5 Things to Cluck About Today 02.25.2010

1. Five years later, Lakeland Film, Endure to Be Screened.
   
2. Gasperalla Film Festival: Be a Supporter of the Arts, volunteer.
   
3. Maps and other escape aids were smuggled to Allied POWs in Monopoly sets during World War II.
   
4. New rumors claiming that Facebook or FarmVille soon plan to charge monthly subscription fees to users continue to circulate. (its False)
   
5. Medal Count United States 32 Germany 26 Finland 19. Where is Canada? Anyone seen Canada? Hmmmmm!
   

5.5 Notice all the numbers in May 25 2010 are divisible by 5.

Why the Civil War Still Haunts the South Today

1. The war was fought aggressively on the Southern home front.
2. The South was agrarian. The southern soil was sacred. The soil was bloodied, salted and destroyed by North Aggression. (Especially Sherman's march to the sea.)
3. 20% of Southern White Men fought; only 6% of Northern Yankees fought in the Civil War.
4. Women of the south were hit hard by economic hardships, and Yankee aggressive campaigns to rid Rebels of their homes.
5. Women taught young Rebel boys to hate Northerners.
   
   "After the war a Confederate officer remarked in his diary that his son was being taught by southern women to hate Northerners: The child's bread is buttered with hatred, his milk is sweetened with it, his top spins and his ball bounces with it." *

Ezekiel 18: 10-13 States the southern view perfectly:

¹⁰ "Suppose he has a violent son, who sheds blood or does any of these other things ^[b] 11 (though the father has done none of them):
       "He eats at the mountain shrines.
       He defiles his neighbor's wife.

 ¹² He oppresses the poor and needy.
       He commits robbery.
       He does not return what he took in pledge.
       He looks to the idols.
       He does detestable things.
 ¹³ He lends at usury and takes excessive interest.
      Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he will surely be put to death and his blood will be on his own head.


*Mc Whiney, Grady The Civil War: A concise Account by a Noted Southern Historian (Abileen Texas: Mc Whiney Foundation Press 2005), 90.

The Vertical Life by Mark Sayers

The plague of modernism striped away our identity in Christ. The cult of the individual took over and we were remade into Zombies working for an identity stirred by modern cultural ethics and building our personal brands. We became obsessed by work. Work promised freedom, coolness, and the ability to be sexy. All of this added to us living not a Vertical Life but a Horizontal life. A vertical life is an identity that is framed by God. God shapes us to serve God well. Sayers book is a call back from this self obsession to the beginning of living a vertical life.

The Vertical Life's first 100 pages stirred me in a good way. I enjoyed Sayers ability to express Post Modern Cultural thinking and its effect on the Church.

But I began to be turned away from the book when he attempted to give a step by step solution to Horizontal Living.

The reformed perspective (which I believe) holds that after the fall, man was born innately in sin. The only way to come clean was for Christ to take our sins on the cross. Sayers argues on another platform. He presents Humans as innately good. Sinners just need to apply a behavior management program and live a virtuous life (no cross needed). I fear that many will attempt to live a behavior management formula, and become depressed when their own good measures are not enough to overcome their sinful ways.

For a counter POV check out Joseph's Review. 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The Vertical Self by Mark Sayers

But God has a solution.  God intends to re-create the world.  (Sayers 105)
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

James Joyce J:5

Be daring and think of the future! Planning is an act of faith and dare because our plans may go awry, but we need to plan anyways.   Think of a favorite author, choose a month, and then create a plan to read all of their works.   Here is my five year plan (J5) to read James Joyce in 5 Marches time:
2010 Dubliners 
2011  Ulysses  
2012 Exiles 
2013 Finnegan's Wake 
2014 Letters of Joyce

Emerging through Vision into Deep Outer Space

"A Child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door." 

 G.K.Chesterton Orthodoxy page 96.

I need to work on my drawing abilities, my wife thought the Vision Spaceship was a Cake.   It is a spaceship, I assure you.   

Hockey Aint Talked Here Much!

How you like those Provinces?

Is it a Win if there is no one talking about it?

 U.S. Beat Canada in Hockey in the Winter Olympics.  Canada was favored on paper, but they were paper tigers, folding under pressure.  You might think that we (the United States) would be uttering a wave of cheers, but static permeated the air,   a dead calm (how can a calm be dead?) on a great event.  

I wish I could have viewed "the game" but I was busy behind the Deli Counter.

Florida in the Civil War: Battle of Olustee Feb 20, 1864.

Reading Life, Questions?

I ask myself, "How I should get all that reading done, how should I organize my reading plan to read all the books in my collection? There is too much of a good thing, and this can be proven with the amount of books I have in my library.


Should one read certain books during certain times of year?

I read the series of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy yearly; I begin the book on July 4 and end the book when my wife returns to school.


Should I read books written by African Americans during the month of June or in February?

 Is it a cliché or straight to read James Joyce in March?

 I guess I am wondering if this is clichéd contrition, or a good way to get to read all the books in my collection.

 Or maybe I should just get rid of them all and start over again.

Chuck It or Cluck It- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger: Classic Cluck

J.D. Salinger's book Franny and Zooey is a classic one, written in 1955. It looks at the authority of "standard practices" on the youth in a family. Salinger described the story as "a prose home movie." The Glass family, the primary actors in the "prose home movie" do not want us to comfortably state, "Look at their Problems; I'm glad that my family is A Ok! My child is so mature compared to these kids." They want us to notice these two kids as our two kids.

Salinger's stories are a call to arms against as Wes Anderson claimed "the bitter, the selfish, the neurasthenic, and the unhappy" adults who attempt to mature the youth too quickly. The vulnerable youth are slain, like a deer in front of a Mac Truck (A swampy attempt at a cliché!). The young artist puts away their 100 Colors of Crayolas in the name of a boring adulthood. 


The book serves as a great commentary on the Sermon on the Mount; the commentary keeps haunting me as my Church studies the Gospel of Matthew.  

The book is a good read; I definitely give it a Classic Cluck.

Movies book remind me of:

1. Royal Tennebaums,
   
2. Garden State
   
3. Rushmore
   

Wes Anderson on J.D. Salinger

Voice New Testament Bible

****/***** Cluck It!



The Voice Devotional Bible by Thomas Nelson Publishers is a valuable resource for those who want to explore in conversation the Story of God.

The Voice was created for a Post Modern Reader who desired a bible that addressed: "emotions, cognitive processes (what were they thinking), tactile experiences and spiritual awareness". The book unlike other bibles that were (created to meet Post Modern needs) did not lose the text in translation.

The Voice Conversation bible encourages the flow of the text. The Voice does not bog the Gospel down by adding copious notes and supplemental information to the text. Other bibles distract me with their beautiful side notes. The use of Italics to inform the reader while staying within the textual block is very helpful, because ones eye does not have to look elsewhere to gain understanding. Often I am left confused and wandering in isolation, stuttering out loud,

"Where the heck am I?"

But the flow keeps me engaged.

The notes in the Voice give just enough info to keep the reader afloat. The voice also does not give headings to the Chapter Breaks; (E.g. Titus 2: What must be taught to Various Groups). A reader may be hindered by a lack of headings because it slows down their ability to find where it says in scripture, Jesus Feeds the Multitude. But the lack of clear chapter breaks helps encourage comprehension of the whole book, for instance in Titus I wanted to read the whole letter and not read the one letter on three different occasions.

The quality of the book is not bad for a trade paperback, but it will not remain intact after a stampede of Thundering Buffaloes.

This book serves its purpose well in helping the reader stay engaged in conversations with others. The book also does a great job with dialogue by providing a screenplay format. The editors did a good job of restating archaic words in modern language without losing the translation or making the reader feel stupid. While I am not ready to rely solely on this bible for my entire bible Conversations (it lacks a concordance, an index, or maps that add to understanding), I will be using this bible when I am engaged in discussions about God's Story with others.


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Currently, I am reading Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger; here is a lecture on it from Yale:

Watch it on Academic Earth

5 Things Worth Clucking About 2/01/2010

1.  The Scorpions have broken up. This brings a tear to my eye.   I will always remember the night I went with a German and a Japanese student to the concert.   On the way home my Ford Taurus Station Wagon broke down due to a blown alternator.  The winds of Change ohhhhhhh!!!!!!
2.  Tallahassee has agreed to a bullet train between Orlando and Tampa.
3.  Green Day win Record of the Year with: 21st Century Breakdown.
4.  J.D. Salinger Dies.   
What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by.  I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them.  I hate that.  I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it.  If you don't, you feel even worse.  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 1
5.  Obama tickles Republican ears with talk on Nuclear Power, and Offshore Drilling.