Walk in the Glow of Each Other's Majestic Presence

A few weeks ago, one of the youth at church performed Taylor Mali's What Teachers Make. It's made the round on the net before and I'd seen it then, but this time it stuck in my head.

Going back to YouTube to watch it again, I noticed that he has a number of other videos of him performing his poems, and I began to watch them. They vary widely in subject matter. Several are about the joys and sorrows of teaching, others about the suicide of his first wife, others about love and about sex and several meta pieces about poetry itself.

I haven't watched all of them yet, nor delved very deeply into his website, but since I've mentioned his work to several people this weekend, I thought I would provide a few links.

I particularly love Like Lilly Like Wilson and Depression is a Kind of Fire Too and Tony Steinberg, Brave Seventh-Grade Viking Warrior. But I haven't listened to any one of them without finding something to admire in his turn of phrase, his connection of ideas, or his powerful delivery.

This is posted mainly for my own reference. It's a review of a book against gay marriage by another conservative who is pro gay-marriage and makes the conservative arguments for it. I am finding it useful as a concisely put set of answers to some of the "why gay marriage?" questions that people have--not necessarily right answers, mind you.

Thanks to crowleycrow I now know about this really cool website that produces maps of literature by author. Lots of time-wasting fun and, who knows, maybe I'll actually use it sometime when I need recommendations.

Many of my friends will enjoy this short film featuring works from some wonderful fantasy artists.

Thanks to eclecticavatar for the pointer.

http://thecutest.info

The interface is a little rough, but I just got sucked in for quite a while.

Yanked in its entirety from kathrynt:

Rock the fuck ON.

http://www.indianz.com/News/2006/013061.asp

Summary: Cecilia Fire Thunder, President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, is opening a Planned Parenthood on res land which will provide abortions. The state has no jurisdiction over reservation lands.

You GO, Ms. Fire Thunder.

Recently a friend did a 500km trek through the mountains of Laos on a unicycle. Seriously. He's put up photos and an interesting and amusing travelogue here.

My favorite quote:

"I'm going to unicycle 500km through Laos."
"At no point in that sentence could I predict what you would say next."

I have the feeling that I've been pointed here before, but either I hadn't clicked through, or they've added a lot of material since I did. The home page isn't work safe, but most of it is fine, as long as you take care not to drink anything while you're reading it.