These posts are a collection of reviews or commentary on movies I like, books I am reading, and/or music that I wish to recommend.

Juno: A review

The movie opens with a young woman standing in her front yard chugging down a gallon jug of Sunny Delight. She makes a disparaging remark about a frumpy Lazy-Boy recliner sitting on the grass, then walks off down the sidewalk. As she strolls through a working class pre-war suburban neighborhood ... Continue reading

Christmas Swing

Mike Laprarie of Mike's Noise is one of many blogging friendships I made at GodBlogCon 2005. Mike loves music, especially music from the 20's and 30's. He collects old 78's and has digitized a terrific sampling of his collection, making them available at his other blog, The Virtual Victrola.Just ... Continue reading

Questions of balance

Strange, isn't it, that this season of expectation, of Advent, is also the most frenetic time of the year. We sing "all is calm, all is bright, sleep in heavenly peace" in church, then rush off to Costco to finish our Christmas shopping.But at all times, life is full of choices and dilemmas that ... Continue reading

Christmas by Jeff Rohlwing

One of the best things about Christmas is the music. I have a pretty eclectic collection, including Bing Crosby, Barbra Streisand, Mannheim Steamroller, Anuna and, of course, Handel's Messiah. Last night I attended a concert where my musical friend, Jeff Rohlwing, performed songs from his ... Continue reading

Michelangelo and risk-taking

Michelangelo was only 25 when he completed Pietà, a marble sculpture depicting Mary holding the lifeless body of her son, Jesus. His Pietà was so astonishingly beautiful that the Italian art community crowed that Michelangelo had surpassed "not only the sculptures of all of [his] contemporaries, but ... Continue reading

Depressed by jazz

I don't grok jazz.My local PBS station plays jazz at night, and I listen from time to time, hoping that my mother's asparagus theory will win out.(Certain disgusting vegetables, like asparagus, are an acquired taste, according to my mother. She claimed that if I kept choking them down, I'd ... Continue reading

Discovering character in the Amazon

In 1912, former president Theodore Roosevelt — having lost a third-party run at a third presidential term, thus making himself a pariah for throwing the election to the Democrats — felt cast aside by history at a time when he still felt destined to accomplish more.An invitation to give a series ... Continue reading

Sinéad’s Theology

Theology is an attempt to create a place of peace in a time of war... I observe a lot of violence done in the name of theologies of various religions, but when you study the actual texts of those religions you find that they don't ... justify war or violence or anything really which is unloving of ... Continue reading