Grab a Hankie - This One is a Tear-Jerker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DAjQhChRs&feature=player_embedded

Dinner in the Yard with Friends

Love It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MInOApCkA98&feature=player_embedded

Quote of the Day

In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.

- CS Lewis

Recently Read

“This is probably going to change me,” Kauzlarich had said at Fort Riley, and when he wasn’t around to overhear, a friend had predicted what the change was going to be: “You’re going to see a good man disintegrate before your eyes.”


- The Good Soldiers

Recently Read

After food, what every man wanted most was war news. The Japanese sealed their camps from outside information and went to some lengths to convince their captives of Allied annihilation, first by trumpeting Japanese victories, and later, when victories stopped coming, by inventing stories of Allied losses and ridiculously implausible Japanese feats. Once, they announced that their military had shot Abraham Lincoln and torpedoed Washington, D.C. “They couldn’t understand why we laughed,” said a prisoner.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Cool Stuff

Heal - Animated Trauma, from Ghost Productions on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/22714000

Stiff Upper Lip

When Winston Churchill said "Never, never, never quit" I didn't realize he was talking about a round of golf . . .

Happy Easter

Quote of the Day

Forgiveness does not mean excusing

- CS Lewis

The Good Soldiers

Just finished the Good Soldiers by David Finkel. The book chronicles the 15-month deployment of Army Battalion 2-16 during the Iraq "surge". The central figure is the Battalion Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich.

The book is a fast-paced read that really centers on the men in the battalion - what they are feeling, how they are changing. The book also describes in unrelenting honesty how totally screwed up Iraq was at the time. Reading the descriptions, I don't see how any reasonable person could have possibly stayed hopeful about the mission of the 2-16 and yet, like "Good Soldiers" they carried on - right down to the very last day of their combat operations.

Finkel's book does not hype the action (although there is plenty of it). Instead, you get a front-row seat in a story that tells you what it was like to be an army infantry soldier in Iraq. It is an amazing eye-opener.

If you like war/memoir books, add this one to your list.

Spring (Up in Your Face!)

Quote of the Day

"That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider for all, and the enemy of all."

- J. August Strindber

Unbroken

I just finished an epic book called "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. It's a true story about a World War II pilot named Louis Zamparini. In fact, it is essentially his biography.

Louie Zamparini was a hoodlum growing up in Torrence, CA in the 30's until he discovered he could run - faster than almost anyone on earth. Nicknamed the Torrence Tornado, he had his eyes set on Olympic gold when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

He ended up a bomber on a B-24 flying fortress that went down in the Pacific and fought to survive with two of his crew mates.

=Spoiler Alert=

After an eternity at sea, he is captured by the Japanese and put in a POW camp. Without going into all the details (which are in the book), by almost every measurement Japanese POW camps were worse than Axis camps in Europe. All of which was made worse for Zamparini when a vicious guard made him the focus of all his hatred and abuse. That guard would later go on to be named #7 on America's list of top Japanese war criminals.

The book is an astonishing tale of resilience and survival under unimaginable conditions. For so many people, their understanding of our war with Japan starts at Pearl Harbor and ends at Hiroshima without much in between. Believe me, this book will educate you (at least concerning the POW viewpoint).

Over and over, while reading this book, I thought "This has got to be made into a movie!" Now that I have finished it, a movie wouldn't do it justice - this needs to be a mini-series.

Highly recommended.

Lorakeets!

Two Annabelles

Ayep - Wanna Do It . . .

http://youtu.be/im1iNq02Kz0

Daffodils

by May Swenson

Yellow telephones
in a row in the garden
are ringing,
shrill with light.

Old-fashioned spring
brings earliest models out
each April the same,
naïve and classical.

Look into the yolk-
colored mouthpieces
alert with echoes.
Say hello to time.

Peek-a-Boo

The Best Thing You Will See on the Internet Today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T36A-H8dPhI&feature=player_embedded

Me and Cousin Ava

Heh . . .

Marathon Thoughts

http://youtu.be/NsMw10KVVCk

Quote of the Day

Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done

- CS Lewis

Me and Uncle Wes

Me and Papa

THE HOBBIT IS COMING!

http://youtu.be/FfesknLk5uI

Quote of the Day

Yeah I called her up, she gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention.

- Dumb and Dumber

Quote of the Day

Through pride the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every vice, it's the complete anti-God state of mind.

- CS Lewis

Sunnin'

Your Next Tweet Will Be . . . .

http://yes.thatcan.be/my/next/tweet/

Here's Mine:

Just made dinner attended by 50 cubits by Lileks today: 7:30am - Ladies and the Oscars but regardless of!

Reading Time with Lauren

The Best Year of Her Life

by Gerald Locklin

When my two-year-old daughter
sees someone come through the door
whom she loves, and hasn't seen for a while,
and has been anticipating
she literally shrieks with joy.

I have to go into the other room
so that no one will notice the tears in my eyes.

Later, after my daughter has gone to bed,
I say to my wife,

"She will never be this happy again,"
and my wife gets angry and snaps,
"Don't you dare communicate your negativism to her!"
And, of course, I won't, if I can possibly help it,
and of course I fully expect her
to have much joy in her life,
and, of course, I hope to be able
to contribute to that joy —
I hope, in other words, that she'll always
be happy to see me come through the door—

but why kid ourselves — she, like every child,
has a life of great suffering ahead of her,
and while joy will not go out of her life,
she will one of these days cease to actually,
literally, jump and shriek for joy.

Swingers

Quote of the Day

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints

- CS Lewis

Quote of the Day

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”

- Ernest Hemmingway

Governor for a Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve2nTIK8H5A

Dream come true

Quote of the Day

Leslie explains that although she doesn’t feel called to be a pastor, she would like to be some sort of a traveling evangelist—“stirring up fights in other people’s churches and leaving,” as she puts it.

- The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

Quote of the Day

Do I believe the rapture is imminent? No. If all the Christians who did believe it was imminent went around doing good deeds with frantic urgency, would I object? Of course not.

- The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

Quote of the Day

My choice in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician, and to tell the truth there's hardly a difference.

- Harry Truman

Gospel for Teens

This is an amazing story from 60 minutes this past week:


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7361574n&tag=related;photovideo


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7361570n&tag=contentMain;contentAux

The Boxers

by Cathy Smith Bowers

When my father, after twenty years, came home
to die, circling, circling, like an animal
we believed extinct, it was my crazy aunt
who took him in, who told later
how the taxi had dumped him
bleached and whimpering on her porch.
And she who had not lived with him
thought his sons and daughters cruel
not to come when he began to call our names.

He died, and soon after, a package in brown wrapping
arrived at my address. My sister, who did not
attend the funeral, kept urging me to open it
and I kept saying I would, soon. Every day
when I came home from work, there it was
sitting at my back door, the remnants
of my father's life—years in the mill
spinning and doffing, then drinking into morning
as he railed at the walls, the cotton
still clinging to his fists. Weeks had passed

when finally my sister and I, after two stiff bourbons,
began to rip the paper, slowly in strips
like archaeologists unclothing a mummy.
And all that was there were a few plaid flannels,
the jacket to a leisure suit, and a pair of boxers,

white and baggy, Rorschached in urine—a smaller size,
my sister said, than the way she remembered him.
Then she offered to drop the things at the Salvation Army
store she passed on her way home. In July

we went shopping for swim suits and I could
see her in the curtained stall across from mine.
She was pulling her slip over her head when I saw
she was wearing them, her thighs like the pale stems
of mushrooms emerging from the boxers' billowy
legs, whiter, softer now, washed clean. I still

can't say why my sister, that day in the Salvation
Army store, glanced up, as I've imagined,
to see if anyone was watching
before she slipped those boxers from the soiled heap
of our father's clothes. Nor why
I took so long to open that package, both wanting
and fearing whatever lay inside. Like a child
huddled by the campfire who cries out in terror
at the story someone just told
and, still weeping, begs for it again.

What If . . .

What if, in the vast story of your life, the trials, the tribulations, the joys and the sorrows, you are beside the point?

What if the entire point of your life is effecting the lives of those you touch?

What of if the entire point of your life is me, and the entire point of my life is you?

What if we can't find our lives until we lose them for each other?

I Can't Believe I am Saying This . . .

You should REALLY listen to the excellent story from Al Sharpton. (eww . . . I just threw-up a little in my mouth).

No, really. It is worth 15 minutes of your time:

Al Sharpton: Conviction by The Moth on Mixcloud

http://www.mixcloud.com/themoth/al-sharpton-conviction/

Pixar's Cars 2 is Coming

http://youtu.be/RRz5YDokhzE

Can you spot the secret URL code that leads you to the sneak peek? (Hint: pause at 00:57)

Old Cell Phone Commercials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWfqkrAM8IY&feature=player_embedded


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAeBlL1zuko&feature=player_embedded

I love how the next one uses the fact that the phone only weighs TWO POUNDS as a selling point . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WUF3yjgGf4&feature=player_embedded

Brilliant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_CDLBTJD4M&feature=player_embedded

Quote of the Day

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

- Theodore Rubin