Friday, February 29, 2008

crazy days

It has been a long week since I last posted - it has been incredibly busy.  Lay readers' preaching workshop last Saturday, AGM on Sunday, Lenten Bible Study Sunday, regular work stuff all week with a whole bunch of extra meetings thrown in and some pension/house/insurance details to look after.  There are times when I really wish I had a personal assistant who ran behind me taking care of the details of life.  But then I think maybe I just need to unclutter my life a little and find more time to pay attention to things.

One really enjoyable thing I did this week was to take a few hours break and go see The Great Debaters with a friend.  What an inspiring movie.  It is based on the true story of a black college in Texas in the '30s whose debate team was so good that they took on the national champions, Harvard University.  In some ways it is a formula film (underdog school rises over obstacles) but it is so well acted (Denzel Washington is amazing and so is Forest Whitaker) and it is gritty enough in its depiction of race and poverty that it doesn't seem like a formula.

I also finished Sarah Paretsky's Fire Sale and thought it was great.  Paretsky writes mysteries with a hard boiled woman detective named V.I. Warshawsky and I've always enjoyed them.  This one is about trouble in her old neighbourhood on the South Side of Chicago.  She gets sucked into a mess while filling in for her old basketball coach.  It gives a glimpse into the problems of poverty and race still occurring today without the same assurance that in the end the underdog will prevail.  Good read.

Now today is my day off and I have a long long list of things to do so....

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