Las Vegas: Comedy and Tragedy

My husband serves on the board for the Dallas chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators, which is having its annual meetings in Las Vegas. We're staying on the 20th floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, overlooking the jagged peaks on the horizon. (Mandalay Bay is where the fight took place in the latest Rocky movie.)

We arrived yesterday before check-in, left our bags with the bell staff, and grabbed lunch at one of the hotel restaurants. (Can you believe I had to pay twenty-four bucks for a grilled chicken sandwich that tasted faintly of Ajax?)

After that we caught a cab over to the Bellagio to see the Ansel Adams exhibit. The most interesting part to me was hearing his description (we got audio guides) of how he took his most well-known shot, "Moonrise over Hernandez. " My favorite is his shot of the Grand Tetons with the Snake River in the foreground, also on display. Great stuff.

Then we got a call from my hubby's stationery vender asking us to join the group at their poolside cabana, so we enjoyed their hospitality before wrapping up the evening with an inner-tube float trip down the "river" circling the pool area. Weather here is balmy, warm, and dry. Perfect!

At night we attended the poolside opening reception and danced under the stars to "Sweet Home Alabama" and other seventies tunes. Then at 10:00, do you think we went back to the room to sleep?

Uh, no. We had tickets (purchased weeks ago) to see "O" at Cirque Du Soleil inside the Bellagio complex. We caught a cab back to the Bellagio, and arrived just as the fountains were gearing up for their famous show on the lake. So we watched water jump and twist and fall to the melody of "Proud to be an American."

Then on to the theater. Cirque du Soleil produces an aquatic show in which world-class acrobats, synchronized swimmers, divers and characters perform in, on, and above water. Sometimes the audience gets sprayed. Imagine a theatre in which the curtains open and before you appears a stage that sometimes allows actors to walk on it but then it sinks, fills with water, and serves as a swimming pool for performers with a different set of talents. Later liquid becomes solid again. A "wow" experience. After the show, it took thirty minutes in a tenth-of-a-mile-long line for cabs to catch a ride back to our hotel.

They say New York is the city that never sleeps, but I think the strip in Vegas has New York beat. Last night is the first time in my life I've sat in a traffic jam at 1:30 a.m.!

The city is not all fun and games, however. We passed more than one person sobbing his heart out as he sat outside a casino, head in hands, apparently having gambled more than he could afford to lose. That'll put a party scene in perspective really fast, huh?

Earth Day Celebrity

A couple of days ago my daughter received an Earth Day assignment: On Friday bring to school a blue plastic bag full of recyclables. Upon her arrival, she was promised, someone would take the bag from her and exchange it for a token to hand her science teacher. That token would count for a "100" in the grade book.

As we approached the school, our girl noticed nobody else was carrying a blue bag.

"Mom," she asked, trepidation in her voice, "what if I'm the only one?" Translation: "I'll die of embarrassment! I'll feel like a nerd! I can't possibly be a nonconformist!!!!"

"You'll get a better grade than anybody else," I said, matter of factly. As soon as I uttered the words, I knew how braindead they sounded. Might as well plant a big, fat "L" on my forehead. Grades at the expense of nerdiness? Sheesh.

As we approached the drop-off point, she saw a small crowd of bagless students standing around. At first that made her more self-conscious. She would have to walk past them lugging five pounds of humiliation.

But then, suddenly, a transformation took place. She sat up a little straighter and, with hope rising in her voice, asked, "Do you think...maybe...they're waiting for someone to show up with a bag?"

"I do," I said.

Sure enough, next thing we knew, Earth Day paparazzi surrounded the car and, like crazed fans, pounded on it with open palms until she emerged with the poise of a movie star, bag in hand. One lucky soul got to be the one to whom she handed the blue bulk, and the rest thrust tokens at her, each student seeming to hope he or she would get to be the one from whom the Earth Day V.I.P. would grasp that slip of paper.

Did you know I'm the mother of a celebrity? We've always known she had it in her. Not surprised at all, really. From the moment of her arrival, we've known she was special....

Congrats, Mom and Dad!

Yesterday my parents celebrated fifty-five years of marriage. Congratulations, Mom and Dad!

Pullet Surprises

Did you catch the announcement about ten days ago of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winners? In case you missed it, here's a link to info on the finalists and the winners.

Virginia Tech

Shortly after Gary and I started going out, he went away to college in Blacksburg at Virginia Tech's fine school of engineering. And Erin Teske, one of the SPS queens mentioned in a post a couple of days ago, is a Tech alumna. How surreal to think of so many murdered in a familiar place.

Please pray for DTS grad and former Glahn babysitter, Jennifer Kincaid, who works at Virginia Tech. She is involved with services to be held on campus tonight at 6 EDT. Take a moment, if you would, to pray for all affected by this tragedy and for Jennifer and her ministry.

Christina Berry is the winner of the book drawing. Check out her blog and the info on Randy Ingermanson. If you're a writer, you'll love Randy's ideas.

Creativity and Good Taste

I'm reading Twyla Tharp's bestseller, The Creative Habit. Tharp is an Emmy- and Tony-winning American dancer and choreographer (think "Hair," "White Nights," "Movin' Out"), and her book is the best I've ever read on creativity.

To my delight, yesterday while looking for a clip from Movin' Out (which weaves Billy Joel's masterpieces into a narrative), I found her on YouTube giving a four-minute commentary on one of her dances. At the end she refers to Proust and his story in Remembrance of Things Past about madeleines.

I often remind my students to incorporate the five senses--especially smell and taste--into their work. Proust's anecdote gives a stellar example of why in "The Cookie":

Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind.

She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.

An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

Follow the link to her commentary and enjoy.

And remember to register for the book drawing tomorrow.

Free Book Drawing

Last Wednesday, I ran an interview with Tricia Goyer about her historical novel, A Valley of Betrayal. She mentioned that she's also a non-fiction writer. And you can enter to win a new copy of her book, Generation NeXt Parenting. How? Post a short anecdote about something one or both of your parents did right and I'll enter your name in a drawing to be held Tuesday morning. Not a parent? Win it for a friend you love.

Something my parents did right: They gave me more than an allowance to manage. By the time I reached high school, I also received a monthly allotment for school lunches, clothing, giving, and stuff like class rings and graduation fees. I knew if I didn't learn the discipline of delayed gratification, I'd have to wear outdated clothes (nerd alert!) or a too-small coat the following winter.

The SoulPerSuit Trio

Thanks to computer geek, Steve Teske, we have retrieved the photo snarfed up by Erin's naughty computer. So I now bring you the three queens of SoulPerSuit at a coffee shop (where else?) the day before Palm Sunday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Erin, in green, is known in the SPS avatar world as the queen of diamonds. Rhonda is the queen of hearts. And there on the right--I'm the old biddy, the queen of spades. Fitting, eh?

The three of us teamed up a couple of years ago to create SoulPerSuit because we all have a right-brained need to engage more than the visual (reading) sense as we give expression to our spiritual contemplations. Erin is a visual artist; Rhonda is an artist and computer geek; and I'm a writer, though if you read their blogs, you can see why I wrote a instead of the. (Erin's at www.likepaperlanterns.blogspot.com and Rhonda's at www.droolonthefrog.blogspot.com.)

In the past few months, Erin has led an on-line group and Rhonda has led a living-room group going through my study of Mocha on the Mount. If you check out the SPS web site, you'll see some of the cool artistic creations in the "Mocha Gallery" that people have created in the process.

Got 90 Seconds?

Get a little history at a glance via this quick overview. Click here: Map History of the Middle East.

A Valley of Betrayal

I’m up to my forehead in book edits on Informed Consent right now, so rather than write a rant on the current stem-cell-research bill, I'm going to introduce you to Montana author Tricia Goyer, and let her do the talking.

Four years ago, Tricia was named writer of the year at the Mt. Hermon Christian Writer’s Conference. Two years ago, her book, Life Interrupted, was named a finalist for the ECPA Gold Medallion Award, and her novel Dawn of a Thousand Nights won the American Christian Fiction Writers’ (ACFW) Book of the Year in the long historical romance category. Today I want her to tell you about her latest novel, A Valley of Betrayal.

San: Tell us a little more about yourself.

Tricia: I write parenting books. I write children’s books. I am a novelist. I am a journalist. I am a mentor. I am a wife. I am a mom. I am a home-schooling mom. I am scattered and confused. Okay, I’m not confused, but others are when they try to put me in a box. But I am scattered. Mostly I mentor teenage moms and I home-school my kids. Oh, yeah. I write lots of books, too.

San: Tell me a little about A Valley of Betrayal. You set it in the time of the Spanish Civil War. Isn’t that an unusual setting for a Gen Xer?

Tricia: When I was researching another novel, Arms of Deliverance, I read an autobiography from a man who was a B-17 bomber pilot over Europe. But before that he was an American volunteer for The Spanish Civil War. I had never heard of this war, which happened right before WWII in Spain. I started researching, and I was soon fascinated. Some people call it “the first battle of WWII” because it’s where the Nazis first tried their hand at modern warfare.

I started by researching this time in history, briefly, then I started thinking of unique characters who had an impact during that time. Characters from my other novels have been medics, war correspondents, artists, prisoners. To me it's the people that make the story (and history) come alive. So for this series I dove into the lives of an American artist, a few international volunteers, a Basque priest, and a German pilot. I research the real people first, and then the plot for my novel builds. Soon, I have to make myself stop researching to start writing. Research can be addictive!

San: How did you end up writing historical fiction?

Tricia: I never planned to write historical fiction. I wanted to write contemporary romances. Then in 2000, I was with two writers in Austria who were researching books, and I was along for the ride. But I was the one who got a novel idea—after talking to an Austrian historian. The historian’s true stories about the liberation of Gusen and Mauthausen concentration camps sparked my novel idea. The idea led to attending two WWII reunions and interviewing veterans. The veterans’ stories led to more novels. The rest, as they say, is history!

You can learn more about Tricia here:
http://triciagoyer.blogspot.com
http://genxparents.blogspot.com
http://www.shoutlife.com/triciagoyer
www.triciagoyer.com

You can buy A Valley of Betrayal here.

I love Easter! And I love...

Easter Weekend Flick Pix

Last night we observed Maundy Thursday by watching The Robe. I'm not sure how I made it this far in my life without seeing it, but I loved it--especially the unexpected ending. The film won two Oscars and stars a so-young-I-hardly-recognized-him Richard Burton.

Another "unexpected": Justus's character, played by Dean Jagger (Major General Waverly in White Christmas).

Hollywood nailed this one, including Pilate's handwashing compulsion reminiscent of Lady MacBeth's.

Tonight we plan to watch the sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators. Also on the list: The Passion of the Christ: The Definitive Edition, (comes in a blue box) which includes filmmaker, production and theologian commentary, deleted scenes, and info on historical context.

In other media, the music in the CD player is Bach's St. Matthew Passion. My favorite piece in this is what we know in English as, "O Sacred Head How Wounded."

Last Weekend

Last weekend I went to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to meet up with my artsy friends, Rhonda and Erin. (We form the humble triumvarate over at SoulPerSuit.) I'll spare you the gory details about my fiasco with American Airlines losing record of my payment and threatening me with a $1,400 airline bill, Erin's car breakdown (she drove down from Virginia), and Rhonda's almost-wreck as she came to Charlotte to pick me up.

On Friday night we joined with a small group Rhonda leads in my study of Mocha on the Mount. Afterward, we laughed a lot, ate too much, and watched this really disturbing but somehow somewhat amusing Youtube video of a squirrel catapult.

On Saturday, we met with some infertility patients and then spent the afternoon checking out art galleries. That night we celebrated Rhonda's birthday by dining at 6th and Vine in the downtown arts district, before settling in to watch Ted Dekker's chiller thriller, Thr3e.

Erin got a shot of us all together, but her Little Computer of Horrors seems to have devoured it. If it ever emerges, I'll post it.

Me? A Thinking Blogger? Cool!

Mary tagged me as a thinking blogger. (Hey, thanks, girl! I'll name my rock band after you, or something.)

Now my mission, should I choose to accept it: Nominate five thinking blogger blogs. So I give you my picks for five intelligent, thought-provoking blogs:

Leftcoastsunburn blog – Seminary student Benji Bruneel looks at places where Christian culture at large (as opposed to at small?) gets it wrong and challenges readers to rise above the status quo.

Scrawny Pulpit blog – Lance Ward, a pastor, speaks to the times, encouraging readers to engage their minds and hearts. Sometimes he steps on toes.

Tot and Jittle – An anonymous blogger takes a satirical look what he (she?) sees at Dallas Seminary. Not saying I agree with it all, but a little navel-gazing for the purpose of improving is what healthy journalism is all about.

Chip MacGregor’s blog – Chip, who happens to be my agent (but that's not why I chose his blog), tells it like it is about the writer’s life. I especially liked his entry about the ego.

Svigeland blog - Mike Svigel sometimes speaks devotionally, sometimes humorously, always insightfully.

Do you have a favorite blog that makes you think? Post it as a comment below. The first five to do so will receive a 2.5-ounce bag of Starbucks decaf house blend coffee.

Home Again

I spent a fab weekend in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. When I get through answering another 50 emails and putting the finishing touches on a "Solomon Latte" talk I'm doing at Prestonwood Baptist in Plano, Texas, tomorrow night, I'll tell you about it.

When I got home, I had a cool message from a friend. She was packing to head for the south of France on vacation, and she called to say she was taking another of my Coffee Cup studies, Espresso with Esther, with her. The fun part for me: she was jazzed that it had the entire Bible text included so she didn't have to lug a Bible with her, and she could also do it on the plane without having to put bulky books in her carry-on. I hadn't thought of the "convenient for vacationers and travelers" angle.

Okay, stay tuned. I also have some video recommendations coming for Holy Week...