Provocations

So I've been reading a book of Kierkegaard's writing on spirituality. Some of it is confusing, some I don't get, most of it is challenging. Here's a bit from the other day...

...it is not the obscue passages in Scripture that bind you once you understand. With these you comply at once. If you understood only one passage in all of Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all. ...God's word is given in order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it.

WARNING: Foul, Todd appropriate, language!

This Gap Sweater Is F*&@#$% Awesome

Extreme Makeover: Meka Edition II

Harsen's Island Vacation 2007

reasons #246, 247, & 248 to visit tennessee

the williamson county fair contained, among other things, an elvis impersonator contest, country clog dancing, and carnival rides. oh, and i tried my first deep fried oreo there...heaven.

grizzly adams

in case it wasn't clear that sabrina and i are sinking into the nerdom of becoming crazy rabbit enthusiasts, recently sabrina nursed a wild baby rabbit back to health. his name is grizzly adams. she found him and released him at the botanical gardens where she works. helluva nice fella. you'd like him. isn't his beard glorious? it reminds me of a beard i have seen before but can't quite place. a beard on someone i kno-...um, scott...have you been pimpin near any rabbit warrens?

Domata Peko // All Heart All the Time

Not only is his name fun to say but he sounds like a killer guy and a fantastic player.

CLICK HERE

Who-dey!

Meka & Dylan in a Steel Cage Match

Midlake // The Trials of Van Occupanther

In competition with Oprah, Brent's "Book Club" has some rules, one of which is "Always judge a book by its cover." Applied to albus as well that is how he found Hem's Rabbit Songs which turned out to be a gem. The band has sense become one of my favorite contemporary music making ensembles. Arrangements from sparse to full orchestral sweeps, instruments from the guitar and piano to the glockenspiel and french horn. Anyway...I love Hem and have always wanted to have my own album cover based discovery.

In todays day of digitlized music sometimes we don't even see the album cover but on emusic I saw the cover for Midlake's The Trials of Van Occupanther and was super intrigued.

Who the heck is Van Occupanther?

So I listened to a 10 second snipit and was hooked.

Upon getting the album I can hardly stop listening to it. I keep coming back to it.

Midlake has an ability to have lush arrangements without over doing it and also preserving the melody, which is often quite strong and often haunting.

The dynamic nature of the music makes it interesting. They can rock but also bring it down. The lyrics are cryptic and interesting like bits of stories parachuted in from Colin Meloy's Moleskine and storytelling harkening back to the Band's Weight and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. You get some evocative details without the entire narrative. But it makes for enjoyable repeated listening.

Another interesting element to the music is the prog-rock-esque electronic sounds. You find yourself wondering whether that's a flute or a synth; that is when you're wondering about Roscoe born in 1891 or who the heck is Van Occupanther?

I take special enjoyment in the fact that I "found" them serendipitiously on emusic by the cover of their album and they turned out to be good; in the same way Brent "found" the gem Hem. Scotty hadn't even heard of them. By the way Scott, I expect your two cents on the album. Andy by the way...you ought to throw down some short stories and record reviews on the blog here. I'm just saying...

Anyway...if you have a face and any portion of a brain that enjoys music...buy this album.

Extreme Makeover: Meka Edition

So with the incoming baby we set ourselves a Labor Day deadline for Meka's new room to be ready.

Phase 1 was moving all the music gear and music crud out of the room and into Neumann & Neumann storage.

Phase 2 was paint and prep; including finding a bed and other furniture. We decided on some paint, gender pigeon holing pink; a design, a wavy stripe which was an idea nicked from some random website and white furniture found via Craigslist and Brent & Erica's garage.

Phase 3 was and is assembling said room.

Phase 4 will be moving Meka in for a good night's sleep. We need to get bed rails before that happens.

Here are some photos of the room including the way we kidized Brent and Erica's dresser. (Thanks for letting us trash that, guys!)

In a surprise move...

...we've decided to reveal the front runner in the name category for the new baby:

Di Aria

That is, Di, short for Diane and Aria which is a beautiful piece of music. They go well together, eh? Quite a ring.

The Countdown

Anderson Hills @ ASP 2007

Here's a little video dealio I made from our ASP trip to Morgan County, TN. Wahoo!

Mom My Ride

Pregnant Woman Yields Saws-All

trapper jane?

well, trapper made it through the surgery just fine!

however, instead of getting neutered, turns out it was a spay-job.

yep, sabrina and i are still getting over the shock of finding out that our little guy is, in fact, a girl.

tom-boys. gotta love 'em.

this has definitely highlighted my preconceived notions of the sexes. i am already thinking of her differently, treating her differently, and attributing her behavior to other causes.

well, i should have known she was a girl by how taken with me she is (as all females helplessly are), as well as the fact that she is willful as all get-out and gives me hell daily.

although the vets were calling her hotlips houlihan (also a name from mash) and others have urged us to do the obvious and call her trapper jane/joan, her name will remain trapper john.

here's to the over-recruitment of girls to the ferry family after a strong male-dominated run. chug-a-lug!

trapper john, a carrot but no nuts!

i am a nervous wreck!

trapper john is under the knife as we speak getting neutered! he has become a bit of a handful since puberty and it had to happen, for the same reasons we had to spay scott at that time in his life.

religious and unreligious alike, pray for our trapper john!

Dancing with the Chicken Slacks

So Grace recently bought me a two-CD set celebrating Stax Records 50th anniversary. It's incredible. And it has only reinforced my belief that there is no better music than soul and r&b (rock 'n' roll be damned). I also started reading Peter Guralnick's incredible book Sweet Soul Music. This has inspired me to revisit the top-five lists idea from months ago.

This installment is Top Five Vocal Performances. Same rules apply. In no particular order:

Carl Wilson on "Wild Honey"
Otis Redding's "These Arms of Mine"
Roscoe Holcomb's "Swanno Mountain"
Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come"
James Carr "Pouring Water on a Drowning Man"

Yeah, soul-heavy I know. But really, could it be any other way?

The Ultimate Beardo = Sam Beam

Sam Beam, aka. Iron & Wine, may very well be the ultimate beardo. Check that thing out! Yowser. Makes me feel like a small female child that thing is so gigantor and manly.

Word on the street, er...the interweb, is that there's a new record dropping in September and if this cut is any indication it's going to be swell!

LISTEN TO IT NOW SNACK SHACK!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN to Boy With a Coin of The Shepherd's Dog coming September 25th.

David and Goliath...the REAL way it went down.

Nana's Welsh Griddle Cookies

Here's the recipe for the apparently famous family traditional recipe of Welsh Griddle cookies. The word is that our Great Grandmother used to make these for our Grandmother and our Mother. Of course...none of US had ever had them until they were made for Meka. How did this skip a generation? And here we thought we were loved.

6 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
2 tsp. salt
3 tsp. baking powder
4 tsp. of nutmeg

Mix ingredients together & then blend in 2 cups of shortening (Crisco); blend like a pie (w/ either a pastry cutter or fork). Beat 3 eggs together add 1/2 cup of milk & 1 tsp. vanilla and blend well w/ beater. Soak 2 1/2 cups of seedless raisins for 1 minute, drain raisins & mix them with a little bit of flour. Mix all together and roll out on well floured surface to ~ 1/4in. thick. Use cookie cutter or glass rim to cut.

Bake 350 degrees in a skillet until light brown (cook like a pancake turning only once).

NOTE: Recipe can be halved OR half of the batter can be frozen. 6 cups of flour makes a LOT of cookies.

Off to Camp...

Well...it's that time of year...Camp time!

Cheryl & I are off to Camp Otterbein for the Jr. High Mission Adventure. We're taking a very small group of kids, a little disappointing, but we'll have a blast. Having never been I'm a little apprehensive and afraid I'll mess it up. Nah...camp's awesome.

Farewell blog. I'll be back soon.

Meka Falls Down the Stairs

We had a horrific scare last night. Meka fell down the entire flight of stairs outside my office at the church building onto the tile floor. She took off towards the stairs, where she usually waits at the top. We ran after her but she lost her balance and went tumbling down. It was terrifying. She had a little bump on her forehead, a little bloody nose and a bit of blood in her mouth but after a couple minutes she was back to playing like normal. It just scared her. I think it scared us worse. She must be made out of either steel or rubble. She's a brusier. Even this morning there's no visible sign of the fall. Crazy.

Ruth Graham

Billy Graham is still alive at 88 but his wife just passed away at 87. I've never been a big fan of Billy Graham though I respect him immensely and love his retreat center in NC. Could be a north/south thing or a generational thing however...the man has been a confidant to presidents of both parties, has shared a simple message of Jesus' love on every inhabited continent to multiple millions of people and has done it all without screwing up morally which happens to too many preachers.

All of that is great, but this cements him in my mind as truly remarkable. And for the record, when I go, contact this prison for a box like this for me.

Billy Graham, like his wife, will be buried in a birch plywood coffin built by inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. The Graham's son Franklin made the request after seeing the coffins on a visit to the Angola prison and being struck by their simplicity, according to a statement from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The coffins cost $215 each.

(From CBS news: CLICK HERE for the full story)