Toward the end of 2010, a couple of high profile corporate logo redesigns made the social media rounds.
The Gap unveiled a strange new logo to pretty much universal jeers. See for yourself below (the original on the left, the updated on the right):
While one can make the argument that any publicity (even when extremely negative or hostile in tone) is good publicity, I’m not sure what they were trying to communicate with their new logo. Maybe something like, “We know what Web 2.0 is“?
Race, Politics, Family
Back in October, we went to see Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company’s production of Yellow Face, by David Henry Hwang — the Tony-award winning playwright behind M. Butterfly.
I’m a bit of a cultural Philistine, so I don’t make any claims to understand much about theater, but I really enjoyed this performance. Yellow Face is a semi-autobiographical, postmodern take on race, identity, family and artistic integrity. You can read a bit more from Mo’olelo here.
I appreciated David Henry Hwang’s use of humor throughout the play, given the intensely personal nature of the ground he was covering. Discussions about race, politics, family, art, etc. can quickly become glum affairs. The quick pace of the dialogue, the multimedia backdrop (see a few photos here), and the interweaving of fact and fiction held my attention throughout.
Yellow Face raises many important questions: How much of our identity (our “face”) do we choose? How do we understand race and identity in our ever-changing culture? Do our parents’ dreams eventually become ours?
As part of the Booksneeze program from Thomas Nelson, I received a copy of Richard Stearns’ book, The Hole in Our Gospel, for review.
In The Hole in Our Gospel, Richard Stearns describes his journey from corporate CEO to following Jesus into the poorest corners of the world. Stearns currently serves as president of World Vision US.
In the introduction, Stearns writes:
Being a follower of Jesus Christ requires much more than just having a personal and transforming relationship with God. It also entails a public and transforming relationship with the world. If your personal faith in Christ has no positive outward expression, then your faith – and mine – has a hole in it.
As part of the Booksneeze program from Thomas Nelson, I received a copy of Max Lucado’s book, Outlive Your Life, for review.
Our community has been using Outlive Your Life as a catalyst for discussion during our midweek gatherings. This book has been challenging us to become better expressions of God’s love for the world, particularly as we consider the daunting statistics about global poverty and injustice.
Outlive invites us to join in God’s work of redemption today:
God invites us to outlive our lives, not just in heaven, but here on earth. Let’s live our lives in such a way that the world will be glad we did.
After about a year, I finally finished reading Love is a Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield.
[An aside: Have I told you how much I love our local library? Seriously, rediscovering the library last year has been such a source of joy for me. Being able to renew Love is a Mixtape many, many times online, discovering obscure music — Derek Bailey, anyone? — and choosing new books with my daughter… the list goes on and on. My friend Richard inspires me through his work as a librarian to dream of better ways of being a church: giving ourselves away for the sake of the community, becoming a trusted resource, finding ways to engage people of all ages…]
headsparks* 