Holy cute! My friend Cory and Katie just got this puppy! (They also got engaged today) (Taken with instagram)

Ebony & Ivory .. cat version.

Photo my friend sent me. They didn’t send a link for me to credit, just the photo’s url.

Cory and Katie (@rcorylucas) (Taken with instagram)

Joel Mikkelsen - “payphone-bass”

I’m in love with a girl and she’s beautiful
Helen of Troy, I’m just a poor boy
I’m in love with a girl and she’s miles beyond me
But I’m still holding out hope

You said “Joel, I am so happy for you,
She sounds like just what you need.
I wonder when I’ll get the chance to meet her.
What’s her name?”

I said “Baby, don’t ask questions,
Unless you really want to know the answers.
Because if you do
I’ll tell you
I’m talking to her right now”

So in college I had this amazing friend named Joel. Everyone loved him. He occasionally could be found playing music in his room or at events on campus. At the end of freshman year Joel, who is Mormon, decided to go on his Mormon mission trip to Mexico.

At the end of saying goodbye I asked Joel if he had any music of his I could listen to when he was gone. He burnt me an MP3 CD with about 100 songs on it. It is kind of amazing how many of these are original songs and how many of them I really enjoy. This is one of the songs.

Yes, Joel returned two years later, but I was in California that fall, and I graduated that spring and moved away. I haven’t talked to him in a bit now but I still listen to his music and hope he is still playing somewhere. I did find his blog though…

Blur - “Tender”

Come on, Come on, Come on
Get through it
Come on, Come on, Come on
Love’s the greatest thing that we have
I’m waiting for that feeling
I’m waiting for that feeling
Waiting for that feeling to come

Garfunkel & Oates - “As You Are” … a sweet love song for Valentine’s Day

Why can’t you just look at you
In the same way that I do?
Through all that’s false and all that’s true
I like you as you are

Take me in
Believe me when I say
You’re more than just okay
You’re perfect as you are

Jamiroquai - “Spend a Lifetime”

Touch me in the night time
All I want from you is love
And I know you can give such sweet moments
To last me so long
Cos, you make me feel so strong
All I want to do is spend a lifetime with you, Baby
Make it happen
All I want to do is spend a lifetime with you, Baby
Oh girl
All I want to do is spend a lifetime with you, Baby
Cos you make me that good
And nothing else matters
Until you’re in my arms, girl
And all those broken promises we made to each other
We have so much more to give
I know that we can do this
That’s how I want to live
Eternally, together
All I want to do is spend a lifetime with you, Baby
All I want to do is spend a lifetime with you, Baby
Will you make it happen for us now
Please this time
You know I need your touch honey
I want your touch honey
Like the morning sun has just begun
Girl, like the rain on my window pane
Girl, if I could make you stay
More than one day
Eternally together
Oh girl I need your touch
Oh girl I want your loving
Sweet, you know that we can make it happen
For you and for me to be
And eternally together we will be

And I’m thinking about a woman
Who I would put no one above
I’m not looking to replace her
Just need someone to love

Amos Lee - “Night Train”

Driver, Drive (2011)

My grandma used to say this to me when I was little and related it to a family member who was a champion skeet shooter, but she always seemed to mention it when we were golfing or playing cards

Chris Carrabba - I’m in Love with a Girl (Big Star cover)

I’m in love with a girl
Finest girl in the world
I didn’t know I could feel this way

It’s the love of your life that you accidentally pushed away, not a victim who escaped your murderous rage

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - “Love Letter”

I hold this letter in my hand
A plea, a petition, a kind of prayer
I hope it does as I have planned
Losing her again is more than I can bear
I kiss the cold, white envelope
I press my lips against her name
Two hundred words. We live in hope
The sky hangs heavy with rain
Love Letter Love Letter
Go get her Go get her
Love Letter Love Letter
Go tell her Go tell her
A wicked wind whips up the hill
A handful of hopeful words
I love her and I always will
The sky is ready to burst
Said something I did not mean to say
Said something I did not mean to say
Said something I did not mean to say
It all came out the wrong way
Love Letter Love letter
Go get her Go get her
Love Letter Love letter
Go tell her Go tell her
Rain your kisses down upon me
Rain your kisses down in storms
And for all who’ll come before me
In your slowly fading forms
I’m going out of my mind
Will leave me standing in
The rain with a letter and a prayer
Whispered on the wind
Come back to me
Come back to me
O baby please come back to me.

The Scaries - “Autumn”

I’m scared that you’re the one that got away
And I want you here with me tonight
You never come…

I was a junior in high school. We heard rumors of an attack right after second period ended. The kids who had worked on our in school television news thing had seen something. We heard nothing official until right before third period.

An announcement came over the loudspeakers right before our news. It told us that planes had been hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. We were instructed to carry on as usual and teachers were instructed to not turn on the televisions. 

I then took a religion test.

Next we went to US History. Our teacher was angry about the ban on television. We listened to the radio the entire class. No class has ever been so silent and attentive. It didn’t seem real. With just the radio it felt like it could have been a play or movie where we were in the 1930s. 

Then the second tower fell. 

I just recall a feeling in the myself that can best be describe as emptiness. Like a black hole had opened up inside of me. Nothing made sense. Without being able to see the destruction, the radio was so much worse. So much worse. I imagined the building falling over and crushing everything next to it. I feel too numb to cry.

The rest of the school day is a blur. Most teachers try to make us do work and ignore our pleas to watch the news. They make an announcement after lunch for anyone with family in NYC or who were traveling by plane from Boston to come to the office if they need to call family.

My Spanish teacher, last period, lets us watch the news the entire time. Seeing makes it more real, but easier to cope with than not knowing what was happening. 

I go to cross-country practice after school. I don’t remember anything about that. I only remember going home and watching the news for the next 6 hours before bed.

The thing that really stuck out to me the days after the attacks was the lack of planes in the sky. The park we ran in for practice is right next to a small airport. They had become part of nature to us. Not seeing or hearing any planes was so weird, I cannot even explain. I just know it made the biggest impression on me.

9/11 never felt truly real to me until recently. I didn’t know anyone who died, I lived in Kentucky and never feared attacks locally, and the scope of the attack was so huge that it was hard to connect with individually.

It was like much like my feelings toward wars. Being in Kentucky I have no fear of a war in my backyard. The war is far off and distant. Thousands are dying and the news just makes you numb at times to the destruction and death.

But every war has its individual stories and images that are shared. An individual soldier or medic or widow of parentless child. These are what always broke my heart and made it real to me. 

I finally cried over September 11 two years ago. I went to a humanities in medicine lunch lecture. The topic was an anthropological study of 9/11 first responders. The quotes were heart breaking. The stories made it feel like it could have been you, even when you were safe in Kentucky. The pictures, the love, the horror.

I sat in that auditorium, a few tears on my face, and I finally had the closure I never knew I needed from the attacks. I understood why I got so angry at politicians, or country musicians, using the memory of that day for personal gain. Why I hated people who used that memory to trump up a patriotism based on fear, anger, and racism. I finally understood what the memory of 9/11 meant to me.

To me remembering 9/11 is to remember innocence. Innocent lives that were lost or forever damaged. The innocence of our country. The innocence that in our warm, safe beds all was right in the world. The innocence and gentleness of the human spirit to rush headfirst into danger in order to help others.

We awoke on September 12, 2001 not to a new world or a changed world. We awoke to the world that we had been blinded to by our innocence. We saw the hunger, poverty, war, terrorism, starvation, and everything else ugly and dark in this world for the first time for what it truly was - an attack on all humanity, not just the poor or weak.

Please take a moment today to remember the victims and heroes of September 11, 2001. Then please take a moment to remember all of the fallen soldiers of the US Military, before and after 9/11. Then take a moment to think of all the victims in the world of terrorism, hunger, poverty, war, and any type of abuse in the entire world, including your own town.

Lastly, take a moment and think of the people we have deemed our enemies. Something is wrong in this world and continual killing and hatred and fighting does nothing to truly solve our problems.

I don’t believe in a god or religion, but I pray for the world. I pray for understanding and compromise to replace arguments and bombs. I pray that my children will someday live in a world where hate and fear are replaced by love and acceptance. I pray for all of humanity.