The Monday Night Summer Club Association

These people are helping me reclaim (slowly) what the pneumonia took away.

If only the music didn't suck more often than not!

Church Basement Roadshow: A Rollin' Gospel Revival

My Review:
"It's "There Will Be Blood" meets "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" on the way to "The Apostle" but while driving a hybrid vehicle with Derrida and a Drag Queen in the backseat. Oh, and Jesus is there too!"

Their Official Plug:
Authors Tony Jones (The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier), Doug Pagitt (A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-filled, Open-armed, Alive-and-well Faith for the Left Out, Left Behind, and Let Down in us All), and Mark Scandrette (Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus) will preach, sing, and sell healing balm in church basements from San Diego to New York City, bringing the good news of the gospel to anyone who will listen.

The San Diego Union-Tribune write up

Catch them if they role through your town.

"Apple Bottom Jeans..."

The "Boots With The Furrr" Scarf for:

Name: Holly Grigsby


Location: Eastlake, Seattle


Job: Companion de Psychiatric Inpatients


Age: THERTY


What I want to be when I grow up: Myself


Best thing that happened to me last week: Friends, lending their ears to my singing.


On my bookshelf most recently: Suttree by Cormac McCarthy, A Road More or Less Traveled by Stephen Otis and Colin Roberts


On my Ipod a lot lately: My Morning Jacket ~ Evil Urges


Just watched this: Ken Burns' America: The Shakers


Why I let someone knit me a scarf with hardly any say in how it would look: Correction--BEGGED--because KJ can knit no wrong!!


My Inspiration for Holly: This was an easy one- I thought "Holly", looked in my yarn pile and pulled out the four yarns I wanted to use. After I planned it all out, I sent her a message to double check if she had any no-no colors. She responded saying basically, she likes earthy, dark wines, and things that work with her hazelishness. Fortunately- that's what I thought as well. On a daily basis, Holly evokes something between gold lame', puffy paint shirts, stirrup leggings, cashmere, cowgirl boots and lyric poetry- but in a good way... Hence, this scarf is a tribute to her sexy, self-effacing style of life, clothing and persona. She's a gem- that you find in the bottom of a cereal box and then put in a frame covered with seashells that your grandma gave you and love forvever and ever- all that and Hip Hop too!

Leadership Credo

Here's my oh so reluctant stab at naming what I think "leaders" should be held accountable to, that I had to do for class.

I believe leadership is an unhelpful word. In all parts of our life, we follow, are followed and struggle for unity – and diversity.

I believe that wanting to be liked is not a sin, and should not deter from offering one’s voice.

I believe fear of responsibility is not a sin and should not deter from offering one’s service.

I believe self-righteousness is not a virtue and should not guarantee words being heeded.

I believe being able to “power-through” is not a virtue and should not guarantee dictates being obeyed.

I believe our inability to gauge one another’s value and our tendency to miscalculate our own, is a fact and should not deter us from trying to listen and trying to speak.

I believe charisma is not a measure of one’s ability to guide others, nor introversion the mark of an administrator.

I believe vision without action is nonsense, and action without vision is laziness.

I believe the greater effort is to become one who can be converted, rather than one who converts.

No one is always a leader and never a follower, thus the term leadership is a deficient construct that serves only to exalt one perspective (or person) at the cost of lowering another.

Therefore, I believe the process of guiding and being guided is an ever-expanding movement towards maturity through humility.

What I Carry Around With Me

I'm headed out to replace my last pair of jeans which died last night. here's what I pulled out of my back pocket before trashing them.

1) Seattle International Film Festival voting ballot
2) Movie Stub from "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" SIFF
3) Movie Stub from "Iron Man" AMC
4) Movie Stub from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" The Big Picture
5) Movie Stub from "Indian Jones..." Majestic Bay
6) Play Stub from "Namaste Man" Intiman Theatre
7) Receipt from Mcdonanlds where I finished my gift card from Niegel on which he wrote:

8) A fortune cookie fortune that reads

Billy Graham and Johnny Cash

Both helped save my soul in one way or another.

Revisiting

This month I read Jane Eyre for the first time in 8 years. I read it when I was 17, and again my sophomore year of college. Reading it at 28, I was a little shocked to find that I was a decade older than the heroine. Why is she so much wiser than I, still?

The story has never felt less epic than it did this time, and I mean that in a good, really good way. The epochs of Jane's life, the vast spans of hope and despair that leave the reader (or viewer if it's a good adaptation) dying to have the tension relieved, are what the book is known for. But this time, these periods of trial and blessing felt like rhythmic seasons as I read chapter after chapter- in essence, her story felt survivable- survivable in a way it never had before.

It's June. June is a hard month for me. June is the anniversary of my survival- a word I still struggle to use- the label melodrama hanging ever so close. Only now am I starting to understand or cognate the fact that I almost died two years ago. I know people who have almost died a number of times, so that makes it hard for me to give my own story credit. I struggle to allow my own story to matter.

Reading Jane Eyre this month, I was startled to see what part of the book brought me to tears. No spoilers here, but I will say its a dramtic story with moments of elated joy and crushing, painful desolation. But what broke me apart this time was the portion of her story dealing with weakness, sickeness and recovery. It was the few pages recounting her foggy state of consiousness while she noticed those at her bedside, and could not muster the strength to move any part of her body. It was here that my gut seized and my eyes went blurry- I know this feeling. I have spent practically zero time thinking about my ten days in the hospital in 2006, yet I'm still dealing with the physical aftermath of double pneumonia followed by two months of barely walking. And suddenly two weeks ago, I started getting flash memories of people around my bedside wearing facemasks. A wave of curdling helplessness that I've tried to forget comes over me, and I'm terrified at drawing near to remembering what it was like to lie awake alone all night, every night, for ten nights in a hospital room, when before that, I'd only been to the emeregnecy room with sprained things.

I think reading Jane Eyre this time has started to trigger what I never felt then: fear. I was too weak and sick to be afraid about what has happening. It was my parents flying overnight and Kim watching me get rolled off into quarentine- and the days and days and days of me dissapearing farther and farther out of my life and into a wierd world of long hallways that eventually led to a plane to Arizona, instead of the two months of my life I had still to live in New York. I think now I'm starting to feel the trauma of what everybody else watched, and I myself just floated through with oxygen tanks and an IV pole. I was too sick to know how sick I was, and after two years, I still have made no headway into wrestling with what that rip in my life did- other than the visible stuff like the patch of veins of my left arm that are darker because of an IV scar, and the experiential part of leaving my own life prematurely- or at least switching lives at an unplanned time.

So as June 22 nears, I'm still left wondering when I'll feel safe enough to revisit that hospital room, revisit the feeling of burning in my lungs, revisit that first night where I experienced things I've never told anyone about, and have barely even glanced at personally. That's really how bad it was. And I haven't admitted that. I still don't know how to.

Seattle International Film Festival

I only got to see one SIFF show, but despite the review below, I had a great time. Wish I'd had more time to explore the festival. Nothing beats getting to hear film directors talk live about the movie you just watched.






The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
My Rating: 2 1/2 stars
Despite a strong cast (Peter Sarsgaard, Peter Sarsgaard, Peter Sarsgaard) and good cinematography I'm left ultimately saying "Why this story now?" Based on Michael Chabon's mid-80's novel, the film fails to move beyond the coming-of-age summer-of-love-triangle- themed plot that pervaded that whole decade. The characters don't seem sympathetic (or believable for that matter) for a 2008 sensibility. Culturally, I feel we've moved beyond the questions these characters are struggling with, or at least we express them differently enough now that this movie ends up feeling like an odd cultural artifact from 1986 featuring a 2008 cast. It just didn't work. However, I'm always willing to pay the price of admission to watch Peter Sarsgaard at his ambiguous, omni-sexual best.

You Never Know What's Gonna Resonate With The Public

As my blog has lived up to its titular bulletin board nature of randomness, I of course think from time to time "If I post this, will anyone care, or is it just dumb, ranty or lame?" Such was the thought that passed through my head before I did my little Bus Rider complaint last week or so. Well, to my shock and awe, I traced back my sitemeter to not one, but two sites that somehow found my post and furthered it on to their own blog sites, in one case, even quoting it like I was Reuters or something. It's flattering and odd, but more, if this is my fifteen minutes of fame I have to admit I was imagining something a bit more flashy than complaining about inneficient bus space usage. I'll try not to let this all go to my head.

Citizenrain.com

Seatrans.blogspot.com
(this one thinks I'm a guy)

It's the Little things...

...like Tracy Morgan singing a fake theme song about a rocket...that make life okay, if not great.

This goes out to Kim, who randomly sang a line from this song right before she hung up the phone, which prompted me to search for it, find, laugh, then post it here. Thanks Kimmeh!

People You Should Know

Isabelle and Nick of Piano Nobile Studio
If you want to know where I'll be Saturday, June 14 (after 10 hours of a class intensive) its Piano Nobile's Open Studio Celebration, part of the Ballard Artwalk. You should probably be there too. Check out their sight for details.

Why you need to know Nick and Isabelle:
Because they're your peers, only better, because they live in a converted garage/studio in Ballard's wharehouse haven on the east side of 15th Ave. And by converted studio, I mean the kind of achingly gorgeous space that only two Cooper Union grads could create, repelete with sky high bookshelves (with books organized by color of course), handmade furniture (that they made and designed) not to mention enough floor space to almost meet Cornhole regulations for indoor games, and wall space galore for DVD projection film enjoyment time. Also, beside being two of the most creative and innovative people you could ever hope to run into, they are the kindest, funniest, most delightfully surprsiing and hospitable geniuses you could ever imagine. And they are one handsome couple.

Why I know Nick and Isabelle:
This is one of those lucky things about life- you do your thing, have your friends and jobs, and somehow a network forms where people you don't know much at all, become pretty tightly linked to your own chain, even though sometimes it takes a long time for the two chains to actually connect. Meaning, that I knew Isabelle from NY, when she and Kim both worked at Purl in Soho, and I would spend my free afternoons knitting at the big wooden table that took up the six feet of floor space in the store. So I logged in a lot of hours in Isabelle's presence, could easily see that she was not only awesome, but someone you'd want to latch onto for life, and got to socialize with her a little, but more or less, our mutual networks spread out as we went on to do whatever it was we were doing. But then she moved to Seattle, and with Kim coming to visit last month, the network chains finally linked, and I was bowled over at how lucky I am to know Nick and Isabelle, and to have them be a ten minute bus ride away. They're the kind of people you expect to read about in Architecture Today (and we probably will, if it hasn't happened already) but find yourself instead, barbaqueing on a $30 Smoky Joe in their front "lawn" (cement driveway and well tended potted herb garden). Add to that an adorable dog named Bauhaus, and you've found yourself some quality people to befriend while being fans of.

Check them out some time. You can't help but be inspired and want to move into a storage bin in front of their house.

*photos borrowed from Kim Hamlin and Isabelle Grizzard Robertson*

In the News

Here's some fun press for Mars Hill Graduate School, feauturing unflattering pictures of friends of mine who were coerced into doing a tableau of Matisse's "La Danse." Yeah, instead of a school mascot we have a school painting. On that random note, I found myself saying to a roommate today that if "La Danse" is our school painting, then "Magnolia" is our school film. It's used in like every class, and gets mentioned by at least one staff member per week. Also, our school video is Sigur Ros' "Glosoli" which has appeared in everything from a lecture on "Mission in a Global Context" to the Orientation weekend service for new students. So I guess we need to figure out what our school song is, favorite actors, favorite color, food, etc. Maybe the Seattle times will write that article.

Belltown Messenger Article

Seattle PI Article

Our namesake: Mars Hill, aka the Aereopagus, in Athens

Racing Stripes

The "Lance Armstrong, Eat My Dust!" Scarf for:


Name: Phillip Schlachter


Location: Seattle, WA


Job: Pediatric Mental Health Specialist- Inpatient Psychiatric Unit/ Children’s Hospital, Student

Age: 24

What I want to be when I grow up: I want to be the guy who sits on the beach in Hawaii and sells coconut monkey’s (probably private practice/therapy, and head football coach)

Best thing that happened to me last week: T’was my BIRTHDAY!


On my bookshelf most recently: I HATE reading, but am getting ready to start reading for Multicultural Issues, and Leadership I.


On my ipod a lot lately: MGMT-Time to Pretend, M.I.A.-Paper Planes, Peter Bjorn and John-Young Folks, Sufjan Stevens-Super Sexy Woman, and yes….New Kids On The Block-Summertime!!

Just watched this: Ben X (at the the SIFF) sad story of a high school boy with aspbergers. One of those films actually worth the $11 compared to the ridiculous nonsense our society calls entertainment.

Why I let someone knit me a scarf with hardly any say in how it would look: 'Cause I wanted to be the proud owner of a limited edition one of a kind scarf! And cause I look ravishing in it, seriously I DO!

And he sure does. This scarf was an easy pick. A month or two back, Philip overheard me talking to someone about making a scarf, and he said (and these might even have been his first words to me) "Ooh, would you make me a scarf?" Duh, of course I would. Especially because everytime I see Philip around school, he is bedecked in brightly colored athletic gear which I knew meant that I could have fun with whatever I made for him. I informed him that my current homework schedule was putting me on a scarf hiatus, but that I would get back to him. I don't know if he knew I was being serious, but I checked in with him last week and said, "still want a scarf?" and we went from there.

At first, I thought Philip was the perfect opportunity to bring back the lime green which I haven't used since the first scarf of "the collection" but when I put it alongside the mottled, jersey grey I wanted to use, it just didn't click. Then Philip dropped the magic words..."Maybe Yellow" and I was sold. Most people flee yellow (including me) but Cascade makes some nice gold yarns, so I was excited to finally have a reason to use one that was more yellow than orange.
This scarf, like Philip, is bold and leaning towards XTreme. It's Powerade via knitting needles. Thanks Philip, for letting me be vicariously sporty through you. I've enjoyed getting to know you while trying to express you in yarn form. We're off to a good start.

                                                           Zoom!

                                        "Yeah? What are you looking at?"