There Are Perks to Living in the South

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Choose Where You Let Yourself Be Interviewed

Glen Beck puts the AG of Connecticut on the hot seat exposing the buffoonery.

Part One (start at 1:15):

Part Two:

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The Glory of Homemade Croutons

Christie makes bread sing when she makes croutons.

Sister #2  found this article online at Unexplained Bacon and knew I would find it tasty.

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Don’t Forget to Remember

In literature as in love, courage is half the battle. Likewise, in virtue as in fashion, tradition is the surest guide to the future.

— Sir Walter Scott

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Easier to Remember When You Can Carry it Around

My boys are only 6, 5, 3, and 1, but they have a list that they can reference to summarize who their friends and enemies are. They know them well. Christie and I encourage their alliances and encourage them to draw daggers to support them.

The Offical Boomershine Boys Guide to Closest Friends and Worstest Enemies

We would rather they learn deep fealty and sweet ardor to something that is overtly a fable (but a sort of supreme fable), than to never learn how to be loyal at all.

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All You Had to Do Was Ask

“A recent study by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and LifeWay Research found that 67 percent of Americans say a personal invitation from a family member would be effective in getting them to visit a church. A personal invitation from a friend or neighbor would effectively reach 63 percent.

Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) are willing to receive information about a local congregation or faith community from a family member, and 56 percent are willing to receive such information from a friend or neighbor.

“The primary lesson North American believers should learn from this research is that many of your unchurched friends are ready for an invitation to conversation,” said Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research. “Unbelievers next door still need a simple, personal invitation to talk, to be in community and to church. Clearly, relationships are important and work together with marketing.”

Lifeway

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How to Know Where Ryan Is

Wherever Nate Wilson is seminaring, booking, articling, that’s where I want to be. He has almost single-handedly (almost) taught me to see life as a story and to notice all these beautiful little sub-plots all along the way. His offerings are splendid little feasts of warm wit and careful clusters of comparison–showing me how all the reasons I must stop being so ridiculously bland.

Today I found Nate at Powell’s Books. He wrote an storytelling article called The Amazing Tale of the Butterfly-Unicorn-Ballerina-Princess and the Giant, Creeping Land Squid.

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I Wasn’t Ready for That

I finished Team of Rivals tonight and wasn’t prepared for the emotion that came with Lincoln’s assassination. I had just spent 743 pages getting endeared to him and then in a moment, he was gone to the ages.

Linc’s Secretary of State was William Seward. Seward had been one of the former rivals and then had built a close-knit relationship to the President–adoring him as did everyone who learned to know him. Simultaneous to Lincoln’s assassination was the attempt to take Seward’s life. It was a bloody, murderous scene in Seward’s home as the intruder killed Seward’s son and severely injured Seward and three others in the home.

As he was convalescing three days later, the nation was in mourning, but:

The news of Lincoln’s death was withheld from Seward. The doctors feared that he could not sustain the shock. On Easter Sunday, however, as he looked out the window to Lafayette Park, he noticed the War Department flag at half-mast. “He gazed awhile,” Noah Brooks reported, “then, turning to his attendant,” he announced, “The President is dead.” The attendant tried to deny it, but Seward knew with grim certainty. “If he had been alive he would have been the first to call on me,” he said, “but he has not been here, nor has he sent to know how I am, and there’s the flag at half-mast.” He lay back on the bed, “the great tears coursing down his gashed cheeks, and the dreadful truth sinking into his mind.” His good friend, his captain and chief, was dead.

General Ulysses S. Grant said:

I have no doubt that Lincoln will be the conspicuous figure of the war. He was incontestably the greatest man I ever knew.

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Four Good Minutes

Find a quiet place. Hit play. Don’t look at the parenting tips while you’re listening to this.

Hans Zimmer’s –Chevaliers de Sangreal from The DaVinci Code soundtrack. (I have not read the book or seem the movie, so quiet your raging heart.)

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Final Parenting Tips

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A Word to All Sesquipedalians

It’s more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like, “What’s for lunch?”

–Winnie the Pooh

HT: DGage

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Forgiveness Principles

I’m about 80 pages from the end of Team of Rivals. It’s been a wonderful book that I have been too long in ending. Basically, it’s the story of Lincoln’s ascent to and stay in the White House and how he surrounded himself by people who had previously been his opposition (usually his opponents inside the Republican party). Over and over and over, the people who chose not to get to know Lincoln used and abused him (which was found out later by their correspondence). McLellan and Chase are the most notable examples. The people who disliked or hated Lincoln and gave him a chance found him entirely admirable and dropped their own ambitions to follow him (notably Seward).

This is my first real biography of Lincoln and I tried to put aside the things I thought I knew. The strongest and most glaring quality I see in Lincoln is his repeated emphasis on passing over transgressions against him. It fully aggravated most of the men (and his wife) around him, but in the short and long term, it had wonderful effects for him to let a wrong go “unrighted” for a while and let a rebuke be rather turned into a quiet wait or even an overt praise. There have been moments I have been flabbergasted at his total magnanimity (and have been making notes of some of them). While I’m not implying Lincoln was even a Christian, I have repeatedly been reminded of the phrase about Christ that when He was reviled, He reviled not again.

Lincoln was steady, calm, collected, wise, insightful and more. He refused to be hasty. He had amazing clarity in times of murky facts. I’ve been bedazzled in regard to his public ways.

Upon hearing that a political foe had lost a state election, a Secretary expressed strong satisfaction, Lincoln replied to him,

You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. A man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.

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Tone It Down to Make It More Important

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

— C.S. Lewis

HT: George Grant

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This Truly is a Full-Service Blog

I grew up with three little sisters, so I understand the premise of the problem. Here’s a tip I might use if we ever have a girl…though the thought is slightly unfathomable.

What to Do With All Those Hair Thingys

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So That’s What Is Supposed to Be Happening?

One task defines the role of the teacher: the communication of an idea from her soul to that of the student. Until that communication takes place, teaching hasn’t occurred. Therefore, the teaching that takes place does not arise from preparing a lesson plan the week or night before, but from the teachers ongoing reading, thinking, writing, discussing, and yes, teaching.

— Andrew Kern

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How to Handle A Baby – Tip #1 and #2

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America’s Most Manly City

I was wondering why they asked me to move just outside of town. They didn’t want to the results so to be skewed so HIGH that the other cities might think we were cheating.

Music City Tops the List

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Designed for His Glory

My brother, Ross, is a 16-year old junior in H.S.  Today his picture “Designed for His Glory” took first place in digital photography at the Michigan Association of Christian Schools Fine Arts Competition in Midland, MI.

© Ross Boomershine 2009

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3D Street Art in Video

I think I have linked to stills of Julian Beever in the past, but here is a video of Edgar Mullar painting “The Crevasse.”

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Kudos to the Brits

I am embarrassed by this news story today of how disportionate the gifts were between the British P.M. and our President. Mr. Brown gave the Obamas thoughtful and important gifts, and we gave him a DVD set of American movies. I hope we remembered to feed him every meal.

Obama’s Blockbuster Gift for Brown

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Don’t Waste My Life

“The unexamined school is not worth building.”

— Andrew Kern

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Here a Tril, There a Tril

Here is a good visual showing what $1 trillion looks like.

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Not the Song I Wanted My Heart to Sing

This morning as I got out of bed, I was annoyed that my brain was stuck on this song I barely know from a show I barely remember from a decade I barely lived in. Well, maybe this is from the early 80’s, so I guess I was there the whole time, but why should the Picture Pages Theme Song be running through my head 30 years later?

I guess the educational principle take from it is that kids remember songs and poems better than rote lists. And they remember them long afterwards. Don’t waste their time trifling with the insignificant ones. Teach them the best.

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Boy Names Needed

Chrissy and I have a girl’s name picked out. Since we are planning on a boy per usual, a girl name sort of sits behind the glass with the little hammer hanging by a chain. It will be a genuine, 5-alarm emergency if we need to go to girl prep mode. Yikes. It will be like introducing a new species to a island; you can never imagine what might happen [actually it reminds me of this story]. A little girl in this house would be dramatic.

A few months ago, I did meet a very kind pastor who assured me that when his little girl was born into his house with five or six boys, their world was radically altered in a wonderful way. I’m going to need to take him to lunch to get the full scoop.

Anyway,we are all out of boy’s names.We want our boys to have names that are:

• Unique but not zany, and
• Important because they…
  • Mean something important, or
  • Remind us of someone we love, or
  • Remind us of someone we want our boys to emulate
• And are fully masculine

Then there are minor points such as syncopation/flow, not preferring alliteration with last name (or we would jump on the name Bradford) and ease of shortening.

So far, we have named a Karsten Micah, Haddon Elliot, Lincoln Gabriel, and Knox Carter. Since we are planning on having a boy, we would love your help. Due date is currently July 30th.

I received some good input on FaceBook. Feel free to duplicate your answers here if you so wish. Oh, and you know I am a sucker for the Pilgrims and Puritans, so have fun reading, but not suggesting, names from the following list.

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Don’t Waste Your Strength

“Build only what you believe in.”

Kelly Johnson, designer of the U2 and SR-71

HT: Ortlund

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The Wheels are Spinning But You’re Not Going Anywhere?

Then you can sympathize with this buck that got his antlers caught in the rope swing:

(or maybe he was doing it for kicks?)

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