It’s a small world after all

So I was getting ready for my class which meets first thing tomorrow morning and I decided that my PowerPoint needed a little spicing up. So I went to Google images, typed in “teacher” and went looking for pictures to add to my presentation. I found this one which I thought was fun and clicked on it. I thereby stumbled across a blog called Confessions of an Untenured Teacher written by a second year teacher from Orange County, California. I thought “this sounds like fun” and so I read a little. Then I read a little more. I liked it. I liked the way the writer, Sarah, talked about being a teacher. She didn’t minimize the frustrations but they all seemed to be couched in a love for the profession and for the kids she works with.

This was just what I needed for the lesson I am doing tomorrow so I printed one of the posts and copied it for my students and sent Sarah a comment letting her know how much I appreciated her blog. Within an hour I had a comment back from Sarah and – guess what – she’s a former student of mine!!!!!!!!!!!! I commented back to her and she wrote me a nice email giving me an update on her life and profession. This was so cool! The internet must be a lot smaller than I thought it was.

Getting ‘Lost’

I mentioned quite a while ago that I was turning into a fan of Lost. I got Season Two on DVD for Christmas but I decided that, even though I had not seen Season Two yet, I would just dive into the beginning of Season Three as it was broadcast last fall. Fortunately, the show took a lengthy hiatus in the middle allowing me to catch up a little but I don’t have the time to watch every episode of Season Two in quick succession (plus I was watching DVDs of 24) and it took me a while to get to my Lost DVDs so I’m still in the middle of Season Two while I’m also in the middle of Season Three. Sometimes it can get pretty confusing but it also has the benefit of making me able to connect the dots because I JUST saw some scenes that are being referred to across seasons. And once in a while I have to ask Bryan what's going on.

Anyway I’m realizing that as good as Lost was in the first season it got even better in the second season. I especially like the way that the producers give us new insight into things that happened in the past. The flashbacks of course are a big part of the charm of the show but we learn things about what happen earlier on the island as well. They really flesh out the characters and the mysteries keep piling up. It's nice to finally be getting at least some answers in Season three!

So people on the internet can complain all they want (and they do) but I think it’s a great show – I hope I finish watching season two by the time season three ends. While I sometimes think some of the online fans can never be happy I’ve really enjoyed the Lost Easter Eggs website and find it a lot of fun and worth checking out.

My Musical Guilty Pleasure - Heart

I have, for quite some time now, harbored a love for band that isn’t critically celebrated. In fact, even though I have nearly all of their albums I seldom admit it. The band in question is HEART. The Wilson sisters first came to prominence in 1976 (the year I graduated from college) with their hit “Magic Man” from their debut album Dreamboat Annie. The combination of the crunchy guitars of Nancy Wilson and Howard Leese along with the amazing vocals of Ann Wilson made for a dynamic first single. The album was released on a small label (Mushroom Records) (which we would probably now call and indie label) but it sold like crazy and, for a time, the Wilson sisters and their band were at the top of the charts. Their second album, Little Queen was on a major label, included the mega-hit “Barracuda” and solidified their place in the seventies rock establishment. This was cool stuff and Ann Wilson could really sing!

Things didn’t always go well for Heart, though. They had a couple of albums that I thought were great but didn’t sell like the first two, Bebe LeStrange and Dog and Butterfly (which, while it may not have been a huge hit, may be their best). Then after a couple of really weak albums they reinvented the band in 1985 with a new rhythm section, a new glamorous look, a new record label and a self-titled album. (I should mention that the album just before they got big again, Passionworks, was a particularly strong album even though no one seemed to notice.) Soon Heart were hot again and the album spawned a number of hit songs. One of their hits even featured guitar playing sister Nancy on lead vocals. Their sound was smoothed out a bit, keyboards played a bigger role in their songs and they were a hot 80’s band (complete with 80’s hair). And lets face it, these sisters were made for video and the new MTV loved them. But this didn’t last long either. Each successive album sold less than it’s predecessors, Ann gained weight and became less of an MTV hottie and the audience drifted away. She could still sing up a storm though but eventually Heart finally packed it in. (Recently they reformed and put out a new album but I haven’t heard it yet.)

Nonetheless, I stayed with them for a long time, even in the lean years (typified by their worst album, Private Audition.) Every once in a while I have the urge to hear the old stuff and I get out a couple of albums and crank it up. While on vacation in the car I heard a couple of Heart tunes on the radio and realized that the time had come to pull out the old CDs again. (I like them enough to have repurchased those first few albums on CD even though I had them on vinyl.) As I write this I have their 1985 self-titled comeback album playing and I find myself knowing an awful lot of the words. Listening to this album brings me back to when I lived in Denver. I remember walking on Evans Avenue with a tape of this album on in my Walkman. I also remember that when I saw them on the Bad Animals tour they were fabulous and put on a great show. (If my memory serves me correctly a new singer named Michael Bolton was the ignored opener.)

So because I so often find myself listening to this stuff it is time to come clean – My name is Bob and I actually listen to Heart. And I enjoy it.

If you want to try to figure out why I like this band so much a great place to start is Dog and Butterfly. It shows that Heart could be a rockin' electric band but also had an interesting acoustic side to them too.

So, what's your musical guilty pleasure?

Beatles albums in Lego

Worth the quick trip to this site to see more.

Hiking the Applachian Trail

We're back from our short trip to Athens, GA to visit Bethany. On the way home we hiked the Appalachian Trail. Ok, so we didn't hike a LOT of it, but we hiked it nonetheless. We had a great time seeing Bethany again and hanging out with her in Athens.

Highlights include:
- Playing and singing in church with Bethany and the Sundays at the Morton Band in Athens, GA. The band is great and we had a wonderful worship service.
- Seeing the Georgia Aquarium - almost worth the trip to Georgia all by itself.
- Four days in the car and actually enjoying listening to country music in Tennessee and Kentucky.
- The Waffle House in rural Tennessee - the complete Tennessee experience there in one restaurant.
- Seeing Alabama for the first time - we were so close that we got off the highway, took the 3 mile side trip to Alabama, got out of the car, threw a frisbee, got back in and drove back to Tennessee. We never even turned the car off.
- Taking a completely different route there and back. We left from Grand Rapids where we picked up Meredith and Bryan so we got to Indianapolis a different way than we drove home from there and on the way home we saw the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (which was a wonder of nature) and Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge (which is as different from that as you can get) so we left Athens a different way. We traveled the same road for about 15 minutes around Indianapolis. Including our trip to Atalanta on Monday we drove about 2000 miles over six days.

Many more pictures here

spring break in Georgia

Paul McCartney may be putting out a new album - at Starbucks?

This article, MACCA-News: Paul McCartney Leaving Capitol Records After 40 Years , says that McCartney is leaving Capital Records where he has been for a very long time and that he will be releasing a new album on the new label from Starbucks. That's right, the coffee place. Other sources have stated that a new McCartney album, reported to be "a rocker" is already done and ready to go.

This isn't surprising since Paul has often used the studio to work through personal tough times and he's had more than his share lately. Some of his (and others) best work has come out of trying times. For example, Band on the Run was made when his band left him and he was recording in less than perfect circumstances in Lagos, Nigeria; Tug of War was just after Lennon's death; Flaming Pie came when his wife Linda was being treated for cancer; finally, Chaos and Creation (see some of my thoughts about that album here) was when he was thinking about what to do about his crumbling marriage to Heather. I've just listed what fans a critics generally consider Paul's best solo albums. For that matter, Abbey Road was made when there was a pretty clear this-is-our-last-album vibe in the Beatles.

But hardship is not enough to make a great album. Linda's death was followed by Run Devil Run which, while it was also a rocker, was almost a throw-away album with covers of old and mostly obscure rock songs. Then, when he released an album of new material it was the less-than-outstanding Driving Rain. This album isn't bad but it certainly isn't among Macca's best. (Although in fairness, Paul also began work on Ecce Cor Meum which, as I've written about earlier, is excellent.) So, while I really don't wish hard times on McCartney, it does help me to think that this next album might be pretty good - we'll have to see. Hopefully, it won't be a long wait.

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D Schmidt

This past year I have enjoyed being part of the Book of the Quarter group at Calvin Theological Seminary. Each quarter President Neil Plantinga selects a book that a number of folks read and we get together a few times over lunch at the Seminary and talk about what we have read. I’ve read some good books (only one of which I’ve reviewed before on this blog – I’m not sure why I only reviewed one of them) and I’ve enjoyed the fellowship and discussions about the books. These are not typically books about preaching or theology, rather they are good and interesting books that inform our thinking and generate discussion.

This quarter the book is by Gary Schmidt, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. Gary is a colleague of mine at Calvin College and this book has won a number of awards including being named a Newberry Honor Book, one of the highest awards that a book for children can receive. So one would expect this to be a good book. What I didn’t expect was that it would grab me as it did and that the writing would be as crisp and as delightful as it was. The plot is based on historical events from Malaga Island, off the coast of Maine in the early part of the twentieth century. Schmidt gives us this history story through the eyes of a boy, a minister’s son, who can’t imagine why the town of Phippsburg would want to get rid of the people who live on nearby Malaga Island, including a young girl he befriends.

Even though it is a children’s book it is not short. But even at 216 pages, I had a hard time putting the book down. Gary Schmidt has done a wonderful job with this book and it is well worth the read.

Why Do You Sing?

“Why do you sing?” Allison Adam asked us that last night and a seminar that she led at the Calvin Seminary Chapel. Answers varied from “to build community” and “to celebrate something” to “it helps us remember” and “to express how we feel.” Allison pointed out that all of those reasons (and a few I forgot) are also reasons we sing in worship and she led us through a few songs in each category, songs that were mostly new to most of us in the seminar. The group sang well (often singing a capella but sometimes ably accompanied by Rachel Klompmaker on piano and a quartet of percussionists) and we learned the new songs quickly due in no small part to Allison’s skill as a song leader and teacher.

Along the way we picked up tips for teaching songs to our congregations and learned some songs that could be very well used in worship. Many of the songs came from the Iona Community, where Allison worked for a number of years. I especially liked the John Bell songs and singing them always reminds me of when I hung out with him and Ron Rienstra for a few days when I played electric guitar for the Hymn Society in Minnesota. (Not many people can say that they did that - this is a group that doesn't use the electric guitar often.) Allison's delightful manner, her wonderful gift for songleading and her Scottish accent made for an evening that went by quickly. Laura and I also got to see a couple of friends that we don’t see very often which made the evening even better. Thanks to the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship for sponsoring this event. I wish some of my Fourteenth Street Church friends had come. While there was a fine crowd there was plenty of room for more people and our church would have benefited from more of us learning from Allison

Bono at NAACP awards

I've seen good speeches before but Bono's speech at the NAACP awards is truly remarkable. It almost seems like a scene out of West Wing where Bartlett brings people to their feet but this is a real response to a truly great speech. Make sure you watch all the way to the end (it's about 7 minutes.) The last sixty seconds is really something.

The Heather Mills dancing saga continues

A big day here on my blog with three posts! But I couldn't resist this one either.

I have been following the Paul McCartney/Heather Mills story and haven't commented on it because I thought that they deserve to go through their personal pain without me adding to the ton of things being written about them. (Although the evidence that they check my blog daily is spotty at best.)

But now that Heather is going to be on Dancing with the Stars things just get stranger and stranger. This headline, though, is probably the strangest one yet: Heather Mills Says Her Leg Probably Won't Fly Off. In the original interview with her that this quote comes from she addresses the issue of her doing competitive dance with an artificial leg in a reasonable and lighthearted manner and I'm sure she said lots of other things in the interview but this, of course, is what gets pulled out.

It is really fascinating to see how some Beatles fans are calling for a boycott of the show and how the press is focusing their attention on Mills' unique situation - both physical and personal. Even though calling Mills a star is stretching it a bit - I'm not sure what she's done to put her in that category - the producers of the show struck gold when they hired her. They've had more publicity than I would have ever imagined. The cult of celebrity is alive and well.

Nitpicking the 6PM news...

I'm breaking my one-post-a-day rule to nitpick the news.

Here was the opening sentence on the 6 PM news tonight, reporting on a downtown building that burned down last night: "Until last night it was a former Grand Rapids factory."

Now, I know that the developers were trying to turn it into condos or apartments or something but, even after it burned down isn't it STILL a former Grand Rapids factory?

The Beatles on Ready Steady Go - 1964

Here is a great video clip from March of 1964 when the Beatles appeared on the British TV show Ready Steady Go. It shows them happily lipsyncing to two of their songs and also includes a delightfully trite George Harrison interview. I love the beehive hairstyles on the fans.

'Studio 60' getting the ax?

This article suggests that Studio 60 is getting put on hiatus after tonight's episode and perhaps being put out to pasture for good. My favorite line from the article is "Death would not come without mourning, but the grief would be more for the promise represented by Sorkin and a stellar cast led by Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford than for anything they produced." Aaron Sorkin knocked it out of the park twice - with Sports Night and then with West Wing. But with Studio 60 it just seemed like he was too full of himself and too intent on making writers look really bright and conflicted.

The good news is that now I won't have the Monday night do-I-watch-it-or-don't-I issues that I've had lately. The other good news is that the Gilmore Girls, a show that I usually only watch with my youngest daughter Lynnae, has been on target this season and Lost has been great so there is plenty to keep me busy!

Oh! Gravity – Switchfoot

I never really got Switchfoot, as least not until just recently. Bethany bought their second album (New Way to Be Human) way back when it came out (1999 or so) and I think I might have listened to it once or twice. They were certainly on my radar screen back then as one of the few artists signed to Charlie Peacock’s ReThink label. I was (and still am) a fan of Peacock’s smart and thoughtful music and his work as a producer. In fact I’ve had two chances to talk with him at length at Calvin – once in my office, just the two of us for about an hour which was wonderful – and my appreciation for him has grown through those encounters. So when he signed this trio (now up to five members) from San Diego I at least perked up. For some reason though I didn’t really grab onto New Way to Be Human but I at least kept my eye on Switchfoot because I trusted Charlie.

A couple of years ago they played a free concert in Grand Rapids just after their stock took off big-time because of getting their stuff on some Mandy Moore movie (A Walk to Remember maybe?). I took my kids to see them (they were, at the time, Meredith’s favorite band) and, while I didn’t really know their music at the time, they were fun to listen to. I stood in the back because I didn’t want to get slammed in the pit with all the high school kids but I remember listening to The Beautiful Letdown once or twice and thinking that it was OK.

I also remember the debacle around the release of Nothing is Sound, in which Sony put out their album with a copy protection thing on it that meant that you couldn’t play it on itunes or rip it to your computer without using their special software. Yeah, it was a pain and so I didn’t listen to Meredith’s copy much. I was more interested in the fallout as a business and technological issue than the music. All in all, Switchfoot was firmly in the "I won't turn them off but I probably won't buy them" category for quite some time.

So, for some reason, when their latest album, Oh! Gravity, came out and I saw it on sale right after Christmas, I bought it. I really don't know why. I think I figured that most of my kids would want to hear it and I knew I had more money then they did so I did it to be a nice dad. I also like to support Christians who are working effectively the in the mainstream so I just bought it on a whim. And you know what? It has stayed in my CD player almost continuously ever since.

When I get a new album I won’t listen much if the music doesn’t move me so there is sometimes a pretty short window for an album to get seriously listened to. In this case, the music did move me. I found the melodies and the arrangements on Oh! Gravity to be interesting and compelling. They players aren’t virtuosi but they do well enough for the genre and the dorky piano break about a minute into the first song oozes fun and creativity.

The lyrical themes on this album follow the same lines as previous Switchfoot albums in that they tend to be somewhat dark, focusing on a sense of emptiness. You get the feeling that Foreman is trying to tap into the malaise that his generation feels without feeling the need to point to Christ as the answer in every song. In fact, there is no explicitly Christian content – at least that I have found so far. Of course, it is not always clear what Jon Foreman is referring to in his lyrics but most of the time I’m just bopping my head and enjoying the groove. Occasionally, though, the lyrics jump out at me, as in the opening to “American Dream”:

When success is equated with excess
The ambition for excess wrecks us
As top of the mind becomes the bottom line
When success is equated with excess.

There is some fun wordplay here and it’s hard to miss his point. Other songs aren’t quite so clear. For example, in “Amateur Lovers,” when he sings

We don't know what we're doing
We do it again
We're just amateur lovers
With amateur friends

we aren’t really sure whether this is a good thing or not. I don’t want to complain too much, though, because I have really enjoyed this album. I also really appreciate that Foreman and the rest of the band let their Christian perspective show through in their music, even if it’s not explicit. Oh! Gravity is not Great Art but it is a pretty cool album that I continue to enjoy.

Midnight Riders: The story of the Allman Brothers Band by Scott Freeman

In reading a recent book about Layla, the author mentioned that Scott Freeman’s book, Midnight Riders: The story of the Allman Brothers Band was probably the best on the subject so, since I know little about the story of the Allmans (although I know their music well) I figured I’d give it a look. I’ve written before about Duane Allman and how the band’s Fillmore East album was practically the soundtrack to my freshman year of college but I was surprised at how little I knew of the story of the band, particularly after Duane died.

Freeman tells the story well but it is such a convoluted tale of drugs, fame and wasted opportunity that it’s a bit depressing. This is a band that had the world by the tail and blew it mostly because of immature behavior, drugs and alcohol. (Haven’t there been enough bands now who have had this happen to them that the young ones might say “hey, that’s a trap – I better be careful!” Books like this ought to be required reading at the school of rock.)

I have to say that I was quite turned off to the band (especially Gregg Allman and Dickie Betts) after reading about their story. I wasn’t surprised at the excesses because the band Stillwater in the film Almost Famous was based them to some extent so I had a bit of warning. It is interesting when I read books about bands because if I’m already predisposed to like the people I usually find myself focusing on their more recent good behavior (Clapton, McCartney) but if I don’t have a real fondness for them going in then I often have the other reaction. In the case of Phil Lesh I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt because I think he’s cleaned up a lot lately and saw the error of his drug ways so when I read Searching for the Sound (his autobiography) and I reviewed it in this blog I wasn’t critical of his drug use but rather the way he seemed so casual about relationships – something that he now ought to know better about.

So it might not have been a good idea for me to read Midnight Riders. It gave me a more accurate but much less flattering view of the band than I had before and, since the book was written before the current incarnation of the band, I have no way of knowing if the members have gotten their lives together or not. I hope so because they can sure play!

(By the way, the hardcover edition has a lot more subtle cover than the one I'm showing on this post - I'm not a big fan of the one shown here.)

Remembering the Beatles on Ed Sullivan

Even when I was young I had a strong connection to music. I have a clear memory of having a portable record player that I used all the time. In fact, I had a 45 with the William Tell Overture on it and I would play it and run around the house in a particular way hiding behind certain chairs at certain times in the music. I think the Lone Ranger TV show caused me to think that that music required action. I don't even know how we got the record - it just appeared. I was maybe four or five years old at the time. It’s one of my earliest memories. Apparently I did music all the time as a child - once someone asked my mom when I started doing music and she said something like "when he was born."

My musical memory gets another jumpstart in early 1964 when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” hit the airwaves. I had never heard anything like it and was immediately taken by how cool this music was. I remember talking about it with friends on the playground and I remember my classmate Greg who said "I don't like the Beatles because they always sing about love." Somehow, even as a fourth grade boy that didn't bother me. I managed to convince my parents to let me buy a Beatles record - and then another one. I got the “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” singles and, when I manged to save big bucks, I got an album - The Beatles Second Album, one of those early US-only releases. Looking back I forgot what a rocker this album was. “Roll Over Beethoven,” "Money," "You Can't Do That" and other great songs got me going as a 9 year old. I wore it out.

When I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, 43 years ago today, (which probably pre-dates my record purchases) I got to see for myself what these guys from England looked like when they played. (Remember, back then we had four or five channels on TV - and that was in the largest market in the country, NYC - and there was no other source of home video. If you didn't watch it when it was broadcast you didn't see it at all. So I stayed home from church (!) on Sunday night and stared in amazement at the television. When I saw John Lennon play the guitar that was it – I was hooked. My brother had a guitar which I started to learn on (despite his desire that I not touch it) and then I found an old four-string banjo in our basement that I tuned like the four highest strings on a guitar. I started playing on that until I finally got my own – a very cheap Harmony guitar that we got from saving trading stamps that they gave out at the grocery store. The guitar arrived on the last day of fourth grade, only a few months after that Sunday night when the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show. I've played ever since. For my last show with the Lazy Blue Tunas in December when it was time to pick an encore we chose a Beatles song - "I Feel Fine." Beatles music has been a constant companion to me for 43 years.

Follow the Leader

I’ve mentioned before that Laura and I write church school curriculum for the Walk With Me series and it seems like only a month ago (and it was) that Faith Alive published the Easter Unit that we wrote called He’s Alive. Today our significantly bigger summer unit, Follow the Leader, arrived in the mail. It was less than a year ago that Manger King, our Christmas play came out and I think our Christmas unit Just Like Me came out in 2006 too. We’ve been busy! But it’s always fun to see our work in print and this one is THICK, 223 pages – no wonder it was such a relief to have it finished!

Go to Faith Alive Resources to see these and other cool things for your church.

Searching for God Knows What – Donald Miller

I usually have a number of books that I’m working through depending on what’s going on in my life and which books I happened to get excited about this very minute. My shelf of books-I’m-about-to-read has grown to ridiculous proportions and I accumulate new books at a faster rate than I actually read the ones I’ve got and I have bookmarks in a half dozen of them. It’s a sickness.

But I did manage to actually finish a book on the plane home from Philadelphia this week: Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What. Having read and enjoyed Blue Like Jazz, I was really looking forward to seeing if the quirkiness of that book could be carried over to another. The answer is a qualified ‘yes.’

Miller’s very engaging writing style is still present in no small measure but Searching is, I believe, trying much harder to make a point than Blue Like Jazz. And while that point is a perfectly good one and Miller does a nice job of tying things together to get there I found it a bit more tedious. What I liked about Jazz what that you literally never knew what you were going to get. The book was filled with Miller’s weird friends and unique situations where they are more like occasional guests in Searching.

Miller’s point is well taken and some of his analogies along the way caused me to think about human relationships and about our relationship to God in new ways and I'm glad I read it. But I was spoiled by the freewheeling fun of Blue Like Jazz and, if asked to recommend a Miller book to someone, will go with that rightfully more popular book.

Snow day

When I was back teaching real school the snow day was one of the highlights of the year. I usually lived very close to the school where I taught so I didn’t really mind “near snow days” because driving was never a problem and actual snow days were like a free gift of time. It was cool.

Now that I teach college I never have that and, since so much of my work is outside the classroom anyway, even if I had a snow day it wouldn’t amount to much. Plus, I have a 45 minute drive every day and when it snows I don’t like it at all.

But today, a Sunday, is different. Church was cancelled as well as Church School – two things that Laura and I are in charge of so it really does come as a free day. I can take the day and shovel my driveway, do some writing, catch up on some resting because I have had a couple of intense weekends in a row and just chill out (literally) in general.

The bad news is that we got hammered by the “Blizzard of 2007” so I have a fair amount of digging out to do. Hopefully the roads will all be cleared by tomorrow morning when I begin the commute again.

Back home from APCE in Philadelphia

After three days at the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators conference it is good to be back home again. I actually wasn’t supposed to come in until later today but the blizzard warnings that were posted for the lakeshore of Michigan got me worried and I pushed my flight up a day and came home last night. Even though I beat the bad storm the drive from the airport to Holland was a bit difficult and I'm glad I don't have to face that today, especially since the news just reported a multi-car pileup and a closed highway AND the flight that I was scheduled to take was canceled. Hooray for good decisions!

Of the two APCE conferences I attended (last year and this) this was the better. The plenary speaker and preacher were both really good. Bill Carter preached for us and I enjoyed all three of the sermons of his that I heard. But the highlight for me was Frances Taylor Gench, the keynote speaker. Her talks were informative, enjoyable and thought-provoking. I even bought one of her books, Back to the Well, Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels.

Aside from that I spoke about my three-dimensional faith notion (which makes up the bulk of my forthcoming book from Baker Books,) went to three sectionals and had a great time hanging out with the group from Faith Alive Christian Resources, who publish the curricula and the plays that Laura and I write. All in all, it was a great time. I’m glad that next year’s conference is a few weeks later, giving me time to recover between Calvin’s Worship Symposium and APCE!