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Wondering Pilgrim

~ the ramblings of a perambulent and often distracted sojourner

Wondering Pilgrim

Monthly Archives: July 2006

This Blog is One Year Old!!

31 Monday Jul 2006

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Blogging

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Blogging

This experiment is now up for its annual performance review.

1. The blog has provoked mild interest amongst acquaintances and some unknown “anonymi”
2. It’s been one place for me to think out loud in a public arena
3. I pulled one post when it became too politically sensitive
4. It has generated a little over 10 hits a week on average. More frequent posts are necessary to maintain interest.
5. I need to learn how to insert some of the widgets and cross links into the sidebars.
6. Realistically, the time needed to maintain the blog needs to be measured against my other priorities.

Recommendation:

1. Set a timeframe to acquire some html skills in order to build up the sidebars
2. Aim to update at least twice a week – say Wednesdays and Sundays.
3. Review after 6 months

Jindabyne the movie

25 Tuesday Jul 2006

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Spirituality

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cinema

Take a short story from the USA and convert it to Aussie cinema and something like Jindabyne appears. Raymond Carver’s So Much Water So Close To Home underwent some changes to become Ray Lawrence’s dramatic depiction of a community’s response to the thoughtless and apathetic actions of four fishing mates who discover a corpse in the isolated Snowy Mountain region. The men continue their fishing adventure and do not report their find until they return three days later.  What seemed a pragmatic solution at the time is now, in the cold light of day, shown up as an act of high grade callousness.
It puts strains on family relationships and turns the men into small town pariahs. The fact that the victim is a young aboriginal woman brings racial tension to the surface. For me, Jindabyne is something of a social commentary on a variety of levels. Apathy is a kind of default position that many of us revert to in daily life. It is a condition that dogs even our best re-creative moments, dulling our thinking. Or was it the surreal, beautiful yet ominous, natural environment of the high country that anaesthetized the senses? I have spent time in the high country myself, and experiences of foreboding are frequently palpable there. The strain on intimate relationships resulting from ethically questionable decisions that have come under public scrutiny is a study in itself. Mixed in is the conflict between passive aggressive resentment and the drive to inappropriate expressions of vicarious guilt assuagement. Throw in the element of racial insensitivity with its hint to the audience that the matter of aboriginal reconciliation will not go away, and we have powerful cinema that will leave you touched by sadness, despair and anger. Yet there are signs of hope also, a reaching out, the courage to make apologies knowing they may not be accepted, but making them anyway because they are necessary for healing to begin. There are tender moments here, flickers of light that deserve to be noticed in the darkness of it all. Some will find the film slow moving, I found it contemplative.

LibraryThing

22 Saturday Jul 2006

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Ministry, Personal

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books

What to do when you’re taking one week’s overdue leave and you can’t really go anywhere that doesn’t seem forced. With one week – you just get there, begin to unwind, then it’s time to come back.

Just a week of no commitments (relatively speaking) is a vacation in itself. I decided to catalogue my library – doesn’t sound much like a holiday, does it? I have been wanting to do this for years, however, and LibraryThing (see www.librarything.com) makes it so easy.

Just go to the site, enter the ISBN (or author and title – even part title) and, if it’s on Amazon or in one of 45 online library catalogues, it does the rest for you – even showing a picture of the front cover – great for us visual types. If none of these have the title you’re trying to enter, you can add it manually. You have the option of inserting your own reference tags and linking and dialoguing with other users. Write and compare reviews. See the stats of your own library.

I’ve catalogued almost 1000 books with about half as many to go. Would have done more except that I kept on stopping to browse books I’d forgotten I had. I invite you to step into my library at www.librarything.com/catalog/djryle

Well, well, well!

02 Sunday Jul 2006

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in churches of christ, mission

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churches of christ, mission, Wembley Downs, Zimbabwe

The challenge to the church was to raise $4000 to sink a well in the remote drought stricken hinterlands of Zimbabwe. Individuals and groups set about to devise their fund-raising schemes. Our resident artist devised a working model that would show week by week how far the bore had sunk towards the water table far beneath the surface. A week or two into the project, our treasurer phoned me,
“We have a problem – $4,200 has come in already.”
“Well, let’s go for a second well!”
“Agreed!”
So now we are going full bore to reach the target a second time.
Who knows? We may even end up saying,
“Well, well, well! Wot ‘ave we ‘ere? Three of ‘em!” Posted by Picasa

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