The great thing about Blackbird Island:  within a relatively short stretch of river, you can find numerous submerged weed beds where you can collect aquatic plants for fish tanks.

The not-so-great thing about Blackbird Island:  it's a major destination for both locals and tourists, who tend to gather and stare from above you on the bridge, usually  ( Read more... )

"But from that moment on, Hermione Granger become their friend.  There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them."

- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

The air changed yesterday.  Autumn has begun.

I consider myself to be fairly contemplative in my approach to Christianity, marked largely by many of the monastics and their orders throughout the centuries.  I have found that my actual working out of my faith tends to be more fluid than the approaches of most of the Christians I have largely found myself surrounded by.  For instance, I've never ( Read more... )

Well, I'm only in Ch. 6 right now, where Harry is meeting Ron while on the train to Hogwarts.  But already there are a few things that have caught my attention ( Read more... )

Last night I finally started reading the first book in the Harry Potter series (now that it has officially come to an end.  However, I do sense an inevitable prequal series on the horizon...).

Now, I've seen the movies and have really enjoyed them, and even in light of the story I've been able to glean from them alone, I am surprised at some of ( Read more... )

I'm predicting that Pushing Daisies, which debuts this fall on ABC, is going to be a superb show.  Superb.


( Read more... )

"...more people are enslaved today than before the American Civil War...."
(National Geographic Magazine)

"I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die.  I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently."

- Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts


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"A small group of thoughtful people could change the world.  Indeed, it's the only that ever has."
- Margaret Mead