The RainDrop

Dear Friends,

You may have noticed a few changes around here. Nothing major… kind of like seeing a friend who normally wears glasses in contact lenses. You may not have been able to put your finger on it quite yet, but there’s been something unmistakable going on behind-the-scenes at SixSeeds.

SIxSeeds.tv, the online magazine you have enjoyed for the past few years, is merging with Patheos.com, the premier online destination to engage in the religion and spirituality dialogue.

Patheos is the website of choice for the millions of people looking for credible and balanced information about religion. Patheos brings together public, academic, and faith leaders in a single environment, and is a source of insight into religious questions, issues, and discussions. Patheos is unlike any other online religious and spiritual site and is designed to serve as a resource for those looking to learn more about different belief systems, as well as participate in productive, moderated discussions on some of today's most talked about and debated topics.

So where does SixSeeds fit into this rather academic, religious site?
Well, you’ll be happy to know that we are largely staying the same, as we will host our own “Patheos SixSeeds Faith and Family” portal and still produce our high quality articles about navigating this world with the kids in tow.

And don’t worry _– _if you are not a “person of faith,” you won’t feel like a fifth wheel. The faith and family portal will provide a creative, enjoyable, enlightening community for modern families raising virtuous children in a context of many different faiths... or sometimes no faith at all.

Let’s face it. No matter what your religious beliefs, it’s hard to be raise a family these days. So, we’ll delve into these topics but with even more friends, more topics, and more fun!

Suddenly, we’ll be welcoming new readers and meeting new folks in our online community (Patheos receives over a million readers per month!). In the next few weeks, the transition will be complete, and we thank you in advance for being patient with us as we grow.

Mostly, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank you guys – our readers who’ve been with us from the time our readership consisted of just a few friends. We won’t forget you as we move into this new phase of success, and we’re adding many more ways for you to interact with our writers on the subjects you care about.

Thank you for making SixSeeds the best place for good, family fun… and we look forward to the next phase of the journey with you!

John and Jean Kingston Founders of SixSeeds

Tony Dungy credits his success as an author in large part to God, and SixSeed's own Nathan Whitaker.

The Tampa Bay news has quite a story about their unique friendship.

Tony Dungy tackles writing with longtime friend: MyFoxTAMPABAY.com

Last week, an Iowa couple who was married for 72 years died one hour apart in the hospital as they held hands.

The story of Gordon, 94, and Norma Yeager, 90, is a real-life love story.

In fact, it's the sweetest story I've read in a while.

This is unbelievable.

Fauja Singh, born in 1911, ran an entire marathon in Toronto over the weekend.

Could we be too obsessed with our kids happiness?  The Atlantic has an interesting article on the subject -- How To Land Your Kids in Therapy.

There are things that will always drastically change an environment - light is one of those things.

This might be a more positive (though sappy) spin on raising daughters than my "what not to wear" post. Seems to be a bit of a viral sensation.

Check out 50 Rules for Dads of Daughters {by Michael Mitchell}

How about these:

My Parents are Honor Students at Cambridge Middle School
My Mom is Too Pretty to do my Homework
My Nanny got an A on my English Paper
My Dad is Too Rich to do my Homework
I Couldn't Do My Homework Because My Dad Was Too Busy Buying New Hampshire

These are all offered in honor of Tim's newborn daughter, Sarah Dalrymple -- may she wear one or more of these shirts 14 years from now.

John just wants the shirt to read:

My Mom is too dumb to do my homework.

While I appreciate the direction of the humor here -- and it is good and rich -- I want to bring to my lovely wife's attention that the way this was solved was by someone on this email thread (ahem), who was called in on this -- and provided the answer John did, with the wonders of the internet and the triangular theorem.

Jean, do you remember that?!

While I appreciate the direction of the humor here -- and it is good and rich -- I want to bring to my lovely wife's attention that the way this was solved was by someone on this email thread (ahem), who was called in on this -- and provided the answer John did, with the wonders of the internet and the triangular theorem.

Haha!!

What group out there is going to support me in protest of such a shirt?

What about my self esteem as a failed helicopter parent??

Now THAT would sell.

My son bought the shirt on a trip to Boston, by the way, so I blame y'all.

You need to get a t-shirt for Christopher that says:

My Parents are Too Dumb to do my Homework!

Thanks John!  We got the answer...it was just a long time coming for Christopher who's new to this and my fried brain cells!!  I'll put you on speed dial for this upcoming year - be ready.

Ha. Hilarious, Jean.

My son's favorite shirt right now is bright orange and says "STATE PRISON" in big block letters. "Allergic to algebra" seems tame by comparison. He bought it when I wasn't there and have told him he can't wear it to school or church or anywhere I might see it. I am fully aware this only adds to the allure.

He's a great kid and doesn't really think prison is cool. (I'm pretty sure.....hopefully.)  He thinks the irony is funny and likes peoples' reactions. Mixed with his 14 year old maturity level, it's the coolest thing since the invention of the iPod.

So don't worry about sexist anti-math shirts. It gets much, much worse.

Looks like my sensibilities are tracking Jean and Rebecca again.

Jean, the basic formula for this problem is one that adds up consecutive numbers -- starting from figure one, each figure is increasing by one more than the increase of the previous figure. Through the magic of the interweb, I found that formula: n(n+1)/2.  Now all you have to do is adjust for the fact that figure 1 is starting with 3 triangles instead of one (as if you were starting at 2 and adding 1+2, then going to 3 and adding 1+2+3).  So I think the formula you're looking for is (n+1)(n+2)/2.  See if that works.

I'm sooo allergic to Christopher's algebra this year (7th grade). This problem was one of the first homeworks of the year (this is just the first part of the page) which I photographed and sent to John in VT after trying to figure it out with Christopher for 30 mins.

I'm sooo allergic to Christopher's algebra this year (7th grade). This problem was one of the first homeworks of the year (this is just the first part of the page) which I photographed and sent to John in VT after trying to figure it out with Christopher for 30 mins.

Give me one of those shirts -- I'd happily prance around in one to show my disdain for  algebra.

And Rebecca - I wholeheartedly agree with you!

I'm not outraged, personally.  I don't mind the "allergic to algebra" one.  

I do -- without outrage -- dislike the "I'm too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me" shirt.  I understand they can't say "so my sister has to do it for me," since sisters don't want to be told that they're not pretty (whereas, well, few brothers want to be pretty), but I do have to say it plays into the stereotype a bit too much of the pretty girl who can't or won't or shouldn't have to do homework.  It's not an awful stereotype -- I wouldn't say it's sexist, because it doesn't say "girls are dumb" -- but still not an impression I want to promote.  

Which is not to say that people should be prevented from making shirts like these, or people should pick up their pitchforks and storm J. C. Penney.  But it's probably not the best cultural influence.  

I saw this and thought that some kids would want it. Some girls don’t like math. Is it sexist to say that? Is it sexist to let them express it? I thought the whole point was seeing women not as a certain stereotype and as themselves, whatever that may be.

I’m all for positive messages, but do we really need the lockstep thought police here? The outrage rubbed me the wrong way.

But surely it's the mothers of the math-genius daughters who are purchasing those shirts for their daughters ironically?

Besides being funny, what a great unintentional snapshot of a happy marriage. He makes her laugh, compliments her sincerely, still gets frisky. They clearly enjoy each other. There is hope!

Surely you guys have seen this...

What a great couple . . . and proof that guys never change:

In this interview with (oddly) Women’s Wear Daily, Justin Beiber says that he wants to start a family around 24 or 25. What a radical idea! Isn’t 24 the new 14? Or so the reactions would have us believe.
 
By the way, he also includes a charitable component in every deal. Seems like a solid young man.

This is one of the sweetest and most moving pieces I've seen so far on TV as the 10th anniversary of September 11 approaches.

"Ten years ago, a sad sisterhood of pregnant women gave birth to children who would never know their fathers because the men had perished in the holocaust of 9/11 terror attacks. Now those babies are almost 10 years old..."

See Diane Sawyer's meaningful story here.

As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, many parents of children (too young to remember the events of the day) struggle knowing how to talk to their kids about it… or whether to at all.  Nancy reviewed a children's book, The Little Chapel That Stood, which is one answer to this very common dilemma.

Y'all know I'm a nerd and I love lists!  Last week Mars released their 2011 "America's Manliest Cities" rankings. Nashville ousted Charlotte to reclaim the title of "America's Manliest City," and I'm fairly sure that a certain David French had something to do with this development. 

The "America's Manliest Cities" study takes 50 major metropolitan areas and ranks them from manliest to least manly. The study compiles manly metrics of each city like the number of home improvement stores, steak houses, manly occupations and motorcycles per capita. But just like a high concentration of construction workers can boost a city's manly measure, an excess of cupcake shops and fancy furniture stores can hurt a city's rank. This year Los Angeles ranked dead last, deposing Portland, Ore. who owned the nefarious title of "Least Manly City" in 2010.

Here are a few highlights from this manly study: 

    * Nashville can thank its love of rodeo events, pickup trucks and home improvement for its #1 ranking as the Music City dominated the "manly lifestyle" category.

    * Although Minneapolis only ranked 36th, Sergeant Slaughter listed the snowy city as his #1 choice for the manliest city citing, "Do you know how hard it is to chop a hole big enough for your boat to go ice fishing?" Look for ice fishing as a potential new category in 2012.

    * Don't tell your friends in Boston, but despite landing in the bottom half of the rankings, New York City ranked #1 in the "sports" category.

    * Cupcake shops run rampant in San Francisco! The City by the Bay has the most cupcake shops per capita of any city in the study and lost points in the "manly kryptonite" category.

    * When discussing the manly mess that is Los Angeles, standup comedian Judy Gold said, "It's very manly if you like tanning beds, botox and low cal mojitos."

Check out the entire list!

Rebecca Cusey had a thoughtful piece in The Daily Caller taking to task their opinion piece which states there’s an unholy alliance between Hollywood and the military to make pro-war/pro-military propaganda films. 

You should check it out.

I just went to one of my favorite websites for interesting comparative data -- statemaster.com -- and saw that Louisiana and Mississippi are the top two states in terms of percentage of Christians and the top two states in terms of percentage of population below the poverty line.  I'm not suggesting anything from that other than to be careful trying to correlate church and economics.  Sure, you can parse the data in a lot of ways.  You can distinguish religious identification from church attendance and point out that the ones who attend are better off financially.  But you could defend organized crime in the same way (e.g. areas with high mob identification have higher rates of poverty, but if you look at the people who are actively involved in the mob, they're much better off).  

If I were an objective, fair-minded, person (which I'm not), just looking at the data I've seen so far, I'd be inclined to view church as largely superfluous.  Education has a stronger correlation with economic well-being and, last I heard, with rates of getting and staying married (which probably reinforces the economic well-being aspect).  Plus, I bet participating in the world of trade and commerce (with the prospect of earning money, getting fired, or going to prison for fraud) tends to moderate one's behavior more than church services.   Add to that the idea that helping the poor through the church is at best a huge waste of time and at worst affirmatively damaging, and I can't help but thank you for liberating me from my ongoing church obligations.  With my Sundays freed up, I can now justify buying a boat, which will make my wife happy, which will increase the odds we'll stay married.  Dave, you've changed my life.  

Thanks, brother.

I guess my question is not what works necessarily but if we as Christians are called to extend mercy even to those who in no way deserve it.

The drug addict is no less hungry than a starving child in Africa, despite the fact he brought it on himself.

Christ died for us while we were yet sinners.

On Monday I wrote something for Patheos that's very tactfully titled "Our Depraved Poor," which is based on new social science showing that the poorest, least-educated cohort of Americans are also the least likely to attend church regularly.  It's interesting to me that this coincides with an increasing move from evangelical churches to de-emphasize evangelism in their outreach.  Yet is American poverty more spiritual than material?  After all, if you finish school, get married, and stay married, you're simply not poor.  The more religious you are, the more likely you are to pursue that life path.  The less religious you are, the less likely. 

Read my provocative piece here.

Many students in the "Class of 2015" began their college experience this week, and you know what that means? The new "Beloit College Mind-Set List" is out!  

Most members of this year's freshman class were born in 1993, the year Mosaic was introduced as the first widely used Web browser, the year Time magazine declared, "Suddenly the Internet is the place to be," and the year The New Yorker ran what is said to be its most reproduced cartoon ever, the one with the caption, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

Professors Ron Nief and Tom McBride have compiled the list since 1998, to help educators understand the cultural touchstones that have shaped the worldviews of each successive year of college freshmen.

Maybe I'm a nerd, but I'm very fascinated with stuff like this!  Some of my favorites from this year's list:

12. Amazon has never been just a river in South America.

13. Refer to LBJ, and they might assume you're talking about LeBron James.

21. They've always gone to school with Mohammed and Jesus.

37. Music has always been available via free downloads.

Read the rest here! 

Did you know there is a growing number of people who not only study Latin, they speak it?  Okay, so "growing" might be a stretch.  But it's an interesting idea nonetheless:

"I can assure you that the enterprise was even stranger than it sounds. The Paideia Institute's "Living Latin" program is an immersive, spoken-Latin summer course based in Rome. The mornings are spent at the St. John's University campus reading poetry and prose and commenting on the texts in Latin; the afternoons are spent doing the same thing at various sites of literary or archaeological significance. If you vacationed in Italy this June, you might have seen us standing around the Ara Pacis on a scorcher, offering competing Latin orations on the pax Augustana. Other exercises were more modern: using hip-hop beats to memorize Alcaic meter, say."

Read more here.

For those of you who have already stepped on a Lego this morning and pulled one out of either the dog or toddler's mouth -- you may be interested to know about the Lego League.

Existing in a number of cities, this league strives to turn our kid's obsession into some healthy competition for the mind. If interested -- you better get busy creating a team and securing a coach, because the details of this year's competition, titled "Food Factor" will be announced on September 2nd.

If it's up to people who've joined an online campaign, then we'll soon be hearing wedding bells.

Though it is not clear whether the characters are actually gay, they are depicted as bickering best friends who live together and sleep in the same room. 

Why is the group asking producers for a gay wedding?  They  claim it's to “put an end to the bullying and suicides of LGBT youth.”

Interestingly, they are also asking for a "tasteful" transgender character.  But aren't Big Bird and Elmo ambiguous enough?

I just got back from seeing THE HELP movie, which opened Wednesday, with my friend Emily at a packed-out theatre in Atlanta. 

The film was intense, powerful, and gripping... full of irony and raw emotion. I laughed a little and cried a lot throughout the movie, as it was such a vibrant depiction of a long and dark chapter in our nation's history. The movie left me with much to ponder, but my initial reaction is this: I'm thankful for people who take the risk of sharing their stories for a cause greater than themselves... and for those who use their voices to speak up against injustice.

I wish I had read the book first, but now it's definitely on my reading list!  Back in April when it came out in paperback, our own Anna Quinn reviewed it.  "[Kathryn] Stockett succeeds in telling a racial story that grips, entertains, enflames, and emboldens," Anna wrote of the book.  "She makes her readers empathize with her characters and cheer them on as they break societal rules and push for truth and change."  Thankfully, the movie does this as well. It will leave viewers inspired and challenged, with no shortage of issues and insights to reflect on and discuss with family and friends.  

Today, I was interviewed by John J. Miller about our new book, "Home and Away: A Story of Family in a Time of War."

Listen to the audio segment here! 

I listened to all of "In My Tribe" on my morning commute, and I had forgotten how darn earnest Natalie Merchant was/is.  In that one album she takes on illiteracy ("Cherry Tree"), alcoholism ("Don't Talk"), child abuse ("What's the Matter Here?"), militarism ("Gun Shy"), and greed ("A Campfire Song").

The latter is my favorite.  She attacks greed through a person who's identified as evil through coal mining, diamond mining, fishing, logging, and failing to clean his plate when he eats (I'm not making this up).

I half expected to hear songs decrying adult-onset diabetes and supporting the use of cloth diapers.

I could be wrong about this, but it feels like even alternative music is much less idealistic these days.  Back in the 1980s and 1990s -- when alt music was alt music -- everything was earnest.  If you were going to listen to something other than hair bands or Janet Jackson, you were going to get preached at.  Then Nirvana happened, alt went mainstream, and all the idealism was sucked right out.  In one stroke, Nirvana killed the fun (bye bye Bon Jovi) and the self-righteousness, leaving only grim-faced chicks in flannel shirts.  It was a lousy time to be in law school.

But back in Paris, Tennessee, Nancy was oblivious to it all . . . rocking the big mall hair all the way through Pearl Jam's fourth album.

Did you know that today was International Friendship Day?

Yes, that's right.  It's mostly celebrated in other countries (especially in Asia), but in 1935 the U.S. Congress declared that the first Sunday of August would be celebrated as National Friendship Day.

Over at Patch.com, Candice Kurzweil shares some fun facts about friendship... this one is my favorite: 

In 1997, Winnie the Pooh was named the world's Ambassador of Friendship by the U.N.

Why don't we hear more about Friendship Day in the U.S. anymore? 

I am sure some of you saw the great Parks and Recreation scene where Leslie Knope gave Ron Swanson a surprise birthday party – steak dinner, a bottle of scotch, and a viewing of The Bridge on the River Kwai, all alone.

Great couple of Parks and Recreation moments, quite touching.

I'm still not on Facebook, so I guess I'm even one step closer to celebrating alone with my tumbler of whiskey.  And to that prospect, I say "bring it on!"  Just me, a beet salad, a fifth of Jack Daniels, P90X Tony, and the golf channel -- Happy Birthday to me.

I actually found all the birthday greetings pretty encouraging, too. I've had too many birthdays where I heard from five or fewer people. I thought it was nice to hear from some old friends, from some readers, etc. Ever since then, I've been leaving happy birthday notes on people's pages.

Wow. What a Grinch.

I’m removing him from my happy birthday list. If he wants to celebrate alone, stoically staring into a tumbler of whiskey, that’s his choice.

I kinda like the birthday greetings.

Slate's David Plotz was skeptical about Facebook. He was especially irritated with the birthday greetings that came his way on the social network.  

So he decided to "celebrate"  his Facebook birthday on July 11. And July 25. And July 28. 

What happened in his experiment?  Check it out!  What do y'all think?  

Barbie is banned from our house.  I know some are tired of hearing me talk about it, so I won't.

Except for three anecdotes (okay 2, and one basic thought):

1) It has made for good conversations.  I've been the driving force. ("Talk to your father," Amy has said from the earliest of days.) I have repeatedly told the girls that truly beautiful women look like their mother or their grandmothers or other real women that we know, not some plastic, impossibly proportioned doll. The disappointment has lasted for about 20 seconds before they forget Barbie and clamor for something else.  I allow them to play with Barbies elsewhere ... they just don't enter my house.  (Again, my goal has been to start a dialogue - it's not a moral issue.)

2) Despite this, at far too early an age than I thought possible (around 3, as I recall), both girls said separately, "But Dad, Barbie is so beautiful!"  (Why would they think this at age 3?)

3) A mom gave a Barbie to Ellie for her fourth birthday. (We've had this happen some, and the girls have learned to graciously accept, and know that we're taking it back to Target for them to find another toy/gift.)  This was a first, however, when the mom said to Amy as Ellie opened it, "I'm sorry for this, because I know how you feel about Barbie, but my child picked it and I just couldn't tell her no."

Which is nice, when you knowingly put off the difficult conversation ("No") onto another family.

Terry Mattingly with an interesting piece.

Eight-year-old Rachel Beckwith had a heart for Africa. Inspired when she learned how a little money could provide clean water for dozens of people, she set up a website asking for donations for the charity:water project instead of birthday gifts for her upcoming ninth birthday. Shortly after her big day, Rachel died from injuries incurred in a multi-vehicle accident. Local media publicized her story, and people from around the world have donated nearly $600,000 to her vision. Our thoughts are with her family and parents, who raised a remarkable little girl.

You can read the full article here.