Thanks to Joey Thames for pointing this out to the faculty today. 

The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is so ingrained in us that we can scarcely imagine what a revolutionary change it would be to think about it instead in terms of work done. To do so would mean taking the attitude of mind we reserve for our unpaid work–our hobbies, our leisure interests, the things we make and do for pleasure–and making that the standard of all our judgments about things and people. We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?”; of a man, not “what does he make?” but “what is his work worth?”; of goods, not “can we induce people to buy them? but “are they useful things well made?”; of employment, not “how much a week?” but “will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?” And shareholders in–let us say–brewing companies, would astonish the directorate by arising at shareholders’ meetings and demanding to know, not merely where the profits go or what dividends are to be paid, not even merely whether workers’ wages are sufficient and the conditions of labor satisfactory, but loudly and with a proper sense of personal responsibility” “What goes into the beer?” (pp. 98-99).

 ~Dorothy Sayers
From Creed or Chaos

Last night as the snow fell and school kids everywhere rejoiced, I lazed on the couch and channel surfed through the weather report, an episode of Friends, and finally one of those infomercials on an off channel we usually ignore. TimeLife is selling a multiCD set of "Great Country Hits of the 50s and 60s."

In a mixture of pride and horror, I slowly realized that I recognize/know 90% of these "hits" from bygone years. Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins, Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Buck Owens, Tennessee Earnie Ford, Glen Campbell -- this music formed the canon of my dad's listening and guitar playing. His Hank Williams Sr record collection survives in my old house in PA, now in the possession of my brother (who hates country music but recognizes the collection value of a vintage LP). Our house was full of music both old and modern (but notsomuch rock, that traffic of sex and Devil). Now MY house is full of music, iPods, hundreds of CDs, two pianos, and a player piano roll collection that includes " Ring of Fire" and "First Date" and "The Green Green Grass of Home."

Today I am awash in mild embarrassment, waves of nostalgia, memories of my father, and a deep desire to see whether iTunes has a legit recording of Marty Robbins's "El Paso."

My online life is just as "cluttered" as my house, with a deluge of data daily -- articles to be read, to-do items that arrive via email or text message or in person. 

In the interest of organization, time management, and helpful tips, here are my favorite techno-helpers for staying organized.  Maybe some of these will help you too.

Evernote
www.evernote.com
Do you ever wish you could "save" clippings online, photos of good ideas, stuff you want to remember, Word docs, Excel files, Web pages, and everything else electronic in ONE PLACE? I'm tired of searching through an entire hard drive plus online bookmarks to find what I used last year for a specific task, or track down that "really cool gift idea for Uncle Larry" that I can't remember.

Evernote works by letting you create "notebooks" organized by whatever topic/theme you choose. Within these notebooks you can store ANYTHING -- pages of notes (typed, handwritten/scanned, whatever); photos (attach or download them); links to web resources; entire Web pages. You decide.  Even better -- you can TAG each item with a subject tag (or several).  So, for example, I *love* the drawer pulls that Anthropologie sells. "One of these days" I'm going to redo my kitchen, and I want nicer knobs. So I chucked the entire Web page into a notebook I call "House" and tagged it "ideas" and "house stuff" and "hardware."  I could have tagged it anything -- "remodeling" or "kitchen" would be useful.  Then, I can extensively search Evernote for any combo of text, title and tag -- AND save those searches for the future!! When I want all of my kitchen remodeling ideas in one place, I'll just search for them.

Evernote is a powerful online (and mobile phone) tool.  Download the full program to your main computer(s) -- it's free -- and supplement with a browser plugin for Firefox/Safari/IE or get the app on your mobile phone. Give it a shot -- it's tailor made for busy lives (moms, students, teachers).

Dropbox
www.dropbox.com
Oh, Dropbox. How I love thee!

Go sign up for one. NOW.  Would you like to access all of your useful files from anywhere on the planet, including your mobile phone, for free, 24/7? I thought so.

Seriously -- Dropbox is one of the best tools to hit the Internet since the Web2.0 revolution. You get 2GB of free space which mirrors the folder structure of your Dropbox folder (which you can install on as many computers as you'd like, or work simply with the online version).  Drop a file into your Dropbox anywhere on the planet, and it automatically syncs to every computer where you have a Dropbox. This is how I maintain my sanity when my teaching files are spread across something like 6 different computers in 2 locations. Unparalleled.

Google Tasks, Calendar, Docs and Gmail
If you don't already use Google's impressive suite of online tools, you are really missing out. 

Gmail isn't the most powerful email client out there, but they've just implemented a "Priority Inbox" feature that I love -- the engine "learns" over time which emails are truly important to you -- the ones you always open and read and respond to immediately. Gmail begins tagging those as "important" and keeps them at the top of your inbox so you see them first.  I also love how Gmail "threads" replies/responses into a single chunk. I don't see 15 individual emails from 4 different people scattered over my inbox; I see one thread about the youth group T-shirt order. Searchable, taggable.

Now, Gmail is more tightly integrated with Calendar and Tasks. The Calendar is fine; it's not impressive but it keeps me on track and I can access/edit all events from my Palm Pre phone easily.  But Tasks --very handy!  You can now schedule a "due date" for anything on your Tasks list ... which lives on its own in your Gmail window.  Reading an email that adds more work to your plate? Click "Add to tasks" and it pops onto your task list, where you can comment further to remind yourself what's to be done. Schedule a due date for it in Calendar and it's something like organization! lol

Finally, Google Docs has revolutionized word processing for anyone who is working away from their desktop regularly.... or anyone who doesn't want to spend $100 for Office.  For free, you can author any Word or Excel document in Docs and share it with anyone (or just save it for yourself to print/use later). Docs also exports docs in PDF format, including nearly any Office doc (except Publisher files). It's not as powerful as the full-bore MS Word (footnotes are tricky, for example), but even college students don't need footnoting until the final stages of a paper.  Plus, the ability to collaborate online on one document is unparalleled for the price.  Check it out.

Feedly
www.feedly.com
I can't keep up with everything I want to read, either in print or online. Feedly helps though.

If you have a Google login, you're set. Just visit Feedly. com and download the extension for your browser (Firefox, Safari, IE).  Within minutes, you will see the most gorgeous home page you've ever seen for reading articles online.  You can also download an iPhone or Android app.

Next step is a wee bit tricky, but not too bad --  if you're using Firefox, it's pretty simple. Anytime you're on a website that updates regularly -- so, NYT, WSJ, CNN, 99% of blogs on Xanga or Blogger or WordPress -- you'll see that the site publishes what's called an RSS Feed. Feedly pulls in those posts as soon as they're posted and adds them to a delightfully clean, crisp reading area where you can skim, read, and ignore as you see fit.  You just click on the little orange icon that pops up in the URL bar in Firefox, and add the feed to Google Reader (or straight to Feedly if you have that option). Done!

Seriously. It's hard to find a prettier way to read everything you want to read in ONE PLACE. Get that cup of coffee and catch up on everything at one time -- Amazon deals, the news, posts from your friends and family, information updates, whatever.

XMarks or Firefox 4.0 (Beta) Sync
www.xmarks.com
I have thousands of "bookmarks" online collected over 15 years of web browsing. (Wow. Now I feel old. lol)  I used to "BackFlip" them using one of my favorite little online tools, but BackFlip succumbed to server trouble and the online revolution. Most bookmarks die within a year or two anyway, as web sites seem to move around more than Army families.

Anyway, install XMarks to Firefox/IE/Safari and you'll create a master list of online bookmarks that will sync to every other computer you use (if the browser extension is installed) via a secure login. You can also access your bookmarks online via login... so it's like a Dropbox for online booksmarks. You can tag your links and search for anything you need.  I have dozens of sites marked for play purposes -- costume suppliers, stage weapons, makeup supplies, script resources, info on how to build this or that.  I can find anything with a simple search, or poke around in the folder I created (called Plays).

If you've jumped up to the 4.0Firefox Beta (now on release 8) -- which looks pretty snazzy, by the way -- Firefox automatically does this syncing for you. Import your XMarks and you're good to go. You can get the Beta installation here, but warning: you need to know a little of what you're doing, because you need to set up a new Facebook profile and use it with Beta, or you'll totally kill both versions of Firefox on your machine. If you have no idea what i just said, you probably shouldn't try this. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/

Picasa Web Albums or Flickr or Mozy--online backup
Picasa Web Albums
www.flickr.com
www.mozy.com

If you have years' worth of digital photos sitting on your hard drive, or even backed up on an external drive. you are asking for it.
Imagine losing every photo you own in a house fire.
Would you miss them? Are they worth something to you?

If so, you need to get your rear in gear and start transferring your digital image files to a more secure location. (Ditto your music files -- if your hard drive dies and takes iTunes with it, your music is gone forever unless you buy one of the programs that rips your iPod music back to your hard drive. And that'll preserve it all only if you can sync your entire music library to your iPod. If you can't, you would truly lose hundreds or thousands of dollars of music. You can't download the songs again for free.)

External and internal hard drives fail -- often.  Either you need to keep leapfrogging your data onto other storage devices, OR start uploading full-res photos to an online source where you can access the FULL-SIZED digital files easily and for free.  (Note: Facebook does not maintain a full-sized version of your photos.  The new "hi-res" upload might help with that, but do you really want to click through every.single.photo on a FB album and save them one-by-one to replace your library??)  So I recommend stashing your photos online too, as a backup. You can keep your photos entirely private. You just need safe, reliable, accessible real estate.

I offer some options, and I'm going to start using Picasa's Web Albums myself. For $5 a year you can have 20GB of storage space -- best rate available, especially if you're already using Picasa (a handy, free, useful photo editor).  Flickr offers online photo storage for free (if you don't use much) or $25/yr for sizable real estate plus people can easily skim your photos (the ones you make public).  Mozy is encrypted, automatic (you can schedule it to backup your hard drive, for example), and useful for ANY kind of file -- your college term papers, your old IRS tax PDFs, your photos, your iTunes library.  It costs about $5 a month, but they offer a ton of customer support ... and there's something to be said for "automatic."  And they maintain multiple versions of files (as in "Oh darn, I didn't mean to save over last year's copy of that test .... I wish I could get it back").

Great article: How to Backup your Photos Online

So there you have it.  These tools are what keep my overly-busy life from affecting my sanity overmuch.  Give them a shot!

A fury of organizational spirit has taken hold of me in the past few days. My brain is racing its own course through the upcoming 2011 tasks, especially my coursework and the plays which demand so much mental attention. Meanwhile, my body urges me to reduce, reuse, recycle -- I've reorganized almost half the kitchen cabinets so far and it's exhilarating.  We now have a spice drawer.   We're about to have a "baking tools" drawer too, for I have my eye set on that junk drawer at the end of the counter that serves no purpose. We threw extra keys and house numbers into it the week we moved in 8 years ago, and it's never been revisited.

I've sorted all the gift bags from Xmas into their own holder (a larger bag) and stowed it next to a companion bag of general-purpose gifting supplies in my closet. (That's light years ahead of the "pile" that ruled a shelf and came tumbling down on my forehead last week when I was trying to wrap Xmas gifts.)  The Christmas decorations are in a neat pile waiting to be returned to their newly organized home in the garage, and I've got my eye on cleaning out that clutter-trap (the garage).

I've got 6 boxes of antique piano rolls (which accompany my genuine player piano from the 1920s) and I just don't need 2000 rolls lying around. Time to type most of them into a list and see if the auctioneer in Florence, SC can do anything with them. (Not surprisingly, there aren't many antique dealers who handle player piano rolls.) I do plan to keep some oldies-but-goodies, the ones that always sat on top of the piano when I was growing up so we could pull them out for instant guest entertainment during the rare times we had people over.

I've noticed something about myself in all this -- I don't get much work done when it's dark outside. In just a few days (TOO few, IMHO), we'll be back to the grind at school and I find myself with precious little daylight once the school day and play rehearsals are done. It's a constant battle to get my mind or body to do anything after sundown in the wintertime. I hate it.  So I'm whacking away at all the projects I can manage during these precious few hours of day.light.  Next week arrives far too soon.

My goals this year for things --

1. Handle everything just once, if possible.  I can't always sit down and "do it now," but I'm getting better at opening the mail on sight and throwing most of it away. I don't need every paper statement that comes through my hands, and we don't use most coupons (because we don't need to be spending money eating out).
2. Be a blessing to others. For example, I hope to pass along most magazines after I've read them. Only a few deserve a home in my library; most offer interesting ideas, but I can bless someone else with a free read when I'm done.  I've got some kitchen gadgets too that just aren't part of my workflow. They're  heading to someone else.
3. Spend the 5 or 10 minutes I have once in a while on chores and cleaning, and absolve myself of the guilt of not spending 6 hours a week cleaning my house. I don't have 6 hours. I rarely have 2. What gets done, gets done.  What doesn't ... can wait.

What are your ideas for keeping clutter at bay this year?

Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World
N. D. Wilson
Thomas Nelson, 2009

Sometimes books, like the authors who write them, prove to be such a tangled mixture of wrong and right, beauty and deformity that I don't know how to handle them. ND Wilson's pithy, artistic revel through the problem of evil and good in our world provokes me to put electronic bits to electronic paper in an attempt to sort out how I feel about this book.

Without ruining any surprises for potential readers:  Nate Wilson sets out to discuss (observe? illuminate? illustrate? investigate?) the meaning of CREATION in a world so clearly broken and destroyed by sin.  His thesis is that our world, spoken into existence by the Eternal Word and held together "by His powerful word" (Colossians 1), is Cosmic-scale Art by the Master Artist.  The eternal, infinite God of the Universe stoops to paint Himself, His Image, in the layers and textures of Life in this cosmos, in all of its aspects. Consider the ant. Snicker at the snowflakes which heap themselves up on a winter night. Gasp in  horror at rodents and rabbits eaten by hawks and tsunamis. And Nietzsche.  The Lord God made them all. (Well, maybe not Nietzsche.)  We are all His poem, His Story.

First off, I have to say --  This is a beautifully-written book.  I get tired of people who hound me to read a book that turns out poorly written and ugly in the mouth. Artistry and Truth go hand-in-hand; otherwise, the Truth gets sent out wearing ill-fitting clothes and wondering why everyone is staring at Her as if she has toilet-paper trailing from a mismatched high-heel.  Nathan Wilson offers us soul-searching, thoughtful perspectives on sin and goodness and clothes them in a fresh, fashion-runway wardrobe.  He bounces between narrative, anecdote, quotation, and lightly-theological discussions. Puns abound. Clearly, Wilson observed the Great Author's style in His Book and followed suit -- no one has ever accused God of handing us a systematic theology text (though I get the impression many of my friends wish He had; it would make their inconsequential, long-winded arguments much simpler).

That said, my opinion must divide here. 

I *love* Nathan Wilson's "voice" in his writing. 

I agree with so much of what he says, especially the chapters about the life hereafter (end of the book), both positive and negative; his imagery of the dead being "planted" in hope of the coming Life; the beauty of the creation around us as living, colorful, tactile parables of spiritual realities.  You gotta love the man's chapter titles too: "The Problem of Evil and the Nonexistence of Shakespeare: A Paper by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark."   I especially loved his personification of unimaginative cosmic materialistic science:  the god "Boom."  I don't think a non-theist would ever be convinced by his words, but passages like these were a lot of fun to read (in the same way that the MPs in the British Parliament like to cheer and chuckle when one of their own works over some muck on the other side of the podium):

Great stuff, right?

But Wilson and I break ranks almost everywhere he deals with the "problem of evil" (to use the theologians' phrase).  Applied to daily living, I love what Wilson says. I agree that ants die because I step on them, so what if the tables turn and I'm the ant? OK, you got me. This world is messed up, but God holds the reins and anyone who names Christ and reads the Word learns that God promises He's got this.  "Can disaster strike a city and God not be in it?" God says in Amos. Hard to argue with that.  "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good" was Joseph's explanation for his years of slavery in Egypt triggered by his brothers' sin. We call this Providence. When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was 12, my mom asked for enough years of life to "raise" me. She got about 11 more sun-cycles out of the deal. None of us are bitter.

But the words that sing hope for the suffering soul turn ugly when Wilson uses them to explain God's role in bringing evil to this planet in the first place. Essentially, "this is the best of all possible worlds." Ah, Leibniz. Voltaire skewered your worldview 300 years ago.  Wilson, I'm disappointed.....

I won't clutter this post with a review of the issues; I've mentioned it elsewhere on my blog and you can read for yourself in a good systematic theology (try Grudem's).  Suffice to boil down the millennia of argumentation to this:
a) God is good
b) God is all-powerful (or sovereign or however you want to state it)
c) Evil exists

All argumentation about the existence of "evil" fights on that ground, at least within the ranks of Theism. Most of the time, people "solve" the problem by weakening one of those 3 propositions.  See, we're left with the knotty problem that no human rationale can reconcile a) b) and c).  We can chuck one (or hide it or soften it) and be ok, but to hold all 3 at once -- well, that's what my professor Bell used to call "trying to carry 3 watermelons at one time."  We humans just don't have big enough brains to hold more than 2 at one time.

Wilson pulls a bait-and-switch in his argumentation.  To illustrate God as Author of this cosmos, he tells gripping stories about cute rabbits getting eaten by powerful, beautiful hawks; of Shakespearean characters who don't understand why they're in such misery at the pen of their Author; of kittens who eat mice AND remain cute.  And those stories are supposed to illustrate how our lives, at times senseless in their ironic, bitter brokenness, reflect a God who creates both kittens and and rabbits and hawks and violent ocean breakers. See? God's got it all in His hands. It's in the Plot. Calm down.

So ... It's not evil as long as it serves a plot-point....?

I wrote about this a couple years ago: some of my Reformed friends don't realize they soften the evilness of evil in order to maintain God's power and goodness.  Is Wilson really trying to suggest that child abuse and a hawk's supper are on the same moral ground?

I appreciate that Nathan Wilson will go to the stake promoting God's glory and power and goodness -- that's awesome.  But he does it by inventing a 4th proposition (God exists) and defending that (ok, awesome), while diminishing the reality of the curse under which we live in this fallen world.

With apologies, my friend --
We ARE commanded to envision a world apart from feasting carnivorous predators, without the thorns that tear apart our fingers as we struggle to garden, without the unwelcome visitor Death (who was never meant to be a part of this world -- not for humans, for sure).  The Creation waits and groans for the day of its release from its bondage to our sin (Rom 8).  Wilson's right: we *will* see hawks and rabbits play together (Isaiah), but it comes at the horrific, measureless price of God's own blood.  Not mine.  My good works on this earth DO count "for real," but the Power of Redemption flows from God's Grace, not my blood.

Lewis in the most famous Narnia Chronicle (Lion, Witch, Wardrobe) writes of the "deep magic" that even Aslan cannot violate: To redeem Edmund's soul of his treachery, the Stone Table must have blood. 

There is no "answer" in softening evil so that God can still look good and powerful. 
Child molesters devour the innocent when no one but God knows about it. I can't explain how that is Just, but God promises that Justice will thrive on the earth once the Blood has done its work. 
People are starving to death on parts of this planet while American farmers are paid not to grow some crops.  God says He'll break the arms of the oppressors.... in His time. 
A hawk will swoop down and snatch a perky fuzzy kitten out of the sight of a screaming terrified toddler this holiday season .... because our sin is *that bad*. 

And so I am left with the reader's dilemma, and I invite you to join me.  Wrestle with ND Wilson's words. Get out your Bible and search.  Glean the many gems from his pages.... but IMHO Wilson falls off the theological knife-edge in his quest to explain what God Himself makes no apologies for (other than to affirm that He is not the Author of the evil that chews us up from the inside out, apart from blood-bought Grace).

Read it.

PS. I'd love to teach a Sunday School class using this book along with C S Lewis's The Problem of Pain and Mary Doria Russell's outstanding fiction pair, The Sparrow and Children of God.

Remembering Luke.

Working on a couple T-shirt designs for our youth group, jumping off from the Burn/Bright activities we've begun hosting at random times. (Friday Night Burn = sports of all kinds; Friday Night Bright = games of all kinds. As expected, the Rameys are in charge of Bright, not Burn. haha)

This is my first time designing screen-printed shirts from the ground up, so I tried to maintain a limited color palette for each shirt (since you pay for each additional screen that must be used for each separate ink color). I think I'm down to 2 or 3 per shirt. Pretty happy with that. Designs are done in Illustrator CS4.

I'm thinking the guys' shirt will be printed on a stunningly bright red fabric:

And the girls' brilliant yellow shirt will be printed on an actual "girls" cut Tshirt if Brady's has them and they aren't ridiculously expensive. (sorry about the white bar at the bottom of the photo)

Thoughts?

Today I was reminded of the current fight between SC politicians/bureaucrats and the state's universities.  Despite slashing public funding for state colleges by nearly 50% over the past few years in the wake of a horrible budget crunch, the state government has declared that schools must keep their tuition increases in the neighborhood of 7% or the state will freeze all funding for building projects on campus (which derails research centers and the like).  The College of Charleston, having originally imposed a double-digit increase for 2011, blinked today and agreed to cut its tuition in order to keep its building program.

I have an honest question.
Since the legislators cut SC public colleges' funding by ~50% over the past few years, why are they now refusing to allow those schools to raise tuition to cover costs? Shouldn't it be obvious that at least some of that missing funding must come from "somewhere"?

I understand that tuition rates are rising faster in America than inflation rates or median incomes. Most American families can't even begin to afford a private university education for their graduating high schooler, and public universities aren't cheap. With average tuition coming in around $7K a year, many kids are being pushed away from 4-year institutions into community colleges.  I understand how politicians feel the heat from angry parents who thought their kid would attend the alma mater ... only to realize they'll have to mortgage the house (again) to even attempt it.

I cringe when I have to tell my hard-working, intelligent high school students that, in order to afford college, they ought to consider doing a year or two at a local community college. To cut the tuition bill in half, they can bang out gen-ed requirements and live at home. It's very economic, but my liberal-arts-loving heart weeps to think of great English courses thrown by the wayside, the loss of music theory, the underwhelming science coursework, the completion of high-school level work in the pursuit of a post-high-school level degree.  Our high schools are doing THAT bad of a job?

I cringe because I've crossed paths with those community college classes in secondhand form, and the tales make me angry and sad.  I can't believe my competent, more-than-Honors-level writer was forced to sit through a bonehead English course in which she spent whole months "learning" to write a compare-contrast essay.  I'm amused that our local writing contest judges uphold a standard for written English that I ban from my classroom in all other instances. (Adjectives? Really?  You think good writing consists in multiplying adjectives and filling paragraphs with wordy constructions?) 

I'm appalled by the story I heard from my friend who recently left her "job" as homemaker and mom to finish her college degree. Her current English professor insists on discussing the "perimeters" of his assignments even after she corrected him... more than once. He apparently doesn't know the word parameter.  I suggested that my friend photocopy his syllabus, underline "perimeter" and write parameter in the margin in red, and slip it under the door of the head of the English department.

Sometimes I sit down for lunch with a current college student (or recent grad) and ask them to tell me about their coursework, what they liked and what seemed like a waste of time. I'm disheartened to find kids who hate their majors, kids who sleepwalk through classes because nothing is expected of them. I get angry when I read about rampant cheating and paper-mill-production of college-level dissertations, papers, and masters theses.  I'm so thankful for a great college education.  I don't know how I got so lucky. God is good.... and my professors were good. A few were absolutely outstanding. And I wrote every word of every paper I ever submitted with my own bare brain.

Has higher education succumbed to the siren call of wealth? 

Will a quality 4-year degree once again become the property of only the wealthy, leaving the hoi polloi to scrounge up vocational training at junior colleges and tech schools?  Or is that actually a good thing? Should 4-year or liberal arts degrees be reserved for only the "professions"?

Why can't the "free market economy" dampen the insane costs of higher education?

The calendar fairy handed me back-to-back musical experiences.  "When it's good, it's really, really good!"
Mumford & Sons, Cadillac Sky, King Charles -- Buckhead Theatre, Atlanta, 11/7/10
Chanticleer -- Brooks Theater, Clemson, 11/8/10

People underestimate how much power an audience has over our enjoyment at a concert. On the one hand, some shows need a young, high energy group of young people to really get things going.  On the other hand, immature audience members often fail to appreciate the nuances of excellent musicianship, less-popular genres of music (like most "classical" works), and the heritage that all of our current musicians share with others around the globe.

I was surprised Sunday to walk into the Buckhead Theater in Atlanta and find a crowd of yuppies and college students and middle aged people waiting eagerly to hear British folk-rock-bluegrass band Mumford & Sons. It was truly an interesting mix of very polite, very excited fans of the good looking quartet with their lovely collection of traditional instruments (and the banjolin). We've been listening to their CD almost non-stop in our household as soon as I got it in July, but most of the people at the show could top that: They could sing pretty much every word of every song!

Mumford & Sons brings a gravitas to their performance that few 20-somethings can ever dream of marshalling even when they add a few more years to the pile.  Lead singer Marcus Mumford offers up his soul on the back of his guitar for each song, staring down the crowd and forcing people to come to terms with their lyrics -- which are rich and deep and reflective. Every man threw himself into the performance, whether Ben rocking out the keyboard or accordion, or Winston on the banjo/banjolin, or Ted beautifully handling the tall double-bass.

But what made the show incredible -- truly an experience -- was the audience. You can't mask an audience's passion for an artist, not the screaming teenie-bopper attention that big-name pop stars earn, but a deep, fierce loyalty a music-lover can have for his/her favorite musicians.  Bring those musicians and those fans into the same room, and you'll have magic. And the Buckhead Theater was a charmed venue on Sunday night. Every album track the band played -- and I believe they played them all -- was thundered back at them by the audience. Even a couple of the 4 new songs had already been leaked to the Internet, and the guys standing behind us were singing every word.  Marcus smirked with satisfaction late in their set when he was finally able to find a song the audience didn't know.... but we loved it anyway.   

The band mates would make eye contact with each other and laugh as if to say, "What is going ON?! We're in Georgia! How do these people know this music so well!"  They powwowed in tight little sweaty conferences at the back of the stage, probably mumbling stuff like Hey, maybe we should throw in this one too? ... and then it would happen. When you can watch four friends doing what they love and loving every minute of it, no one in the audience was willing to let them off the stage until we'd heard every recorded track and then some. 

I'd be remiss not to mention opening bluegrass band Cadillac Sky in my review.  They were outstanding musicians. I've never seen someone "shred" on a banjo .... but I did last night!  The lead violin player was amazing, though the crowd didn't give him nearly enough applause for his talent. The guitar player was crazy and did things with an acoustic guitar that shouldn't be possible. The double-bass guy was JAMMIN'. I think the group brought 6 or 7 people to the stage for their set, which was a lot of fun.  Definitely a show well-worth the ticket price (and extra Ticketmaster service fees). 

I have a feeling Mumford & Sons will be back among us next year. They won't forget to visit their new "favorite crowd ever" (Ben's words).  If you haven't heard the album, I highly recommend finding some tracks on YouTube or MySpace and giving them a listen . . .

Switching gears completely, Coart & I found ourselves at the Clemson University Brooks Center tonight on row B enjoying 12-man-wonder-singers Chanticleer. We've been Chanticleer fans for more than a decade now, chasing them to various local cities when we're lucky enough to have them close by.  My favorite venue for an a capella performance is the hall up at Brevard College -- perfect acoustics! But Brooks is a good performance space too, and I heard every glorious note of tonight's program.

What do you get when you assemble 12 of the finest vocalists on the planet? Twelve guys who can sing anything from medieval chant to Italian madrigals to Schumann lieder to 20th C experimental music, R&B, gospel, and jazz.  These concerts provide such a variety of musical material -- I'm always fascinated!

Tonight's "special" or unusual selections were very interesting. One, "Observer from the Magellanic Cloud" suggested the sounds of a future satellite traveling in the nearby galaxy we call the Magellan Cloud, catching a whiff of a signal from Earth of the Maori people in New Zealand dancing their tribal dance in honor of those stars (which they believe bring them crops & a good growing season). The piece slowly changed from a vocalization of something that would suit a sci-fi movie soundtrack into a Maori tribal dance/chant ... and then swirled together as the two "signals" became one.

Even more amazing was a set of pieces by an Australian composer, I'll have to look at my program to find her name, who was haunted by aboriginal melodies and sounds.  One piece was mostly harmonic overtones -- the singers used their mouths to create a variety of precisely pitched sounds which, taken together, started to "shimmer" throughout the room in overtones. High pitched harmonies seemed to coalesce from the very air, conjured by the magic of physics/acoustics and the human voice.  I was truly stunned. Not an electronic instrument (or any instrument) in sight except the human voice and some incredible vocal training. 

Do yourself a favor: Find some Chanticleer for your Christmas (or world/follk/classical) CD collection. 
Look up videos/clips of Chanticleer singing Francis Biehl's "Ave Maria," or the Vaughn Williams arrangement of "Loch Lomond." Those are both gut-wrenchingly gorgeous. 

I guess that's the end of our concert budget for a while. At least we wrapped up 2010's season with an unforgettable 24 hours.

Chicago has treated us well. As we face our final moments in the city,  most of us are sad to leave.

To pick up the thread from the previous entry . . .

Wednesday found us at the steps of the massive Museum of Science & Technology. The building itself is longer than the typical Smithsonian building and at least 3 stories high. These folks take their science seriously! lol  We broke up into groups to explore the massive collection which ranged from biology to chemistry to transportation and technology. My favorite moment was watching the chicks hatch -- the scientists participate in a breeding program for nearly-extinct species of chickens, and they let visitors watch the hatching process (which looks pretty traumatic).  We were amazed by the "molecular gastronomist" -- the guys who are experimenting with rearranging food protein molecules so they can be "replicated," Star Trek style, on long space missions.  The guys own a restaurant downtown too where they serve up their oddly shaped recreations of nutrition. The most amazing: the paper (it's REAL paper) which IS cotton candy. It doesn't just taste like cotton candy -- all the proper food molecules are there, just reorganized into a paper structure. Weird.

The museum was exhausting. We took the bus & train to Chinatown where a friendly neighborhood fireman pointed out some good local cuisine (and it was great), and then we were off -- headed back to the hostel to recharge before some more shopping on our last night out.  We had hoped to do the Sears Tower on Wednesday, but it was closed again because of the high winds. (We later heard that the barometric pressure in Chicago on Wednesday was the lowest it's ever been recorded . . . which explains the unbelievable winds.)

On Wednesday night most of the group met Derrick, an Irish-Mexican living in California. Yep, you read that right!   The hostel was very full -- a large group of IB students from a Chicago high school were staying the night as part of their assignment to interact with foreigners. Also the Danish National Performance Team (gymnasts) were around, plus our friend from France whom we'd met at breakfast the previous day. And a friendly older man from NYC who was moving to Chicago and looking for his apartment (which is why he was staying at the hostel). He grew up just down the street from the NY Giants' baseball stadium, and was watching the World Series game (1) with intense interest. The Berliner sitting next to him was mostly just confused.

This morning (Thursday) we had hoped to see the Sears tower before heading home, but the weather didn't cooperate. The winds were too high in the morning and the tower was closed.  That's a disappointment, but there's really nothing we could have done.  Our only 'free" evening with decent weather was Monday night, and we would have probably missed the improv show if we'd gone up to the Skydeck. Who knew the weather would be so uncoorporative?

Instead, Coart took the kids on a walk downtown while I watched the luggage, and then we hit Lou Malnoti's pizza one more time -- so good!  Our Irish-Mexican friend hung out with us for a bit longer -- he can turn on or off his Irish accent at will -- and then boarded the train for the long ride to O'Hare.

Truly, it was a great trip. I definitely found Chicago to be one of my favorite US cities. People seem friendly and helpful, and not particularly bothered by tourists.

But it's good to be home.  I always miss my bed.