In no particular order:
– Joshua Tree, U2
– Birds of My Neighborhood, Innocence Mission
– Good Dog, Bad Dog, Over the Rhine
– August and Everything After, Counting Crows
– Garden State, Soundtrack
– Rock Spectacle (Live), Barenaked Ladies
– White Ladder, David Gray
– The Bends, Radiohead
– Into the Great Wide Open, Tom Petty
– Brand New Day, Sting
Honorable Mention (the Christmas album I can’t wait to break out each year): A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi
Come on, now! Add to the list!
I wonder how far away I got from clean water today?
Since I didn’t leave the house, the answer is pretty easy – about 20 steps. Any time I get thirsty I stand up, find a clean glass, and turn on the faucet. Easy peasy. Even when I do leave the house, every building I drive past has clean water, and every gas station would be happy to sell it to me. But not everyone has it this easy.
Did you know one billion people on this planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water?
That’s billion with a B, as in 1,000,000,000.
And, according to charity:water, “Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren’t strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses.”
This seems ridiculous to me, that I can be no more than 20 steps from drinking water, while 1,000,000,000 people on this earth can’t get to it. Don’t you think?
What if I told you that you could go HERE to track our progress and give whatever amount you’d like to help us reach our goal? What if I told you that a $20 would provide one person with clean water for 20 years? It would be ridiculous not to do that. Don’t you think?
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Guess what? There’s a bigger picture.
I bet you have thirty friends or acquaintances you could band together with to change someone’s world. You can do more today for people around the planet than you ever could before, probably in the history of the world.
Thirty of us, (thanks to Tyler), are taking 30 days in September and working together, trying to change the world for 1500 people in Africa.
You can join us, or you can find 30 other people and change a different part of the world – so what will you do this month?
Airports are strange places.
You stand in huge crowds of people, and no one says a word.
A McDonald’s hamburger outside the airport? 99 cents. Inside the airport? $19.25.
Airports are so big now that you often walk further than you end up flying.
Strangely enough, these are not the things that I dislike the most about the airport – that would be security. I don’t like how they look at you like you are a terrorist. I don’t like how they shine that little penlight on your license. I don’t like how the line to go through security, if laid out flat, would stretch from here to Mars.
What I dislike the most is that airport security gives me no feeling of security: they check for metal, check for liquids, make you take off your shoes. And don’t get me wrong, they do a great job. But all the things they check for have to do with incidents that have already happened. So while evil people are out there devising new and even more maniacal ways of blowing us up, airport security insists on me taking off my belt and my flip flops.
I would be much more encouraged if airport security made me do something totally inexplicable.
Like cutting one inch of hair off of my head and looking at it under a microscope.
Or making me have a dental x-ray before I can board the plane.
What about forcing me to perform the presidential fitness test from high school?
At least then I would feel like they had an inside scoop on the next terror plot, and not like they were stuck on trying to prevent the boring old repeats.
I know there is a life lesson hiding in here somewhere. It probably has to do with the negatives of living a reactionary life style, instead of deliberately plotting new courses and trying strange, exciting, crazy things. Or maybe it’s just that we should all start taking the bus.
I don’t think the weather could get any more beautiful than it has been for the last week. This is both exhilarating and depressing: exhilarating because I work at home and can cut out early to play soccer with the kids or just sit in a chair outside and read; depressing because, well, it can’t get any better.
Who am I kidding? This is not depressing at all – the fact that the beginning of summer is still 9 1/2 months away is enough to keep me happy for, well, 9 1/2 months.
Anyway, as we head closer and closer to the first official day of autumn (the best season), here are three things to be REALLY excited about:
1) The Fireside Writer’s Conference is only 43 days away. Find out more about it HERE.
HUGE FAVOR TO ASK: If you work somewhere that you wouldn’t mind posting a Fireside Writer’s Conference flyer (you know, somewhere in the lunch room or toilet stall or on your boss’s glass door), please email me at shawnsmucker (at) yahoo (dot) com and I will email one to you (a flyer, not a glass door).
THING TO BE REALLY EXCITED ABOUT #2)
It’s still not too late to donate to charity:water and support our “30 Bloggers, 30 Days, $30,000” initiative. Read more about it HERE or check out how much we’ve raised so far HERE ($4,785 as of yesterday at 4:17pm)
***as of this morning, Bryan Allain is matching any gift, dollar for dollar – to have your gift matched, go HERE
#3 Football!
So what are you enjoying about life these days?
When I was a kid, I remember seeing that guy at nearly every sporting event. Maybe you remember him – I’m talking about the guy holding up the John 3:16 poster behind the basketball net, or the uprights, or in the outfield.
For years he was always there, and I think, even today, he is fairly representative of our Christian culture: if you ask any Christian to give you the verse in the Bible that best explains the Gospel, they will probably tell you John 3:16. And don’t get me wrong – it is a beautiful verse that tells an amazing story:
“”For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
What could possibly be wrong with that verse? Continue reading “What’s Wrong With John 3:16?”
If you didn’t see it yesterday, go on over to The House Studio and check out my guest post for their ongoing “Monday is for the Random” segment. It involves a combination of the Jackson 5/Nirvana (Smells Like Rockin’ Robin) as well as a very scary Mary Poppins.
Now for today’s regularly scheduled programming.
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Picture this: we are driving down the road in my 1990 GMC Safari minivan. That’s right, much like the one pictured here, but gray instead of blue, and without the big house in the background. Also, ours does not have a/c, and the windows won’t go down. And the radio shouts at you like a large cat dying of colic, even when you turn the volume all the way down. Cade and Lucy are in the back seat.
Cade: Dad, what’s wrong with your radio?
Lucy: It’s broken.
Me: Yeah, it doesn’t work.
Cade: Why not?
Me: I don’t know, it’s old.
Cade: Why don’t you fix it?
Me: I can’t do it myself, and I don’t want to spend the money to fix it.
Cade: Why not?
Me: Because it would probably cost like a hundred dollars (I always use this amount because to them, the need to come up with $100 is an insurmountable obstacle)
Silence for a moment.
Cade: I bet if you ask Mimi (his grandma) she’d give it to you.
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Previous episodes of “Stuff Cade Says” include:
– the one when Cade suggested I breastfeed our baby
