Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
He was playing real good, for free
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 04/12/2007 - 22:05In 1970, Joni Mitchell released an album, Ladies of the Canyon. On song, “For Free”, or perhaps her 1974 version on Miles of Aisles, “Real Good for Free” is getting quoted a lot in the blogs recently:
But the one man band
By the quick lunch stand
He was playing real good, for free.Nobody stopped to hear him
Though he played so sweet and high
They knew he had never
Been on their t.v.
So they passed his music by
I meant to go over and ask for a song
Maybe put on a harmony...
I heard his refrain
As the signal changed
He was playing real good, for free.
- Joshua Bell, too, was playing real good for free
- Real Good for Free: Joshua Bell Solos in DC Subway
- He Was Playing Real Good, For Free
- Playin' real good for free...
What is it all about? Last Sunday, the Washington Post had an article entitled Pearls Before Breakfast (NewsTrust Review) talks about Joshua Bell, playing at a Metro stop in Washington DC and nobody stopped to hear him, though he played so sweet and high…
For Vicki and John
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/09/2007 - 21:23For all of you that know Vicki Cosgrove and haven’t heard, she and her husband are facing difficult times and prayers and financial support are sorely needed. Please read this diary on DailyKos, recommend it, pass it on to your friends and do what you can to help.
Beyond that, please think about lighting a candle for Vicki and John.
(Cross posted at Howard Empowered People)
Bubblr
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 04/03/2007 - 19:37I believe it was from the Freedom to Connect conference that I learned about Bubblr, a web 2.0 Flickr mashup tool.
I've now created my first mashup using Bubblr. Enjoy.
"Cancer"
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 04/03/2007 - 09:32When Kim and I first started dating, Kim’s mother was still alive, battling cancer. It cast a tint on everything we did. When Kim trotted me out on the obligatory, “new boyfriend tour”, we visited some of her oldest and closest friends on Cape Cod.
These were people that we could talk openly and honestly with. On the porch in the evenings, we would joke about how people talked about Kim’s mother’s cancer. They would always say "cancer". By this typographic notation, I’m trying to indicate the way they said it. They would lean their head forward, look both to the left and the right to make sure no one else was listening, or could hear, and then say in an urgent loud whisper, the word cancer.
You see, for many of them, cancer isn’t a word you can say normally. It is similar to "vagina". Perhaps this is, in part, because of the cancers we seem to hear the most about are breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostrate cancer and colon cancer.
After six weeks, the cancer took Kim’s mother. A few years later, our good friend on the Cape had her own serious battle with cancer. She blogged about her experiences, and you could see there, the difficulties that people had talking about cancer.
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Palm Sunday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/02/2007 - 13:34Every year, I hear the story of the Passion and I would think that over time, I would know it so well that there I wouldn’t hear something new. But yesterday, as we heard the story of the Passion be told again, a simple phrase that I’ve probably heard hundreds of times before jumped out at me. In Luke 22:45, we hear, “At last he stood up again and returned to the disciples, only to find them asleep, exhausted from grief.”
For some reason, I’ve always thought of the disciples falling asleep on the Mount of Olives as being from shear physical exhaustion. It was late at night. They were probably tired. They had come a long way to Jerusalem. Yet the phrase exhausted from grief jumped out at me.
Is this exhaustion from grief which caused the disciples to sleep somehow similar to the exhaustion from grief that leads us to “relax” by watching shows like CSI, Law and Order, Crossing Jordan, 24? (See my previous comments on this in America’s Next Top Model.
Yes, the grief of Holy Week is exhausting. The grief of being a nation at war, and the grief of 9/11 is also exhausting. The grief of families struggling with chronic illnesses, with desperate financial situations and so many other griefs are also exhausting. The question is, how do we best make it to Easter?
