June 2011
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From Smithsonian magazine: In 1960, Columbia Pictures released a movie about NASA rocket scientist Wernher von Braun called I Aim at the Stars. Comedian Mort Sahl suggested a subtitle: But Sometimes I Hit London. I posted that only because it made me laugh, but it got me to thinking: I grew up near Huntsville, Alabama,…
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I've been meaning to post a link to this apropos the continuing discussion about films to be used in Francesca's class on Theology and Film. Only, I thought it was Image magazine's list, and didn't recognize it when Craig linked to it by its proper name. Actually I had intended to post it a couple of…
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Sunday Night Journal — June 26, 2011 On my way to work Friday morning, crossing Mobile Bay, I saw something I’d only seen once before, though I’ve made that crossing twice every workday since 1992: a hawk of some kind with a fish in its claws, flying away toward its nest, or wherever they go…
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You can listen to the entire new GW/Dave Rawlings album on NPR right now. I'm not sure how long these "First Listen" features remain available. I have two of her (their) albums, Time (The Revelator) and Revival, and while each has a few songs I'm unenthusiastic about, the rest are terrific.
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I assume anyone who would be interested knows exactly what I mean when I refer to "the Corapi mess." If you don't, Google something like "corapi black sheep dog" and you can quickly find out all you want to know (Daniel Nichols tells me he started getting thousands of hits when he put up a…
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Weekend Music The local paper has a daily list of famous people whose birthday is on that day. Today happens to be Colin Blumstone's: he's 66 (!). If I'm not mistaken, he was the lead singer on this song, which I liked at least as much as anything by the Beatles when I was in…
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I said a couple of weeks ago that I thought Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the 2008 convention "served as a sort of test of whether one likes or dislikes middle-class evangelical Christians." (The post is here.) Interestingly, a writer at Vanity Fair has had a somewhat similar reaction to something discovered in that recent email…
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If you happen to need one, you couldn't do much better than this. (Hat tip to Robert.) I wouldn't want to give you the idea that there are a lot of people like this just hanging out in New Orleans: the lady is a professional musician. But man, what a gift for the tourists.
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Sunday Night Journal — June 19, 2011 A few weeks ago I was having lunch with some relatives whom I don’t see very often. The conversation turned to politics, and as has been my habit for a good while now when people are discussing politics, I listened but didn’t speak. Eventually someone noticed this. “So…
Light On Dark Water 