For Holy Week: Mostly Music

Posted on by David Rodeback

This post grew from Palm Sunday to Easter, as I added music for each day of Holy Week, plus links to passages in the New Testament Gospels about each day (except Wednesday).

(I’m using embedded YouTube videos for the music. For most of you that means adds, usually skippable. Sorry about that.)

Music for Holy Week

Palm Sunday

I remember visiting Old Jerusalem, walking through its gates, viewing it from the Mount of Olives. My time there wasn’t quite the same as the New Testamant describes, but for me it was a remarkable day.

Here Stanford Olsen, an acclaimed veteran of the Metropolitan Opera, sings “The Holy City” with the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. I remember singing this splendid anthem as a teenager in a much smaller choir. I recall hearing my father-in-law sing it too.

Bookstore Memories

Posted on by David Rodeback

A teenage son and I were at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, a recurring pilgrimage. I was browsing in Fiction when his distress call came.

He was half a building away, lurking in his favorite subsection of History. He had filled an entire basket with books to buy, and he needed help.

To his credit, he already knew he needed two kinds of help. He needed time to reduce his selections to a manageable stack of several. That took him most of an hour. Then he would still need more funds than he’d saved for books. He solicited and quickly received contributions from bookish family members, and he came away with a heartwarming but reasonable stack of books.

I like to listen to people in bookstores. I’ve overheard one sort of conversation many times, especially at used bookstores. The child in it can be a first-grader or a teen, and it goes about the same.

Reading Aloud Is for Adults Too

Posted on by David Rodeback

Wednesday, February 5, was the 15th Annual World Read Aloud Day. Its creator, LitWorld, focuses mostly on the benefits of reading aloud to children. Good reasons for doing that reach far beyond language skills and a lifelong love of books.

The benefits of reading aloud for youth and adults get far less attention, but they’re real. I don’t mean just reading a witty or scandalous social media post or a short excerpt of an article. I mean reading entire essays, stories, even books aloud.

Granted, reading aloud can be bad manners—on a train, plane, or quiet library floor, or anywhere else we would disturb people to whom we’re not reading. And it’s slower. There’s not time to read all the books anyway. We’d compound that problem if we always read aloud.

In Which I Read My Fiction Aloud for World Read Aloud Day 2025

Posted on by David Rodeback

Today is World Read Aloud Day — or WRAD, because the world needs more acronyms. Is this the first you’re hearing of it?

The website says “15th annual,” but I first encountered WRAD only last year. I was not in time to do anything about it, except to make a note to do something about it this year.

A nonprofit called LitWorld created WRAD “to celebrate the power of reading aloud to create community and amplify new stories, and to advocate for literacy as a foundational human right.” Worthy causes all. Their website, LitWorld.org, has an activity packet, a social media kit, a web form to report your own activities, and many other resources, including links to – you guessed it – people reading aloud.

LitWorld and WRAD mostly focus on reading aloud to children, and we could make a long list of the benefits of doing that. But just between you and me, good things happen to youth and adults too, when we read aloud or are read to. I submitted a column to a local newspaper this week on that very topic. (I’ll link to it here if and when it’s published.)

To me, the obvious thing to do for WRAD is (ahem) to read aloud. So I got up early to read into a good microphone Monday morning before work, did some light editing after work, and now it’s just under 20 minutes of audio, with me reading three pieces of my own fiction aloud.

Poke the Algorithms in the Eye: Read Books in 2025

Posted on by David Rodeback

Intricate modern algorithms have their place but don’t seem to know their place. They and their faceless custodians would rule, not serve, the world, and never mind the human cost. Some people blame algorithms for our intellectual, political, and cultural bubbles and the toxic tribalism that results. I blame them too, in part.

Social media algorithms would rather please or provoke than inform or connect. They aim to keep us scrolling, clicking, sharing, flaming, and otherwise engaging at the expense of everything else, including work, family, friends, neighbors, quiet introspection, real-world compassion, and calm perspective.

Amazon’s algorithm, understandably, likes to show me things I might buy. It’s not very clever sometimes. A good half of those “We’ve found a book you’ll love” e-mails point me to books I found myself, online or IRL, and already added to my Amazon wish lists. I don’t remember the last time I loved any of the other suggestions.

Abolishing Christmas (a short story)

Posted on by David Rodeback

Isaac turned the corner in the airport terminal and smiled warmly through his exhaustion. “Councilman Hirsch,” said the homemade sign in big block letters. The man holding the sign was Evan Jackson, his fellow city councilman. Evan’s welcoming, ironic grin said he was glad to see his friend but also enjoyed the gag of treating him like a VIP.

“Shalom, my friend,” said Evan without irony.

“Shalom,” Isaac said. They briefly embraced. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“My pleasure. How was your flight?”

“The second seemed as long as the first, though obviously it wasn’t.” Tel Aviv to JFK was hours longer than JFK to Salt Lake City. “How’s Dani?”

“My better half sends her greetings,” said Evan, “but she’s helping a different friend today.”

“Our loss.” Dani and Isaac’s own wife, Tovi, had been dear friends – but Tovi had been in the grave nearly a year.

Tovi, he thought. Toviel. God is good. He was just starting to believe that again – and though he had not always seen it, it had been the perfect name for her.

“How was your pilgrimage?” Evan asked as they waited by the baggage carousel.

“When I am there, I feel holiness. When I leave, some of it seems to come with me.”

“As it should,” said Evan.

“Yes, and I’d like to prolong it this time, if I can. I thought of you, by the way. The shofar was impressive, and I know your fondness for trumpets. And another reason.”

“What was that?”

“You call it the Holy Land too,” Isaac said. “Next year you and Dani should join me.”

“Let’s do it.” Evan’s sudden smile faded. “Forgive my asking, but how was it, you know, without … ?

“Holiness and loneliness are not incompatible. I managed to enjoy one despite the other. Perhaps it helped that I missed last year, because of her passing, and the year before too.”

“Because of her illness,” his friend said softly.

“Yes. Thanks for the card you gave me as I left. I rather enjoy having gentile friends who know better than to wish a Jew ‘happy Yom Kippur.’” He smiled sadly. “Happiness is not the point.”

“Holiness is more the point, as I understand it,” said Evan, “and I wish I could help you prolong it, but we need to have a serious chat with you this afternoon.”

“You said Dani didn’t come.”

“She didn’t. Vern’s waiting in the truck.”

“An unexpected turnout,” Isaac said. “It’s council business, then.” Vern Fellows chaired the Helaman City Council.

“Sacrifice the Sacrifice of Thanksgiving”

Posted on by David Rodeback

Recently, some words I had read before in Psalm 107 struck me with new force: “Let them sacrifice the sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Psalm 107:22). I’m sure the Psalmist wasn’t thinking of our American Thanksgiving holiday when he wrote; neither the nation nor its holiday existed then. And I’m not thinking primarily of the thank offering to which he probably referred. (See Leviticus 7:11-21; a thank offering was a “peace offering for thanksgiving.”) I’m not Jewish, and that was thousands of years ago. Still, I have wondered: What could my “sacrifice of thanksgiving” be, and how might I offer it? And for what ought I to be thankful?

Writing What I Believe, Writing What I Love (Part 3)

Posted on by David Rodeback

This post concludes my essay on writing what I believe and writing what I love. In the first part I explained that it includes reading what I love, and that includes long novels. In the second part I wrote of hope and of young people who restore my hope. This concluding part touches on my reasons for choosing to write what I write, with thoughts about my audience and what it is that I am writing.

Writing My First Novel

Something else happened in those months of filmmaking, which has directly influenced my aspirations as a writer. May I hazard another metaphor? (I can hear you saying, “Not if you’re asking permission first.” Forsooth.)

I used to prefer watching high school marching band performances from high in the stadium, where patterns and formations are clear. In making that film, I learned to prefer a closer view. Now I want to be in the front row, if they won’t let me on the sideline. I like to watch individual performers, and I think I’ve figured out why.

Hidden in Plain View

In helping to make that film, I peered behind the scenes for months, firsthand and by watching many hours of raw video footage. I discussed the marching band experience at length with dozens of students, parents, and staff, mostly one at a time. I asked ninth graders and seniors alike why they joined the band and why they stayed in it when the marching got rough. I recalled my own band experience (though darkly, through the glass of decades). And I spent hours and hours with a couple of talented filmmakers, as we tried to do justice to it all in 80-plus minutes of sights and sound and words.

You can watch our film if you wish; I still enjoy it. But the hours of interviews we left on the cutting room floor affected me as much as the fragments we could include.

In that process I learned to see beauties beneath and behind (if they are not actually not beside or before) the visual and musical beauty of the show. True, each person’s performance is part of the whole, and great effort goes into uniformity of appearance, movement, and sound. But these youth are more than cogs in a machine, if you approach closely enough and watch them long enough and strive to have eyes to see.