brushing fame.

is this for real??

I told mike (hazeltine) that I'm leading worship next Sunday night, a prospect both neat and intimidating, and mike said,

"awesome. that's a good combination, neat and intimidating.
it implies...growth...opportunity....experience...






















and the possibility for















TOTAL FAILURE."

(quoted with permission)

religion and atrocity in our time.

That's the book I'm reading, by Marc H. Ellis.
I'll keep you informed as to how it changes my life.

RIGHT NOW is Sunday afternoon nap time.

Mmm...Pretty excited about that.

saving daylights.

Just read an email from one of the coolest guys I know....three cheers for luke stones.

Also, today, it was windy in Lethbridge.

I've had 2 days in a row where I was up for @ least 18, if not 20, consecutive hours.

I'm going to bed.

...*breathes*...

I was asked to head up front of house for the U of L's genocide colloquiam, or weekend of discussion...
I thought, sure, some work hours, that's cool...

Didn't expect my world to be shaken.

That's all...

waiting for life or letting it happen. aka "I love my feet"

Hi.
It's 3.22pm. I work again @ the theatre @ 3.30pm...so I'm pretty much killing time.

3.23pm.

Shoot, I was going to tell you something...maybe something I learned today? Well...now I've forgotten.

Shooot.

It's 3.23pm and it feels like 6 or 7pm....UofL campus gets really quiet really early in the afternoon on Fridays...kinda neat.

aww crap. I totally thought of something to blog about and then forgot.

Oh well.

so...OH! my next "midterm" is nov.9....way freakin' sooner than I thought and totally in line with my orchestration (strings) project & quiz, learning a song for the english repetoire recital, and this weekend, being INSANELY busy with church and choir and work.

Aiiya.

3.25pm. out.

no.968

I hope to hit 1,000 posts by the end of this year.

Today I woke up late, and decided not to go to Orchestration -- instead I slept, ate lunch, and now am going to spend a few hours just blitzing my homework. I'm working at the school's theatre tonight, doing Front of House for the Genocide conference...should be interesting.

I'm also stressing out a little, because my roomie who had a van (which she let me drive all the time) is back, but her van is dead and buried in Lacombe...just makes me ever more bus-bound.

Okay kids, that's all.

thoughtful mind.

I'm listening to a Damien Jurado song..."Lord do me a favor, it's wrong but I ask you...take my brother's life."

It's got me thinking...well I should say maybe, that I had a dream last night in which I felt so securely embraced, and that feeling has been haunting me all day...just wanting to find it again.

My dad's brother died in umm...2001, January, during the recording of my album, "life worth living". Wayne, my uncle, gave me my first guitar, which I played for 1 song on the album, and the whole project was kind of dedicated to him. In the year before his death, my dad's mom, and his brother-in-law had also died...it was a couple years of intense grieving for my family, for my dad. I never really felt all that much about it...
It was really hard to watch my dad grieving, and I felt a lot of regret about the lack of relationship I'd had with my uncles and my grandma, but I don't know that I felt a whole lot of grief myself. I made a pact with myself, I guess, at that point, to keep in touch more with my family. I speak so highly of my mom's dad...my heart swells with pride and love when I think of him, but I don't think he or my step-grandma know that...very few people in my family, I think, really understand how much they mean to me.

My uncle Wayne struggled with a lot of things in his life, which I won't speak specifically about here because they're private things, not for public consumption in this manner...
I have a friend who struggles with a lot of the same things, and he um...this friend, I'm not sure that he knows that I know exactly what it is that he is facing. I wish he knew, because it's very similar to what my uncle struggled with. (It isn't criminal or anything, just an illness with a stigma...again, a private thing). But everytime I see him...for days afterward, I just want to be near him, to talk to him...but we're both busy, and currently we live in different provinces, so it's not really a possibility.

He's just one more person who I really care about, and I hope he knows. And knows that I...see this thing, but also don't see it at all. It isn't everything he is.

Stirring up emotions...ah, life.

"Jackie, come save me, the doctors, they'll kill me!
no they're here to help you straighten out your mind."

The Modern Singing Master...

Introducing....Cornelius L. Reid.
Well, not really introducing him, just to you guys. My voice teacher, Tony, is trained in the Reid school of vocal pedagogy....genius, if you ask me.
Here's some stuff...

"There is a vast difference between "natural and habitual" and "natural and correct." When a student is instructed to sing naturally he is really being told to sing, not correctly, because no principle has been applied to establish this as a functional reality, but in a way that is merely "habitually natural." ... What the singer has really been told when instructed to "sing naturally" is to go along with habitual faults which have become natural to him ... Constructive vocal training cannot proceed effectively as long as "natural" is confused with "habitual." Nor can the student hope to change a faulty technique by any method based on this error."
-- Reid, The Free Voice

I'm reading about Reid second hand, in an essay by Pedro de Alcantara, called "An Alexander Teacher Reads The Free Voice, His Mouth Agape." It's in a book called "The Modern Singing Master: essays in honor of Cornelius L. Reid".

"...Today, eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, passersby on 86th Street and West End Avenue in Manhattan can hear singing wafting from an eighth floor window, the product of the teaching of a Galileo of vocal pedagogy, Cornelius L. Reid. Claiming to have rediscovered the science and the craft of the bel canto maestros, this modern singing master researches and he teaches -- researches as he teaches -- and he invites voice students, voice teachers, and voice scientists to look at what he has found."

I'm looking, learning, listening. In this singing world, "each lesson is another opportunity for discovery".
Worth the move to Lethbridge, to learn this, to sing like this.

pilfered.

This quotation comes from the blog of one andrew synder.

Each of us has contact with hundreds of people who never look beyond our surface appearance. We have dealings with hundreds of people who the moment they set eyes on us begin calculating what use we can be to them, what they can get out of us. We meet hundreds of poeple who take one look at us, make a snap judgement, and then slot us into a category so that they won't have to deal with us as persons. They treat us as something less than we are; and if we're in constant association with them, we become less.

And then someone enters our life who isn't looking for someone to use, is leisurely enough to find out what's really going on in us, is secure enough not to exploit our weaknesses or attack our strengths, recognizes our inner life and understands the difficulty of living out our inner convictions; confirms what's deepest within us. A friend.

-Leap Over a Wall, Eugene Peterson


thanks.

bureaucracy at its best.

As many of you will be aware, the BC Teachers are on strike, in protest of many things (a forced contract, the elimination of collective bargaining for issues such as class size and composition, as well as no meaningful wage increase since the early 90's). My mom is one such teacher, and I couldn't be more proud of her. The day after they went on strike, she turned our kitchen calendar to October, and saw a picture of Tommy Douglas -- Canadian champion of free health care, social welfare, and other programs. He was an essential part of Canada becoming the nation it is today, and his policies were based on Biblical principles -- to take care of the weak, the sick, the poor, the widows, the dispossessed, and also the idea that we are all children of God, and therefore equal, and deserving of the same treatment and care.
Anyway, below is an email from my dad in response to my asking what was happening with the strike.

"Vince Ready, the 'facilitator' appointed to try to bring an end to the dispute has apparently declared an 'impasse' today. So, Mom, who said she predicts they'll be back by Oct 31st, may be right. It's disappointing. The government doesn't seem to be budging.

The supreme court is to rule tomorrow regarding what further penalties to apply to the union. (they have already frozen all of their assets--physical and financial--and no strike pay can be given members). And the Crown Prosecutor is considering whether or not the teachers are still only in 'civil contempt' of court or 'ciminal contempt' of court. When he will rule on that, I don't know.

The whole LM is expected to 'shut down' tomorrow as all public sector unions (except hospitals, care homes, and likely bus drivers) strike or respect pickets.

It's no fun. That's for sure." (LM stands for Lower Mainland).

It's disappointing and disenchanting, I suppose, to realize that our BC Liberals don't really care about the people in the province. It's a real slap in the face for people living in a "democracy".
The teachers, and now other CUPE workers, who are striking are public servants. The teacher's I've spoken to are much more concerned about the declining quality of public education than they are about the wage increase. In BC, we are being led by a government that would support a private/public system of education, not to mention health care. It is a system that benefits the rich, and punishes the poor, one which Tommy Douglas and other Canadian politicians fought hard to do away with.

It certainly leaves me disillusioned, and not knowing what to do. As a young person, a student, perhaps an idealist, I have lost a lot of respect for Gordon Campbell and his party. I think many people our age are disgusted with the current political system, and thus refuse to engage in it. This particular current event illustrates the hopelessness that one can feel in today's system. In many ridings in BC, the Liberals won less than the majority of votes, but the Liberal candidate was elected, because the majority of votes were split between the Green Party and the NDP. I thought this would cause the Liberals to wake up, and pay attention to what people were saying, but apparently it hasn't.



In my family we've been praying first and foremost that the hearts of our politicians would be softened towards God....that's the only place we believe change can come from.

moral of the story is...

the moral of the story is, don't listen to insecurities. I actually just re-read the last few posts, and I might edit them, and comments, on the off-chance andrew's ever on here...because shoot, I can really assume the worst about people when I want to.
I apologize for that. Just to...you.
Umm...here's to God's grace, for helping me work through all this, and for forgiveness and second chances and all the goodness of Abba's love.

peace out.

retraction.

Jim's name is Andrew. I picked Jim because it's a name I don't really like.
So, me and Andrew worked on theory tonight for a few hours -- he even checked over my work for me and found some pretty significant mistakes.
It was fun hanging out tonight, and I was like 'hmm...we're totally friends...maybe I don't need to mention that I've been upset', but then on the way home, I did.
And he was like "did you think I wasn't joking? Cuz I never would've invited you over if we weren't really friends".
*phew*
We talked for a while actually, lots about how moving here as a transfer student is hard, and making friends is hard, real friends, not just surface ones....

SO...I'll keep it real, and leave the posts....but just so you know. It's better. I got bold and looked fear and shitefromthepast in the face and said "eff off -- you can't wreck this friendship"...and it worked.

Mhmmm.

lighter fare.

I'm at school, using the free computers. They're all stand-up email stations, so no nice sitting break like at Cap.

This morning, my bus was like...6 minutes early, I clearly was not yet at the stop, so I had to walk to school.
No biggie, it just meant I had to book it in order to be on time. I arrived at my 9.30am voice lesson @ 9.32am. NOT BAD!

[Walking here is hella exercise, because you aren't just walking, you're also (more often than not) fighting against a crazy wind....today the wind was 50 (knots, I assume?) gusting at 70. I don't really know what that means, so...yeah.]

THEN I went back home, made a sweet omlette (seriously, if I wrote about it, you'd want to come visit, just so I can make you food).

THEN I went back to school. For Sociology 1000. And also for voice masterclass no.3 or possibly no.4...I forget.

Great day, just going to go read for sociology. Working on theory with "jim" later -- watch for a post of celebration after I talk to him about...well, you know.

Here's to mountain fresh water and sunny days --

deleted part 2.

uh yeah.

conviction...and stuff....I guess I'm human....but that isn't always the best excuse...

DELETED!

GOOD NEWS: I went back to the Alliance church's young adults thing tonight, and my friend Dennis (real name), was like "oh man, you're here. I was wondering what happened to you. How've you been?". Dennis was a breath of fresh air, reminding me that people I meet are prone to care about me, and that my presence or lack there of is noticed, and matters.

peace out.

a practical introduction.

The title really means nothing, unless you, in your poetic genius cause it to mean something. Yes.

While imr will not be rocking the socks off of all Lethbridge residents anytime soon, I did go to Calgary and hang out with them yesterday. Phew. Thank goodness for roommates. (My roomie Carmen was going to Calgary, and she tooketh me with her).
I guess I can say I didn't hang out with "IMR", but I did hang out with ash, andwer, ryan and steve. It was a day when I was reminded that we're friends, and I'm so thankful for that.

TODAY has also been great. I went to church with my friends Deanna and Mel (they live 2 doors down), and Mary-ann was there too.
I was really...I don't know, both moved and disturbed during the sermon. I...was struggling with what the pastor was saying, not that it was wrong, more that it was a message that really caused me to think about what happened this summer at Keats...
anyway, after the service I went up for prayer, and my friend Mary-Ann was there, and we were both in tears, so we talked for a bit...and then this guy Brian came and said he had a word for her, so they prayed together, meanwhile I'm just sitting, crying, wondering what...just what I can even pray for myself. Then...THEN Brian has a word for me, and ... WOW.

God is faithful. And he knows who I am, and what my heart is longing after. He understands better than I do the feelings that I struggle with, and that, this morning, was made clear to me again, and I am overwhelmed by it right now.

I think it's too personal to post on here, and also it would be very trite ... but what I would desire or attempt to communicate is this sense of awe at who God is, and the intimacy with which he knows me, and the gentleness with which he speaks to me. And as he softens my heart, and removes my defenses, I do not feel condemned, or just beat up and destroyed, but in the midst of it, and over all of it, I know that I'm loved.

That's all for now.

tunes: shane and shane.

*sighs*

The boys of in medias res, some dear friends of mine, were maybe sorta possibly going to come through Lethbridge, rocking out and eating all my food along the way.
Sadly, it looks like that won't happen.
I do mean sadly, because I don't know how the piss I'd get to Calgary at this point (at least, not on my budget), and I was kinda getting used to the idea of seeing them, and seeing them here, and having them see me here.

Alas, such is life.




?

peeps. all around me.

This morning, I was all ready for church, so I headed outside to jump in the car, and drive to church.
Pretty standard stuff.
My family was already gone, which is also pretty standard. They'd left me the van to drive, because it was first in the driveway, hence, last to leave.
So I'm walking out to the van, I see it....I see my keychain...I recall giving my little brother the key when I moved to Lethbridge...
I sighed and stomped and walked back into the house.

I called EVERYONE to try and alert them to my predicament.

Joanna came to get me.

Hollerrrrrr.

Air Canada loves me.

Dear Melinda Appenheimer

I saw the season’s first southbound geese this morning and it gave me pause: Maybe our feathered friends have it all figured out. What better time to pack a bag and check out Bogotá’s burgeoning cuisine scene or zip over to Vegas? With myriad new ways to earn Bonus Aeroplan® Miles and a wealth of route expansions, now’s the perfect time to head south.

See you in the skies,

Lauren Wells, Editor
onAir, the Air Canada e-zine for people on the go.

look outside.

SNOW!

oowww...my stomach lining...

I had kfc for dinner tonight. the glorious greasiness was more than I was expecting, perhaps more than I can handle.

there was a reason why I got into salads and whole grain breads. this feeling was it.

ugh.


tunes: jonathan inc.
thoughts: school of rock is a pretty sweet movie.

this is Lethbridge.

Today, I went out for breakfast with the girls from 325 Ojibwa.
Then, I came home, called Lynnae, and she came to pick me up for our run.
We ran in the coulees, which are the hills that lead down to the river. I guess the coulees are made up of the trails, trees, spaces between the hills...hmm...any geography majors?
ANYWAY, they are beautiful. These pictures don't do justice, but they give it a start.
Now I'm sore but happy, eating some chocolate...heh...and waiting for the shower. My first shower-use conflict in a month, and I live with 7 girls, 2 full bathrooms. Not bad.

peace out.




tunes: tobymac "welcome to diverse city"
luke says: "your little bro is one serious dude."

new friends.

I headed out for a run around 5.12pm today. I called my new friend Deanna on the way out the door, just to see what she was up to tonight. She, and some other friends, were going to a concert tonight, so she invited me.
I thought about it on my run, and even though $10 is a bit steep for one with no cash, I decided to go. I decided it would be good for me to go!

SO...I went! With Deanna, Mary-Ann, Mel and Andrew (who is my blume = flower...that's another story). It was sweet. First off, Mary-Ann paid for all of us...wow. Blessings.

The girl we went to see, amanda falk, was so good. I was really impressed, and moved, by her. She finished her show with worship (it was at a church), and it was the best worship I've been in since I moved here. I was just on my knees, weeping. Crying out everything that's been stuck inside. Wow.

After the show, we talked with her for probably half an hour, hugs all 'round (my first hugs in 27 days were tonight! From Deanna and Amanada -- more amazing a blessing than I can tell you. Except maybe you'll understand when I say that the last person to hug me was my mom on Sept.3/05 when she left Lethbridge). So yeah. Amanda said we totally blessed her in the worship time...we were in the front, just givin'er, plus we're all voice majors, just letting go to our Father. We're gonna keep in touch with her, which I think is rad. And to be honest, if I were her, travelling around, and I met some girls who I actually connected with, however briefly, I would totally want them to email me, and keep in touch.

THAT WAS MY NIGHT!!!

Deanna and some other girls live a few doors down, actually 2. We went there after the show, and hung out, and Deanna played with my hair, and we listened to Amanda's cd, and I cried some more...man.

I'm supposed to run with Lynnae in a few hours (@ 7.30am or so), and then I'm going out with the neighbour girls for breakfast. Also, my roomies are awesome, Jenessa's boyfriend Kyle is here, he's really fun. We're ordering KFC tomorrow -- so greasy and gross.

I'm checking out some new churches this weekend -- for sure sunday morning @ River of Life Community Church, with Deanna and crew.

So that's my update. Weird to tell you guys about new friends, but also rad...my heart is expanding and filling with more love. Wow.

peace...

"It's been so long since I have met you here, since I have said these words or cried these tears. And like a child would come I run into our secret place. And s the music fades, the tears are rolling down my face.
I am alive in this moment, in this moment I am found. I belong."

-- starfield.