please...
Please doubt me… you’ve no idea how much trivial drivel I’m capable of writing and posting. I dare you.
Please doubt me… you’ve no idea how much trivial drivel I’m capable of writing and posting. I dare you.
In the year 2009 I had 107 blog posts. To date in 2010 I have 33 (counting this one). What does this tell me?
1. If I hope to catch up to last year’s number I better get busy.
2. Maybe I should write shorter entries.
3. There’s really not much to say that hasn’t been said a thousand billion times before.
4. I should set a goal.
5. That goal will be 200 posts in the year 2010.
You doubt me? Please say you doubt me.
He walks with a limp now—arthritis in both a front and a back leg give him the creaks when he stands. He does not chase the ball in the yard more than once these days, preferring to chase it down, chomp it in his labrador’s soft mouth, and then rest, triumphantly with his prize in the cool grass. He sleeps more than he used to. When he runs, which he still does every time the UPS man drives anywhere near the neighborhood, or the cat next door saunters across the neighbors back deck, or I turn on the waffle ball pitching machine to take a little BP, he runs noticeably slower than he did a year ago.
But he is still graceful in the water, and he will swim for as long as I am willing to throw the toy into the lake for him to retrieve.
For this reason, too, we will spend a few more days at the beach in Ludington this summer.
I wonder if he dreams, like I do, of a heaven—perpetually sunny and sixty-five—where no one would think to put up a sign saying “no dogs allowed” on any beach?
"Lectio divina is not a methodical technique for reading the Bible. It is a cultivated, developed habit of living the text in Jesus' name. This is the way, the only way, that the Holy Scriptues become formative in the Christian church and become salt and leaven in the world. It is not through doctrinal disputes and formulations, not through strategies to subdue the barbarians, not through congregational programs to educate the laity in the “principles and truths” of the Scriptures–not in any of the ways in which the Bible is so commonly and vigorously promoted among us as an impersonal weapon or tool or program. It is astonishing how many ways we manage to devise for using the Bible to avoid a believing obedience, both personal and corporate, in receiving and following the Word made flesh." –Eugene Peterson
“Mark out an area outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourselves. Along with your weapons have a stick with you. After you relieve yourself, dig a hole with the stick and cover your excrement.” (Deut. 23:12-13)
Last week I drove to Benton Harbor to play in a church league fastpitch softball game, and ever since then I cannot get out my mind this impossible hope of someday having a local church fastpitch league to play in again.
When I was fourteen, I played in my first fastpitch softball game, on my dad’s church team at the Prairie Camp. In those days my church could field two full fastpitch teams. Because men who played softball played fastpitch softball. Since then I’ve had an overwhelming passion for the game. I love watching it played by the best players in the world where the pitching is virtually unhittable. I’ve played a few games with and against world class competition, but more often, these days, I play regularly on a travel league team that’s middle of the pack.
But that’s not my hope for the future of men’s fastpitch. Playing in that church league game in Benton Harbor, which could only be described as the lowest levels of men’s fastpitch, reminded me again that the lowest level of men’s fastpitch–like a local start-up church league I daydream about–is both more fun and simply better than the highest level of slow pitch softball (where enormous, steroid charged, beer-chuggers hit blooped in pitches three hundred feet with $400 bats–how stupid).
Last night playing church league slow pitch softball at Cedar Road Missionary Church, all I could think about was how much more fun every player on both teams could be having if we stopped the game right where it was and declard that for the rest of the night and for the rest of the season we’d be playing fastpitch.
So what that no one really knows how to pitch; we’d learn. So what we don’t have helmets–no one wore helmets to play softball until the late 1980s. So what we don’t have any catchers gear…okay, maybe we’d need some catchers gear. And we’d need move the bases in to the correct distance and the pitching rubber would have to be moved forward.
None of these are impossible obstacles to overcome. All we need is the will to try it.
I’d even settle for a happy medium called “modified fast pitch”.
It wasn’t great body surfing, but it was body surfing nonetheless. Three days in a row on three different beaches in Ludington, Michigan. Sweet.
Smalltown Fastpitch captures invite title
Smalltown Fastpitch of Benton Harbor beat the Munger Firemen 3-2 in the championship game of this weekend’s Rich Plangger Fastpitch Invitational.
The game was a rematch of last year’s Class D state championship, also won by Smalltown Fastpitch.
Browning Chabot was the winning pitcher, throwing a four-hitter with five strikeouts. Robby Prenkert’s RBI single in the top of the seventh inning drove in Brent Chabot with the winning run.
Smalltown was 4-1 in the tournament, losing to Munger in a pool play game on Saturday.
The team won its other two pool play games to advance to Sunday’s single elimination round.
Smalltown beat the Goshen Gators 3-2 in one semifinal and Munger beat DC Current of Bremen, Ind., in the other semifinal.
Rich Plangger and his son Rick were honored for their long time contribution to local fastpitch softball.
http://www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2010/06/22/sports/1519867.txt
Jamaica Gleaner News - Jamaica needs more, Bruce - Lead Stories - Monday | June 21, 2010
This is my friend Courtney, who speaks the truth with conviction. There is a serious crime problem in Kingston, but the solution cannot simply be “lock ‘em all up.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUU6jbBmJ6U&hl=en_US&fs=1&&w=480&h=385]
They’re supposed to be the two best basketball teams in the league playing in a seventh game for the championship. But they look awful on offense. They miss shots; they fumble the ball; they stand around; they dribble too much.
My assessment: The Lakers and the Celtics are tired of each other and just want this thing to be over with.
Crying out loud, it is the middle of June.
I blogged this from my phone. How cool is that? Call me Dr. Technology.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UbGSPx486E&hl=en_US&fs=1&w=480&h=295]
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/309295/may-13-2010/glenn-to-the-mountaintop
Two words….
GORAN DRAGIC.
http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100502/News01/5020310/1129/News
I play softball against and sometimes with this guy.
http://http//laporteassemblyofgod.com/components/com_sermonspeaker/media/041810%20Jeff%20Kling.mp3
God is good.
R. is not an avid blog reader, but he does read one blog religiously. Not many days ago his favorite blogger posted the following brief entry.
"One difference between Glenn Beck and me: while we both assume people are greedy, I happen to think that greed is evil." (http://robbyprenkert.blogspot.com/2010/03/compare-and-contrast.html )
He--that is, R.--has been reading Nietzsche, as well. He thinks that he could write a reply. "One difference between Nietzsche and me: while we both assume people are greedy, I happen to think that greed (the will to power) is evil."
Which leads him to a related and obvious thought, of course. It is not so much the fact that Nietzsche and Beck share a worldview that troubles him. It is the masses of unthinking evangelical Christians who have so blindly devoured Beck's Nietzschean, 'anti-Christ,' rhetoric that worry him.
Four kinds of flowers, two ducks, new leaf buds, and two butterflies.
Morgan took a little dip in the Baugo Creek.
Sydney picked flowers for people she loves.
One difference between Glenn Beck and me: while we both assume people are greedy, I happen to think that greed is evil.