In Memoriam

On Thursday, the world lost a film legend. Paul Newman succomb to cancer at home, a peaceful end to a long and decorated film career.

When I think of Newman, I immediately remember his sly and clever character in the film Cool Hand Luke, but Paul Newman was much more than the character Luke Jackson that he portrayed in that film.

He gave us some of cinema's most enduring characters and worked with some of the most talented actors and directors in show business. His portrayal of Butch Cassidy alongside Robert Redford's Sundance Kid birthed one of the most talented partnerships ever seen on the silver screen. Their lesser-known but just as fantastic pairing in The Sting further cemented their on-screen chemistry.

Newman also starred as Professor Michael Armstrong alongside Julie Andrews in the provocative Alfred Hitchcock cold war thriller Torn Curtain. Throughout the 70s and into the 80s, Newman continued to star in a variety of films and won Emmy, Academy and Golden Globe awards.

He was an avid auto racer from the time began training for the racing movie Winning, and continued to race in SCCA while owning part of both an Indy Racing car team and a NASCAR team. He continued to compete sporadically in racing well into his 70s, driving in the 24 hours of Le Mans in 2005.

Though his talent will alway be with us in his films, his presence, both in Hollywood and among the many charities he served and funded, will be greatly missed. Paul Newman, January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008.

The Great Storm & Puppy Pictures

I don't know if I can adequately recount how ridiculous this week has been. As many of you may know, the remnants of hurricane Ike swept through this area a week ago today, bringing down around 5,300 power lines and leaving more than 300,000 people without power. Kristen and I were fortunate: we never lost our power and suffered no property damage (the picture above is from the group home where I work). However, the widespread blackout was the impetus for a number of stunning events. Here are just a few:

- Traffic lights stopped working. Now, I've lived through a number of power outages in my life, and when the power goes out, every traffic light I have ever seen reverts to a backup source that at least causes the lights to flash yellow, encouraging caution. For whatever reason, this very simple feature wasn't built in to any of the lights here in Louisville, so they all just went black. Since Louisville drivers are some of the worst ever, it made driving a lot more interesting.

- People made a run on gas. Seriously, everyone just relax. We're not going to run out of gas, at least, not unless you buy up way more than you need as a knee-jerk reaction. Are you unhappy with the +25 cent jump in gas prices? Maybe you should just wait 3 or 4 days instead of insisting that you fill up all your vehicles RIGHT NOW.

- Walmart ran out of candles and batteries. There were still no candles as of 3 nights ago...I had to tear into a box that had not yet been stocked on the shelf to find some. The picture to the left was taken 6 hours after the storm. When I asked where the batteries were, a sales associate pointed me to a shopping cart with 30 or so bent packages of AAs. That's all they had.

- Railroad signals stopped functioning. I know this kind of falls under the traffic signals, but I was so incredulous when I discovered this that I have to recount it seperately. Apparently, when the power goes out, there's no backup power for railroad signals either! I drove past the signals near our house for days, unknowingly taking my life into my hands at each crossing, until a generator appeared, chained to the signal box. Who came up with this system?

- Classes were cancelled. Jefferson County cancelled all public school class for the week, as did the seminary. While I was happy not to have to be in class, I have a bad feeling we're going to be paying for it for the rest of the semester, especially in Greek. I had to study by candle light at work; my atheist co-worker pointed out that I was studying like the monks of old.

On the upside, I got to spend several full days with Kristen, which was a welcome change from the fast pace of the semester. We were able to go to Homemade Pie and Ice Cream, which I heartily recommend if you are ever within 150 miles of Louisville. It's worth it, but you must go to the Upper Highlands location...all the others are just copies of the original. We also got to spend some good time with Paisley, which was both fun and entertaining. On Wednesday of last week we took now 13-week old Paisley to the park. For fun, you should compare these to the pictures of Paisley from my August 3rd post "Changing Times" to see how much she has grown. Here are pictures of what followed at the park:






Hopefully this week will be less eventful that last, but I will miss the slow pace of a few days off.

At least I didn't go a whole month!

So, it's been a little while since I have updated the blog...so much for posting every week! Since I last posted I've started classes and we finally brought home our new puppy, Paisley. It's been a crazy couple of weeks.

This semester I'm taking 12 hours. Most of my classes are moderately difficult but require a lot of reading and small assignments (what I might call busy work). The exception is Greek, which I am learning by making every day Greek day (on the orders of my professor). I have never been good at languages; I took a year of Latin and two years of Spanish in High School, only to take a placement exam in college and be placed in Spanish 101. Four semesters later, I've got "donde esta el bano" and "el hefe de transito" to show for it. The second one I learned from my father in any case.

Last year I took two semesters of Hebrew, and that was both extremely difficult and extremely disappointing. But Greek has been different. Part of it is my professor, part of it is my Greek partner George and I think I am just more motivated in general. Nevertheless, I have really been enjoying Greek, though it is at times more than I can handle and I am still struggling to keep up with the vocabulary. I bought a Greek New Testament, and I'm hoping to be able to read a little of it by the end of the semester.

Paisley is great. She was 31lbs at 10 weeks, and I am guessing she's up to at least 36lbs now. She gets bigger by the day, but she's so much fun. We've been training her to respond to basic commands and she seems to be understanding more and more what is expected of her. She was definitely the right pick for us, and she makes the apartment a lot more fun. I'll post some pictures sometime soon.

Both Kristen and I have been thinking a lot about where God is calling us post-seminary. For the first time, I'm beginning to think about what kind of ministry God has for us, and it's an exciting time! Kristen has started working through where God is calling her. She has a phenomenal passion for working with young women, and I am excited to see where he will guide and direct her. Both of us would appreciate prayer in this area as we seek God's will.

Finally, the Large Haldron Collider was turned on yesterday, and we're all still here...what a relief! The race for the White House is getting closer and more interesting by the day- I'm keeping up with that and you can expect to see more posts on that as election time draws near. Keep checking the blog- now that I am in the rhythm of classes, they'll be new posts much more often. Thanks for reading!

Olympic Moments

We've been in the midst of the Olympics for a little more than a week now, and I'm due to post (actually overdue) so I thought I would spend a little time commenting on what has been a spectacular Olympics thus far. I hope that you have been following as closely as I have, as apparently, if you look away for a hundredth of a second, you can miss some
very big things!

As I am sure everyone knows by now, Michael Phelps tied history two nights ago, winning his 7th gold medal of the games by a scant .01 of a second. Then tonight, he and the rest of the American team triumphed in the men's 4X100 Individual Medley relay, beating Australia and giving Phelps a record-breaking 8th gold medal in one Olympic games, for a total of 16 Olympic gold medals over his career. An unbelievably humble show of determination and athleticism lead Michael to this point, and has made his entire country proud to have him representing us in Beijing. Additionally, you would think that by now people would learn that trash-talking Michael Phelps and the American relay teams only makes them swim faster. Also, Phelps middle name is Fred.

Not so captivating in my estimation is the silly sport of synchronized diving. A sport that is by definition redundant leaves me wondering why I should be impressed that two people can do the exact same thing at the same time and win a gold medal for it. The difficulty of the dives is much less than in individual diving, and honestly, who cares? Might this spawn a whole new group of synchronized sports? What about synchronized gymnastics, or synchronized weightlifting, or maybe synchronized shot put? If we could get the athletes to face each other, that might be interesting...

I did have a chance to catch a bit of the USA's "Redeem Team" (who came up with that?!?) and their game against the basketball powerhouse of Angola. After Dwyane Wade stole the ball and ran halfway down the court for a slam dunk with no one else in sight, I started to feel bad for Angola, so I quit watching. Blowouts aren't as much fun as they're supposed to be. However, I am always impressed with Dwyane Wade's attitude, and particularly with this comment: "I've played in conference finals and the NBA finals, but I've never been so excited to play a game as I am to play in the Olympics." Dwyane Wade is the man (see below).

As surprising to me as anyone else, I have enjoyed watching beach volleyball this year. I have often criticized the sport for being redundant (see discussion of synchronized diving above) but my attitude toward it is changing a little bit. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh have played some amazing matches, and I surely hope that they are able to pull of a gold medal. Despite Walsh recovering from shoulder surgery, they have still have been a force to be reckoned with. I heard just the other day that they have played somewhere in the neighborhood of 475 games in the last four years and lost 18 of them. I'm not really sure how that's possible, but I believe they could do it!


Gymnastics has always been a sentimental favorite of mine, and while the team competitions and the men's all-around were mostly a disappointment for the US, the women shined in the all-around competition with Nastia Luiken receiving gold and Shawn Johnson silver. In the face of irregular scores and what seemed to be a Chinese bias in scoring, these women stayed strong.

It seems more and more likely at this point that the Chinese earned their Women's Gymnastics Team gold with at least one ineligible gymnast. The AP reported a few days ago that nine months before the Olympic games, Xinhua, the Chinese government's news agency, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13 years of age. The AP found the information on a website and though they saved a copy of the webpage, the page was removed from the site in a matter of hours. The New York Times reported in July that Provincial Sports Administration listings showed the age of gymnast Jiang Yuyuan to be 14, also too young for Olympic competition. Despite this, both girls were on the gold-winning women's team. The Chinese claim that these are simply mistakes and that their government-issued passports list the correct ages. However, as one of my friends astutely observed recently, "They've all still got their baby teeth!"

Certainly no investigation will be launched and China will do whatever it needs to in order to avoid further controversy. I am saddened by this though not too surprised, as it tends to be China's modus operandi. It's not only unfair to the other competitors, but is clearly dishonest. The issue isn't about what team would have won had the Chinese not had underage gymnasts on their team, the issue is that their gymnasts are in actuality probably ineligible, and if this is proven to be the case, the team should be stripped of their medals. At least the American team can rest in the fact that they won their silver medal playing by the rules.

Just a little sidenote...at the time I wrote this, the USA was leading the medal count at 57. Just FYI.

Track and field is just gearing up, so there will be plenty more for me to blog about in the coming weeks, but I thought I would leave you with an appropriate link to a hilarious site. Cake Wrecks is a blog with constantly updated pictures of "When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong." Here's an Olympic Cake that probably should have been more thought out by the bakers. Enjoy!

Changing Times

These last couple of weeks have been busy for Kristen and I. We moved into this great new apartment, mostly because we weren't happy with the management of our old apartment complex. A more pressing reason, however, is that we have our Great Dane puppy coming home in just a few weeks. Before updating on that, here are a few pictures of our new apartment, pre-move:

We were pretty excited about the yummy gift basket!

And I was of course very excited that we have our own covered parking spot. Now all my washng and waxing shall not be in vain!

The move would not have been possible without the very generous help of several of our very good friends- they were more than willing to sacrifice their Saturday to help us get all of our junk from one apartment to the other. Thanks Dan, Stephanie, Shelby, Amanda, Nathan and Jennifer...we could not have done it without you!

In other news, we've been out to the breeder's twice recently, with a span of 5 days in between. It is amazing how much the puppies have grown; they were markedly larger when we came back out he second time, and even more outgoing and personable. We got a great feel for their personalities while we were there. The first of the two trips was also the first time the puppies had experienced grass and the outdoors, and they were curious and excited.

Their excitement quickly gave way to exhaustion, however, and before we knew it they were all passed out asleep on the grass.


We woke them, brought them in and fed them, and they promptly fell asleep again, this time on Kristen's lap.


After struggling to make a decision on a puppy the first time, we came back for another visit today, repeating the basic format of our last visit, right down to the puppies falling asleep again on Kristen's lap.

And, after a lot of talking and thinking, we finally settled on which one of the quickly growing girls will be our Paisley...

She's the perfect one for us: she has a very even temperment and loves to play and be near others, but she also is inquisitive and curious and often content to spend a little time to herself. So we'll be bringing this little (or not so little at that point) Fawn Great Dane home on August 17th, and we couldn't be more excited!

The New...Ford?

The current run-up in energy costs has and will continue to have great repercussions on the manufacturing of cars and trucks both at home and abroad. All three of America's domestic manufacturers have struggled to maintain pace with the more flexible factories and fuel-efficient models of overseas automakers, specifically Japanese automakers. There has and in many cases continues to be great question as to whether GM, Ford and Chrysler can even survive this most recent economic downturn, especially with their reliance upon now-unpopular trucks and SUVs for their largest profit margins.

Many assumed that the best candidate for survival was General Motors with its seemingly unending line of vehicles. The company could eliminate two more divisions (a prospect not unlikely in the coming months and years) and still be two or three deep with models in every class of vehicle. GM's size has enabled it to weather hard times better than its American counterparts, but it still suffers from antiquated manufacturing models and quality control issues, as well as financial woes. Just this morning the company announced a second-quarter net loss of $15.5 billion, or $27.33 per share, compared with a profit of $891 million, or $1.56 per share a year earlier. This is the third-largest loss in the history of General Motors.

On the other hand, Ford Motor Company just took a huge leap forward last week with the announcement that they will totally restructure their line of vehicles, differentiating the Mercury brand more from Ford and Lincoln, and incorporating more of their European models into their American line. Under the leadership of CEO Alan Mulally, the financial situation that Ford is currently in (they recently posted a $8.7 billion loss) may finally be the impetus that drives Ford back to profitability. Not only are European Fords more fuel efficient, they are a higher quality vehicle with top-notch components and they have more of a slant toward the performance enthusiast's driving tastes. Many (including myself) have longed to see the European Focus and other Euro models come to the United States, and it seems we may finally be getting our wish.

What's important here is that Ford is finally abandoning a strategy for designing and manufacturing cars that lost its effectiveness in the early eighties. This new model for Ford will put a premium on flexibility of production and quality in design. The difference will be bold and immediate, and should propel Ford forward in sales and profit. Keep an eye on Ford in the next few years...you're going to see things you've probably never seen before- cars and trucks that you'll really want to drive.

Vehicles Pictured (Top to Bottom): Ford Focus ST (Europe), Ford Kuga (Europe), Ford Verve Concept (US)
Sources: Detroit Free Press, Autoextremist.com, MSNBC.com

Ludacris-ness

This will be a short entry, but I feel the need to comment. Sorry in advance if anyone's offended (i have edited for content).

Recently, rapper Ludacris released a classy and dignified song entitled “Politics (Obama Is Here).” I though it's worth sharing the highlights with you...maybe it will convince you (Democrat, Republican or Independent) who you should vote for in November.

Hillary hated on you [Obama], so that b***h is irrelevant

Paint the White House black and I'm sure that's got 'em terrified
McCain don't belong in any chair unless he's paralyzed
Yeah I said it cause Bush is mentally handicapped
Ball up all of his speeches and I throw 'em like candy wrap
'cause what you talking I hear nothing even relevant
and you the worst of all 43 presidents

Really Ludacris? Once I get past your "creative" spelling and grammar, I see your genuinely sophisticated political analysis. You should write a book or something, but you would have to get it past the spell check, so I guess maybe that's not such a good idea. Way to man up and show us how an intelligent, well-informed person interacts with ideas that they disagree with. You're a pillar of wisdom, a master of rhetoric, man of genius, a statesman and a scholar. Or maybe you're just an idiot who should get a real job.