I'm considering the following workshop:

Norman Mealy Hymn Workshop
Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: the Makings of Christian Music

Frank Burch Brown, Professor of Religion and the Arts at Christian Theological
Seminary, Indianapolis, will challenge us to explore different style of music
for worship at the Norman Mealy Hymn Workshop on Saturday, November 8 (9 to
12:30) at St. Mark's Church.

Registration fee: $12 ($8 student/senior) or 4 for $44. Lunch (by reservation):
$8. Checks payable to St.Mark's Mealy Memorial can be sent to St.Mark's Church,
2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704.

I've not blogged the last couple of days, not because I'm terribly sad (which was the case several weeks ago) but because I've been pondering and running and dancing around and singing. Sometimes it's only been in my own mind; at other moments, when my guard is down, the stuff leaks out. I'm learning to be less embarrassed about. "Excuse me," I say. "I didn't mean to emote all over you." Then I move on.

I have some excellent teachers around me to free me. May I be a good student.

Oh, the crypticity

A six year old girl is teaching me about telling stories.

Lynn wrote:

Raymond, given the apparent dearth of children's books about the North American Chinese experience, you may have found a creative outlet for yourself.  And maybe Laura would illustrate it!  But don't miss Grace Lin's other book, The Ugly Vegetables, whose title captivated me at the library once. Although the protagonist is a girl, so what?

What a great idea! I've not yet seen The Ugly Vegetables. I'm really enjoying Grace Lin's books myself -- and the two little girls who live in my household love them too. You're right -- there's nothing wrong with the fact that the protagonist is a girl -- that's certainly great. A topic for another time -- but I feel that Asian males are tad under/mis-represented in our culture -- and hence, I'd love to supplement the books I found so far with ones that feature boys.

It's 11pm and the jackhammering on the main thoroughfare a couple of blocks aways goes unabated. My housemate tells me that this is not unusual -- better to dig up a major road when there is little traffic than at rush hour. I hope the noise stops soon however. This little camper needs his beauty rest.

i spent some time this afternoon at the Berkeley Public Library searching for children's books that involve Chinese-American or Chinese-Canadian characters and themes. (What I found is summarized in my Wiki entry ChineseNorthAmericanChildrensBooks.) Two major reasons motivated my search. First of all, I'm an uncle now; my sister Janice recently had a baby boy! Second, as I have alluded in past entries, I myself could stand to do a lot more reading. I actually think that reading children's books is a good way for me to get started. Not only do they assume less background on the part of the reader than adult books (naturally!), but they are really deeply multi-senory experiences that touch deeply the child in me who needs to get a bit more educated.

I'll continue my search, updating my wiki along the way. I didn't realize how much I'm enjoying spending more time in the children's sections of my local bookstores and libraries!

Some days, I really don't know what to blog. That doesn't mean that I don't have anything to write. For good or bad, I've gotten to a point where I want my blog entries to be reasonably well-crafted. And often, I don't have quite enough energy to write such entries.

That's where my wiki comes in. I don't feel the same high standards for entries there and therefore feel freer to do braindumps there. Ocassionally if I write something of particular interest in my wiki, I'll draw attention to it on my blog. Should you care, you can find out what's new on my wiki by going to the RecentChanges page, where you can see that I wrote recently about BachAndJazz and that my former housemate Christian Stimming has been posting information about his upcoming wedding to Anne. (Congratulations, Christian!)

Recently, I've started receiving comments on my blog that are on the border of being relevant to the discussion on hand, prompting me to think a bit harder about my policy concerning what to do with comments (or writing in general) that happens on my websites. I'm using my wiki to write up my thoughts and policy: MyBlogWikiCommentingPolicy. Any comments about it?

From Independent: "What should you write?":

But most blogs are, it must be said, badly written and poorly presented - the kind of drivel that gets read only reluctantly even by the authors' closest friends and family. Even so there are an awfully lot of good blogs - interesting, provocative, and passionate; direct, opinionated and informative. The best ones all have a unique approach or view that sets them apart, and engineer a sense of community among readers. They can be a great way of finding information too often ignored by the mainstream media. [via Scripting News]

Figuring out what to write is more of a challenge than I think that it should be. And I certainly find it incredibly challenging to maintain a consistently high level of writing.

Lloyd put out a call for lists:

So, who would like to share a list of something on a weblog entry? Come on, you've got a list stashed somewhere. I know it. 😉 Naturally, I'll list all responses here.

I was particularly struck by Lloyd's list of periodicals that he has subscribed
to at one point or another: Let me put in bold ones I also subscribed to at one
point or another.

• Atlantic Monthly
• Brill's Content
• Commentary
• Dissent
• The Economist
• Elysian Fields Quarterly
• Far Eastern Economic Review
• Foreign Affairs
• Granta
• Harper's Magazine
• In These Times
• Macworld
• MacWeek
• Mother Jones
• The Nation
• National Geographic
• The New Republic
• New Scientist
• The New York Review of Books
• The New York Times
• The New Yorker
• Newsweek
• The Progressive
• Psychology Today
• Red Herring
• The San Francisco Chronicle
• Scientific American
• Sports Illustrated
• Threepenny Review
• Tikkun
• TIME
• The Times Literary Supplement
• US News and World Report
• Utne Reader
• Vanity Fair
• Washington Monthly
• Weekly Standard
• WebTechniques
• Wilson Quarterly
• WIRED

I'll throw in two lists of my own:

• My amazon
  wishlist -- which I add to through my wireless phone when I'm browsing
  at a bookstore and see a book that intrigues me. I just type a search on amazon
  and drop it on the list,
• My
  current RSS subscription list in OPML (XML) format.

Not terribly inspired but I'm sure revealing, nevertheless.