iPhone Meets Blog II

iPhone Meets Blog

I dictated this post.

Natural Parenting

 With thanks to xkcd dot com.

Merry Chrithmuth

When I was little there was this one Christmas where both of my front teeth were actually missing and everyone kept asking me if all I wanted for Christmas were my two front teeth and was like, What?, because I didn’t know it was a song.

Posted Via iPhone

My boss is an Italian plumber.

The History Boys

The best moments in reading are when you come across something–a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things–that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out and taken yours.  –Hector

An Idea For Your Blog

Take every picture you posted on your blog in 2009 and put them in a slide show for your end-of-year post. I started to work on our year in pictures after I stumbled across something similar on our blog about four years ago.

The Swell Season

Mindy and I saw The Swell Season in concert last night with Elise, Olive, and Francis at Crystal Ballroom.  Wow.  I mean, wow.  The two-and-a-half hour gig was one long highlight (worth standing the whole time for) but being ten feet away from the band and Glen Hansard taking the stage literally unplugged for Say It To Me Now (think “that scene” in Once–we might as well’ve been passers-by on a street in Dublin) especially stood out.

They didn’t play my favorite song off of Strict Joy, Feeling The Pull, or Love That Conquers, a song that sounds like a Simon & Garfunkel/The Beatles lovechild, but Hansard covered Van Morrison’s song Astral Weeks and I thought his guitar was going to breakup on re-entry.

Seeing them live we were better able to grasp how robust their music is.  The harmonies on I Have Loved You Wrong were pristine and I already thought High Horses was driving but I didn’t feel it pound in my chest until last night.

Marketa Irglova’s effortless vocals are on my mind, on my mind, on my mind…

And, although The Frames are nineteen years tight, I like to think that the crowd singing along added.  Nicely done, Portland.

Compassion Blog Post

If you click on Restoring Social Outcasts to Community under Compassion Blog to your right, you’ll find my latest post on Compassion’s blog.

Doc On Prayer

From Cannery Row by John Steinbeck…

On the black earth on which the ice plants bloomed, hundreds of black stink bugs crawled.  And many of them stuck their tails up in the air.  ”Look at all them stink bugs,” Hazel remarked, grateful to the bugs for being there.

“They’re interesting,” said Doc.

“Well, what they got their asses up in the air for?”

Doc rolled up his wool socks and put them in the rubber boots and from his pocket he brought out dry socks and a pair of thin moccasins.  “I don’t know why,” he said.  “I looked them up recently—they’re very common animals and one of the commonest things they do is put their tails up in the air.  And in all the books there isn’t one mention of the fact that they put their tails up in the air or why.”

Hazel turned one of the stink bugs over with the toe of his wet tennis shoe and the shining black beetles strove madly with floundering legs to get upright again.  “Well, why do you think they do it?”

“I think they’re praying,” said Doc.

“What!”  Hazel was shocked.

“The remarkable thing,” said Doc, “isn’t that they put their tails up in the air—the really incredibly remarkable thing is that we find it remarkable.  We can only use ourselves as yardsticks.  If we did something as inexplicable and strange we’d probably be praying—so maybe they’re praying.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Hazel.