And the coal trucks come a-runnin’
With their bellies full of coal
And their big wheels a-hummin’
Down this road that lies open like the soul of a woman
Who hid the spies who were lookin’
For the land of the milk and the honey

And this road she is a woman
She was made from a rib
Cut from the sides of these mountains
Oh these great sleeping Adams
Who are lonely even here in paradise
Lonely for somebody to kiss them

and I’ll sing my song, and I’ll sing my song
In the land of my sojourn

And the lady in the harbor
She still holds her torch out
To those huddled masses who are
Yearning for a freedom that still eludes them
The immigrant’s children see their brightest dreams shattered

Here on the New Jersey shoreline in the
Greed and the glitter of those high-tech casinos
But some mendicants wander off into a cathedral
And they stoop in the silence
And there their prayers are still whispered

And I’ll sing their song, and I’ll sing their song
In the land of my sojourn

Nobody tells you when you get born here
How much you’ll come to love it
And how you’ll never belong here
So I call you my country
And I’ll be lonely for my home
And I wish that I could take you there with me

And down the brown brick spine of some dirty blind alley
All those drain pipes are drippin’ out the last Sons Of Thunder
While off in the distance the smoke stacks
Were belching back this city’s best answer

And the countryside was pocked
With all of those mail pouch posters
Thrown up on the rotting sideboards of
These rundown stables like the one that Christ was born in
When the old world started dying
And the new world started coming on

And I’ll sing His song, and I’ll sing His song
In the land of my sojourn

“The Land of My Sojourn”
Rich Mullins
(c) 1993 – Edward Grant, Inc., 1993 – Kid Brothers of St. Frank Publishing

I was prompted by Kari’s piece the other day to revisit Rich Mullins’ A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band. I have long counted this as one of my favorite albums, but it tends to be one of my forgotten favorites; I don’t listen to it for a while, and then when I turn it on again, I wonder why I ever forgot about it.

I can’t pick a favorite song of of this album, but the song I quoted here is one of the best. Rich nails the feelings that I have about the land where I live with these lines:

Nobody tells you when you get born here
How much you’ll come to love it
And how you’ll never belong here
So I call you my country
And I’ll be lonely for my home
And I wish that I could take you there with me

Not much else to say about it… but if you haven’t listened to this album for a while, get it back out. You won’t be disappointed.

…and stuff is a bit crazy here at work. Fortunately for me, I’m taking vacation this afternoon to help a friend move, and then Wednesday afternoon through Friday as we take a short vacation to Door County, Wisconsin. It should be beautiful this time of year – most of the leaves should still be around. I’ll have to post some pictures once we get back.

[end of random thoughts]

…and stuff is a bit crazy here at work. Fortunately for me, I’m taking vacation this afternoon to help a friend move, and then Wednesday afternoon through Friday as we take a short vacation to Door County, Wisconsin. It should be beautiful this time of year – most of the leaves should still be around. I’ll have to post some pictures once we get back.

[end of random thoughts]

…and stuff is a bit crazy here at work. Fortunately for me, I’m taking vacation this afternoon to help a friend move, and then Wednesday afternoon through Friday as we take a short vacation to Door County, Wisconsin. It should be beautiful this time of year – most of the leaves should still be around. I’ll have to post some pictures once we get back.

[end of random thoughts]

Yesterday night I sat down in front of the TV, looking forward to watching a hockey game. The Dallas Stars were playing the Phoenix Coyotes, and according to the TV schedule, it was slated to be broadcast on OLN (cable channel 69 in our area) at 7:30 PM central time. I was bewildered to find that rather than the NHL, OLN was showing some cheesy show about the “25 scariest animals” or the “10 worst jobs” or something like that. Where was my hockey?

A quick check of the OLN website confirmed that they were showing the NHL. They even have a cool graphic that says “NHL on OLN: We believe in hockey.” I double-checked the TV listings at Excite. Yep, it was supposed to be on. I checked nhl.com. Yep, they agreed that the game was supposed to be on OLN, and even gave an in-progress score. So what the heck was going on?

Next I did a Google search, and I found this article from Newsday. It ends up that OLN is in a wrestling match with several major cable companies, apparently including my local provider, Mediacom. They want OLN to be a first-tier channel, i.e. have it included in the “standard” cable package that the company offers, rather than have it as part of a second-tier, pay-extra package. And so they are using blackouts of NHL games to try to blackmail the cable companies into switching around their cable packages.

The end result of all this: a whole bunch of really mad fans. Check out the OLN forum, for one. The funny part (OK, it’s not so funny, maybe ironic?) is that the people that paid extra to get that second-tier so they could watch hockey are the exact ones that are getting screwed. No hockey for you! If I were Gary Bettman, I’d be getting pretty upset with OLN – why, after already almost killing your league with a cancelled season, would you want to further alienate your fan base by blacking out TV coverage and not explaining why?

I will be contacting all three parties to express my frustration. I doubt it’ll accomplish anything, though. I should check… does some other network have TV rights for the Stanley Cup playoffs? If not, I may miss another whole season. Arrrrgh.

I’m getting a cold. I’d forgotten how much I hate colds. You can’t breathe, and your throat feels nasty. I’m thinking I might head home and try to take a nap.

On a totally unrelated note, there was a fun little episode with Laura last night that’s worth relating. We were heading out to run a couple short errands last night, and she really didn’t want to get in her carseat. But she finally did, and we ran to the video store and then to pick up cheesesticks from Papa John’s. In both cases, Laura and I just sat in the car while Becky ran in.

While we were waiting at Papa John’s, I could tell she was really getting bored just sitting there, not getting to do anything. So, I grabbed a little toy rabbit and proceeded to play peekaboo between Laura and the rabbit, a game that she’s enjoyed on previous occasions. After bemusedly considering the rabbit, she looked at me with a tired look that seemed to say “thanks for trying dad, it’s not really that interesting, but I appreciate the effort.” Hard to explain, but one of those mundane yet priceless moments that make parenting such a joy.

I got two more off my CD wish list yesterday:

A Place Where You Belong – The Normals
Cold Roses – Ryan Adams and The Cardinals

Another purchase that wasn’t on my original list:

Love and Thunder – Andrew Peterson

Good stuff. Andy P is awesome. But The Normals are awesome, too… and Ryan Adams is pretty darn good.

I love new music days!

My little sister Rebecca (the youngest of us 5 kids) turns 18 today! Wow. Now I feel old.

Happy Birthday, sis, and don’t go out and do anything too crazy.

So, after months of planning, debating, and voting, we finally have a new name for our church. Formerly Noelridge Baptist Church, we are now Noelridge Park Church. We will be implementing the change as quickly as possible.

I think it’s a good choice. People wanted to keep the Noelridge name. (it’s the name of the surrounding neighborhood.) They had discussed Community or Bible as words to go in the name, but those are so common as to be kind of “blah”. “Park” is good since we’re right across the street from the park, and it also has a bit of a stately feel to it.

I’ve got the domain name registered (www.noelridgeparkchurch.org), and as soon as I can get a few pictures taken we’ll have a new website up. We’re still in need of a logo, so if any of my loyal readers happen to have mad talents with graphic design and want to do some pro bono work, leave a comment and let me know.

It’s fun to see things moving in this direction. I am excited as I look forward to what the Lord will do in the coming months.

Last Saturday afternoon I got to see Andrew Peterson and Andy Osenga in concert at “Cornfest” in Clermont, IA. Clermont is a little bitty farm town, and this “Cornfest” thing was pretty much a start-up festival, I think… they had some small Christian music acts going for most of the afternoon, and then their headliner was the aforementined Andys. I’ll note here that it’s a good thing that they booked those guys – probably 70% of the folks that were there for the concert came specifically to hear Andy P.

I felt kinda bad for the Andys that the concert was not very well attended – maybe 150 people, max. They had a large flat-bed trailer for a stage and had to battle bugs all afternoon – asian beetles, bees, other nasty things. Some lady shared some bug spray with them after about the third song and I think that helped things out a bit. And yes, there was somebody riding atop a Holstein cow in the background. Only in Iowa.

Anyhow, it was just three of them – the two Andys and then Ben Shive on keyboards. They did a two-hour set, with lots of stories and bad jokes in between. There were also impromptu versions of the Rawhide theme and an old Spin Doctors song (can’t remember the name…) I’m not familiar with Andy P’s music yet (an omission which I am hurriedly correcting) so I can’t give a song-by-song breakdown. Suffice to say that he did a few songs off of his new album, took several requests, and filled in with other favorites.

The show was marred by a few technical difficulties; Andy was complaining all afternoon that his guitar sounded funny in the monitor (it sounded fine to the audience) and so in the course of several songs they replaced the guitar cable, the direct box, the mic cable that connected the direct box to the board, and then both the 9-volt batteries in his guitar pre-amp. (Andy O had to steal 9-volts out of two of his guitar pedals to make this last fix happen.) The time required for these fixes gave time for Andy O to sing one of his songs (High School Band, so I wasn’t complaining about the other issues.

After the concert the three of them hung around and talked with folks until almost everyone had left. I was really wanting to meet Andy O (having missed him at the Caedmon’s concert last year), and was not disappointed – we talked for a while and had a good time. Ben and Andy P seemed like nice guys, too.

But the best was yet to come. There were a couple little kids who had a couple favorite Andy P songs that they wanted to hear and that he hadn’t done in concert. So, he grabbed his trusty Taylor and proceeded to take requests for another 45 minutes… just him singing and about 20 of us perched on the side of the hill listening. It was awesome. I kept thinking he was about ready to wrap up, but then he’d ask for any more requests, and somebody would ask for a song, and so he’d tell the story about the song, and then sing it… wow. After a while Ben and Andy O came and sacked out on the hill next to the rest of us, just enjoying the music and the beautiful afternoon.

So then towards the end of that “set”, Andy P sang a goofy little song he’d written for his daughter. I don’t know what it’s called, but the chorus has a line about her “one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten pretty little toes”. About halfway through the song Andy O got up and wandered off – I think he was going to pack some gear into his car. But it was too good not to comment on, so after the song was over I asked Andy P if he’d run Andy O off, made him feel inadequate by singing a song about somebody with ten toes. (For the reader unfamiliar with Andy O’s toe situation, see his blog here.) Andy P got a good chuckle out of that, then told the story about Andy O’s run-in with the lawnmower, and mentioned that it was the middle toe, “Roast Beef”, that was missing. So then I had to mention Andy Gullahorn’s song by that name, and so we tried to come up with the lines to that song… but between Andy P, Ben, and myself, we could only come up with the first few lines. It was still pretty funny.

Let me say here just last that I was also hugely blessed by my wife that afternoon; our daughter Laura was getting tired and antsy as only toddlers can. Becky was very gracious and willing to deal with her so that I could take advantage of the chance to enjoy the concert and meet the guys. Fortunately Laura fell asleep right before the acoustic mini-set, so she got to enjoy that time.

I could ramble on for quite a while, but I’ll spare you. Let’s just say I came away from last Saturday with a good sunburn, a heightened appreciation for my wife, and a real blessing from getting to meet one man who is my favorite artist right now, and another who is quickly climbing that list.

(Full-sized photos of the afternoon are available on my flickr page here.)