The most important issues

This video was brought to my attention by fellow members of my faith. We may not always see eye to eye with those of the Catholic faith but this video is something I feel strongly about passing along. To those who agree with this....please get out and vote this November.

Music and Memory #3

I just got myself a cheap little mp3 player. I have had a desire to get out and walk in the mornings and having some music to accompany me would help motivate me to walk more. I gathered a number of favorites from my computer and downloaded them to my new player.

Among the songs I added to my player were a few Josh Groban Christmas songs. Now if you have never heard him sing a carol or two you are definitely missing something. I could listen to them year round. In fact, when his Christmas CD came out last fall, I quickly got a copy for myself and began listening to it OVER and OVER...it was still only November.

About the time that I got this CD a good friend sent me a book...a very good, very difficult, very heart wrenching book, in the hopes that I would read it and enjoy it as he had.

Well, as it happened, I found myself reading that book, Give Us This Day, while listening to this new Christmas CD.

Fast forward to today. I am listening to the tunes I have just downloaded to my new mp3 player. As The First Noel and Angels we Have Heard on High by Josh Groban start out I am suddenly thinking of that book I read last fall. Many of the same feelings I had as I read that book come flooding back to my mind and heart.

It is a good thing.

Related posts:

• http://paperclippings.blogspot.com/2005/06/music-and-memory.html
• http://paperclippings.blogspot.com/2005/07/more-on-music-and-memory.html
• http://paperclippings.blogspot.com/2007/12/hardest-book-i-ever-read.html

Former US Soldier Speaks Out

This video came to my attention this morning. As this young man walks away from the camera...It brought a tear to my eye.



BTW...it was not paid for by the McCain campaign. One comment, left by the contributor, says,

One final comment. Some have suggested that the McCain campaign paid for this ad. Nothing could be further from the truth.

McCain would never use soldiers for political gain. He has honored them, but he will not use them.

This was a personal ad by someone who felt strongly about this cause.

Bumper Stickers Speak for Themselves

I snapped this picture while sitting at a stop light the other day.

In the lower left was this bumper sticker, saying Barack Obama for President 2008.

In the lower right was this bumper sticker saying Impeach Bush.

In the upper left was this nail in the Left's coffin.

It says, "I love my country...but I think we should start seeing other people."

And just to show it all together:

Need I say more?

A new resident at our house

The cat lover in me is incredibly happy right now. In all the time that I have been married we have not had a cat live with us. My hubby is some what allergic to them.

Then our neice along with the neighbor kids pitched in to buy a kitten for $5.00. Well, the neighbor kids' mom is highly allergic to the critters. So, we ended up giving it a trial run at our house. We still have to see what happens, but it is looking good so far.

She is about 7 or 8 weeks old and is completely house trained. Good job kids...on picking a good cat!

Our kitten's name is Bessie Cow. She looks sorta like a black and white cow...only MUCH smaller.

Now we have a kitten who scurries across the floor and purrs up a storm. At this moment she is asleep on some stuff on my computer desk.

LIFE IS GOOD!!!

City of Heroes...and friends

Warning: If you don't play the game you might not care. If you do play the game...you still might not care. Read on if you want.

I recently convinced a friend to join in the fun on City of Heroes. I have been playing for over a year now and thought this friend would enjoy the game, as well.

Well, he brought another friend along with and I have found them to be hilariously fun. Just this week I had to walk away from the computer to take care of family stuff. This picture shows what I came back to find. They had their characters jump up on the torch sconces near the entrance to a room. I quickly snapped a screenshot because it was so funny.

All their in-game banter has been increased with the addition of Teamspeak to our gameplay. :)

Anne turns 100

In the late 1987 I was introduced to a little red-haired orphan named Anne Shirley when PBS aired the new movie Anne of Green Gables. I liked the story, but something came up to prevent me from viewing the movie in its entirety.

Some years later it was re-aired as a promotional tool to raise funds for PBS. This time I saw it from beginning to end. This time I was hooked on the story. I wished there was more.

Not too long after this I learned that this movie was based on books written by LM Montgomery. In the early 90s I received the entire set of books about Anne. I read the whole set of 8 books in a little over a week. Like many good books that are turned into movies I found that there was a much better story told through the written pages than is portrayed on screen.

A few years later I reread the series. This time I could not put the story to rest. There were parts of the story that I felt were left out. In order to get the "fill-in" stuff out of my head I wrote, what I later learned, was fan-fiction.

I am now a huge fan of LM Montgomery. I have read other books she wrote beyond the Anne series. These include: Kilmeny of the Orchard, The Story Girl, The Golden Road, the Emily series, The Blue Castle, and various short story collections that have come to my attention. I have yet to read everything that she wrote, but give me time.

I write about this now because the story of Anne Shirley was first published 100 years ago in 1908. The author, LM (Maud Montgomery) hailed from Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada. After writing the first two books she intended to leave the story there. But fans of the books clamored for more. The subsequent 6 books in the series were written here and there with a couple of the stories written out of chronological order. People simply wanted to know what happened between times.

"Cavendish is, to a large extent, Avonlea," Montgomery wrote in 1911. "Green Gables was drawn from David Macneill's house, though not so much the house itself as the situation and scenery, and the truth of my description of it is attested by the fact that everyone has recognized it."

Montgomery's home is no longer standing, but the restored Macneill farmhouse, now known as Green Gables, has become part of a national park and draws thousands of visitors each year.

That alone is testament to Anne's power to move the human spirit. "When the book was first launched, it was promoted as a book that drives away the blues," said Gammell. "It is uplifting, it does make you feel good." Carma Wadley, Deseret News, September 2, 2008

Huzzah to Anne and to the lady who created her, Lucy Maud Montgomery!!