writing this post with some voice software. Dragon Naturally Speaking. It was a gift to me, and I like it, but it takes getting used to. You have to think very differently than when you’re writing by hand. That is, typing by hand. With the voice recognition stuff, you have to think in chunks, rather than as you type. But, in the long run, it could be a lot faster way of working.

But I’m doing okay. I’ve gotten to do a few things that needed to be done like straightening out some of my books and a lot of the files on my computer. I’ve been catching up on some reading that I needed to get done. But trying to type or get any of this type of thing accomplished has been a bit overwhelming. I’m trying to get back at it.

Tuesday night I had the honor of being a roadie for my buddy’s band. I have some knowledge of drums and guitar, so I can actually be some real help, and I wanted to do it. The band is called Strawberry Alternative. They’re very good. The only problem was, I can only do most things with my left hand, which made for an interesting evening, but it was fun. They played at the historic Gem Theater in downtown Detroit. So I was able to be backstage, to see what’s back there. I got to check out the dressing rooms and such. It was like a small version of the Fox Theater in Detroit. My brother in law gave me a tour of the Fox a few years ago, and I always find that kind of thing interesting. It’s kind of cool to get to go where people don’t normally get to go.

Anyhow. That’s all for now. It’s hard to write this way. I’ll start things back up probably within about a week on a more regular basis. Thanks for your prayers faithful readers.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Sliced Again

2011-05-05T14:26:00.000-04:00

I’m going in next week to be sliced again. This time it will be my right hand. Less of a big deal for playing the guitar, but a bigger deal for everything else because I’m right handed. So I’ve been practicing doing things with my left hand that I normally do with my right.

It’s not fun.

But I’m actually looking forward to getting this done and over with. The carpal tunnel surgery on my left hand has made my hand stronger and more sensitive. With some more time I’ll be playing better than ever, and I’m hoping to get back on the drums sometime in December or January after my right hand is fully healed. It takes a long time.

I’ve found this whole experience kind of challenging because there are things I simply can’t do while I’m healing from the surgery. I have to rely on others to do things, which I’m mostly okay with, but I feel a certain guilt about it all. Like I’m not pulling my weight. To my way of thinking, there’s a very fine line between taking care of yourself and being lazy and selfish. Taking care of yourself is healthy and important to do, but I think it can easily become an excuse to be self centered. I guess I’m not sure about where those lines are. I am often accused of not taking care of myself. I’m probably guilty of that too. And I have no response to the accusation. I’m not sure what to think.

Anyway. If you pray, pray that all goes well. It’s pretty minor surgery, comparatively speaking, but sliced is sliced. They knock you out. They do secret things to you while you’re in La La Land. It’s all rather discombobulating.

Sorry. I just wanted to write down the word discombobulating. I’m not even exactly sure what it means. But it feels right.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Tired

2011-05-03T13:18:00.000-04:00

Do you ever get so emotionally worn out that you start shutting down? My wife told me I looked tired last night.

Sometimes I get very tired. Both physically and emotionally. I reach a point where I don’t have anything left to feel. I need to feel sorrow and empathy for those who are hurting. I need to feel angry about injustice. I need to feel hopeful about the future.

But I’m tired and I don’t feel.

It’s like I run out of feeling. I get overwhelmed with all the demands and expectations and go numb. I wish I had a greater capacity for emotion, a deeper well, but I don’t. And, when I get to that point of emptiness, I’m like dried up leaves rolling down the street in the wind. I want to connect, I want to empathize, but when I’m burned out of feelings, nothing rises to the surface. It’s like this bit from a Jackson Browne song:

It’s like a song I can hear
Playing right in my ear
That I can’t sing
I can’t help listening

And then I feel guilty. People get mad at me sometimes because I’m not always “there” for them like they want me to be. Some have gotten very, very mad. They had no idea what I was going through, and some of them wouldn’t have cared if they did know. They certainly never asked. They were going through their own pain, or loss, and I didn’t respond like they wanted me to, so they condemned me and strapped me to the whipping post. But I don’t hold it against them. I understand.

Sometimes I wish life was a little more like a TV show. A situation comedy. You know, where everything that happens is happening because of all the half heard conversations and assumptions everyone is making about everyone else. Joanie overhears the last sentence of something Chachi is saying to the Fonz and assumes he’s breaking up with her, so she talks to Ritchie, who then goes to the Fonz and yells at him for interfering, which is what Ritchie is doing, not the Fonz. Three’s Company did this for every show they did. Blah blah blah.

In the sitcoms, they always realize in the end how they have gotten it wrong, and they smile and laugh and the camera freeze frames on the big laugh. Credits role.

Life is so NOT a sitcom.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Autonomic Art

2011-04-28T14:12:00.001-04:00

I’ve been involved in music since I was a kid. I tried to write songs at a very early age, and I started instrumental music with piano lessons when I was 6 or 7. The piano teacher told my parents I just didn’t have the talent to play because I struggled with it so much, but what was really going on is that my eyes were bad and I couldn’t see the music. No one knew it at the time, but after I got my first pair of glasses, it all went clear. Yet, I didn’t go back to the piano because it cost a lot and too much time had passed, which is a very sad thing for me.

But no one could keep me out of music. I kept trying to write songs. I listened to music like people drink water to stay alive. Then, in fifth grade, they put some of us on recorder flutes and started to teach us melodic notation and, as we prepared for sixth grade, our band teacher asked us what instrument we’d like to play. I said “trombone.” I was very enamored of the trombone. Who wouldn’t be? But she looked at me and said, “You look like a drummer.”

So I was a drummer.

I went on to play drums with school band, drum and bugle corps, a local symphony, rock bands, a country band, a rockabilly band, church bands, so on and so forth. With drums and percussion, I was better at the symphonic and drum corp stuff than playing on the set, but I did okay. I always liked to sing, so I tried my hand at that and did okay. I eventually took guitar lessons and a few piano lessons to get the theory down, and kept writing songs which, for me, was and still is an autonomic response to life.

But I’ve known some musicians and other artists who quit. They just quit playing, quit singing, quit painting, quit their crafting, quit making quilts or building cars and whatnot. They quit producing their art pretty much completely. Which has always been strange to me. I honestly don’t understand it. It makes me wonder why they were doing the thing in the first place. I mean, there are all kinds of petty reasons we might cling to in order to justify our expression of art or craft or skill, when we shouldn’t be trying to justify it at all.

I like this quote from Stephen King. He said,”"Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around."

I’m with that.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Time?

2011-04-26T11:42:00.000-04:00

What is time?

If you think you know for certain, go ahead and put your definition in the comments section. It would be interesting to see what you think. But I’m not certain about what time is, and I haven’t found any science books or scientists that have given a particularly satisfactory answer to the question. It’s much like the concept of gravity, in that no one can really explain it.

Is time just an idea, or does it have some tangible reality to it?

It seems to me that “time” may only matter to us, as a concept or otherwise, because it “passes,” and as it passes we experience loss and decay. So it’s not so much time that matters to us, it’s the loss and decay that matters. As Chinua Achebe wrote, “Things Fall Apart.”

What if entropy is the real issue? What if time only matters because entropy occurs? What if time is only the distance between one state of being and the next state of being, and the “difference” between those two states of being is decay? And, on the other hand, what if decay didn’t happen? Where would time be then? Would it even make sense to talk about time? I’m fascinated by the idea of an existence that functions without entropy.

But, for now, it makes sense that we would devise some way to keep track of this commodity of “time” as it decays away from us, or whatever it’s doing. And our measuring tool, for the most part, seems to be the clock. Clocks help us to keep track of the loss. They are the measure of what’s gone and what’s potentially ahead. Because of this, sometimes just having a clock nearby can be a bit oppressive. But not having a clock can be worse, because the treasure of life can slip away, wasted, if we don’t pay attention.

It all just makes me want to fly like an eagle. To the sea.

How about you?

Romans 8:20-21
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Death In His Grave

2011-04-22T10:38:00.000-04:00

A songwriter I really like, John Mark McMillan, wrote a great song called “Death In His Grave.” It expresses the realities of Good Friday and Easter in a beautiful way. Here are the words, and the video is below. Pause the music to the right before you play the video.

Peace to you.

Death In His Grave
John Mark McMillan

Though the Earth Cried out for blood
Satisfied her hunger was
Her billows calmed on raging seas
for the souls on men she craved

Sun and moon from balcony
Turned their head in disbelief
Their precious Love would taste the sting
disfigured and disdained

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke with keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

So three days in darkness slept
The Morning Sun of righteousness
But rose to shame the throes of death
And over turn his rule

Now daughters and the sons of men
Would pay not their dues again
The debt of blood they owed was rent
When the day rolled a new

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke holding keys
To Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke with keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

He has cheated
Hell and seated
Us above the fall
In desperate places
He paid our wages
One time once and for all

Jesus Movies

2011-04-19T12:42:00.000-04:00

It being time for Easter, people ask me what is the “best” movie about Jesus life. The Passion of the Christ is the first one many might think of, and it is a great film, but it’s not exactly about the life of Jesus. It’s really more about the death of Jesus, and there are some other great films that bring out much more of the account of the Messiah.

My personal favorite is Jesus of Nazareth, which was made for television, but it was done on a huge budget and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It is a masterpiece in many ways, though it is very long, running at 6 ½ hours, but it’s worth every second. The attention to detail is amazing. The acting is natural and restrained, and the whole thing makes you feel like you’re there, 2000 years ago, in the middle of it all.

My least favorite are two films, one being the 1999 made for TV movie called “Jesus,” which was so bad it’s best to just leave it alone and hope it fades into the mists of oblivion. Then, on a larger scale, there is The Greatest Story Every Told, starring the blond haired, blue eyed, Swedish actor named Max Von Sydow as Jesus. I like Max Von Sydow as an actor, and he has done some cool things, but what were they thinking? He is horribly miscast in this film. The whole thing is a giant mess from start to finish. Over blown, over acted, obvious in it’s presentation. It’s an embarrassment.

Other versions like the two versions of King of Kings are okay. But not great. Most are a bit maudlin and preachy when they aren’t being pompous and over done.

A big exception to all of that is this newer version that we watched with our kids the other night. It’s called The Miracle Maker, and it is done in stop motion animation. If you don’t know what that is, it’s how the old Rankin and Bass TV shows were made, as well as modern films like Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas and, like the Henry Selick films, this is light years beyond Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer..

The Miracle Maker succeeds on every level. It is a great retelling of the life of Christ that the whole family can watch. My kids were into it for the whole show. And, on top of this, it is one of the best pieces of stop motion work I’ve ever seen. The sheer number of characters on screen throughout the film is outrageous from a stop motion perspective. Given that they have to move all of those character one little increment for every few seconds of film, it leaves you stunned and wondering how in the world they managed it. It is a co British/Russian production, with mostly Brits doing the voice acting (Ralph Fiennes does a fantastic job with the voice of Jesus), and the Russians doing most of the animation. It is stunning to look at, with character design, backgrounds and lighting informed by the paintings of Raphael. Regnault and Botticelli. And it is very respectful of the Bible.

You could easily read through the four Gospel accounts this week and see a few of these movies. It would be well worth your time.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

It's Not You, It's Me

2011-04-16T18:23:00.001-04:00

At one time in my life I was very devoted to chocolate. I was known for this. People made jokes about how much I loved chocolate, and I didn’t mind because it was a love affair worth celebrating. And I thought it would last forever.

Alas.

I still like chocolate, but I am no longer as devoted as I once was. Once upon a time I thought we were mated for life, and if given the choice I would have taken the chocolate every time.

But, over the past few years, if I’m to be honest, some of the spark has gone out of the relationship. I mean, I still like chocolate. I enjoy it sometimes. But it is no longer always my first choice, and I’m not exactly sure why. Sometimes I’m just feeling more like lemon or lime or who knows what. You could say I’m kind of “playing the field.” The other day, for instance, I was inexplicably drawn to something called “Blueberry Pie” ice cream. Swirls of blueberries in vanilla ice cream with chunks of pie crust mixed in.

Oh my.

In the freezer, right next to the blueberry ice cream is the chocolate. And it’s not just chocolate. It’s Chocolate Moose Tracks ice cream with all kinds of wonderful things in it. But it simply glared at me balefully while I left it sitting and took the blueberry instead.

Perhaps I should seek counseling? I just don’t know.

Occasionally, I’ll dip into the world of chocolate again, trying to capture some of the old romance. But, while I enjoy it, it’s just not what it used to be. And I feel kind of bad about it.

It’s not you, chocolate. You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s me. It really is. Somehow I’ve changed. I don’t know how or why. No one is to blame. Well, maybe I am, but I don't know what to do about it. It just happened. We can still be friends, can't we?

I promise to visit from time to time if you’ll have me.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Just Another Everyday

2011-04-12T10:09:00.000-04:00

So, Sunday afternoon my kids had some friends over. We almost always have a lot of kids over here. There were half baked humans whirling about, laughing loudly, imagining who knows what kind of whatnot, blissfully unaware of the wider weirdness of the world.

It’s a beautiful thing.

At one point I looked outside to be sure everyone was still breathing and noticed that one of my kids and a few of the others had strange wet spots on their clothes that made it look like they’d all peed their pants. At first I thought they must have sat on a wet swing or on the ground and gotten their butts wet. But they cleared up the mystery.

Them: “We put ice cubes in our butts.”

Me: “You what?”

Them: “We put ice cubes in our butts.”

Me: “Why in the world would you put ice cubes in your butts.”

Them: “Because it’s so warm today!”

Me: “It’s not that warm.”

Them: “But it feels good!”

Me: “Well. Um. Um. Uh. Well. Just don’t take them out and lick them or anything.”

Them: “We won’t!”

But they had this look on their faces like the only reason that wasn’t happening already is because they just hadn’t thought of it yet.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Fumbling

2011-04-07T12:24:00.001-04:00

The coach would hit the balls out to us on the field. I liked being out there. I liked the other guys. I liked the smell of the grass and the blue sky overhead.

We spread out past the bases, waiting on that ball. But I was never very good with the “I got it!” I was always a little afraid of that moment when the ball might come towards me. I wasn’t afraid of the ball. I was afraid of not catching it. There was a better chance that I’d miss it than catch it. I could get to the ball, my hand eye coordination is pretty good, but no one taught me how to set myself, to be ready for it. You had to walk in the door with certain skills or you were quickly pushed to the sidelines and simply put up with.

I caught it sometimes. But, mostly, I fumbled the ball before dropping it. There was a certain clownish aspect to the whole thing. Fumbling was normal for me. Trying to get the grip. Trying to gain some control, but failing. That kind of peace and security is elusive. At least for me.

Later, I found out that fumbling was more of a football word than a baseball word. With a football, you have your hands. No glove. And the hands either get it or they don’t. You either complete, or you don’t.

I never much went for football either.

I’m just kind of a fumbler. I’ve fumbled a lot of things over the years. Goals. Dreams. Hopes. Ambitions. Friendships. Moments that could have mattered a lot more than they did. I just couldn’t get a grip. A lot has slipped through my fingers.

But while I still struggle with this, while I still fumble all the time, I have some peace because I know I’m held for eternity by hands that never fumble. Ever.

Jude 1:24-25
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Church Songs

2011-04-05T16:02:00.000-04:00

I have been involved in writing music now for over 30 years. It started when I was a kid, before I had even learned an instrument. I would use two cassette decks and sing my song ideas onto them. I’d sing a melody line on one, then play it back while recording on the other and add parts as I went along, back and forth, trying to piece things together.

For many of us who are caught up in this behavior of song writing, it is somewhat pathological. When a song starts humming in the mind, you either get it out or you get a little crazy. It’s hard to concentrate on other things. It’s like having a radio playing loudly in one ear while someone tries to talk to you in the other. It really is a compulsion, and it can be a good one if properly managed.

I’ve lost track of how many songs I’ve written over the years. People ask me sometimes, and I honestly have no idea. It’s in the hundreds. I’ve recorded a few things along the way, but I’ve never been very happy with the results. Some friends are helping me do some things now with new gear that has finally become financially accessible. But it’s still very, VERY challenging to produce anything even half way decent. My talent has some pretty severe limits.

Over the past fifteen years I’ve primarily written songs for use in churches. For those of you who don’t go to church, this might seem a little odd. I know when I was a kid, I thought all those songs we sang in church had always just sort of been there. Didn’t God write those songs? But the fact is that song writing for Church use is a long and honorable tradition. Artists have done it all throughout history, people like Bach and Handel, John Newton, Charles Wesley and W.C. Handy. And Hank Williams Sr.

Hank saw the light, at least for a little while, and he wrote about it. It’s what he did.

And there are moderns still writing for the Church. Contemporary artists like Phil Wickham, Chris Tomlin, the Fee brothers, Darlene Zschech and many others who are doing the best they can to tap into melodies and song structure that clicks with the contemporary heart and mind, while still communicating eternal truth. Other artists are trying to express their hearts in relationship to God, people like John Mark McMillan and Jon Foreman and David Crowder, who are great artists and very gifted musicians.

I’ve been drawn into this tradition, and I enjoy it. Especially the music for churches. There’s a great sense of accomplishment when you write something, like a prayer set to music, and you lead people with it and they learn it and take it to heart. You become a kind of Cyrano de Bergerac between people and God. It’s very different in some ways than a performance oriented approach to music, but I love it.

It’s an honor.

Psalm 33:3
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Shallow

2011-03-30T23:01:00.000-04:00

If you surf the internet or spend enough time in conversation with people, you will discover that, apparently, one of the greatest sins a person can commit in the world these days is to be shallow. Or, at least, to be thought of as shallow. To be shallow is to be an object of disdain. Heaven forbid.

And the second runner up is the sin of unoriginality. Followed closely by the sin of being boring. And then there’s the sin of not being “honest and transparent,” which is the arch sin of sins. You must be perceived as “honest and transparent,” if you want to be taken seriously in this world. You don’t necessarily have to actually be honest and transparent. I mean, how do you know that anyway?

“Oh, I just know.”

Oh, really? That’s some talent you have there.

The beauty of it is, if I call you “shallow,” that means, automatically, that I must be “deep.” And who would know better than me, right? Deep is good! Deep is special! Deep is holy! Well, at least it’s better than shallow. If I’m deep, then I’m what? Intelligent? Thoughtful? Serious? Passionate? Wow. I must be pretty amazing if I’m all of those things. And all I need in order to be all of those things is for you to be shallow.

How easy is that?

But what if it’s you? What if it’s me? What if I’m the shallow one? What if you are the unoriginal, boring fake? How would we know?

Don’t worry, I’m sure some deep, original, interesting, honest and transparent person will be sure to let us know.

Proverbs 20:5
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

From a Lawnchair

2011-03-28T09:49:00.001-04:00

We sat on the driveway in cheap lawn chairs, looking at the first edge of the sunset. She seemed timeless to me then, like parents do to their children, but I know now how young she really was. She had been throwing the ball to me so I could learn how to catch. Then we sprayed the driveway with a hose to clean it. Then we sat in those chairs, smelling the cool, clean water clinging to the air.

The grass, the whole front yard was immaculate. She took pride in it. She had a green thumb, just like her mother. So there were flowers. It was all very green, very alive. And so were we.

I looked up and down the street. I knew the people there. Most were okay. A few were risky to know. Unpredictable. One house, across the street, at the end of the block, was rumored to be a drug house. In the middle of a small, suburban neighborhood. And it probably was. But people weren’t so ready to shoot each other over drugs back then. It was much safer to sell or use drugs than it is now.

For the most part, though, the neighbors were nice people who ate spaghetti and fried chicken and meatloaf and potato salad, who went to work long hours and came back home looking for a little quiet. Just like us, they watched M.A.S.H. and the Carol Burnett show and Happy Days. We waved at each other and smiled. It was the right thing to do.

We were floating in this place, at that time, drifting slowly from day to day. Being. Doing what seemed right to do at the time. We had our place. There were shadows there, but we learned to live with them.

We sat on those chairs on that summer evening, looking at the sunset, wishing the day would last just a little bit longer.

Psalm 39:4-5
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Gilligan's Pathos

2011-03-26T11:19:00.001-04:00

I was watching an old episode of Gilligan’s Island with my kids. Overall, it’s not an especially good show, but it is still strangely compelling. The raw use of stereotypes to create comedy somehow draws you in. And then there's the lagoon. Man, when I was a kid, I loved the lagoon on Gilligan’s Island. How I wished I lived near that lagoon. Still do. But, I suppose, the real beauty of Gilligan’s Island was that you could watch it with your brain turned off. It’s oddly cathartic.

So imagine my surprise when I was watching it the other day, and I found a really poignant moment that had a lot to say about friendship. Who da thunk it?

In this episode, there’s a typhoon headed for the island, so they find a cave and, with no time to spare, they realize there isn’t enough room for all of them. What to do? The men quickly draw straws and Gilligan gets the short straw, which means he has to wait it out in the storm, tied to a tree. Then the Skipper realizes Gilligan broke his own straw to protect the others. The Skipper is moved by Gilligan’s bravery, and decides to go out into the storm and wait it out with Gilligan. Then the Professor decides the same thing. Then all of the castaways are out in the storm, holding onto one another, braving the typhoon together because it’s just not right to stay in the cave when your friends are out in the storm. It’s not right to be a coward when your friend is being a hero.

Skipper: Professor, I order you back in the cave!
Professor: After the storm.
Skipper: Look, I'm out here. I'll take care of Gilligan.
Professor: I know you can, so I'll take care of you.

This was on Gilligan’s Island? This episide, “Hi-Fi Gilligan,” was a nice piece of work, blending the slapstick comedy elements and the character elements really well. Come to find out, the episode was written by a woman named Mary C. McCall, Jr. Her real name was Mary McCall Bramson, and she was a founder and the first woman president of the Writer’s Guild of America. One of her screenplays for a movie called “The Fighting Sullivans” had been nominated for an academy award years before. It’s considered a classic war genre film. And this was her only episode for Gilligan’s Island.

They should have had her do more episodes.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Cash: Bootleg Vol II

2011-03-24T10:56:00.000-04:00

Johnny Cash’s son, John, has been gathering and releasing what could be called “historical” pieces of the Johnny Cash music catalogue. Four or five years ago they released Bootleg Vol I, “Personal File,” which was two CDs worth of demo recordings, just Cash and his guitar. And now they’ve released another two CD set called “From Memphis to Hollywood.”

The shining star of the new release is Johnny’s first recorded show, which he did for radio. They think this recording was actually made by Johnny’s wife at the time, Vivian. An amazing person in her own right. It’s a rough recording in the sense that it lacks the sonic quality of modern recordings, but it really shows how, from the earliest stages, Johnny had a very personal quality in his presentation, and his voice is a bit higher too. Plus, you get to hear Johnny try to sell awnings for the “Home Equipment Company,” which is where he worked at the time. What could be better than that?

Then the CDs goes on with some demo recordings, long lost vinyl B-sides and such. One of the “rockabilly” demos called “You’re My Baby” was actually recorded and released by Roy Orbison. Cash’s demo has the line, “you’re my sugar . . . little wooly booger.” It’s just fantastic. Johnny didn’t mind getting a little goofy sometimes, even though it’s not normative of what he did. Roy chose to leave that line off when he recorded it.

I’ve seen a few people on the internet over the past few years make snide remarks about John Carter Cash (Johnny’s son) releasing this stuff. They say the same kinds of things about Rick Rubin for the posthumous recordings he’s released. It’s that tone of “they’re just doing it for the money” thing, as if releasing music for the money is something new.

Ha.

I’m thankful they take the time and effort to get these things released. Some of us are interested in the over all body of work that Johnny Cash produced: the phases he went through as a song writer and musician, as well as the stages he went through as a human being. All of these things matter when it comes to Cash. It is a big source of his popularity that he struggled through life and tried to be faithful to God in Christ while being honest with his art. He had a certain broken nobility.

If you like roots, traditional or folk music at all, you can’t miss this stuff.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Simply Complicated

2011-03-19T15:49:00.000-04:00

Occasionally I’ll meet someone who has a very simple life. It’s very rare, but some people still pull it off. They don’t have too many responsibilities. They don’t try to do too much. They aren’t buried in commitments to other people. They don't have too much stuff. And I kind of admire them.

It's also true that some of these same people are very lonely. They don’t have strong ties to very many other people. They have ties, but not necessarily strong ones. That’s part of the reason they’re able to keep things simple.

Relationships complicate life. It’s just how it is. I think Jesus, for instance, probably had a pretty simple life until he took on those twelve guys to train. Then everything changed.

And then there are all of those other things that add to the mix. The extra curriculars of life. I personally have a somewhat innate desire to be a polymath. It’s really more of a passive thing, but I have recognized it in myself. Unfortunately, I’m not really smart enough for it, but the desire is there, and it always has been. It’s a part of who I am. I am nothing if not curious. But, while this makes life interesting, it also complicates things. It creates a lot of clutter.

A part of me wants a simple life. But, at the same time, the chaos of many friends and family, many things to learn, many things to do, is exhilarating.

I wonder sometimes if there is a way to balance these things. If it is possible to embrace the fullness of life and somehow keep things simple?

If you figure it out, let me know.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Listening Habits (c.03.2011)

2011-03-17T09:39:00.001-04:00

Just found out that Paul Simon is releasing a new CD called “So Beautiful or So What.” There are only a few artists these days whose music I automatically buy right when they release it. Paul Simon is one of them. If he puts it out, I get it fast, I listen to it over and over again, and I spend time wondering why the rest of the world isn’t listening to it too.

Lately, for some reason, I’ve also been listening to some things I’m not exactly sure why I like. For over a year now I’ve been listening continually to this Chinese musician named “Mamer.” Peter Gabriel sent me an email telling me I’d like it, and he was right. I’m telling you, it’s great, great stuff. I have no idea what the guy is saying, his words are just part of the music to me, but the music is amazing.

Then there’s this “band” called “Owl City,” which is actually a guy named Adam Young. It’s overly processed on purpose, electronic stuff, which I usually can't stand. I didn’t much like Kraftwerk when they started all that stuff, and I’m hard pressed to enjoy much of that kind of music. But Owl City is a very fun bubble gum version of that, with really strong pop sensibilities, and it makes me feel good when I listen to it. Also, the imagery the guy uses in his lyrics is interesting. I heard he started by recording things at his house. Like I do.

For the most part I prefer more organic music. Less processed. I get excited about music that is carefully crafted, especially with real instruments played by gifted musicians. And if it has masterful lyric writing, well, that’s even better. Which brings me back to...

Paul Simon is a unique piece of work. He has no excuse being a pop star, but there he is. Stubby little genius with the odd, slightly warbly voice. If someone said, “You could write lyrics as good as Paul Simon but I’d have to take your left knee cap,” I’d have to spend some serious time talking myself out of it.

Some things are worth a limp.

Genesis 32:22-32
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Sticks and Stones

2011-03-15T14:56:00.000-04:00

Some of the people who have hurt me the most over the years are completely oblivious to it – people who treated me like I was more of an idea or a thing than a person. And there were times when what was the most painful about it was their ambivalence and ignorance. They were so wrapped up in themselves and what they wanted that they had no idea what they were doing to me. Or they didn’t care.

I’m not saying I’m any better. I know it must be true of me as well. I know I’ve done this to others, especially when I was younger. It’s a trait of the immature and the self centered. And you’d think people would grow out of it, but some don’t. It’s so easy to objectify people in the pursuit of our own desires. We care about causes. We care about ourselves. We care about injustice and religion and politics. But all of those things become sticks and stones for hurting others if we don’t genuinely care about people like we should.

I’m saddened by the fact that, in my weaknesses and my inability, I fail to care for some of these people like I should. Like I want to. People I care about. People who might not even want to, but they will hurt me with their thrashing through life.

So you learn. You learn that sometimes it doesn’t much matter what you say and do, certain people are not going to listen to you. They aren’t going to take any lessons from you. You learn sometimes that you are not the person who is going to be an agent of change in their life. And, despite what you may have been told, meaningful relationships are about how we change one another. If your friendships, your relationships, don’t involve good, healthy change in your life and in the lives of the people you are connected with, then those aren’t relationships. They’re acquaintances. If you aren’t growing in kindness and compassion and peace through your relationships, then something is wrong.

The reality is, like it or not, there are some people you could love perfectly, if that were possible, and it still wouldn’t be enough because they’re too busy loving themselves or hating themselves or taking care of themselves or making sure they have what they want, or what they think they need. There’s no room left for you in their life. You can come or go, they don't really care. You're of no use to them except, maybe, as a punching bag. And they will hurt you over and over again if you let them.

Sometimes it isn’t a question of forgiveness. It’s a question of survival.

Luke 23:34
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Lifestyles of the Psychosociopathic

2011-03-12T01:35:00.000-05:00

I was doing some research recently and I came across a mental health website called “Mental Health Matters.” On this site, they published a certain article because there happened to be some serial killer making headlines at the time. They pointed out that the word “psychopath” is not a clinical term, but that there are disorders like “sociopathy” and “Dissocial Personality disorder” that are pretty much the same thing as what we mean when we say “psychopath.” So I was reading through what kinds of behaviors you might find a “psychopath,” or a “sociopath,” doing, and here’s what they listed:

    * Glibness/superficial charm
    * Grandiose sense of self-worth
    * Need for stimulation, with a proneness to boredom
    * Pathological lying
    * Conning and manipulating behaviors
    * No sense of remorse or guilt
    * A very shallow emotional affect - they display emotions they don't really feel
    * A lack of empathy for others
    * They are parasitic - they live off of others
    * They are impulsive, and show poor control over their behaviors
    * They tend to be promiscuous
    * Their behavior problems start early in life
    * They cannot form long-term plans that are realistic
    * They are impulsive, and irresponsible
    * They do not accept responsibility for their actions - another caused it
    * Marital relationships are short, and many
    * They display juvenile delinquency
    * Their criminality is diverse

Is it just me, or isn’t that kind of a description of our society as a whole? It kind of creeps me out. The “they” being described could easily be “us.”

I suppose some sociopaths are nice people, I don’t know. I’m not being all inclusive here, but aren’t most serial killers sociopaths? That’s what I’ve read, anyway.

So, what if “we” as a whole are becoming a psychopath? What if “we,” as a whole, are mentally ill, but we don’t do anything about it because the individual parts that make up the whole can’t see that there’s a problem? See, another trait of the psycho/sociopath is:

They do not perceive that anything is wrong with them.

Jeremiah 17:9
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Kitsch Me Baby One More Time

2011-03-08T09:24:00.000-05:00

It makes me sad sometimes when I see someone apologizing for something they like because it isn’t cool or hip to like it. Just watch some people backtrack when they say they like a movie, and then someone else starts attacking, explaining why it was terrible. It’s easy to feel ashamed of liking something when others think it’s horrible or stupid. We think that means we’re stupid, because we like it, I supposed. But that’s a pile of nonsense.

I, myself, have always been inextricably drawn to some of the worst kinds of art and popular culture imaginable. And I am NOT sorry about it. It’s part of what makes me me.

Hey, I know good movies when I see them. Usually, anyway. I have spent time learning to understand the art of cinema. And I’ve read a lot of the classics. I’ve got a good sense of what makes for great music. For the most part, I can recognize the good stuff. I just don’t always know the bad stuff. In fact, a lot of the “bad” stuff just isn’t bad to me. I happen to like it.

I can watch Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia or Sunrise, and enjoy every second. Then I can watch Teenagers From Outer Space or Invaders From Mars and enjoy every second. I can read masterpiece novels and enjoy every word, then immediately read some cheesy sci-fi hack piece and enjoy every word. I’ve always liked kitschy things, as far back as I can remember. Gumby and Gilligan’s Island and the Ghoul. I liked ALL of the Planet of the Apes movies. Elevator music. Donny and Marie. I even liked Elvis at his most Vegasy..

I think it’s not good that some people don’t appreciate higher or more complex forms of art simply because they don’t want to put in the effort it takes to understand and appreciate it. It’s a great loss. But it’s also not good to look down on other things simply because they lack a certain finesse, or they don’t measure up to something else.

It’s not that I don’t think there are bad novels or movies or music. I can't stand certain things. But sometimes we like things and it doesn't matter that it's bad. What makes something “bad” to me is not that it’s made cheaply or that it’s stupid or cheesy. Sometimes it's "bad" simply because it's corrupt. Or preachy. Or obvious. Or manipulative. Or who knows what. My first reaction to a lot of things is simply an emotional one. Some things click with me, while others don’t, and I don’t always know why. Do you?

If I like it, maybe it’s because it reminds me of something my mind has forgotten but my heart needs to remember. Maybe it makes me think. Maybe it taps me into feelings of childhood. Maybe I’m moved by the artistry of some things, the innocence of others, and perhaps the audacity of others, or perhaps it makes me feel like someone out there understands me. Maybe it’s all of those things and more.

Maybe I just like it...

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

When Knievel Was King

2011-03-05T14:24:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, I was totally and completely an Evel Knievel fan.

What? Like you weren’t? Right. Only if you weren’t born yet. And still, even then...

Of course, at first, my mom wasn’t too sure about this . . . fascination. After all, his name was “Evel.” It couldn’t have been more clear. But it wasn’t clear at all. Turns out his name was more of a gimmick. Hyperbole. And it wasn’t actually “Evil,” right? It was “Evel.” Vowels make all the difference. Turns out he was a nice guy. At least as far as Evel’s connection to me as a kid, he was an all American daredevil who jumped motor cycles over rows of cars, trucks or whatever else he could find, in ever increasing numbers while telling us kids to stay clear of drugs.

He set world records, jumping over things with that motor cycle. It was magical, my friend. Magical.

I didn’t know much about what he did with his private life. That was the stuff of legends. All that mattered was the joy of waiting for him to jump, then the joy of watching him approach the ramp, then the joy of seeing the jump and seeing him land. When he crashed, it really upset me. I wanted him to make it. I didn’t want him hurt. It really was all about the jump, the risk, the daring do, and the flash of a smile when he was through.

For Christmas one year, I received a treasured gift. It was an Evel Knievel action figure with stunt bike. The most popular toy in the land of America at the time. It made the toy company over 300 million dollars. Viva Americana! Oh yes. It was a little Evel on a little motorcycle that you wound up with this round lever on a little red plastic platform. Zim zim ZIM, louder and louder. You would launch Evel and he would ride and jump over a ramp, over whatever you might put in his path.

Here’s what happened.

Someone broke my Evel. And when they did, they just shrugged their shoulders and walked away, like it didn’t matter. And no one did anything about it. It was not replaced. It was not fixed. I was left holding the sad and tattered remains with no hope of justice.

Now THAT was evil.

The Chip and the Shoulder

2011-03-03T12:05:00.001-05:00

In the days of my youth, you’d hear this expression pretty often. People would say: He’s got a chip on his shoulder. Sad to say, this expression is being lost. You hardly hear it anymore. But that doesn’t mean the chips are gone. Oh no.

The phrase apparently goes all the way back to the 1600's, and the “chip” was a piece of wood. But the way I understood the expression back in the day was informed by a very popular TV commercial featuring an actor named Robert Conrad, who played tough guys in TV shows. He was selling batteries by putting a battery on his shoulder, looking into the camera, and saying, “”Knock it off. Go ahead. I dare you.” He was playing with the idea of the expression. If you want a fight, mess with my battery, the idea being the same as the chip on the shoulder. You can bug me about a lot of things, but if you bug me about this particular thing, my chip, my sensitive issue, the thing in my life I don’t have any patience about, you will get a fight. Or an angry response. Or I will pour out all my insecurities and frustrations on you. Or I’ll just get snarky.

Do you have a chip? Or chips? Is your shoulder getting tired yet?

If you want a clue as to what your chip might be, just fill in the blanks:

One thing that really gets on my nerves is ______________.

If there’s one thing I really hate, its _______________.

I just can’t stand people who _______________.

The thing about these chips is that they’re kind of like another kind of chips. Once they’re off your shoulder, and on the ground, they’re kind of like...

Cow chips.

If you get my drift.

We have a tendency to step in them and, well, you know how it goes. We spread the chips all over the place. We make a big mess. Smelling up the place. Because of that thing that gets on our nerves, that thing we really hate, that we can’t stand.

That thing which reveals how little we really believe in grace and forgiveness.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Pastor Nance

2011-02-28T12:11:00.000-05:00

I, personally, have two pastors in my life. I have the pastor I had when I was a kid, who I still think of as my pastor. And I have my pastor/friend/mentor, appropriately named Paul, who has been helping me for years to find my way and be faithful in what I do. I love them both.

Unfortunately, we found out last night that the pastor of my youth, Willard Nance, has passed away. I have to admit it’s got me feeling pretty down. It’s sad to see him go, but he was very ill, very old, and it’s good to know his suffering is over. He had a stroke a few years ago, and he was incapacitated by it. I went to visit him a few times and he became frustrated and agitated because he couldn’t communicate clearly and we couldn’t understand him. It was miserable and it made me feel bad for him, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

I could write a book with memories of this pastor. We went to church a lot in those days. Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Plus, eventually, youth group things with our youth leader, a guy named Gary. It was a big part of my childhood and teen years. I remember standing in the baptismal pool and being dunked by Pastor Nance. I remember going to a Holloween party in the church basement, and finding a creepy person in a mask that all the kids were standing around, trying to figure out who it was. It was driving us crazy, and it ended up being the last person we would have guessed. It was our pastor.

A pastor who wears creepy Holloween masks to spook the kids. Or, just a pastor who will wear a Holloween mask in the first place. That’s my role model. And he was a great role model. We KNEW he loved us.

And there was never any doubt about how Pastor Nance loved Jesus. He loved the Gospel. He knew what the word “grace” means because he believed so much grace had been poured out on him. I don’t know the details, but we heard glimpses of stories over the years about how he had struggled with substance abuse in his younger years. We knew that when he presented the Gospel, he was sharing something that was very personal for him. It mattered to him, so it mattered to us.

He never had a mega-church. He wasn’t asked to speak at conferences. He didn’t do a lot of big, impressive things in the eyes of the world. He was a working class, working man’s pastor, and I loved him for it. He was a great man, but not for the usual reasons people might bring up. He was a great man because he had a great love for Christ and he acted on that love. He served faithfully for years until he literally couldn’t stand anymore.

He is one of my heroes, and he will be greatly missed.

Peace to the family and friends of Willard Nance.

© LW Publishing 2011

Pay Attention

2011-02-24T10:18:00.000-05:00

I’ve been paying attention lately to how hard it is for me to pay attention because it’s come to my attention that I’m not very good at this. And, by “this” I mean really focused attention that catches details and remembers them

Bear with me: I was recently watching Star Wars Return of the Jedi, and there is this moment where Chewbacca, the big dog like guy, is swinging on a vine with a little Ewok creature and, while they are swinging, Chewbacca (or the Ewok) makes the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan YELL. If you don’t know what that is it’s okay because that’s not the point. The point is, I’ve seen this movie more times than is reasonable in any number of universes, but this was the first time I noticed this Tarzan thing. I mean, it’s meant as a cute joke, it’s really obvious, and it stands out like a sore thumb. I have seen it countless times and I NEVER noticed it before.

It seriously, seriously makes me wonder what else I’m missing. This “event” has me thinking about this attention thing. I can be looking right at something and not really see it. I can be listening to something and not really hear it. And I think the problem is that I’m not PAYING enough attention.

When I talk to people or read books or watch movies, I often don’t get the details. I have this automatic thing going on where my mind is filtering, getting the gist of what’s communicated, and summing it up into main ideas. In the process, details are lost. I don’t do this because I don’t want to listen. I don’t do it to be mean or disrespectful. I do it automatically. I can’t remember not doing this. I sort of gather the big idea and the details float off into the ether. I think it’s why I can’t remember names and why I have to go back and get details when I need them.

Can you say, “ADD?” I knew you could.

I don’t really know that I have ADD. Or that I don’t. But it has me thinking. I’m ruminating on this in a distracted sort of way. I’m thinking that true, detailed attention costs us something. That’s why it’s called “paying” attention. It costs us time and energy and focus. To truly “pay” attention to one thing, I have to not be paying attention to something else – that’s part of the cost – and this is definitely not an easy thing for me. It’s not natural. I can’t even sleep some nights because my mind is going, going, going. When I ask someone what they’re thinking and they say, “nothing,” I hardly believe them because that has never been true for me. I’ve never personally experienced it. Unless I’m sleeping. And, even then, I dream.

So I’m practicing. I’m trying to tap into the “feeling” of detailed payment of attention. I’m trying to keep my mind from wandering while I do things. Trying to keep myself from thinking about something else. Focus. Like a laser. I am a cat. I am attention personified...

So far it’s not working, but if they find me unconscious, on the floor, with a little pool of drool under my head, you’ll know what happened.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Chicken

2011-02-22T11:33:00.000-05:00

When I was in university, I took some philosophy classes and I enjoyed it. A lot. Everything just clicked. And one of my philosophy profs noticed my, shall we say, “acumen,” in this area, so he took me aside and suggested I become a philosophy major. He said I was a “natural.”

Well, after the swelling in my head went down, I kept trying to picture myself as a philosopher.

“So, Dave, what do you do for a living?”

“Who me? Well, I’m a philosopher.”

“No, seriously, what do you do for a living?”

“I am being serious. I’m a philosopher!”

“No really, I want to know what you do for a liv-ing.”

I just couldn’t picture it. The only thing I could envision was, perhaps, teaching philosophy, which didn’t seem very exciting. But, later, I realized that the issue was more that I was afraid to commit to doing anything that seemed too, well, I suppose “responsible” is the right word. I was afraid to take my abilities seriously and put them to meaningful use. I was chicken.

And I see a lot of other people struggle with this same kind of thing. We doubt ourselves. We wonder if we’re strong enough or talented enough or smart enough, even when people affirm our strengths.

Moving forward isn’t so easy for some of us. To move forward, sometimes we have to let go of things we’ve been infatuated with for one reason or another. “I always wanted to be an astronaut but, for some strange reason, they just aren’t accepting 6 foot 7 English majors with no flight experience into the program!” And, ultimately, we have to be willing to try. As trite as it sounds, Yoda was wrong: if you want to do something, you need to try to do it. Maybe you aren’t smart enough or talented enough or responsible enough for some things, but you won’t know until you try. See what happens. Who knows, maybe you’ll discover that you aren’t cut out for some things. Big deal.

Then again. Maybe you’ll find out that there’s more to you than you thought.

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
Vincent van Gogh

Public Service Announcement

2011-02-21T15:26:00.002-05:00

Sure, you’ve heard of the flu. You’ve heard of West Nile Virus. But I’m here to warn you of another, much more insidious epidemic that you may not be aware of. You should know that it can take hold of you at any time, for almost no reason, and be spread to countless other people without warning. And by now, I’m sure you’ve already guessed at what I’m talking about.

Laughter.

Yes. Laughter.

This stuff is dangerous, people. And unpredictable. Doctors have no idea why it happens to us, but they know it can be very contagious. You don’t even have to hear a joke. It can just . . . happen. Spontaneously. And if you aren’t careful, it could leave you short of breath and completely out of control.

I know, I know. You think I’m making this up. Obviously you haven’t heard of the Great Laughter Epidemic of 1962. Well, if you don’t believe me, just pause the music over there on the right and look at this:

You can see how serious this is. So next time you start laughing, just consider what you’re doing to others. Consider how you are spreading this horrid little phenomenon to the people you love. Ask yourself...

Is it worth it?

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Trust Issues

2011-02-19T11:56:00.000-05:00

One year, when I was in Elementary School, there was a poster contest for a carnival in town. It was a thing the city was putting on, so they had the kids in each school make posters to promote it, and each school chose a winner for best poster. If you won, you would get free tickets to the carnival, yada yada yada. So I went home and drew up a poster. It was Donald Duck, telling the kids to go to the carnival because it was going to be so much fun. Yada yada yada. And it turned out pretty good. I won the contest.

So the posters go up on the wall of the school, in the big hallway near the office, and they did some little ceremony with me. I can’t quite remember the details, but the principal shook my hand and such. Which was all cool. But then this one lady, she was a teacher or a secretary or something, I honesty don’t remember why she was there, but she turned to me and asked me a question. She said: “The picture is really great, but why did you spell the words all wrong.”

I was a little dumbfounded because what I had done was obvious. Or, at least, it should have been. Donald Duck has his peculiar way of speaking. A kind of scratchy duckese. So I had spelled whatever it was I had him saying on the poster phonetically to reflect that. No one had questioned this, all the way to the victory circle. And that’s what I told the woman. “I just tried to spell it like it would sound if Donald Duck said it.” It was, let me say it again: obvious. But the woman seemed surprised. She said, “Oh.” Then she looked at the poster for a second and looked at me and said, “Well. I think it would have been better if you had spelled the words correctly.” She said the word “correctly” as if it was a word I would have a hard time understanding. I remember that the principal gave her a look, but he didn’t say anything. After all, she was a grown up like him. He just gave me a pat on the head and sent me back to class.

Now. I mention all this because, in a small way, it was a life changing moment. For the first time in my life I looked at an adult and thought to myself: This is a stupid person. I wasn’t thinking mean about it. I didn’t look down on her. I just realized that she didn’t get something that was simple. Something I understood, and I was just a kid.

Seriously. I thought about it all that day, and again and again over the years. Grown ups CAN be stupid. Grown ups CAN be wrong. Some grown ups MIGHT not know more than kids, let alone other grown ups.

Can you see how this could change one’s world view? Can you see how this one little incident could undermine a kids trust in the adult world?

I’d like to say that the adults of the world have regained my trust. You know, in general.

I’d really like to.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Small Things

2011-02-17T19:15:00.001-05:00

Years ago, I worked at a factory making tubing for auto parts. Those weren’t the best of times.

It was a loud, depressing place, full of machines. Some were automatic, others you had to manually operate, bending different tubes into shapes that would somehow fit in the engine compartment of one car or another. It was hot, grueling work. The only real plus was the pay check, which wasn’t much of a plus.

But there were a few of us who became friends because we were stuck together on one of the machines. This machines was huge. And by huge I mean HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. It was practically as big as a small house. A team of operators would sit at different parts of the machine and do their piece, then send it along to the next part, assembly line fashion, until the part finally fell off the end into some big wooden box. Talk about being cogs in the machine. We were cogs.

But we were singing cogs.

Right about that time, the song “We Are the World,” came out. It was on the radio constantly, blaring through the factory. And this one group of us who were on the big machine, learned all the parts and began impersonating the different singers as we lip synched to the song. We did this and we laughed so hard. It was really funny. I mean, I suppose it was funnier because of where we were and all that, but it was funny. It was a relief in the day.

One of the guys was named John. He did the Joe Cocker bit. And it was a perfect fit. He really looked like Joe Cocker, but even funnier than Joe Cocker looks. It was hysterical.

And out of that little experience, we struck up a conversation. Then we started to hang out a little. Not a lot, but a little, here and there. And eventually I thought of him as a good friend. And we stayed friends over the years, long after I left the machine shop, mostly because of John. He would always call me to keep in touch, which. I wasn’t very good at. In my past, too many people had left and never looked back, so I kind of got used to the next thing being the next thing. I didn’t do a lot of looking back. I still don’t. It’s not easy for me. But John kept in touch, so we kept in touch. We’d talk now and then. We went out to eat a few times. We started going to a comic convention together every year. It was a blast seeing him.

We were friends up until his death a few years ago. He had a stroke. He was in his early forties and it was a great tragedy. But we had a good friendship. We shared life in common. He came to share my faith. And it taught me to appreciate the small things, the goofy little experiences that we share together in life. Laughing and singing and sharing things in common. These things are seeds for friendships and connections that can be meaningful and lasting.

Today, I thought of him, and I was missing my friend.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Grow Up Already

2011-02-15T10:32:00.000-05:00

Over the years I’ve become a much more serious person. I suppose it needed to happen, but I kind of miss the old me who would do and say really dumb things and laugh at whatever and not take everything so seriously. But growing up happens. And it should.

I found growing up a challenging thing from an emotional standpoint. I simply didn’t want to do it. Partly because it scared me, and partly because our culture encourages us to not grow up. It’s apparently something we’re supposed to avoid.

The commercials said, “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid.”

Walt Disney said, “Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.”

The Ramones sang, “I don’t want to grow up.”

Simple Plan sang it at the top of their lungs, "I don't want to be told to grow up."

And there’s plenty more where that came from. It’s a theme of living in the western world that growing up is about loss. Losing innocence. Losing freedom. Losing imagination and wonder.

But I think, in reality, what people are afraid of is losing our selfishness. After all, childhood is a massive exercise in selfishness. And we accept it from children, to a point, because they’re trying to figure out who they are and what their life should be about. But when this selfish, self focus, drags on year after year, decade after decade, keeping a person from growing and maturing, it gets plain ugly to see.

Growing up doesn’t mean giving up comic books or giving up dreaming about the future or losing your sense of wonder. At least it shouldn’t be about things like that. Growing up means realizing that the world doesn’t revolve around you, and being at peace with that reality. It means living for others sometimes instead of living every moment for yourself. It means learning to live out grace with contentment. It means learning to cope with the harshness of life without letting it eat you alive.

I love children. I adore my own kids. They are wonderful. There is much to be said for childhood. I miss my childhood in some ways. But here’s the truth: Apart from a very few child savants, children have not produced great art or films or accomplished great scientific discoveries. Children have not created medicines and vaccinations. Children have not built great cities or uncovered profound spiritual truths. They just don’t have it in them yet.

We should be like children. We can be child-like. But we should not be children forever. It’s okay to grow up. It’s healthy. And it should be expected.

1 Corinthians 13:11
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Unpredictable

2011-02-13T19:45:00.002-05:00

For the life of me, I can’t figure out people. People are chaos theory personified. Which is hard for me because I’m a figure it out kind of person. I like seeing how things add up to something. But people don’t add up. I’m constantly surprised by what people do. Sometimes it’s a pleasant surprise, many times it’s not.

People are just too complicated. There are too many factors involved. Too many experiences that shape a heart. And it makes us all so unpredictable.

While I was typing this, one of my kids started another argument with another one of my kids. Which is extremely predicable. You just never know when it’s going to happen or why. It’s completely unpredictable.

I like to read a few blogs, and I can’t predict what people are going to post. I mean, you can read a blog and say to yourself, “that was the kind of thing I expect from that person.” But you never know just what someone might say. And don’t even try to figure out what people are going to do. I don’t even know what I’m going to do five minutes from now. I mean, I have some ideas. But you never know.

Some people are more consistent than others. In fact, it’s nice to be around people who are more consistent because they seem less dangerous. It’s like a guy who might be violent at any moment. His family lives in terror, not just of what he will do, but of what he might do, at any moment, because he’s unpredictable.

I’m not the dangerous type. Not really. But I honestly believe I have some challenges relationally because people can’t figure out what I’m going to say next. When it comes to words, I’m very unpredictable. I mean, I could be talking to you and then suddenly

© LW Publishing 2011

Life, the Three Stooges and Everything

2011-02-12T15:56:00.000-05:00

I wonder sometimes if God is watching from on high, a little bored or something, and we make for some good entertainment.

We watch the Three Stooges. God watches us.

I’ve heard people (mostly women, but my daughters as well) say things about the Stooges over the years, things like: Why are they doing that? They’re not making any sense. That was kind of random and pointless, don’t you think? Why do they keep hitting and hurting each other? You don’t really think that’s funny do you?

These criticisms are fair. But it’s funny anyway. And in many ways, the Three Stooges are a perfect metaphor for the human race.

They are we.

I’m not talking serious theology here. Not really. It’s more about trying to get into the heart of God, which seems kind of inscrutable to me at times. But I imagine God watches us, and he gets tired of crying about it all the time. Wouldn’t you? There’s a lot to cry about, you know? The human race is very good at stupid. So, just from a love standpoint, it must get emotionally draining, all the heart break and sorrow. Even if it doesn’t make God “tired,” he probably still wants a rest from it all. Kind of like he rested on the Sabbath.

So I imagine God, turning the sound down on the earth, putting on a pot of whatever spiritual thing passes for coffee, and watching the chaos while humming the tune of Three Blind Mice.

He stops weeping, for a little while, and he laughs.

Psalm 2:4
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Keep Your Eyes On The Navel

2011-02-10T08:09:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered this word: “omphaloskepsis”

Isn’t that great? It sounds like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.

Webster’s Dictionary says it means “contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation.” It comes from the Greek language (doesn’t everything?). “Omphalos” is "navel.” Without the “om” (a meditative vowel all to itself, for those who are into such things), the word sounds suspiciously like something else we won’t get into here. And “Skepsis” means "examination." It’s probably related to the word “skeptical.” Who knows. But what gets me is that there’s a word for the act of contemplating one’s navel. How cool is that?

I suppose there must be a word for everything, or at least we have the power to create a word for pretty much anything. I just love this, how we find ways of saying things that no one would ever really say, but we could if we wanted to.

The thing is, what I’m most concerned about here is the important issue of individuals who are omphaloskepsistically impaired. Consider how it makes a person feel who wants to meditate, but they can’t actually see their navel due to a distended mid-section resulting from hyperphagia.

Hyperphagia is a word for the problem of eating too much. Do you, too, suffer from this tragic, crippling disorder? Oh, the humanity! Perhaps we should start a foundation or a telethon or something to deal with it. A support group at the very least.

Hi. My name is Dave. And I’m a hyperphagic.

Frankly, I’m just happy that I don’t suffer from autocoprophagy. I would tell you what that is, but it might make you disgorge whatever your hyperphagia led you to recently consume.

I’ll just leave it to you to use what I’ve offered here as a starter for spending some quality time omphaloskepsising.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Fickle

2011-02-07T10:32:00.001-05:00

I have to admit it. Sometimes I’m fickle.

What a rotten word. It’s almost like a curse word, isn't it? Fickle. Sounds like something stuck to the bottom of your shoe that you can’t get off. Sounds like a sharp object sticking out of the carpet, waiting for the bottom of your foot.

But there’s no getting around it. There are a few things I stick with for the long haul, my wife and kids not being the least of them. Music is not a problem. Or reading. Or studying the Bible. But with a lot of other things I’m into it for a while, I’m full of curiosity and wonder, and then it starts to trail off into an occasional ho hum whatever.

Exhibit A: For a while I was into photography. I got an okay camera. I read books on it. I read articles. I started paying attention to photos, really thinking about what I liked or didn’t like about them. How they were composed. Here are a few images I shot:

I really enjoyed it, trying to get different kinds of shots. Especially with my cheap camera. It was a challenge. But now I have a hard time remembering to take my camera with me to anything. And I don’t really know why. Whatever the reasons, I lost interest.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened. I have picked up and sat back down: Baseball. Piano. Fishing. Roasting my own coffee beans. Drawing with colored pencils. Writing poetry. Basketball. Exploring my family history.

The list goes on and on.

It honestly, if irrationally, makes me feel at times like the bourgeois pig that inspired the misguided Karl Marx to write the Communist Manifesto. When I think about it over time, the ins and outs of one fascination giving way to another, it makes me feel like a petulant child who can’t make up his mind what toy to play with, the kid who is bored all the time and needs to be entertained.

Then again, maybe it’s just the way life goes when you have an inquisitive mind.

?

Psalm 63:3-5
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011