Perhaps you know how I enjoy perspectives...different ones, big ones, small ones, odd ones. This morning, I took a look at a far-away perspective.
Take a look at our world from space, the amazing, beautiful, freaky, scary, weird, and wonderful Earth.
Chris Hadfield's Pictures from Space
Talk about perspective.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
Gratitude Journal #172
Today, I am grateful for my family who took good care of me this weekend.
Today, I am grateful for laughter and all the funny stuff in life.
Today, I am grateful for the peace that comes from knowing you did your best...even if the situation didn't turn out as you expected or hoped.
Today, I am grateful for cuteness.
What are you grateful for today?
Today, I am grateful for laughter and all the funny stuff in life.
Today, I am grateful for the peace that comes from knowing you did your best...even if the situation didn't turn out as you expected or hoped.
Today, I am grateful for cuteness.
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What are you grateful for today?
Friday, January 25, 2013
Words, Words, Words of Gratitude
"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have." Frederick Keonig
What do you have right now that you can appreciate? What can you do to fully appreciate what you have?
What do you have right now that you can appreciate? What can you do to fully appreciate what you have?
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Mama Bear and the Movies
When was the last time you had a visceral reaction to a movie? Movies may be entertaining or moving, shocking or scary, hopeful or sweet, funny or ridiculous, enraging or frustrating, thrill rides or slow raft trips down a river. Some rare few will make you think. Even rarer movies will teach you something about life or death that you didn't already know.
But when was the last time a movie reached into your soul and showed you a part of yourself that you hadn't know existed before?
In fairness, my mama bear instinct has always been strong, but I've thought of it more as a protective instinct, not viscerally violent. Until I saw the movie Taken on Monday.
I'll put on my critic's cap and tell you (if you haven't already seen it) that Taken isn't a great movie, and I certainly didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I prefer my action movies silly rather than intense. Think The A-Team and Knight and Day...fun and funny romps with nary a lick of seriousness in them. Taken, however, is nothing if not intensely serious. It was released in 2008, so it's really old news, but DVD is the only way I would see an action movie like this anyway because I can simply walk away when the action gets too violent or uncomfortable.
From a critic's viewpoint, the script of Taken is clunky, the plot predictable and extremely manipulative. The movie focuses so tightly on action and violence that the characters come off as flat stereotypes rather than rounded, real people.
But I loved the movie anyway because all the bad guys we meet--and there are a LOT of them--die violent, well-earned deaths at the hands of an angry father, played by Liam Neeson, who, by the way, is aging so very nicely.
What engaged me even more than a simple angry-dad-going-after-his-abducted-daughter plot is that the daughter's abductors are human traffickers, kidnapping attractive young women to sell into slavery. The subject is popular in the news lately, with lots of bloggers promoting organizations that rescue women trapped in the sex trade, plenty of news segments on NPR discussing the wife-buying between North Korea and China, and eastern European mafias. Human trafficking is everywhere, really, and always has been. Making slavery illegal doesn't make it go away.
That's why the justice meted out in Taken is so very, very satisfying. Neeson's character is a Dad operating outside a system which can't provide justice for all. Only a rogue retired CIA agent can get the job done, and these slavers are messing with the wrong Dad. As the movie's Dad brutally forces his way to his daughter, I felt the intense satisfaction that only comes from seeing justice duly served on people who would dare threaten my child.
Oh, yeah.
Isn't that what's great about the movies? We can experience vicariously that which we would never experience in real life. In Taken, the bad guys get their just desserts and the good guys return to normalcy without ill effect.
What isn't so satisfying is the fact that only two girls are saved...and the first one because Dad needs information to find his daughter. We see plenty of women who've been abducted, but Dad's only interested in saving his daughter. In the process he kills the wealthy leader of the Paris slave operation (yay!), but a thinking viewer knows this slime-ball is just a cog in a very large machine. Taking him down won't stop the slavery. Rescuing one woman won't help the thousands of women who aren't rescued.
I'm really proud of my teenage son Nick for recognizing this problem. "What about all the other girls?" he asked.
You might take that unspoken point from the movie as an indictment of the worldwide establishment which doesn't put enough effort in stopping slavery. But that would credit the movie with far more intelligence and social conscience than it demonstrates otherwise. It's an action movie that does action very well and engages the violent protective instincts latent in all parents, but not much more.
That's what makes it fun to watch.
The not-fun-at-all question remains, however. What about all the other girls?
Now it's your turn. What movie have you seen recently that, perhaps unexpectedly, engaged your heart or mind?
But when was the last time a movie reached into your soul and showed you a part of yourself that you hadn't know existed before?
In fairness, my mama bear instinct has always been strong, but I've thought of it more as a protective instinct, not viscerally violent. Until I saw the movie Taken on Monday.
I'll put on my critic's cap and tell you (if you haven't already seen it) that Taken isn't a great movie, and I certainly didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I prefer my action movies silly rather than intense. Think The A-Team and Knight and Day...fun and funny romps with nary a lick of seriousness in them. Taken, however, is nothing if not intensely serious. It was released in 2008, so it's really old news, but DVD is the only way I would see an action movie like this anyway because I can simply walk away when the action gets too violent or uncomfortable.
From a critic's viewpoint, the script of Taken is clunky, the plot predictable and extremely manipulative. The movie focuses so tightly on action and violence that the characters come off as flat stereotypes rather than rounded, real people.
But I loved the movie anyway because all the bad guys we meet--and there are a LOT of them--die violent, well-earned deaths at the hands of an angry father, played by Liam Neeson, who, by the way, is aging so very nicely.
What engaged me even more than a simple angry-dad-going-after-his-abducted-daughter plot is that the daughter's abductors are human traffickers, kidnapping attractive young women to sell into slavery. The subject is popular in the news lately, with lots of bloggers promoting organizations that rescue women trapped in the sex trade, plenty of news segments on NPR discussing the wife-buying between North Korea and China, and eastern European mafias. Human trafficking is everywhere, really, and always has been. Making slavery illegal doesn't make it go away.
That's why the justice meted out in Taken is so very, very satisfying. Neeson's character is a Dad operating outside a system which can't provide justice for all. Only a rogue retired CIA agent can get the job done, and these slavers are messing with the wrong Dad. As the movie's Dad brutally forces his way to his daughter, I felt the intense satisfaction that only comes from seeing justice duly served on people who would dare threaten my child.
Oh, yeah.
Isn't that what's great about the movies? We can experience vicariously that which we would never experience in real life. In Taken, the bad guys get their just desserts and the good guys return to normalcy without ill effect.
What isn't so satisfying is the fact that only two girls are saved...and the first one because Dad needs information to find his daughter. We see plenty of women who've been abducted, but Dad's only interested in saving his daughter. In the process he kills the wealthy leader of the Paris slave operation (yay!), but a thinking viewer knows this slime-ball is just a cog in a very large machine. Taking him down won't stop the slavery. Rescuing one woman won't help the thousands of women who aren't rescued.
I'm really proud of my teenage son Nick for recognizing this problem. "What about all the other girls?" he asked.
You might take that unspoken point from the movie as an indictment of the worldwide establishment which doesn't put enough effort in stopping slavery. But that would credit the movie with far more intelligence and social conscience than it demonstrates otherwise. It's an action movie that does action very well and engages the violent protective instincts latent in all parents, but not much more.
That's what makes it fun to watch.
The not-fun-at-all question remains, however. What about all the other girls?
Now it's your turn. What movie have you seen recently that, perhaps unexpectedly, engaged your heart or mind?
Monday, January 21, 2013
Gratitude Journal #171
Today, I am grateful for a four-day weekend.
Today, I am grateful for snow flurries...so pretty and fluffy.
Today, I am grateful for my hands. They do so much!
What are you grateful for today?
Today, I am grateful for snow flurries...so pretty and fluffy.
Today, I am grateful for my hands. They do so much!
What are you grateful for today?
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
The Content of Their Character
Yesterday, just after I picked Jack up at school, NPR ran the entire tape of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering his I Have a Dream speech. You can see a video recording of the speech here.
It's strange to think that in August, that tape will be 50 years old. Just think how far we've come since then.
Then, think how far we have yet to go.
Dr. King's speech is a tour de force of effective rhetoric, and I taught it as such in English 102 classes. Listening to Dr. King's voice yesterday in my car, I found myself speaking with him, saying his words out loud.
Jack noticed, and asked if I knew the words. I told him that the words were so important that yes, I did know a lot of them.
Jack is not at an age where he can appreciate the metaphor, the biblical references, the historical importance and context, the high and powerful rhetoric, though he is studying the Civil Rights Movement in school. Phrases like "victims of creative suffering" and "police brutality" and "valley of despair" and "oasis of freedom and justice" don't mean much to him.
Yet.
I grew up in the south. I never saw the segregated water fountains or lunch counters or schools, but I saw segregated neighborhoods, I heard racist comments uttered freely and without thought, I saw news coverage of the Greensboro massacre in November, 1979, when I was almost 13 and attending a mostly-white private school.
I lived two hours from Greensboro. That massacre was in my back yard and an entire world away. I couldn't understand the politics and hate surrounding the massacre, but I did know that violence wasn't right, killing people wasn't right, wearing sheets or swastikas wasn't right.
That much I did understand.
My generation, however, saw far less of the dehumanizing ugliness of racism than my parent's generation, in large part because of the work and words of Dr. King and many others who stood up instead of by.
Jack's generation is growing up with an African-American president whose second inauguration will take place on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, and regardless of how you or I may feel about his politics, President Obama sets a powerful example of democracy's ability to move forward and expand its freedom and power to make true its belief that all men are created equal.
But Klan membership is growing. The ugliness isn't gone.
Yet.
What is the content of our nation's character? How will we be judged? Will we ever truly be able to sing, "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty. We're free at last"?
One day.
It's strange to think that in August, that tape will be 50 years old. Just think how far we've come since then.
Then, think how far we have yet to go.
Dr. King's speech is a tour de force of effective rhetoric, and I taught it as such in English 102 classes. Listening to Dr. King's voice yesterday in my car, I found myself speaking with him, saying his words out loud.
Jack noticed, and asked if I knew the words. I told him that the words were so important that yes, I did know a lot of them.
Jack is not at an age where he can appreciate the metaphor, the biblical references, the historical importance and context, the high and powerful rhetoric, though he is studying the Civil Rights Movement in school. Phrases like "victims of creative suffering" and "police brutality" and "valley of despair" and "oasis of freedom and justice" don't mean much to him.
Yet.
I grew up in the south. I never saw the segregated water fountains or lunch counters or schools, but I saw segregated neighborhoods, I heard racist comments uttered freely and without thought, I saw news coverage of the Greensboro massacre in November, 1979, when I was almost 13 and attending a mostly-white private school.
I lived two hours from Greensboro. That massacre was in my back yard and an entire world away. I couldn't understand the politics and hate surrounding the massacre, but I did know that violence wasn't right, killing people wasn't right, wearing sheets or swastikas wasn't right.
That much I did understand.
My generation, however, saw far less of the dehumanizing ugliness of racism than my parent's generation, in large part because of the work and words of Dr. King and many others who stood up instead of by.
Jack's generation is growing up with an African-American president whose second inauguration will take place on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, and regardless of how you or I may feel about his politics, President Obama sets a powerful example of democracy's ability to move forward and expand its freedom and power to make true its belief that all men are created equal.
But Klan membership is growing. The ugliness isn't gone.
Yet.
What is the content of our nation's character? How will we be judged? Will we ever truly be able to sing, "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty. We're free at last"?
One day.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Gratitude Journal #170
Today, I am grateful for wonderful worship services to start the week.
Today, I am grateful to own a dog who makes a comfortable driving-around-town companion.
Today, I am grateful for friends who make time for me.
Today, I am grateful for blog readers who take time to read my words.
What are you grateful for today?
Today, I am grateful to own a dog who makes a comfortable driving-around-town companion.
Today, I am grateful for friends who make time for me.
Today, I am grateful for blog readers who take time to read my words.
What are you grateful for today?
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