My stay-cation project propagating azaleas on the cheap

I've been on stay-cation this week, and I've worked myself silly. One of my projects was trying to root some of clippings from my Grandma's azaleas and spending $0 doing it. I wrote about it over on my Easy Budget blog. If you are interested in how it turned out, check it out here.

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Must we act out the lyrics of worship songs? (Video)

"We stand and lift up our hands."

As we sing these words of the Chris Tomlin praise song in church everyone feels obligated to stand and lift up their hands.

OK, not everyone. Almost everyone feels obligated to stand. Those who never lift up their hands still don't do so even though they do feel obligated to stand.

I have one friend who bucks the trend. He says he's not going to stand just because some human being says he ought to stand. He'll stand when the Spirit tells him to. Although this morning he did stand at the line, "We stand and lift up our hands." Maybe the Spirit just happened to move him at that exact point in the song today. Or maybe it was because he was sitting on the front row.

Hey, I'm not judging him, because I always A) stand and B) lift up my hands when the line is sung, and I do so specifically because the line says it -- even though I sometimes both stand and lift up my hands during other songs because the Spirit leads me to. And sometimes I neither stand nor lift up my hands in other songs even though the Spirit does lead me to because, you know what, no one else is doing it -- or at least not many others are.

And I'm not talking about when I'm in a church where people don't make that kind of outward expression -- I'm talking about where I'm in the kind where they do, and where I'm comfortable doing it, but I don't do it because right then and there I'm afraid someone will think I'm putting on a show or being all holy-holy.

But back to that standing-and-lifting-our-hands song. Do you remember the next line? It's "We bow down and worship Him now."

Do you know how many of those people who stood and lifted their hands bowed down in unison at that line? Zero!

So my friend who never stood up to start with is the one who was in the right all along and the rest of are hypocrites! (Well, excepting for today he stood up -- but he still didn't lift up his hands, mind you.)

This was all after the singing of another song in which Jesus is called "The Rose of Sharon." Something struck me funny there, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Turns out my friend Googled it. During the passing of the peace he tells it was the Shulamite woman in the Song of Solomon who says she is the Rose of Sharon. So if you are among those you make the Song into a parable of Christ and the Church, shouldn't the Rose of Sharon be the Bride of Christ, not the Groom?

That's what he and I thought, though I have since found there are others who don't agree.

That notwithstanding, it's a great song. The peace of God be with you:

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Photo: Bibliothèque de Toulouse. Domaine public

Getting a bowl from our dish drainer ...

is like playing Jenga:

I got out a bowl successfully with one hand, then knocked my wife's cell phone off the counter. Go figure.

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Not all writing advice is good

Consider yesterday's post. Whoever said to keep a notebook by your bed to write down ideas you have in the middle of the night is clearly an idiot.

Or maybe it's my implementation of that advice that's not so hot.

Be that as it may, I followed the advice. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about how I didn't like people to throw balls at me, expecting me to throw them back.

I remember nothing about why I thought this would make a great blog post. I remember only the two sentences I ran to my laptop to write down before I forgot even that much: "I don't keep loose balls lying around. Someone will want throw them."

Later, I would write marvelous prose from this inspiration. At least, that was the plan.

What happened instead was a migraine. By the time I got over it I was way over deadline – and not feeling fantastic.

By the time I finished it sounded sad and pathetic. I posted it anyway. I made a joke on Twitter about how sad and pathetic it sounded. That would make it better, I thought. Problem was, some people would read it who hadn’t come from Twitter.

So I asked my wife to look at it. Should I just take it down. “Leave it up,” she said. “It sounds contemplative.”

“OK,” I wrote back. “But tomorrow I’ll be contemplative about what a bad idea it was.”

You might be thinking, “Your problem is that you didn’t stay up and write down the who idea.”

No. I’ve done that. The next day it was gibberish. So I should have learned my lesson.

It works for other people. I remember hearing years ago that Don Schlitz, who wrote “The Gambler” got the entire song in a dream. He got the first half one night and the second half the next night. Yes, inspiration came back and finished what it had left undone for that guy. He sold it to Kenny Rogers and they both made tons of money on it.

(I can't find this story on the Internet, so it might be entirely apocryphal.)

And Ed King, who wrote the guitar solos for “Sweet Home Alabama” says he got every note of them in a dream. He’s still living off the royalties. (His story is definitely true. He's told me so himself.)

So I guess the lesson is: Next time set it to music.

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Photo: Greg Richter Photography

Church revival text message from Cletus

I don't use text messaging; I call myself neo-Amish. But somebody claiming to be "Cletus" just sent me this one. If it was this Cletus, then I'm really behind the technology curve.

Maybe I should ask if there'll be skunk pot pie in the fellowship hall.

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Play ball! -- just not with me

I don't keep loose footballs lying around. Someone will want throw them. And that will expose my lack of athleticism.

For some reason I never retained the ability to correctly throw one. Oh, I was taught -- time and again. But unlike riding a bicycle, I forgot. I can catch one, and I used to be able to run like crazy afterward. Once when I visited my cousins on a Sunday afternoon they were playing in the muddy vacant lot next to their house. I had on my church clothes. They were playing tackle. So every pass thrown my way was either incomplete or I scored a touchdown. But most were touchdowns.

"You should play, football!" they said repeatedly. They were nuts, of course. I was a scrawny kid who would have been killed on a football field. I was running only because I feared getting my good clothes dirty or torn. I'd have probably been running for fear of my life if I'd suited up, so, who knows, maybe I could've been a star at least at the junior high level.

I would've clearly never made it as a quarterback though: They would have had to re-teach me to throw the ball in every pre-game warmup.

I used to work with a guy who'd periodically walk around the newsroom tossing a miniature football. I avoided eye contact to ensure he never threw it to me. I still had to keep him in my peripheral vision just in case he tossed it to me anyway. I think he did once or twice. I kept waiting for the publisher to come in one day and have a snit fit over it. But no. It continued on.

Now he's in Chicago. I assume there are no men working for the Trib who can't throw a football.

People who aren't athletic always play outfield in P.E. softball. I don't mean to say outfielders aren't athletic, but what happens in P.E. class is that you have the normal number of infielders and everyone else is in the outfield. So you might have 8 or 10 covering the entire field. If you space it out right, someone who has talent will run over and catch the ball when your prayers don't get answered and the ball gets hit to you anyway.

Thing was, I actually could catch the ball. But I had some odd last-second twist I'd put on the glove when I caught it that made everyone marvel at my technique. I couldn't throw it for squat, though. Nor could I hit.

Until one day ...

For some reason, one day I connected and had a stand-up double. It was really only a base hit at best, but the outfield always moved in close when I came up to bat, so my unexpected hit put it over all their heads -- all 8 of the outfielders.

And it wasn't a fluke, I kept getting on base -- which was quite an accomplishment considering that they eventually figured out I was going to hit farther out, and there were eight outfielders.

I went from being next-to-last picked to batting cleanup. Yes, I said cleanup. I was pretty good until the girls came and watched us one day. Then I was back to striking out -- just like I did, well, with girls.

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Photo: "Push Ball Scrimmage, Columbia" George Granthan Bain Collection (Library of Congress)

Why we need editors: Only The Shadow knows how to diagram these signs

These side-by-side signs appear to have been made at the same time, so why not word them the same?

If only we knew.

I'm a professional editor, so me pointing out others' word foibles is like Mike Tyson telling me I hit like a girl. Plus, nobody's perfect; I'm occasionally the reason the newspaper I work for has to run a correction. But you've got to admit it actually looks like somebody wasn't sure which way was correct and so tried it both ways, figuring one of them had to be right.

Neither one is.

The sign of the left says the only purpose of this door is for a facilities staff member to open it. (Presumably, the real purpose of the door is to protect something inside from falling into the hands of anyone who isn't on the facilities staff.) The one on the right says that the facilities staff can't do anything to the door except open it. (Can't even close it once it's been opened.)

What the sign-maker really wanted to say was "To be opened by facilities staff only" -- no one except facilities staff can open the door. (The facilities staff can do other things with the door: shut it, lock it; and the door serves other purposes than for the facilities staff to open it.)

That said, I can't imagine what would be so exciting behind either of those doors that anyone, facilities staff included, would want to open them. But then, only you live once. And you can only prevent forest fires.

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