Broadway Musicals Written by Gender-Studies Professors

- - - -

Annie Get Your Symbol of Violent, Colonizing Western Masculinity

Hello, Doula!

How to Succeed in Unpaid, Undervalued Domestic Labor Without Really Trying

The Best Little Female-Operated Sex-Worker Co-op in Texas

Bye Bye Burqa

Joseph and the Amazing Heterosexist Dreamcoat of Male Privilege

Jesus Christ Oppressive Religious Figure

Lys Mys



... from here

What I am listening to ...

Due to the outpouring of requests, I am posting a list of what I have been listening to lately. (Just kidding. No one has asked! I just feel like it.)

First, no Bach or Lutheran chorales. That is church music. I tend to listen to church music ... in church. And I love it and insist on it. I can't seem to get the knack of listening to it outside of church. Blame it on my father who ( I think I have blogged about this before) would wake us up on Sundays by playing Tennessee Ernie Ford and then take us to a strict, TLH, Bach prelude, LCMS service and then play Hank Williams and popular country of the 1960's and 70's on Sunday afternoons and evenings.

So my taste in music outside the sanctuary is most definitely not sacred or classical. So with that caveat :

Drive By Truckers, A Southern Rock Opera, a two disc rock story about growing in the South listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and how the band intertwines itself with the lives of its listeners. Some really good rock and roll on here.

The Break Up Society ... James at Thirty Five ... another concept album about looking back at youth from almost middle age. Great power pop record. Here is a video from the band:



Joel Plaskett and the Emergency ... Ashtray Rock ... yet another concept album and yet another one about looking back on growing up. This time the story is about a high school band that is broken up by a fight over a girl. The songs are all good on this cd.

This is a hilarious video (and a great song) by Joel Plaskett:



The Hold Steady ... Stay Positive .. All Hold Steady albums are concept albums. This is the fourth album by these guys and it is very good. The Hold Steady is a unique mix of very catchy 70's rock and Catholic religious imagery and the waste of lives lived on the edge of drugs and alcohol and what not.

This is the band on David Letterman :



The Avett Brothers ... Emotioanlism .. I have just discovered these guys for the second time and am seriously obsessed. They are from right here in Concord, NC. They play a style that is impossible to categorize. Acoustic but punkish, bluegrass without the blue or the grass, rambunctious but beautiful. One must listen to it a few times to really know what I mean. I saw them in Cary, NC last week. Great stuff.

This sample is as good as any:

He did not say: "Everything will turn out successfully."

Luther on vocation:

This, then, is the first thing, namely, that the very great patriarch, who at that time was the only bishop and a burning light in the whole world, has the blessing, the promise, and the Word yet lives and acts as if he had nothing at all.

Why?

Because here he is not a man of the church but a man of the home and very wretched. He performs his common domestic duties, concerning which God prescribed nothing in His promises, just as He prescribed nothing about how He would help and guide him or about the outcome. Thus He has not given us a promise that there will be peace this year and a rich yield of grain. Accordingly, I should not say: "I do not know what will happen. Therefore I will do nothing.

Indeed, God rather says: "Do your duty, and leave the rest to Me." He did not say: "Everything will turn out successfully." No, He said: "Do your duty. You do not have to know how things will turn out or what will happen. You have been justified. Go, then, and exercise your faith in the household and in the state." For this knowledge of God's will and this vocation thanks must be given to God that a man of the church, that is, one who has the Word and faith, knows that he pleases God even in the lower stations in the kind of life that has to do with the state and the household, whether he is a servant, a maid, a magistrate, or a subject. If he can only be a part of the political and the domestic sphere, he should give thanks to God and know that he has a God who is well-disposed and propitious toward him.

Luther, AE, Vol. 5, 274

Sermon July 27, 2008; The 11th Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon July 27, 2008; The 11th Sunday after Pentecost

There but for the grace of God ...

... Angry man shoots lawn mower for not starting

The biggest "you think?" moment in the article: She said he was intoxicated. Really? You'd never think so.

Whatever back story you need is in the photo.


A Milwaukee man was accused of shooting his lawn mower because it wouldn't start. Keith Walendowski, 56, was charged with felony possession of a short-barreled shotgun or rifle and misdemeanor disorderly conduct while armed.


According to the criminal complaint, Walendowski said he was angry because his Lawn Boy wouldn't start Wednesday morning. He told police quote, "I can do that, it's my lawn mower and my yard so I can shoot it if I want."

A woman who lives at Walendowski's house reported the incident. She said he was intoxicated.

Walendowski could face up to an $11,000 fine and six years and three months in prison if convicted.

A call to Walendowski's home went unanswered Friday morning.

On the use of masculine pronouns for God

Therefore use of the masculine pronoun for the Christian God is necessary because God cannot be truly known apart from his revelation in Christ. As Luther put it, to try to know God apart from the historical particularity of the Son and his cross is to construct a theology of glory. Similarly, avoiding the masculine pronoun suggests that we can know God apart from the revelation that God is the Father of the Son. Hence they cannot be replaced. They are not human constructions in response to ineffable religious experiences, but names for God given to humans by God himself. The very names encapsulate the entire story of the triune God. To avoid them is to suggest indirectly that God did not reveal himself as a Father to a Son, or at least that these are not divinely given names.

Does this mean that God is male? Of course not. And the best representatives of the grand tradition have always agreed. "No one in the whole conciliar and creedal tradition regarded the word 'father,' when used in reference to God, as having any sexual connotation whatsoever. The Cappadocians in particular had already gone to some length to say that paternity and sonship in God possessed no sexual reference."

Must we do something about the misperceptions of God and the oppression of women to which these misperceptions have contributed? Yes, but the way to go is not to reject the name and thus the masculine pronoun that follows, but rather to correct the distortions of readings that assume a male gender. This involves correcting the assumption of "metaphorical theology" (that assumes that all language for God is simply metaphorical and thus can be changed without doing untoward damage to meaning) that Trinitarian "Father" and "Son" language simply extends ordinary understanding of "father" and "son" to God. But the biblical authors assumed meaning flows not from the bottom up but from the top down. Paul wrote in Ephesians that all fatherhood on earth derives its name and meaning from God's fatherhood (Eph 3:15).

The same dynamic is found in divine Sonship, according to C. S. Lewis: "Divine Sonship is, so to speak, the solid of which biological sonship is merely a diagrammatic representation on the flat." In other words, we are to draw a proper conception of "father" and "son" from the Trinity, as revealed to us, rather than understanding the Trinity from our experience of human families.'

Gerald McDermott, Gods Rivals, 171-172.

Luther on the treasure 3 : I want to give you the everlasting bread

One dare not despise the treasure because of the person. Our God wishes to impress this on us all, not only on this young woman. Christ wishes to say: "I am not so much concerned that you give Me a drink as that I supply you with living water." It is a disgrace that Christ must go begging on earth, even among His own followers. It is a shame that He must cry: "For the sake of God, give Me bread!" He wants to rouse us to give gladly to those who serve in the ministry. But although Christ pleads and cries: "For the sake of God, give Me bread!" His plea is not fulfilled; for people assume that it is a poor pastor speaking.

Verily, Christ does not stand in need of heaven and earth; He could eat and also satisfy His own with food. But He wants to say: "I am begging that you may obtain food and drink. I use your help to feed Me and My own. In this way you might recognize Him who dispenses the true, eternal drink of water and learn what sort of Word He possesses. After you know that it is I and that the Word is Mine, you will say: 'After all, everything belongs to Thee; we will gladly return all to Thee. Dear Lord, give us who are truly hungry the real bread and drink.' This is the reason why I beg and say: For the sake of God, give Me bread!' - that you may recognize Him who is speaking to the young woman." (If He were to ask her for a drink, then she, in turn, would ask Him; and He would give her the water of everlasting life, and she would never die.) This is also what Christ wishes to do to us. But first we must learn to know the gift and the Teacher. Then we should be ready not only to give all but also to say: "Oh, -dear Lord, give me some of the eternal water too! Without it I must die of eternal thirst and hunger!" Christ says: "I am asking you to give Me bread for the sake of God because I want to give you the everlasting bread."

Luther on the Treasure 2: a real treasure that God speaks into your physical ear

Christ says: "You do not know the gift." We recognize neither the Word nor the Person of Christ, but we take offense at His humble and weak humanity. When God wants to speak and deal with us, He does not avail Himself of an angel but of parents, of the pastor, or of my neighbor. This puzzles and blinds me so that I fail to recognize God, who is conversing with me through the person of the pastor or father. This prompts the Lord Christ to say in the text: "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give Me a drink,' then I would not be obliged to run after you and beg, for a drink. You would run after Me and ask Me for the living water. But since you do not know the gift and do not recognize Him who is speaking with you, you despise Me." Even if Christ did no more than greet us, it would be a treasure above all treasures; it would be honor and treasure enough. He has another treasure in store for us, however, which He reveals when He brings us forgiveness of sin and redemption from death, devil, and hell, when He transforms us into heavenly people and illumines our hearts. We can never express the value of this treasure adequately. We shall always fall short of recognizing it fully and of esteeming it as we really and truly should.

We should mark well that this is spoken to us too. If we recognized this gift, we would receive water in which the Holy Spirit is given to us. By God's grace we have at least begun to recognize God's gift and the Teacher. If we had not, I would not be able to teach you. Then you would fare as you did in the papacy, where you were told: "Run hither and yon!" However, thus far we have received only the first fruits and not the tithe.

It is just beginning to dawn on us that God's speaking to us is an inexpressibly precious gift and that we are honored to be God's pupils and disciples. This is what is meant by knowing the nature of the gift and the person of the Doctor and Teacher. We and our hearers are just beginning to recognize that it is not a man we are listening to, but that it is God who is telling us things that contain an everlasting treasure. Therefore we are told again and again that we cannot speak about this subject enough; we must be like a stammering child. We cannot fathom what an incomprehensibly great treasure we possess in the divine Word. Nor do we really understand who this Person addressing us is or how excellent and exalted this Person is. If we did, it would impel us to boast of being followers, not of a king or of an emperor but of God. People in the world are proud if they have a gracious lord, or if they are privileged to see a prince; it means much to them to stand in his presence and hear him speak. Now it is true that it is a treasure to have a gracious lord or to be a prince's counselor. But look at the glory of the man who can say: "I am God's pupil; I hear Him speak -not an angel, not a pastor or a prince, but God Himself. I am His counselor." For God says: "My message is an excellent gift, and by comparison the world's riches and glory are nothing but filth."

My dear friend, regard it as a real treasure that God speaks into your physical ear. The only thing that detracts from this gift is our deficient knowledge of it. To be sure, I do hear the sermon; however, I am wont to ask: "Who is speaking?" The pastor? By no means! You do not hear the pastor. Of course, the voice is his, but the words he employs are really spoken by my God. Therefore I must hold the Word of God in high esteem that I may become an apt pupil of the Word. If we looked upon it as the Word of God, we would be glad to go to church, to listen to the sermon, and to pay attention to the precious Word. There we would hear Christ say: "Give Me a drink!" But since we do not honor the Word of God or show any interest in our own salvation, we do not hear the Word. In fact, we do not enjoy listening to any preacher unless he is gifted with a good and clear voice. If you look more at the pastor than at God; if you do not see God's person but merely gape to see whether the pastor is learned and skilled, whether he has good diction and articulates distinctly - then you have already become half a Jacob.

For a poor speaker may speak the Word of God just as well as he who is endowed with eloquence. A father speaks the Word of God as well as God does, and your neighbor speaks it as well as the angel Gabriel. There is no difference between the Word when uttered by a schoolboy and when uttered by the angel Gabriel; they vary only in rhetorical ability. It matters not that dishes are made of different material -some of silver, others of tin - or whether they are enameled earthen dishes. The same food may be prepared in silver as in dishes of tin. Venison, properly seasoned and prepared, tastes just as good in a wooden dish as in one of silver. We must also make this application to Baptism and absolution. This ought to be a comfort to us. People, however, do not recognize the person of God but only stare at the person of man. This is like a tired and hungry man who would refuse to eat unless the food is served on a silver platter. Such is the attitude that motivates the choice of many preachers today. Many, on the other hand, are forced to quit their office, are driven out and expelled. That is done by those who do not know this gift, who assume that it is a mere man speaking to them, although, as a matter of fact, it is even more than an angel, namely, your dear God, who creates body and soul. This does not imply that we should despise and reject the gifts which God has distributed according to His own measure, more to the one and fewer to the other; for gifts are manifold. However, there is but one God who works through this multiplicity of gifts (1 Cor. 12:6).

Luther on the treasure #1 : "Well, I have been duped! I see only a pastor."

This coming Sunday’s Gospel for the LSB series “A” treasure is Matthew 13: 44-52. The parables of the field, the pearl of great price and the dragnet.

Looking around at different stuff, I came across this commentary of Luther’s on John 4:10(LW, American Edition, Vol. 22, p. 525-530). Luther mentions the pearl of great price and goes off on a long section on the Gospel as treasure, the hidden-ness of the spoken Word and how we fail to value the Gospel properly. It is wonderful throughout and I am going to post all 5 pages ( in several posts) because it is that good. It really fits in with this Sundays Gospel.


If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you: Give Me a drink! you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.


"I would be happier to reverse -the order and give you a drink. In fact, this is the reason for My presence here. I am asking for a drink to quench My physical thirst that I might have occasion to give you a drink. If you only realized what a gift is now to be found on earth, you would ask Me for it, and I would give you a drink that would taste better than this water. It is of the utmost importance to recognize this gift and to know Him who gives it. But neither the gift nor the Giver is known." This is also our lament - and it will eternally remain so - that the schismatic spirits do not recognize the gift even when exhorted to do so; and the great multitude also despises this ineffably precious treasure and fails to recognize the Giver of this gift. In fact, we too, who claim to be saints, pay it no heed and do not fully appreciate the value of this treasure offered to us through the Gospel. My dear friend, how few there are among us who esteem this as a genuine treasure, as an eternal gem, as everlasting life! There must be some, however, who will hazard life and limb for it. In Matt. 13 we read of a man who found a pearl in a field. He sold all his possessions in order to buy pearl and field (Matt. 13:45-46). Thus we find many who are willing to endure tortures because of it; they, too, will receive the drink. But the other crowd says flippantly: "What do I care about it?" You will find a hundred thousand people who regard silver mined from the earth as a real treasure. They will not shrink from laboring night and day to acquire such a perishable treasure.

Would to God that we could gradually train our hearts to believe that the preacher's words are God's Word and that the man addressing us is a scholar and a king. As a matter of fact, it is not an angel or a hundred thousand angels but the Divine Majesty Himself that is preaching there. To be sure, I do not hear this with my ears or see it with my eyes; all I hear is the voice of the preacher, or of my brother or father, and I behold only a man before me. But I view the picture correctly if I add that the voice and words of father or pastor are not his own words and doctrine but those of our Lord and God. It is not a prince, a king, or an archangel whom I hear; it is He who declares that He is able to dispense the water of eternal life. If we could believe this, we would be content indeed. However, a fault which is manifest throughout the world and also in us is that we fail to recognize the gift and its Giver.

I, too, am not at all perfect in this respect; my faith is not as profound and strong as I should like to have it. Flesh and blood are an impediment. They merely behold the person of the pastor and brother and hear only the voice of the father. They cannot be induced to say: "When I hear the Word, I hear a peal of thunder, and I see the whole world filled with lightning." No, we cannot be brought to do that, and this is most deplorable. Flesh and blood are at fault. They refuse to regard the oral Word and the ministry as a treasure costlier and better than heaven and earth. People generally think: "If I had an opportunity to hear God speak in person, I would run my feet bloody." This is why people in times past flocked to the Oak, to Aachen, and to the Grym Valley. Because the people believed that Mary would help them in these places, they all hurried there. If someone at that time had announced: I know of a place in the world where God speaks and anyone can hear God there"; if I had gone there and seen and heard a poor pastor baptizing and preaching, and if I had been assured: "This is the place; here God is speaking through the voice, of the preacher who brings God's Word" - I would have said: "Well, I have been duped! I see only a pastor." We should like to have God speak to us in His majesty. But I advise you not to run hither and yon for this. I suppose we could learn how people would run if God addressed them in His majesty. This is what happened on Mt. Sinai, where only the angels spoke and yet the mountain was wrapped in smoke and quaked. But you now have the Word of God in church, in books, in your home; and this is God's Word as surely as if God Himself were speaking to you.

Giving to the hungry what you deny yourself

Fasting has become popular in many circles. Evangelicals and Christians of confessional leanings whose grandparents would be shocked to hear of such Roman Catholic customs such as fasting are taking up the practice in great numbers. Which is all well and good.

But it is interesting to sometimes hear of the motivations for such things. It is often turned into just another self help program and the talk is of all the benefits accruing to the fasting person. One fasts to benefit oneself.

In the early church fasting was certainly thought of as beneficial and was urged on the faithful at every turn. Yet it was always attached to the the other disciplines namely prayer and the giving of mercy or alms. One fasted to repent and to benefit others not oneself. Gregory of Nyssa summarizes that last aspect very well here:


Plenty of strangers wander the roads, and everywhere we see their outstretched hands begging for help. Their home is the open air; they shelter in porticos, streets, and deserted corners of the marketplace, lurking in nooks and crannies like owls, and clothed in tattered rags. Their food is whatever they may get from a passerby, and they drink from the fountains with animals, using the hollow of their hands as a cup. Their storeroom is their pockets if these are not too torn to hold anything. For a table they use their knees pressed together; their bed is the pavement, and to bathe they have simply a river or pool which God gives for the use of everyone. Such is the rough, wandering path they follow, not because their life was like that from the start, but because misfortune has driven them to it.

You can help them through your fasting. Be generous to your brothers and sisters who are in trouble, giving to the hungry what you deny yourself, and making a fair distribution in the fear of God.

Gregory of Nyssa

We are longing to receive a gift

Again, as regards generosity, consider when a beggar asks you for something that you are a beggar too in relation to God. When we pray we are all beggars before God. We are standing at the door of a great householder, or rather, lying prostrate, and begging with tears. We are longing to receive a gift — the gift of God himself.

What does a beggar ask of you? Bread. And you, what do you ask of God, if not Christ who said: I am the living bread that has come down from heaven? Do you want to be pardoned? Then pardon others. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Do you want to receive? Give and you will receive.

Augustine of Hippo

from the "Tradition Day by Day" website

Free TV online

I am usually way behind the curve when it comes to technology and what is new so this may be old hat but ...

But more and more TV and movies are becoming available online (legally!) for free.

The two sites I have come across are

Hulu which has an increasingly large collection of TV, old and new, movies old and new. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are on every day which is sweet if you, like me, do not have cable. The Newhart show is on Hulu. Always funny. PBS is putting more and more of their stuff on Hulu.

A site I just discovered is SnagFilms which is much like Hulu (online streaming content) but it is all documentaries. Some pretty interesting choices.

One more comment: more and more companies and channels are putting at least some of their content online. "Hopkins", a documentary about John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore on ABC is online. I will catch up with that series soon.

So, cancel your cable, upgrade your laptop and enjoy.

Oil suffers its biggest weekly loss of $16.20 a barrel

Yay!

Luther South High School in Chicago on the ropes

I lived for some years in the Chicago area and this is sad news.

Sermon for July 13, Pentecost 9, Series A

Sermon for July 13, Pentecost 9

Trash Culture ... the only culture?

This is an interesting article about film criticism and trash culture and its questions can be applied to many fields.

A couple of nice quotes:

"When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture."


"It was fun watching the applecart being upset," Schrader said, "but now where do we go for apples?"

Two small thoughts ...

... on the parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13 after doing some reading and thinking on the text for Sunday's sermon.

First, Jesus says the tares are planted after the wheat "while men sleep." A couple of church fathers refer this to the office of bishop and pastor whose job it is to guard and grow the field of the church. Heresy and false teaching enter the church through the weakness and carelessness of the pastors.

Second, several fathers ( Augustine and Jerome, I think) speak of the fact that to our eye tares can become wheat. God offers repentance and salvation to all. One who may be a reprobate to our eyes may tomorrow or the next day turn and repent. So there is a Gospel patience to our work. We dare not desire to become judges. Yes there are borders and Law to be preached and sinners to be excluded but all this we do with tears, praying for repentance. God knows who the tares are in eternity from his perspective. We do not.

Issues Etc. segment

I was on the new Issues Etc. yesterday discussing a Higher Things article I wrote on the Lords Supper. You should be able to listen to it on podcast here sometime today.


Pastor David Petersen was on just before with a nice segment on guilt and shame.

Luther in Front of the Text: The Genesis Commentary

Here is a bit of a very nice article, available online by James Nestingen, Luther in Front of the Text: The Genesis Commentary. I'll try to post more of it in the days ahead.

Note how Nestingen points to Luther's concern with those in front of the text, hearers of the Gospel, unlike modern scholarship which is concerned with the community behind the text, the community who supposedly produced or originally heard the text.



Law and gospel are not, as stereotypically misunderstood, a way of speaking of the Old Testament and New as literary forms. Nor is there merely a grammatical distinction, dividing imperatives from indicatives. Rather, law and gospel are two different ways in which God rules.

The law is anything that restrains or drives, be it legislative, literary, or the imaginings provoked by fright. Through the law, God holds the world in order for the promise, and drives to it. The gospel is the specific word of grace in Christ which comforts, bringing peace and joy to a conscience smitten by the law. Through the gospel, God gives what the law demands, freeing a person for this life and the life to come.

Though his research was keyed to Luther’s work on Psalms, James Samuel Preus’s
analysis works as well with the Genesis commentary. Preus argues that, following his
interpretive shift, Luther saw the community of the Old Testament as parallel to the church. Both are eschatologically oriented communities: the people of the Old Testament awaited the messiah just as the people of the New Testament now await the return of the messiah.

Thus the community of the patriarchs in Genesis and the community of the faithful
gathered in Wittenberg by the word share a number of common characteristics. Both live in a realm of law, battered by the powers of sin, death, and the devil. Both have heard a word of promise that has given them hope and the confidence of faith in the face of difficulties.

Both ommunities experience tension as they struggle under the law, awaiting the realization of the gospel. In a certain sense, Luther’s work with Genesis could, therefore, be called historical. That term is most commonly used to refer to the factual representation of the past; but it may also be used to speak of the particularity, the down-to-earthness of present existence. This latter sense
applies to Luther’s commentary. He is not nearly as interested in the world behind the text, the context which has so absorbed modern scholarship, as he is in the world in front of it, so to speak.

The world in front of the text is the one where the people in the narrative as well as those in subsequent history, including our own time, must live—the historical world of everyday realities. It is the realm of law into which the gospel enters as an alien word, bespeaking righteousness and bringing forth the freedom that is the hallmark of the new age. The test of interpretation for Luther is not the theoretical re-construction of what the text originally meant; rather, it is the opening of the text to the hearers as a word in which Christ is brought home, enabling life amid the hard particularities of present-day historical life. For such a purpose,
Luther will use the historical data available to him and even allegory if he finds it necessary.

The only one who could ever reach me ...

... was the son of a preacher man.

There is an incipient discussion at this blog about the Gospel and the Word of God and whether it is the same from the mouth of a preacher and the mouth of layperson. This made me think of

...Dusty Springfield! And, of course, one of my all time favorite radio songs: Son of a Preacher Man. Great stuff.



Here is another song by her : "I Only Want to be with You". Her hairdo is wonderful.



I have always liked this song also. "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me". What a voice.

Two stories about taking communion when one shouldn't have

Sally Quinn, an avowed atheist, writes about taking communion at Tim Russert's Roman Catholic funeral because it "made me feel closer to him." A bunch of commentators weigh in on that fact here. My quick perusal of the commentators response indicates that none of them really get at the wrongness of the act. I cannot explicate the reasons in this forum because I haven't got the time or the energy but suffice it to say that the Eucharist is not a part of a spiritual buffet where anyone can come and get what they want out of it. Christ says "this is my body" and St. Paul warns there are repercussions for those who approach in unbelief. Jesus offers himself to all but only on his terms : repentance and true faith.


Here we hear of a senior Romanian Orthodox archbishop facing possible defrocking for receiving Holy Communion during a Catholic service.

Sermon 8th Sunday after Pentecost, Series A, July 6, 2008

Sermon 8th Sunday after Pentecost, Series A, July 6, 2008

Some random reading

A short article on a Christian music festival in Pennsylvania. The article focuses on what the people were wearing and popular t-shirt slogans.

Such as

"Total Jesus freak,"
"Poop on Satan" (over a picture of a toilet);
"Darwin is dead, Jesus is alive"
"There is nothing intellectual about believing you and I evolved from hydrogen gas."
"God is not a conservative Republican. But he's definitely not a liberal Democrat."


The New York Times Magazine has an interesting piece on Rush Limbaugh. Considering it is the NYT, the piece is fairly balanced.


And here is another cry wolf story on how the Internet is ruining every one's brains especially our children. I've read stories like these so many times .... I don't think the future is so dark. But it is definitely getting cloudy. I do think the single most important gift we can give our children outside of church is to instill a love of reading.

Here is the first bit:

BOOK REVIEW
'The Dumbest Generation' by Mark Bauerlein

How dumb are we? Thanks to the Internet, dumb and dumber, this author writes.

By Lee Drutman, Special to The LA Times
July 5, 2008

In the four minutes it probably takes to read this review, you will have logged exactly half the time the average 15- to 24-year-old now spends reading each day. That is, if you even bother to finish. If you are perusing this on the Internet, the big block of text below probably seems daunting, maybe even boring. Who has the time? Besides, one of your Facebook friends might have just posted a status update!

Such is the kind of recklessly distracted impatience that makes Mark Bauerlein fear for his country. "As of 2008," the 49-year-old professor of English at Emory University writes in "The Dumbest Generation," "the intellectual future of the United States looks dim."

The way Bauerlein sees it, something new and disastrous has happened to America's youth with the arrival of the instant gratification go-go-go digital age. The result is, essentially, a collective loss of context and history, a neglect of "enduring ideas and conflicts." Survey after painstakingly recounted survey reveals what most of us already suspect: that America's youth know virtually nothing about history and politics. And no wonder. They have developed a "brazen disregard of books and reading."

The Road

Wow. I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The best novel I have read in a very long time. Very intense. A post apocalyptic tale of a father and his son. It is told in the starkest, barest language yet is a powerfully emotional book. I t is full of horrors yet also carries a faintest glimmer of hope. In the end, it is a story about love surviving all, the love of a father and son. It is also a story of faith, faith which believes despite all evidence to the contrary.

Here is the New York Times Review of it dated September 25, 2006.

Some bits from the review:

In “The Road” a boy and his father lurch across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. The imagery is brutal even by Cormac McCarthy’s high standards for despair. This parable is also trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fueled by the force of a universal nightmare. “The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

This is an exquisitely bleak incantation — pure poetic brimstone. Mr. McCarthy has summoned his fiercest visions to invoke the devastation. He gives voice to the unspeakable in a terse cautionary tale that is too potent to be numbing, despite the stupefying ravages it describes. Mr. McCarthy brings an almost biblical fury as he bears witness to sights man was never meant to see.

“There is no prophet in the earth’s long chronicle who is not honored here today,” the father says, trying to make his son understand why they inhabit a gray moonscape. “Whatever form you spoke of you were right.” Thus “The Road” keeps pace with the most enterprising doomsayers as death and desperation manifest themselves on every page. And in a perverse miracle it yields one last calamity when it seems that things cannot possibly get worse.

Yet as the boy and man wander, encountering remnants of the lost world and providing the reader with more and more clues about what destroyed it, this narrative is also illuminated by extraordinary tenderness. “He knew only that the child was his warrant,” it says of the father and his mission. “He said: if he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

Dennis Lehane writes this in an Amazon entry:

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth.

If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is ... Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work ... But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith.