August Rush

Few movies leave you with the overwhelming urge to share them with those who haven’t seen them. Movies that when you are finish watching them, you actually feel uplifted and enlightened. I don’t know if I can count those kind of movies on two hands.

One very obvious exception to that norm is a movie I watched last night called “August Rush”. It’s about a child musical prodigy who is taken from his mother at birth and raised in a boys home. His parents were both musicians, but the boy is much more – he can hear

music in his head and when he finally gets the chance to handle musical instruments, his genius shows.

I don’t know exactly what it was about the movie – maybe the fact that it didn’t have any of the trash that almost every other movie has today – but it was just really enjoyable. I like good music, so maybe that’s part of the reason I liked it. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a musical talent like a prodigy. But more than that, the movie seemed very hopeful. It was even very emotional at times.

I highly recommend August Rush to everyone. If you are looking for a good family that anyone of any age can watch and enjoy, this is it.

Tags: August Rush,movies,music

Food choices…

I am experiencing that strange phenomenon where my sense of awareness is heightened because of a change I’ve made in my life.

I know you know what I am talking about: when you start the car buying process, for example. You’ve never noticed any green Honda Civics on the road before, but once you decide you want to buy one, you start to see them everywhere. It happens to people when they begin to look for a home. You notice ‘For Sale’ signs on every corner; you begin to think that everyone in the world is selling their home. That’s not the case of course, but since you’ve started paying close attention, your awareness has increased drastically.

For me right now, it’s my diet and exercise routine. Four weeks ago I started the P90X exercise program and the corresponding diet plan. The diet plan is strict, dictating how many portions of which foods I am allowed to eat throughout the 90 day program. I’m taking the diet seriously, and that’s where my new-found awareness comes in.

I’ve become super-sensitive to the foods around me. At work, I never noticed how much junk food there is free for the taking until I eliminated it from my diet. There is always a pastry or desert of some kind laying around at seminars, office meetings, and on the desks of co-workers. Before P90X, I wouldn’t have thought twice about picking up one of those tasty treats and stuffing it in my mouth, but now my eyes immediately hone in on anything that shouldn’t be part of my diet and signals my brain that there’s trouble ahead. It’s strange because I don’t think I am doing this consciously, but I suppose that’s how the brain works in these kind of situations.

At the grocery store, I swear I only walk down three aisles to find what I need. Our stores are stuffed with so much unnatural food, but it seemed so normal to be before. It’s almost difficult to find things that haven’t been processed, artificially flavored, or enhanced in some unnatural way. I think it takes me longer to shop now than it did before.

I can’t deny that I feel better, and it’s a change I intend to make permanent; nonetheless it’s funny to think about how the brain has to change it’s patterns when you make a decision like this.

Tags: P90X,healthy living,fitness programs,healthy food

Improve your vocabulary, feed the poor

My wife showed me the coolest site a few days ago.

It’s called Free Rice, and it is a humanitarian website that helps your brain as you give to the less-fortunate. Visit the site and you are given random vocabulary questions – some of the words are difficult, some not so much. Each time you get a question right, 20 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program to help world hunger. I think it’s a wonderful idea.

I am big on grammar (maybe annoyingly so sometimes), so naturally this site would appeal to me. But even so, it’s beneficial for anyone to play, because correct grammar and food are two things there are a shortage of in the world. Especially food in some parts of the world – that is the most important part of the site after all.

If you’ve never done so before, you really should go and play for a while. You’ll be giving good service and it’s fun.

Tags: Free Rice,United Nations World Food Program,world hunger,vocabulary

Founding Fathers

I am about 30 pages into David McCullough’s ’1776′ and I can already tell I am going to like it a lot. His biography of John Adams was excellent, and the first book of his that I have had the pleasure of reading. I know he has written a number of other books, so I will have to add them to my list to.

After I put down ’1776′ a few days ago, I remembered something that a former co-worker of mine liked to say. He was the type I would find it almost impossible to have a conversation with, because for some reason he felt he had to disagree with everything I said. I never discovered his true beliefs on most subjects, because he was usually so caught up in disagreeing that his statements of belief would usually contradict, depending on who he was talking to.

One day another co-worker and I were talking about something one of my college professors had said about the American Revolution. ‘Disagreeable co-worker’ heard the words American Revolution and immediately stepped in to assert his conviction that the founding fathers weren’t such good guys – in fact, they were criminals. I don’t think he really believed this, becasue I had heard him praise them on earlier occasions, but this time he wanted to disagree. He claimed to be an ardent patriot, but on this day he believed that our country had been founded upon a base of criminal acts. I ignored him like I usually did, but I was annoyed at his narrow understanding of this country’s founding.

What would our world be like if every citizen felt he had to submit to every corrupt or unjust government? What if nobody stood up to them? Thank goodness that the founding fathers did just that, out of the belief they were not throwing down government in favor of chaos or anarchy, but in order to set up a just system of government. English government in the colonies was not justly adminstered – had it been, there might not have been any spark to start a fire in the first place. They didn’t provide an environment where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness could be sought without impediment, so something had to be fixed.

If you look at the Revolution and the founding fathers in strictly black and white – that is to say, Britain set up laws that the colonists disobeyed, period – then you need to open a book and read a bit more into the causes. I’ve come to the conclusion that the founding fathers followed their consciences and did what they felt they had to do. I doing so, they disobeyed laws, but didn’t abandon government. They replaced unjust with just, and founded this great nation that we live in and benefit from today.

I will continue to hold them in the highest esteem and I know I’ll thoroughly enjoy my reading of ’1776′.

Tags: David McCullough,1776 book,American Revolution,Founding Fathers