I had the privilege of speaking last week to participants in the workshop on Religion, Spirituality, and the Arts organized by Rabbi Sandy Sasso. This year, Becky Archibald is one of the participants, and it was an honor to have a chance to meet her. While she is mostly famous for her instrumental pieces, in particular for solo piano, here is a work for choir that she composed. The message of this Psalm seems apt for the present moment. Read more
In my Sunday school class this past weekend, we talked about the election, how hard it is to know whom and what to believe, and the fact that political candidates pretty much never seem to be there to actually accomplish the things they promise or that we hope they might. One person in the class said that “democracy is broken” in the United States, and I found myself wondering whether that is true. I definitely think that there is a... Read more
Via the Huffington Post. Read more
I constantly tell my students that the skills they learn in my classes are transferable, and so even if they are not especially interested in the subject matter, the things they learn to do are applicable to other areas of life. As we near the end of this election season, I am struck by how true this is, particularly as pertains to two areas about which I teach: history, and information literacy. Information literacy is simply a term for the... Read more
It was IO9 which drew my attention to the fact that an artist had created a digital replica of a stained-glass Dalek for use on the cover of the Doctor Who audiobook, Order of the Daleks. The artist talks more about the project on his website. You may not be surprised to learn that other artists have also had the idea. And as I mentioned some years ago, the novelization of the early Doctor Who episode “The Daleks” features a glass Dalek. Order... Read more
I love the way YouTube provides the serendipitous discovery of music that is new to me, much the way browsing the shelf at a library has done with books, music, and other things. Such was the case with the above piece by Marcel Chyrzyński. You can find a collection of his pieces that are on YouTube on his website. Read more
The blogger dinner this year at AAR/SBL will be at 7pm on November 19th at Yard House on the River Walk (849 E. Commerce St.). The food and drink menus look great, and they were able to give us a reservation for 20 people and let us all order off the menu with separate checks, which makes for the most convenience for everyone. If your plans change, or you expect to be late, or have more guests coming, please indicate that via... Read more
I suppose I could have spiced up the title of this post even more and talked about 50 shades of grey candidate. Looking for a candidate whose reputation suggests that they are something more than human is looking for something other than the real human beings who run for office and participate in the political process. You will never be voting for the good guy against the bad guy. In a sense, you will always be voting for the “lesser... Read more
Via Gerhard van den Heever: New Testament Society of South Africa: Early Christian Studies Subgroup Inaugural Session: 9—12 April 2017, University of Stellenbosch. Call for Papers Mapping Transformations Towards a Christian Late Antiquity Paper proposals are invited that address the theme of the inaugural session of the Early Christian Studies subgroup of the New Testament Society of South Africa. Since this is the inaugural session of the new subgroup and intends to establish a methodological and theoretical framework for... Read more
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