SF author Jack McDevitt is new to me, but I enjoyed his recent book Seeker. It’s a pretty straightforward far-future hard SF tale, with some pretty transparent commentary on contemporary U.S. politics. It features characters who appeared in two previous novels, which I think I’ll track down. All in all, not a bad page-turner.
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Julie Powell’s blog fame has been transmuted into a book, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, and 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. It captures not only the joys and sorrows of cooking (and blogging) her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but also life as a secretary in New York on the cusp of 30. It’s very funny and very vulgar. It is not her blog, but grows out of the experience of blogging. If you read her blog, you’ll recognize chunks of the book.
Snowflakes on October 29
OK, so they’re only light flurries, but the very fact that it’s flakes and not a bit of mist is noteworthy.
As is the forecast for tomorrow and Monday: 57, then 63.
Friday Ten
Inspired by Doc Smartypants, here is my inaugural Friday Ten:
- David Brown
- David Epstein
- Jeffrey Kofman
- Anderson Cooper
- David Muir
- Jim Sciutto
- Dan Harris
- Terry Moran
- Jake Tapper
- Matt Lauer
(And if you think, “Ten what?”, well, the only point is that there are ten of them. That’s all the guidance there is from the Doc. But these are in fact ten of something very specific.)
Sci-Fi Movie Canon
John Scalzi over at Whatever has a book out, The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, which includes a canon of 50 science fiction films. He posts several times about the book (the link is to the first post), and in one he mentions the meme of taking the list and bolding the films you’ve seen. And so herewith (the list cries out for annotation and comments, but I just don’t have the time right now):
- The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
- Akira
- Alien
- Aliens
- Alphaville
- Back to the Future
Blade Runner- Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact- The Damned
- Destination Moon
- The Day The Earth Stood Still
- Delicatessen
- Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial- Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
- The Fly (1985 version)
- Forbidden Planet
- Ghost in the Shell
- Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis- On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)- Robocop
- Sleeper
- Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back- The Stepford Wives
- Superman
- Terminator 2: Judgement Day
- The Thing From Another World
- Things to Come
- Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey- La Voyage Dans la Lune
- War of the Worlds (1953 version)
Columbus
I went shape-note singing for the second time in a week today. Last Monday I went to the public sing hosted by Norumbega Harmony in Newton, and this afternoon I went to the monthly sing at St. John’s Church in Charlestown. This hymn cut right to the heart of my condition.
Columbus
Mercer’s Cluster, 1823/Columbian Harmony, 1829
Oh, once I had a glor’ous view
Of my redeeming Lord,
He said, “I’ll be a God to you,“
And I believed his word.
But now I have a deeper stroke
Than all my groanings are;
My God has be of late forsook;
He’s gone, I know not where.
Oh, what immortal joys I felt
On that celestial day,
When my hard heart began to melt,
By love dissolved away!
But my complaint is bitter now,
For all my joys are gone;
I’ve strayed! I’m left! I know not how;
The light’s from me withdrawn.
Once I could joy the saints to meet,
To me they were most dear;
I then could stoop to wash their feet,
And shed a joyful tear;
But now I meet them as the rest,
And with them joyless stay;
My conversation’s spiritless,
Or else I’ve naught to say.
I once could mourn o’er dying men,
And longed their souls to win;
I travailed for their poor children,
And warned them of their sin;
But now my heart’s so careless grown,
Although they’re drowned in vice,
My bowels o’er them cease to yearn–
My tears have left mine eyes.
I forward go in duty’s way,
But can’t perceive Him there;
Then backward on the road I stray,
But cannot find Him there;
On the left hand, where He doth work,
Among the wicked crew,
And on the right I find Him not
Among the favored few.
What shall I do? Shall I lie down
And sink in deep despair?
Will He forever wear a frown,
Nor hear my feeble prayer?
No; He will put His strength in me,
He knows the way I’ve strolled,
And shen I’m tried sufficiently
I shall come forth as gold.
Knitting Retreat at Woolman Hill
In a previous post I described the knitting retreat I’m leading at Woolman Hill Nov. 4–6. (You can download a flyer with registration form there.)
I don’t have a very firm plan yet, but it will probably go something like this:
Friday evening:
- collecting ourselves in the present with some silence
- invite people to take out their knitting (if they haven’t already)
- introduce myself and the retreat center, outline my plan for the weekend
- ask each person to tell us what they like to be called and share one thing they hope for from the weekend (I’ll encourage people to go slowly around the circle, giving space between each person’s speaking to really hear what they share. This is pretty standard Quaker technique, and I expect to encourage it throughout the weekend unless it turns out not to sit well with the participants. I will have some discernment time after the session to consider any adjustments to the schedule based on people’s hopes.)
Saturday morning session 1 (optional, 1/2 hour, no knitting):
- brief introduction to Quaker worship<
- Quaker worship
Saturday morning session 2 (knitting and conversation):
- as we knit, go around the cirlcle and tell what we’re working on
- break
- show and tell our resources, ask for help on any knitting problems we’re trying to solve
Saturday afternoon session (knitting in silence):
- ask people to knit together in silence for a period of time (I’ll need to get a feel for how people feel about silence in order to decide how long. 1/2 hour to an hour.)
- break
- discussion about what it was like to knit together in silence (probably encourage them not to knit; perhaps split them into small groups)
Free time Saturday afternoon
Saturday evening (sharing our knitting):
- ask people to reflect and share on what about knitting is (or isn’t) spiritual for them
- break
- ?? encourage people to seek out one or two others they’d like to talk with and move chairs into small groups
- ?? closing silence or epilogue (prepared reflection, maybe a song)
Sunday morning: meeting for worship (optional) 1 hour
Sunday morning session (knitting together, content tbd)
Desert photos
Beth Stroud on the nature of a call to ministry
Check out this UCC blogger: Chuck Currie: Beth Stroud And The Call To Ministry. He comments on a sermon preached by Beth Stroud, a lesbian United Methodist minister currently appealing the revocation of her credentials. Here’s a snippet. (He includes a link to the whole sermon.)
It’s taken me a while to learn that my calling is not about me. It’s still often hard to remain clear about that. It’s not about my gifts and potential, and it’s not about my limitations, either. It’s always about a need or a hurt in the world that God has seen, a cry that God has heard, and what God intends to do about it.
Visiting Brawley
I flew home to California to see my family at the end of last week, and I took a few pictures to give an idea of where I grew up. Here are a few pictures taken just a few miles west of my parents’ home (they live in town).
This photo was taken driving east toward the Chocolate Mountains. You can see the Algodones Sand Dunes just before the mountains.
Here’s the lifeblood of Imperial Valley:
And here’s my family:
Me with my parents.
My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew.