e. l . wood is a native of birmingham, alabama. he grew up on the urban streets of dallas, texas before attending
college at houston baptist university where he earned a b. a. in english and psychology. after a year of teaching high school english in the public schools of houston, e. l. wood attended sam houston state university where he earned a master’s degree in english. after bouncing around the deep south for several years, he finished his ph. d. in american literature before 1900 at the university of southern mississippi. e. l. wood has been teaching in some capacity since 1992 and has taught for a local community college since 1995. in his spare time, e.l. wood enjoys reading, movies, and the outdoors. he is personally acquainted with several search and rescue teams around the southeast. he is married to the lovely and gracious a. c. they have a daughter (special k), and one dog. They reside in h'burg, deep south. in addition to being the sole proprietor of the gandy dancer billiard parlor, e. l. wood dabbles in folk art and the occasional cultivation of a handlebar mustache.
before viewing the following clip, ask yourself the following questions:
“am i happy with the service i get from the united states post office?”
“why does the cost of postage keep going up, but the service of the us post office remain the same or get worse?”
“when was the last time the us post office turned a fiscal profit?”
according to jo cerra's article in the new york times , the us post office lost 5 BILLION dollars in 2007, 2.4 BILLION dollars in 2008, and is on track to lose 7 BILLION dollars in 2009.
with these thoughts in mind, witness the rhetorical mastery that is THE ONE.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
one of my favorite happenings is when god reveals glimpses of himself in unanticipated or unexpected places or/and events. maybe i should not be so startled or surprised, but when it happens, i feel the most like a child on christmas morning than at any other time. one such event occurred last friday night at the beau rivage hotel and casino in biloxi, mississippi.
my lovely and gracious wife and i are not big fans of the boats, but we did want to catch the los lonely boys in concert. so, we booked a room, burned through a roll of nickels at the one-armed-bandits, ate some pretty good food, and set off to hear what turned out to be a great concert.
i knew the los lonely boys were going to be good, but had no idea that they were going to be THAT good. the three brothers ( henry, jojo, and ringo garza) brought it for roughly 70 minutes, came back for a one song encore that turned into a two song encore that morphed into another twenty minutes split between stevie wonder’s superstition and jimi hendrix’s voodoo child. Wow. pretty much the whole concert was amped a bit more than their studio work; in fact, the pace and volume of the concert revealed a whole other side of the band.
but i digress - - - about twenty minutes into the show, for one brief moment, the boys slowed the pace a bit. henry dedicated a song to “all of us here tonight who might have done that one little thing in our life we might regret,” and then they played forgiven.
it’s not like i haven’t heard the song before or haven’t ever contemplated the spiritual journey of the band whose albums include titles like forgiven and scacred.
maybe it was the venue – a casino – with vice in all its forms available. maybe it was the brazen act of witness in a secular forum. whatever it was, in the roughly 3 minutes it took for the los lonely boys to perform forgiven, the arena was almost completely silent, and i was taken into the presence of god in a powerful and palpable way.
and it was pretty cool to know that the answer to the song’s question, “Can I be forgiven?” is a resounding, “YES!”
Take it away. Take it away. Take away these feelings cuz they're bringing me down. Cuz I can't breathe. Feels like I can't breathe. Feels just like this whole world's coming down on me.
Oh, can I be Forgiven for all I have done?
Can you set me free? Can you set me free? Set me free from all this pain life's done to me.
If you can hear me praying, then I'll ask one more time.
Can you take it away, Lord? Oh, can I be forgiven? Can you take it away, Lord? Help me change my ways of living. [ Forgiven lyrics from http://www.lyricsyoulove.com/ ]
Oh, can I be forgiven for all I have done? Is there time for me? Is there still time for me? Time to change whatever I've got left of me.
If you can hear me praying, then I'll ask one more time.
Can you take it away, Lord? Oh, can I be forgiven? Can you take it away, Lord? Help me change my ways of living.
