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July 28, 2006
All The Governor's Men
(This is legitimately my first multi-category post, and justifiably so.)
I am currently listening to one of the most amazing things I have heard in my life. It is a unique mix of progressive history and old-time radio.
It's called All The Governor's Men, and it's the story of the contested Georgia governor's election of 1946, wrapped up in the early stirrings of civil rights ideas and the aftermath of World War II.
There is historians' comment, actual radio footage from '46, and dramatization (and some pretty brutal dramatization at that) of the times.
And they're putting this on the radio.
Not only am I totally on-board, it's even kept my eldest daughter's attention for more than just a few seconds.
I may be about to actually give some money to public radio - under the guise of Georgia Public Broadcasting - for the first time in my life. This program is worth it. More please more please more please.
(EDIT: It would be even better if the media file on the site didn't say "All The Governer's Men" - ow. Try not to let that egregious mispelling distract you. Of course, I would have more right to moan if my syntax on the parenthetical sentence above wasn't so horribly fractured.)
Posted by Chuck at 03:20 PM | TrackBack
July 22, 2006
This is why YouTube scares me.
Student and I are in midst of conversation. YouTube comes up.
Student: Why are you so scared of YouTube? It really doesn't seem like it would be that bad.
Pearson: Oh, I know that if I even tried just playing around on the thing, I would not leave the site for 72 hours. Bare minimum.
Student: There's not THAT much on there, is there?
Pearson: Okay, example. I want you to name a band. Any band.
Student: You seem to have been talking about Mute Math a lot.
Pearson: Okay. I'm going to YouTube now. I am searching Mute Math hits...and look at all of this stuff I get...and...wait...look at this...
...and suddenly my brain is broken all over again.
Because, when I saw Mute Math play at Cornerstone, I saw a drum solo...well, more correctly, a piano stool and mike stand solo...that was simply AMAZING.
And what I found in THAT VERY YOUTUBE SEARCH was THIS VIDEO of THAT VERY DUDE DUDE OH DUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE
DUDE!!!
Let us recap. I, on a whim, go searching YouTube for a band of someone else's choosing, and I immediately found one of the most amazing concert moments I have ever been at. Total elapsed time: Two minutes. Including time to view video clip.
I don't even know if I want to do the search for any of the other Cornerstone bands.
Especially Luminate.
(Phew. No indie band video clips, just video game stuff.)
(But I wanted to find indie band clips.)
Posted by Chuck at 10:04 PM | TrackBack
July 04, 2006
Why I hate "worship music"
Interview content from Christianity Today - with one of the old-school inspirational songwriters, Michael Card - submitted with only the above comment.
How does someone "worship God with their wounds," like you sing in "Come Lift up Your Sorrows"?Card: We can't worship God without recognizing our woundedness. We have a worship revolution going on in the U.S., but we're not worshiping. There is no woundedness in it. True worship celebrates God's worth, and without experiencing woundedness, you don't know his worth. You don't have that experience of God's presence over God's provision. You experience his worth in the wilderness, not in the picnic grounds. "Amazing Grace" says, "I once was lost, but now am found." Without that acknowledgment of loss, what do you have to worship him for, unless you're just worshiping feeling good? Lament is the lost language of worship.
What do you think of today's worship music?
Card: Many people are doing good work and trying to listen to the Scriptures and to where people's needs are, but the majority of worship music is an industrial response to a trend.
The insights you give in this album are rare in Christian music. Why don't we hear more lyrics like this?
Card: When an industry, rather than a community, creates music, it will lean toward what sells best. Many people are writing great stuff, but we won't ever hear it because of the industry. The early Jesus music came out of community. John Michael Talbot says there was a holiness to Christian music back then that it doesn't tend to have now. That's not to say God can't use the Christian music industry, because he does.
An overemphasis on music, rather than lyrics, is part of it. Many songwriters are very young, too. You have to look harder to find what your heart resonates with, but you can find it. Andrew Petersen is one of the greatest writers today. Yet, nobody had ever recorded one of his songs before. "The Silence of God," which is on my record, is his. Sara Groves is a great writer. People like them need more support from the industry.
Posted by Chuck at 12:32 AM | TrackBack
July 02, 2006
Another dream, this one off the hook
What follows the jump was typed out last Wednesday morning early, while I was staying on Pelee Island, south of Leamington, Ontario. It has been thus far a wonderful vacation; this was a rather stark moment in the midst of it. I'm still trying to make heads or tails of it. It is probably horribly unrealistic, but I'm not sure it doesn't actually mean something.
Typing out dreams is not my normal style, and I'm taken aback that I've now done this twice in the past three months. But I really can't keep this one to myself.
Staying in this bed and breakfast tonight, I had one of the most vivid dreams of my life.
I dreamt I spent a sabbatical year as a kindergarten teacher.
As near as I can tell, I spent sometime between 12:30 AM and 2:30 AM having this dream. Admittedly, 12:30 is a guess - but I was asleep by 10:30 PM, and I usually do get two hours of REALLY HARD sleep when I sleep. I saw 2:32 AM on the alarm clock in the room, and good luck getting to sleep after that.
And this isn't as surprising a dream as it might first seem. My grandmother was a kindergarten teacher, and one of the great ones at that. My mother was a kindergarten teacher who took many years off to have two sons, and then returned to her vocation while I was in junior high (if I remember that right). She was also one of the great ones.
(Of course, they're my own flesh and blood and it stands to reason that I think that they were two of the great ones. But: they WERE, they WERE.)
But the dream, man, the DREAM. There were details of this dream that you never get out of a dream.
The one thing I don't remember is names. But: I get to the school for the first day of pre-planning (I don't even get dropped into the middle of it; I remember PRE-PLANNING) and I'm introduced to the teacher whose classroom I'd be using for the year. The principal that introduces me is this combination of Amelia and Anna's outgoing elementary school principal and my OWN elementary school principal, Carl Kane, whose name I swear I hadn't thought of for ten years before this (and only then because Mama brought him up). The teacher has the features of Amelia's old kindergarten teacher; she tells me that she retired last year, but she would be available to sub this year (a look in her eyes said to me "I'll be here when the kids overwhelm you").
I'm terrified, of course, but not as much as you'd expect given the circumstances and given my own tendency towards emo.
The first day comes. The kids come in. They are a whirlwind of excitement and nervousness and fear. I immediately wonder what I did to get myself into this.
But I do this next bit automatically, I daresay instinctively. I stand in the middle of everybody and I raise my hand, and just stand there. I wait. A couple of kids (and the parapro in the room - again, I remember the parapro assigned to me, details!) get the clue immediately and raise their hands, and stand quiet. Slowly, everybody in the room sees what's going on (a couple of them see it with an elbow in the ribs from their mates) and is standing, looking at me, with their hands raised.
"When you see this, boys and girls," (and immediately a couple of them cringe and think "wow, this guy is LOUD") "you now understand what this means. If you're talking, you are quiet. You look at me. I'm about to say something important. Does everybody understand this?"
Murmurs of assent.
"And in this room," (my dear Lord, where did THIS come from? I never say something like this! Mama, is this next bit your fault?) "you will not say "yeah" or "okay" or "whatever" or anything like that. You will address me with "yes, SIR" and you will address (parapro name, not remembering) with "yes, MA'AM". Is this clear?"
"YES, SIR."
"Okay. Now, my name is Dr. Pearson."
More murmurs, this time of nervousness. Did he just say DOCTOR Pearson?
"And this means most of you think that I'm a guy that you go to when you're sick, that this is what the 'DOCTOR' in front of my name means, right?"
"YES, SIR." (Oh WOW, how'd they catch on that quick?)
"So I get to tell you know: I'm not that kind of doctor. Which means you want to know next: what kind of doctor am I? You want to know that, right?"
"YES, SIR." (I'm getting pretty stupefyingly amazed at this point.)
"And I'll tell you - but I want to hear about you first."
Somehow at this point I line them up. Don't remember how I told them to do this, but that's not the vivid part. The vivid part is, I told them to do so quietly, without speaking to their neighbor at all. And, of course, because they were new kindergarteners, that didn't happen.
So, as the line was forming, I took as many talkers as I could pinpoint and I sent them to the back of the line. I also deliberately took a couple of people who I know were NOT talking and sent them to the back of the line as well. (Early childhood newbies, please do not try this at home. I'm a trained professional. Or a trained dreamer. Or something.) There were the expected howls of protest, but sulking, to the back of the line the innocent went.
Once the line was assembled, and everyone was quiet, I said "Quite a few of you wound up at the back of the line, yes?"
And one of the aggrieved, still sulking, looked square at me and said "But I WASN'T talking."
I looked at her. I said "You are not in trouble. Nor is anyone around you. You are still learning my rules, and I am still learning about you. But can you understand that, with all the talking, I might have been a bit confused about who was talking and who wasn't?"
She nods.
"Can all of you understand that, with all the talking, I might have been a bit confused about who was talking? And that I might have been unfair to somebody?"
"YES, SIR."
"So there is only one way for me to be totally fair to everybody when I have you being quiet. If you know what that is, raise your hand."
Eager boy raises his hand, and I recognize him. He says, with appropriate cynicism, "We all get into trouble."
"That's a good thought; I see exactly why you think that. But I don't like it so much, because there are good kids in this bunch who don't deserve to get into trouble at any time." (Note exceeding optimism.) "I don't think, if everybody gets in trouble, I'm being fair to them. But it's obviously not fair if somebody talks and that boy or that girl DOESN'T get in trouble. I want to be fair to everybody, and have nobody get in trouble. If you know how that can happen, raise your hand."
Confused girl raises her hand. She says: "The only way that can happen is if none of us talks."
I smile. "Exactly."
There is thought about what this means. I remember that this doesn't click perfectly initially, but eventually, it's understood that if I'm going to be fair to everybody, everybody has to do what I say. Again, I don't know if every kindergarten teacher does it this way, or even if such a technique works in real life - the point is, I VIVIDLY remember how I made these kindergarteners understand this in the dream.
Obviously, there is a lot I remember here. The frightening thing is, I've only typed out a fraction. There is SO MUCH MORE here.
I remember reading silly stories to them. Frog and Toad stories appeared a LOT. I remember getting choked up a little during one such story, the one where Toad dreams (ha!) about being THE GREATEST TOAD IN THE WORLD and performing in a theatre as Frog, watching him, gets smaller and smaller - and Toad gets VERY afraid. I remember tears as I read "Come back, Frog, I will be lonely" - and I remember the relief in my voice that I REALLY FELT as Frog said "I am right here" and Toad woke up from his dream. Somebody - in the middle of the class - asked why I was crying. And, in the middle of the room (again, I don't know if I recommend this for real teaching professionals) I told them that I got afraid like Toad did, of being alone, and that I knew that I need that true friend like Frog who would be there to make things right.
I told them that they needed a Frog around for them, and they needed to be Frog to several people around them, and they weren't real friends unless they had both.
I remember telling a couple of outcast boys, who were simply alone and alone and alone all the time, that if they really needed a Frog, I would be a Frog for them. I also told each of them that there was another boy in the class who seemed alone and he really ought to offer to be a Frog for that alone boy. I don't remember if that worked or not.
I taught with soccer a LOT. The discipline system in my class was yellow cards and red cards. (REALLY. This says a lot about my subconscious, I know.) The rules said clearly what rules broken got them a yellow-card warning, and that two times breaking these rules got them a red card. They also said what rules broken earned them straight red and kicked the school discipline rules into play.
I spent the whole year teaching them the rules of soccer in PE (I taught them PE too; I think that's the least realistic part of the dream thus far) and, towards the end of the year, we played a short 11 vs. 11 game. (I had 22 kids exactly, by the way. Again, I don't know what that means.)
There was also a trip to the Atlanta Silverbacks' training camp, to see how the soccer team trained and to learn about how the real business of a professional sports team works. The kids were blown away when they learned that not only were the players not big-time bling-bling superstars, many of them worked jobs outside soccer to make ends meet. They were starstruck anyway. They got tons of autographs anyway.
And there were times we had talks about the real big-money soccer players (I think I got away with this talk while the Champions' League final was on in the background, it may have even been the Barcelona-Arsenal game from this year) and how they get paid millions to play a game for a living, and how many of their parents work very very hard at their jobs and barely clear minimum wage. And how that wasn't fair.
A lot of the theme of the year was how life isn't fair, come to think of it. But a lot of the theme of the year was how, when we work together with one another, we can make good things happen.
I'm not even going into the teaching about religion. Let's just say there was a lot of practical experience with the limits that public school systems put on talking about Jesus.
I did finally tell them what it meant to be a doctor of philosophy. I remember the field trip to Shorter to show them what I normally did for a living (there was the "real college class" in the middle of it which was really Dr. Turner and Heath Simpson doing chemistry demonstrations, and with that there is a first hypothesis of where this dream actually comes from, which I'll tell the interested another time).
They really came away with the feeling that, if you were really good all throughout elementary school and middle school and high school, and you did what your teacher asked, college was your REWARD.
I got the kids to promise me that they would do everything they could while they were going to school to prepare for college. I promised them that, if I could help them with college at all when the time came, I would. That was honestly the scariest part of the dream - looking at 22 kids and saying "I love these kids, but there is so much in their life that can change in twelve years - what can I do for them in the meantime?"
I don't remember when I woke up, when the dream ended and when I realized "oh wow, that was an INSANE dream." I do know that when I woke up, it was bolt upright, and any hope of me getting back to sleep was essentially nil.
But this is a nice bed and breakfast, and there is a sitting room with a nice lamp and a plug to charge up the computer with. And so I came in here, and plugged in the computer, fired up an Ashley Cleveland album, and typed all this out.
It is now 4:20 AM.
I still have no idea how I'll get back to sleep.