A Song to Bring Peace (Music Video)
One of my FaceBook friends posted this music video of an Israeli pop song by drummer Gil Ladin, and it quickly captivated my ear. I wasted enough time listening to it that I figured it demanded it’s own blog post.
The words of the chorus are based on an old Hebrew prayer: Establish peace, goodness, and blessing, grace and kindness and compassion, upon us and upon all Israel, your people.
He turned it into a song for peace for the world:
Establish peace, goodness, and blessing,
life, grace and kindness
and compassion upon us;
establish peace, our children;
compassion upon us
and upon all Israel, your people;
and say, ‘Amen.’Sim shalom tovah uvrachah
chaim chên vachesed
v’rachamim alênu
sim shalom benênu
rachamim alênu
v’al kol yisrael amecha
v’nemar amên.
See how many names of how many different countries can you recognize in the bridge (the rap portion of the song)?
-TimK
P.S. My Hebrew is only good enough to catch bits and pieces of the verse, and I really don’t know modern Hebrew very well to start with. Can anyone translate it?
Creepy Crawlies Everywhere, and Ants and Flies
Photo © 2008 “that_james” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
At the Museum of Science in Boston, the last time I was there, they had a display of cockroaches, big ones. (Similar to the display pictured here, which is from the London Zoo.) Even though the buggies were behind plastic, I felt an urgent need to get out of there as fast possible.
My phobia of bugs (except for spiders, which don’t bother me much at all, except that I don’t want to get bitten)… My fear of bugs might stem from my childhood. I spent most of my growing years living in an old, yellow house on the side of a hill. A lot of pleasant memories are attached to that house, and a few creepy ones. Each year, for example, we were attacked by a hoard of ants of various sizes. Mostly, we saw the normal, black, carpenter ants, which I learned to live with and to kill on sight. We set down ant traps sometimes, in a never-ending struggle against these tiny invaders.
But we also got other kinds of ants from time to time, too. On one occasion, I pulled a box of cereal out of the cupboard and poured myself a bowl. The cereal was laced with hundreds (or maybe thousands) of tiny, brown-black ants only a millimeter or two long— I don’t know what kind they were, and I never want to see them again. (Fortunately, I can still eat cereal, but I’m religious about wrapping up the bag and closing the box securely when I put it away.)
Jim “Suldog” Sullivan’s tale of The Ant & the Dishwasher reminded me of this and a couple more of my own. And unlike Jim, I do not hate to kill insect. (Shudder.)
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A Date at the Laundromat
Photo © 2008 Isaac Hsieh CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
A romance thread at Sherry the Redhead Riter’s “BlogNTweet” forum reminded me of this story. Sherry asked how often we date.
Now, of course, I don’t date, because my Beloved (formerly “the Missus”), she doesn’t let me date. (It’s probably better that way.)
But we do “date” each other, occasionally… Well…
We used to date, even if we didn’t call it “dating.” For example, when we first got married, we moved into a tiny, third-floor, attic apartment. I worked down the street, and my Beloved was still finishing up her college education. (In fact, our wedding date we chose because it was during a break from classes, which gave us a couple weeks for a short honeymoon.) We had plenty of time during our off-hours to hang out together, spend time with friends, do chores together, or whatever. We used to go grocery shopping together every week, and then we’d carry all those bags up all those stairs. We had to do the laundry at the laundromat, so every week, we loaded up the car with our dirties and drove across town to the “good” laundromat. While the clothes were drying, we walked across the parking lot and got a bite to eat at Burger King. Not fancy, but it was special, and these memories I now look back on fondly.
Then we had kids.
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Friday Fun: SUCCESS! And More of It!
(Adapted from “The Fallacy of Success” by G.K. Chesterton.)
One of the most pressing issues of the members of today’s generation is what they should do with their lives. In generations of old, social and family pressures kept people in line. You took up the same occupation as your father before you, or else you’d become a heretic. You married and raised children like your mother before you, or else you’d become an old maid. But today, the whole world is before you, too many options, and it can get rather confusing.
This is especially true for the young woman of today, who can literally do anything she wants to, and sometimes she feels as though she must in fact do everything—succeed in a career, become rich and famous, and manage a family, including a useless, good-for-nothing slob of a husband, all in her spare time.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not necessarily easier for young men, just different. Both sexes come to adulthood with dreams and ambitions, but with no means to achieve them other than focus, hard work, and perseverance, which is boring, difficult, and boring, respectively.
This state of affairs has given renewed rise to a class of books, which I honestly think may be the silliest man has ever known. They are more exciting than the most explicit romances, more far-fetched than the most absurd science-fiction, and more boring than the dullest religious tome. But romances are at least about love (or at least about sex). And science-fiction is at least about science (or at least someone’s conception of it). And religious tomes are at least about religion. But these other books are about nothing. Or rather, they are about SUCCESS.
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EyeLeash: A Blog Novel (Book Review)
Not too long ago, Jess C Scott sent me a PDF of her first indie novel EyeLeash: A Blog Novel, to kick off a series of book reviews I’ve wanted to do, of indie and mid-list novels and memoirs.
EyeLeash is the private journal of Jade, a 17-almost-18-year-old girl, who recently graduated from an all-girl high school, wants to lose her virginity with Novan, a boy (now turning into a man) she knew from earlier in her life, and struggles with how she should accomplish that.
This novel is written in an alternative format (as a personal online journal), and it’s risqué for a YA novel (because of all the talk about sex). Surprisingly, the format did not distract me, and the story kept my attention. It became clear to me early on that not only did Novan have an emotional attachment to Jade, but Jade also was whipping herself up into an emotional attachment to Novan, even though they both said there was nothing between them. As the story progressed, Jade descended from confused to disturbed to pitiful. I began to feel sorry for Novan, wanting to tell him just to forget about this girl, because she has to get herself together before she could be a viable partner to any man.
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Teaser Tuesdays: Taxed to Death
Yeah, I know. It’s actually Wednesday… The holiday on Monday pushed everything late, and I forgot to post this yesterday.
I’m reading Taxed to Death, by Debra Purdy Kong, as part of the “Pay It Forward 2010″ group on Goodreads.
I’ve just started reading the book, so I haven’t really formed a complete opinion yet. It started slow, but it’s been slowly building up steam. I like stories that push hard at the very beginning, gets them rolling. However, I have gotten through the first two chapters without completely falling asleep, so at least it’s got some redeeming features.
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Christian Fiction, What’s Wrong with It?
Photo: A Bible and cross on the Sibley family marker in the South Douglas Cemetery in Douglas, Massachusetts; photo © 2009 Svadilfari CC BY-ND 2.0
Sunday, a friend of mine in church was wearing a T-shirt from a band I didn’t recognize.
I asked, “Who are they? Is that a Christian band?”
“Well,” he said, “they’re a bunch of Christians who are in a band, but they’re not a Christian band.”
I understood immediately. “Like I’m a Christian who writes novels, but I don’t write Christian novels.”
But why don’t I write Christian novels, when that’s such a large and growing market? Or maybe a better question would be, why don’t the books I write fit into the “Christian” category?
I sometimes write characters who are Christian. Sometimes, my characters even go to church. In my next Ardor Point novel, I expect the main character to reach a spiritual crisis, which will transform her and redefine her life, and she will credit God with the solution. The last Ardor Point novel, From the Ashes of Courage, at its core is a story about unconditional love, which is a Christian theme. And in this story, Gail faces a crisis of meaning, which is a spiritual crisis. And I write from the perspective of a life-long Christian and Bible scholar. Why then can’t I sell the story as Christian fiction?
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My Favorite Romantic Movies
As it’s two days before Valentine’s Day, instead of coming up with a proper “Friday Fun” post, I thought I’d slack off and just list some of my all-time favorite romantic movies (and TV show episodes).
(BTW, pictured to the right are the flowers I bought for the Missus this year, which she picked out, and which I paid for with money she had earned. But apparently they’re still sweet and quite special. See what I mean when I say that I’m “the husband of a wonderful wife,” and not the other way around?)
And now, here are the movies…
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The Lake House – Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves get sucked into a time-warping mailbox, where they dance to a song that hasn’t been written yet. A wonderful melding of intense romance and cheesy sci-fi. Made my cry. (Won’t tell you why.)
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Gilmore Girls episode “Love, Daisies and Troubadours” – The town troubadour demands the town enforce his rightful monopoly to play music on the streets of Star’s Hollow, and Rory explodes, because she’s actually still in love with Dean and can’t bring herself to tell him. Meanwhile, Max buys Lorelai 1,000 yellow daisies—not 999, not 1,001—because it’s better than chopping Luke’s head off. Lorelai cries but still doesn’t know whether she wants to accept his proposal of marriage, even though he’s a great guy and she’s in her mid-thirties and not getting any younger.
Valentine’s Day Blog Posts
On the fourth day of Valentine’s, I thought I’d link to a few cool posts from some of the blogs that I follow:
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Pam Epstein is completing her PhD dissertation, about love and marriage from the mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century in America. For her research, she’s looking at old newspaper personal ads, and sharing some of the more interesting ones with us. Here’s an entertaining ad she posted today, from someone offering a, uhm, rather interesting romantic service.
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I met Jim “Suldog” Sullivan online via our mutual interest in libertarian politics. Since then, he’s been writing pretty regularly in his uniquely personal (and often funny) blog. Here’s a post from his archives, about how he met his wife.
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Sandra at Add Humor and Faith…mix well recently posted about marrying her Hubby, and how God gave her the kind of husband she needed (rather than a “perfect” husband).
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And of course, here’s from my own archives, my own story of happily ever after.
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Lastly, maybe Valentine’s Day is about romance, not about sex. But… Well, maybe it can be about sex, too. Check out these 13 funny-sexy panties. (Maybe the Missus will get herself one of the dirtier ones for my Valentine’s gift!)
Cheers,
-TimK
A Young Love Story: The Sister I Never Had
Just before my 15′th birthday, my father attended a weekend business meeting at a small college in Utica, NY, and the whole family came along for a weekend road trip.
Hung up on a girl I had met in school, before I had left for Utica, she and I argued. Words were spoken. Angers flared. Drawing from the reaches of my vocabulary, I told her she was “an obnoxious, self-centered, egotistical, dirty, little, two-faced slime ball.” And over the weekend, I grew sorry for lashing out at her, and I wrote a long letter not only apologizing but also telling her all about our trip.
The last day in Utica, I walked down the hallway of the dorm where we had been staying, and I happened to glance in one of the open doors. Inside, a pretty, young Latina with long, thick hair, was packing her things into a suitcase. I did not know her, but her youthful beauty stabbed into my innards. She looked up at me, and I stared for a moment, transfixed, before I quickly turned away and continued on, still reeling and amazed. That moment will forever be frozen in my memory.
We all piled into the car and drove about a half hour to someone’s house—I didn’t know whose at the time—where we would eat and sleep over until the following day.
Then I saw her again, the girl from the dormitory. She was there, at the same house.
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