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butts_county_is_the_place_to_b
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Name: stephen
Country: United States
State: Georgia
Birthday: 9/15/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: Movies, TV, thinking way too much about things
Expertise: creating opportunities to ask the question "why do you know that?"
Message: message me
AIM:  Flying4
Member Since:
12/9/2003
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| from Yahoo! News: Fire destroys Johnny Cash home By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press Writer HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. - A fire destroyed the lakeside home of the late country singer Johnny Cash on Tuesday. The fire started around 1:40 p.m. CST in this suburb about 20 miles northeast of downtown Nashville. Fire trucks arrived within five minutes, but the house was already engulfed in flames, Hendersonville Fire Chief Jamie Steele said. Just a few hours later, there was almost nothing left except brick chimneys and the steel frame. The cause is unknown, but Steele said the flames spread quickly because construction workers had recently applied a flammable wood preservative to the exterior of the house. The preservative was also being applied inside the house. No workers were injured, but one firefighter was slightly hurt while fighting the fire, Steele said. Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, lived at the home from the late 1960s until their deaths in 2003. The property was purchased by Barry Gibb, a member of the Bee Gees, in January 2006. Gibb and his wife, Linda, had said they planned to restore the home on Old Hickory Lake and hoped to write songs there. Gibb's spokesman, Paul Bloch, said the singer and his family are "both saddened and devastated by the news." While the Cashes lived there, the 13,880-square-foot home was visited by everyone from U.S. presidents to ordinary fans. "So many prominent things and prominent people in American history took place in that house — everyone from Billy Graham to Bob Dylan went into that house," said singer Marty Stuart, who lives next door and was married to Cash's daughter, Cindy, in the 1980s. Stuart said the man who designed the house, Nashville builder Braxton Dixon, was "the closest thing this part of the country had to Frank Lloyd Wright." When Cash moved there, the road was a quiet country lane that skirts Old Hickory Lake. Kris Kristofferson, then an aspiring songwriter, once landed a helicopter on Cash's lawn to pitch him a song. In later years, Cash did a lot of recording in the home and in a studio on the property. The landmark video for his song "Hurt" was shot inside the house. "It was a sanctuary and a fortress for him," Stuart said. "There was a lot of writing that took place there." Richard Sterban of the Oak Ridge Boys lives on the same road as Cash. "Maybe it's the good Lord's way to make sure that it was only Johnny's house," Sterban said. Cash's musical career began in the 1950s and spanned from rock 'n' roll to folk to country. His hits included "Ring of Fire," "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I Walk the Line." The Bee Gees are best known for their disco hits of the late 1970s, such as "Night Fever" and "Jive Talkin'." | | |
| I wonder... Do we really ever "beat" the things we struggle with in life? Or is that just the essence of the struggle, the fact that we win some / lose some until we die? And just try to make the best fight of it that we can, with our hearts & perspective toward the struggle being what really counts, not the visible result.. Is it really less about whether we win or lose, but how we play the game? Is it less about what results I produce, and more about my heart? Is it really? It doesn't feel like it much of the time. I listen to this song (Wholly Yours, by David Crowder*Band) and it's songs like this ("...a certain sign of grace is this, from the broken earth, flowers come up pushing through the dirt..")....that when I find myself believing "easier" that I rejoice in this idea, and when I'm struggling to believe, I desperately want it to be true...that God, not only can, but does take broken and dirty things and makes them new again...and not that He stopped doing it at the end of Revelation, but that He continues to do so. And when we dirty up what He has made clean, He can purify us again. And again. And again. I'll never comprehend the lengths and depths of that kind of devotion or patience. We're all pretty much raised to cut off someone of they're not making use of our charity....oh how fortunate they must be to recieve OUR grace, right?....and when we see that they take our money, or our friendship or compassion or whatever it is we have to offer, and don't turn into what we want...well, that's it. We're just wasting our time. My soul trembles in gratitude that God doesn't just decide to cut us off like that, because we certainly screw Him over more than anyone ever has to us. I'd be making a safe bet in my own mind to say that I've never gone a day without doing that. I get like this sometimes. I think there's no amount of grace that can fully cover me, because I'll squander it by the end of the day and will continue to do so until I die. I may have good moments in between, but I get stuck under the impression that the moments where my heart is true won't matter in the light of my constant tripping and stumbling right into eternity. And in my weaker times like this, I just pray that grace proves me wrong.....terribly wrong. | | |
| I wish I was 1) a little more photogenic and 2) around people with cameras more. I almost never have remotely current pictures to post on any of my sites. | | |
|  | Currently Watching
A Scanner Darkly (Widescreen Edition)
By Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane, Mitch Baker, Sean Allen (II), Cliff Haby, Steven Chester Prince, Natasha Valdez, Mark Turner, Chamblee Ferguson, Angela Rawna, Eliza Stevens, Sarah Menchaca, Melody Chase, Leif Anders, Turk Pipkin, Alex Jones (III), Lisa Marie Newmyer
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So this movie...very good. Minor and/or major, and/or vague spoilers abounding in the forthcoming analogy I'm trying to make. So, after many twists and turns in this film, the basic premise seems to be that the main character, who thinks he is an undercover narcotics agent (who isn't sure whether he's addicted to a particular substance or not, given the nature of said substance and its effect on the brain), is revealed by his superiors to be a discarded pawn, used to rat out a paranoid, more dangerous dealer/potential terrorist threat. The main character is then shipped off to a somewhat frightening detox facility, that the paranoid addicts have been theorizing over (off and on) over the course of the film...where what little brain activity he hasn't fried from substance abused is basically wiped clean, and he starts over...only for the viewer to discover that the detox facility itself is the agency who harvests and distributes said substance, and the main character was meant to think he was just a pawn, when his superiors were actually relying on him to break past his post-detox semi-brainwashing, to gather evidence against the facility. Which has led me to a wild series of thoughts, one after another while I lay restless in bed, many I've already forgotten during the process of waiting for my computer to boot up. First...and I don't even know how this is going to end up, so be forewarned for confusion, as is the usual with my ranting. Is this not how we are used sometimes by God, or rather, how it appears? A greater purpose may be in mind the entire time, one we perhaps couldn't fathom from the outset, (or maybe would reject if we'd known?) so we aren't revealed all the details ahead of time. We're allowed to think that we're being punished for certain things, or that purposes we've come to hold steady to, really didn't mean all that much in the first place...only to find out that they really DID. I remember seeing the last scene in the film, where the main character, about as much of a shell of his former self as he can be, picks up on a detective instinct in finding a piece of evidence, telling himself he must show this to his friends when he gets a chance...makes me wonder if that's how we can be, or are intended, when we are made new. The greater bulk of worldliness that previously defines us is or should be swept away, leaving us with a renewed purpose, and a few unique individual traits remain...same tools, new focus, I guess. Which leads me...or doesn't, but my brain went there anyway...to the next part: the substance. I get so frustrated that as a person I'm always having to fulfill an ever-emptying void...and I don't mean that as if to say I don't have Christ in my life, because in all honesty, I've got to put Him in there everyday just like anything else. Which is where substance...and when I say "substance" (for those of you who know me and are raising an eyebrow at this moment), I pretty much mean anything ultimately UNfulfilling. We somehow come across something that will temporarily get us from Moment A to Moment B, and it hooks us. We'll compare ourselves to people who are more dependent on substance than us, and so we look better, and it's easier to justify the amount of times we use it to fill our voids. This grows and grows as you naturally build a resistance to the usual amount you're using, to the point where one night you find yourself not being able to fall asleep at night until you've fulfilled yourself. And all for what? An action, that is not only a sensory fulfillment, but simply a metaphorical admission, that this substance owns you. One quick action, and it's over...but it's like a fight (a UFC fight, for my analogy's sake)...it won't take long, but once it takes hold of you, the easy thing to do is tap out and be done with it, though you live with the shame of knowing it owns you...until you can fight back and own it. And what sucks about being caught in the hold and not wanting to tap out to it....well, it feels like you're in a submission hold but you refuse to tap. It hurts like crap. But apparently, that's the only way you get to be a better fighter. Not tapping out, and learning how to counter the hold. Thanks for tolerating. | | |
| ...you ALWAYS play "Freebird" in practice mode first. Or else your hand hurts like hell. | | |
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