Month: February 2012

Children, Ethics, Hope, Love, Music, Theology and Life3 Comments

Grandparents, Moneyball and the Call to Worry

Gary Furr

Watched “Moneyball” Sunday night.  I liked it.  It surprised me.  I wasn’t sure that it could be faithfully made into a film worth watching, but, as usual, I know little about the art of that.  Brad Pitt is a great actor, all of the fluff of paparrazinsanity aside, and he hit a homer again.  It’s an interesting story about baseball, change, and the resistance to new things that always comes.  It doesn’t end with exploding lights, a la, “The Natural,” but with the gentle irony that success leads Billy Bean to a fateful choice between one vision of “success” and … Continue reading Grandparents, Moneyball and the Call to Worry

Basketball, Competition, Culture, Ethics, Sports, Sports4 Comments

Jeremy Lin’s Magic Week and Why I Like Him

Gary Furr

Jeremy Lin and the Knicks finally lost a game.  Look for some of the “Linsanity” to fade.  Expect a second wave of rumLination to follow, as the bandwagon backs over the kid from Harvard.  I don’t even watch the NBA anymore, and basketball was my sport.  I don’t know what it was, but after Jordan, Magic and Larry and their supporting casts went away, it sometimes seemed like the NBA turned into the athletic version of the Kardashians.  LeBron is still hated for leaving Cleveland.  Truth is, if the NBA game has changed a lot in recent years, so have … Continue reading Jeremy Lin’s Magic Week and Why I Like Him

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Enemies and What to Do With Them

Gary Furr

I was recently in a meeting that included someone who moved here from outside the United States.  He and his wife had been here about 10 years.  At the end of our meeting as we were talking about various issues, he made an interesting observation.  He said “it has been curious for us to see that Americans seem to always need an enemy.”  Of course, many Americans I know would cheerfully say, “Then get out!” I thought it was an insight worth thinking about.  Not only do we always seem to need an enemy, it seems that at times if … Continue reading Enemies and What to Do With Them

Art, Christianity, Competition, Culture, Death, Fame, Hope, Love, Music, Perfectionism, Pop, Suffering2 Comments

Whitney Houston and the Biggest Devil

Gary Furr

Whitney Houston made your heart soar with that magnificent voice.  You kept hoping for her—so lovely, so achingly vulnerable, so fragile.  “Come on back, girl,” you hoped.   In the end, she didn’t.  There will be moralizing—drugs, bad choices, all the rest.  But such times are wrong for moral lessons.  There is a time to criticize, and a time to refrain from criticizing.  A time to learn a lesson, and a time to let the dead alone and mourn. The story of Whitney Houston makes me think how hard it is to care for one’s own soul when there are so … Continue reading Whitney Houston and the Biggest Devil

Art, Cancer, Christianity, Death, Folk, Gospel music, Music, Suffering, Theology and Life

“Death Gospel,” Art and Life

Gary Furr

The website “Sightings” put out an interesting piece this week.  Thanks to my good friend and blog reader Lamon Brown for forwarding this to me.  It is a piece on the music of Adam Arcuragi.  I was unfamiliar with Arcuragi, but immediately was drawn to go read the piece and the NPR interview of Arcuragi.  His album Like a Fire that Consumes All Before It, writes M. Cooper Harriss …has raised interest in the popular-musical category of “Death Gospel,” a metaphysically attuned variety of the Americana genre named by Arcuragi. Death Gospel is not sonically related to “Death Metal” (a … Continue reading “Death Gospel,” Art and Life