Joseph F. Radosevich

I usually do these in bullet form. I'm going to try this in paragraph form today. We've been watching the World Cup for the last two weeks. The knockout stages are the most fun. I picked Ivory Coast to win. Most of our family want a country outside of Europe or South America to win. Only Europeans and South Americans have ever won it. I finished 3 books this month.  Man of Sorrows, King of Glory by Jonty Rhodes is a great book on the person, natures, offices, and work of Christ the Son. He organized it around the humiliation of Christ (taking on humanity) and the exaltation of Christ (rising after the ascension to the highest place). It is a short but strong book. I would pair it with Mark Jones' Knowing Christ .  The Glamour of Grammar by Roy Peter Clark. Clark is a good writing coach, but he crossed in this book from crass to vulgar. I don't understand why he had to be so vulgar when explaining grammar. I threw it away.  Alisse Califry by Elizabeth Radosevich. I re...

I can mark every four years since 1998 by the World Cup. I was 14 that year. It was a big deal that we played Iran in the group stage. The USA team didn't do well; the coach tried out a strange 3-6-1 formation that I've never seen since. I was hooked on soccer though. I could tell you about the players and events of each World Cup since then. I watched the 2014 along with my kids but they were 5, 3, and 1--Kyle Beckerman and Mix Diskerud were their favorite players because they had cool hairstyles. They remember the 2018 WC in Russia, and 2022 in Qatar. We have inside jokes and stories we tell of the different tournaments. Some years they get excited by the yellow and red cards or the headers. In 2022 we made our own highlights of the great moments (those videos are priceless). This year I took my four oldest to the St. Louis Arch for a Watch Party/Soccer Party hosted by STL City FC. It was 94 degrees and so sunny. We played small-sided games while the organizers had a projecti...

It was the first thing I remember writing. I was in first grade.  I described a recent dream. We had a short assignment; this was the last year I was in public school before I was homeschooled through high school. I could barely spell, so I'm sure it was hard to read (I also wrote a story that year about "rassling" with my brother). I had recently had a nightmare that my family was living in a wing of our church. We slept in one of the children's classes. The hallway was yellow, and my classes were often on the other end. One night there was something suspicious going on. My dad went to find out what was going on, but he was in his underwear. This dream was at least a year before we moved to the church's parsonage two blocks away and really did have someone break into my dad's truck--which was right outside my window-- and take all his work tools. That was the whole story that I wrote for the assignment: my dad walking through a dark church in his underwear to...

Some of my kids and I are doing a challenge in the month of June to only read books that we are already own. The rules is that we have to read or reread books that are in our house or that are in my office--no buying of books or reading library books. I don't remember who came up with the idea, but something like it had been bouncing around in my head for the past several months.  We have the blessing of a good library near us that can do interlibrary loan, so we get just about any book that we need. We also budget money so that we can buy books each month. I often buy books for $4 to $6 off of eBay. I'm also given stacks of books as a pastor--from conferences or from other pastors that are clearing out their libraries.  This is a chance for us to just read and reread the things that we have. Since I may only read two or three books this month, I might extend the challenge a while longer. I'm reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose because the Lewis and Clark expedit...

I've noticed a trend that many writers are moving to newsletters away from blogs and magazine-style websites. I have several concerns about that and reasons that I still write for my blog instead of writing a newsletter. One of the downsides to newsletters is that it means it is harder to find good things to read on the internet--especially free writing. Everything is sliced up and behind many different paywalls and subscription funnels. Blogs were free and RSS readers gathered them together easily. Even though you might have to buy or subscribe to a newspaper or a magazine in the past, you got a lot of different writers in one place for a very cheap price. Even mid-sized newspapers and magazines had several good writers. Now, good writing (and editing) is more fragmented than ever. I also have concerns about how newsletters turn readers into a commodity. It eliminates the relationship that a writer and a reader can have. I wonder if it affects your writing for you to be getting yo...