Susan Boyle Wows The Cynics

From the BBC:

A 47-year-old church volunteer from West Lothian has become an unlikely overnight singing sensation with millions watching her perform online.

Susan Boyle, from Blackburn, stunned judges on ITV's Britain's Got Talent with her performance of I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables on Saturday.

Since then Hollywood actress Demi Moore has joined the legions of fans who have voiced their support on the internet.

Ms Boyle has now become the bookies' favourite to win the talent show.

Ms Boyle, who told viewers she had "never been kissed", said she had always wanted to be a singer.

She said: "I entered the competition because I wanted to have a chance at my singing."

Susan is feisty and completely natural. She charmed me before she began singing. To watch the reversal of attitudes of the cynical judges to her comments, followed by their reactions once she started singing, makes the video worth viewing. I hope Susan wins.

MadPriest, do let us know if you spot Susan Boyle while you're in Scotland.

Embedding is disabled, but you can view the video here.

H/T to Oyster at Your Right Hand Thief, although he is the world's worst cynic and makes sport of Susan.

All Right! If you want to hear Susan Boyle's version of "Cry Me a River", from a charity CD made in 1999, listen to it at The Daily Record. You won't be sorry. Thanks to Susan S. in the comments for the link.

Our Letter On Ivor Van Heerdon's Termination

Grandpère and I sent the letter below to the chancellor of Louisiana State University to protest the firing of Dr. Ivor van Heerden. Grandpère composed the letter, and I edited and revised it. GP was pleased with my editing and revision. He said, "I didn't know you could write so well."

He complains about the time that I spend blogging, so I said to him, "Do you realize that my writing skills are honed by writing on my blog? Keep that in mind when you get annoyed with me." Ha!

My recent posts on Ivor are here and here.

Dr. Michael V. Martin
Office of the Chancellor
156 Thomas Boyd Hall
Baton Rouge LA 70803

April 15, 2009


Dear Dr. Martin:

As alumni of the classes of 1959 and 1961, we feel strongly about the firing of Dr. Ivor van Heerden. He served the people of New Orleans and Louisiana well in his investigative work before and after Hurricane Katrina and his subsequent conclusions that the levees were poorly designed and poorly constructed and not adequate to do the job of protecting New Orleans. He was the go-to man for accurate information on the quality of the work done by the US Corps of Engineers.

Dr. van Heerden should have been rewarded with promotion, tenure, and a sizable raise in compensation for his excellent work, rather than a termination notice. The decision to fire Dr. Van Heerden seems rather shameful. His termination places the Forever LSU campaign and future attempts to move the university to a rank in the top tier in jeopardy. What has happened to academic freedom at LSU? Actions such as this send a bitter message to the world that non-tenured faculty members who speak out, even when they speak truths that we need to know, do so at the risk of their jobs.

This year, we will be withholding our usual donation to LSU.


Sincerely,


Joseph T. Butler, Jr.
June B. Butler

The Children's Bible In A Nutshell

In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The Bible says, 'The Lord thy God is one, but I think He must be a lot older than that.

Anyway, God said, 'Give me a light!' and someone did.

Then God made the world.

He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren't embarrassed because mirrors hadn't been invented yet.

Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden.....Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn't have cars.

Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel.

Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something.

One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it. He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check.

After Noah came Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother, Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast. Jacob had a son named Joseph who wore a really loud sports coat.

Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh's people. These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable.

God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include: don't lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbor's stuff.

Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humor thy father and thy mother.

One of Moses' best helpers was Joshua who was the first Bible guy to use spies. Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town.

After Joshua came David. He got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named Solomon who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn't sound very wise to me.

After Solomon there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then barfed up on the shore.

There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don't have to worry about them.

After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn too, because my mom is always saying to me, 'Close the door! Were you born in a barn?' It would be nice to say, 'As a matter of fact, I was.')

During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Democrats.

Jesus also had twelve opossums.

The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.

Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount.

But the Democrats and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn't stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead.

Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to Heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution.

Thanks to Erika.

Leeds Parish Church

On Sunday, the day before I left, I attended a sung Eucharist at
Leeds Parish Church, the big Anglican church in the city, with Erika and Susan. The night of our gathering the two of them stayed at Haley's Hotel where I stayed. May I say what a pleasure it was to meet Susan and Erika in real life? I wish we'd had more time to visit, but I'm pleased we had what time we had.

I wanted to link directly to the history page of Leeds Parish Church, but the hosts want you to visit the home page first. Click on "Back to History" on the home page, and that will take you there.

We had to park a good distance away, after a rather long ride round and round the road that circles the City Centre in Leeds. From the circle, you can see the place where you want to go, but the difficulty is in finding the right exit from the circle to actually get to where you want to go.

After we parked the car, as we approached the church on foot, we heard change ringing. What a delightful surprise! The first and only other time that I heard change ringing was at St. Martin in the Fields in London, quite by accident. I was so excited, and I knew what it was that I was hearing, because I had read THE BOOK on the subject, The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers.

Listen to one of the peals from Leeds Parish Church. Isn't it lovely? It sounds like angel music to me. I suppose that some of you folks in England take the pleasure of change ringing for granted, but try to imagine my excitement in hearing it for only the second time in my long life.



Erika, Susan, and I were seated by the very nice lady usher in a place of honor directly across from the pulpit, pictured above. We were somewhat awed and a bit concerned that someone would ask us to move to a lower place, but that never happened. The service was lovely with the men's and boys' choirs doing the honors.

Below is a picture of Erika and Susan after the service, standing in front of the very pew where we were seated.


After church, they headed south toward home near Bristol, and I went back to the hotel for a farewell lunch with the Doorman-Priest family.

The Red Head

Here's another for you. It's just as bad or as good as the Easter tale.

A man is dining in a fancy restaurant and there is a gorgeous redhead sitting at the next table. He has been checking her out since he sat down, but lacks the nerve to talk with her.

Suddenly she sneezes, and her glass eye comes flying out of its socket toward the man.. He reflexively reaches out, grabs it out of the air, and hands it back.

'Oh my, I am so sorry,' the woman says as she pops her eye back in place.

'Let me buy your dinner to make it up to you,' she says.

They enjoy a wonderful dinner together, and afterwards they go to the theatre. They talk, they laugh, she shares her deepest dreams and he shares his. After paying for everything, she asks him if he would like to come to her place for a nightcap. They had a wonderful, wonderful time.

The next morning, she cooks a gourmet meal with all the trimmings and invites the guy over. The guy is amazed. Everything had been SO incredible!

'You know,' he said, 'You are the perfect woman. Are you this nice to every guy you meet?'

'No,' she replies...

(Wait for it...)

(It's coming...)

(The suspense is killing you, isn't it?)

She says:





'You just happened to catch my eye.'


Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

Well, it made me laugh out loud, and it's my blog.

Please Pray For Barbara

From Susan S:

My youngest sister, Barbara, 52 years old, is now fighting her 3rd round of Breast Cancer. She had it first in 1992, then a more virilent strain showed up 2 years ago. Now a different but still breast cancer has appeared in the skin on her chest. She will get 25 radiation treatments, 2 different oral Chemos, plus surgery to remove what they can. It is moving fast. She sent this letter today.

"I saw the radiologist today. He said that I was between a rock and a hard place. He, the surgeon, and the oncologist will discuss and let me know on Friday if they will still want to do surgery on Monday. He might want to start radiation now because there is no way the surgeon can get it all - even the area visible to the naked eye. It has spread on the skin in a noticeable way in the past 2 weeks.

The radiation treatment will have a 20% change of extraordinarily bad consequences including ribs that will just break due to the bone marrow being killed, and/or a chest wound that will not heal - period. he said less radiation than that won't do much good, and of course even with radiation it might just slow it down for awhile.

He did say that without radiation, the cancer will do what the radiation might do. It will just eat my chest up. He said there is no medicine, food, or anything that I can do now to make it go better. He said there is no test that can be done to determine if my chest can withstand the treatment. (i had 37 treatments in 92-93). he said the consequences probably wouldn't start until 6 to 12 months after radiation was done. he said they would probably do 25 treatments (mon - fri for 5 weeks.) will take the chemo pills at the same time. Tykerb & Xeloda - look them up. Very festive.

I'm going to be as positive about this until I start screaming - will holler out when that begins.

I've been eating chocolate all day. It doesn't hurt.

Please pray for my baby sister.

Susan S.

And the latest update:

My sister Barbara had surgery yesterday to remove what they could of the cancer. There was more than they thought because it is spreading faster than was at first suspected. I told her we are praying for her. Please keep her in your prayers.

Ugly Doesn't Change....

From Bob Marshall in the Times-Picayune:

Ugly doesn't change, even when you see it coming. Neither does stupid.

I'm talking about the decision by LSU to fire Ivor van Heerden, the head of the LSU Hurricane Center who earned world-wide renown for his work before and after Hurricane Katrina. This move had been rumored and threatened almost since van Heerden began his post-storm work, but it was no less repulsive for its inevitability.

As someone who covered that story, I always thought the state should be rewarding van Heerden, not chasing him away, because metro area residents -- indeed, citizens of any U.S. community currently relying on federal levees to keep them safe -- owe Van Heerden a huge debt.

Bob, that makes, at least two of us, but I expect there are many more who feel the same way.

Please read the entire editorial. It's difficult to pick and choose more quotes. Marshall lays out, step by step, the debt the people of New Orleans and south Louisiana owe to Ivor. Don't forget that the original story from the press was that Katrina flooded New Orleans. It was only when Ivor and his team began investigating that the truth began to emerge.

What they found was something else: Signs of catastrophic engineering failures.

In other words, the floodwalls and levees failed not because they were too small, but because they had been either poorly designed, poorly built -- or both.

But for Ivor and Team Louisiana, would we even know this?

Happy 50th, Barbie!

Thanks to Ann and Doug.

Don't Let The Door Hit You On the Way Out!

Shall I tell you about my Easter Day after church? I shall. My three children and my six grandchildren came over for Sunday lunch. Many years ago, I'd plan a sit-down meal, not formal, but all gathered around two tables at the same time. I should say that my plan was to have that happen, but it never did. Someone or ones always drifted in late. On each holiday, we faced the question of whether to wait for the missing, or to go ahead and start eating without them. Finally, one of my children told me that my plan wasn't working, which was quite true.

The new plan is that we prepare a meal and people drift in whenever, sort of like an open house. The cousins like to be together, so I ask my children to try to be there at least part of the time AT the same time. Plus, we have an Easter egg hunt. This seems to work, and I'm a lot more relaxed than on the former, more structured occasions.

My daughter arrived first with her three boys. Grandpère had already started his meal. The food is ready. Why wait? I ate with the first shift. The next shift came, my son, his two children and his girl friend. I don't think his children ate a meal. They may have eaten while they were with their mom earlier. They plunged right in to the Easter candy. Then came the third shift, my son, his wife, and their son. They had already eaten, but my son ate again.

The children behaved decently for a good while, but then the sugar highs kicked in, and the scene began to get wild. We tried to get them to keep their wildness outside, but they continued to drift back in. We had a few clashes, some hysterical crying and consoling to be done, but no major injuries.

Diana, our dog, escaped from the yard only twice, and on one of the occasions, she took a swim in our neighbor's pool, returning home dripping wet. She thrives on all the excitement. I could see that Grandpère was becoming agitated, but I had my wine, so I was chillin'. He should drink on these occasions.

He tried to settle them down with a video - Wait! - "Fawlty Towers". Needless to say, that did not work, and soon all drifted away and back into mischief. When the wildness peaked, their parents decided that it was time to go, and I couldn't disagree.

God bless them all. I love to have them come, but it's a bit of a relief when they go, too.

Thought For The Day - Not Mine

God forgiving us, and our forgiving others, are parts of the same act. There is not forgiveness of one without forgiveness of the other.

(James Alison in Knowing Jesus)