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Articles in "Positively Speaking"

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The second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony is the proper soundtrack for this column. I recommend the Youtube presentation of the Chicago Symphony ,Carlo Maria Guilini conducting. It was uploaded on May 20,2011. I think it has the best interpretation of tempo.

Joy is lying next to me on the white couch with too many pillows. Her soft sock body suits her name and her purpose. Her cornflower blue thread of eyes and pale salmon pink lips dot her face.

Tonight I am exhausted. It’s psychic exhaustion. It’s let down. My head and heart have been spinning about this particular column for weeks now.

Then again, sometimes it’s hard to choose an opening line. There are four choices this time for opening paragraphs.

"Turn your wheels to the right" he said as I descended backwards toward the Sound. I tried not to think about that scene where Ashley Judd smashes the car off the end of the ferry to escape

There is a feeling inside one’s body when one steps out into the unknown hoping for a good effect in one’s life. It’s difficult to know if the area of focus ought to be in the head or the heart.

The cat threw up all over Proverbs 25-27 and it bled through from Proverbs 3-Ecclesiastes 5. Ohmygosh is that the best opening line ever? I’m going to find a way to use it in everything I write, I think.

If I had a partner, a husband, or kids at home, I would be distracted by so much I wouldn’t see as much. The sheer logistics of getting people from here to there, moving through six different schedules, someone always with a radio or a TV

If sight were smell the aroma in the lobby of the gigantic contemporary worship space would have reeked of Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Russia. 

Wellllll gosh golly whadyaknow….the Mayans were right. They were just a week late with their date. Indeed on 14 December 2012 the world came to an end.

Saturdays are definitely for appointment radio switching between KPLU and KUOW . It’s a lovely way to spend a day doing chores or relaxing with some knitting.

"Down the Shore" is the ultimate fantasy pleasure experience for any Tri-State native worth their saltwater taffy. So when my Mom married her second husband, George, who in retirement owned two stores on the boardwalk at Pt. Pleasant Beach

Yesterday I had the opportunity to tell the story of The Christmas Jacket – which I will give it’s annual repetition in a few weeks as Hanukkah and Christmas approach

The last thing in the world I have wanted to do this week is write a column. It has been, to put it lightly, a crappy fortnight.

Joe and Caity have given me permission to write the following. I figure it’s time to come out of the closet but it pretty much finishes my career off in traditional evangelical circles….

An off Island story but true and very typical as too many people know:

The young girl stood very still with her arms at her sides while her older brother squeezed his hands around her neck yelling, "I’m gonna kill her! I’m gonna kill her!!" Their mother just to the right of them sighed as if one of them had taken the other’s bicycle saying, "Honestly I don’t know what you do to make your brothers so angry."

Being a parent requires the ability to engage intimately with both little people and big people and not everyone is good, or comfortable at that. I can teach you how to do it more easily and with more fun.

The miles could not click off fast enough for me to get home. Hours before I had stopped in West Seattle to pick up my second Craigslist treasure of the week.

Everyone once in a while I have to rail against the constrictions of my life, mostly financial and just celebrate hope and promise.

The overtown youth group streaming into the sanctuary had no idea the man in the front wearing a Hawaiian shirt, clicking his fingers, teaching the congregation ‘ Sweeten Me Lord’ was the person who single handedly was responsible for their Protestant youth leader to be carrying, and playing, a guitar in said sanctuary.

They are just the best. Saturday birthdays are just the best. If you don’t work on a Saturday, Saturday birthdays are just the best. There is a whole long day to celebrate being alive with friends and family and yourself.

Gosh almighty! Twenty years!! How did it happen? I finally have my twenty-year pin. I’m a real Islander. I was told when I moved here it took twenty years to be a real Islander.

Sure enough, Twenty years is coming up this November. So technically this is only my nineteenth Strawberry Festival.

 

Boycotting grapes and lettuce was never something that interested me much in the sixties. I was utterly in favor of the Farm Workers Union. A really fatalistic attitude towards influencing management caused me to think boycotts were futile.

 

Father’s Day. Whew! As I think I’ve shared before, in our family my youngest dubbed it Moofa Day about ten years ago . It stands for Mothers Who Are Fathers Day. True to form, my beloved daughter sends me Moofa greetings every year.

The enormous crackle of impending doom drew my attention from the task at hand, which was to catch a two hour nap before I started my second shift. As my head lay on the pillow , I looked at the trees swaying outside my bedroom window.