Tag: Youtube

Hymn For The 81%

81% of American Evangelical Christians support Donald Trump, despite his resemblance to a certain Biblical Man of Lawlessness. 19% don’t, probably because of his resemblance to a certain Biblical Man of Lawlessness.

A leader among that 19% has written a beautiful song that reaches out to the 81% and tries to call them back from the Outer Darkness:

See this post at Daily Kos for more information on the singer and the song.

And see this post for a response to the song from another liberal Christian. Short version: it’s a beautiful song, brother, but you must have learned better from the Gospel itself, because they are not better than this and haven’t been in your lifetime.

Sweating In The Sun

I’ve been listening to that song a lot lately.  And watching the video; the video adds whole new layers of meaning that I didn’t know were there, as a good music video should.  The ghosts of those teens looking through the passing freight train at the grown man as he’s clearly remembering when he was them really drives something home to this particular middle-aged small town boy. 

(By the way, I think it’s kind of funny that “twenty years” after eighteen – i.e., thirty-eight – seems to be the default age for songs like this, where the singer is lost in bittersweet memory about their long-ago youth.  I’m almost five years past thirty-eight myself, and of course Bob Seger is way past it by now.  Thirty-eight doesn’t seem that old.  But I suppose twenty years is a nice medium number when you’re talking a human time scale, where ten years isn’t enough to even realize that time is passing and thirty makes it ancient history.  Twenty years is when you realize that time really has passed, that the world has changed and so have you, that you really aren’t young anymore, not like you were back then, and you’ve actually been dealing with adult things – good and bad – for some time now, and you’re past the scrambling-to-survive stage and maybe have a few moments to count the cost.)

Continue reading “Sweating In The Sun”

FoodFight Episode 1: #NoPlant19

My dear friend Emily H. has posted what she hopes will be the first of a series of Youtube posts on food injustice. The first is about the disaster that is this year’s planting season in the Midwest and its connections to Climate Change.

Please check it out, like, subscribe, share, and – if Ko-Fi has corrected its issues – donate. Let’s help an independent documentarian get off the ground.

Hometown Book Trailer!

Hey, all!

I’ve signed up for a premium membership at Booksgosocial, an online book promotion service, and one of the services they provide for premium members is creation of book trailers.  Of course I’ve taken advantage of this service, and the first one, for Hometown, has been completed!  It is now available at both their Youtube channel and mine.  Have a look:

(And of course, if this trailer convinces you that Hometown is something you want to check out, then just head on over to Amazon and get yourself a copy!)

“It’s about believing in yourself.”

I saw the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line for the first time last night.  It was a powerful movie, but there was one scene in particular that stuck with me:

If I could, I’d put a recording of that speech in my alarm clock.

Every artist, in every medium, has a responsibility to tell their truth in their work.  Maybe it will sell, maybe it won’t.  In the end, we have no choice, because nothing else will work.  You can’t tell someone else’s truth and make anyone else believe it.