Author: Maria Johnson

Beijing Olympics 2008

Beautiful or poisonous? They’re getting a lot of bad press about the air pollution, and makes me want to stop and make a political statement about the absurdity of the US getting flack about the environment (Drill. Now. Dammit. How ironic that Paris Hilton has the solution), but they sure do know how to put on a show. Even the the EPCOT-looking ball from the light-show was beautiful. And frankly, it’s unfair to say that anything could beat the weirdness of the Greek opening ceremony, but really, the weird suspended pregnant chick vs. this dancing beauty:

The EPCOT ball was a knock-off, but still lovely:

and of course, fireworks. It’s China — could they screw it up? No way:

Good luck to all the athletes.

I love to squat on YouTube

I especially love it when it is actually work. I created a fantastic presentation for class today, and ended with this music video of Queen Latifah. Okay, so a little weird, but it worked beautifully with the lesson about poetry, and Emily Dickinson’s quote,

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”

If you watch the video, you’ll see how Al Green’s head is so affected by his emotion that he can’t contain himself. Anyway, I guess you had to be there…

Hey, do you make your bed first thing when you get up?

I’m essentially a slob at heart although I’ve come to the conclusion that 5 slobs cannot co-exist under the same roof, so I have spells of clutter-anxiety-induced neatnik bouts. Before I went back to work fulltime, I seemed to have things under control, but I’ve relaxed the reins and now I feel like a new bout is going to hit. It will be a total sucker punch for my family who is boycotting the blog because they don’t like that I moved. Good. That means I’ll talk about them here. Bahaha.

Anyway, I have discovered that if I make my bed first thing in the morning, the rest of the day seems organized. I said “seemed” okay? I am well aware of things like self-fulfilling prophecy and all that psycho-babble.

Still, it works for me. Look, it’s not even 6:30 and after making my bed I have almost finished a blog entry. See? It works. I might just finish grading papers today.

Do you make your bed?

Check out this book review…

So I got involved in a pretty neat little project that Chris Cash at The Catholic Company is doing. He’s gathered a cadre of bloggers interested in doing reviews for various products, including the thing I love best to do: read books. There’s this for a bonus: I get to read stuff before it’s published, and I get to write about it. Nerd nirvana. I know!

So here’s the first review. I posted it as my Monday Musings at rosaryarmy.com because I think it’s something the readers there would appreciate, but I want you guys to fly on over there, too.

One of our challenges as Catholics is to continue to grow in our faith. It is easy to fall into a comfortable rut of attending Mass and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation randomly, or just once a year, in short, operating at the minimum level. We don’t just shortshrift ourselves when we do that, we shortshrift God.

And yet, there is so much available to guide our exploration of our faith. Our beloved Pope John Paul II, a prolific writer, has written a body of work that addresses our needs, not just as Christians, but as human beings made in the likeness of God, and provides profound insight into God’s love for us and how we can love God in return.

Although these documents exist for us to study and nurture our faith, many Catholics, including myself, are intimidated by them, fearing that they may be too academic, perhaps too esoteric for the common reader. The Theology of the Body was one of those documents that seemed inaccessible to me.

Enter Christopher West, Catholic author and speaker well-known for his on-going work on John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. West brings his understanding of marriage and sexuality to people thirsty for knowledge and understanding about a topic that is often relegated to whispers if it is spoken about at all.

His newest book, Heaven’s Song, available in September 2008, continues the exploration of John Paul II’s theology of the body with new material never released by the Pope. In these new talks, West reveals the Pope’s study of the Song of Songs and the marriage of Sarah and Tobias.

I have to admit that I was a little intimidated when I received an advance copy of his book for review. The Song of Songs was just not something I was drawn to, and Sarah – didn’t all her husbands die on their wedding night? It seemed so obscure.     [read the rest of it here]

finding inspiration in plurkville

Lisa Hendey’s recent plurk about “old lady syndrome” and a sore knee after exercising had me laughing. Forget the aches and pains — I’ve lived with those for a while. I mean, it takes my body about 5 minutes to warm up after I get out of bed. The effort alone of trying to sit up is an ordeal in itself. To watch me stumble across the bedroom floor as I attempt to straighten up is like looking at one of those posters of evolution. Still, it beats what’s going on in my brain, which evidently is so overcharged and overfull that anything triggers a short circuit.

A real live “Home Alone”

These poor folks are gonna be in a world of trouble when they get back home. Seems that they left their kid at the airport when they boarded their flight to Paris.

Paris! Just like in the movie. Ha!

It turns out they are an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family. Must be a cultural thing to leave the kid behind when traveling…wink wink. The last time it happened was about 2000 years ago.

for those of you who like the T-shirt

Our modern culture demands a t-shirt as a souvenir for everything we do. Maybe it’s shallow. Maybe it’s just fun. I prefer to think it’s fun. After all, there’s nothing cooler than a really neat T-shirt. There’s a neat little project going on over at The Catholic Company that you might want to check out.

The Catholic Company has undertaken a challenge, together with the Missionaries of the Poor (MOP), to send 5000 (or more!) catechisms to the poor and needy at MOP missions in Jamaica, India, the Philippines, Haiti, Uganda & Kenya. We are sending the first 500 catechisms, and hope our loyal customers will help us send at least another 4500 copies.

Among the items is a T-Shirt that says: Eternity is better.

Buy a few catechisms to send, and purchase the T-shirt for yourself. You know you want the shirt — do something good for others through the Missionaries of the Poor while you’re there.