Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “General Thoughts”
As chestnuts are roasting over an open fire, you’re lighting up the tree and lighting up your… laptop screen… we believe we can help you use your holiday screen-time for something more productive than Zoom meetings or doomscrolling. We at Forefront Festival have compiled another Forefront Last Minute Shopping Guide — a short, curated, hyperlinked list of Christmas gift ideas …
“It was easily the highlight of my day. This may seem dramatic but it’s eternally significant work. Good job, brother.” The above is what a friend texted me the night he attended the premiere of Our Place at the High School where I teach and co-direct the drama club, Schroeder Theater Company. I was struck. Last year, in the Winter …
People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can’t rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right. -Sarah, “The Crow” Way back in …
If you’ve ever enjoyed the 1996 Schwarzenegger holiday classic “Jingle All the Way”, you know just how difficult, stress-inducing, and dare we say life-threatening getting the perfect Christmas gifts for your loved ones and neighbors can be. To alleviate some of these more negative possibilities and to spread cheer, we have compiled a short list of stellar last-minute Christmas gift …
Amid the bevy of opinions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the qualifier ‘unprecedented’ seems to be one of the few descriptors we’re all in agreement on. It appears that not a single sphere of modern life has evaded the reach of sweeping measures put in place to mitigate contagion and suffering. From the effects of broad economic shutdown on virtually every …
For some regrettable reason, I watch Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s hit adult animated TV show, Rick & Morty. The show, which streams online and airs on Adult Swim among other shows like it, is a witty, irreverent, sci-fi sitcom that originated from a dark parody of Back to the Future. The episodes revolve around Rick Sanchez, an elderly alcoholic …
A great fear has gripped our world in recent weeks. With frightening swiftness we have been swept into a historical moment that is both unprecedented and familiar, and will require the heroic resolve of medical professionals and policy makers to see us through this crisis. As this disease continues to reveal the fragility of our life together and confront us …
“Drama’s not safe and it’s not pretty and it’s not kind. People expect the basic template of television drama where there might be naughty villains, but everyone ends up having a nice cup of tea. You’ve got to do big moral choices and show the terrible things people do in terrible situations. Drama is failing if it doesn’t do that.” …
“Ask the questions that have no answers.Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.” —Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation FrontIt is one of the more clichéd remarks of our time to decry the distracted age in which we live. Ours is the generation of “instant gratification,” as the saying goes. And so it is. As with most other clichés, this …
In the summer of 2014, I enjoyed the enormous blessing of spending the summer working at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. Lodging a stone’s throw from the oft erupting Old Faithful Geyser in the heart of the world’s first National Park was a wild pleasure I’ll never forget. Propelled by a desire to enjoy more of God’s …
