Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Welcome to Friday! And since next week is Thanksgiving, that means the start of some vacation for most of the ec team. We hope you'll be taking some time to celebrate with your families and friends, too!

So let's get this holiday kicked off right—with "Snippets and Soundbites"! You know you want to hear about all the weird, randomness we've found in this week's news stories!

Like mother, like daughter.
Remember the story we told you a few weeks ago about the death of Fluffy, the world's longest snake in captivity? Well, the Columbus, Ohio, zoo where Fluffy made her home still misses her, but they have called in reinforcements to fill the void she left. The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium announced Wednesday that it has acquired Fluffy's significantly shorter daughter. The new snake, whose name wasn't revealed, is 12 years old and 18 feet long. Fluffy was 24 feet long and 18 years old when she died at the end of October with an apparent tumor. To learn more, go here.

Dance the night away.
Are you a fan of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars"? Did you agree with the voters' decision to keep Bristol Palin this week? Well, apparently one rural Wisconsin man didn't agree—because after Bristol's routine on Monday night, the man shot his TV with a shotgun. . . which led to an all-night standoff with the SWAT team. The man was arrested Tuesday morning and is also accused of threatening his wife with a gun after he shot the TV. He appeared in court on Wednesday on a charge of second-degree reckless endangerment, and his bail was set at $1,500. The man's wife said he was under stress because of financial reasons, suffers from bipolar disorder, and had been drinking prior to retrieving his gun. Apparently, he was angry because Bristol, former U.S. Vice President candidate Sarah Palin's daughter, continues to do well on the reality show despite no dancing experience and according to some, little talent. Read all about it here.

Facebook causes asthma attacks?

An 18-year-old Italian man and his doctors are warning that Facebook could cause asthma attacks. Here's why: the 18-year-old was recently dumped by his girlfriend. Then, she unfriended him on Facebook. Distraught, he re-friended his ex-girlfriend using a new identity/nickname he created on the site and started keeping tabs on her. Apparently upset over seeing her friend new guys and pictures of her posing with guy friends, he had an asthma attack. It's important to note that the man had been taking two steroid drugs to help control his asthma. After noting that viewing his ex-girlfriend's profile on Facebook seemed to trigger his increasing attacks, a doctor suggested the man no longer log in to Facebook—and that seemed to stop the attacks. Italian doctors promptly published a paper in a medical journal saying social networks could cause psychological stress and trigger attacks in depressed asthmatics. To learn more, go here.

And if this wasn't enough news of the weird for you, check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec. 

Brianna Blue: I am free

On page 55 of the November issue of ec, we printed a letter we recently received from ec reader Brianna. Brianna discussed a poem she had written, and we'd love for you to read it, too.

I am free
by Brianna Blue

Found in a culture
Worlds away from my small town in the Bible belt
Entrusted to new friends
Not sure about the truths that I held
Insecure and shy
 A new journey arose
Who was I really?
 No answers
Only scars hidden beneath my trendy clothes
The God I once worshiped
 Now like a distant childhood friend
Rising anxiety reveals an addiction
A tendency time has yet to mend
Talking about it only brings more problems, uncertainties, and doubt
Sharper blades
Deeper wounds
 Maybe I can just cut them all out
My identity in Christ
Now a confusing, questionable mess
Failure & anger take turns with my mind
 As I obviously fail this test 
Friends offer church, the Bible, & prayer
But I find my comfort in cutting
 Choosing the blade over God
Showing how little I care
Restrained to a room
 Forced to leave my cutting habit in the past
This hospital is scary
 But I find strength thru my silence
My invisible mask
Vowing to avoid future imprisonment
My life takes a turn
Not towards the healing power of God
But to even worse outlets
To a new, even darker level of self-resentment
Torn from my blade
No skills to cope
It was on to alcohol
 Complete trust in a cup of vodka & coke
Who needs a higher power? God? The Holy Spirit?
I can solve my own problems…
I thought
But I came nowhere near it
Self-mutilation, the blood, and the pain
The alcohol, the pills
this drug in my vein
My problems, my worries, my fears only growing
What is wrong with me?
I keep asking
And the tears just keep flowing
One day an old friend
A remnant of the life I used to lead
Speaks of a topic my mind has shunned
Of a Savior, a Christ who died
And without knowing it plants a small seed
He takes me to church
He speaks of our Lord
Over & over he tosses that dart
A chisel to my numbness
The Holy Spirit finds a tiny seed in my heart
God’s perfect grace
Like water to a bean sprout
Rushes in with hope, with Faith
 Abolishing an overwhelming heap of doubt
A weary step it is
The first one back onto that rock
My Father demonstrates His patience
As I turned away
But He continued to knock
Lifted up in such grace & mercy
 I find myself so unworthy to accept
But I begin to pray
& become aware
No matter how far I ran
God never left
He held true to His word, to His promise of His grace
To the church I am called
To the altar
His spirit leads me to this place
Rededicating my life to His will
I find a renewal of mind-set
Handing over my life, my body, my spirit
This is a tiny gesture of apology
Knowing there is no way I could ever repay my debt
But through the blood on the cross
My Father has washed away my sin
All of these things I’ve struggled to conquer
Are no surprise, no challenge for Him
Amazing is a word unworthy to describe the grace of the God I serve
Trials we are promised
Yet rest in Him is also guaranteed
Finally from my sins, from my failures, & my transgressions
Through God’s unending love & His mercy
I am free.

Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Friday is here, meaning it's time for "Snippets and Soundbites"—and we know you're excited!

Let's see what random news of the weird we dug up from this week's news cycle.

That's my fence!
Good neighbors share a lot of things, right? Well, it appears a Minnesota man may have taken the whole concept of sharing a little too far—so far in fact that it became stealing. A Duluth, Minn., woman used to have an antique iron fence around the perimeter of her yard—until last September, that is. That's when 53-year-old Randy King took the fence down and installed it in his own yard just a few blocks away. King admitted to stealing the fence in court, but also implied that he had been given permission to to take down a fence in an adjacent lot and had simply gone a little too far. But the woman reportedly told police that a month before her fence went missing, a man had come by and asked to buy it. She had declined. Whatever really happened, King agreed to the terms of his felony charge, including probation and a $1500 restitution. The good news for the woman whose fence has been missing all this time: an insurance company is paying for a new fence and it's set to be installed on Monday. Learn more about this strange tale here.

That's harrassment! 

One of the ec team's driving pet peeves are the people who slam on their brakes repeatedly for no reason. And it's apparently not a favorite driving habit with the New Jersey state patrol, either. This week, police accused a New Jersey woman of harrassing other drivers on the Garden State Parkway by repeatedly braking. Apparently, she would slam on her brakes often, causing other drivers to tailgate. She was charged with harassment, falsely incriminating others and filing false reports to law enforcement, which leads us to wonder if she didn't repeatedly brake so that other motorists would hit her car. The police issued a warrant for her arrest after 22 incidents on the parkway this summer. The woman is currently free on $27,500 bail. Read more here.

Gran can rock!

Ruth Flowers is 69 years old. And at an age when many people are settling into retirement, she's just getting started. That's because Ruth Flowers, aka "Mamy Rock," is thought to be the oldest professional DJ in the world, and she's quite popular on the club scene in Europe. Mamy Rock got interested in DJing at her grandson's birthday party when she was 65. Eventually, her grandson introduced her to a music producer who taught Mamy Rock about the basics of electro rock and before she knew it, Flowers was working the turntables herself. She says she'd rather "sign a contract with a record company than sign up for a nursing home." Learn more about Mamy Rock here.

As always, if this just isn't enough news of the strange for you, check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec! 

Decluttering your life: week 13 and the wrapup

Hey y’all! Can you believe it’s the middle of November already? That’s right—we’ve been through 12 weeks of tips for decluttering your life, and I hope you’ve learned a few ways to get your life (and stuff!) in order.

For your 13th week, I want you to think about your relationship to stuff. I’m not trying to stereotype here, but I’m not talking about guys having a lot of sports equipment and video games, or girls having a lot of clothes and makeup. I’m not asking you what you own; I’m asking you what you think about what you do own.

For most of my college years, I was afraid to throw anything away. When I moved into my own apartment and it took an entire U-Haul truck to hold my belongings, I thought I’d accomplished something. But then I noticed that a year or so later, those same boxes I’d had the guys from my church put in my dining room were still there. I didn’t even really know what was in them.

When I finally opened some of the boxes, I saw there was a lot of broken junk in them; things I didn’t want or need, or that didn’t work. A lot of outdated books, magazines, catalogs, concert tickets, clothes that were out of style, and other worthless stuff was cluttering up my life. I had been collecting a lot of nothing. I’d asked those guys from my church to move boxes of garbage. I held on to things I wasn’t using anymore simply because I thought I might need them again.

I wasn’t eligible for an episode of Hoarders or anything, but I definitely had too much stuff. I guess I was treating my possessions like a blanket—as long as I had them around me, I was...I don’t know. That’s the bad part. I don’t even know why I kept all that stuff. (Thankfully, I have a lot less stuff these days.) I didn’t need cleaning or organizing skills...I just needed to own less stuff.

Does this sound a lot like you? Do you have boxes of things you’d never part with, but only a vague memory of what’s in them? Is every single surface in your bedroom cluttered with stuff?

Try an experiment this week. Pick a shelf in your bedroom (not the closet) and take ten minutes to clear it off completely. Do a quick sort through the stuff and throw out what isn’t useful, and put the rest away. You can decorate your shelf with a few knickknacks, but don’t clutter it up again.

Now keep that shelf clean, just for this week. Whenever you notice that shelf, ask yourself if you like it clean. Do you miss what was on that shelf? Do you feel anxious or weird when you look at it, or do you maybe feel relaxed and a little proud of yourself?

If you want more clean shelves, then do them one at a time. It seems ridiculously limiting, but doing it this way gives you a way to ease into having less stuff without it being stressful.

But also—and this is important—if you want less stuff, you can’t make your whole life about acquiring stuff. Girls, don’t let shopping become one of your main interests in life. Guys, don’t believe the lie that throwing money around makes you awesome, attractive, or important. Spending all your time, attention, and money on acquiring things is a good way to look like a shallow human being who is more interested in things than in people. You can still buy things, but try to place a check on yourself about what you do and don’t need. Don’t let your hard work of cleaning out your life go to waste.

Now remember, I’m not saying don’t buy anything. I’m just saying you own your things—they don’t own you. Put things in their places, but also put the idea of stuff in its proper place in your life. Stuff can be fun, useful, awesome, enjoyable, and worthwhile. But it’s only stuff. Some people get rid of an item of clothing every time they buy a new one. Others limit the number of their possessions (but this can be just another way to obsess over stuff). Whatever you do, just make sure that it helps you keep your belongings at a manageable level.

So now we’ve been through 13 weeks of cleaning up your life. Take a little while to evaluate whether doing any of this made a difference for you. Make a list of the top three (or five) things you want to keep doing, then remember to do them. Here’s hoping getting a handle on clutter becomes a lifelong habit for you!

BONUS! Tips to relieve stress

Gretchen Williams had a lot of ideas for how to manage your stress in her article on page 16 of this month's ec. But if you'd like MORE ideas, here are 5 more suggestions Gretchen saved just for the ec magazine blog.

1. Do one thing.
Procrastinating creates, rather than alleviates, stress. Take a second and do one thing you have been putting off. You’ll feel so much better.

2. I Get By . . .
 . . . with a little help from my friends, or so The Beatles’ song goes. Spending time with friends gives you a chance to laugh, to share your worries, and to realize you are not alone.

3. Have an outlet
Listening to or playing music is a great way to relax. Some people use other pursuits such as art, writing, gardening, or photography to de-stress.

4. Pick and choose
You have so many options in front of you in terms of activities. Instead of doing everything, pick a few things you really love, and let the others go. There’s a time and season for everything.

5. Be realistic
Sometimes our biggest stressor is ourselves. Are your expectations for yourself too high? Be realistic about your capabilities and just do the best you can.





Interested in reading more of Gretchen's suggestions? Check out "Stressed Out" on page 16 of the November 2010 issue of ec.

Friday Snippets and Soundbites

It's Friday! We hope your first week of November has gone well—and either way we intend to make it better with "Snippets and Soundbites." What's a better way to kick off the weekend than with random tales from this week's news that prove the world is a strange place?

Ready to see what weirdness we dug up this week? Let's go!

Mr. Clean doesn't make a clean getaway.

A Pennsylvania man was jailed this week after a strange crime: trying to steal $86 worth of body soap. The 38-year-old Erie, Pennsylvania man was charged with felony shoplifting after he stole 13 containers of soap from a Rite Aid store on Wednesday night. He failed to post his $5000 bond on charges of felony retail theft and receiving stolen property and was put in jail early Thursday morning. Police aren't sure why the man was stealing soap. . . or why he needed so much of it. Maybe he just liked the smell? Read all about it here.

Superheroes wouldn't do that. Or would they? 

When Halloween is over a weekend, there's always sure to be some interesting stories. This year, one of them comes to us from Connecticut. That's because police in Stamford had to break up a fight between Captain America, Spider-Man, and Poison Ivy in a parking garage on Sunday morning. When police arrived they found the man dressed as Captain America, presumedly for the holiday, beating the father of the man dressed as Spider-Man. Spider-Man then punched Captain America as police tried to break up the fight—and somewhere in the middle of it all, Spider-Man's girlfriend, dressed as Poison Ivy, got a punch in too. The two men were arrested on assault charges and the woman dressed as Poison Ivy was charged with breach of peace. Learn more about the superhero brawl here. And then, tell us who your favorite superhero is in the comments section!

How hard is it to find a palace?

This week we learned that a 16th century watercolor of King Henry VIII's "lost" palace will be auctioned off by Christie's next month. It's expected to go for up to $1.9 million. So why such a stir about a really old kind of faded painting? Well, it has to do with the fact that it's the only one of its kind and the palace it depicts no longer exists. Apparently, Henry VIII comissioned Nonsuch Palace to rival the one King Francois I of France had and to celebrate the birth of his first legitimate male heir. Construction began in the southeast part of Englan ind 1538 and took eight years to complete. The palace was built as a hunting lodge and called "Nonsuch" because supposedly no other palace could match its splendor. The palace was still incomplete when Henry died in 1547. It fell into disrepair in the 1680s and the countess who owned it at the time began demolishing it to sell off the materials in order to pay her debts. By 1690 the palace had vanished—and for almost 400 years historians could only guess at its appearance through written records and a few drawings. The ink, chalk, and watercolor painting Christie's is auctioning off is the only surviving representation of what the palace actually looked like. It was painted by Joris Hoefnagel in 1568 as a record of the most important buildings in Europe. To learn more about this story and see the painting, go here. To learn more about Nonsuch Palace, go here and here.

As always, if today's edition of "Snippets and Soundbites" isn't enough news of the weird for you, check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec.

Monthly poll!

If you have already blazed through the November issue of ec, maybe you noticed the poll on page 39. Whether you did or didn't, we want to know what you think about singing. Take our poll below!

November daily Bible Readings

Attention all ec readers who have taken the challenge to read through the Bible this year:

Here are your November daily Bible readings. Now that it's November, it's time to be thankful. (And to prepare for the awesome food that's coming your way at Thanksgiving. See example at right.) One of those things you can be thankful for is unrestricted access to God's Word, the Bible. Now that we've entered the eleventh month of the year, you're almost finished with reading through it this year! Just keep digging into His Word. Here's the plan to do just that this month:

Monday, November 1: Jeremiah 52; 2 Timothy 2
Tuesday, November 2: Lamentations 1; 2 Timothy 3
Wednesday, November 3: Lamentations 2; 2 Timothy 4
Thursday, November 4: Lamentations 3; Titus 1
Friday, November 5: Lamentations 4; Titus 2
Saturday, November 6: Lamentations 5; Titus 3

Sunday, November 7: Ezekiel 1–2; Philemon
Monday, November 8: Ezekiel 3–5; Hebrews 1
Tuesday, November 9: Ezekiel 6–7; Hebrews 2
Wednesday, November 10: Ezekiel 8–10; Hebrews 3
Thursday, November 11: Ezekiel 11–12; Hebrews 4
Friday, November 12: Ezekiel 13–14; Hebrews 5
Saturday, November 13: Ezekiel 15–16; Hebrews 6

Sunday, November 14: Ezekiel 17–18; Hebrews 7
Monday, November 15: Ezekiel 19–20; Hebrews 8
Tuesday, November 16: Ezekiel 21–22; Hebrews 9
Wednesday, November 17: Ezekiel 23–24; Hebrews 10
Thursday, November 18: Ezekiel 25–26; Hebrews 11
Friday, November 19: Ezekiel 27–28; Hebrews 12
Saturday, November 20: Ezekiel 29–30; Hebrews 13

Sunday, November 21: Ezekiel 31–32; James 1
Monday, November 22: Ezekiel 33–34; James 2
Tuesday, November 23: Ezekiel 35–37; James 3
Wednesday, November 24: Ezekiel 38–39; James 4
Thursday, November 25: Ezekiel 40–41; James 5
Friday, November 26: Ezekiel 42–44; 1 Peter 1
Saturday, November 27: Ezekiel 45–46; 1 Peter 2

Sunday, November 28: Ezekiel 47–48; 1 Peter 3
Monday, November 29: Daniel 1–2; 1 Peter 4
Tuesday, November 30: Daniel 3; 1 Peter 5

Editor's thoughts: November 2010

During my freshman year of high school, I took an art class. While I still have some of the “art” I created, I honestly don’t remember a lot about the class. The one lesson that has stuck with me, though, is the series of classes that focused on the concept of perspective. We drew and drew—the same objects, the same landscapes, again and again—from various perspectives. I had to learn to look at things from a different point of view and attempt to draw them from each new and different perspective.

It’s interesting that it would be the classes on perspective that I remember most vividly from high school art class. That’s because while I don’t draw much anymore, I still struggle with perspective. When life’s storms blow through my world, I often find myself wondering why this painful experience had to happen to me. I’m the queen of blowing things completely out of proportion. When a work day is frustrating or I don’t get my way or things don’t go exactly as I thought they would, I’m quick to think—and sometimes say—that life couldn’t possibly get any worse.

A lot of the time, my perspective on life revolves solely around me—how this affects me, how I feel, how I’m being mistreated. As I’ve matured in my faith, I’ve had to learn to listen to the Holy Spirit when I feel my emotions and my me-centered perspective start to spin out-of-control. Because what I learn when I listen and search Scripture is that my God can use the painful experiences of my life to display His glory. That maybe I’m walking through this experience now so that later I can help someone else. That it’s not all about me. Every once in awhile, I’m able to look at the so-called chaos in my life and see it from God’s vantage point. In those moments, I see how He is loving me through this all and how He’s using this experience to teach me, conform me, and bless others. I begin to recognize how He is at work in every part of the situation I thought was the worst thing ever.

It wouldn’t hurt me—or you—to seek to see life from God’s perspective a little more often. That’s the point of David Crim’s cover story on page 26—and in a way, this issue of ec. When we see ourselves from God’s point of view, it changes how we think about our lives and our purpose, as you’ll see when you read Will Snipes’ story on page 46. God’s perspective is so much bigger than ours that He can even use our grief and pain to reveal His glory and achieve His purposes, as Matt Papa discusses in an exclusive Q&A with ec (p. 56).

Don’t miss this: God is at work in every part of your life and He’s calling every believer to live an uncommon life, empowered by hope and strength that only He can give. It’s time to see your life from His perspective.