When I began this blog, I assumed that if any number of people read this blog, my actual identity would eventually come out publicly. Of course, I’ve been blogging all along — some 4½ years and almost 3,000 posts ago — under the pseudonym of “Brother Maynard.” When I began blogging here, I said that “the names are being withheld to protect the innocent and show grace toward the guilty.” I thought after the first year that I would announce myself, but on the advice of a few friends, I never have. But maybe I’m no longer feeling gracious.
I’m Not a Monk, But I Play One on the Internet
Radio Hymns #2: Lord is it Mine
When Roger Hodgson departed Supertramp in 1983, someone commented that the remaining group was reduced to being just “Tramp”. It was the end of an era for the band after releasing a number of very successful albums. Among them was the classic 1979 release, Breakfast in America. The album included four hit singles (”The Logical Song”, “Goodbye Stranger”, “Take the Long Way Home” and the title cut, “Breakfast in America”).
Hodgson was known for writing songs with spiritual or philosophical themes. Though the songwriting credit on Supertramp’s songs was commonly given jointly to Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, though they wrote alone. They had different styles, and the one who actually wrote the song sings the vocal on it. The two composers have different styles, and in the case of this week’s addition to my new series, Hymns from the Radio Dial, it is Hodgson’s voice we hear singing the lyrics to “Lord, is it Mine.”
Random Acts of Linkage #118
Not sure if that’s the image you expected at the top of the links list this week, but you have to admit it’s iconic. And it beats posting an image of the other guy who died that same day and stole most of the news cycle.
But now… thematic puns.
- A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in linoleum blown apart.
- Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.
- I would like to go to Holland one day, wooden shoe?
- England doesn’t have a kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.
- The Irish should be rich because their capital is always Dublin.
- Italian building inspectors in Pisa can be quite lenient.
- A Scandinavian race is never over until the last Lapp crosses the Finnish line.
Jon & Kate Tempt Fate
The idea was brilliantly conceived. Faced with the economic and logistic realities of suddenly having six extra mouths to feed, the two hatch a plan: get a bunch of television cameras to follow them around and film the whole thing for a television show as a way of earning some extra cash. Maybe the plan went over too well. You all know the story better than I, perhaps… family portrayed as devout Christians with a deep faith in God and down-home family values. You can sense trouble brewing already. It’s too much of a setup, isn’t it?
Following last week’s series introduction,
Random image of the week, a “desert-ed vehicle.” You know, because seven days without a pun makes one weak. Don’t groan, that’s just a foretaste!
I have in my record collection (yes, kids, it’s made of vinyl, and it plays on a turntable without any forward-backward interference so as to produce music instead of senseless garbled noises, thank you very much) a 1974 collector’s album by Larry Norman called Streams of White Light into Darkened Corners. I know you’ve all been waiting with baited breath to find out just what I might possibly replace my long-running Sunday hymn series with, and this is it. And I’m really looking forward to digging into it… after this week’s series introduction. Oddly enough, I had the idea for the series a couple of months back, and sat down to list some 50+ songs that fit the bill, and titled my list “Hymns from the Byways.” Then a few weeks later, I was thumbing through my record collection to find something nostalgic and landed on this forgotten LP. The idea is this — convinced that secular:sacred is most likely a false dichotomy, I’m compiling a list of songs which are (a) “Christian”-oriented but scored on the pop charts or (b) spiritual songs recorded by “secular” artists. I’m looking at that crossover space where we find spiritual truth on the radio. “Hymns from the Radio”? Not sure yet what to call the series, but don’t touch that dial.
Updates:
This week’s “random” image of the week is from
The author of the second-best-selling book in history (next to the Bible) would have been 80 years old today — June 12th — had she not died in March of 1945. Ironically, on June 20, 1942, she wrote, “It seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a 13-year-old schoolgirl.” This was one of the earliest entries in the
I think I mentioned an event coming up here this October featuring Phyllis Tickle speaking on her book
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