First, the good news

First, the good news February 21, 2012

Good news, glad tidings and other otherwise delightful, happy or amusing stuff from recent days.

Keith Humphreys reminds us that many men of the cloth don’t spend their days testifying before Congress in all-male panels dedicated to denying rights to women — “Christianity and the Least of Us“:

This week’s Economist article about the remarkable work of Jesuit Priest Greg Boyle could thus not be better timed. Father Boyle’s “Homeboy Industries” in Los Angeles has turned around the lives of thousands of gang members. Many of Boyle’s flock have committed terrible crimes, had terrible crimes committed against them, or both. Heart-killing time in prison figures prominently in their histories. Most people couldn’t reach these lost souls. Indeed, most people wouldn’t even try, even if the commandments of their faith so instructed them.

Comedian John Fugelsang shares the beautiful love story of a Franciscan monk and a nun — his own father and mother (via AmericaBlog).

Caleb Wilde: “Yesterday I Saw the Body of Christ at a Funeral …

The Mt. Zion AME church is in the process of being renovated.  And this week the Mt. Zion AME church lost not one but two of their members. The Parkesburg United Methodist Church opened their doors, their sanctuary and their cafeteria hall for not one, but both funerals.

… This is how unity is supposed to work.

This is also how unity is supposed to work: “There Are So Many Different Reasons

When I look around the waiting room I see so many men and women there for so many different reasons. I don’t know where else most of us would have to go without them.

I♥NY: Improv Everywhere invites public to “Say Something Nice” (via).

San Francisco Police Department: “It Gets Better” (via John Cole)

Good beer, good company — James Fallows on “Hero of American Capitalism: Jim Koch.”

Metrokitty: “Spider-Hyphen-Man” (via Dave Ex Machina)

Hyperbole and a Half: “The Alot Is Better Than You at Everything” (via Punning Pundit)

And for still more helpful visual aides clarifying points of grammar, see The Oatmeal.

Ed Darrell traces the history of “Standing on the shoulders of giants” (point to point, point observation …).

John J. McKay: Here There Be Monsters

Dualism, Abraham, Flannery O’Connor and the theology of flesh … just another video game review.

Good interviews Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs:

We’ve been gradually training our kids to equate dirt with vocational dissatisfaction. The real enemies of job satisfaction are drudgery and boredom, and those can be found just as readily in cubicles as they can in ditches.

Paul Bibeau: “Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years After We’ve Sucked the Life Out of You?

Cara Hogan: “Derry park residents join forces, purchase property

John Regal finally owns the land his home sits on.

Regal, 55, is vice president of the newly formed Foxy Terrace Cooperative, which just bought the Big W Mobile Home Park on Bypass 28 for $2.2 million.

Residents bought the property last week and became the 100th mobile home community in the state owned by a co-op group of residents.

Residents contacted the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund five years ago, he said, because they wanted to buy the property and improve their living conditions.

“The rent was constantly escalating and nothing was really put back into the community,” he said. “The money was going back into the landlord’s pockets. We got in contact with the loan fund and they helped us over the years with a purchase and sales agreement to submit to the landlord.”

See also: “Resident-bought mobile home park is New Hampshire’s 100th.” (ROC USA, the nonprofit advocating resident-owned communities, is based in the Granite State.)

Now streaming: “September” from the Shins’ forthcoming album Port of Morrow.


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