More importantly to me, 25 years ago today my wife and I got married. Going to celebrate...
But it's always been a coincidence that we we got married on D-Day. Anyway, here's some rare color film of the D-Day invasion (color film was available, but rare, then, and there was no easy way to show/distribute it). I've been to Omaha and Utah beaches, and to Pont du Hoc, and through the little lanes of Normandy. It's still moving...
I've been reading more and more on this theme, but this is from Salon—no bastion of right-wing propaganda. Surely, it can't be true, can it? Isn't "the science settled?" This is upsetting the accepted narrative...
1.65 million of you have already seen this on the Intertubes, but still...
If you don't know the story, Newsweek published a list of top 10 "dying" cities in America, and Grand Rapids, Michigan made #10. People in Grand Rapids didn't like that. So Rob Bliss (a local event producer) and some other creatives got together and came up with this, the world-record lip-dub video, in a long, single shot. It's been picked up by all the national news services. Just search for "Grand Rapids lip dub video."
This is the city where I have lived and worked for about twenty years. Well, actually, I live in a suburb of GR on shore of Lake Michigan, 30 miles to the west. But GR is our metro area, West Michigan's business and artistic center. To many of the cultural and political elites, this is just "fly-over" country, Jesusland, where people live in trailers and marry their cousins.
But this video shows the quintessentially, uniquely American spirit. The qualities that it captures—optimism, diversity, energy, civic pride, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, joy in life, decency—are strengths that will make Grand Rapids and communities like it resilient and resistant to the pessimism, dependence, and decadence being peddled by too many of our "leaders."
Whether it is probable is another question. And whether it is prudent, or productive, to believe that heaven is a fairy story, is yet another matter.
Of course Stephen Hawking has the right to make up his own (rather considerable) mind on this matter. But does his mathematical prowess give him any more insight into these questions than anyone else? Does he have any special knowledge of or information about these issues that is not available to you or I? Which raises another question: what would make one an "expert" on heaven? What would qualify someone to give expert opinion on the existence of God?
Is belief in heaven just personal speculation and opinion? And does what one believes about heaven make any practical difference in how one lives in the here-and-now? I'm currently writing a sequel to Lost in the Pages, that addresses these questions. If life is a story, what happens next?
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 6:04PM | 