Therapy Llamas

Carol Burnett Show - Star Trek Parody

New Year's Resolution Poems by The Editors of Poetry Magazine

New Year's Resolution Poems by The Editors

We Make Blowgun Darts w/ Crayons

Seth's Blog: Doing what you love (but maybe you can't get paid for it)

Seth's Blog: Doing what you love (but maybe you can't get paid for it)

Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye : The Poetry Foundation

Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye : The Poetry Foundation

"Whirled Beat" 10-year-old boy drumming washing machine

A Softer World comics/poems

A Softer World

The Education of Average Joe

My friend Andrew Kreider has a new collection of poems called "The Education of Average Joe".
He reads four of the pieces below. Here's a link where you can find out more":
The Education of Average Joe

Simon's Cat in 'Icecapade'

Star Trek - DJ Spock

Slapping the Skins

I don't actually blog much about this, but I play percussion at my church about
three times a week. My friend Rod Ferdnance videotapes most of the services and
he made a video of a ending to a song at church. So, enjoy.

Lame Otter Joke.

From Hello With Cheese.

Anything with otters can't be too lame-cause otters are
my favorite animal.

Think a Happy Thought...

What Would Happen?

My whole life I have done what "they" have told me.

I have said the words they wanted me to say.

I have dressed the way they wanted me to dress.

I have lived the way they wanted.

Forty plus years they have controlled who I am.

Who are "they" you may ask?

Who is this shadowy influence on this free man's life?

They are my parents, my family, my teachers,

my professors, my friends, my pastors, my church family, 
my neighbors, and my wife.

What would happen if I turned away from all they want from me?

What would happen ...

If I did what I wanted?

If I said what I wanted?

If I lived how I wanted?

If I sought my own first of all?

What would happen if I exposed them to all I truly am,

All that I let lay hidden within?

What would happen if I let them see all the contradictions?

All the incongruities?
All that doesn't jive with their notions of who I ought to be?

What if I turned my back on all they want and ask of me?

Am I wrong to submit to them?

Am I untrue to my cowboy ideals?

Turning my back on speaking plain, 

And self-reliance?

My cowboy ideals would be fine if it was just me,

My horse, my gun at my side,

But I sleep in a soft bed on a city street,

Not in a bedroll under the stars.

I work in an office, 
Shop in a Wal-Mart,

Walking through a world filled with people dear to me.

There are no sagebrush or cattle in my landscape.

The question of ‘What will happen?’ will lay unanswered,

Because I am not free.

My liberty is bound to those I love.

Sleighbell fever has overtaken me. The only remedy is to play till it passes.

Dave Brubeck-Religion and Jazz

Watch Dave Brubeck on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

"Instrument of Choice" by Robert Phillips

She was a girl
no one ever chose
for teams or clubs,
dances or dates,

so she chose the instrument 
no one else wanted:
the tuba. Big as herself, 
heavy as her heart, 

its golden tubes
and coils encircled her
like a lover's embrace.
Its body pressed on hers.

Into its mouthpiece she blew
life, its deep-throated
oompahs, oompahs sounding,
almost, like mating cries. 

From Good Poems by Garrison Keillor 2002
(King 2341 Tuba pictured above. )

"I Will Make You Brooches" By Robert Louis Stevenson

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me.

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire, 
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.