Big Sole Blog (BSB)

I don't know what overtook me today, but for the first time in maybe 30 years, I heard Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses," which I've posted above, and started crying. My first thought is that I needed to cry because I've been holding so much in over the last year (family deaths, health concerns, a variety of fears). Once in my life I was known for crying often--sobbing because

I am still contemplating the capacity to love unconditionally. Here is my poem, not meant for literary magazines, but for all people in struggle for peaceful human co-existence: "The Real Thing About It." It is a meditation.

Let's be thankful that in spite of wars, corruption, and violent crime, humans also do good things. "Give a Little" bit, the song in the Coke commercial, was first recorded by Supertramp and written and composed by its co-founder Roger Hodgson. The commercial uses the version that Hodgson recorded with a children's choir.

President Barack Obama more than likely ticked off people on both the right and the left with his recent argument that raising taxes on the rich lines up with Jesus' teaching that "to whom much is given much shall be required." On the right there will be those angry because they believe (and are wrong) that Obama is not a Christian and so he has no right to quote Jesus Christ. On the left there

Written in 2005, the poem "Silk and Flour" was originally entitled "Silk and Flowers," but while creating the video, I changed the title to one I had considered nearly seven years ago. I don't remember what incident inspired the poem. It may have been nothing but a muse in my head, but I feel like I had seen something in the news that caused me to think about the dark side of ego that reveals

This story reminds me of Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw's movie, Love Story, but this story is true and the people are African-American.I discovered this true love story through a friend who shared it on Facebook via Clutch Magazine. LaKeasha Monique Rutledge-Draft and NFL free agent Chris Draft, the couple in a very moving weding video, were married on November 27, 2011, and one month later,

As I said on Twitter yesterday, "I was in New Jersey when [the] towers came down. I've written about it before. I don't know if I want to again just b/c of [this] 10 year anniversary." I grappled with whether or not to write anything about September 11 a decade later because it took me until 2004, a whole three years after September 11, 2001, to write anything at all about what I felt on that

I will be moving this blog away from discussions of politics and race toward something less controversial, mythology perhaps. Something less personal, too, but what I do not know because existence is personal, is it not? Suddenly I am aware of the many reasons a woman should confine her own freedom of speech to the abstract or less threatening and yet even that decision is political. How will I

As I work at putting my life in order, which means doing the things I've always said I would do before my time runs out on this planet, I realize that I'm spending less time online. That's a good thing, but it's also a strange thing given how much time I've put into the Internet since 2002 and even earlier. I should probably elaborate, but I've got someplace to go right now and later it's

Nietzsche v. Jesus Christ from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.The video above features Dallas Willard lecturing at Stanford University in 2002 on objective versus subjective constructs. He is comparing and contrasting the teachings of Jesus Christ to those of Nietzsche. From a description from the video's sponsor, the Veritas Forum:"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," Jesus said. "God is dead,"

Stefano Langone won me over a few weeks ago on American Idol when he sang Smokie Norful's "I Need You Now." And when I say "he sang it" that's an understatement. He slayed it! So, I wasn't surprised at all when he won a wild card slot. He committed to this Norful gospel song like he grew up in a black Baptist church. According to Idol's site, Stefano admires Stevie Wonder.

In the video below, Jay Smooth recites excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" on the topic of extremism. You can read Jay's post at Illdoctrine.com. I listened and thought that we have Talk Like a Pirate day and Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Perhaps we should also have a Speak the Words of MLK Day.

Let me say at the outset that the verses that follow are by Paulo Freire, but in their original form they are presented as prose not poetry in his last book Pedagogy of Freedom, Chapter 3, "Teaching is Not Just Transferring Knoweldge." (The video at the end of this post is one of his last interviews before his death in 1997)As I read this book, I am struck increasingly by how his philosphy had

Pima Community College released the following video of Jared Lee Loughner rambling and ranting around its campus, and media enterprises are calling in more experts to decipher meaning behind his jumbled words and bizarre behavior. The school suspended Loughner last year after he showed myriad signs of being mentally disturbed and possibly a danger to himself, college staff and students. Multiple

Is this controversy with boycott the same as objections to The Last Airbender casting? As Rosanna Rosanna Danna would say, "It's always something!"I just read at The Root and the U.K. Guardian that a white supremacist group in the U.S.A. is boycotting the superhero movie Thor because British black actor Idris Elba has been cast as the Norse god Heimdall. Wikipedia says Heimdall is called "the

I'm with my dad and my adult children today. Helped a bit with cooking, but my daughter and son have the ball. I want to enjoy the day and not worry about tomorrow. I want to live and breathe gratitude, and that requires living in the moment.

A friend sent this to me, the "Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way." I wish I could adopt it because I honestly believe that sometimes no matter what you do, you can't change the outcome of a bad thing. The old way to say this would be "Let go and let God."

Why I keep paying dues to AuthorsDen is probably worth some reflection; however, until I do that I keep my own words on the bio page: "Life is a winding road of lessons and opportunities. Wear good shoes." Those words are working through my life more than ever right now since I'm in graduate school. About once a week I panic and ask myself, "Why are you doing this? You're too old for grad school

"Why Can't I Own a Canadian?" and are conservative Christians leading people to Jesus or away from him? The first question is the title of a letter penned sometime before 2002 in response to Dr Laura Schlesinger's comments about homosexuality in the Old Testament. She is a conservative who once said she was an Orthodox Jew but supposedly distanced herself from orthodoxy later.My friend Regis

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cStephen Protherowww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorFox NewsI love Stephen Colbert's interviews with authors. How he purposely misunderstands makes me laugh; however, his show is a spoof of Fox's O'Reilly factor, and I think Bill O'Reilly does not misunderstand on purpose. He actually does not understand. Colbert