Ed Norton interviews Bruce Springsteen about his latest project

Yes, this is a little old, but I meant to share it here a while ago.

Another excellent view into the creative mind. Here, Ed Norton interviews Bruce Springsteen about his latest project, The Promise: The Making of ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’.  Listen below…..

Through a Dog's Eyes -- Jennifer Arnold.

Through a Dog's Eyes by Jennifer Arnold
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I purchased this book after hearing Jennifer Arnold talking about her work and the book on an NPR program.  I am so glad that I did! Every person who has dogs or plans on having a dog needs to read this book.  Jennifer Arnold made so many points about dogs that I never would have thought of or learned elsewhere.  The back of the book has a lot of great tips on training your pups. It is a keeper on my perma-bookshelf.


View all my reviews

A Whole Lot of Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

I found a blog with a bunch of Jack Handey quotes (if you lived under a rock for many years, google "Deep Thoughts" and find out about it), and I had to share it here.  Deep thoughts was a part of SNL when SNL was IMO at it's funniest.

***Ok, so I originally cut and pasted a list of quotes, but then I visited Jack Handey's website, where it is very clearly stated that no deep thoughts may be reproduced on any site without permission.  In an effort to respect the wishes of this wise man, I took the quotes down and replaced them with the widget for his site.  Enjoy!

DeepThoughtsByJackHandey.com

Terry Gross is my homegirl

All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists by Terry Gross
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I scored this signed copy at a local used bookstore, and it ended up being my favorite companion on a recent cruise to Bermuda (actually, second favorite after the drunk woman from Long Island, whom I drank and smoked with all too often in order to escape from my family). Any fan of Fresh Air can appreciate reading these transcripts of her interviews. My favorite in the book was the interview with Gene Simmons.  


View all my reviews

DNA of Relationships so far ...

The DNA of Relationships by Gary Smalley


So far, this book has been very helpful.  I was skeptical, because Mike Huckabee is one of those critically acclaiming this book, and the author is very well-liked in evangelical circles.  In fact, this author probably wouldn't appreciate the venue in which I am reading and studying the book -- at my MCC church.  Our group is facilitated by, and we are being taught the material in the book by our transgendered (female to male) pastor.  He is an incredibly intelligent and wise person, IMO, so I trusted him enough to actually purchase the book and attend the book study groups.  So far, I have no regrets.  


View all my reviews

Nightlight: A Parody by Harvard Lampoon

Nightlight: A Parody by Harvard Lampoon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pop culture haters and lovers of Harvard Lampoon alike should easily be able to enjoy this one.  I'll keep it simple: this book made me laugh out loud more than any other book -- ever.  


View all my reviews

Sick of people getting off on judging others

I ran across this video, where famous preacher/financial advisor Joel Osteen says that he can't say whether someone is going to hell or not.  Then people proceed to rip him to pieces.  I believe he did the right thing.  Too many people are being turned away from the very idea that God exists because of the very people who posted this video to make Joel Osteen look bad.

I am not a huge fan of Osteen, by the way.  I am glad, however that a person who has so much influence on people in the Christian world is refraining from judging (lest he be judged?).
My comments are below the embedded video.



Here's a brain teaser for you people who love to judge:

God is the One who is all knowing and omnipotent (according to your subscribed belief system)
God is the One who will do the judging that you people look so forward to (I think it's sick how much you people get off on people potentially going to hell, and you should too!)
God knows our hearts and what we're gonna do before we do it.
God sent his son to redeem us from our sin.
(again all of this is what you're saying you subscribe to when you call yourself a righteous Christian, right?)

The Bible was written so long ago, by people and translated over and over again.
People (who might I add did not die on the cross for our redemption from sin) wrote and translated and modified the words. Yet those people continue to say that all of it is the "word of God."

Something is amiss, people.

According to what you go by,
God knows everything.  You don't.
What He chooses to do with his children is not for you to predict.

Not to mention,  What if what He said about not judging others (lest you be judged) holds a LOT more weight than any of the things that you say will send other people to hell?

Let me put that again differently ... what if your judgement of others is found to be worse in God's eyes than the things that you are judging people for?

Since you don't know everything like God does ... you can't answer the question.  You can only pray that Jesus' blood redeems all of your brothers and sisters (who by the way youre supposed to love as you would love yourself) regardless of what they believe.  That is what I believe.  That is what I got out of Jesus' teachings.

It kills me.  The belief that people will be punished forever by an omnipotent, all-loving God is just stupid.  People who believe this are fooled, and people who believe this are turning people away from the very God that they say they are trying to serve by spreading His word.

People are so gripped by the bad theology that they are making people not even want to be open to the idea that God even exists.  I was agnostic, and the ridiculous mentalities of conservative Christians rendered me uninterested in trying to see if God could actually be real.
It was the MCC church that made me even consider praying to a God that I didn't even think was there.

From Fresh Air on NPR.

Hearing this story on the radio the other day made me feel sure of my decision to be strongly against the death penalty.

20 Years Of Defending Death Row Inmates

Listen to the Story

Fresh Air from WHYY

[39 min 17 sec]

• Add to Playlist
• Download
• Transcript

Katya Glockner-Dow

Over the past two decades, David Dow has represented more than 100 death row inmates as an appellate lawyer.

text sizeAAA

February 8, 2010

Attorney David Dow has made a career out of defending death row inmates in Texas — a state that boasts the highest number of death row executions nation-wide since 1976.

In the last twenty years, Dow has defended over 100 inmates sentenced to death. Many of his clients have died — most of them were guilty — but Dow says they should have been sentenced to life in prison instead of death at the hands of the state.

"The person that we're executing is simply not the same person who committed the crime that landed that person on death row in the first place," Dow tells Terry Gross.

Dow's new book, The Autobiography of an Execution, is in part an exploration of the politics behind the death penalty and an argument for its abolition. It's also a memoir; Dow delves into how this line of work has affected his family life.

David Dow is the litigation director at the Texas Defender Service and teaches law at the University of Houston Law Center.

Excerpt: 'The Autobiography Of An Execution'

by DAVID R. DOW

The Autobiography of an Execution
By David R. Dow
Hardcover, 288 pages
Twelve
List price: $24.99

LANGUAGE ADVISORY: This excerpt contains language some might find offensive.

If you knew at precisely what time on exactly what day you were going to die, and that date arrived, and the hour and minute came and went, and you were not dead, would you be able to enjoy each additional second of your life, or would you be filled with dreadful anticipation that would turn relief into torture? That is the question I asked myself at twenty minutes past eight o’clock on Halloween night. Jeremy Winston was still alive. He was in the holding cell, eight steps away from the execution chamber at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas. He was supposed to have been dead for two hours.

Winston was my client. I was sitting in my office in Houston with three other lawyers, waiting for the clerk's office at the United States Supreme Court to call. The warden at the Walls was holding a judicial order instructing him to execute Winston after 6:00 p.m. He would carry it out unless the Supreme Court intervened. Winston had been pacing for two hours in the tiny holding cell, three steps one way, three steps back. He had requested a cigarette in lieu of a final meal. Prison officials informed him that tobacco products were not permitted on prison grounds. But the three guards who would escort Winston to the gurney gave him a pack of cigarettes and one match. He lit each new cigarette with the dregs of the old one.

Our phone rang. The clerk at the Supreme Court wanted to know what time we would be filing additional papers. I hadn't planned to file anything else. The four of us working on the case had already written our best argument and sent it to the Court. It had been there since five o'clock. In nearly twenty years of representing death-row inmates, this had never happened to me before. Was the clerk telling us to file something? I told him I'd call right back.

Had a law clerk or even a Supreme Court justice seen some argument that we had missed and decided to hold the case a little bit longer, giving us more time for the lightbulb to click on? That's what the justices do sometimes, they toy with you. Jerome, Gary, Kassie, and I were sitting in the conference room. We frantically deconstructed and reassembled our arguments, looking for something we might have missed. I was bouncing a Super Ball off the wall, tossing it with my left hand and catching the rebound with my right. Gary was juggling three beanbags. Jerome and Kassie were sitting still, pens in their hands, waiting to write something down, if we could think of something to write. Jeremy Winston was wondering why he was still alive. Suddenly I saw him, peering into the conference room, watching his lawyers juggle and play catch and sit there doing nothing. He shook his head, a gesture just short of disgust, realizing the sand was about to run out.

Maybe, I said, we had called something by the wrong name. You might think that when a life is at stake, formal legal rules would not matter so much, but you would be wrong. People die when their lawyers neglect to dot the i 's or cross the t 's. I decided we would refile what we had already filed, and just call it something different. Because I couldn’t think of any other explanation, I convinced myself the problem was with the title. Necessity's eldest child is invention; her second-born is rationalization. Gary's the fastest typist. I asked him to get started working on it.

Two minutes later the phone rang again. Kassie answered. The clerk was calling to tell us never mind, that we had lost. I went into my office, closed the door, and called Winston to let him know. He was declared dead at twenty-seven minutes past nine.

I walked in the door from the garage at nine fifty-five. I was sucking on a peppermint to hide that I had been smoking. A dried-out roasted chicken was sitting on the counter. A fly was on the drumstick. I shooed it away. An open bottle of red wine was next to the chicken. I called to my wife, Katya. There was no answer. I figured Lincoln had had a nightmare and she was upstairs with him. I started to climb the stairs. Katya called to me from the library. She was sitting on the sofa, her feet on the coffee table, holding a wineglass on her stomach. Her eyes were red. She had been crying.

What's the matter? I said.

Where were you?

At my office. The Supreme Court didn't call until after eight. Winston didn't get executed until after nine. What's the matter?

You were supposed to take Lincoln to the haunted house. He waited up until nearly eight.

Oh shit. I completely forgot.

Lincoln was six. I had expected to be home by 7:00 at the latest. I told him I would take him to the haunted house after he collected enough candy. He had made me a costume to wear. I said, Why didn't you call to remind me?

I did call you. I left three messages on your cell phone.

I told her I had left my cell phone in my car. I asked, Why didn't you call the office?

Because I didn't think you would still be there. You always call when something happens. The execution was supposed to be at six, right?

Yes, it was supposed to be, I said. Did you go without me?

No. He said he wanted to wait for you. I told him I didn't know when you were going to be home. He said that he would just wait. He kept his Thomas the Tank Engine outfit on and sat on the stairs. At seven thirty I told him the haunted house was going to close in a few minutes, but he said he'd keep waiting. He came and sat outside with Winona and me to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters. At eight I told him it was time to go to bed. On the way upstairs he said that he was feeling a little sad. I told him that it was okay to be sad. I said that you had probably gotten busy at work. He said, I know, but I'm still disappointed.

I said, Crap. I can't believe I forgot this. I'm going upstairs to check on him. I'll be right down.

I peeked in his room. Winona, our seventy-five-pound red Doberman, was lying on the bed, her head resting on Lincoln's ankles. He said, Hi, Dada. You missed the haunted house.

I said, I know I did, amigo. I'm really sorry. I forgot all about it. Can you forgive me?

He said, Yes. Why are you home so late anyway?

I had a lot of work to do.

He said, Did you help the person you were trying to help?

I'm afraid not, amigo. I tried, though.

He said, Dada, I'm a little sad.

Me too, amigo.

Will you sleep with me for five minutes?

Sure I will. Scoot over.

Twenty minutes later I walked downstairs. Katya said, I'm sorry about Winston.

Thank you.

I sat down next to her on the sofa. The TV was muted. She said, Your clients are not the only people who need you.

I said, I know.

Life is easier with pillars. Mine are my family. One wife, one son, one dog. When I tell Katya that, she can't decide whether to believe me. Belief is a decision, I say; it doesn't just happen. Believe what I am telling you.

Before I met her, I planned to live out in the country. Get forty acres, run some cows, sit on the deck with the dog, watch the sun set and then come up, drive to my office at the university twice a week, come home, take a walk down to the creek. Read a lot of books, stick my head in a hole and say screw you to the world, have a conference call every morning with the lawyers I work with, file my appeals from a laptop eighty miles from death row.

To get to the piece of property I almost bought, you'd head west from Houston on I-10 toward San Antonio and get off the interstate at the small town of Sealy. Eric Dickerson went to Sealy High School. He's a Hall of Fame running back. There's a billboard at the exit reminding you of that. Dickerson played for the Los Angeles Rams in the 1980s. One day in practice the head coach, John Robinson, criticized Dickerson for not working hard. Dickerson said he was working hard. Robinson told him that if he was really working, he'd be sprinting on the running plays instead of just jogging. Dickerson said, I am running, Coach. Robinson went out onto the field and ran next to him.

Well, he tried to.

From a distance, ease can easily be mistaken for indifference.

From the book The Autobiography of an Execution (c) 2010 by David R. Dow. Reprinted by permission of Twelve Books/Hachette Book Group, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Goodreads book review

Prayers for Emotional Wholeness: 365 Prayers for Living in Freedom by Stormie Omartian


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a fantastic book for those of you who are part of the Christian belief system. Prayers are classified by what you may be going through or what you need at the time, and there is short scripture to accompany each prayer at the bottom of the page. Stormie has a way with words. The prayers are so sincere and realistic, often saying exactly what I wish that I could say but have difficulty coming up with the words to express (and often adding more that I couldn't have thought up on my own). I highly recommend this book to people who feel they need to pray more and may need some guidance and/or reminders to do so. I recently purchased this one for a friend who believes but has a hard time remembering what she has declared is important to her. Hope this helps!

View all my reviews >>