:)

Every single day I'm realizing more and more how amazing my wife is.



I am unbelievably blessed.

Photography

I'm starting to really enjoy/obsess over photography

Love 146

Can't post about this organization often enough. I truly believe that slavery is among the greatest evils/atrocities in our world today. These guys are legitimately doing something about it.




http://love146.org/

Woo hoo!

My big sister Aimee is pregnant! :) so exciting!

Music and emotion

“A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.” - Leopold Stokowski

I think that music is in itself just undifferentiated emotion. Emotion waiting to be labeled.

Songwriters find it on accident sometimes, like buried treasure. The right melody or combination of chords stumbles out of their mouth or hands, and there it is: an emotion. Happiness. Sadness. Regret. Hope.

A good songwriter can get onto it like a surfer clumsily riding a wave. He or she knows where it is, can find it, and can even manage to tame it sometimes by attaching their message to it.

GREAT songwriters knows how to make it. They know what they want to express, and then they do so.

That's my greatest dream and goal.

Examples?

Inspiring

Amelia Lyon's photography is absolutely fantastic. (http://www.amelialyon.net/). Seriously amazing.

Dreams

I've been having some insane dreams lately.

My favorite involved rats, old TV's, and a wonderful mother of a friend/english teacher of mine. In the dream, we were talking about poetry, and she said this:

"Sometimes poetry so perfectly describes how I feel, that I think I must have written it myself and forgotten that I did."

I seriously love that quote, even if my subconscious version of Mrs. Luoma made it up.

Hangin with Lil sister nikky and boyfriend Mitch!

Yes please

Who would like to purchase this for me?

My Desk

My desk needs some serious love

Hmm...

Thinking about singing some covers in front of the webcam and throwing them up here from time to time just for fun...

Chart toppers

Life's amazing busyness has caused me to seriously neglect this blog for almost exactly six months, but I think I'd like to get back on the wagon with it. (how many times have you read that on somebody's blog before another indefinite dry spell?)

I'm going to spare descriptions of all of the things I've been up to (wedding/marriage/work etc.) but if you happen to want details about that stuff check out http://scwhittaker.blogspot.com/

What I want from you currently, for reasons that will definitely be spelled out at some point in the future, is your favorite chart-topping song from the 1970's-now, and why you love it. Don't make this about trying to think of something super original, just your favorite popular song from the last 40 years and what makes it your favorite. Go!

Paul and Stinker

Tonight was the second time I spoke to Paul, the homeless man I met last week. He only sleeps in the place I've met him when it's raining because there's an overhang there. He was still there tonight because it takes his mattress (in the place he normally stays) about three days to dry out. Paul has a big fat cat named Stinker who he loves to death, has read the entire bible dozens of times, and was a Navy Seal in Vietnam. He doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, doesn't steal, and is incredibly kind and respectful. He is the antithesis of what comes to mind when you think of the homeless.

"I was almost done. I was supposed to be in-country (in Vietnam) for twenty-six more days, then I would have done my time and been done. Then I got the news that my wife and three-month-old son were killed by a drunk driver, and I decided to stay and try my hardest to get killed."

He tried to find the most dangerous places he could as a Navy Seal, then after he was done with that, he intentionally crashed his motorcycle three separate times, trying his hardest to kill himself.

Years later, two more sons from a second marriage died five years apart in the military. One in Afghanistan, one in Kuwait. Paul told me he tried to talk them out of joining.

"I finally decided God wanted me alive when I put the barrel of my .357 magnum in my mouth and pulled the trigger, only to hear it click on a dud round." He told me tonight, "So I took it out of my mouth, aimed it at a hillside in my backyard and fired five shots that all went off without a problem. I put it back in my mouth and tried to use the last round on myself. But it just clicked again. I wasn't supposed to die."

"Why do you think you're still alive?" I asked, sitting next to him and petting Stinker.

"I have no idea." He answered, looking straight into my eyes.

I desperately want to help him answer that question.