Skip to main content

Valises & Vermouth

Search This Blog

POLITICO Arena: Bradley A. Smith's response to 'Obama's Copenhagen speech: Was he convincing?'

Posted by Unknown on December 18, 2009

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Below is a wonderful breakdown of President Obama's speech at Copenhagen. I could not have said it better myself.

POLITICO Arena: Bradley A. Smith's response to 'Obama's Copenhagen speech: Was he convincing?'

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Popular Posts

Anne Rice's Ultimate Supernatural Hero

When most people hear the name Anne Rice , images of vampires, witches, and New Orleans emerge. Astute readers can detect more than horror in the gothic queen’s oeuvre though. Rice’s investigation into the supernatural is imbued with the divine, revealing an intense theological interest in novels like Memnoch the Devil and Vittorio the Vampire . In her latest novel, Christ the Lord — Out of Egypt , Rice presents fans with her most personal work, a extended meditation on the hidden life of Jesus. Libraries are filled with tomes on the life of Jesus Christ—whether literary, historical, political, or mystical. Rooted firmly in the Jewish tradition of midrash, that prayerful story-telling that seeks to open the Word of God to deeper understanding, Christ the Lord is technically a work of speculative theology posing as historical fiction. As with all her writing, Rice has done her research; she spent more than three years examining New Testament scholarship of every political an...

Sharon Kay Penman's A King's Ransom

Richard the Lionheart, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Poitou and Anjou was the very definition of foolhardy. At the approach of his death (no this is not a spoiler as he died in 1199), I found myself angry with the great king for the reckless behavior that ended his life after only a decade of rule. The promise of what could have been died that April day with the Lionheart. If there are moments where the future of the world changes, author Sharon Kay Penman makes you believe that this was one of them. Jerusalem might have been returned to Christian rule had Richard returned to the Holy Land, and if he ruled long into old age, as his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine did, the Magna Carta forced on King John in 1215 at Runnymede would have been unnecessary, and thus even American democracy might have been affected by the Lionheart. My anger was fleeting in response to A King's Ransom , for there is a deep and abiding sadness that permeates this biograp...

109th Bethlehem Bach Festival

Photo of BCB from bach.org. When I was in sixth grade, I wanted to play the oboe. I have no idea why I wanted to play this obscure instrument. It's not sexy like the trumpet or the sax, and it's not quirky like the trombone or fun like the drums, but regardless the oboe was for me. (I never did play the oboe, but that is another story.) I think I knew intuitively what the oboe could do was special. This weekend at the 109th Bethlehem Bach Festival in Pennsylvania I heard what might just be the very reason the oboe exists. Friday night, at Packer Memorial Church at Lehigh University, the Bach Choir of Bethlehem and the Bach Festival Orchestra, under the baton of veteran conductor and artistic director Greg Funfgeld, gave us Songs of Joy, including Bach's Easter Oratorio BWV 249. In the second movement, an unusual second orchestral sinfonia before the joyous aria, is centered on a mournful oboe solo. It reminds us that Christ has died and lies within the tomb, th...

Powered by Blogger