June 2007

I’d make up a word and a bunch of people would be using it regularly in order to prove how cultured they were.

I’m not Shakespeare, but if you want to use my word you can:

Croc-offs

It’s my word for generic Crocs, if you couldn’t tell. I just got a pair for $3 at payless… How consumer of me.

The New York Times reports:

After weeks of insisting that food here is largely safe, regulators in China said Tuesday that they had recently closed 180 food plants and that inspectors had uncovered more than 23,000 food safety violations.

The story continues:

Regulators said 33,000 law enforcement officials combed the nation and turned up illegal food making dens, counterfeit bottled water, fake soy sauce, banned food additives and illegal meat processing plants.

“These are not isolated cases,” Han Yi, director of the administration’s quality control and inspection department told the state-run media.

China Daily, the nation’s English language newspaper, said industrial chemicals, including dyes, mineral oils, paraffin wax, formaldehyde and malachite green, had been found in everything from candy, pickles and biscuits to seafood.

Hungry?

We had VBS this week, which sent me into a panic because I was the director. But, it was very fun for the girls, as well as the rest of the kiddos from our church.

We had the children sing a hymn and recite a poem that they learned this week before the service today. Olivia was just a smidge too young to get the idea of a “youth choir performance,” though she is not at all too young to get the idea of “performance.”

If I wasn’t so darn proud of her groove she might have embarassed me, shaking her little tooshie to midieval hymns in front of the whole congregation.

In the battle between solidarity and dislocation, conservatives should naturally be on the side of the former, and it should be conservatives who benefit from the public’s interest in “strong community” and even, yes, “a sense of togetherness.”  (For some reason, the latter sounds much less ridiculous when you call it solidarity.)  Conservatism’s “failure” has been that conservatives have defined themselves or allowed themselves to be defined as individualists and advocates for the interests of the self.

- From Eunomia, Good New for Conservatives

You can find it here. There isn’t anything very spectaular going on there right now, I need to have some time to sit down and sew. But I’m gearing up to list some other things besides just baby carriers.  I just made a pattern for soft soled shoes that use recycled leather and denim. And I also made a pattern for little girl’s A-line dresses from recycled men’s dress shirts (they’re a tad punk rock).

Look for those new listings in the next few weeks, as well as some new fabric choices for my Mei Tais.

The more Peter Leithart writes, the more he sounds like a Lutheran. And then he doesn’t. Either way, I can’t get enough of it. The vigor of us confessional Lutherans occasionally has the unfortunate side effect of making everything we tell you about doctrine sound like we’re holding a rod above your heads of all our fellow Christians. Or an axe.

But Leithart. He has the tone of someone who’s diving into scripture feet first. And acknowledging that it’s really, really messy. Scripture’s darker passages, winding stories, and odd comments just don’t wrap up nicely–it’s encouraging to hear someone admit that. And admit that without immediately claiming to have figured it out.

And this isn’t to say that Leithart’s opponents and critics aren’t diving into the pool just as deeply. Plenty of them are, and that’s why they’ve been so impassioned in their critique. As painful as this can be, it is the way of the church. What else do we mean when each Sunday we confess “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church?”

One church from Peter and Paul all the way up until the 34th PCA General Assembly 2007. One church that has trouble building consensus, trouble talking, trouble being polite, trouble even getting an informal show of hands. There’s a reason Jesus didn’t run for election. Jesus is not a member of your congregation. You are a member of His. And although it might surprise some to hear an LCMS Lutheran say it, when we each come to eat and drink, we’re not served with our own personal Jesus, a la (depeche) mod. “Given and shed for you” was not the precedent for “Have it your way.”

Scripture has this way of knocking the wind out of you, kicking your doors clean off their hinges, and sticking around in your craw long after you’ve asked it to take a hike. And just wait until it starts rifling through your desk drawers. Leithart sounds like a guy who’s watching Scripture rearrange his furniture. And knock a hole in the living room wall with the sofa. For the sake of the church. I like that.

I just finished a first listen of Andrew Osenga’s 6-song EP, Letters to the Editor, Vol.1. I don’t think anything’s made me so happy in a while.

Osenga has been one of my favorite songwriters since his old band the Normals put out their first record, Better Than This. Something about that record caught me–I think it was the song “Apron Full of Stains,” and all the stuff that went along with being a confused, Christian teenager–and by the time the band released Coming to Life I was hooked.

Some of my most heartfelt memories are tied to his music. Driving home a van full of sleeping strangers south across Ohio cornfields after a fantastic Normals show in Toledo. Ending my relationship with my first serious girlfriend in the dead of winter and feeling all my own sadness and heartache echo back to me in songs like “Coming to Life.” Listening to “Romeo on the Radio” with Devona, a long time before she was ever my wife. Arguing with Andy that the production on “Black Dress”–well, yeah it’s noisy, but it makes sense.

It’s been years since The Normals split up, but Osenga has kept making excellent records. This latest EP is something competely different. From his blog, where the seed germinated:

Here’s what I’m thinking: I’m going to write and record the songs, that’s my part. What I would love for you guys to do is to inspire me. Send me ideas for songs, whether they’re stories you’ve heard, a word you think sounds cool, an idea you’ve wished somebody had written about. Send me paintings or drawings you’ve made, a photo you took that you can’t stop looking at, whatever you think could inspire a song. I’m going to make my goal for this project to base every song off something from you guys.

The 6-song result is a fine listen. I especially liked “Wanted” and “Swing Wide the Glimmering Gates,” which bookend the collection.

Many are saying that we should expect more artists following Osenga’s approach. Others artists are being similarly inventive. Podington Bear releases three new songs each week. Paleo crossed the nation, recording a song every day for a year, and posting them all on his website.

Andrew takes things a step further, providing instructions on his blog allowing fans to record their own background vocals (or Webground vocals, as he calls them). The chorus of fans ring out the final notes of “Gates”.

These are exciting ideas, and the music is exciting stuff. Give it a listen.

Elise:

(pointing at me) “Maaaaaa Maaaaaaaaa”

(pointing at Olivia) “Wah Yah”

(in response to being pushed by Olivia) “AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

Olivia:

“I woke up in the middle of the night (it was really 9:30 by the way) and we went to watch the lightning bugs. Then Sherman got me with his leash. Sherman leashed me. I popped on my arm. Then I cried and mom held me. I had to go the doctor and get fixed. Now I have a beautiful pink cast.”

(pointing to her pink cast) “I don’t want this thing.”

Since the PCA has recently knocked them around a bit, maybe Leithart and the rest of the Federal Vision crowd can just become Lutherans. They like baptism well enough.

I’m not encouraging anyone to ditch their confession. I just find myself nodding along with much of what Leithart and others have to say. Far more than many of the products of my own denomination, the Federal Vision discussion constantly reminds me what is so refreshing about being (in John H’s terms) an Augsburg Evangelical.

And wasting time. I have a lot of important things to do, but since I had one of the worst days ever I’m doing this for now and I’ll do the important stuff when I’m so sleepy that I can hardly keep my eyes open and the baby is twenty minutes away from waking up to nurse.

The Queen of Carrots posted this Meme, and it’s probably been a year since I did one so I thought I’d copy her. It’s also a good time to post a Meme like this because we started our blog 3 years ago, next month. That’s craziness.

How did you start blogging?
Rob was reading a photo blog by a guy who was an ex-patriot in Japan and had a young family. Then Rob’s mom told us about all the confessional Lutheran blogs she’d been reading. We became interested in letting the whole world know all about us so we signed up with blogger.

Did you intend to be a blog w/a following? If so, how did you go about it?

We wanted a following when we began blogging. We linked to other blogs regularly, joined in on theological discussions that were running about the blogosphere. We wrote emotional pieces about our soon to be born first child. At one point in time we were getting more than a hundred hits a day. Then about six months after Olivia was born we quit blogging regularly, and Rob pretty much quit all together. Most of the readers were reading him, so our “following” started following others. I was sad at first, but I really don’t care any more.

What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those goals?

I hope to keep my writing fingers limber so that when I can connect more that two brain cells, and sleep for more than four straight hours without feeding someone, I can write short stories that are as good as F. Scott Fitzgerald or Flannery O’Connor. I have four paragraphs and a basic premise for a short story, including character names and other details. That’s a little bit successful, but mostly my blog just gives me an excuse not to think about that short story when I’m really tired.
Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?

Yes. When Rob was writing more often we had a higher standard for what was blog worthy. Anymore I just want to share something with who ever will read it so I am flying off the cuff a lot more often now. Plus, I’ve gotten more set in my ways, but less likely to make a big fuss about it. I think I argue more when I haven’t made up my mind, but now that I’m getting old and stubborn I’m not as interested in the ruckus.

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?

That It’s not a good idea to fight with your old friends that have moved away over the internet. I haven’t talked to a few people, even online, that used to be very dear to me and I’m afraid it’s because the internet leaves little room for “agreeing to disagree.”

Do you make money with your blog?

No.

Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?

They do. In fact I think that they are the only people who actually read this blog anymore, excepting the few people who we made more intimate connections with and are reading to keep up with the family. Hi Mom, Dad, other Dad, Nina and Papa, Mina, Nana and Bunkle, the Uncles and Aunts, and the Stagers.

What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger?
1. Just keep writing until you find your blogging voice, and then just go with it.

2. Write even if no one comments. Blogging is more enjoyable if you post what you want, regardless of how people respond.

How did you come to name your blog?
We were constantly listening to Andrew Peterson’s album <i>Love and Thunder</i> which rhymes with Love and Blunder and it just seemed to fit the mood of a young married couple. It’s clever and it rolls off your tongue. I have come to think of Rob and I as “Love and Blunder” in tandem.

One of the reasons I wanted to buy an old house is for the history in the home. The imagined lives of its past inhabitants, wondering about the children growing here. Wondering about who had the house built.

In this house some of those questions were easily answered. We have the original blue prints and the original work order for the home, passed down by the 4 previous owners of this home. Almost nothing in our house has been changed except the kitchen has been updated and the basement finished.

We also know quite a good deal about the original owner of the house. Mr. Sittle and his wife were the first people to build on this street in 1926. They moved here from a farm and brought some of the pieces of their old barn with them, which are still in the garage. Mr. Sittle was a milk man for a local milk company, he drove a horse drawn milk wagon up and down Market Street, when it was still a brick road. He was driving milk for that company still, when they started delivering the milk in trucks.

Our next door neighbors moved into their home when the Sittles were retired. They tell us all about how Mr. Sittle would bring a lawn chair out into the front yard just to watch my neighbor’s children play in the yard. My neighbor, Bob, recollects Mr. Sittle with a look in his eye like he’s remembering a long lost friend, or a close family member.

Now our neighbors are reaching retirement and Bob comes out and chats with Olivia and tickles Elise and pretty much acts like an on site grandfather. I can see that he is pretty satisfied in becoming the neighborhood replacement for old Mr. Sitttle.

about something very close to my heart: the normalization of childbirth.

I have had two very different births. Olivia’s birth was a nightmare and Elise’s birth was beautiful. It wasn’t a homebirth, but it would have been if the laws in Ohio would permit me to have a transfer in the case of an emergency to a doctor that I knew.

Look up your state’s birth laws, unless you live in New Mexico you will be astonished.

Be educated on natural childbirth (as in take a Bradley class, or something not offered in a hospital), have a midwife, a doula, or a husband/best friend/coach to help you deliver as naturally is possible. One thing people don’t know about birth is that one intervention leads to another, even something as seemingly harmless as continuous fetal monitoring.

Protect yourself and your baby.

and Olivia is proud to tell us (as of last night), “God made me.”

God Parents, you’ve done well.

The more than 100-year-old roots of Eldridge’s mega-popular book, Wild at Heart:

Eliot was justifying the inclusion of athletics in college education as a way of making education appealing to boys who would rather be fly-fishing than studying. That same justification was at the root of a nearly contemporaneous movement within British and American Christianity, the movement most commonly known by the name assigned by English novelist Charles Kingsley: “muscular Christianity.”

Via Leithart: Muscular Christianity and American Sport

See the rest at my photobucket site.