This is the second Black & Decker Complete Guide that I’ve used to good effect in my battle to overcome being born and raised as the quintessential not handy guy while tending to as much of the care and feeding of our 1930s-era home as I can.
I”m not there yet. Continue Reading »
Posted in paterfamilias | Tagged DIY | Leave a Comment »
The two principal articles in the December 22, 2008 issue of Sports Illustrated number that lies before me are why SI remains the uncontested leader in North American general sports periodicals. Jim Trotter’s ‘D As in Dominant’ connects the dots between the Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain of yore and its present day top-ranked NFL defense. Joe Posnanski’s noir take on the winter baseball meetings in Las Vegas (!) captures the pathos and ridicule that are both required for a full understanding of this off-season institution.
Both are simply great sports writing. Continue Reading »
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No voice speaks more poignantly from exile than the writer of the one hundred thirty-seventh psalm. ‘By the rivers of Babylon’, he explains, ‘we sat and wept for Zion.’
To these captors of the exile Judaeans, the songs of Zion seemed mere entertainment. The exotic accent, the strange musical lilt, must have appeared to offer a respite from empire’s deadening tedium. All they wanted—it didn’t seem like much—was to prod their captives to sing a tune or two from the Old Country. Continue Reading »
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A special bond links those who labor by night. Few volunteer to lay their energies down on the dark side of the day’s cycle. Usually extraneous considerations have made it necessary, often unpleasant ones. The world looks different from the angle of nighttime work. People who have seen it understand this and become part of a loosely linked tribe defined by its members’ shared nocturnal journey.
A psalm speaks to those whose temple assignment finds them waking to their nightly duties while others retire. Fittingly, it is brief and spun of well-wishing.
Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD, who stand by night in the house of the LORD! Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the LORD!
May the LORD bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth! (Psalm 134:1–3 ESV)
One thinks of the night attendant breaking the monotony by mouthing these words quietly from the shadows. He lifts his hand towards the most holy place. From his solitude he blesses the Lord. No one knows except the unseen God who receives the blessing and, more often than not, returns it in grace.
Those, too, who labor through the soul’s dark night recognize each other. From their shadow, they raise a hand towards a holy place. Quietly their lips form their blessing, shaped by darkness, spoken quietly as befits the night and its sounds that carry far.
May it, too, be returned from Zion, speeded to its destination by the maker of heaven and earth. May it rest gently on the shoulder of the one who stands alert in his corner while others sleep, unknowing.
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The Aaron Pelsue Band has become a fortunate fixture on the Indianapolis worship music scene. From its `home stadium’ at the Circle City’s East 91st Street Christian Church, the band has developed a dedicated following among Christian worshippers who appreciate—in addition to some rockin’ music—the band’s ability to play alternating lead and supporting roles in that spectrum of Christian experience that unites biblical instruction to the emotional expression of corporate worship. As an occasional visitor to East 91st Street Christian Church, this reviewer is a card-carrying member of TABP’s enthusiasts.
Though this live CD provides a glimpse of the energy TAPB brings to live worship, it undersells the bands other strengths. Unimpressively mixed, the album fronts Pelsue’s voice at the expense of the band’s broader sound. This is, of course, an occupational hazard of both live and debut albums. At points on TAPB LIVE, the band seems to have reaped the downside of these twin liabilities. Continue Reading »
Posted in my hometown, reseña | Tagged music, reseña, The Aaron Pelsue Band | Leave a Comment »
This collection of twenty of Camilo Sesto’s hits from the 1970s and 1980s is an excellent introduction to the Spanish-born love balladeer’s work. Largely unknown in the English-speaking world, Sesto is a mega-star with a voice well suited to the stage.
His lyrics are all about women and the love they inspire, reject, nourish, and protect. Rich orchestrations back up a strong, supple, capable voice. In the Spanish-speaking world now middle-aged people often locate formative experiences in their young lives by pegging them to a Sesto song the was current at the time, much as might happen among English speakers via the music of the Eagles or, say, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. More than one young love will leap to mind when a Sesto ballad arrives unexpectedly over the airwaves.
Though the genre is not my favorite, one has to respect Camilo Sesto as a master of it.
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This CD is my entrée to the beguiling art of Over the Rhine. If impressions count for anything, this is going to be a long, pleasant, even coquettish courtship.
The music is difficult to classify, yet adjectives abound. My first: inviting. The lyrics invite you in and reveal new depths with every return. You don’t quickly get beyond an OtR tune, you don’t quickly figure it out and move on. There is captivating suggestiveness to each line, the insinuation that there’s here than meets the eye if you’ll just stick around long enough to allow disclosure to happen on its own terms. Continue Reading »
Posted in reseña | Tagged music, Over the Rhine, reseña | 1 Comment »
Not for the faint of heart is the effort to discover a true Buenos Aires dining experience outside of that Argentine capital. The middle-aged men who wait on table there are not moonlighting on, say, their day job as a CPA. They are meseros. ‘Always been, always will be. Serving you your Argentine beef is what they do. They respect the meat, smile only as necessary, and never say, ‘Hi, my name is Trish, I’ll be taking care of you tonight.’
So it was with a little fear and trepidation that I turned a recent business trip to Seattle into an opportunity to take my Latin America-raised son (now a sophomore at Seattle Pacific University) to the Buenos Aires Grill, an establishment he’d scoped out during a city food tour with his mother. Continue Reading »
Posted in two hippos make an island | Tagged food, Seattle | 1 Comment »
Our predicament is on display from several angles. All that is productive, good, and joy-crafting in us is marred, dented, even chained. We are not what we could be and we cannot will ourselves out of this mess.
Nor are we doomed.
One of the angles of approach that provides a clear view on our damnable situation is the fear of other people that we suffer. It seems not to matter whether they possess the authority—moral or otherwise—that would make us subject to them or even eager to please. Nor does our own personal and professional coming of age solve our dilemma. We still live anxiously in the presence of other flesh, as the biblical dialect styles other human beings in order to bring out the limping, provisional, conditioned fragility of them. Continue Reading »
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We need thoughtful people in the pulpit.
Around the dinner table, a friend and his wife decry the insipid aridity of much that passes for Christian proclamation. These are not cultured despisers, these hosts of mine. They are decades-old friends who have been around the block and around the world, have celebrated life and been beaten up by it, have served and been served in proportions that overweight the first of the two.
They are veterans. All of their life together has been lived out under the sound of a voice from a pulpit. Whether in San José or Aberdeen or Wheaton or Cambridge, Christian preaching has been a contextual envelope for the grit of getting on with things. They have always lived within range of the pulpit’s voice.
Much of it has been very bad. Continue Reading »
Posted in clarity, denkschrift, missio dei | Tagged theological education | 6 Comments »
Canter Bridge 