04 December 2008

Speaking of Faith


Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippet. Completely brilliant. My friend Matt Kane turned me on to this program. Elevate yourself. Remember your purity and truth. This week's program is a conversation with physician and storyteller Rachel Naomi Nemen. Her books include Kitchen Table Wisdom and Lessons from My Grandfather. This is what she had to say about STORY, a subject that's very special to me:
  • Stories are a container for wisdom.

  • They touch something human and unchangeable in us.

  • Stories are what hold a culture together

  • The world is made of stories, not of facts.

  • Facts are only the bones of stories.

  • Our wholeness is never lost; only forgotten.

  • Integrity simply means "what is true."

    Check it out.

03 December 2008

Odetta In Memorium


MixwitMixwit make a mixtapeMixwit mixtapes



American folk legend Odetta has died, at the age of 77, of heart disease. Listening to the voice, well, it makes me know, know by faith, by soul, that something much more powerful than our human bodies and minds lives in each and every one of us, and instead of sadness, I feel a bouyancy of spirit, a connectedness to everyone. That's how powerful Odetta's voice is.

02 December 2008

O Superman circa 1980.



More bragging: not many people get to have Laurie Anderson as a childhood soundtrack, but I did. And inexplicably, this song reminds me of Texas Hill Country. So Ahead of Her Time. Then. Now. Always. Ms. Laurie Anderson.

Goodbye, November

{Photo found on Flickr}

Purgatory Is Nearer in November
by Josephine Jacobsen

November is beautiful as the word sounds, is gray, is bare,
Is compact of wind, of leaves blown and the thin, tall rain;
Brought back to our care are the dead in November,
and the air of these days is charged with their pain.

For these are not the free dead, not the remote, bright crowd
Of our picture-book, or our image of nebulous heaven:
These are caught, tangled in a web comfortless as a shroud—
These have not familiar place, nor flight, nor oblivion, even.

They have not escaped yet-they are close in the clouds massing together;
At the cold first drop you will stare on the dark ground and remember.
They are the accent of autumn, they are the source of the tone of this weather.
The heart is reached by the waiting dead, in their month, in November.

"Purgatory Is Nearer in November" by Josephine Jacobsen, from Contents of a Minute. © Sarabande Books, 2008. Reprinted with permission (buy now) on The Writer's Almanac.