Picturepocket's Blog

Tag: culture

  • Insomnia

    If you listen to conservative news commentators, there is a strong insistence against anything “woke”. What is it to be “woke“ and why are certain people so strongly against it? Basically, the term means a person who has recently become aware of systematic racism, as in “awoken” to a problem that has been occurring for…

  • Cubits & Curiosity

    I was thinking about my Dad recently and his impact in the world. While he never built anything large, nor entertained a wide audience, after his death, for years, I would run into people whose lives he had crossed and created a meaningful connection. One of his talents was listening, not necessarily for relational purpose,…

  • The Thief & the Missionary

    I just read a heartbreaking letter from a missionary friend. She spent a decade starting and building up a bakery in Africa to support a local church and orphanage. She turned control over to the workers whom she had trained and trusted while she went back to the states to attend to some health issues.…

  • Tough Times & Choices

    The movie that I ended up seeing back-to-back with Oppenheimer, was not the Barbie movie, but the 1975 film The Hiding Place. If you aren’t familiar, the story is about a Dutch watchmaker and her family that hide Jews during the German occupation. (There are some free streaming services that have it.) Both films are…

  • Participation is the Goal

    I have been spending a big chunk of my summer holding down the metal bench beside our local pool. I have both the kids signed up for lessons with one in the morning and the other in the evening. My oldest has worked her way to highest level. We have gone all the from Catfish…

  • Jesus Revolution 2.0

    Here we are in 2023 and the hippy Jesus is back on television. Watching the recent movie Jesus Revolution on Netflix brought me back to my childhood church experience. My parents met and married in a pentecostal church on the West Coast after the Vietnam War. My early days of Sunday school were at one…

  • The Human Struggle

    I am just finishing up listening to Demon Copperhead on audiobook. It was my commute entertainment for my summer course. I have to admit that got over halfway through the story before realizing that it wasn’t just familiar to another plot, but exactly the same as David Copperfield. Not the magician, but the Charles Dickens…

  • Wizard of the Ring

    I just watch the 1925 classic Wizard of Oz with my children. I was struck by many scenes in the movie seem to be prototypes for the Lord of the Rings saga. To begin with, the concept of someone leaving their quaint home to go on a big adventure is similar. Obviously, both stories have…

  • Life in Plastic

    As a mother of two girls, I am well acquainted with Barbie dolls. We have a whole bin of them and briefly we had the dream house that I both got and gave away for free. We have a lonely Ken doll who spends his days shirtless and face down in a corner. There’s a…

  • Quality of Life

    Yesterday, was my lecture about Globalization and Economics for my class. I went over different economic theories, types of trade, infrastructure, development and industrialization. One of the things that struck me as I reviewed the information, was how much is missing in financial discussions about quality of life. In a rush to get highways built…