Believe it or not, I wasn’t shooting a wedding when I captured this. I was actually in a wedding as a groomsman for my best-friend Zach, and this girl happens to be one of the pastor’s daughters. They had a backyard wedding reception and there was a tire swing in the very back that the little girl’s were playing on. I couldn’t resist once I saw what they were doing so I grabbed my camera and ran back there. I took about 3 photos and got this one. I was stoked.

I love a good story–who doesn’t? But a good story can rise and fall at the mercy of the storyteller. That’s why I love the story and videos below. Yes, the story is good, but more than that, the way this young man tells the story of how he was able to reunite a lost roll of film with it’s owner is just great. Take a few minutes and watch these little videos. I think you’ll be blessed.

Found: Lost Pictures of New York Blizzard (part 1)

Found: Lost Pictures of New York Blizzard (part 2)

Found: Lost Pictures of New York Blizzard (part 3)

If you can’t see the above videos, here are links to all three parts of “Found: Lost Pictures of New York Blizzard”: part 1, part 2, part 3

If I can use a British word, the film is brilliant. The story is heart warming and genuine, the nineteen twenties era is spot on, and the acting is some of the best I’ve seen. During the opening shot of the microphone I turned to Bethany and said, “I already like it”. From a cinematography standpoint it’s just a beautiful film. The production is high quality and they absolutely nailed the era of England in the twenties. Basically, it’s a film about two things: fear and friendship. I won’t give any spoilers away, but the IMDB description sums the film up this way, “The story of King George VI of Britain, his impromptu ascension to the throne and the speech therapist who helped the unsure monarch become worthy of it.” That’s a very fair explanation, but in no way is this a boring English movie. Colin Firth (King George VI) and Geoffrey Rush (the speech therapist, Lionel) are both just incredible in this movie, and the way their friendship is established is both funny and heart warming. Bethany and I talked about it the whole way home from the theater (which was about 20 miles away because it’s not playing everywhere) and we just couldn’t get over the characters and the nuances of each person. Needless to say, we highly recommend the movie. Yes, we know it’s rated R, and without getting in to how I feel about the useless rating system, I can say that if you’re an adult you can see this movie without any real awkwardness. It’s rated R for language, but I’m telling you that even the very few (about two) sections of language are actually quite funny. Though I don’t condone the use of poor language, I can honestly say I was laughing…a lot.

There are few movies that come out that I clap at the end, and this was one of them. If you’ve been waiting for a great movie to come out that you can catch, this is the one. Like I said, it’s a story about fear and friendship and if those concepts don’t capture your heart then you’re probably not living too well. Go see it–it won’t disappoint.

Here’s the trailer:

As you probably already know, a major snow storm hit the East Coast this past week which brought loads of snow and shut down roads and airports for a few days. Many people are still feeling the effects of the several feet of snow that left them stranded, like the people of Newark, New Jersey. But what you may not have heard about is Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, and a man that appears to be leading his town by example.

I first heard about Mr. Booker when he and Conan O’Brien were “feuding” over YouTube. During his short-lived run on the Tonight show Conan made a joke about Newark that didn’t go over too well with the mayor. So Booker took to YouTube to settle the matter, thus placing Conan on the Newark, New Jersey’s “no fly list”. The feud went back and forth for a while via YouTube and Conan’s show but ended on a high note when Conan invited Booker to the show and donated $100,000 to a charity in Newark.

But this week, Cory Booker was at it again — this time he wasn’t battling Conan, but the snow. According to Twitter’s blog, Cory was out in the streets of Newark with his shovel and a team of people literally digging people out of the snow. He was using his Blackberry phone and his Twitter account to let people know that he could come to them and clear their driveways or sidewalks and get them to where they needed to be. Some people had to work, others had doctor’s appointments, and the mayor wanted to make sure his people could get their safely.

As I read over his Twitter timeline and saw all the tweets and people he was helping I actually started to cry. Really, this man is leading by example and being an inspiration to others to do the same. It’s people helping people and that’s something anyone can get behind, especially those who are Christians, like myself. This challenges my own heart to remember that we all need to take care of each other, not just in snow storms, but in the storms of life. Mayor Booker might be literally digging people out of the weight of snow, but what about the weight of trials and hardship in life? I heard a pastor say once in regards to helping each other “… that’s what Christians do right, we help each other out!” I think he was right. The Christian life is not meant to be lived alone, but in a community of people and at times that is going to include getting our shovels out and doing some hard work to dig each other out. Another pastor I know said this during a men’s retreat which I think is appropriate, “There two things a man needs to be successful in this life: a Bible and a shovel.” He needs a Bible so he can understand God’s Word and follow what it says, and he needs a shovel to work hard and provide for his family and serve the church. Well, Mayor Booker is an example of how to use a shovel, and I am reminded that I can’t just read my Bible and expect things to happen — I need to pick up my shovel once in a while.

Literally every book I got for Christmas (2010). 2011 is shaping up to be the year of “input” (and if you don’t get that reference, go watch Short Circuit). I haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to try and read all of them this year. That would basically be one book a month and a few them are in the 500 page range. If I can resolve to read twenty minutes a day, I think I could it — the real question is do I want to? The verdict is still out on that. Either way you can expect reviews on everything I read.

All the books listed from the top of the stack to the bottom (in the above photo):

1. Worldliness by C.J. Mahaney
2. Whatever Happened to Worship by A.W. Tozer
3. Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde
4. Letters From a Father to His Sons in College by Samuel Miller
5. The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein
6. Why We Love The Church by Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck
7. How Should We Then Live? by Francis Schaeffer
8. Gospel-Powered Parenting by William P. Farley
9. The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
10. Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
11. The Apostles’ Doctrine of the Atonement by George Smeaton
*12. Style and the Man by Alan Flusser

*not pictured

Just a little reading from our 16th President about Thanksgiving, 1864:

Date: October 20, 1864
By: Abraham Lincoln

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad, and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their campus, and our sailors on the rivers and seas, with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while he has opened to us new sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards
. Moreover, he has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may be then, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

In testimony where of, I have here unto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twentieth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

If you Google “medal of honor” you’re confronted with some very interesting results. The first two (three if you count the “sponsored link”) are links to a popular video game with the same name, and the third result is for the “Congressional Medal of Honor Society” which was created by the U.S. Congress to remember the recipients of the highest award given to U.S. military personnel — that is, the literal Medal of Honor. This might be confusing to some, but not to Google. Google is just returning back what it thinks are the best results of what people are searching for. But Google’s results illustrate this reality: we live in a confused culture. Confused over what? The simple answer: everything. We are a culture that doesn’t understand parenting, gender, race, sex, death, development, God, religion, and many others. But in the case of the medal of honor, we are confused over reality, or said another way, we’re confused over what’s real and what isn’t.

Staff Sargent Sal Guinta is the first living person since Vietnam to awarded the Nation’s highest medal, the medal of honor (you can watch his personal account of the story in this video). Three years ago he bravely fought off the enemy in Afghanistan and his story, though heart-breaking, will give encouragement and hope to many Americans. It’s the story of a real young man, with real strength and valor, doing something that few would ever do. He stared down certain death and risked his own life for his fellow soldiers and his country. Even in his own words, he believed he didn’t deserve the medal, but wanted it to represent the many other who fought along side him and those who are still fighting today. He sounds like a humble and self-sacrificing man, and I personally want to thank him for his service to the United States. But as I listened and read his story, I couldn’t help but think that so many other young men are out there right now, sitting behind a screen playing a video game that, though entertaining, doesn’t teach them anything about life in the real world, with real pain, and real risks. I like the way one former Marine officer Benjamin Busch put it in his article “Why A Video Game Does Not A Soldier Make”, he says

“Playing and risking your life are different things. In the video war, there may be some manipulation of anxiety, some adrenaline to the heart, but absolutely nothing is at stake…A video game can produce no wounds and take no friends away.”

Some young men probably stood in long lines back in October waiting for the release of the latest “Medal of Honor” video game. Many of them probably didn’t even hear about President Obama awarding the actual Medal of Honor just a month later. But then again, there’s really nothing exciting about an old guy giving some young guy a little necklace, right? Wrong. My concern is that young men today don’t know anything of the bravery, valor, or even honor displayed by Sal Guinta. And what they do know of it is probably highly distorted. While they sit at home in their bedrooms playing video games created by companies that spend millions of dollars to create reality, there are real men and women risking their lives every day, many of whom have left their friends and family here and aren’t guaranteed a return ticket home. Again, officer Busch’s comments are relevant,

“And for those who truly want to play for a Medal of Honor, recruiters are standing by. Only eight have been awarded since we invaded Afghanistan. All but one have been posthumous.”

It’s easy to live in a confused culture and not see the weird dichotomy it creates at times, or the blurred lines of reality and fantasty. As I look forward to training and educating my own son about the world around him I would do well to see the problem here and make the necessary adjustments. I hope and pray that he would grow to understand that there’s more to life than entertainment and that he would always separate what’s real from what isn’t, even when the lines look blurred. More than that, I pray he would be a man of great courage, valor, and honor — not just for his country, but for his God who deserves far greater allegiance.

Watch President Obama reward Sal Giunta with the Medal of Honor:

Build Anything from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

Ever since she went “missing” in the Indian ocean, I can’t help but keep up with the story about Abby Sunderland — the 16 year old girl trying to circumnavigate the world in her sail boat. If you’ve followed the story (or heard the news), you know she was basically a little over half way in her voyage when her boat was crippled by rough water and winds. Thankfully, she was equipped with location devices which she manually set off when her mast was destroyed and she laid in wait for rescue. The nearest boat to her was over 400 miles away, but Australian search teams did a fly-by and were able to contact her via radio to confirm she was OK. After about 40 hours of bobbing in the middle the ocean, a French fishing boat was able to rescue her while leaving her crippled boat behind to presumably sink. But however amazing and incredible the story already is, I think it’s just the beginning.

The tide has turned (so to speak) in this saga, and it’s headed straight for Abby’s parents. People everywhere want to know one thing: why would they let a 16-year old girl sail around the world alone? A few years ago they let their son Zac Sunderland attempt the exact same feat which he completed in mid-2009. Zac was 17 years old when he finished and it took him 13 months to make it around the globe. Abby, a year younger and maybe not as experienced as Zac, has now abandoned her quest and it was a dangerous voyage. But I have yet to find an article regarding Zac’s successful trip and blaming his parents for letting him complete the task. Were their parents doing the right thing then by letting him go and now they are to blame for Abby’s failed attempt? — I think not. The problem is not the Sunderland family’s parenting model, it’s everyone else’s.

We’ve long forgotten the days when “adolescence” didn’t exist — that is, this weird time our culture has created between childhood and adulthood. It’s a scary place where teenagers have little to no responsibility and learn to remain in childhood until they are at least 18 and then they’re allowed to venture out on their own. Newt Gingrich wrote a very interesting article in 2008 titled “Let’s End Adolescence” in which he basically gives proof for the failure of this “social experience” we call adolescence. As well he gives examples of young people who accomplished great things with their lives. He writes,

Benjamin Franklin was an example of this kind of young adulthood. At age 13, Franklin finished school in Boston, was apprenticed to his brother, a printer and publisher, and moved immediately into adulthood.

John Quincy Adams attended Leiden University in Holland at 13 and at 14 was employed as secretary and interpreter by the American Ambassador to Russia. At 16 he was secretary to the U.S. delegation during the negotiations with Britain that ended the Revolution.

Daniel Boone got his first rifle at 12, was an expert hunter at 13, and at 15 made a yearlong trek through the wilderness to begin his career as America’s most famous explorer. The list goes on and on.

[via Bloomberg BusinessWeek, originally pubslished Oct. 30, 2008]

That’s why the problem is everyone else. The culture we have created in America doesn’t want young people to go out and do hard things anymore. They’re either “too young”, “too inexperienced”, or any number of excuses we have created for them and there are no longer any expectations on them. The Sunderland family believes that young people have more to offer and they live by that. They understand that young people weren’t designed to sit around and play video games. They’re not here to just be a drain on our economy as the media teaches them to consume, consume, consume. Just because Abby didn’t make it around the globe in her boat doesn’t mean she failed. It means she tried to raise the bar for young people and call them to do something greater with their lives, and just because she didn’t finish doesn’t mean her effort wasn’t worth it. It’s also a call to parents to really look at the bigger picture here and realize that their kids are ready and able to do more than our weak culture thinks they can do. They are ready to be challenged with more than we are offering. They just need a little help from us.

For further reading:
Abby’s blog
“Abby Sunderland Makes it Home” - The Rebelution
Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations by Alex and Brett Harris

Photos from the Library of Congress. No known copyright restrictions. Quotes taken from various films of the nineteen eighties. Idea to put the two together by me.

If you’re not a Flickr user, you can stop reading this and move on — if you are, stick around.

What you see above is a sampling of the photos that I have personally “fav’d” on Flickr over the years. As an avid photographer and Flickr lover, I actually take my fav’ing too seriously, but this new web application “ffffl*ckr” is pretty ffffreakin’ sweet. It pulls all your favorites in to one location (after you connect your account), and then shows them to you in a very visually appropriate way. As I see my own favorites I feel like I’m inside my head a bit — it’s kind of cool. Not because I’ve got all these amazing photos in my head, but because it tells me what interests me and what sticks out to me. Sometimes they are just funny or cute, but other times I feel like the photos I “fave” have depth and personality that I want in my own photography. I think of these photos as places I need to go in my own work and so I save them. I’m loving it.

More from the Civil Wars:
Free live album available here.
“Poison and Wine” EP (4 songs) available on Amazon.com.
Follow The Civil Wars on Twitter.

SEE: Art In My Coffee
The first time I ever experienced “foam art” in my coffee was in Seattle. There’s a coffee shop our good friend Megan told us about called Victor’s Coffee that literally made designs in coffee. It’s something I’ve seen pop up more in the internet world and now the site Art in My Coffee is completely dedicated to this beautiful art. I really appreciate the quality of the images here as well as the fact they are basically considering it an online museum. You can even submit your own photo which is fabulous. Oh, and if you’re looking for them in short form, they are on Twitter.

DO: Buy Me This In-N-Out Clear Cup
For those non-Californian types this won’t make sense so if you want to move along that’s fine. But for my California natives, I know you understand how awesome this is. Some people may have already spent their hard earned money on one of those (way overpriced) Starbucks clear cups, but I’m telling you right now that this In-N-Out cup should be mine. For only $10.50 from the In-N-Out company store, this is a no-brainer. My family already purchased the beautiful, stunning, fabulous, hand-painted, hand crafted In-N-Out Double Double, fries, and drink Christmas ornaments, but those can only be brought out once a year and for a limited time. This perfectly clear, palm tree lined, 16oz plastic cup of goodness is exactly what I need on a daily basis. I promise I will treat it right, never microwave it, and always hand wash so you know it’ll be in good hands.

“Ask for books.” Maybe not the most exciting advice to give a bunch of college students who were drowning in a sea of reading in the middle of the semester, but that’s what my professor commanded in class one afternoon. He continued, “For every Christmas, birthday, anniversary, Father’s Day, or whatever…I ask for books.” I remember thinking that seemed pretty boring and lame. “Ask for books for Christmas?! Yeah, right!” was my first thought, followed by, “he must be joking.” But he wasn’t, and I knew it. Why? Because we knew he wasn’t talking about text books for class. He was talking about the books that would further our education and growth beyond the walls of the class — the books that would shape our lives and learning for the years beyond college. And it wasn’t until I was ripping the snowflake patterned paper from my Christmas presents this year that I realized how important that advice was, and how in many ways I’ve wasted valuable time and resources.

For Christmas this year I got books. My family usually asks me for my “Christmas list” so they can go out and purchase the things that I really want — at least what I think I want, and even though I provided a small list of things it wasn’t like past years. For the past few years I’ve asked for electronics, gadgets, and games, but this year I referred them to my Amazon.com Wish List which is appropriately titled “Books, Among Other Things”. That wish list has become a collection of books (among other things) that I would one day desire to own and obviously read. Anytime my pastor or a speaker I hear mentions a book he’s read, I add it to my list. Any time my wife says she “heard about this book,” we add it to the list. Any time I read about a book or a friend mentions a book, I usually add it to the list. Sometimes I just purchase the book right on the spot because I don’t want to forget it. This practice, combined with generous friends and family, has allowed my wife and me to receive at least a dozen or more books in the past year alone. These are the books that are continuing to teach, grow, and shape us by great thinkers and minds that we would otherwise be unable to communicate with.

Books are tools in an ever growing toolbox of literary helps and guides for the growth of our hearts and minds in a world that would just rather sit back and lazily learn about the world passively on a television screen. It’s because reading is hard — it’s not an easy task. It takes patience and practice, and in world that wants everything NOW, it just doesn’t have the right marketing “buy in.” When was the last time you saw a commercial about a book? Probably not that recently unless you were watching the “Oprah book club channel” (doesn’t exist), and even then I wouldn’t recommend them. That same professor who advised us to build our personal libraries would often boldly exclaim that “the world belongs to those who read!” It’s 100% true — no doubt about it. The world will never belong to Suresh Joachim and Claudia Wavra who “achieved” a Guinness World Record for the most time watching movies, unless of course they can learn to spend their time a little more wisely — like reading maybe? Books will take you beyond the limits of a ninety minute film and give you a breadth of information to which you can actually use your mind to work through. If it’s a good book, it will take you to places you’ve never been, meet people you’ve never met, and introduce to a world that is definitely bigger than the planet that your probably living on now if you aren’t making a regular practice of reading.

Don’t sell yourself too short because life is already short enough. Find something your interested in and read about it. Set a goal or two, make a schedule, and be a little disciplined in your reading in 2010. A great way to start and finish books is to simply read twenty minutes a day. In the grand scheme of the day that’s a very small percentage of time. I’ve read enough to know that I need to be doing the same thing, and the more I read the more I realize that I don’t read enough. Had I actually taken to heart what my college professor was urging us to do that day, I probably could have read a hundred more books between then and now. I could have learned any number of a million subjects, but I have only just begun to apply this simple advice. But you gotta start somewhere, so why not start today? As usual, I’m writing this for myself than anyone else, so if you need someone to join you at the library (yes, they still exist) then I’ll be ready with my library card and a good book in hand.

P.S. I’ve mentioned this topic before, so if you’re looking for “further reading” (hint, hint) then my post titled “The Way I See It #111” might interest you.