Tuesday = News Day: Episode 14 – Paint the town red [and blue, green…]

This is a story from a while ago that caught my attention.

‘Make a city beautiful, curb corruption. Edi Rama took this deceptively simple path as mayor of Tirana, Albania, where he instilled pride in his citizens by transforming public spaces with colorful designs. With projects that put the people first, Rama decreased crime — and showed his citizens they could have faith in their leaders.’ 

If you have time to check out the TED talk that introduced me to him, check it out.

But if not, then simply read the article which talks about how this Albanian mayor brings art to politics. The colours on the buildings may not look so amazing in themselves [to me, anyways] but it’s when you see the new building held against the picture of the old one that you see just what a difference it makes and then when you hear/read the story you get an idea of how transformative this is.  Have a read.

‘Edi Rama has been in politics since the start of the 21st century, but before that he was a painter. It was this deep affinity for light and color that informed Rama’s time as mayor of Tirana, when he literally painted the town … every color. Rama is best known for the removal of government kiosks all over the city, thus cutting down on endemic bribery, and for the establishment of a modern new reception hall for citizens with paperwork requests. Rama’s administration also demolished thousands of illegal buildings, removed hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete from riverbanks, and planted thousands of trees and bushes all over the city. Rama continues to serve as a leader of the Socialist Party of Albania.’

He asked me for a compromise. I said, ‘No. Compromise in colour is grey. And we have enough grey to last for a lifetime.’ Edi Rama

[For last Tuesday’s Hey dude, Were’s my husband’s bike click here]

Monday = Funday: Episode 14 part II – Kent-Leigh [by Mariah Carey]

I am not sure how I could post three awful music numbers and forget this absolute classic.

At the last Vineyard church where I worked as a youth/student pastor one of my youth guys [and now students] is a guy called Kent-Leigh which was a unique name for me but we got to know Kent-Leigh and watched him grow up and learn to speak and all was good and well and normal in the world, until this happened:

A lady auditioning for the Bulgarian version of Pop Idol [called Music Idol] surprised the panel of judges by confidently announcing that she will be singing the hit song ‘Ken Lee’ [I think the ‘T’ was silent] and went ahead to sing this classic Mariah Carey number she had obviously ‘learned the words’ from just listening to it… and so Ken Lee Tulibu Diboo Douchoo was born [which we sing full volume every time we hang with Kent-Leigh and he loves it. Probably].

I give you ‘Ken(t) Lee’:

[For Part I of the music mess, I mean mix, click here] 

Friday = My day: Episode 13 – The route of all evil [and it’s NOT money!]

LEAVE U ALONE!

American speling irritates me.

I hope that doesn’t offend you, but it really does. Take the word ‘colour’ for example. It’s like Americaland took “There’s no ‘I’ in team” to some kind of crazy extreme and added their own little corollary of, “Oh well, if that’s true, then there is no “U” in ‘color’ which makes no sporting analogy sense whatsoever.

It’s “Colour!” Deal with it.

But you know when American speling really gets me mad. When they’re right. [fortunately I don’t get mad very often]

A chief example [of the two I can think of] [yes, only two! That’s it – it’s like the extent of American success in Word War I and II] is the word ‘route’.

I PRONOUNCE YOU…

I just realised what irritates me even more. That I just now realised the point I was wanting to make was about pronounciation and not spelling at all. What a waste of a witty and insightful introduction. No, screw it, I’m leaving it. No ways am I going to be able to be that creative on pronounciation.

As a good descended-from-the-British South African, I pronounce the word ‘route’ as Americaneses would pronounce the word ‘root’ hence my title having the same self pronounciation for us as ‘Money is the root of all evil’ [it’s not – money AND raiSINs perhaps, but not money alone].

So it really bothers me when I hear Americaneses pronouncing the word as a word that rhymes with “out” but starts with an ‘R’ but only mostly because they are correct. I have no idea how ‘ou’ became ‘oo’ from us between the paper and the tongue. It makes absolutely no sense and now I feel like I’m on the losing team. I’m one of the last two left in the picking teams game and the other captain just said, “Ah, you can have both of them.”

Have me? You got to earn me homie! But I digest.

So I will concur for now that ‘route’ should be pronounced like ‘shout’, ’bout’ and ‘doubt’ and not in the same way as you would say ‘hoot’ ‘boot’ or ‘shoot’ but I will continue to say it the wrong way. I’ve moved my driving over to the wrong side of the road, so you will have to be content with that.

‘TO’ MEANS ‘UNTIL’

The second Americanese speling thing that irritates me, I just now realised is a different word usage thing [Man, I did not think this through!] but again, the intro was pure literary brilliance and it is too late to veer over and drive on the right side of the road. [the left side being the ‘right’ side, if you get my Tokyo drift]

It happens in morning prayer which we do every Friday. Part of the devotion is two people reading Bible passages. The South Africans will take chapter 1 verse 1-10 and day “I am reading chapter one, verse one to ten” whereas the Americalanders will say “I am reading chapter one, verse one through ten” which sounds completely stupid to me, but only because I grew up doing the other one.

And once again, they are correct. Because ‘to’ to me suggests until, upto, to the point of. If I drive you to school I don’t drive up the steps and into the building – I drive you to the very edge of school and you take over from there. And so 1 to 10 really should mean I am going to read verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 and then I got you to 10,over to you. Right? Sad face!

Again, I’m probably not going to change because it feels so wrong to me when I hear it and when I say it [I’ve never said it!] But every time I hear someone else do the reading and they say “verses 1 through 10” I look up and give them a little victory acknowledgement nod.

But we still have colour! And you can’t take that away from me. No matter which root you try to take.

[For last Friday’s Everything happens for a reason, click here]

Wednesday = Wed day: Episode 13 – From “I do” to “We do”

When the beautiful Val [tbV] and I finished our time at the Simple Way, our bossman Darin suggested this wooden artwork, that  a friend of theirs could put together for us, with some words that we had spotted on the Book of Facings, as a farewell gift, and we jumped at it.

These words are powerful and are a covenant of who we would like to be as a family and the kind of home environment we are working towards, both for ourselves and for the many people we hope to extend hospitality to who will come and stay with us, and, for a short or long time, become a part of our family.

Some of these are definitely easier than others.

But all of them are valuable to us.

And it feels like we’re making progress on a couple of them.

This list is not all-inclusive by any means, or even close to. But it is populated with words, experiences and principles that we value and want to chase enthusiastically after.

Ah, wait, I’m doing it wrong. I said WE WANT TO CHASE ENTHUSIASTICALLY AFTER! 

[That’s better]

We didn’t come up with this list, so you are welcome to borrow them and embrace them. Even come up with some of your own.

So let’s hear from you then… What are two things you would add to this list if it was in your home?

[For last Wednesday’s Search for MEDS: Married, Engaged, Dating, Single, click here]

Tuesday = News Day: Episode 12 – Of street art fun and inspiration.

So for this Tuesday I thought let’s do something a little bit different. The Beautiful Val [tbV] passed this link on to me and I just absolutely love this kind of stuff. Street art incorporating vandalism or brokenness or set structures into brilliant new creations. This is some kind of special gift and I really think you will enjoy most of these a lot. And it’s me so I had to use ‘Pooping Houses’ as the one I chose [“I didn’t like the others. They were all too flat.”]

So take a look at the rest of these here and if you have a link [because I would really love especially the Tuesday posts to be much more interactive as we share inspiring stories with each other] to a similar piece of street art that made you laugh or cry or sigh wistfully or just be completely amazed, then please leave it in the comments section. Thank you.

[For a look at next Tuesday’s Hey dude, where’s my [husband’s] car?, click here]

[For a look at last Tuesday’s stories ranging from a rapping air steward to Horror author Stepehen King’s take on faith to a bold and kind gesture from X-Men’s own Patrick Stewart, click here]