update
Gasp! A whole half-week since I've blogged?
Work has been busy. I now know that I do not have sweet doll hair-fixing skills. It's just one of those things I didn't experience in my childhood really. I did learn how to have a good pretend war...
Anyway, hopefully soon I'll have pictures that will... explain all that. Ahem.
My car is overheating badly. I filled it up with radiator coolant and even had a daft little adventure walking across town looking for oil one day... there's more pubs than gas stations in this town, I think. And yet, the car still zips up to max temperature after no more than 10 minutes driving. Is the gauge just broken and going bonkers? That's dangerous.
The search for graduate schools has officially commenced. I still can't believe it's high time to do that, but graduate school doesn't have that misty, "naww, that could never happen!" feel to it any more.
I intend to look a lot more... and it's always good to have more information than enough when it comes to these sorts of things... but for preliminaries, I've requested information from Syracuse, Rice, University of Texas, Baylor, and American. Many more will follow I think.
Three of those colleges are in Texas. :D
Also, I haven't even bothered yet looking at foreign schools. Hmmm.
Benny and I just watched one of the saddest things I've seen this summer. It's this one section on the third disc of the Return of the King extended edition. It is a tribute to a young filmmaker named Cameron Duncan. He died at the age of 17, of cancer, and was recognized as one of the best filmmakers of his age.
Shortly before his death, Peter Jackson invited him to come tour the set and use one of his film crews to make a few short films. He did, and wow, they are incredible. His last few relate specifically to his fight against cancer. I regret that his website doesn't have them, but if you know anyone who has the RotK DVDs (and I know you do :D ) then go watch the Cameron Duncan section. Really moving.
Probably one of my favorite parts of being in Indiana is getting to be around my family's church. (Brownie points moment: my favorite part is being with my family! :D ) Ahem.
Anyway, our church is a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. This is a really good group of people in Kokomo, and I wanted to comment on one part that I have really grown to respect, and that is psalm-singing.
Unlike... pretty much any other church I can remember going to, this one sings purely the Psalms, in verse form, without instrumental accompaniment. That does several things to worship.
For one thing, it makes you sit up and think. There is no piano, no guitar, to keep you on cue. You can't grow lax in your singing, because if you did, there'd be nothing left.
The people sing in tenor, soprano, alto and bass parts, and when everyone gets into a tune they know, it's gorgeous to hear people singing and not half-mumbling like they do in other churches. I think people don't realize how much they rely on instrumental backing until they try and sing without it. It's rather a shock.
Of course, the words couldn't be better. It is the Psalms, after all. But putting them in the context of song is very very different from proclaiming them from a pulpit or praying them in your private devotions.
For example there are numerous deprecatory psalms (is that the Hummel-Term© for it?) that simply never make it into modern worship songs. It sounds weird in song to our ears... but it shouldn't.
Not to mention I consider it real vocal training... all the sight-reading and part-picking and such. Not that I'm aiming to be the next Placido Domingo, but I do think it's fun.
************************
Tomorrow we begin packing for the summer's return to the South. We'll get to spend half a week in me old stomping grounds of Alto, Texas -- travelers are stopped to intake the grand vistas of our abode *and* the high point of El Camino Real, by a single blinking stoplight. So much for a worthy tourist attraction.
In any case, #47 (my sister Candace) is graduating from high school and will have her ceremony on the third. She needs (and I think has) sweet speech-writing skills. Gawsh!
So huzzah for muggy days and East Texas humidity.
Work has been busy. I now know that I do not have sweet doll hair-fixing skills. It's just one of those things I didn't experience in my childhood really. I did learn how to have a good pretend war...
Anyway, hopefully soon I'll have pictures that will... explain all that. Ahem.
My car is overheating badly. I filled it up with radiator coolant and even had a daft little adventure walking across town looking for oil one day... there's more pubs than gas stations in this town, I think. And yet, the car still zips up to max temperature after no more than 10 minutes driving. Is the gauge just broken and going bonkers? That's dangerous.
The search for graduate schools has officially commenced. I still can't believe it's high time to do that, but graduate school doesn't have that misty, "naww, that could never happen!" feel to it any more.
I intend to look a lot more... and it's always good to have more information than enough when it comes to these sorts of things... but for preliminaries, I've requested information from Syracuse, Rice, University of Texas, Baylor, and American. Many more will follow I think.
Three of those colleges are in Texas. :D
Also, I haven't even bothered yet looking at foreign schools. Hmmm.
Benny and I just watched one of the saddest things I've seen this summer. It's this one section on the third disc of the Return of the King extended edition. It is a tribute to a young filmmaker named Cameron Duncan. He died at the age of 17, of cancer, and was recognized as one of the best filmmakers of his age.
Shortly before his death, Peter Jackson invited him to come tour the set and use one of his film crews to make a few short films. He did, and wow, they are incredible. His last few relate specifically to his fight against cancer. I regret that his website doesn't have them, but if you know anyone who has the RotK DVDs (and I know you do :D ) then go watch the Cameron Duncan section. Really moving.
Probably one of my favorite parts of being in Indiana is getting to be around my family's church. (Brownie points moment: my favorite part is being with my family! :D ) Ahem.
Anyway, our church is a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. This is a really good group of people in Kokomo, and I wanted to comment on one part that I have really grown to respect, and that is psalm-singing.
Unlike... pretty much any other church I can remember going to, this one sings purely the Psalms, in verse form, without instrumental accompaniment. That does several things to worship.
For one thing, it makes you sit up and think. There is no piano, no guitar, to keep you on cue. You can't grow lax in your singing, because if you did, there'd be nothing left.
The people sing in tenor, soprano, alto and bass parts, and when everyone gets into a tune they know, it's gorgeous to hear people singing and not half-mumbling like they do in other churches. I think people don't realize how much they rely on instrumental backing until they try and sing without it. It's rather a shock.
Of course, the words couldn't be better. It is the Psalms, after all. But putting them in the context of song is very very different from proclaiming them from a pulpit or praying them in your private devotions.
For example there are numerous deprecatory psalms (is that the Hummel-Term© for it?) that simply never make it into modern worship songs. It sounds weird in song to our ears... but it shouldn't.
Not to mention I consider it real vocal training... all the sight-reading and part-picking and such. Not that I'm aiming to be the next Placido Domingo, but I do think it's fun.
************************
Tomorrow we begin packing for the summer's return to the South. We'll get to spend half a week in me old stomping grounds of Alto, Texas -- travelers are stopped to intake the grand vistas of our abode *and* the high point of El Camino Real, by a single blinking stoplight. So much for a worthy tourist attraction.
In any case, #47 (my sister Candace) is graduating from high school and will have her ceremony on the third. She needs (and I think has) sweet speech-writing skills. Gawsh!
So huzzah for muggy days and East Texas humidity.
I've ruled out anything in Texas, though. :-) Not because we don't have some good schools, but because I've got to get out of this state sometime.
What kind of specialization are you interested in?
Uhm, for now I'm looking at strictly political science, the government type stuff. I suppose I really should go to Washington before I devote a few years of my life to learning about it.
::sighs:: There's always teaching. I could grow a beard and be Dr. Johnson.
The University of Chicago has been my top grad school choice, for some reason. Perhaps Indiana Jones played a part. ;-) It is good for intellectual history, but it doesn't seem to match my focus as well as some other schools. Yale, on the other hand, has exactly what I'm looking for; several faculty members have done extensive research in modern Anglo-American and French intellectual history. I've also started looking at Columbia, which was the American birthplace of intellectual history as a field.
What I've done so far is to identify (through the AHA and similar resources) which schools offer the specializations I'm interested in. From there, I look up individual faculty members to see what they've written. If someone looks really promising, I'll try to get a copy of his or her work.
And I didn't know Indy taught at Chicago... interesting... I remember Dr. Coppinger mentioning it as a good history school.