rivervision

i hate b0rd3rs books.. i hate what it does to small book sellers.. EXCEPT for the fact that they often have great prices on books that i really want – have been wanting, or didn’t know i wanted. 2 months ago i found jimmy carter’s book “palestine: peace not apartheid” for $5.00.. originally $23. last year i found one of anne lamott’s books. today i found this:

“we shall overcome: hear the history of the civil rights movement as it happened.” $6.00.. originally $45. as i was checking out the nice lady asked me if i had one of their cards and i told her no. no, because i shouldn’t be shopping there, but they do have excellent bargain books.. such as this. and so i opened it up and i showed her what is on the cd’s.. original speeches and recordings from the time. i told her ‘this is a book about the history they don’t talk enough about in school. this is a book about peace, not war. in they only focus on war… that’s your lecture from a local pacificst.’

yes, i love books. i adore them. i love beautiful books that i can literally stroke pages and soak in what is offered. i have another book like this – national geographic’s ‘peace: the biography of a symbol’ that i lucked into the fellow who helped on it – mike sweeney – was (up until june of 09) my friend ppp’s boss and a member of my church. he gave me a copy of the book and signed it. it’s a beautiful book about another topic that needs to be indoctrinated into the heads of our school children. i’ve not read the whole thing, just parts, but when i pick it up i carefully stroke the pages and get to soak in a bit of the content just through those strokes.

okay, i’m rambling. yesterday bit the big one, today was better. tomorrow i may go camping with FPC. right now i should work on something my prof wants me to do to get me to move forward with my dissertation proposal. i’m going to go down to the church because i think it may be air conditioned.

oh, and if anyone is interested in getting a copy of these recordings, let me know. i’ll figure out a way of getting them too you.. i’m awfully flakey, but i may be able to upload the individual files.

my experience with pastor corinne’s hummingbirds was very much a spiritual one. this is what i twittered last night:

got to commune with pastor corinne’s hummingbirds tonight. i kept saying it was zen. it wasn’t. it was communing with God.

yep, yep, that pretty much sums up my experience. i hope i get to go back! here are some pictures i took of people’s hands as they were communing with the birds:

btw, vb. i have no idea how corinne gets them to be so peaceful with each other. if you’d like to ask her i’d be happy to put you in touch with her. :)

i stopped by prince of peace lutheran today. i went over there because pastor corinne had gone to palestine / israel last year and had picked up a bunch of small crosses, fish and stars of Bethlehem made from olive wood by palestinian christians for people who may not ever get a chance to go there and who having something from the Holy Land would be meaningful. i have a catholic someone who is important to me who is going through a rough time right now and i thought that bringing this person a cross from bethlehem would be meaningful to them (pastor corinne agreed). while i was there she asked if i’d seen her in the paper with the hummingbirds, and being that i don’t read the print version of it, no i hadn’t. apparently i’d missed something cool, so cool that i wanted to share it with y’all.

c. logan herald journal, 2009

want to see more? go see the other 11 pictures in the album.

corinne invited me over for an event going on at her place tonight – for the fellowship and to hang with the birds. i can’t wait. the added bonus? corinne lives at one of my new favorite spots to hang, so afterward i’m going to go hang with the birds i’m starting to think of as friends.

i first read about the spiral jetty over a year ago. it was mentioned along with other outside works of art (i’ve tried to find the article, but can’t). i forget what the other pieces were that were mentioned, but i did take special notice of this one because the article mentioned that it was a part of the northern salt lake, just west of brigham city – which is 20 miles west of logan. today was a crappy crappy crappy day – and so i decided that i needed to get out of the valley and seek out the jetty. luckily there are instructions on the website, but even more lucky – i didn’t need the directions. i simply followed the signs – first to promontory summit (aka, where the golden spike was placed to link the east and west US by rail) and then on to the jetty.

here are the pictures i took. i’ve put pointers to getting out there beyond the break if you want to go.

(if you can’t see this, you can also find them in my picasa account).

*btw, yes. i think i’ve finally found a place i can drive and escape to around logan – at least during dry times. in eugene i go to the coast – specifically the north jetty at florence. i can go there and just rejuvenate. once i get the drive down better (the last 2.5 miles) i can see the spiral jetty being the same. a place i can go, enjoying not only the place but also the journey, and come back feeling a bit more sane than i did when i left.

pointers to going out to the spiral jetty (please forgive if you already know any of this):

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