Cat cam

No! Someone has actually invented a cat cam to follow a cat around all day and see where he goes. This cat's name is Mr. Lee. Here he is wearing his camera around his neck:

Rockin' Girl Bloggers

I’ve been tagged by Dewey as a Rockin’ Girl Blogger, and now I have to tag five more bloggers who rock. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Colleen at Loose Leaf Notes rocks! Not only is she an excellent writer, but also a wonderful photographer. Colleen adopted the last available lion from The Shameless Lions Writing Circle, and I hope to get to know her even better in our new global community.

2. Nancy of Bookfoolery and Babble is another booklover. She photographs so many interesting things that she needs a couple of other blogs to post them all. I love to see where her Poppet goes next as she explores the world. Nancy, you rock!

3. Susan of Patchwork Reflections is a poet, photographer, thinker, writer, grandmother, nature lover. I'm finding more and more to like about her as we email back and forth and comment on each other's blogs. This lady rocks!

4. Lisa of Tales of a Psycho Mamma already knows she rocks because her 2-year-old recently told her, "You rock, dude." I joined Lisa's Something About Me challenge and also read her book blog, so I think I can say, "Rock on, Mamma!"

5. Karen of Verbatim is my final choice for Rockin' Girl Blogger. We both have impossible maiden names, we both like tag-less T-shirts, and her latest book review made me laugh. Karen, you rock, that's for dang-shootin'-sure. (Sorry ... lol.)

Dewey, I think YOU rock, but I can't tag you back. By the way, folks, Dewey gave me a gift: "Louis told me that the video below is Roary’s favorite song." So click on the hippo to hear "The Lion Sings Tonight."

The Lion Sings Tonight

Something About Me ~ my reading choices

My choices:
1. The Seven Daughters of Eve ~ by Bryan Sykes (Chris)
2. Place Last Seen ~ by Charlotte McGuinn Freeman (Wendy)
3. Einstein's Dreams ~ by Alan Lightman (Raidergirl3)
4. The Memory Keeper's Daughter ~ by Kim Edwards (3M)
5. The Tortilla Curtain ~ by T.C. Boyle (Dewey)
6. Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books ~ by Paul Collins (in memory of Nattie)

Alternates:
7. Luncheon of the Boating Party ~ by Susan Vreeland (3M)
8. A Thousand Splendid Suns ~ by Khaled Hosseini (Diane)
9. The Happy Room ~ by Catherine Palmer (Twiga)
10. The Time Traveler's Wife ~ by Audrey Niffenegger (Dewey)
11. The End of Faith ~ by Sam Harris (Judith)
12. Demon Haunted World ~ by Carl Sagan (Kookiejar)

This challenge lasts five months, August through December, so I chose five books. The sixth book on my list is for Nattie, one she chose to tell us something about herself; but Nattie died young, leaving behind two small children. Cancer took her before the challenge got underway, but some of us are reading books she chose, doing it in memory of Nattie.

If you have read any of these books, please tell me what you thought of them. Thumbs up? Or thumbs down?

The Armchair Traveler

UPDATED:
Click here for completed challenge and reviews of all books.

I'm joining another challenge, this time one where I'll be traveling while sitting comfortably. This one runs from July 1 through December 31, six months to read six books that fall under the ‘armchair traveling’ theme, fiction or nonfiction as long as the location is an actual place you could visit. Books may be cross-posted to other challenges, but you cannot count any books read prior to July 1st.


My choices:
1. Beneath a Marble Sky ~ by John Shors ~ India
2. Her Fork in the Road: Women Celebrate Food and Travel ~ ed. by Lisa Bach ~ the world
3. Italian Neighbors: or A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona ~ by Tim Parks ~ Italy
4. Latitudes of Melt ~ by Joan Clark ~ Newfoundland
5. Place Last Seen ~ by Charlotte Freeman ~ Sierra Nevadas
6. Shadows on the Rocks ~ by Willa Cather ~ Quebec


Alternates:
7. Brazzaville Beach ~ by William Boyd ~ Republic of the Congo
8. Secret River ~ by Kate Grenville ~ Australia
9. With Their Backs to the World: Portraits of Serbia ~ by Asne Seierstad ~ Serbia

Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith ~ by Barbara Brown Taylor

Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith ~ by Barbara Brown Taylor, 2006

Baylor University named Barbara Brown Taylor one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English-speaking world. After ordination in the Episcopal Church, she served as a priest for two decades, and now she teaches religion at Piedmont College and is an adjunct professor of Christian spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary. She is also a writer, having published more than ten books and now serving as editor-at-large and columnist for The Christian Century.

The title of this book may surprise many people who think "leaving church" means walking away from church.  Did she?  Yes, and no.   Yes, she put away her collar, left the church she was serving, and didn't go back.  Not going back is required of clergy in some denominations, like hers (Episcopal) and mine (United Methodist).  We don't go back because people would continue to go to her or me for the pastoral care we had been giving them.  But on the other hand, no, she did not leave God, which is what many think "leaving church" really means.

The book is divided into three parts:  Finding, Losing, and Keeping.  Taylor says the central revelation in her life is "that the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human" (p. xi).  In this book she explores what that has meant to her "in a world where religion often seems to do more harm than good" (p. xii).  She could see that "human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God" (p. 106).

Taylor addresses the reason I don't usually tell people up front that I am an ordained minister when she says, "If being ordained meant being set apart from them [the people] then I did not want to be ordained anymore.  I wanted to be human" (p. 120).  Many pastors seem to enjoy being considered something special, but Taylor and I both see ourselves as one of the people.  I was especially interested to see that, after leaving her position as pastor of a church, she began to teach religions of the world.  While I was still pastor of my last church, I did the same thing.

This book will give you a look at what being a pastor is all about, the struggles as well as the joys, and "look[ing] at life through the windows of the church" in a context "so tightly focused that even my junk mail was Christian" (p. 168).   I rate the book 9/10, excellent.
__________
An opposing point of view:  http://jameskasmith.blogspot.com/2007/04/leaving-church-for-what.html

THE CALF-PATH by Sam Walter Foss

This poem appeared in The Writer's Almanac on June 12, but I found it by reading Mary's Library blog. This is the kind of thing I tend to do, thinking about all the creatures who followed the calf who first walked that way; however, I have never said it so well or even thought it so well.


The Calf-Path

One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell–wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell–wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed – do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf,
And though this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed this zigzag calf about
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way.
And lost one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.