Inspired by Jake, I’m going to pull some stuff from old writings, journals, papers, etc that I’ve done and post them here. Below is some rambling thoughts from my journal after my first Art Appreciation class at Wheaton College with Jeff Thompson. But before that, an explanation of my history with art.
Though my mom painted all over our house (literally), I’d never been a big fan of ‘formal’ art. One particular event scarred my art appreciation. Sometime during middle school my parents got a membership to The Art Institute of …

Dove and Palm Oil (ht. Corporate Babysitter)

Condoleezza Rice (ht. Thom)

Liberia needs clean water (ht. twotp)

Old School Poision- Something to Believe In (ht. Gavin)

3 Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree (ht. Thom, Mike, MOA)

Here are a few stories of creativity I’ve read recently…

With all the foreclosures there are a lot of neighborhoods with houses with rather unpleasant plywood covering the doors and windows. An artist in Chicago took advantage of the opportunity and began offering his boarding contract services with a twist. Basically he puts boards on windows, but he paints the boards to look like windows and doors, rather then just boring plywood. He’s done it to a few houses in my part of the city and is hoping to get a …

Okay, this will be a terribly undeep discussion. Aaron sent me a link to WorldNetDaily the other day and I read the article, commented and then browsed a couple of the links. From what I gather, WorldNetDaily is a christian news website (I think it used to be a magazine?), so one of it’s article titles struck me: “Obama aide says he didn’t mean to blaspheme Jesus”
The title doesn’t strike me because it has anything to do with politics, but that it seems to imply that they think …

Conveniently for my weekly book reading, I got hooked up with the Ooze blogger program, and now I get books shipped to my door every once in a while to read, enjoy and review. The first, My Beautiful Idol, by Pete Gall, I received last week and finished in a few days.
The book was basically a memoir, sort of like Blue Like Jazz in style. It sort of seemed like I was reading a series of blog post from a really good writer. Gall is brutally honest about his mindset …

My wife had this brilliant thought the other day (this occurs most days, the really brilliance is when my brain stays focused long enough to remember it): “If the government is just giving away money with this Economic Stimulus package thing, then why not at least give it to the people it was once promised to.” Brilliant.
Okay, so I know it’s a little late for the suggestion, but it’s worth dreaming about. The government is giving $600 to every person who made over $3000 and filed their taxes this year. …

I posted on the topic of foreclosures early this week, mostly with a brainstorm idea on what I think could help remedy some of the problems low income neighborhoods face. It was met with some thought provoking challenges, that I’m trying to consider. That being said, I would love to read if anyone has written or read other posts about Foreclosures, the housing crisis, and particularly what the role of the church and/or us as individuals should be in the midst of this. Any ideas?
If so add them to the …

A month or so ago, while browsing the blog of one of the amazing writers for Geez Magazine (which I’ll be reviewing on Saturday), Chris Cocca, I learned about a site called 6 Sentences. The site basically contains stories that are six sentences long, and they are quite good. Anyways, it seemed like an excellent writing exercise to help improve me writing abilities, so I gave it a shot. I’m going to try this or something similar (maybe some spoken word) at least once a week, and I just …