Rocco Maiolo's Ramblings and Musings

Today I was driving into work by myself and I had one of those thought over-dose moments. I have a friend who actually wakes up in the middle of the night with thought-overdrive. He can't get back to sleep, so he goes to a coffee shop or his office and journals. I like my sleep, so I'm not quite that radical. My speed is when a thought percolates long enough and it starts to take shape, it becomes a blog post. A charmed life. I know it's misquoted; it's from Macbeth of whose main character, Macbeth, it is said -- pejoratively -- that he has a charmed life. Ie. he thinks he's invincible because of certain equivocal prophecies given to him by three nasty witches. That's not the kind of charmed life I'm thinking of. Several times this week -- and on the drive into work -- the thought occurred to me that I'm a very happy (aka blessed) man. My wife and I are now empty nest; the house is quiet and it stays relatively mess-free. Although I miss our ki

Check out my daughter's songs http://kaylamaiolo.tumblr.com/ Dad is very proud of her!

I was tooling around on the internet the other day and came across this (a warning from a large US fundamentalist Christian organization): "The book's [Harry Potter, The Sorcerer's Stone ] discussion guide ...implies that we can find out truths about bravery, loyalty and the power of love by reading imaginary fiction." Okay, this is so bizarre that I need to clarify that this group is criticizing the discussion guide for implying that readers can learn important ideas from "imaginary" fiction. Let's leave the phrase "Imaginary" fiction aside for a moment and ask really? about the rest of the statement. I can only guess that fiction is meant for what? Just entertainment or escapism? Or is all fiction -- imaginary fiction -- totally evil? It's mind-boggling. So what kind of fiction discussion guides are they okay with? Discussion guides that ask questions like, um, I dunno, "What colour hair does the main character have? And

No one is ever prepared to have his first daughter get married. a child and that child’s child unprepared unsolicited undone by water and blood a child and that child’s child taking a first step first bike first backpack boyfriend trip grad another grad unprepared unsolicited undone by time and memory a child and that child’s child giving her my arm giving her away with a smile a kiss and a photo unprepared unsolicited undone by loss and joy

I blogged about Tim Winton's Cloudstreet ; I thought I saved a draft, was going to finish it up, and ZAP: it's not there. So here's the super-short version. Great book. I don't think I've read an Australian novelist. The jacket of the original 1991 edition says that this book "confirms Winton as one of Australia's major writers..." Wow, I guess I should be reading other Australian writers because Winton is great. The book reads like poetry almost as often as it reads as prose. It's both character-driven and has really poignant plot vignettes. If I have any criticism, it's that it reads like short stories and not really like a novel with a central character, turning point, reversal and so on. Or maybe the house on Cloud Street is the main character. Hmm. Winton did say in an interview that for him, central to writing were two things: 1) place -- if the place isn't real, characters can't come alive and 2) childhood. Speaking of w

If you have an iPad, iPod, Blackberry or any other manner of smart-device, you have to check out the YouVersion app. It has tons of different versions of Bibles in all sorts of different languages -- I'm going to have to listen to the Arabic one sometime! You can download versions for offline reading and you can listen to audio versions. God bless the people at lifechurch.tv -- and/or their patrons -- because the material they're putting on there (free to their users) must be costing a fair bit of money. Cool features on YouVersion is that you can highlight a verse and tweet it or send it to facebook or email it. I just emailed Colossians 4:5-6 to my pastor.

I've just finished reading Marilynne Robinson's Home . If you know nothing about Marilynne Robinson, know that her first book, Housekeeping , considered a modern classic, won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award; her second book, Gilead , won the Pulizer along with a slew of other awards; and then there's Home , winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize and the Orange Prize. In a book review published in The Independent , Salley Vickers writes, "Home is not a novel in which plot matters. Like Jane Austen, but in a different key, Robinson's intent focus is the super-subtleties of human exchange. The heart of this utterly absorbing, precisely observed, marvellous novel is the fumbling inadequacy of love, its inability to avert our terrible capacity to wound and maim, not even but especially, those nearest and dearest to us." It took me a month and a half to read Home . That's in part due to the fact that our book club did a meet-and-greet in early April,

I've been thinking about writing this blog for a while now, but I've hesitated because writing it means not only facing attitudes I have that I'm not proud of, it also means baring my soul to my 15 followers... and random people from Kirksvill Missouri? and Kristiansand, Vest-Agder -- really? According to Feejit, I guess so. First some background information: The church I attend runs a 24-7 homeless shelter. We've been at it for several years during which time we've helped countless people by giving meals, beds and clothing. We've also worked closely with outside agencies to help with everything from social services to education, rehab, recovery and the list goes on. The "Shelter", as we call it at Southridge Community Church, is the most singular thing that has defined us in our community. When we say we attend Southridge, invariably the response is, "Oh ya; aren't you the guys who run the homeless shelter?" Having said all this, much to

I’ve just finished reading The Church of Irresistible Influence . Several things in this book resonated with what’s been going on in my world. First of all, let me clarify something: Little Rock, the church that Robert Lewis the author pastors, is a mega-church. I attend what some would consider a “mega-church” and I love it. We run a 24-7 homeless shelter out of one site; we partner with a children’s organization out of another site in a desire to minister to the “orphans and widows”, biblically, not literally, speaking; and out of our third site, our anchor cause is caring for the elderly – the site is in the vicinity of several senior homes. Our staff is wonderful. They're both incredibly gifted and humble. They model a life of Christ-centredness and they challenge us to do likewise. Having said all of that, I will neither defend nor criticize the concept of the mega-church. In fact, that’s my first point. Church – wake up! Let’s stop criticizing each other. Actually, it’s not

In three days I'm about to start teaching a whole new crop of high school kids the craft of writing. This will be around the twentieth time. 20 X 25... that's 500 students. That's a humbling thought because every time prior to meeting my new students, I feel that I'm not qualified to teach them. I do write and I have been published professionally (as an educator) and as a freelancer in real magazines and periodicals, but -- lest it sounds like I'm exaggerating -- my total published pieces are around 10. Maybe a dozen but definitely not twenty. When I was a kid I wanted to be a writer. I read this book from Scholastic Press (I think): The Mystery of the White Oak. Not a famous book by any stretch. I'm sure it's been long out of print. Years ago, I Googled it. It took me a lot of fancy Boolean search logic before I finally found it. Anyhow, it was the first chapter book I read if you don't include Bobby Coon by Thorton Burgess. Interesting sto

My wife will tell you that I'm a very unemotional person. When our kids were little and the Disney cartoon Beauty and the Beast had just come out, she nicknamed me "Beast"; my son who was born shortly after the movie came out on video -- and who saw it about a hundred times -- was lovingly nicknamed "Beast Jr" by his mother. All this is to say, that I don't cry much. Although, I have to tell you, I did a lot of throat clearing the first time I saw Beauty and the Beast, Free Willy and Homeward Bound. Well, in the last several years, I've cried at several scenes in books: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, and Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stow The first book, I can't tell you about because it would give away a serious spoiler. Do yourself a favour: Read it. Especially if you're a male. It'll make you ashamed of our gender and wish you were a better man (pardon the cliche). The sec