Leonared Cohen is a Canadian writer, musician, and poet. I just found this today but the haunting music and lyrics tell of a haunted and struggling human being who is calling out for peace and forgiveness. So human, and something we can all identify with or at least I can. The lyrics are based on the book Holy or the Broken. Cohen worked for years to get the song written as perfectly as possible. He struggled with the writing, with life and finally coming to faith.
Wikipedia says that “Hallelujah is one of the most haunting, mutable and oft performed songs in American music history. ”
Though this is not a Christmas song, the lyrics help us prepare for it.
Today, I feel frivolous! Never having had a linear thought in my life, I have decided to take a detour of my stories from the North and describe our return to “A” Town, (Ahmedabad) last Sunday. After visiting the Indian travelers’ equivalent of an Italian travelers’ visits to Rome, Florence and Venice…Taj Mahal, Golden Temple, Jaipur/Varanasi, (I couldn’t choose just three!), we lift Delhi on an overnight train. I was excited as I love train travel. Surviving the throngs of Delhi travelers pushing/shoving through security and milling around on the platform, our train finally rolled into the station. We had a 2A accommodations which means two bunk bed organization with a total of 6 people together in a space. A sleepover! It is possible to have 3A or even 4A…
This is a rework of a much earlier blog from India that not many people saw. It was one of my favorites. Today is the first of two posts in response to questions I have had about what is available in India to help the many less fortunate people. Soon, there will be a post about a unique program for the sight impaired.
It started maybe six weeks into our time in India…. we started missing the variety of the food we enjoyed in America. We began a hunt. Some of the students found Dominoes, while others visited McDonald’s for paneer cheese sandwiches, which weren’t too satisfying, but the French Fries were great! And someone saw a KFC in Alpha One Mall! The mall makes you think you are in America except for its size. There are 4 stories plus a basement where we discovered Hyper City. It became our large box…
In Hindu India, all life is a gift from God, even tiny, insignificant animals. Of course, it may be their belief in reincarnation or a real love of life. For me, I choose the latter.
Though it looks like our chipmunk, this is a squirrel found only in parts of India. We noticed them scooting up the trees and across the lane where we lived in Ahmadabad The first significant encounter I had with this tiny animal was in Agra. You might remember the most famous building in Agra is the sublimely beautiful Taj Mahal . I was walking through the windy, narrow streets with several of the girls going back to our hotel. We noticed that at the nearby intersection, traffic was completely stopped. Several men were standing in a circle in the center of the street. On the ground was an obviously hurt…
Mother Cow is the queen in the pantheon of sacred Indian animals. In fact, she stands head and shoulders above the rest. There are group all over Indian demanding the government name the cow as the national animal to replace the tiger which currently holds that honor. You might wonder how this all came about. Many years before the pyramids were built in ancient Egypt, or written law chiseled into stone by Hammurabi, or paper invited by the Chinese, the Indian people had given up their nomadic wanderings. They had settled down to an agricultural lifestyle. This was before coins were used as money, and wealth was determined by the number of cows owned by the farmer. Cattle became legal tender and were used as payments, presented as dowry, and even used to pay the hated taxes! Through the ages, cow’s milk has been often the only source of nourishment…
From day one in India , we have had a love/hate relationship with the rickshaw/tuk-tuk and we are still alive after 45 days. I guess we won. It is cheap transportation…$0.20 for one way to Cept University. The most expensive rides have been $2.00. Cheap, safe? What is the hate side of the story? Well it scary, that’s what. Rickshaws going in all directions. Yes, they scoot in the wrong way. Cars are on the left side (thank you British) and rickshaws squirm in and out and sometimes on the wrong side of the wrong side traffic! It is a lot like Mario Cars video game but it is real. I told David I would never criticize his driving…
These are two of my CEPT friends who greeted us each time we visited. The man is one of the guards at the gate. Just as the man was guarding the campus, the scruffy old dog followed and guarded him at all times. When the man stood at the gate, so did the old dog. When he sat in the chair , the dog lay at his feet, or they walked side by side. Whenever I didn’t see the dog, I would signal where? The man would smile, and point to a nearby place where the old dog was lying in the shade. The day of our late night flight back home, I told the man that we were leaving for America. David said don’t be silly, “He sees people come and go all the time,” but the man put his hand over his heart. He did care. I shook…
The Road Hammers is a Canadian country music group composed of Jason McCoy, Clayton Bellamy and Chris Byrne. Formed by McCoy as a side project, the trio’s music is influenced by 1960s and 1970s trucker music and Southern rock. Their first self-titled album included remakes of several classic truck-driving songs. It was recognized with a Juno Award in 2006, along with numerous Canadian Country Music Association awards. After five years together, the group disbanded after one last show on December 31, 2010 in Langley, British Columbia.[1]
Kiss is not thankful for being in the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving! I am wondering whose idea it was to include Kiss in the first place? 🙂
Kiss star Paul Stanley says his band was “screwed over and misled” by the executive in charge of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and that both the group and their fans deserved better from the event.
Stanley doesn’t go into any detail about his complaints, but a look at the video above sure makes it seem like a rough gig for everyone involved. As the band gamely mimes along to ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ on an extremely cold and rainy day, the camera frequently seems to be in an odd place.
For example, during the opening verse of the song, a giant balloon featuring Jake the Dog and Finn the Human from the show ‘Adventure Time’ was front and center on television screens across America instead of the group. There wasn’t a close-up shot of Kiss until the first chorus, and for some reason the camera stayed locked on bassist Gene Simmons during Tommy Thayer’s guitar solo.
But who knows, maybe the coat Stanley was wearing gave him a nasty flashback to the days of ‘Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.‘ If he was somehow expecting this to be the one parade in the history of the universe that was fun and exciting — as opposed to a never-ending series of rushed and often poorly presented attractions — we could have told him beforehand that wasn’t going to happen.
Simmons seemed to have had a bit more fun, telling the New York Post he was “proud to be a part of” the parade, and saying that he intentionally kept his famously long tongue in his mouth as much as possible in order to keep things family friendly: “My tongue is God-given. As regards the parade, my intention was to be tongue in cheek. Mostly, I kept it in my cheek.”
TalesAlongTheWay 