Tennessee (What!?! Wednesday)

"Lord I've really been real stressed
Down and out, losing ground
Although I am black and proud
Problems got me pessimistic
Brothers and sisters keep messing up
Why does it have to be so damn tough?
I don't know where I can go
To let these ghosts out of my skull
My grandma's passed, my brothers gone
I never at once felt so alone
I know you're supposed to be my steering wheel
Not just my spare tire
But Lord I ask you
To be my guiding force and truth
For some strange reason it had to be
He guided me to Tennessee

Take me to another place
Take me to another land
Make me forget all that hurts me
Let me understand your plan

Lord it's obvious we got a relationship
Talking to each other every night and day
Although you're superior over me
We talk to each other in a friendship way

Then outta nowhere you tell me to break
Outta the country and into more country
Passed Dyesburg into Ripley
Where the ghost of childhood haunts me
Walk the roads my forefathers walked
Climbed the trees my forefathers hung from
Ask those trees for all their wisdom
They tell me my ears are so young
Go back to from whence you came
My family tree my family name
For some strange reason it had to be
He guided me to Tennessee

Take me to another place
Take me to another land
Make me forget all that hurts me
Let me understand your plan

Now I see the importance of history
Why people be in the mess that they be
Many journeys to freedom made in vain
By brothers on the corner playing ghetto games
I ask you Lord why you enlightened me
Without the enlightment of all my folks
He said 'cause I set myself on a quest for truth
And he was there to quench my thirst
But I am still thirsty...
The Lord allowed me to drink some more
He said what I am searching for
are the answers to all which are in front of me
The ultimate truth started to get blurry
For some strange reason it had to be
It was all a dream about Tennessee

Take me to another place
Take me to another land
Make me forget all that hurts me
Let me understand your plan"

- Arrested Development "Tennessee" from the album 3 Years, 5 Months, 2 Days In The Life Of...

My So-Called Life (the famous letter)

Dear Angela,

I know in the past I've caused you pain and I'm sorry. And I'll always be sorry 'till the day I die. And I hate this pen I'm holding because I should be holding you. I hate this paper under my hand because it isn't you. I even hate this letter because it's not the whole truth. Because the whole truth is so much more than a letter can even say. If you want to hate me, go ahead. If you want to burn this letter, do it. You could burn the whole world down; you could tell me to go to hell. I'd go, if you wanted me to. And I'd send you a letter from there.

Sincerely,

Jordan Catalano

- My So-Called Life television series

This is a sad letter but it's even more sad in the context of the show. Jordan wants to apologize to Angela but he can't do it. He also can't read or write very well so he enlists Brian to help him write it. Brian has always loved Angela and writes the letter pretty much in both he and Jordan's voice. 

Someday My Chance Will Come

"I will study and prepare... and someday my chance will come."

- Abraham Lincoln

Happy Monday Everyone!

Image-Based Communication vs Traditional Storytelling

"I’m saying that when Gutenberg invented moveable type in 1454 people feared the oral tradition of storytelling would be replaced, lost, or regarded as a lower form of communication.  They were upset that information previously communicated by word-of-mouth was now being written, coded in text, and that access to this information would be restricted to only those persons who could read – which in many cases, is exactly what happened.  Now book people. the literati, are upset because the world is adopting a more image-based communication system, because we’re telling stories and sharing information via pictures."

- Gordon J.H. Leenders. May Not Appear Exactly As Shown. pg 91

Laura's Song

I'm loving this song. It's from Donwill's album "Don Cusack in High Fidelity."

If you like this song, you can download it for free here - http://donwill.bandcamp.com/track/lauras-song-radio-edit

and then you should get your own copy of the album. It's a great concept album that I've been bumping steadily for over a week now.

Why Do People Think Like This?

- reblogged from memories from the past 

I know people who think like this and I just want to tell them. "It's okay to be happy."

Remembering the Future

"A philosopher, Kierkegaard, he said, 'The most painful state of being is remembering the future,' particularly one you can never have."

- Father Mallory from Joan of Arcadia: Season 1 Episode 7 "Death Be Not Whatever"

2 Choices - React or Resolve

"You have two choices . . .  react or resolve."

- Zach, age 12

Taken from Deb Austin Brown's amazing book "Growing Character: 99 Successful Strategies for the Elementary School Classroom"

Happy Monday Everyone!

Don't Smoke, Write

"I don’t smoke. I came across this great timesaver just a few weeks ago at my children’s school song and dance extravaganza (of course, I took my laptop… just in case). There were 20-to-30-minute periods when said kiddies weren’t extravaganzaing. Parents who smoked popped out for a cigarette break. 'Aha!' I thought – a perfect time to pop out for a write-a-blog-post break. I managed to draft a whole post in my two breaks and it’s so much healthier than smoking."

- Sean Banville from his blog post - http://seanbanville.com/2010/03/20/time-management-tips-4-busy-teachers-–-part-ii/ 

Crazy How Easy It Is To Hurt Someone

“Oh, it wasn’t you,” she frowned. “It was a coincidence. When you were born your father had a…a disappointment. A big disappointment. It broke his spirit just as he was getting going. It’s crazy, crazy how easy it is to hurt a man.”

- Monique Proulx. The Heart is an Involuntary Muscle. translated by David Homel and Fred A. Reed. Douglas & McIntyre Ltd, 2003. pg 355

What Stories Do

"Stories can give us ways to arrange what we see and experience, can give us the material for conversation, can help us to make contact with our grandchildren by reading to them."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 330

I really like this book. It really explains what stories do and how we use them to organize our thoughts and make sense of our world.

How Much Strength We Have

"Sometimes we don't know our own strength. It can be hard to tell just how much weight you can safely bear, or how much will crush you. I'd like to think you can shoulder as big a burden as you believe you can, that it's all a matter of will. Certainly a comforting thought...Other times it's hard to remember you had any strength at all. Then you can only hope to have someone to remind you, you were once fierce and able."

- Irv Harper, the narrator on Everwood

Only So Many Tomorrows

"Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows."

- Michael Landon

Happy Monday Everyone!

We Need to Focus Inwardly Sometimes

"The danger of modern life is that we are so predominantly extroverted that we think our energy should always be outer-focused, and so we fight this push into ourselves."

- Bond, D. Stephenson, Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way of Life. Shambala, 1993 pg 83

One Author

"John Donne was in no doubt about the connection between story and life:

All mankinde is of one Author, and is one volume; when one Man dies, one Chapter is not torne out of the booke, but translated into a better language and every Chapter must be so translated; God emploies several translators; some peeces are translated by age, some by sicknesse, some by warre, some by justice; but Gods hand is in every translation; and his hand shall binde up all our scattered leaves againe, for that Library where every book shall lie open to one another."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 248

King of Rock

"I'm the king of rock, there is none higher
Sucker MC's should call me sire
To burn my kingdom, you must use fire
I won't stop rockin' till I retire

Now we rock the party and come correct
All cuts are on time and rhymes connect
Got the right to vote and will elect
And other rappers can't stand us, but give us respect

They called us ill, we're gettin iller,
There's no one chiller
It's not Michael Jackson and this is not "Thriller"
I'm one def rapper, I know I can hang
I'm Run from Run-DMC, like Kool from Kool and the Gang

Roll to the rock, rock to the roll
DMC stands for devestating mic control
You can't touch me with a ten foot pole
And I even made the devil sell me his soul

Now we crash through walls, cut through floors
Bust through ceilings and knock down doors
And when we're on the tape, we're fresh out the box
You can hear our sound for blocks and blocks
For every living person we're a verbal treat
It's me and DMC, Jay where's the beat?

Now we're the baddest of the bad, the coolest of the cool
I'm DMC, I rock and roll, I'm DJ Run, I rock and rule
It's not a Trick or Treat and it's not a April Fool
It's all brand new, never ever old school

You've got the music in your body and you can't comprehend
When your mind won't wiggle and your knees won't bend
Music ain't nothin but a people's jam
It's DJ Run, DMC rockin without a band

Now I walked on ice and never fell
I spend my time in a plush hotel
I stood on many stages, held many mics
Take airplane flights, at huge heights
So all you sucker MC's, you gotta say please
Cause when he jumps high, I'm pulling down weeds
Got a song so strong, it's knocking down trees
Is it hard to believe it's Run-DMC

I am from, around the way
And Run goes to school, every day
And Jay plays the records he has to play
And we get down with no delay, HEY!
I rock the party with the words I speak
And Run says the rhymes that are unique
And Jay cuts the records every day of the week
And we are the crew that can never be beat
So don't try to diss me, try to be my friend
Cause if you do, you'll get yours in the end
The rhymes we say, shall set a trend
Because a devestating rap is what we send

Every jam we play, we break two needles
There's three of us but we're not the Beatles
My name is Darryl, you can call him D
You can call me Darryl Mack, or you can call him DMC
People always ask, "DMC, what does it mean?"
D's for never dirty, MC for mostly clean

Like we said before, we rock hardcore
I'm DJ Run, I can scratch. I'm DMC, I can draw
And now we got the knack, to attract
Our rhyme's an aphrodisiac
We'll reign on your brain and rock your knot
When it comes to rock, give it all we got
To be MC's, we got what it takes
Let the poppers pop and the breakers break
We're cool cool cats, it's like that
That's the way it is, so stay the hell back
We're causin' hard times, for sucker MC's
Cause they don't make no songs like these
PERIOD!"

- Run-DMC title track from the album "King of Rock"

Why Do I Stay with Her?

Wise words today for anyone who is in an unhealthy relationship. You can change the pronouns so that this passage will work equally well to inspire you if you are a guy (read as written) or a girl (replace 'she' with 'he')

So here is the wisdom, I transcribed from the DVD "The Holiday."

Miles: "Why am I attracted to a person I know isn't good?"

Iris: "I happen to know the answer to this. Because you're hoping you're wrong and every time she does something that tells you she's no good you ignore it. And every time she comes through and surprises you, she wins you over, and you lose the argument with yourself that she's not for you."

Miles: "Exactly. And on top of that, there's the old standby - I can't believe a girl like that would actually be  with a guy like me."

- The Holiday available on DVD

Pain is a Part of Life

"As much as it hurts, I'm starting to believe that pain is just as much a part of life as happiness. Can't have one without the other."

- @thehardcahhwolf

Today is not a Happy Monday Everyone.

I wish it were.

I'm just heart-broken. I shared my pain on Twitter last night and got some great support from my online friends. I so needed that.

Today I wrote a Sad Picture Story (Update of My Life) on my main blog. You can check it out if you want.

I think I just need to remember that I have had great joy. I should treasure those memories and the happiness that I did feel before this heartache and heartbreak.

Underlying Order

"My friends, as you can see, the chaos of the world had an underlying order. When the ancients discovered PHI, they were certain they had stumbled across God’s building block for the world, and they worshipped Nature because of that.  And one can understand why. God’s hand is evident in Nature, and even to this day there exist pagan, Mother Earth—revering religions. Many of us celebrate nature the way pagans did, and don’t even know it. May Day is a perfect example, the celebration of spring …the earth coming back to life to produce her bounty. The mysterious magic inherent in Divine Proportion was written at the beginning of time. Man is simply playing by Nature’s rules, and because art is man’s attempt to imitate the beauty of the Creator’s hand, you can imagine we might be seeing a lot of instances of the divine Proportion in art this semester."

- Dan Brown. The DaVinci Code. DoubleDay: New York, 2003. pg 95-96

Keep It Alive

Abstract Trees B&W
Originally uploaded by Tim Noonan

"Children prefer concrete images because they have not yet learned the language of abstraction. When they do they will have lost a powerful human response-code for describing and making sense of their world, unless they keep it alive through story."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 162

Moment of Truth

Guru of Gangstarr is in the hospital. He suffered a heart attack earlier this week and underwent surgery. Apparently he is doing okay, which is great to hear.

I thought it fitting today to play one of the best rap songs ever. It's from his group, Gangstarr. Enjoy!



"No matter what we face
We must face the moment of truth baby

They say it's lonely at the top,
in whatever you do
You always gotta watch motherf*ckers around you
Nobody's invincible, no plan is foolproof
We all must meet our moment of truth

Verse one

The same sheisty cats that you hang with, and do your thang with
Could set you up and wet you up, nigga peep the language
It's universal, you play with fire it may hurt you
Or burn you, lessons are blessings you should learn through
Let's face facts, although mc's lace tracks
It doesn't mean behind the scenes there ain't no dirt to trace back
That goes for all of us, there ain't nobody to trust
It's like sabotage, it's got me ready to bust
But I can't jeapordize, what I have done up to this point
So I'ma get more guys, to help me run the whole joint
Cultivate, multiply, motivate, or else we'll die
You know I be the master of the who, what,where, and why
See when you're shining, some chumps'll wanna dull ya
Always selfish jealous punks, will wanna pull ya
Down, just like some shellfish in a bucket
Cause they love it, to see your ass squirm like a worm
But just as you'll receive what is coming to you
Everybody else is gonna get theirs too
I ain't no saint, therefore I cannot dispute
That everyone must meet their moment of truth

Actions have reactions, don't be quick to judge
You may not know the hardships people don't speak of
It's best to step back, and observe with couth
For we all must meet our moment of truth

Verse two

Sometimes you gotta dig deep, when problems come near
Don't fear things get severe for everybody everywhere
Why do bad things happen, to good people?
Seems that life is just a constant war between good and evil
The situation that I'm facing, is mad amazing
To think such problems can arise from minor confrontations
Now I'm contemplating in my bedroom pacing
Dark clouds over my head, my heart's racing
Suicide? nah, I'm not a foolish guy
Don't even feel like drinking, or even getting high
Cause all that's gonna do really, is accelerate
The anxieties that I wish I could alleviate
But wait, I've been through a whole lot of other sh*t, before
So I oughta be able, to withstand some more
But I'm sweating though, my eyes are turning red and yo
I'm ready to lose my mind but instead I use my mind
I put down the knife, and take the bullets out my nine
My only crime, was that I'm too damn kind
And now some skanless motherf*ckers wanna take what's mine
But they can't take the respect, that I've earned in my lifetime
And you know they'll never stop the furious force of my rhymes
So like they say, every dog has it's day
And like they say, God works in a mysterious way
So I pray, remembering the days of my youth
As I prepare to meet my moment of truth

(you should know the truth
and the truth shall set you free)

Verse three

Yo I got one lyric pointed at your head for start
Another one, is pointed at your weak ass heart
Now if I pull the trigger, on these fully loaded lines
You're gonna wish I woulda pulled a black nine, I mack dimes
Crack the spines of the fake gangsters
Yeah the biting trifling niggaz, and the studio pranksters
Yo lookin at the situation plainly: will you remain g?
Or will you be looked upon strangely?
I reign as the articulator, with the greater data
Revolving on the tascam much doper than my last jam
While others struggle to juggle, tricky metaphors
I explore more, to expose the core
A lot of emcees, act stupid to me
And we have yet to see, if they can match our longevity
But anyway it's just another day
Another fake jack I slay with my spectac' rap display
Styles, smooth but rugged -- you can't push or shove it
You dig it and you dug it cause like money you love it
The king of monotone, with my own throne
Righteously violent prone my words bring winds like cyclones
Storming your hideout, blocking out your sunlight
Your image and your business, were truly not done right
Throw up your he-allah-i now, divine saviors
You got no hand skills there's no security to save ya
No pager, no celly, no drop top benz-y
I came to bring your phony hip-hop, to an ending
My art of war will leave you sore from the abuse
Cause you must meet your moment of truth."

- Gangstarr title track from the "Moment of Truth" album

Why Can't It all Be Poetry?

Fearless: "It's just one of those days where you just look at your life and you go, 'Is this my life? Is this all there's ever gonna be?' ... Look up, a couple hours later, bam! There's Vicki."

Joel: "It's like someone answered your question."

Fearless: "An answer, maybe not the answer. But for the first time in a long time, at least, I'm open to it. I don't know why... Ya know, I look at your life sometimes and think, 'That's how it's supposed to be. Get yourself a sweet wife, have a great kid.' Ya know, become a part of the whole chain of being."

Joel: "Yeah, chain of being. It's poetic."

Fearless: "I guess it ain't all poetry though, huh?"

- Boomtown, television series, Season 1: Episode 9 "Crash"

Warm it Up

"Optimists are people who take the cold water thrown at them, heat it with enthusiasm, and use the steam to push ahead."

- Author unknown.

This is one of "443 Character Quotes and Words of Wisdom" from Deb Austin Brown's excellent book, Growing Character: 99 Successful Strategies for the Elementary Classroom.


Happy Monday Everyone!