Category: Seen, Heard, Said

Is Orphan an Anti-Adoption Screed? – Paste Magazine
The first time I saw a trailer for this movie I rolled my eyes to the heavens and thought, For the love of Pete, WHY are we scaring people away from adoption so excellently?! But I discovered this article via @pastemagazine, and it makes a good point: “Does this girl strike you as someone who serves as a stand-in for adopted kids in general?” Also: I hate passing judgment on a movie I haven’t actually seen.

D & D Ministry – KUOW
Heard this very interesting story about a man who came to faith in Jesus Christ via the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons. I’m continually amazed how easy it is for us to put God in a box, and how able he is to break out of that box and surprise us all.

Momversation
Last night I went to a local BowlHer party in connection with the BlogHer conference in Chicago, and met Giyen, who is a panelist for Momversation. I’ve seen some of the Momversation videos around the internet, and they discuss some pretty interesting topics. But I was mostly intrigued by their production schedule for collaborating remotely on the project.

How You Doing – The Corner
I discovered an audio documentary project on KUOW called The Corner: 23rd and Union, and it’s incredible – stories told by people living in that neighborhood. I’ve listened to almost all of them (there’s more if you click on the iTunes icon), but Jean Tinnea’s story titled, How You Doing, struck a particular cord of familiarity. She’s an elderly white woman who talks about walking through her neighborhood, making eye contact with her neighbors, and saying, “how you doing.” I’ve made the same effort as I walk through the public squares near my house, and get a same mixture of responses as she does. I also got a kick out of this woman’s crackly voice saying things like, “pimps” and “gang bangers” and “the street greeting is…” I want to be just like her when I’m old.

Encouraging Young Artists – PBS Supersisters
Recently I had the epiphany that I’ve been a writer since I could write – I just never had a mentor to encourage me or give any direction. I’m so task oriented at home I often forget to spend time cultivating my kids’ interests, discovering what they enjoy creating and making space for them to explore. This post was a great reminder that I have budding creators right in front of me, and I should pay more attention.

Gradbabies – The Word Cellar
Jennifer writes a great essay on dealing with everyone else’s expectations, particularly when it comes to having babies.

What Makes This Paragraph So Great? – Don Miller
This short writing lesson rocked my world – “Notice how the paragraph feels descriptive, but is actually more full of verbs than adjectives.”

High School Musical 4 – Hulu.com
This is pretty hilarious considering a certain 6yo’s obsession with High School Musical.

Bryan Zug, Geek of the Week! – Seattle P.I.
Big shout out to the man of the house for this nomination by his peers!

Who Needs a Manual to Write Real Good? – NPR.org
A hilarious grammar tongue-twister to commemorate the 50th anniversary of William Strunk and E.B. White’s Elements of Style, the grammar manual used by millions of students.

Wear a twitter shirt! – twitshirt.com
This cracked me up. I’m such a nut I might actually consider buying one if I find a most excellent twit to wear! If you follow twitter, what is your favorite tweet you’d wear on a shirt?

Susan Boyle has it – Britain’s Got talent
Several friends pointed me to this video of Susan Boyle auditioning for the UK’s version of American Idol. She looks like a sturdy German farm wife as she takes the stage, drawing snickers from the young audience and mocking from the judges (which include Simon Cowell). But this confident woman with a dream to sing for a large audience surprises everyone, and the conversation has enlightened us all to our chronic ways of judging a book by its cover.

UPDATE: Is Susan Boyle ugly? Or are we?

Book Update – Conversion Diary
A great post from another writer about finding time to write in the midst of Life: “…good writing is possible under all sorts of circumstances…”

Where the Wild Things Are movie trailer
YouTube won’t let me embed this in the blog, so definitely click through to watch it. I’m so excited! (And so is Thomas).

Seattle Needs 700 volunteers to help the homeless – Mars Hill Church
“teams of volunteers will be sent out to various parts of the city, and will speak with every person they meet to determine if they are homeless. If they are, the volunteers will ask them to participate in a survey to help the city understand their needs. Volunteers will need to commit four hours on the evening of April 13, 2009 and one hour of training prior to the evening of the assessment.”

filmwell.org
Friend Jeffrey Overstreet partnered with others to launch this new blog – essays and discussions of “cinema off the beaten track.” Check it out!

Saving your kids’ memories – reluctantentertainer.com
As a former scrapbooker turned digital media user, I don’t actually do a lot of scrabooking anymore, but I still want to create a physical space for my kids’ memories. This idea seems to take the time-intensive creative road blocks out of making these memory books, and is actually something I can sit down and do while watching American Idol in my dark basement.

Do you have a clutter cemetary? – clutterdietblog.com
Yeah. It’s the tiny spare room off the kitchen – the room we never use and I wish to be part of my kitchen! I think knocking down that wall would really solve my “clutter graveyard” problem, don’t you?

Eff It – Schmutzie.com
What an awesome post about finally letting go of all those unrealistic expectations we hold ourselves to!

Tell Stories – The Rabbit Room
A friend sent me this article. Stephen Lamb posits that while pulpit preaching has its place, God is often met through experience and story, therefor we all need to be aware of how we “preach” the gospel through the living of our lives.

Re the essay excerpt from Wangerin, Bryan says, “That essay by Wangerin is one of my favorites of all time on crafting a life of incarnational Gospel — always surprised by how little circulation it gets — and then am conversely surprised when I run into instances where folks think of it as important.”

Most Powerful Words: I need help – difficultseasons.com
It’s not difficult for me to ask for help – I do it all the time. I also love to help other people, but have learned that not everyone finds it as easy as I do to ask for help. So now I go looking for ways to help, knowing that not everyone will initiate with their need. But I love this article on asking for help – for those who find it difficult to ask, Jim gives you this awesome script:

Here’s a script where you can just fill in the blanks: “Hi. My name is ______ and I need your help. What I need help with is ______________. Can you help me with that?”

AIG Bonuses linked to retention, not performance – npr.org
I’m not going to pretend I know anything about any of this, so I’ll start with that. But even in my simple understanding, I was on the bandwagon of boo-ing the AIG bonuses… until I heard this story. This guy – whoever he is – succinctly explains the bonuses in question as retention bonuses, and clearly defines what this means. Essentially, certain employees were asked to stay on at the company despite its declining state, and were promised bonuses if they stayed a certain amount of time. These bonuses were not attached to performance, according to this guy, but to a contractual obligation of employment. AIG didn’t want to lose key people during tough times. The employees fulfilled their obligations, and therefore received the bonuses.

Again, I really have no clue about economics, but this seems reasonable to me in theory. I mean, if a guy really didn’t want to be there, but he was promised money to stay, don’t you think it would kind of suck to stay and then not get the money you were promised if you stayed? Yeah, I know AIG got bailout money, and we tax payers are now holding the bag. But geez, the guy was just following through.

Seems like the government and the media are hyping everyone up. Thoughts?

Economy Puts Focus on Family Planning – NPR.org
I find this to be a very interesting story on many levels, and I’m sure at some point I’ll expand this into an entire blog post. I am not pro-choice. Neither am I pro-life. I am anti-abortion. I recognize the decision to abort is difficult and tragic, and though abortion grieves me, I refuse to villianize the people behind these decisions. I’m putting this up here so I remember it, and come back to it another time with more in-depth thoughts. Any comments?

An abrupt change of subject – dooce.com
All I’m going to say is: I can relate. I wish I couldn’t, but I do.

Wine to Water
This organization discovered me through twitter. Doc Hendly started following me, I clicked through to his website, and discovered a cool organization that serves third world communities by helping them gain access to clean water. One of the ways they raise money is through wine tasting parties that raise awareness. Bryan and I have been talking about hosting a wine tasting party in our home just for fun, and this seems like a great way to do that and serve others. Win!

How to change – Tim Keller podcast
I was poking around the internet looking for a podcast to listen to while I cleaned the kitchen, and stumbled across some Tim Keller sermons on Sermon Cloud. This short one (33 minutes) encouraged me in very specific ways. If you are struggling with ongoing sin or know someone who is, Keller has some very hopeful things to say regarding change.

Growth is small, slow, and gradual, he reminds us. Growth can’t always be seen, but it can always be measured. You can’t watch a plant growing, but suddenly you notice one day it’s bigger. You can’t watch your child grow, but one morning he feels heavier or looks taller or can say more words or can suddenly spell “stop.”

Likewise, you may not feel like you’re growing spiritually, then one day something may happen and you think to yourself, Man, a couple years ago I never could have done that, I never could have been this patient, I never could have had this kind of self control. When we have the spirit of God in our life, we will change – it’s inevitable. We will worry less, become more patient, face our troubles gracefully, be more loving, etc.

I found this to be incredibly hopeful, both for myself and for others I know. When all I can see is the moment I forget that God sees the future, that he is timeless, that his spirit in us is not dead or decayed, but alive and growing.

Emma and her hilarious giving – Ravings of a creative housewife
I’m not prone to seeking out social justice projects myself, so I don’t naturally stumble across ways for my kids to get involved in helping others. We practice kindness, hospitality, and generosity with the people we bump into every day, but at some point I would love to take my kids out of their comfort zone (so to speak) to help other completely outside of the world they know.

Bead Parties – Notes of Us
“Bead For Life is an organization in Kampala, Uganda, whose goal is to eradicate poverty through creative means. Instead of just accepting donations, they empower their Ugandan women (who have been through situations I cannot imagine) to create beads from recycled paper: old calendars, magazine pages, and even cereal boxes. These beads, in brilliant colors of reds, oranges, pinks, blues, greens, purples and more, become necklaces (long, short, flat, woven or circular), bracelets and beaded jewelry bags.
The profits they receive from selling their jewelry go toward their own community projects and six other organizations in Uganda.”

Somewhere Out There – This American Life
“The story of struggle and pain, passed through and fought through and over come – that’s not a story you tell in public. Because no one ever asks, How did you two stay together? They only want to ask, How did you two meet?”

“[They] had to make that same transition that all couples do – from the crazy-in-love stage to the other thing, the hard part of love. And it’s when you’re in that struggle you most need the story of how you’re meant to be. Because the alternative, that the person you’re with could be any one of hundreds of thousands of people – well, if that’s true, then why even try?”

Meditations on an Insulin Pump – Practical Theology for Women
“the greatness of the treasure isn’t marred by the fragility of the vessel”

The C-word – Finslippy
“why do we feel that in order for our opinion to be right, we have to make sure that everyone who feels differently is wrong? ”

In Defense of Conservative Blogging – Mandajuice
“First, and most important, is that you will never catch me in the business of trying to change someone’s mind about politics. The ONLY reason I even hazard to bring it up here on my boob-juice blog is because it bothers me that there are so few conservative mommy-bloggers out there. And then I hit myself upside the head and think DUH – there probably ARE at least some of us out there, we’re just so used to being the minority that we mostly shut up and play dead.”

CPSIA, or How to Lose Your Small Business and the Shirt Off Your Back – Mommy Needs a Cocktail
I hate to belabor the lead testing point any further – particularly since I first mentioned it right down there, below this post, the one I wrote seven whole days ago – but the whole thing is just so ridiculous I think it deserves another rant. I’ve appointed Kristin to Secretary of Legal Interpretation because she knows what all this means and (more importantly) can break it down to it’s logical conclusion. Also, she’s selling all her kids and baby tee’s at a greatly reduced price to unload her lead-free shirts because she can’t afford to have them tested for lead.

Handpicked book recommendations – flashlightworthybooks.com
This link found me through twitter, and continually updates with new book lists every day. Maybe you’re in a book club? Or like Mad Men? Or enjoy mysteries? I’ll bet you can find a good book here.

Volatile Markets? Try Lady Gaga to Calm Down – NPR’s All Things Considered
Heard this in the car and thought it was interesting. A professor of finance and risk engineering (???) studied 50 years of pop music and found a correlation between financial market trends and popular music – the more dreadful the market, the greater desire for music with a steady, consistent beat. Sounds a little out there, but I actually think I get it.

New About Page – Thispile.com
Shameless self promotion, but I updated my sidebar and about page, so if you read me through RSS check it out!

Lead testing law could put thrift stores and small businesses out of commission – LA Times.com
At first I was just irritated by the paranoia, but then I started to realize the larger consequences to the new law. Consequences like thrift stores discontinuing sales of children’s clothing, consignment shops going out of business due to expensive lead testing costs, Etsy shops closing down, and other small children’s toy and clothing makers getting put out. Can you imagine all the perfectly usable clothing and toys that will be thrown into our landfills? All the jobs that will be lost?! I’m all for protecting the children from toxins, but this law is written too vaguely.

Update: public outcry is getting results. Keep up with the changes here.

Some requesting delay in switch to digital tv – NPR.org
This story cracked me up – the poor, poor consumer’s union, the poor, poor consumers. Delay the switch to make sure everyone is prepared? I say the best motivator for making the switch is discovering your television won’t work. But spending millions of dollars to change the date and modify the advertising campaign to make sure all Americans will have ability to watch Grey’s Anatomy? Logic FAIL.