Category: personal
lucy lu turns 5: a look back at the photos
lucy 5th birthday

lucy 5th birthday

our little lucy lu is becoming less and less little by the day. it’s hard to believe, but today she turns 5. as cliché as it sounds, it really does seem like yesterday that we were driving to the hospital in paducah preparing to meet her for the first time.

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should little rock police officers live in little rock?

little rock police department

a couple days ago, max brantley, on the arkansas blog, posted a list of city employees organized by place of residency (little rock or non-little rock). the most skewed numbers toward non-little rock residents—confirming brantley’s suspicions—were police and fire employees.

non-little rock fire department employees outnumber little rock employees by an almost 3 to 1 margin (295 to 110). despite the margin being more narrow, the far more troubling numbers, to me, are non-little rock police employees who outnumber little rock employees by more than 100 (365 to 252).

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more easter for your money: celebrating the resurrection with walmart

i’m not a walmart hater. i have many friends who are, but i’m not. at all. in fact, i think walmart is actually good for communities. there’s certainly some negatives that come with its presence, but ultimately, i think offering products at lower prices is good for lower income families.

i say that simply to establish that i’m not the type who looks for reasons to bash walmart.

but yesterday, as i entered a local walmart, i was greeted with a large sign that hung above the entrance. here’s the sign:

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burying the infant: in memory of rob toon

grammy awards

two years ago today, my best friend rob breathed his last breath. on february 13, 2010, he finally found rest from his battle with leukemia.

you can read what i wrote just hours after he passed away here. as this anniversary neared, i knew i wanted to express some thoughts here on the blog but i struggled with exactly what to say (which, for me, is rare).

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the ‘why i hate religion, but love jesus’ guy won’t go away. (and that’s not a bad thing.)



over the last couple weeks, as jeff bethke’s video (above), ‘why i hate religion, but love jesus’, was hitting critical mass on the web, i began writing a post about it. that post quickly made its way to my ‘drafts’ folder (which only has 5 posts all-time). it wasn’t that it was particularly controversial or incomplete, it was just that i felt like the support & the criticism across the internet was overstated and largely unhelpful. the web really didn’t need one more blog post.

but.

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top 5 regrets of the dying: an invocation for 2012

in 31 years of life, i’ve never made a single new year’s resolution. it’s not that i don’t think it’s a good idea to set some goals, but more that i could easily set some goals on the 1st of march or august or whatever month…and i don’t do that either.

a new year, though, does offer a good opportunity to look ahead and embrace a fresh start. certainly, the analogy of new life is one that is particularly salient right now. so how about we begin the year on the blog with a post about death? :)

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most read blog posts of 2011

year number 3 of blogging is about to come to an end. it’s been an up and down year. there were times when i thought i finally hit my stride and there were other times i was ready to shut down the site and pretend it all never happened. but 107 posts later (in 2011), i’m still plugging away.

each year, i like to take a look back—more out of curiousity than anything—and see which posts were most read. it never fails that that list is comprised both of posts i could’ve predicted (news-worthy or “controversial” posts) and things i would’ve never guessed.

so, here’s the list of the 10 most read posts on my blog for 2011.

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