If you want to understand a woman, look in her bag~~Valerie Steele

A true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence~~Amos Bronson Alcott

Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed~~Vida Dutton Scudder

I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form~~President Calvin Coolidge, Inaugural Address, 1924

You never realize what you have until it’s gone. Take toilet paper, for example~~Unknown

Sing out loud in the car even, or especially, if it embarrasses your children~~Marilyn Penland

When a student asked the Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer how many hours a day he should be practicing, Auer said, “If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.”

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new~~Ursula Le Guin

Creativity is the residue of time wasted~~Albert Einstein

Practice doesn’t make perfect: practice makes permanent~~Unknown saxophone professor

Silence is a message, just as doing nothing is an act~~Leonard Peltier

During election years it becomes even more obvious: you cannot control your reputation. You can do the very best you can to do the right thing at the right place and time, but all it takes is one person or event to shatter a lifetime’s worth of work in one fell swoop.

And the onset of 24-hour news cycles hasn’t helped the truth to come out any sooner than it used to: if anything, the 1500 TV talking heads help cement misunderstandings, false information, and reputation-destroying rumors far more quickly than ever before, and with much broader dissemination.

And so it was that when a friend recently posted the graphic below, I was immediately struck by the truth of it.

You won’t always be able to do much about your reputation, but you certainly can choose to always be responsible for your character.

And in the end, that’s what matters:

But here’s a thought: perhaps if you lowered your standards—just a little—on what constitutes a successful Monday, it could entirely reframe how you view both success and Mondays in the future.

It has clearly worked for the Tasmanian Devil:

Happy Monday, all!

You know, most Christians hold to both these seemingly contradictory truths: that we are fully selfish, sinful human people at the same time that we are also, with God’s gracious help, being daily changed and shaped to look more like Jesus as we grow in our faith over time.

I do not think that even the most famous propositional statements of historical Christianity—such as the Nicene Creed, the Apostle’s Creed, and so on—illustrate this very point in as earthy a fashion as does…(drum roll, please….) church signage.

Oh, yes. In church signboards we see the silly and the sublime, the inconsequential and the weighty, the foolish and the eternal. (And if we’re particularly lucky, we get to see both truths exemplified in the same message board’s slogan.)

My husband recently shared this batch of linguistic and theological wonders with me, and they are simply too good to keep to myself. If you feel philosophically-inclined today, go ahead and ponder. On the other hand, reading these may result in a metaphysical struggle of gargantuan proportions: how not to snort coffee out of both nostrils as you read some of these nuggets.

Happy pondering, coffee-snorting, and laughing!

CHURCH SIGNS
— Whoever stole our AC units, keep one: it is hot where you’re going.
— To err is human, to arrrr is pirate
— How do we make holy water? We boil the hell out of it!
— Our Sundays are better than Dairy Queen
— Free Coffee! Everlasting Life! Yes, membership has its privileges
— Read the Bible. It’s user-friendly plus we offer tech support here on Sunday at 10:30am
— Walmart is not the only Saving Place
— Keep using my name in vain and I’ll make rush hour longer – God
— The church is prayer-conditioned. Come join us!
— Church Parking Only! Violators Will Be “Baptized.”
— God > Chuck Norris
— Signmaker on vacation. Come inside for message
— God’s Will is Perfect. People Make MISTEAKS.
— Sunday’s Sermon: “Why Didn’t Noah Swat the Two Mosquitoes?”
— Have trouble sleeping? We have sermons—come hear one.
— Do not criticize your wife’s judgement. See whom she married.
— Wrinkled with burdens? Come to church for a faith-lift.
— Read the Bible—it will scare the hell out of you.
— God answers knee-mail.
— Gardening for God brings peas of mind.
— To prevent sinburn, use sonscreen.
— Prayer: wireless access to God with no roaming fee.
– Honk if you love Jesus. Text while driving if you want to meet him.

I also understand that I am one of only 973 people in the entire United States who do love opera.

Okay, so I am under-exaggerating just a wee here. (But perhaps not by much.)

There are many reasons why most Americans are generally under-impressed by opera (if they think of it at all), and I sense the stirrings of a future blog post on this very topic.

Jennifer Rivera has written a thoughtful, interesting article on the loss it would mean to all kinds and styles of music if opera—the Olympic form of vocal music—should eventually disappear from the American landscape.

Along the way, she debunks a few of our assumptions and points out how those assumptions can be marginalizing and demeaning not only to ourselves and other human beings, but to the musical art form itself.

I highly recommend this article. And more thoughts on this topic will be coming later this summer~

I really love this.

(This graphic has been provided by Burning Through Pages, a non-profit that actively works to encourage all kids—and especially teens—to read. Check out their page if you get a chance~~this is a group that provides books free of charge, helps kids join book clubs in their communities, and assists them in founding book clubs if there aren’t any. The group will also match a child or teenager with a volunteer to discuss the book with them one-on-one.)

Growing up in a rural community in North Dakota, Daniel Stenberg never thought of himself as a professional storyteller.

But that’s exactly what he’s about to become.

Daniel has been working with Prairie Public Broadcasting (North Dakota’s PBS affliliate) to shoot a documentary about 6 World-War-II-era brothers who grew up in Watford City, North Dakota. (You can see his Kickstarter project page here.)

The project is scheduled to begin shooting in June, when the background shots of the rolling Dakota prairies will be green and lush, the crops will be well on their way, the birds will be chirping and prairie roses will be blooming—and locals are reminded once again of why they choose to live in North Dakota. (After many months of a cold, Canadian-style winter, June can be a helpful month of reminders for this.)

As for background research, Daniel already knows his topic very well. His grandfather, Chris Stenberg, was one of those 6 brothers. Born into one of the many farming communities in rural North Dakota, the brothers—Arnold, Casper, Chris, Henry, Ray, and Selmer—were born into an era when ordinary people were called upon to live through extraordinary times. Only two of the boys had the opportunity to finish high school (born in 1916, Daniel’s grandfather himself—by all accounts an intelligent, richly-gifted man—never had the chance to go beyond eighth grade.)

This is a story of good times and bad, of faith and doubt, of vulnerability and steel-sided determination. The family knew its share of sadness: during 1941, the youngest boy, Selmer, died of appendicitis at age 9, and within 8 months, sons 3 and 4 (Chris and Henry) went off to war. Only one of them returned: after serving for four long years, Henry was killed only one week before WW II ended. The news took over a month to reach the family.

Daniel speaks of discovering and reading the letters home from war that his grandfather wrote to his family as being one of the pivotal moments in his realization that this story needed to be told. The letters spoke of the ordinary and immediate—how’s the weather? how are the crops coming along?—while also articulating the universal, timeless themes of what it means to be human in a broken, inhumane world (about the war, Chris’ letters wondered aloud as to why it was necessary at all: “why can’t we all just get along?”)

And Daniel realized that he was going to need to be the one to tell it.

So he took an 18-month sabbatical from his career and started on the fundraising, the meetings, the grant proposals, and all the details that make up the planning stages of such a monumental undertaking.

After spending a number of years in his early 20s working in Washington, D.C. in various capacities (yes, starting out as an intern), he returned to North Dakota a couple years ago with a renewed vision for appreciating and telling the unique stories of his home state.

This is the first installment of that series. When asked what his next project will be after this, Daniel laughs out loud. “I can’t say that I want to be a professional film-maker for the rest of my life,” he muses. “But I know that I want to tell this story. If other stories come up that I want to tell, then maybe.”

Daniel’s fund-raising efforts have been unusually successful so far. With his mother’s rhubarb jam, homemade krumkake, and other delectable farm goodies as some of the rewards available for different levels of donations, his Kickstarter campaign has been brisk.

There is still time to get in on the ground level for this amazing project, and since Daniel’s mother—farm wife Gayle Stenberg—is known in the community for some fine cooking and baking, you may want to check out Daniel’s campaign ASAP. The opportunity to take in some fresh-baked or fresh-grown goodies is a rare opportunity to experience North Dakota hospitality while also taking part in the telling of a really good story.

You can find more information about Daniel and his documentary here.

The 6 Brothers documentary project can also be found on Facebook.

A news story about the documentary and its North Dakota roots is here.

I can’t quite tell if Snoopy is being passive-aggressive, or if he is innocently trying to comfort Charlie with all possible spellings, or if he’s finally getting even with Charlie for all the times he’s been “corrected” for his grammar.

Who knows?

No matter which way it shakes out, this graphic is still adorable in that special Peanuts way.

Happy comforting of your favorite Grammar Nazi on this beautiful spring day!

But yesterday I was finally able to spend some quality time reading, and I finished off not one but two books.

I feel like a new woman.

And so I found a wonderful photograph that captures my feelings about reading today, yesterday, or any day, for that matter:

Happy reading, everyone!

But I still found this chronicle of existential angst to be one of the funniest, most intelligent, and hilariously self-deprecating videos I’ve seen of either cat or human all year. : )

Please enjoy—I surely did!

Click here to view the embedded video.