In Praise of Allen Levi

Two weeks left until school starts.

Summer has many great traditions and events. From outdoor movies (which sadly we did not partake of this year) to weekend getaways, our summers are filled with some great activities. Some are relatively new, like home school baseball on Thursday nights and some have been going on for years, like my sister and her kids' annual visit from D.C. to the old homestead. Last year a new summer tradition started which starts again today. Allen Levi will release a new song on his blog today (http://www.allenlevi.wordpress.com/) and continue to release a new song each day until Sunday. Yep 7 songs in 7 days. You can also link to the blog from his web site http://www.allenlevi.com/.

Now wait just a minute, you might be saying who is Allen Levi and what kind of music does he perform?

This video may begin to answer those questions.

I am not sure if I have posted about Allen before. I know I have periodically put up links to his website and blog before. I met Allen about 15 years ago when I was living in South Carolina. He performed concerts at the church I was attending 2 years in a row. He was in the early years of his transition from full time lawyer to full time singer.

Allen quickly became of my favorite musicians. He is a prolific song writer/story teller who at both of those concerts sang songs he had written only hours earlier. Unlike Bebo Norman who is featured with Allen in the above video, Allen has not become a Contemporary Christian Music star. I am not sure this was his intention.

A good # of Allen's concerts are played at Young Life (A Christian parachurch youth ministry) camps and training events. He also plays churches like the concert I saw him at. He also has performed at many more intimate venues. He told me once he even plays at birthday parties. I found this out first hand in 2004 when Amy flew him from Georgia to Illinois for my surprise 40th birthday party.

I reviewed all of the songs Allen played last August in preparation for this week. I thought I would link one up here to give you an idea of his music. The problem is they were all awesome and I had hard time deciding which one to choose. You can find them all by clicking here.

If I had to choose one I would choose Proposal (A Love Song). I chose this one because a) I like the premise of a proposal song following the advice Elisabeth Elliot's father had for her brothers: Never tell a girl you love her until you are ready to propose. and b) because I once told a girl I loved her in a song and then proposed in the same song. (She said "sure" btw.)

The indecision in picking 1 song is understandable as I vacillate easily when trying to determine which of Allen's songs is my favorite. Yesterday it was A Frazier Fir in Florida from that album I bought 15 years ago. Today it's back to Love to Give Away, a beautiful song about his singleness. I am sure after this week I will (and hopefully you too) will have some new gems to choose from.

I could probably go on and on about Allen, but instead I will let his music speak for himself. Not only is he my featured blog this week, he is also listed in my blog roll. Give him a listen, and a read, as his song explanations are often as poignant as the songs themselves. Who knows? maybe he will play at your surprise birthday party as well.

Next Time: A night at the races.

Blah Blah Blogging

It's time to review labels again.

Label #16 (3 Way Tie) Blah Blah Blogging.

This blog has not been immune, at times, to instead of blogging about home schooling or crazy family members or first place baseball teams, to occasionally just blog about blogging. This label nostalgia is a pretty good example. Last weekend when I posted that I had not posted for awhile is another.

Over the 20 months Home School Dad has been the blog sensation sweeping the nation I have made a few observations about blogging. I'd like to share a few here.

1) You could always spend more time blogging. Early on I became overwhelmed with how much time I could pour into the blog-o-sphere. But no matter how much you spend, it seems like you could always spend more. Not letting blogging consume me was a hard calf to corral the first 6-8 months. It is now pretty easy to not get swept up out of control. This balance was hard to come by but it is certainly something I will want to pass on to the blogging class I teach this fall.

2) Some ideas just don't work. I sometimes get an awesome idea for a post. Sometimes it's just an excellent title. Often times, these ideas and titles pretty much write themselves into epic blog posts. Other times, no matter how hard I try, I just can't bring the idea home. This is where my wife/editor is so helpful. She'll read it and say "I have no idea where you are going with this." Sometimes I can salvage the idea, but every once in a while that dog will just not hunt. When that is the case, the best strategy is just to let the idea go.


3) Some ideas aren't worth the work. In my first few months of blogging, I used to look back at my previous months worth of posts, choose the 5 I liked best and put them in a box in my blog called Dave's fave five. This became an incredibly arduous process. First of all, it was sometimes hard to choose the 5 best because I thought everything was great. Other months I thought nothing was any good. It usually depended on whether I had a nap or not. Then after I decided on the 5, I had to link them and label them and mark them with D and put them in a blog for David and me. By the time I got it all done it was about time to do the thing over again. Part of running an effective blog is to know when to go the extra mile and when to pull the plug. A number of months ago I scrubbed all references to Dave's fave five and I've never looked back.



So from time to time I am going to still blog about blogging, but like they say at the Porcupine Salesmen Convention: Don't ignore what got you here, porcupines and more porcupines! And my porcupines are definitely home schooling and being crazy. Two porcupines that I know a lot about.



Next Time: In Praise of Allen Levi.

A prelude to dismiss

http://www.showmyface.com/ is the home of Six Word Saturday.

My Six words: My wife doesn't read any prologues.

My wife is an avid reader. But she doesn't read forewords or prologues. I used to think this was just true about non-fiction as some forewords and prologues can be kind of dry. But I recently found out this is for fiction books as well. I on the other hand read all forewords, dedications, introductions, prefaces, prologues. I mean I usually read the Library of Congress catalog information.

I am currently reading an excellent book, The Time Traveller's Wife and she is rereading her favorite Grisham, The Last Juror. Both books start out like gangbusters. Chapter 1 of The Last Juror is ostensibly a prologue. The action of the book begins in Chapter 2. Chapter 1 just tells the history of the town newspaper. If Grisham would have called it a prologue, Amy would have missed the colorful back story. The preface of The Time Travellers wife really enticed me into the book. It did a great job of starting to flesh out the characters in present time. Present time is a rare commodity in this book, so it literally was a calm before the storm. I want Amy to read the book, but she won't even read recommended prologues.

So, if you are writing a book and want my wife to read it. You can either title the prologue chapter 1 or just say mean things about her in the prologue. She will never find out.

For more six word Saturday click here.

Next Time: Blah Blah Blogging.

Blog Class

Three Weeks left until school starts!






I am starting to get ready for our home school co-op for this fall. I will be teaching a class on blogging and yes I have been consulting the above referenced book for a few pointers. One thing I will be emphasizing in the class is Internet safety. I will be instructing my students not to use their own names on their blogs. To that end, I will be no longer using the names of my children and replacing them with nicknames. My oldest will be called by the not surprising moniker, bunny girl. My son will be known as Spider Droid to combine his love for Star Wars and his previous passion for Spiderman. My daughter with the penchant for Lucyisms will be referred to as Princess puppy. (Lucyisms will be referred to as puppyisms)



I blog using blogger and will be teaching my students this platform. One of the things I like about blogging is the ease of removing or editing previous posts from blogosphere. In the weeks to come, I will be editing past posts and replacing the kids names with their nicknames.

I am excited about the class. I have created a new blog just for the class, but will still be linking things here as well.



Next Time: Blah Blah Blogging

Despicable Me Vs. Toy Story III

After 300 blog posts were completed on this blog earlier this year, I looked back on my 25 most used labels and from time to time I count them down here.

Label# 16 (3 way tie) Reviews

I have reviewed many things on this blog. Books, films, & music. Today I am going to compare two movies my family watched yesterday . While most of the family went to watch Toy Story III again with Amy who had not seen it yet, Spider Droid and I went to see Despicable Me.

I had taken everyone but Amy to watch Toy Story III on opening day in 3D. I can only vouch for about 90% of the movie as I made 3 runs to refill popcorn. What I did see was quite entertaining. I definitely enjoyed TS3 and would recommend it somewhat highly. (PS Amy did not like TS3 at all...she found it violent, scary, and poorly written, but that's just HER opinion, and this is NOT her blog!)

I will say though, that it is not nearly as good as the original and while I had first thought it better than TS2, I realized afterwards that much of the plot of 3 is just a reworking of 2. I also thought that the 10 (4 * $2.50) extra dollars I spent on 3-D were wasted. (The 4.50 I spent on the kids popcorn were a shrewd purchase with my multiple refill trips) The only thing that was really enhanced by the glasses were the short at the beginning and the Despicable Me trailer.

There was also a more dark side to TS3 that I thought was unneeded. Without giving away the plot, the danger the main characters were in the end caused my youngest daughter nightmares (which is why we didn't take her when Amy went yesterday.) The suspense in the other 2 films was much less scary.

I will admit that I did cry like a baby at the movie's conclusion. If the theme of the movie could have been toned down just a bit it would have been a much better ending to a fine series.

Now while TS3 was a movie that I thought would be fine for the whole family it was not, at least for ours. Despicable Me was a movie that I thought would only be suitable for Spider Droid and myself, but after watching it, I am convinced that all the kids would love it.

Despicable Me is one of those films where you laugh from beginning to end. We didn't buy popcorn this time so I can say that for the entirety of the film. The movie quickly shows it has depth beyond the premise of an aging villain trying to pull off one final evil plot.

Because of timing issues we did not see the movie in 3-D. It would have easily been worth the extra $5.00 ($2.50 * 2(Do I have to spell out everything for you?!!!!)). From the 3-D trailer I saw at TS3 and from the version we saw, it is easy to tell how the 3-D experience would add to the visual excitement of the film.

But even with all the visual excitement, it was never where I thought it would overwhelm a certain 4-year old of mine. The tone of this movie is not nearly as dark as a tale of a villain bent on evil schemes could have been. I would recommend it much more than I would TS3.

Well that's what I have for you review wise.

Next Time: Blogging Class