Author: Chad
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The Simba Life Quarterly
“Either run from it or learn from it.” This has been the motto and mission of The Simba Life as I’ve used it since its birth in 2006. My inspiration for the name came from The Lion King, but I’ve long desired to wrestle the Simba name and its connotations away from Disney’s grasp and forge for…
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House Of Cards
As the second season of House of Cards begins Friday, it’s worth remembering that the Netflix political drama last left us with a prayer. In last season’s finale, Frank Underwood, the politician who has schemed his way through a twisted plan of revenge, enters a church, gets on his knees and looks skyward. “Every time I’ve spoken…
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The Spirit of American Experience
[Update: the video with show footage was removed, so this one just has the music. Doesn’t have the same effect but it’ll have to do…] This might be one of my all-time favorite things. It’s the older version of the American Experience opening and theme (composed by Charles Kuskin) that so beautifully juxtaposes things I…
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Hoffman And Heath
I watched this video from the 2005 Oscars to remember the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, but was reminded when watching it that Heath Ledger was also up for the award that year. And now both men are gone. When an old actor dies we can look back fondly on his career and be grateful for…
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Now Is The Time
I’d like to thank two like-minded quotes for not leaving my conscience alone. I’m not thankful in the happy Thanksgiving sense—more like how someone keeps fighting an argument, if only with himself, though he already knows he’s toast. Fine, I give in, but I’m not happy about it. The first is from John Wesley’s “Sermon…
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Where There’s A Willard…
I’ve recently started volunteering at the Frances Willard House Museum, specifically in the archives/library, which holds material from and related to the life of Frances Willard, the suffragist and temperance advocate who led the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the late nineteenth century. I got to see the museum’s recent exhibit, titled “Rights or…
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Dharma Island
Disney owns the Lost mythology, so why not a Dharma Initiative attraction on Discovery Island? :: http://t.co/AppFOyDL7V— John August (@johnaugust) January 13, 2014 John August’s above tweet informed me that Disney World used to have a wildlife attraction on their massive property called Discovery Island, which was abandoned in 1999 and left to be overrun by wilderness.…
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Get Open And Wait
A poem Get open and wait—And suddenly the world becomes clear.Like a sunbeam across a prairieThe atmosphere cracks and shouts a violent hello.A burning yellow rainbow—light itself enlightened.We seek illumination in our days;we crowd them still with noble desiresof seeing the sunset once again.Just one more time.
# poetry -
iLibrary: Resistance Is Futile
If a library doesn’t have books, does it cease to be a library? The coming of BiblioTech, a new Apple Store computer lab bookless library in San Antonio, the first in the nation, begs the question. It has also brought with it rhetorical musings on whether the future of libraries is already here, and whether…
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Seeing In Black And White
Rod Dreher recently wrote about Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s comments about, essentially, how happy he believed Black Southerners were in the 1950s before the civil rights movement. To Dreher, Robertson’s comments demonstrate the power of narrative, of the stories we tell ourselves and how they affect how we see the “truth” of our own situations, even when…
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The Cold Is A Sharpener
A poem The cold is a sharpener. A whetstone on the world. It makes the sky stronger, like marble, more vivid in its crepuscular color. It makes the air thicker: the crunch of my boots on the sidewalk’s new coat of snow slices through it, so clean and clear. It makes my body taut, every…
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What Is This Feeling?
I made a goal to see more theater (musicals especially) and this year I’ve succeeded. The Book of Mormon, then Once, and now Wicked, which I saw on Thursday. I loved the music of Once in its own right, but it’s different from the others, which are more traditional showtunes. That said, there is something I love about…
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An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
Chris Hadfield couldn’t just be a fighter pilot, engineer, astronaut, photographer, musician, or the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station: he just had to be a damn good writer too. At one point in his superb memoir An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Hadfield describes what it’s like to exit the ISS into…
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Ötzi: A Life
Radiolab has produced another winner in their “An Ice-Cold Case” episode, an illuminating portrait of Ötzi, a 5000-year-old natural mummy discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991. The details scientists have been able to ascertain about this mountain man are astounding. Radiolab, as usual, brings the story alive, telling what we know of Ötzi’s life and…
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A Novel Ninevember
Fiction usually isn’t my thing, but I want to get better at it. So I’m reading nine novels in November’s thirty days and writing about them here. I’ll update this post as I go along. Some spoilers, natch. Update: Just made it through the ninth book, with only hours to spare. I’m very glad to have deepened…
# books, Ender’s Game, Fahrenheit 451, fiction, Fortunately the Milk, Gilead, Jerry Spinelli, Lois Lowry, Marilynne Robinson, Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, Paul Coelho, Perks of Being a Wallflower, Ray Bradbury, reading, review, Stargirl, Stephen Chbosky, The Alchemist, The Giver, The Ocean at the End of the Lane -
Ru-thi-oooo!
My great friends Tone and Brian adopted a baby this weekend. Tone wrote about the process here, detailing the long, sometimes painful but ultimately fruitful journey they took from first beginning the process last year to finally holding their first baby, Ruth Marilyn, in their arms last Friday. When I first saw the name they…