Unapologetic Plugs...

UP#1...

On Monday evening I picked up my oldest daughter, Ariele, from the Austin airport. She has lived the the last two and a half years in the beautiful, incredibly hip city of Portland as a writer and editor with The Burnside Writer's Collective and part-time coffee barista at several local purveyors of java delicacies. She is moving back to Austin, which is a bittersweet experience for her, because of her acquired taste for the loveliness of all that is Portland, OR, and her deep love for the weirdness of Austin. On Tuesday we were hanging out and she was headed to a cool gathering that occurs every Tuesday night in this town at The Tavern, called Austin Inklings...a varied and diverse collection of folks nudged into conversations of life and faith over a pint or two by local book reviewer and renegade pastor, Kester Smith. Before I let her go I talked her into going to Book People, Austin's quintessential independent book store, with me to run an errand. She's already a Book People convert, so it did not take much coaxing, but it meant a great deal for me to have her there, because my mission was to pick up a book from the desk that I had ordered... Barack Obama: An American Story co-authored by Bob Carlton and Ariele Gentiles. Yup...that's right...Ariele's book. Well, Ariele's and my dear friend Bob Carlton, who was kind enough to ask Ariele to co-write with him. So when the clerk brought the book to me and rang it up, I casually mentioned, "Oh by the way...this woman right here...this is one of the authors...and another by the way...she's my daughter." Several weeks ago when I told Ariele I had her book on order from Book People she told me not to go pay for one because she had plenty of copies and she had planned to give me as many as I wanted. My response was...and every parent in the blogosphere will relate..."Dearest biological offspring, if you think you are going to rob me from the joy of informing the bookseller that the author of the book I am purchasing from his establishment is my brilliant, beautiful, talented daughter...you are CRAZY GIRL!" So I've used the picture of the book cover above as my facebook profile for the last month or so, and this is unapologetic plug #1...the book was published by Zondervan and Youth Specialties targeting high school students who want to talk about the life and faith of President-elect Obama, but it is well written, (I am, admittedly, a tad biased) and stands on its own for adults as well and is available online at the YS website, amazon.com, and all of your standard booksellers.

UP#2...

If you don't know the writing of my friend, Milton Brasher-Cunningham, then you are missing a rare treat in the literary world. A singer/songwriter, poet, novelist, pastor, and chef, Uncle Milty's blog Don't Eat Alone is a not-to-be-missed delight in the blog universe. He does an beautiful Lenten Journal entry each day during the season of Lent and is currently doing the same thing with a daily post in his Advent Journal. I recommend all of those things to you, but I particularly want you to be aware of a little piece of Christmas poetry that Milton wrote several years ago at the request of his amazing wife Ginger, who is the pastor of a church in the Raleigh/Durham area. The result was "A Faraway Christmas". The story is written in a Dr. Seuss kind of rhyme, with something to say to most any aged person about what would happen if we shared ourselves with one another. Milton has recorded an audio CD complete with musical background and other extras and if you are looking for a very special gift or something to use in a class or Christmas worship service, I recommend it highly. We used "A Far Away Christmas last year during our Christmas eve service at Journey, and it was a beautifully moving part of that special evening.
You can go to Milton's blog and look for the order box on the left.

The only other plug I will tell you about is the hair plugs that my Uncle Whitney got in the early sixties to combat his receding hairlines. I WILL apologize for that one... somebody needed to.

Pling...Pling...

dg