the scriptorium

Friday, January 30, 2004

Week 2: Top 5 Picks
Yay! I got through reading this week's entries. I'm learning to be a bit more Simon-like in my technique (not that I'm gonna blast anyone or anything--I've just learned that if a story doesn't immediately grab my interest, it's not Top 5 material). All of the entries were really good, as usual, but there were five that particularly shone. As I said previously, any previous Top 5 "winners" are disqualified from future Top 5 lists, simply because I want to showcase as many as possible and I know me--I'll keep going to the same five if I don't make myself look at others' offerings. So without further ado, here they are (in no particular order):

1. Where the Hell Was I?: Hilarious post about a freedom of expression that, if we're lucky, we'll never experience the sight of.
2. Look Both Ways: Photoessay of what freedom looks like.
3. The Journey: Musing on the choice between freedom and "safety".
4. Quantum Meruit: The freedom to leave one's past behind.
5. Again with the "last but not least" thing--this is the sentimental favorite for me this week: Thinking, Just Thinking. This is a wonderfully poignant tale of the freedom that springs from forgiveness.

posted by #Debi at 2:39 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Here's another fun thing found while reading the Blogger Idol posts for this week. (The states I have visited are in red.) Problem is, I can't remember which one I got it from, since several of them had it. Anyway, I thought it was cool, so I nabbed it. Thanks to whomever.

posted by #Debi at 2:31 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

Thursday, January 29, 2004

It's amazing the things you'll find when browsing the Blogger Idol posts:

Cooter
You are Cooter. You are good with your hands and
don't say much. When you do it's usually an
attempt at humor. If you had a clean shirt,
you'd probably use it for a rag.

What Dukes of Hazzard Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I haven't gotten to all the posts I want to read in order to formulate my Top 5 list this week, but I did decide on one rule for myself. I decided that once a blog has appeared on one of my Top 5 lists, it cannot appear on another. That way, a different 5 blogs will be featured each week. As it happened, that knocked a couple that I really enjoyed out of contention this week. So in addition to the ones I will post in the next couple of days, go read the entries from last week's Top 5 as well. Heck, I dare ya--go try and read them all! (Oh, yeah--the lovely quiz above was found via Keep It Simple, Stupid. Thanks much.)

posted by #Debi at 10:27 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

Sunday, January 25, 2004

Week 2: Freedom
I have often said (or if I didn't say it, I have thought it) that anything worthwhile that I have to say on a subject has probably already been said better by someone before me. In that spirit, I offer the thoughts of greater minds than mine in this compilation of quotes on the subject of freedom (with the occasional commentary, of course--you don't expect me to say nothing on the subject, do you?):

"Freedom of speech is of no use to a man who has nothing to say and freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God."
~Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
~*~*~*~*~*~
"The freedom to share one's insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.
~Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1740-1792)
This should be the "battle cry" of bloggers everywhere.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate."
~Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978)
Ditto above commentary.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
~Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
~*~*~*~*~*~
So long as faith with freedom reigns
And loyal hope survives,
And gracious charity remains
To leaven lowly lives;
While there is one untrodden tract
For intellect or will,
And men are free to think and act,
Life is worth living still.
~Alfred Austin (1835-1913)
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Freedom is the moment between sleep and waking before selfhood and the world return."
~Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
~Kris Kristofferson (b. 1936)
I included this just to see if anyone's paying attention, and because it's the song that jumped in my head when I first saw this week's topic. When you think about it, though, there's a kind of "Zen" about this lyric.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time."
~Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Again with the "Zen" thing. Actually, it kinda sounds like a Son of God I know.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Psalm 119:45: I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts.
~*~*~*~*~*~
2 Corinthians 3:17: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Ephesians 3:12: In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Galatians 5:1: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
~*~*~*~*~*~
James 1:25: But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it--he will be blessed in what he does.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
~Richard Lovelace (1618-1657?)
~*~*~*~*~*~
Last but not least, I really like this last one--it's pithy and should be meditated on for a while.
"Words like 'freedom,' 'justice,' 'democracy' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply."
~James Baldwin (1924-1987)

posted by #Debi at 6:04 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

Thursday, January 22, 2004

Wow. It has taken me until just now to get through reading all of the entries in week one of

. There were 80 entries, and I wanted to read them all, at least for the first week. That way I could make an informed decision on my "top 5". I'm afraid, though, that I was a little overwhelmed, and the last entries probably didn't get the attention they deserved from me. I know a little more now how Simon, Randy, and Paula must feel after hearing audition after audition for days on end. The big difference here is that there really were no bad entries. Click on the button above to read all the entries, if you dare to take on the task. My top 5 recommendations are (in no particular order):

1. Codswallop and Flapdoodle: A conversation between the main characters, having been swept into a time warp. Very imaginative and entertaining.
2. Clarity Amdist Chaos: The journal of a junior high "playah".
3. Loobylu's Journal: A wonderfully illustrated fashion tour of the '80's.
4. Tim Samoff: Wacky adventure of 6 adolescent thrill-seekers, armed with nothing but skateboard decks and bravado.
5. And last, but definitely not least, Cliff Between the Lines: The stories were so good it took two posts to get it all. I have to admit that this one was my sentimental favorite this week, because of the writing style and the use of "definitions" at the beginning of each post that functioned as sort of subtitles.

Now I have a bit of a "breather" before next week's topic is revealed. I have to admit that I'm enjoying this much more than I thought I would. I've not had much time to get around to my regular favorite blogs this week, so I'm gonna have to figure out a way to pare down the number of Idol blogs I read next week. They're all so good, it'll be difficult to cut them down. I have a list of about 20 out of the 80 that stood out, so I may just read those for next time.

posted by #Debi at 8:59 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

Sunday, January 18, 2004

Week 1: The ‘80’s
Omigod! It is so totally heinous to open the door on the closet that I shoved the ‘80’s into. The big hair, along with that seemingly uniquely Southern phenomenon known as the front porch bangs (Liz knows that of which I speak). Football-player-sized shoulder pads that, if you had to wear a jacket and a shirt, made you look like something out of science-fiction B movies. The ‘80’s were, I’m afraid, my defining decade in a lot of ways. I entered them as a relatively squeaky-clean, fresh-faced, thin, soon-to-be college graduate, innocently thinking that now that I was an adult, life was mine to define any way I wanted. The world was my oyster, so to speak. By the time the ‘80’s were done, I was a divorced, belly-dancing, appliance salesperson/backup singer, eyes-wide-opened with disillusionment . But I get ahead of myself.

I graduated from EKU in August of 1983 with a degree in Marketing that I still have never used in a marketable way. At that point, I think I had in mind to be a top buyer for a major department store, since I had laid aside my previous dream of being the next Donna Karan. However, a month or so later I was married (to the man I “settled for”, as it turned out), living in Oklahoma as a military wife. That ended up being the best part of the whole marriage. Before this, I had never seen a prairie grassfire, never interacted with Native Americans, and never (except for the dorm) lived away from home. Lawton was like an itty-bitty global community, in the days before such a term was even coined. I met people from all over the country, and fed a good many of them. My ex hung out mostly with his single Army buddies, and they would often come over for a home-cooked meal and some of my homemade pecan pie. Pecans were plentiful in Lawton. We even had a pecan tree in the front yard of the house we rented (not that we ever picked anything from it). It was a wonderful experience, for the most part (meaning, except for my ex and I being constantly at each other’s throats), and it gave me, I think, the hunger that I now have for seeing the world. I mean, how cool is it to be working at a rural WalMart alongside a girl that you later find out is a real live Indian princess?

Unfortunately, that was only one year out of three years of pain and suffering (for both of us, I think). But it did change my life, in that it solidified in me things that I wanted by illustrating those things that I didn’t have. I’m not talking about material things, really; more like internal things such as a sense of self, a spiritual life, independence (but yet, oddly, there was also the need for support, too, both physical and emotional).

Wow. This could easily turn into an autobiography if I’m not careful. I don’t want to recount my entire experience of the ‘80’s, just one pivotal point in my life that happened to occur then. I often look back on my life as a sort of “flow chart”—you know, those things we did in computer classes in the ‘80’s where you have the little boxes that say, “if yes, then this” and “if no, then the other”. There are plenty of times in my life that I wish I had chosen the other fork in the chart, but that’s not possible. I guess the only thing one can do is take the lessons of the choice and use them to make better choices in the future. That’s what I’m trying to do with the ‘80’s.

posted by #Debi at 4:38 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

Thursday, January 15, 2004

No man is an Island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankind;
And therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
John Donne, poet (1573-1631)

It's odd that this quote appeared in my A.Word.A.Day email for today. Yesterday I got a call from my mom, telling me that my last uncle, her last brother, had died of pneumonia the night before. I can't imagine how hard this must be on her. She's now had three brothers die in the space of about 4 years. Since her mother died when she was in high school, and she was the #2 child (behind my oldest uncle), I imagine that she did what most older sisters do and became a sort of surrogate mother to her younger siblings. She sounded OK on the phone, but I know things are going to be rough at the funeral. I hate to see my mom in pain in any way, and this is a lot of pain for a person to go though in a short span.

I was trying to think of my defining memory of my uncle Paul (I don't capitalize "uncle" because we never called our uncles and aunt by the titles, just by their names). There is, of course, the last couple of years, after his accident, when he had been little more than a functioning vegetable. He was working with one of his brothers in loading a horse onto a trailer when the horse kicked the gate that Paul was closing. It knocked him to the ground and out, and he ended up having to have a partial lobotomy, more or less, to deal with the swelling and subsequent brain damage. I didn't see him much during that time, though, so I prefer to remember when he was younger, when I was a kid. I remember him building a chopper, and I thought he was the coolest guy I knew. I don't think I ever got to ride on it, but maybe he let me sit on it. I remember, when I was a teenager, the grief he and his former wife went through when his youngest child died at age three. Jeff had birth defects, and I can always remember his mother crying out at the "wake" about how he never got to call her Mama. I think their marriage broke up over issues surrounding that grief. And, yes, I remember the grief at the hospital directly after his accident, the guilt his brother Bill (who owned the horse) felt about Paul's life coming to an effective end. Mom is convinced that that guilt brought back the cancer he had recovered from but ultimately died from.

The funeral is tomorrow. I'm taking a half-day and going up to be there for my mom. Please pray for all of us.

posted by #Debi at 6:19 AM | permalink | 0 comments |

Sunday, January 11, 2004

I’ve been back from Mayhem for almost 24 hours, and the glow of hanging out with so many great people is starting to subside just a bit. I now have to start thinking about tomorrow and work and all that. (Well, maybe I have a few more minutes to bask…)

Mayhem was very cool, mostly for the relational thing, from my point of view. One of the coolest things was meeting so many people from the blogosphere and putting names with the faces. I met Eric Keck, who is much younger than I thought he was. (Not that I thought he was all that old—he just looks so young!) I met Beth Keck, who is absolutely gorgeous and a great singer/songwriter. She provided some of the worship for us. Oh yeah, mustn’t forget—I met Tom Mohan, which was very cool, since he’s a semi-regular commenter. I had no idea he was planning to be there, and when I saw his nametag, I’m like, “Are you the Tom Mohan? I’m Debi from the Scriptorium!” How high-school-reunion of me! I met Todd Hunter, who has been such a help to Alan in encouraging him to hang in there. Gosh, I met so many people I can’t remember them all! What was truly bizarre is the number of people who saw my nametag and said that they enjoyed reading my blog. That was cool, but a little disconcerting. Makes me feel like I have to come up with something profound now. Oh well, if that happens, it’ll be accidental, let me assure you!

Most of the time I spent at the coffee machine and the drink/snack table, helping Liz with the never-ending task of keeping everyone coffeed-up. Liz had it pretty much under control; I just kept supplies stocked and filled coffeepots with water for the next round and such. Probably the most fun I had was at dinner on Friday night. We had a kind of buffet, with several different kinds of sandwiches, cookies, chips, and drinks. Everyone lined up and filed through, and I kept the trays going, replacing empty ones with full ones. But, that way I got to meet pretty much everybody. I met some fellas from Toronto who were a lot of fun (Canadians have such a great sense of humor!). There were people there from Oregon, Florida, Massachusetts, and several points in between. I think all in all there were about 260 people there. Pretty cool.

Brian McLaren was the main “speaker”, and he spoke 3 different times during the weekend. I got to serve him coffee (dig me!), but really didn’t get to hear him speak much, because I was helping at the coffee station. I’m not complaining though, because I got to go to the round-table discussions on Saturday, and they were very cool. There were 5 to pick from in the morning, and 6 to pick from in the afternoon. In the morning, I went to one about dealing with “relational mutts”, or people who have a hard time connecting with other people for one reason or another. That was very helpful, especially with the ministry I’m beginning to volunteer with (which, no, I haven’t told you about yet—I’ll get to it!). In the afternoon, I went to a round-table headed by Mollie and Bill Bean, entitled “Sleeping Single in a Simple Church”. I was a little depressed at first that the group consisted of about fifteen 20-somethings and me, but it turned out cool. I got to show them another side of the picture, that if your life is fulfilling in other ways, the “mate” issue doesn’t loom quite so large. Or at least I hope that’s how it came out. :^)

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot—I got some really good photos during the weekend. They’re posted on my fotopage.

posted by #Debi at 7:26 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

OK, this next is Laura's fault:

What Famous Leader Are You?

I don't know about that, but I like it better than the results I got when I chose the 18 question version of the test (this is the 45 question version), which was JFK and it said something about me liking power for the increased sexual options it afforded...

posted by #Debi at 2:48 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

Friday, January 09, 2004

I'm sitting here blog-surfing when I ought to be getting organized to go to Cincinnati. I've got this whole list of things that need to be done, and I keep revising it, marking off things that should be done today, but can probably wait 'til I get back. I've been doing this a lot lately, putting things off, to the point that I'm really starting to get disgusted with me and my surroundings.

I say I've been blog-surfing, but really not so much. Something's going on with my Imac where the screen is getting fuzzy (no, it's not dust--I already thought of that). It's like I need to adjust the sharpness if it were a TV, but there's no sharpness knob on an Imac. I've run Norton Utilities on it, thanks to +Alan, but that doesn't seem to have fixed the problem. If it turns out to be somethng that requires a lot of money to fix, I'm gonna be upset. I have too many things draining my bank account right now to fool with putting money into my computer. If anyone has any ideas about what could be causing this problem, feel free to let me know. It's getting so bad that sometimes I have to print out my email to read it. Oh, well...

I'm really looking forward to Mayhem--I think it's going to be an awesome time. However, I'm not looking forward to driving there. It snowed last night, and the roads are covered in my neighborhood. I'm sure the main roads are clear, but I still hate driving in snow, even if it's just a little bit. Too many idiots out on the roads. It'd be cool if I had someone to ride with me, but everyone else here is either going way early or way late. /whining

Well, I've got lots to do and little time to do it, so I'd best get to it. Peace!

posted by #Debi at 9:08 AM | permalink | 0 comments |

Thursday, January 08, 2004

It's been a hectic week so far, with vestiges of the cold still hanging on, and getting used to sort of a new schedule at work (more on that later). I hope to be able to post longer tomorrow, since I have the day off to go to Mayhem this weekend in Cincinnati. I pray that it doesn't snow significantly, because it's looking like I'll be driving by myself up there, and I hate driving in the snow.

I mainly wanted to direct everyone to a lovely Epiphany story in progress over at No Claim to Sainthood. Part One is posted, and is gripping already. I can't wait to read the rest of it.

I must go now, since I told myself that I would get to work early today so I can leave early and get some laundry done. It's starting to look like getting to work early isn't going to happen, though. Oh, well....

posted by #Debi at 6:11 AM | permalink | 0 comments |

Thursday, January 01, 2004

I did absolutely nothing today, except manage (and hopefully conquer) my cold symptoms with sleep and medication. I did do a little bit (OK, a lot) of blog surfing. And, I got a fotopage! Check it out and let me know what you think.

posted by #Debi at 9:17 PM | permalink | 0 comments |

Hi, I'm Debi. Once in a while I have a thought and I like to write it down before it goes away. This is where I write it.