Here is the essential conflict in discussion of how to understand Ezra correctly: It's one how to interpret scripture wisely and responsibly. Some would posit that the Quran is the Muslim "Bible"; that may be, but I would argue that we err in viewing the Bible as a Christian Quran, dictated in all its wordsby God himself.
The view of Scripture I'm coming to is one where I understand the Bible as a collection of writings of people who were feeling their way in the dark toward God. Thus we see echoed in Scripture the same struggles that we deal with ourselves as a society and a church, viz. how much to assimilate and how much to retreat from "foreign" ways. That Ezra acted in the way he did, even though the book affirms his actions, does not mean that his position is solidly rooted in God as much as it is solidily rooted in his understanding of God within his socio-cultural context.
I think the man was a misogynist and a racist, whatever virtues may rightly be attributed to him, and so I object to his action. Questioning the rightness of his action, even as I understand the reasons for doing so, leads me to a deeper inquiry into my understanding of God and the ways my experiences and culture act as a filter; it also leads me into a deeper exploration of Scripture itself.
Others have views different from mine. But it leads them on a parallel odyssey of the spirit, as they see the contrasting voices in Scripture and meditate on the same issues and conflicts, and move toward a deeper understanding of God. On the way, we run into each other, disagree (sometimes sharply) and hopefully learn from one another. I see this as a good thing, though stubborn know-it-all that I am, I probably don't come across that way.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
ezra again
Still pondering the ethnic cleansing in the book of Ezra. The traditional justification for this act, among evangelicals, is that it what needed to maintain the identity of the Jewish people, and to protect the Jewish faith from pagan influences. I follow this reasoning completely, understand it, have heard it before, and used it myself as well.
A few problems with it:
Lastly lastly, I really hate the idea that women are the source of evil and destruction in Israel and Judah. Patriarchy sucks.
What I'm hitting on here is one of the thematic struggles of the Tanakh, whose authors sometimes had sharply differing views of how to treat Gentiles. I believe it's the Priestly writer who warns sharply about the dangers of associating with Gentiles, tells the people that they can enslave foreigners in their midst, and so on; while the Deuteronomist tells the reader to show kindness to the foreigner in their midst, for the Israelites themselves were once aliens and strangers in a foreign land, and reminds them to leave grain on the ground for the needy and the alien. Ezra says "Get rid of these foreign women"; the book of Ruth says "Let them in, so they can experience the wonders of our God and our people."
On the one hand you have the order to keep separate from the pagan nations surrounding them -- something particularly hammered home in the books written post-Exile -- yet with the other hand, you have writers like 2 Isaiah saying that all the nations will come to Israel and worship the Lord on his holy mountain.
I've heard the "keep them pure, keep them separate" argument before, but it doesn't match up with vast other parts of the Tanakh, where Israel is meant to be a blessing to the nations, where the Queen of Sheba comes to Solomon and leaves amazed at the great wisdom the Lord has given to him, where the nation is uniquely positioned to spread news of the One God throughout the ancient world.
Did the command to evangelize the world come with Christ, or was it in place thousands of years earlier?
A few problems with it:
- It's inhumane. It involved mass divorce, ripping husbands and wives apart, and tearing children away from their fathers because the kids weren't "pure enough." Whether the wives and children made the journey from Babylon or were local non-Jewish women, the result was the same: dishonor, shame, and a life of misery. The "extreme circumstances call for extreme measures" line is used to justify all manner of atrocities, and I'm unconvinced that more humane measures weren't possible.
- Jesus flat-out says that to divorce a spouse who has not been unfaithful is to commit adultery. Paul adds an allowance for divorce when one partner has converted and the other can't stand it, but in that case it's a mutually agreed-upon release from an unpleasant situation, not a racially driven purge.
- It's inconsistent with obvious cases like Ruth and Rahab, where pagan women were accorded places of honor in Israel and Judah's histories.
- It's also inconsistent with the scriptural principle of honoring your vow for the vow's sake, even if you realize it was a vow you were unwise to have made in the first place.
Lastly lastly, I really hate the idea that women are the source of evil and destruction in Israel and Judah. Patriarchy sucks.
What I'm hitting on here is one of the thematic struggles of the Tanakh, whose authors sometimes had sharply differing views of how to treat Gentiles. I believe it's the Priestly writer who warns sharply about the dangers of associating with Gentiles, tells the people that they can enslave foreigners in their midst, and so on; while the Deuteronomist tells the reader to show kindness to the foreigner in their midst, for the Israelites themselves were once aliens and strangers in a foreign land, and reminds them to leave grain on the ground for the needy and the alien. Ezra says "Get rid of these foreign women"; the book of Ruth says "Let them in, so they can experience the wonders of our God and our people."
On the one hand you have the order to keep separate from the pagan nations surrounding them -- something particularly hammered home in the books written post-Exile -- yet with the other hand, you have writers like 2 Isaiah saying that all the nations will come to Israel and worship the Lord on his holy mountain.
I've heard the "keep them pure, keep them separate" argument before, but it doesn't match up with vast other parts of the Tanakh, where Israel is meant to be a blessing to the nations, where the Queen of Sheba comes to Solomon and leaves amazed at the great wisdom the Lord has given to him, where the nation is uniquely positioned to spread news of the One God throughout the ancient world.
Did the command to evangelize the world come with Christ, or was it in place thousands of years earlier?
Monday, November 26, 2007
bedtime bible stories
Let me caution parents against reading Bibles with their children if they think it's going to be all peaches and ice cream. There's sweets in there, but there's a few rocks to be found too.
Like many children's Bibles, the one we’re reading with Rachel right now streamlines the accounts of Scripture so you don’t encounter situations like reading the story of Jesus four times in a row, or reading about the history of the kingdom from David to the Exile, and then starting it all over again. And like other children's Bibles, it also makes sure kids get the officially proper understanding of the story, not quite to the point of Mary saying, "Oh, Joseph, I feel so happy that our baby will take all our sins on himself and save us from the fires of hell by dying in our place!" but it’s still got a few unnecessary whetstones to sharpen its point. (Strange we think that so necessary when the Scriptures themselves don't have that degree of polemic.)
But at least it’s (mostly) tolerable. It’s no Prayer of Jabez or Rhema Bible College children's Bible, and though it adds a few details to make the story more interesting, they at least appear to be historically accurate and provide the bonus information preachers usually provide in their sermons. I have one children's Bible that used to be my mother's, with a very definite colonialist bent. It actually says that Nimrod pleased God because he went out and conquered the superstitious peoples of the world. Um, yeah.
For Evangeline, we read the actual Bible. So far we've read Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Esther, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, more or less in their entirety. (We skipped the genealogies in 2 Chronicles, the law part of Exodus, and some of the more graphic stuff in Judges.)
As a result, bedtime Bible reading with Evangeline has been an education and a half by itself. We've read stuff I think many people don't read with their children, or at all. We've wrestled together with the story of Jephthah and his decision to offer his daughter as a human sacrifice to God, and concluded together that while God may indeed have appointed Jephthah to lead the Israelites in war against the Moabites, only an idiot would think that he was qualified to be a spiritual leader as well. And that led us in turn to a discussion of leadership and authority, and how God sometimes will give people authority in one area but not in another, and how we should stop and evaluate whether their leadership in a second area really is valid. (I was thinking of our president in some nebulous way, and of preachers who tell their parishioners how to vote, more specifically.)
We just started Nehemiah last Tuesday night, after finishing the book of Ezra on Monday, and I found myself wondering at the sharp differences in the writing style between Ezra/Nehemiah and the other historyish books in the Tanakh. The books from Genesis through 2 Chronicles have a very clear sense of God as a participant in history. The authors ascribe words and motivations to God for what happens, and there's a sense of wonder and awe about God that permeates, and develops through, the books. In Ezra and Nehemiah, the books read more like the sort of thing you would find in a Christian bookstore or hear during testimonials night. "The hand of God was upon us," the writer says as an explanation for why things worked out well. God is more removed in these books than elsewhere in the entire Tanakh, with the exception of the Esther, where he's not even mentioned. (Though at least that book is so well structured that you get a sense of God's involvement as the plot progresses.)
In all honesty, Ezra and Nehemiah aren't books about God’s dealings with Israel as much as they're books about having a proper nationalist spirit, and why other peoples shouldn't mess with the Jews. The one begins with the reconstruction of the Temple and ends with the exiles purging themselves of all the unclean Gentile women and half-breed children they've polluted themselves with; and the other is about the city of Jerusalem itself and the efforts to repair the damage inflicted a century previous, by Nebuchadnezzar. It's been a while since I read Nehemiah, but if memory serves, it also ends with some sort of purging. The chapter we read Friday night has Nehemiah flipping out over 1 percent interest being charged against fellow Jews on loans.
Anyway, Evangeline is asking all the questions you'd expect her to, the questions that simultaneously make you want to cheer her on because it shows she's thinking, and tell her to stop being so difficult because they show you that you haven't been thinking enough.
For instance: Ezra is beside himself with grief that the exiles have married non-Jewish women and actually had children with them, and he convinces the people that in order to be right with God, they have to divorce all these foreign wives and send away both them and their children. That's horrible, and I found myself cheered immensely when I read that there were two clans that refused to comply.
Evangeline, naturally enough, wanted to know why they did this. So I gave the traditional explanation that the Jewish people were meant to be a unique people, possessed not only of the knowledge of the One God but of a special relationship with him that required keeping themselves separate from the pagan peoples around them. Why? Well, because if they married people with other religious beliefs, they might be led to worship other gods, their children might, or the worship of the Lord could be mixed up with the worship of other gods.
"Solomon did that," Evangeline said.
"True, but look at how it worked out for him," I said, thinking of Solomon’s idolatry.
"Yeah, but he did it to keep peace."
And from there she made the leap to interfaith marriage today, wondering what was wrong with it if both people believed in God.
What she didn't ask, and to be honest, I was grateful for it, was why if Ezra did the wrong thing, the book doesn't make it sound like he did. I mean, let’s be honest: 21st-century Christian sensibilities aside, the point of the book is that Ezra did do the right thing by demanding that everyone get rid of their non-Jewish family members. There's no voice from heaven saying "Straight up!," and Christians like to use that as silence as evidence of God’s disapproval (and by extension, of his support for our strong pro-marriage stands), but the implication of the book is that this was the appropriate response.
Tuesday night she asked why it was such a big deal to repair the Temple, since we can worship God anywhere. Again, I gave her the traditional explanations about God's Name inhabiting the Temple, and Jesus' death changing everything, but at the same time, I was aware of the deficiencies of the explanation. The Israelites worshiped God at any number of shrines before Solomon built the Temple, and he was fine with that then; and he’s fine with it now, and I was starkly aware of how many inconsistent doctrines of God and dispensationalist thinking I've picked up over the years.
To be honest, I deserve this. I keep telling my children that wisdom lies in the questions you ask, and not in the answers you give, and I encourage them to ask tough questions in church. So it's only fair that they hold my feet to the fire too.
Like many children's Bibles, the one we’re reading with Rachel right now streamlines the accounts of Scripture so you don’t encounter situations like reading the story of Jesus four times in a row, or reading about the history of the kingdom from David to the Exile, and then starting it all over again. And like other children's Bibles, it also makes sure kids get the officially proper understanding of the story, not quite to the point of Mary saying, "Oh, Joseph, I feel so happy that our baby will take all our sins on himself and save us from the fires of hell by dying in our place!" but it’s still got a few unnecessary whetstones to sharpen its point. (Strange we think that so necessary when the Scriptures themselves don't have that degree of polemic.)
But at least it’s (mostly) tolerable. It’s no Prayer of Jabez or Rhema Bible College children's Bible, and though it adds a few details to make the story more interesting, they at least appear to be historically accurate and provide the bonus information preachers usually provide in their sermons. I have one children's Bible that used to be my mother's, with a very definite colonialist bent. It actually says that Nimrod pleased God because he went out and conquered the superstitious peoples of the world. Um, yeah.
For Evangeline, we read the actual Bible. So far we've read Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Esther, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, more or less in their entirety. (We skipped the genealogies in 2 Chronicles, the law part of Exodus, and some of the more graphic stuff in Judges.)
As a result, bedtime Bible reading with Evangeline has been an education and a half by itself. We've read stuff I think many people don't read with their children, or at all. We've wrestled together with the story of Jephthah and his decision to offer his daughter as a human sacrifice to God, and concluded together that while God may indeed have appointed Jephthah to lead the Israelites in war against the Moabites, only an idiot would think that he was qualified to be a spiritual leader as well. And that led us in turn to a discussion of leadership and authority, and how God sometimes will give people authority in one area but not in another, and how we should stop and evaluate whether their leadership in a second area really is valid. (I was thinking of our president in some nebulous way, and of preachers who tell their parishioners how to vote, more specifically.)
We just started Nehemiah last Tuesday night, after finishing the book of Ezra on Monday, and I found myself wondering at the sharp differences in the writing style between Ezra/Nehemiah and the other historyish books in the Tanakh. The books from Genesis through 2 Chronicles have a very clear sense of God as a participant in history. The authors ascribe words and motivations to God for what happens, and there's a sense of wonder and awe about God that permeates, and develops through, the books. In Ezra and Nehemiah, the books read more like the sort of thing you would find in a Christian bookstore or hear during testimonials night. "The hand of God was upon us," the writer says as an explanation for why things worked out well. God is more removed in these books than elsewhere in the entire Tanakh, with the exception of the Esther, where he's not even mentioned. (Though at least that book is so well structured that you get a sense of God's involvement as the plot progresses.)
In all honesty, Ezra and Nehemiah aren't books about God’s dealings with Israel as much as they're books about having a proper nationalist spirit, and why other peoples shouldn't mess with the Jews. The one begins with the reconstruction of the Temple and ends with the exiles purging themselves of all the unclean Gentile women and half-breed children they've polluted themselves with; and the other is about the city of Jerusalem itself and the efforts to repair the damage inflicted a century previous, by Nebuchadnezzar. It's been a while since I read Nehemiah, but if memory serves, it also ends with some sort of purging. The chapter we read Friday night has Nehemiah flipping out over 1 percent interest being charged against fellow Jews on loans.
Anyway, Evangeline is asking all the questions you'd expect her to, the questions that simultaneously make you want to cheer her on because it shows she's thinking, and tell her to stop being so difficult because they show you that you haven't been thinking enough.
For instance: Ezra is beside himself with grief that the exiles have married non-Jewish women and actually had children with them, and he convinces the people that in order to be right with God, they have to divorce all these foreign wives and send away both them and their children. That's horrible, and I found myself cheered immensely when I read that there were two clans that refused to comply.
Evangeline, naturally enough, wanted to know why they did this. So I gave the traditional explanation that the Jewish people were meant to be a unique people, possessed not only of the knowledge of the One God but of a special relationship with him that required keeping themselves separate from the pagan peoples around them. Why? Well, because if they married people with other religious beliefs, they might be led to worship other gods, their children might, or the worship of the Lord could be mixed up with the worship of other gods.
"Solomon did that," Evangeline said.
"True, but look at how it worked out for him," I said, thinking of Solomon’s idolatry.
"Yeah, but he did it to keep peace."
And from there she made the leap to interfaith marriage today, wondering what was wrong with it if both people believed in God.
What she didn't ask, and to be honest, I was grateful for it, was why if Ezra did the wrong thing, the book doesn't make it sound like he did. I mean, let’s be honest: 21st-century Christian sensibilities aside, the point of the book is that Ezra did do the right thing by demanding that everyone get rid of their non-Jewish family members. There's no voice from heaven saying "Straight up!," and Christians like to use that as silence as evidence of God’s disapproval (and by extension, of his support for our strong pro-marriage stands), but the implication of the book is that this was the appropriate response.
Tuesday night she asked why it was such a big deal to repair the Temple, since we can worship God anywhere. Again, I gave her the traditional explanations about God's Name inhabiting the Temple, and Jesus' death changing everything, but at the same time, I was aware of the deficiencies of the explanation. The Israelites worshiped God at any number of shrines before Solomon built the Temple, and he was fine with that then; and he’s fine with it now, and I was starkly aware of how many inconsistent doctrines of God and dispensationalist thinking I've picked up over the years.
To be honest, I deserve this. I keep telling my children that wisdom lies in the questions you ask, and not in the answers you give, and I encourage them to ask tough questions in church. So it's only fair that they hold my feet to the fire too.
homeschooling my second child
Rachel's been doing well with the homeschooling. I've finally started to win an uphill battle where her handwriting is concerned. Because she's the younger of two children, Rachel started writing before she attended preschool, although perhaps it would be more accurate to say she was "drawing letters" than to say she actually was writing.
The result, though, is that while she did eventually learn to make the letters look right, she’s been making them in a way other than the correct way; i.e., she would make a T by starting at the bottom of the letter instead of at the top. Not a huge deal, I suppose, but it’s supposed to have dividends in other areas later on.
Well, after much work, I’ve finally got her doing her letters the correct way at least half the time. She still keeps slipping back into sola uppercasa as one of the three pillars of her faith when she’s writing on her own, but I'm confident that this too will come in time.
Her reading has been great, too. After resisting me on other occasions when I've prompted her to challenge herself, on Tuesday she picked up a Level 2 Step into Reading book and did a passable job with it. She still got stuck on a few words, including some she already knows, but now that she’s read it all the way through, she'll keep going. Her biggest problem isn't sight words, it's remembering what sounds dipthongs make, and how to handle that dang silent E. (It's elementary for silent E, but she's still in pre-elementary.)
Well, after much work, I’ve finally got her doing her letters the correct way at least half the time. She still keeps slipping back into sola uppercasa as one of the three pillars of her faith when she’s writing on her own, but I'm confident that this too will come in time.
Her reading has been great, too. After resisting me on other occasions when I've prompted her to challenge herself, on Tuesday she picked up a Level 2 Step into Reading book and did a passable job with it. She still got stuck on a few words, including some she already knows, but now that she’s read it all the way through, she'll keep going. Her biggest problem isn't sight words, it's remembering what sounds dipthongs make, and how to handle that dang silent E. (It's elementary for silent E, but she's still in pre-elementary.)
Aside from reading and writing, the main thing we've been working on is literacy. We’re working our way through our beloved copy of The Brothers Grimm, as well as reading D'Aulaire's "Book of Greek Myths" and a children’s story Bible. We also just read a couple books about Pocahontas, one of which noted about the famous scene with John Smith, "Most historians think Smith made this up. We really don’t know. Oh, and we don't know if she actually thought of herself as a Christian and loved John Rolfe, or if she just thought converting and then marrying him would help her people." That book cracked me up with its honesty. Once Thanksgiving's over, I guess I'll have to see about finding some other books about Roanoke and Virginia Dare, or about the Puritans' arrival at Plymouth Rock.
In addition to all this at home, Rachel also takes gymnastics lessons, wants to attend the art academy where Evangeline goes, and knows more folk and Broadway tunes than many people far older than her. So I think we're getting the humanities covered.
Math is a little difficult for her, when it comes to adding numbers together that add up to more than 10. This, too, I think will come after I've explained it another time or two and worked her through a few exercises. She's doing well.
'into the woods'
One of the big things at our house the past few weeks has been the Stephen Sondheim musical "Into the Woods."
I bought Natasha the soundtrack to the 2000-ish Broadway revival with Vanessa Williams, and for her birthday we bought Evangeline a DVD of the original production, with Bernadette Peters, and the girls have been going around singing one tune or another from the show for more than a month. Rachel's humming "You are Not Alone," one of the songs from the show, right now.
The first act of the musical weaves together the fairy tales of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and original Sondheim bridging material that can be called "The Baker and His Wife," into one more or less cohesive story.
The stories go pretty much the way you expect to, with some pretty good music along the way, and some rather hilarious comments on the tales themselves, such as when one of the princes comments, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel. What kind of a name is that?"
The first act ends like you would expect a fairy tale to end. Jack is wealthy, the Baker and his Wife are expecting their child, Rapunzel and Cinderella each have married their princes, and so on. Everything has ended "happily ever after," just as you’d expect it to.
And then the curtain rises on Act 2. Everyone is still happily-ever-aftering when the giant's wife comes down another beanstalk, looking for the boy who repaid her hospitality and generosity by stealing from her husband and then killing him. On top of that, Rapunzel has gone mad from years of living in a tower all by herself and then suddenly being thrust into palace life after giving birth to twins, all by herself, in the middle of the desert.
Oh, and the princes, having had everything they ever wanted and having believed themselves to have fallen in love with women they couldn't have ― Cinderella kept running away at midnight every night of the festival, and Rapunzel lived in a tower with no door ― have grown bored with their lives now that they once again have everything they ever wanted, and are in love with two new women, one of whom is in enchanted sleep within a forest of briars, and the other who lies in an enchanted sleep within a casket made entirely of glass.
It’s an incredible story, although it does get a little intense when everyone's arguing over how to stop the giantess and whether they shouldn’t just hand Jack over to her. (They tried having her kill the Narrator, but that didn’t work out.) When we watched it last week, Rachel -- who took a haunted house in good stride ― was so wigged out that she started shaking during that scene.
Like any good story, the show functions well at several levels. The first act is memorable because of the way it retells the fairy tales with all the charm and excitement found in the originals, albeit with a little more characterization. But by the time the second act is drawing to a close, the protagonists have been forced to grow up and assess their fairytale lives to find out what went wrong.
There's the message about letting someone else tell our stories for us, and letting them decide what should happen to us. Cinderella of course has lived the life her dead mother told her to, even going regularly to her grave for further guidance; and the Baker is horrified when the others kill the Narrator (God), because "Now we'll never know how our story ends."
In the end, the four who remain -- Cinderella, Jack, Red Riding Hood and the Baker -- are forced to determine how their story will go. Rather than running from its unpleasantness, they realize that the bulk of the misery everyone's experiencing comes from focusing only on what they wanted, and not considering how a blind pursuit of their own goals would affect everyone else.
So in the end, Sondheim uses the vehicle of fairy tales to critique the message of fairy tales and to pass on a lesson to adults about the life lessons we teach our children through the decisions we make.
One thing I find amusing is that while the decision to kill the Narrator is essentially an effort to throw off the yoke of subservience to God and experience freedom and self-determination, the characters don't really do that. The story remains scripted, orchestrated, and choreographed down to the final drop of the curtain.
No one got killed at all. At best, all they did was shake off the familiar representation of him that was at the moment engaged in pointless moralizing about their situation. His hand and his guidance remained on them no matter what they did.
Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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The first act of the musical weaves together the fairy tales of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and original Sondheim bridging material that can be called "The Baker and His Wife," into one more or less cohesive story.
The stories go pretty much the way you expect to, with some pretty good music along the way, and some rather hilarious comments on the tales themselves, such as when one of the princes comments, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel. What kind of a name is that?"
The first act ends like you would expect a fairy tale to end. Jack is wealthy, the Baker and his Wife are expecting their child, Rapunzel and Cinderella each have married their princes, and so on. Everything has ended "happily ever after," just as you’d expect it to.
And then the curtain rises on Act 2. Everyone is still happily-ever-aftering when the giant's wife comes down another beanstalk, looking for the boy who repaid her hospitality and generosity by stealing from her husband and then killing him. On top of that, Rapunzel has gone mad from years of living in a tower all by herself and then suddenly being thrust into palace life after giving birth to twins, all by herself, in the middle of the desert.
Oh, and the princes, having had everything they ever wanted and having believed themselves to have fallen in love with women they couldn't have ― Cinderella kept running away at midnight every night of the festival, and Rapunzel lived in a tower with no door ― have grown bored with their lives now that they once again have everything they ever wanted, and are in love with two new women, one of whom is in enchanted sleep within a forest of briars, and the other who lies in an enchanted sleep within a casket made entirely of glass.
It’s an incredible story, although it does get a little intense when everyone's arguing over how to stop the giantess and whether they shouldn’t just hand Jack over to her. (They tried having her kill the Narrator, but that didn’t work out.) When we watched it last week, Rachel -- who took a haunted house in good stride ― was so wigged out that she started shaking during that scene.
Like any good story, the show functions well at several levels. The first act is memorable because of the way it retells the fairy tales with all the charm and excitement found in the originals, albeit with a little more characterization. But by the time the second act is drawing to a close, the protagonists have been forced to grow up and assess their fairytale lives to find out what went wrong.
There's the message about letting someone else tell our stories for us, and letting them decide what should happen to us. Cinderella of course has lived the life her dead mother told her to, even going regularly to her grave for further guidance; and the Baker is horrified when the others kill the Narrator (God), because "Now we'll never know how our story ends."
In the end, the four who remain -- Cinderella, Jack, Red Riding Hood and the Baker -- are forced to determine how their story will go. Rather than running from its unpleasantness, they realize that the bulk of the misery everyone's experiencing comes from focusing only on what they wanted, and not considering how a blind pursuit of their own goals would affect everyone else.
So in the end, Sondheim uses the vehicle of fairy tales to critique the message of fairy tales and to pass on a lesson to adults about the life lessons we teach our children through the decisions we make.
One thing I find amusing is that while the decision to kill the Narrator is essentially an effort to throw off the yoke of subservience to God and experience freedom and self-determination, the characters don't really do that. The story remains scripted, orchestrated, and choreographed down to the final drop of the curtain.
No one got killed at all. At best, all they did was shake off the familiar representation of him that was at the moment engaged in pointless moralizing about their situation. His hand and his guidance remained on them no matter what they did.
Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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engaging my gifted child
I had about the 10 billionth meeting last Monday with Evangeline’s teacher regarding her schoolwork and socialization in the classroom, with the major change this time that I involved the school principal.
Evangeline has become extremely disengaged from school. Her work is mostly stuff she mastered in kindergarten or first grade, which is frustrating. Her teacher last year had her learning negative numbers in math and had put her in the most advanced reading group the school offers for her age group, which was still far below her reading level.
Her teacher’s main focus when we've talked has been on Evangeline's perceived inability to socialize with her peers. We've met or conferred at least a half-dozen times where that was the main focus of the meeting, but some time about two weeks ago, I finally snapped and got angry in a constructive way on Evangeline's behalf.
Instead of trying to redirect the focus to a discussion of her academic skills, I pushed back hard on the social skills and said point-blank "She’s not an extrovert. There's nothing wrong with that. She has friends, she makes new ones, and she has no problem interacting with them. But she doesn’t like crowds, and when she started third grade, not a single one of her friends was in her class. What did you expect her to do? Open up to a bunch of kids whom she barely knows or who have picked on her?"
The main thing Evangeline needs socially is a chance to interact with her peers, not just kids her own age, but kids who really are her peers, both academically and interestwise. But when you’ve got a kid who started teaching herself to read when she was 4, who took it upon herself in first grade to learn cursive writing, who reads at a ninth grade level when she's only in third grade herself, who had her own freaking art show in first grade, and you give her assignments like "Write your name and address three times" or two pages of "Underline the subject and circle the predicate," you’re going to get a kid who’s as lonely as Mr. Morton, no matter what the predicate says she’s supposed to do.
So the long and short of it is that, after Natasha and I met with the principal and the teacher last Monday morning for about 45 minutes, Evangeline is getting some math work from a higher grade level, will be reading some books that are considered middle school level, and will be partnered with some of the other bright kids in the third grade.
It'll be an improvement, though heaven knows if it'll be enough. The school is great for kids who are in the center of the bell curve and who fall to the left of it, but I’m seeing with my own eyes that it’s not as well equipped for kids who land on the right of the curve and who need a little more effort to engage them.
With a little guidance, Evangeline does a good job of keeping herself engaged. Six weeks ago I let her read my trusted copy of "Coraline," and she was hooked from start to finish. For about two weeks, everything was "Coraline this" and "Coraline that" and "AAaah! Look out, it’s the Other Mother!"
Rachel, who hasn’t even read the book yet, got in on the action too, and was drawing pictures of women she said were the Other Mother, and loved to watch a "trailer" for the book that someone posted on YouTube. (Incidentally, did you know they’re making a movie of the book now? It’s stop-motion animation, and features Dakota Fanning as the voice of Coraline.)
Evangeline immensely enjoys books like "Coraline" that play with expectation and perception, and that give you unexpected twists in direction or on reality. I've told the girls a few of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories as best as I can remember them, and she was hooked. After her bath the other night, she even started wearing her towel over head so that it covered her entire face except for her mouth, like in "The Minister's Black Veil."
Evangeline has become extremely disengaged from school. Her work is mostly stuff she mastered in kindergarten or first grade, which is frustrating. Her teacher last year had her learning negative numbers in math and had put her in the most advanced reading group the school offers for her age group, which was still far below her reading level.
Her teacher’s main focus when we've talked has been on Evangeline's perceived inability to socialize with her peers. We've met or conferred at least a half-dozen times where that was the main focus of the meeting, but some time about two weeks ago, I finally snapped and got angry in a constructive way on Evangeline's behalf.
Instead of trying to redirect the focus to a discussion of her academic skills, I pushed back hard on the social skills and said point-blank "She’s not an extrovert. There's nothing wrong with that. She has friends, she makes new ones, and she has no problem interacting with them. But she doesn’t like crowds, and when she started third grade, not a single one of her friends was in her class. What did you expect her to do? Open up to a bunch of kids whom she barely knows or who have picked on her?"
The main thing Evangeline needs socially is a chance to interact with her peers, not just kids her own age, but kids who really are her peers, both academically and interestwise. But when you’ve got a kid who started teaching herself to read when she was 4, who took it upon herself in first grade to learn cursive writing, who reads at a ninth grade level when she's only in third grade herself, who had her own freaking art show in first grade, and you give her assignments like "Write your name and address three times" or two pages of "Underline the subject and circle the predicate," you’re going to get a kid who’s as lonely as Mr. Morton, no matter what the predicate says she’s supposed to do.
So the long and short of it is that, after Natasha and I met with the principal and the teacher last Monday morning for about 45 minutes, Evangeline is getting some math work from a higher grade level, will be reading some books that are considered middle school level, and will be partnered with some of the other bright kids in the third grade.
It'll be an improvement, though heaven knows if it'll be enough. The school is great for kids who are in the center of the bell curve and who fall to the left of it, but I’m seeing with my own eyes that it’s not as well equipped for kids who land on the right of the curve and who need a little more effort to engage them.
With a little guidance, Evangeline does a good job of keeping herself engaged. Six weeks ago I let her read my trusted copy of "Coraline," and she was hooked from start to finish. For about two weeks, everything was "Coraline this" and "Coraline that" and "AAaah! Look out, it’s the Other Mother!"
Rachel, who hasn’t even read the book yet, got in on the action too, and was drawing pictures of women she said were the Other Mother, and loved to watch a "trailer" for the book that someone posted on YouTube. (Incidentally, did you know they’re making a movie of the book now? It’s stop-motion animation, and features Dakota Fanning as the voice of Coraline.)
Evangeline immensely enjoys books like "Coraline" that play with expectation and perception, and that give you unexpected twists in direction or on reality. I've told the girls a few of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories as best as I can remember them, and she was hooked. After her bath the other night, she even started wearing her towel over head so that it covered her entire face except for her mouth, like in "The Minister's Black Veil."
'beowulf'
Anyone seen the new "Beowulf" flick? Neil Gaiman co-wrote the script, and Robert "What Lies Beneath" Zemeckis directed it, so I'm intrigued, even though I hear it's one of the nouveau movies where everyone acted in front of a blue screen, with all the visuals overlaid later on via CGI, including Hrothgar’s beard.
Stephen Whitty, the film critic for the Star-Ledger, gave it a mixed review. I think he enjoyed the story itself, possibly because it was "Beowulf" and if you have a degree in English of any sort (or are a guardian of culture, which a film critic certainly is as opposed to a movie reviewer), you are required to like "Beowulf" even if you thought it was tedious when you read it in high school and college.
For those not familiar with the story, "Beowulf" is the oldest known piece of literature in Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, and it reflects a lot of those sensibilities even though it ostensibly is a Christian, rather than pagan, tale. In the story, the hall Heorot is under nightly siege by a monster called Grendel, who comes in and kills people at his leisure. The mighty Beowulf comes and fights Grendel to the death, thus making himself the target of vengeance by Grendel's mother. He defeats her and lives to a ripe old age, when he dies after slaying a dragon.
Personally, I still have mixed feelings about "Beowulf" as something to read. It's a great piece of literature and all, because it's the oldest extant poem composed in English, and it's a great literary window into our Anglo-Saxon heritage, and it shows the culture at a state of transition from pagan to early Christian, where the people still loved their old stories and were retelling them with a bad gloss of their new faith, yada yada yada, but at least the translations I've read have been pretty dull, and full of endless boasting about how tough Beowulf is, how great a king Hrothgar has been, how mightily Bob the Builder swung his hammer Mjolinir-Craftsmann in the construction of Heorot, and so on. I remember reading it in college and getting to the part where Beowulf was fighting the dragon, and thinking, "Waitasecond. What happened to Grendel's mother?" My eyes had glazed over for a third of the poem, and I had missed it completely.
I borrowed a copy of a "Beowulf" graphic novel from the library about a month ago and read it to Evangeline. Because it was a visual medium, it cut all the description and much of the plot exposition, and told the story in a fairly straightforward manner. I was actually able to show her how Beowulf taps into the same archetype as Heracles, Superman and the other larger-than-life, kick-your-ass figures she's enjoyed reading about. She seemed to enjoy it at the time, though she's never asked me to read it to her again.
She did make some joke about weregild the next day, though. Personally, I think that's a concept we need to recover in English-speaking society. If you harm me or my kin, or damage our reputation, I should be able to demand your life in restitution, either as a blood-payment or as a lifetime of servanthood. I'm not particular.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
that thanksgiving thing
Thanksgiving is always an active time here in our family. Last year we invited some friends over and had the seven of us around the table; this year in addition to my parents, I invited a friend if mine who is going through a divorce to come over with her two daughters but she decided to decline. I re-extended the invitation again Wednesday, but she decided to stay at home. The big activity at school this week ― it was Wednesday morning, not quite five-thirty when I wrote this ― was the school's Harvest Festival, which probably should just be called Thanksgiving, but isn't.
It's traditional for the children to make some sort of communal meal they invite their parents to come share with them for lunch. In first and second grades, it was stone soup. And yes, they really did put stones in it. This year they made some kind of vegetable noodle soup, but because of my reputation as someone who bakes bread, Evangeline's teacher asked if I could help them make some bread too. She seemed surprised that I don’t have a bread machine, but agreed the students would probably find it more fun to mix and knead it all by hand.
So Tuesday morning I got up bright and early, boiled and mashed some potatoes, adapted some recipes on the fly from my cookbook so we could try them with sourdough, and took all the ingredients to the school so the kids in Evangeline's class could have fun making potato rolls and sourdough muffins. Wednesday morning I got up bright and early to bake them, and I have to say that they turned out all right.
The kids had a good time making them, too. I think the biggest excitement wasn't skipping their regular work plans, and it wasn't even the idea of making bread. It was getting their hands mucky in the dough, and getting to punch it as part of the kneading process. At least one kid had a nice rhythm going, as though he were using a punching bag. (I had to tell him that wasn't the idea.) When I picked Evangeline up yesterday, at least three kids ran over to tell me, "Mr. Learn! The bread’s getting bigger!"
I doubt any of them will remember the history and science I cunningly tried to sneak in there, but you never know. I’m sure they’ll all remember the taste. My bread is good enough that Evangeline's teachers last year all lamented at year’s end that they wouldn’t be getting it any more for holidays or when it was Evangeline's turn to bring in snack.
It's traditional for the children to make some sort of communal meal they invite their parents to come share with them for lunch. In first and second grades, it was stone soup. And yes, they really did put stones in it. This year they made some kind of vegetable noodle soup, but because of my reputation as someone who bakes bread, Evangeline's teacher asked if I could help them make some bread too. She seemed surprised that I don’t have a bread machine, but agreed the students would probably find it more fun to mix and knead it all by hand.
So Tuesday morning I got up bright and early, boiled and mashed some potatoes, adapted some recipes on the fly from my cookbook so we could try them with sourdough, and took all the ingredients to the school so the kids in Evangeline's class could have fun making potato rolls and sourdough muffins. Wednesday morning I got up bright and early to bake them, and I have to say that they turned out all right.
The kids had a good time making them, too. I think the biggest excitement wasn't skipping their regular work plans, and it wasn't even the idea of making bread. It was getting their hands mucky in the dough, and getting to punch it as part of the kneading process. At least one kid had a nice rhythm going, as though he were using a punching bag. (I had to tell him that wasn't the idea.) When I picked Evangeline up yesterday, at least three kids ran over to tell me, "Mr. Learn! The bread’s getting bigger!"
I doubt any of them will remember the history and science I cunningly tried to sneak in there, but you never know. I’m sure they’ll all remember the taste. My bread is good enough that Evangeline's teachers last year all lamented at year’s end that they wouldn’t be getting it any more for holidays or when it was Evangeline's turn to bring in snack.
Monday, November 19, 2007
the anthropomorphized dog
If you've ever had a dog -- I've had four in my life, God bless 'em all -- I'm sure you'll recognize the inherent truth in this story of what happens when a dog finds a sweet potato.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
'into the woods'
A note to my fellow parents: Despite its fairy tale themes, "Into the Woods" might be a little intense for your young child.
For those not familiar with it, "Into the Woods" is a musical by Stephen Sondheim that strings together an assortment of Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Included are Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk and an original fairy tale by Sondheim, that serves as bridging material. We will call "The Baker and His Wife." The stories all blend into a coherent and entertainingly light-hearted first act that ends with everyone living happily ever after.
The second act shows what happens after "Happily Ever After." This is when the Princes Charming grow bored with the wives they pursued so hard in the first act and are now pining after Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. This is when the Baker and his Wife have their child and must now deal with the realities of having a baby. More importantly, this is when the giant's wife comes looking for the boy who repaid her hospitality with theft and murder.
We've been listening to the revival soundtrack for the better part of a month, and the girls and I even have had a discusson about who deserves the blame for the giantess' rampage through the kingdom. (There's a whole song dedicated to this question.)
For her birthday, we got Evangeline a DVD of the original production of "Into the Woods" starring Bernadette Peters, and spent the evening tonight watching it.
The move night was great fun, the girls loved it, and now are curious to see other plays and musicals we have on video. Still, it got a little intense. Around the time the giantess had destroyed the baker's house, wrecked the castle, stepped on Rapunzel, crushed the baker's wife beneath a falling tree, and thrown the narrator to his death, and everyone was arguing over whose fault it was and whether they should hand Jack over to the giantess for justice, I glanced over at Rachel. She was looking a little undone. Her blue eyes were wide and she was trembling.
Luckily her mother was sitting right next to her. I told Rachel that her mother looked scared, and maybe she could calm her down and remind her that everything would work out all right in the end. She grabbed on and held her mother tight and told her all those things, and we watched the rest of the movie without further incident.
Maybe she's not ready for "Arsenic and Old Lace."
Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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For those not familiar with it, "Into the Woods" is a musical by Stephen Sondheim that strings together an assortment of Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Included are Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk and an original fairy tale by Sondheim, that serves as bridging material. We will call "The Baker and His Wife." The stories all blend into a coherent and entertainingly light-hearted first act that ends with everyone living happily ever after.
We've been listening to the revival soundtrack for the better part of a month, and the girls and I even have had a discusson about who deserves the blame for the giantess' rampage through the kingdom. (There's a whole song dedicated to this question.)
For her birthday, we got Evangeline a DVD of the original production of "Into the Woods" starring Bernadette Peters, and spent the evening tonight watching it.
Luckily her mother was sitting right next to her. I told Rachel that her mother looked scared, and maybe she could calm her down and remind her that everything would work out all right in the end. She grabbed on and held her mother tight and told her all those things, and we watched the rest of the movie without further incident.
Maybe she's not ready for "Arsenic and Old Lace."
Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Friday, November 16, 2007
tick tock, tick tock
This is not as much a story as it is a conceit for a story, and hopefully, the first shot in an interblog war as the eponymous Zero and I start rewriting one another's posts as an exercise in finding pointless ways to annoy each other through writing. (Assuming he's up for it. I haven't asked.)
It was nearly an hour after Hartdegen's discovery before he began to grasp what had happened: Somehow, he had found a way to call other times on his office phone.
The first sign that there was something unusual going on came late in the afternoon on November 5 when he had to ask Vax about the Wells contract. At that time, he hadn't got around to resetting the clock on the phone, so that it said 5 o'clock when it should have said 4. He called Vox on the other side of the building, and got his end-of-the-day, out-of-office voice mail message -- only Vox hadn't left yet.
After Hartdegen left his message, he ran into Vox in the hallway and got the information. The next day, Vox teased him for calling half an hour after their talk to ask the same exact questions.
It was a subtle sign, and Hartdegen missed it, but more signs came over the next two weeks of work that something odd was afoot. He arrived early for work and called co-workers, not expecting them to be in, only to find them already hard at work as though the time on his phone clock really were correct. Once he called Mrs. Watchett and spoke with her for ten minutes, only to find that she had no memory of the call when they met less than an hour later.
Little signs accrued here and there: gaps in people's memories, times and events that didn't synchronize by an hour exactly.
It was on Novemeber 8, when he fixed the in the living room and the one in the guest room that an idea began to percolate uneasily in Hartdegen's mind. The computers, the cell phone and the VCR all had taken care of themselves on Nov. 4, and he had reset the time on his alarm clock late November 3.
So at quarter to three on November 16, Hartdegen decided to try an experiment. After fumbling with the programming controls for his office phone, he changed the date to November 5, 2008, and called a friend's cell phone.
"Hey, it's Alex," he said. "I just wanted to check in with you. Can you believe the election last night?"
Hartdegen nearly dropped the phone in a mix of shock and excitement. He was talking to the future.
With time at his fingertips, he was now officially ready for Eastern Standard Time.
It was nearly an hour after Hartdegen's discovery before he began to grasp what had happened: Somehow, he had found a way to call other times on his office phone.
The first sign that there was something unusual going on came late in the afternoon on November 5 when he had to ask Vax about the Wells contract. At that time, he hadn't got around to resetting the clock on the phone, so that it said 5 o'clock when it should have said 4. He called Vox on the other side of the building, and got his end-of-the-day, out-of-office voice mail message -- only Vox hadn't left yet.
After Hartdegen left his message, he ran into Vox in the hallway and got the information. The next day, Vox teased him for calling half an hour after their talk to ask the same exact questions.
It was a subtle sign, and Hartdegen missed it, but more signs came over the next two weeks of work that something odd was afoot. He arrived early for work and called co-workers, not expecting them to be in, only to find them already hard at work as though the time on his phone clock really were correct. Once he called Mrs. Watchett and spoke with her for ten minutes, only to find that she had no memory of the call when they met less than an hour later.
Little signs accrued here and there: gaps in people's memories, times and events that didn't synchronize by an hour exactly.
It was on Novemeber 8, when he fixed the in the living room and the one in the guest room that an idea began to percolate uneasily in Hartdegen's mind. The computers, the cell phone and the VCR all had taken care of themselves on Nov. 4, and he had reset the time on his alarm clock late November 3.
So at quarter to three on November 16, Hartdegen decided to try an experiment. After fumbling with the programming controls for his office phone, he changed the date to November 5, 2008, and called a friend's cell phone.
"Hey, it's Alex," he said. "I just wanted to check in with you. Can you believe the election last night?"
Hartdegen nearly dropped the phone in a mix of shock and excitement. He was talking to the future.
With time at his fingertips, he was now officially ready for Eastern Standard Time.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
No room for introverts in our view of healthy?
When and how did extroversion become the yardstick for measuring the social maturity of people, including introverted ones?
I remember as a preteen (and even as a teen) being castigated by my mother for not being more outgoing and willing to initiate conversations with people I didn't know at all or barely knew. I was called stuck-up because I didn't do small talk and chitchat with people I had just met and felt uncomfortable approaching strangers, and generally was under steady pressure to go out and do things I didn't enjoy, with people I had little to nothing in common with, all in the name of socialization.
I'm 37 now, and I still have trouble with those things. I've learned that I'll eventually work my way into a group, find a connection with a few people, and even have a good time, but it takes longer for me than for people who are comfortable with large groups. Sometimes much longer.
Now my daughter is in third grade, and her teacher has approached me about a half-dozen times about her slow progress in making friends in class. At an upcoming meeting with the principal where we're supposed to be talking about keeping school interesting for her instead of boring her to tears with stuff she mastered in kindergarten, the principal has said she wants to discuss how to develop Evangeline's social skills and "educate the whole child."
Let me this again, for the back of the room. There is nothing wrong with her social skills. My daughter is a perfectly healthy and well-adjusted introverted third-grader.
She gloms onto other kids her own age all the time, and they have a great time playing together. She'll stick like glue to a friend, laughing, playing, and running around. Stick her in a class without any friends, and yes, you'll see her withdraw fairly quickly once she sees that everyone else has put up the No Vacancy signs and pulled in the Welcome mats from their little social groups.
Give her time and opportunity to work with her classmates and to discover the areas of commonality, and you'll see her make friends. What, is this supposed to happen in the first week of school, when the only kids in her class whom she knew last year either treated her poorly or barely interacted with her at all?
She's not the one with the bad social skills in that scenario.
Give her time and opportunity to work with her classmates and to discover the areas of commonality, and you'll see her make friends. What, is this supposed to happen in the first week of school, when the only kids in her class whom she knew last year either treated her poorly or barely interacted with her at all?
She's not the one with the bad social skills in that scenario.
wild child
Here's an essay by a college professor who wants more wild children -- students who are willing to break rules, try new things, and set aside social conventions in pursuit of their dreams.
I'm half-inclined to agree. Kids needs guidance and structure of rules, but kids who are willing to set aside rules and not be run by them are the risk-takers who will move and shake the world in days to come.
Evangeline has been butting her head up against a rule at school that is essentially unjust, and I've been trying to help her work her way through an appropriate response to it.
At lunchtime, students at the start of the year were allowed to sit with their friends from other classes if they wanted. About two weeks in, that privilege was unilaterally revoked because of the noise, and everyone was required to sit with their classmates.
Two things annoy the bejesus out of me about this. First is that the restriction has been imposed on everyone without regard for individual behavior. You don't hit an ant hill with a grenade, and you don't punish everyone because of some children's behavior. Second is that it's a punishment that fails to address the underlying problem; kids who are being rowdy and rambunctious will continue to be so even if they have to sit with other kids. And, sure enough, here we are in November and whenever I've been to the school and had lunch with Evangeline, the noise level has been ridiculous, and the kids still are being reprimanded for the volume.
Personally it's a pain in the tuchis, because Evangeline's friends are all in other classes from her this year, she doesn't get to see them the entire day except for recess, and she's miserable as a result. When they drew lots to see who would be friends at the start of the year, the quiet girl (shockingly) was the one who got the short straw -- again.
So what's Evangeline to do? Accept an unjust rule, or work to change it? And when the teachers continue to disregard her request because they're thinking about control instead of what a child needs, what does she do then? My fifth grade lunch was hell because I was stuck next to a bully by virtue of assigned seats and was not allowed to change seats for an entire semester, no matter how I asked.
Honestly, if Evangeline broke this rule and started sitting with her friends, and remained polite and respectful to the teaching assistants the entire time, and refused to move to an assigned table, I'd be thrilled. Some rules are just stupid and they need to be broken so everyone can see how wrong they were in the first place. That's a better lesson than blind obedience to authority.
I'm half-inclined to agree. Kids needs guidance and structure of rules, but kids who are willing to set aside rules and not be run by them are the risk-takers who will move and shake the world in days to come.
Evangeline has been butting her head up against a rule at school that is essentially unjust, and I've been trying to help her work her way through an appropriate response to it.
At lunchtime, students at the start of the year were allowed to sit with their friends from other classes if they wanted. About two weeks in, that privilege was unilaterally revoked because of the noise, and everyone was required to sit with their classmates.
Two things annoy the bejesus out of me about this. First is that the restriction has been imposed on everyone without regard for individual behavior. You don't hit an ant hill with a grenade, and you don't punish everyone because of some children's behavior. Second is that it's a punishment that fails to address the underlying problem; kids who are being rowdy and rambunctious will continue to be so even if they have to sit with other kids. And, sure enough, here we are in November and whenever I've been to the school and had lunch with Evangeline, the noise level has been ridiculous, and the kids still are being reprimanded for the volume.
Personally it's a pain in the tuchis, because Evangeline's friends are all in other classes from her this year, she doesn't get to see them the entire day except for recess, and she's miserable as a result. When they drew lots to see who would be friends at the start of the year, the quiet girl (shockingly) was the one who got the short straw -- again.
So what's Evangeline to do? Accept an unjust rule, or work to change it? And when the teachers continue to disregard her request because they're thinking about control instead of what a child needs, what does she do then? My fifth grade lunch was hell because I was stuck next to a bully by virtue of assigned seats and was not allowed to change seats for an entire semester, no matter how I asked.
Honestly, if Evangeline broke this rule and started sitting with her friends, and remained polite and respectful to the teaching assistants the entire time, and refused to move to an assigned table, I'd be thrilled. Some rules are just stupid and they need to be broken so everyone can see how wrong they were in the first place. That's a better lesson than blind obedience to authority.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
the revolution of god
Clay Shaiborne of the Simple Way in Philadelphia wrote something that raises the question of what terminology is appropriate for communicating the message of Jesus in a postmodern, post-colonial, post-Christian, post-whatever society like the one we find ourselves in.
He makes the argument that "Kingdom of God" no longer packs the linguistic punch it did in the first century, where it would have stood in stark contrast to kingdoms of Herod, Caesar, and other kingdoms the gospel readers would have been familiar with.
In the article, he ran through a list of names like "Revolution of God" that in some way recapture some of the message that was once inherent in a phrase like "Kingdom of God." My personal favorite is Revolution, though I remember liking "dream," in the sense of King's "I have a dream."
He makes the argument that "Kingdom of God" no longer packs the linguistic punch it did in the first century, where it would have stood in stark contrast to kingdoms of Herod, Caesar, and other kingdoms the gospel readers would have been familiar with.
In the article, he ran through a list of names like "Revolution of God" that in some way recapture some of the message that was once inherent in a phrase like "Kingdom of God." My personal favorite is Revolution, though I remember liking "dream," in the sense of King's "I have a dream."
gods of ash and stone
A fairly fundamentalist friend recently surprised me by admitting that he believes or is willing to believe the animist notion of dryads, naiads and other such elemental spirits that are familiar to us from Greco-Roman myth.
I admit it's an idea I've toyed with, because of stuff I've read or heard, and just because the geekboy within me finds the idea interesting and strangely compelling. I also like it because it's more nuanced than the fundamentalist view of spirits that "They're all demons."
Lewis actually discussed the notion in "That Hideous Strength," if you've read it. Merlin suggests that he can go out into the woods and glens of England and awaken the slumbering spirits he once dealt with back in the days of Arthur; and Dimble separately muses that such wild spirits could be spirits that haven't yet had to choose sides in the war between heaven and hell, or at least hadn't had to make such a decision during Merlin's time.
And of course if you're familiar with the stories missionaries tell from animist countries, there's invariably tales told of families or villages that were doing obeisance to a spirit. It wasn't an evil or malicious spirit necessarily; quite often it directed them toward good water, advised them on planting crops and so on -- and incidentally the one story I'm thinking of, from Cambodia, deals with a spirit that the family got into a relationship with after disturbing its sacred tree. Anyway, the spirits usually have a good relationship with the family until the missionaries come with the gospel and then, often though not always, the spirits go nuts and start threatening reprisals if people convert. Other times, they just fade out quietly as the family embraces the gospel.
In a larger sense, this is a reflection of what goes on when the gospel explodes in a culture where it was unfamiliar. The change the gospel brings is quite amazing: People who "get" it, who see the story as fulfilling a messianic expectation in their own culture, will see a values shift in terms of morals, justice and spirituality; while those who see it as a threat will start to define themselves in opposition to it. In a sense, those who have been seeking the Truth (or at least who see it) move dramatically toward it and those who prefer the secrecy of darkness move that way. The same perhaps could be said of dryads, naiads and others, for the sake of argument.
But of course, in a larger sociological perspective, we see the exact same phenomenon in conjunction with other socio-messianic movements. The music of The Beatles exploded on America like a small nuke, spiritually and socially. For large chunks of society, the 1960s was a time of redefinition, with utopian aspirations, social responsibility and breaking free of the shackles society had clapped on them. Others saw the cultural revolution spearheaded by The Beatles as a menace to society, and pushed back hard, to the point that rock music was seen as seditious, Lennon himself was regarded as a threat to national security and there was a serious move by the Nixon (?) administration to have him deported; and so on. We still see that divide perpetuated today, in the presidential campaigns, for instance, where McCain scored points with other conservatives by contrasting his service in Vietnam (establishment) with Clinton's identification with the Woodstock/hippie movement (counterculture).
So perhaps we should see "The Giving Tree" as personal revelation from the co-dependent spirits of the woods.
In the Torah, God warns the Israelites not to fall into the ways of the Canaanite people, saying repeatedly that their sins are why he is going to drive them out before the Israelites. There is another time, though, where he says "the land will vomit them out"; suggesting that this isn't just an action on his part but a reaction by the land itself, that the sin of the Canaanite peoples has so violated the natural order that the land itself was in revolt against them. In other words, sin has not just personal and interpersonal consequences, but environmental (in the broader sense than the merely ecological one) consequences as well.
I admit it's an idea I've toyed with, because of stuff I've read or heard, and just because the geekboy within me finds the idea interesting and strangely compelling. I also like it because it's more nuanced than the fundamentalist view of spirits that "They're all demons."
Lewis actually discussed the notion in "That Hideous Strength," if you've read it. Merlin suggests that he can go out into the woods and glens of England and awaken the slumbering spirits he once dealt with back in the days of Arthur; and Dimble separately muses that such wild spirits could be spirits that haven't yet had to choose sides in the war between heaven and hell, or at least hadn't had to make such a decision during Merlin's time.
And of course if you're familiar with the stories missionaries tell from animist countries, there's invariably tales told of families or villages that were doing obeisance to a spirit. It wasn't an evil or malicious spirit necessarily; quite often it directed them toward good water, advised them on planting crops and so on -- and incidentally the one story I'm thinking of, from Cambodia, deals with a spirit that the family got into a relationship with after disturbing its sacred tree. Anyway, the spirits usually have a good relationship with the family until the missionaries come with the gospel and then, often though not always, the spirits go nuts and start threatening reprisals if people convert. Other times, they just fade out quietly as the family embraces the gospel.
In a larger sense, this is a reflection of what goes on when the gospel explodes in a culture where it was unfamiliar. The change the gospel brings is quite amazing: People who "get" it, who see the story as fulfilling a messianic expectation in their own culture, will see a values shift in terms of morals, justice and spirituality; while those who see it as a threat will start to define themselves in opposition to it. In a sense, those who have been seeking the Truth (or at least who see it) move dramatically toward it and those who prefer the secrecy of darkness move that way. The same perhaps could be said of dryads, naiads and others, for the sake of argument.
But of course, in a larger sociological perspective, we see the exact same phenomenon in conjunction with other socio-messianic movements. The music of The Beatles exploded on America like a small nuke, spiritually and socially. For large chunks of society, the 1960s was a time of redefinition, with utopian aspirations, social responsibility and breaking free of the shackles society had clapped on them. Others saw the cultural revolution spearheaded by The Beatles as a menace to society, and pushed back hard, to the point that rock music was seen as seditious, Lennon himself was regarded as a threat to national security and there was a serious move by the Nixon (?) administration to have him deported; and so on. We still see that divide perpetuated today, in the presidential campaigns, for instance, where McCain scored points with other conservatives by contrasting his service in Vietnam (establishment) with Clinton's identification with the Woodstock/hippie movement (counterculture).
So perhaps we should see "The Giving Tree" as personal revelation from the co-dependent spirits of the woods.
In the Torah, God warns the Israelites not to fall into the ways of the Canaanite people, saying repeatedly that their sins are why he is going to drive them out before the Israelites. There is another time, though, where he says "the land will vomit them out"; suggesting that this isn't just an action on his part but a reaction by the land itself, that the sin of the Canaanite peoples has so violated the natural order that the land itself was in revolt against them. In other words, sin has not just personal and interpersonal consequences, but environmental (in the broader sense than the merely ecological one) consequences as well.
Monday, November 12, 2007
bible studies
The pastor of the congregation my family attends now is a very humble guy.
He's admitted that there's stuff I've studied that he's never even thought about, and he's willing to admit that he could be wrong about even stuff that he does know well, so he's always willing to listen to ideas that will challenge his preconceptions. That's rare for anyone, but especially for a leader in the area of his authority. His basic decency and friendship more than anything have been what's kept me tethered to The Point at the church at large, at all.
I've done the adversarial Bible studies. I'm afraid I can't help it, really; a college professor once pointed out to me that my role in class was to be his personal ha-Satan, by questioning everything he taught us. (He meant it in a good way.) They generally go over poorly too, even on basic stuff, like suggesting that St. John the Evangelist, St. John the Elder and St. John of Patmos might not have been the same person, but all belonged to the same "school of John." Church and Bible study leaders dislike it when I suggest that we have tithing wrong, that the doctrine of sanctification is a misunderstanding of grace, and so on.
I hate to think how they would react if I disavowed the whole pre-creation rebellion of Lucifer, or suggested that the Hebrew understanding of God evolved over time from Sinai to Christ, going from a tribal deity whose favor can be earned by behavior and whose approval can be measured by your relative prosperity, to a transcendent one who rules all the nations and whose ways beggar our understanding.
He's admitted that there's stuff I've studied that he's never even thought about, and he's willing to admit that he could be wrong about even stuff that he does know well, so he's always willing to listen to ideas that will challenge his preconceptions. That's rare for anyone, but especially for a leader in the area of his authority. His basic decency and friendship more than anything have been what's kept me tethered to The Point at the church at large, at all.
I've done the adversarial Bible studies. I'm afraid I can't help it, really; a college professor once pointed out to me that my role in class was to be his personal ha-Satan, by questioning everything he taught us. (He meant it in a good way.) They generally go over poorly too, even on basic stuff, like suggesting that St. John the Evangelist, St. John the Elder and St. John of Patmos might not have been the same person, but all belonged to the same "school of John." Church and Bible study leaders dislike it when I suggest that we have tithing wrong, that the doctrine of sanctification is a misunderstanding of grace, and so on.
I hate to think how they would react if I disavowed the whole pre-creation rebellion of Lucifer, or suggested that the Hebrew understanding of God evolved over time from Sinai to Christ, going from a tribal deity whose favor can be earned by behavior and whose approval can be measured by your relative prosperity, to a transcendent one who rules all the nations and whose ways beggar our understanding.
Friday, November 09, 2007
what, me, bitter?
When we lost our son five years ago, most of our church didn't do squat for us. I got reminded that God is faithful, I was urged to have faith, and other people told me to get my priorities straight and put my wife and daughters first, but very few people were there for us in any way that really mattered.
The regulars in this forum at the time were there for me, but the only good memories I have from our church at the time are:
The regulars in this forum at the time were there for me, but the only good memories I have from our church at the time are:
- Maura, who asked me how I was doing, then saw the answer before I could say a thing, and embraced me, giving me permission to bawl.
- Anne, who got my e-mail saying that Chris had left, and wrote back, "God's a pisser. I'm here for you."
- A very small handful of close friends who listened to me scream, rant and rail against God, and said nothing deep or meaningful.
tired of church
I am tired to death of church.
I am bitter and angry about the narrowness and moralism that have come to pervade evangelicalism in the United States. I am frustrated by the insipidty of the teaching, which has watered down the most radical message ever presented, into a gospel of self-fulfillment, four spiritual laws and a gateway to happiness and success. Most of all, I'm tired of the pretense.
Two weeks ago, the fellow delivering the announcements made the standard pitch to attend one of the weekly "community groups" that our church offers. As he put it, these are the heart of the church, where you really dive into the Bible. The people you get to know there become like family, and they're always there for you when you need them.
It made me furious. It took a superhuman effort not to shout "Bullshit" at the top of my voice, but I have a sense of propriety, and did not.
Dive into the Bible? Here's what almost every Bible study I've ever attended has been like: You have a bunch of people sitting in a room studying a translation of an ancient text they don't understand. The leader has a clear message he's guiding everyone toward, or he's not guiding anyone at all.
Either way, the people at the study simply repeat the things they've said or heard about the passage before, and unless you're new to this Bible study thing, nothing is new. Bible studies usually are limited to the gospels or Pauline epistles, and aside from their entertainment or Golden Book value, no one ever reads the Old Testament stories. (Some studies are topical in nature, and they're even duller.)
As for the relationships, all that really gets any deeper is the pretense. We'll aww and gee-whiz over other people's prayer requests, and we'll even pray for them at the study, but we never actually get involved in a meaningful or personal way. We're happy to listen and to pray, but if you actually need someone's help the response you're most likely to hear is "Oh geez, I'm sorry I can't help you with that. Good luck."
Church itself is even worse, or maybe it's better, depending on how you look at it, because the pretense doesn't run so deep. You know that when someone is chatting with you politely after church that they really don't care about your personal problems, which is why no one bothers to share them after church.
In the end, I wonder if vast chunks of the American church don't belong with all the flatterers in Dante's hell. We actually train greeters and other members of our churches, especially pastors, to welcome people, befriend them, make them feel at home, and treat them like they're someone special, and then leave them cold once they've settled in.
As for the other aspects of the church, I find nothing invigorating, refreshing, or renewing about them at all. The music is so loud it physically hurts, and not just in the ear that doesn't already have permanent hearing loss. I cannot worship to music that makes me want to run away, especially when the songs change every two or three months, after I've just barely learned the lyrics to the latest tunes.
The sermon is well spoken, amusing, and at times even absorbing, but ultimately it is like a can of Coca-Cola. It is filled with empty calories that accomplish little beyond giving a burst of energy and rotting the teeth in my head. There is nothing new, nothing interesting being shared, and do we really need a three-month series on the book of Galatians? I agree that legalism is a problem in the church, especially among those of us who can see everyone else's legalism perfectly clearly, but surely in a state where we're weary of corruption, high taxes, Bruce Springsteen; seeing heightened tension running along ethnic lines; and feeling existential despair over the state of the union -- surely there are other things that will have a bigger impact on us that have not already been preached from one end of the liturgical calendar to the other.
I learn more and have more to think about after reading with my 8-year-old the Bible's account of Jephthah and his decision to sacrifice his only child to the Lord, than I have in years of church attendance. What is wrong with the church?
Surely our children are ready to go beyond Golden Book theology and actually discover the horrors and wonders that really await them in the Bible. Surely they can even go beyond the same old Bible stories and parables of Jesus, and even do things to experience God themselves. What is wrong with the church?
I do not even find that I have anything to give to the church that it wants or knows what to do with. I am tired of talking about God, I am tired of hearing about God, and I am tired of being alone.
I hate church with a passion, and I cannot find it to make myself go.
Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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I am bitter and angry about the narrowness and moralism that have come to pervade evangelicalism in the United States. I am frustrated by the insipidty of the teaching, which has watered down the most radical message ever presented, into a gospel of self-fulfillment, four spiritual laws and a gateway to happiness and success. Most of all, I'm tired of the pretense.
Two weeks ago, the fellow delivering the announcements made the standard pitch to attend one of the weekly "community groups" that our church offers. As he put it, these are the heart of the church, where you really dive into the Bible. The people you get to know there become like family, and they're always there for you when you need them.
It made me furious. It took a superhuman effort not to shout "Bullshit" at the top of my voice, but I have a sense of propriety, and did not.
Dive into the Bible? Here's what almost every Bible study I've ever attended has been like: You have a bunch of people sitting in a room studying a translation of an ancient text they don't understand. The leader has a clear message he's guiding everyone toward, or he's not guiding anyone at all.Either way, the people at the study simply repeat the things they've said or heard about the passage before, and unless you're new to this Bible study thing, nothing is new. Bible studies usually are limited to the gospels or Pauline epistles, and aside from their entertainment or Golden Book value, no one ever reads the Old Testament stories. (Some studies are topical in nature, and they're even duller.)
As for the relationships, all that really gets any deeper is the pretense. We'll aww and gee-whiz over other people's prayer requests, and we'll even pray for them at the study, but we never actually get involved in a meaningful or personal way. We're happy to listen and to pray, but if you actually need someone's help the response you're most likely to hear is "Oh geez, I'm sorry I can't help you with that. Good luck."
Church itself is even worse, or maybe it's better, depending on how you look at it, because the pretense doesn't run so deep. You know that when someone is chatting with you politely after church that they really don't care about your personal problems, which is why no one bothers to share them after church.
In the end, I wonder if vast chunks of the American church don't belong with all the flatterers in Dante's hell. We actually train greeters and other members of our churches, especially pastors, to welcome people, befriend them, make them feel at home, and treat them like they're someone special, and then leave them cold once they've settled in.
As for the other aspects of the church, I find nothing invigorating, refreshing, or renewing about them at all. The music is so loud it physically hurts, and not just in the ear that doesn't already have permanent hearing loss. I cannot worship to music that makes me want to run away, especially when the songs change every two or three months, after I've just barely learned the lyrics to the latest tunes.
The sermon is well spoken, amusing, and at times even absorbing, but ultimately it is like a can of Coca-Cola. It is filled with empty calories that accomplish little beyond giving a burst of energy and rotting the teeth in my head. There is nothing new, nothing interesting being shared, and do we really need a three-month series on the book of Galatians? I agree that legalism is a problem in the church, especially among those of us who can see everyone else's legalism perfectly clearly, but surely in a state where we're weary of corruption, high taxes, Bruce Springsteen; seeing heightened tension running along ethnic lines; and feeling existential despair over the state of the union -- surely there are other things that will have a bigger impact on us that have not already been preached from one end of the liturgical calendar to the other.
I learn more and have more to think about after reading with my 8-year-old the Bible's account of Jephthah and his decision to sacrifice his only child to the Lord, than I have in years of church attendance. What is wrong with the church?
Surely our children are ready to go beyond Golden Book theology and actually discover the horrors and wonders that really await them in the Bible. Surely they can even go beyond the same old Bible stories and parables of Jesus, and even do things to experience God themselves. What is wrong with the church?
I do not even find that I have anything to give to the church that it wants or knows what to do with. I am tired of talking about God, I am tired of hearing about God, and I am tired of being alone.
I hate church with a passion, and I cannot find it to make myself go.
Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Monday, October 29, 2007
star trek 11
And the rumor mill has it that Paramount is planning to make yet another Star Trek movie. I heard about the movie over the weekend at a Halloween party, and I have to say that as I've learned more, I think the studio is jumping the gun on this one, but I'm still mildly intrigued.
As I understand the movie is using Nimoy's Spock just to provide an anchor for longtime fans, but the intent is to tell a story of Kirk's early years post-Academy, pre-command. From what I'm told, it's going to show Kirk getting to know the people who ultimately will become his trusted inner circle -- Scotty, McCoy, Spock and Mitchell -- and thus flesh out their characters at an earlier point in their development. You're better connected than I on these things, and doubtless you'll know if I'm mistaken.
In terms of continuity, I think the movie represents a solid opportunity, if Paramount were to play its cards right, to reinvigorate the Star Trek franchise by using it to launch a reimagined Classic Trek with its own continuity. ST10 could be a touchstone or bridge between the two incarnations of the franchise ... but of course, Paramount won't play its cards right, because Star Trek is the cash cow, and if they knew how to play their cards right they wouldn't have milked the cow to death in the first place with the meretricious writing that became the hallmark of Voyager and the bulk of Enterprise as well.
The smart thing to do would be to wait another ten years or so, and give people time to forget the Star Trek cliches of time travel, sound effects in space, appalling neglect of physics, Treknobabble, incredible coincidences, happy humanist philosophizing, aliens that look like humans with funny hats, and so on. The fans who stayed through "Spock's Brain," who endured a lounge singer dominating an entire season of DS9, and who wrote a 120-page paper on Star Trek's religious themes -- those fans aren't going anywhere. They just need time to forget how godawful the franchise became, and then they'll provide the core base for a new series, even if it's a total relaunch.
Aside from that, I'm disappointed in the sense that I think a movie would have far more creative potential if it drew its cast from TNG, Voyager and DS9. In an organization like Star Fleet, it makes little sense to keep everyone in the same position for their entire careers. (One of the nicer elements of ST:TMP was that Kirk actually had to draw his crew back together again, from all the placs they had wandered to.)
Just my 2 cents.
some justice
For a moment, Serenity's world was chaos. There was the protest of tires squealing desperately to a halt, the cold sound of metal upon metal, and a flash of pain, and then it was all over. She never saw it happen.
When she came to herself, she found herself standing in a line long enough to hold all the people in creation, yet that moved briskly enough that she scarcely seemed to have waited at all. When she reached the front of the line, she discovered that St. Peter was letting people through the Pearly Gates based on their answer to a single question.
"How much money did you make last year?" the saint asked the man two spots ahead of Serenity. The man was older and distinguished, carrying himself with authority and ease in a pricey suit with a silk tie.
"I earned $175,000 in my job, plus additional earnings through my investments and other revenue sources," the man said.
"Ah, yes." St. Peter sighed. "We've been expecting you, governor." With the shake of his head, he pressed a button and the politician disappeared in a flash of light and a puff of smoke. The scent of brimstone lingered in the air only a moment before a breeze from beyond the gates carried it away.
And now it was the turn of the woman in front of Serenity.
"How much money did you make last year?" St Peter asked her.
The woman before Serenity paused a moment, looked up and out thoughtfully, and said, "I charged $125 an hour a time, and averaged about $250,000 a year in take-home, give or take a few."
"A lawyer," St. Peter said sadly, and she too disappeared, even faster than the governor had.
"A lawyer," St. Peter said sadly, and she too disappeared, even faster than the governor had.
By this time, Serenity was feeling nervous, feeling the chances of getting past the gates were pretty slim. But when St. Peter asked, "How much money did you make last year?" she said, meekly, "$5,143," and waited for the dismissal.
To Serenity's great surprise, St. Peter opened the door to heaven and escorted her inside personally, turning only to ask one question.
To Serenity's great surprise, St. Peter opened the door to heaven and escorted her inside personally, turning only to ask one question.
"What grade did you teach?"
Saturday, October 27, 2007
'o holy night'
I never even heard "O Holy Night" until I was a missionary in Haiti, back in 1993. We sang it once at a school staff Christmas party, accompanied only by guitar, and the song has forever been emblazoned in memory as having the most beautiful tune, best sung by candlelight in temperatures in the mid- to upper 80s.
Last year when Christmastime rolled around, I printed up a list of Christmas carols for us to sing during family devotions. The girls preferred "Do You Hear what I Hear," probably because it's so simple to learn, but I have high hopes that "O Holy Night" will catch on in years to come, even though our New Jersey winters are far colder than in Haiti.
Last year when Christmastime rolled around, I printed up a list of Christmas carols for us to sing during family devotions. The girls preferred "Do You Hear what I Hear," probably because it's so simple to learn, but I have high hopes that "O Holy Night" will catch on in years to come, even though our New Jersey winters are far colder than in Haiti.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
unsustainability
Georgia (as well as much of the southeastern U.S.) is in the middle of a really horrific drought. The region is seriously strapped for water, and despite the drizzly rain of the last three days the situation continues to become more and more dire with each passing day. Due to outdoor watering restrictions as well as concious decisions to conserve on the part of many folks in the Atlanta area, consumption has fallen anywhere from 16-34 percent in metro counties. This situation, however, is not one they can conserve our way out of. What they need is rain, and an incredible amount of it, very soon.
A friend, ever the skeptic of global warming and climate change, notes "Droughts, floods, earthquakes and natural disasters NEVER happened before the 20th century and therefore it must be our fault."
He is quite right that famines, droughts, floods and other natural disasters occurred before the onset of the Industrial Era, and if those who fear global warming were basing their concerns solely on incidents like Hurricane Katrina, the drought hitting the Southeast, and some above-average temperatures in October this year, they would deserve to be roundly driven from the table.
Unfortunately, the data go back quite a bit more than the last few years, and it's not just a few Chicken Littles screaming anymore. It is the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community that global climate change is happening, and that it almost certainly is due to or being accelerated by human activity. I'm aware that consensus doesn't make it absolute certainty, and that there are some quite intelligent scientists who disagree ... but as a matter of public policy, it makes sense to listen to the consensus when it's as strong as this consensus is. (There's always the argument that 30 years ago some scientists were ringing alarm bells about global cooling and a new ice age; if that invalidates conclusions that have been reached with more data and more sophisticated computer modeling, perhaps we should get back to the Flat Earth theory. There are some rather intelligent people who still hold to that too, after all.)
But for the sake of argument, let's set aside the question of global warming. For the discussion, I'll concede that there's nothing to it, that the very notion is absurd that human activities are causing the Earth to heat up, the Arctic to melt faster than normal in the summertime, the permafrost to thaw, and hurricanes to worsen. Let's say it's all poppycock. You know what that changes, in the final analysis? Nothing. Our lifestyle in America is still unsustainable, and it is disastrous for ourselves and the rest of the environment.
It used to be that most streams and waterways in the United States were good to fish from. Pioneers, settlers, and those who came after them would catch fish in the river and feed them to their families. Nowadays most of the waterways we used to fish from are polluted; the river downhill from my house actually has a sign warning people not to eat more than three fish from that river in a month. Nice, huh?
And while our ancestors lived the ultimate in sustainability -- they ate meat from animals they shot, turned worn-out clothes into quilts and rugs, grew their grains and vegetables themselves, and basically recycled or composted everything they used -- we as a nation throw out 22 million tons of garbage every year. If current trends continue, that's going to rise to 33 million to 35 million tons per year in just four years. And ironically, about 60 percent of that waste is organic and compostable. (I'm sure recyclable aluminum and plastics make up another sizeable chunk.)
The average meal in an American household also travels about 4,000 miles to reach the dinner table, if I recall the figure correctly.
Does anyone think it's a good idea to continue in a lifestyle that involves this much prolifigate waste? I don't. How infinite are our resources, anyway? From what I understand, hydrogeologists believe we already have consumed fifty percent of the world's oil supply. The rest is going to be increasingly more difficult to get, making it al the more expensive.
The situation in Georgia and the Southeast may not be due to global warming specifically, but I'm sure the American lifestyle hasn't helped much there either. We consume water recklessly, watering lawns that wouldn't naturally occur in the area during times when grass should be brown and dormant anyway, and we make little effort to recycle water after we use it, nor even to return it to the water table. Generally the goal is to get it to the streams and waterways as fast as we can, and never mind recharging the water tables.
So lately, environmentalists have been calling for things like improving fuel efficiency in our vehicles; developing alternate fuels and energy sources that don't involve producing pollution; finding natural heating and cooling systems; reducing our electricity consumption; transporting our goods across shorter distances instead of getting them from halfway across the planet; and so on. We have a family of four, and yet we produce only one garbage can full of trash every month or so.
It seems reasonable to me.
A friend, ever the skeptic of global warming and climate change, notes "Droughts, floods, earthquakes and natural disasters NEVER happened before the 20th century and therefore it must be our fault."
He is quite right that famines, droughts, floods and other natural disasters occurred before the onset of the Industrial Era, and if those who fear global warming were basing their concerns solely on incidents like Hurricane Katrina, the drought hitting the Southeast, and some above-average temperatures in October this year, they would deserve to be roundly driven from the table.
Unfortunately, the data go back quite a bit more than the last few years, and it's not just a few Chicken Littles screaming anymore. It is the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community that global climate change is happening, and that it almost certainly is due to or being accelerated by human activity. I'm aware that consensus doesn't make it absolute certainty, and that there are some quite intelligent scientists who disagree ... but as a matter of public policy, it makes sense to listen to the consensus when it's as strong as this consensus is. (There's always the argument that 30 years ago some scientists were ringing alarm bells about global cooling and a new ice age; if that invalidates conclusions that have been reached with more data and more sophisticated computer modeling, perhaps we should get back to the Flat Earth theory. There are some rather intelligent people who still hold to that too, after all.)
But for the sake of argument, let's set aside the question of global warming. For the discussion, I'll concede that there's nothing to it, that the very notion is absurd that human activities are causing the Earth to heat up, the Arctic to melt faster than normal in the summertime, the permafrost to thaw, and hurricanes to worsen. Let's say it's all poppycock. You know what that changes, in the final analysis? Nothing. Our lifestyle in America is still unsustainable, and it is disastrous for ourselves and the rest of the environment.
It used to be that most streams and waterways in the United States were good to fish from. Pioneers, settlers, and those who came after them would catch fish in the river and feed them to their families. Nowadays most of the waterways we used to fish from are polluted; the river downhill from my house actually has a sign warning people not to eat more than three fish from that river in a month. Nice, huh?
And while our ancestors lived the ultimate in sustainability -- they ate meat from animals they shot, turned worn-out clothes into quilts and rugs, grew their grains and vegetables themselves, and basically recycled or composted everything they used -- we as a nation throw out 22 million tons of garbage every year. If current trends continue, that's going to rise to 33 million to 35 million tons per year in just four years. And ironically, about 60 percent of that waste is organic and compostable. (I'm sure recyclable aluminum and plastics make up another sizeable chunk.)
The average meal in an American household also travels about 4,000 miles to reach the dinner table, if I recall the figure correctly.
Does anyone think it's a good idea to continue in a lifestyle that involves this much prolifigate waste? I don't. How infinite are our resources, anyway? From what I understand, hydrogeologists believe we already have consumed fifty percent of the world's oil supply. The rest is going to be increasingly more difficult to get, making it al the more expensive.
The situation in Georgia and the Southeast may not be due to global warming specifically, but I'm sure the American lifestyle hasn't helped much there either. We consume water recklessly, watering lawns that wouldn't naturally occur in the area during times when grass should be brown and dormant anyway, and we make little effort to recycle water after we use it, nor even to return it to the water table. Generally the goal is to get it to the streams and waterways as fast as we can, and never mind recharging the water tables.
So lately, environmentalists have been calling for things like improving fuel efficiency in our vehicles; developing alternate fuels and energy sources that don't involve producing pollution; finding natural heating and cooling systems; reducing our electricity consumption; transporting our goods across shorter distances instead of getting them from halfway across the planet; and so on. We have a family of four, and yet we produce only one garbage can full of trash every month or so.
It seems reasonable to me.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
10 things about me
I've
been tagged. In order to keep this going, and in the interests of
promoting both navel-gazing and mutual understanding, I'm going to
tag Zero, Brucker,
and the entire CHRefugee forum.
Please note that I'm tagging Brucker more from a desire to nettle him
than from an expectation that he'll respond, although he has every
other time I've tagged him.
1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
At this time in 2007, I was living in an efficiency apartment in Easton, Pa., and walking my black Lab three times a day around the city, sometimes for more than an hour at a time. I also was commuting to my job as a copy editor for a run-down chain of community weekly newspapers every weekday, and spending a fair amount of time visiting my then-fiancee, who had begun her first year of graduate school. I was doing anything I could to find a new job, looking for an apartment closer to work and to Natasha, and planning for our wedding in June.
2. What were you doing one year ago?
Pretty much the same thing as now. We were living here in Nova Bastille, and planning birthday parties for Rachel and Evangeline. Their birthdays are only a day apart, so we decided to have their celebrations on adjacent days the same weekend. This year we've decided to put the two of them together into consecutive parties, since they have several friends in common and have other friends whose siblings are friends with the other one.
3. What are five snacks you enjoy?
Cookies, naturally; along with Tostitos, especially though not always with queso; ice cream, in various flavors, but nothing too exotic or unusual. I love homemade pretzels, so when we've set aside the time to make them, I've been known to eat them. The girls and I also make Cheerio squares from time to time, a variation on Rice Krispie squares that uses Cheerios instead. I also like the occasional 3 Musketeers bar.
4. What are five songs you know the lyrics to?
Oh, good grief. You must be kidding. I have a knack for memorizing lyrics to songs I like, and I love music, so you might as well ask five albums or Broadway soundtracks that I know the lyrics to. Most recently you can hear me singing with the girls songs such as "Ode to a Hero," by Weird Al; the Hebrew portion of "When You Believe," from "The Prince of Egypt" soundtrack; "Turn, Turn, Turn," by Pete Seeger; the folk song "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder"; and "Hard to Get," by Rich Mullins.
5. Five Things You Would Do If You Were A Millionaire
1. Pay off our mortgage, Natasha's college loans, the car loan, and our home equity loan. Instead of paying off our mortgage, I also could see my way to buying a slightly bigger house in cash. Debt is bad, and we have way too much of it in the United States.
2. Set aside at least six months' liquid assets. Savings is good, and we have far too little of it in the United States.
3. Invest wisely for our eventual retirement. We've been doing that for a while, but more would help. It's not like we can count on Social Security to be there for us when we retire in another 30 years.
4. Figure out how I can use the money to make the world a better place, not by backing politicians or movements, but using my financial influence to support worthy causes and to set a good example.
5. Probably start a business, with some good (and ethical) advisers so I don't drive it under and end up dirt-poor within a year.
6. Five Things Your Kids Have Taught You
1. Art. Before she turned 2, I noticed that a progression in the way Evangeline scribbled with her crayons. I watched her progress from back-and-forth movements, to ups-and-downs, and so on, through what was plainly a natural evolution of her own artistic style. I started drawing with her, encouraging her to push her boundaries further.
As one might expect, this has had an effect on my artistic ability as well. When Evangeline reached the point that she was drawing people, I was doing little better than advanced stick figures; six years of steady artistic expression has got me to the point that I recently doodled freehand a picture of Lilo and Stitch chasing Cinderella down the stairs of the palace.
I’ve also come to appreciate other art more. I’ve gained an appreciation for the work of the masters particularly ― we have prints of the Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the Rocks and the Vitruvian Man all hanging up in the girls’ bedroom, for example ― but also for art in general. I find I’m actually capable of analyzing art similar to the way I analyze books or stories, if not to the same degree; and what’s more, I enjoy visting art galleries and museums more than I ever would have thought possible.
2. Laughter. Hang around children long enough, and you’re going to hear some outrageous stuff. Some times it’s unintentional, like when they misunderstand song lyrics in an utterly nonsensical way. But sometimes it’s deliberately witty, like the birthday poem Evangeline wrote me back in August: “Roses are red / Violets are blue. / My dad is crazy / Happy birthday to you.” I’ve never laughed as well or as hard as I have with my children.
3. Shared joy through shared experience. When I was a child, I used to love Saturday mornings, because the CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh would run Bugs Bunny cartoons for about two hours. And not the cheesy ones Warner Brothers has been trying to foist upon unsuspecting children on the Cartoon Network lately, either. No, these were the classic Chuck Jones/Friz Freleng cartoons where Bugs would outsmart Yosemite Sam, or trick Elmer Fudd into shooting Daffy in the face. Now that I’m a father, one thing I’m proud to have done is to share those classic cartoons with my girls. It was one of the best moments of the Christmas we got them, when the four of us sat down with my mother, and three generations of us watched and laughed to classic Looney Tunes together.
It’s been like that with many things. The older they get, the more things there are I want to share with them. The girls already have learned some select Monty Python sketches, including “Dead Parrot” and “Buying a Mattress”; and I’ve loved reading “Idylls of the King” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” with Evangeline.
It’s a tremendous gift to share with our children the things that we also have loved.
4. Faith. A couple years ago, I wrote an essay about what a marvel it was to witness Rachel’s daily interaction with God through the medium of an unassuming toy she liked to take with her everywhere. Children have such a wonderful faith in God, uncomplicated by fretting over doctrine and theology, and it segues so naturally into action.
Once Evangeline understood that Jesus wants her to love people who don’t love her back, she very insensibly made an effort to do just that. I still stand in awe of a 7-year-old who tries to stop her best friend from needling one of the class bullies, because she knows it’s the right thing to do, and I pray that I may one day have faith like hers.
5. Full-bodied enjoyment of music. When most adults sing, it’s a rote activity. If you listened to us singing “Amazing Grace,” you would think our mothers had died; if you listen to us singing “Happy Birthday,” you would think we were sick with the stomach flu.
Kids are different. When Evangeline and Rachel sing, the whole world knows. Evangeline dances in church during the worship service, and when we sing during family devotions after dinner, they both belt out “Awesome God” like they mean it, flopping around the room like fish who have just jumped back into the water. Even a tender song like “Tell Me Why” is deeply heartfelt.
If I can sing just half as enthusiastically as they do, I’ll be doing pretty well.
7. Five Things You Like To Do
1. Reading. My mom used to tell everyone that I would read the comics section before I used the pages to line the guinea pigs’ tray. It’s true. I don’t read the great works as often as I used to ― these days it seems like it’s graphic novels more often than it’s Germanic revenge epics ― but reading remains one of my favorite activities. I love when I get to do it with my children.
2. Baking. I find tremendous satisfaction not just in making the meals myself, but in doing it from scratch as much as possible. Thus it is that I make our own pizza, dough included; as well as bread, bagels, pancakes, cookies, pretzels, hamburgers, buns, and plenty else, all from scratch.
3. Doodling. My older daughter especially has taught me about art, whether directly or in-,but I love taking the opportunity after reading a Brothers Grinn fairy tale with Rachel for us to draw a picture of it together. Evangeline tells me regularly that I’m doing it wrong ― no use of basic shapes, for instance ― but I have a good time anyway. I think I’m even getting decent at it, too.
4. Discovery. Bah. I may be 37, but it’s still fun to learn new things.
5. Music. The self-appointed Guardians of Pettiness think it somehow within their rights to disparage me for singing, learning to play piano, or otherwise indulging my musical interests, but I say, tough Turtlewax. I score quite high for rhythm and music as one of my learning styles, I’ve always enjoyed it, and to hell with people who think it’s polite to tell me I have no business doing so.
8. Five Things You Would Never Wear
Women’s clothing
Plain white button-down dress shirts
A kilt
A military uniform
Bell bottoms
9. Five Favorite Toys
WiFi-ready laptop
Corn Popper
Count von Count Beanie Baby
Cookie Monster Beanie Baby
Storm Happy Meal action figure
10. Five Things You Hate To Do
Bury myself up to the neck in sand and then smear honey all over my face
Roll around naked on a bunch of tacks, then rub myself down with alcohol
Clean my ear with a meat thermometer, then pound it all the way through to the other ear
Throw multimegaton warheads over the fence because my neighbors won’t turn down the stereo
Shove miniature replicas of the Statue of Liberty up my nose, so that the base gets jammed in my
1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
At this time in 2007, I was living in an efficiency apartment in Easton, Pa., and walking my black Lab three times a day around the city, sometimes for more than an hour at a time. I also was commuting to my job as a copy editor for a run-down chain of community weekly newspapers every weekday, and spending a fair amount of time visiting my then-fiancee, who had begun her first year of graduate school. I was doing anything I could to find a new job, looking for an apartment closer to work and to Natasha, and planning for our wedding in June.
2. What were you doing one year ago?
Pretty much the same thing as now. We were living here in Nova Bastille, and planning birthday parties for Rachel and Evangeline. Their birthdays are only a day apart, so we decided to have their celebrations on adjacent days the same weekend. This year we've decided to put the two of them together into consecutive parties, since they have several friends in common and have other friends whose siblings are friends with the other one.
3. What are five snacks you enjoy?
Cookies, naturally; along with Tostitos, especially though not always with queso; ice cream, in various flavors, but nothing too exotic or unusual. I love homemade pretzels, so when we've set aside the time to make them, I've been known to eat them. The girls and I also make Cheerio squares from time to time, a variation on Rice Krispie squares that uses Cheerios instead. I also like the occasional 3 Musketeers bar.
4. What are five songs you know the lyrics to?
Oh, good grief. You must be kidding. I have a knack for memorizing lyrics to songs I like, and I love music, so you might as well ask five albums or Broadway soundtracks that I know the lyrics to. Most recently you can hear me singing with the girls songs such as "Ode to a Hero," by Weird Al; the Hebrew portion of "When You Believe," from "The Prince of Egypt" soundtrack; "Turn, Turn, Turn," by Pete Seeger; the folk song "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder"; and "Hard to Get," by Rich Mullins.
5. Five Things You Would Do If You Were A Millionaire
1. Pay off our mortgage, Natasha's college loans, the car loan, and our home equity loan. Instead of paying off our mortgage, I also could see my way to buying a slightly bigger house in cash. Debt is bad, and we have way too much of it in the United States.
2. Set aside at least six months' liquid assets. Savings is good, and we have far too little of it in the United States.
3. Invest wisely for our eventual retirement. We've been doing that for a while, but more would help. It's not like we can count on Social Security to be there for us when we retire in another 30 years.
4. Figure out how I can use the money to make the world a better place, not by backing politicians or movements, but using my financial influence to support worthy causes and to set a good example.
5. Probably start a business, with some good (and ethical) advisers so I don't drive it under and end up dirt-poor within a year.
6. Five Things Your Kids Have Taught You
1. Art. Before she turned 2, I noticed that a progression in the way Evangeline scribbled with her crayons. I watched her progress from back-and-forth movements, to ups-and-downs, and so on, through what was plainly a natural evolution of her own artistic style. I started drawing with her, encouraging her to push her boundaries further.
As one might expect, this has had an effect on my artistic ability as well. When Evangeline reached the point that she was drawing people, I was doing little better than advanced stick figures; six years of steady artistic expression has got me to the point that I recently doodled freehand a picture of Lilo and Stitch chasing Cinderella down the stairs of the palace.
I’ve also come to appreciate other art more. I’ve gained an appreciation for the work of the masters particularly ― we have prints of the Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the Rocks and the Vitruvian Man all hanging up in the girls’ bedroom, for example ― but also for art in general. I find I’m actually capable of analyzing art similar to the way I analyze books or stories, if not to the same degree; and what’s more, I enjoy visting art galleries and museums more than I ever would have thought possible.
2. Laughter. Hang around children long enough, and you’re going to hear some outrageous stuff. Some times it’s unintentional, like when they misunderstand song lyrics in an utterly nonsensical way. But sometimes it’s deliberately witty, like the birthday poem Evangeline wrote me back in August: “Roses are red / Violets are blue. / My dad is crazy / Happy birthday to you.” I’ve never laughed as well or as hard as I have with my children.
3. Shared joy through shared experience. When I was a child, I used to love Saturday mornings, because the CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh would run Bugs Bunny cartoons for about two hours. And not the cheesy ones Warner Brothers has been trying to foist upon unsuspecting children on the Cartoon Network lately, either. No, these were the classic Chuck Jones/Friz Freleng cartoons where Bugs would outsmart Yosemite Sam, or trick Elmer Fudd into shooting Daffy in the face. Now that I’m a father, one thing I’m proud to have done is to share those classic cartoons with my girls. It was one of the best moments of the Christmas we got them, when the four of us sat down with my mother, and three generations of us watched and laughed to classic Looney Tunes together.
It’s been like that with many things. The older they get, the more things there are I want to share with them. The girls already have learned some select Monty Python sketches, including “Dead Parrot” and “Buying a Mattress”; and I’ve loved reading “Idylls of the King” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” with Evangeline.
It’s a tremendous gift to share with our children the things that we also have loved.
4. Faith. A couple years ago, I wrote an essay about what a marvel it was to witness Rachel’s daily interaction with God through the medium of an unassuming toy she liked to take with her everywhere. Children have such a wonderful faith in God, uncomplicated by fretting over doctrine and theology, and it segues so naturally into action.
Once Evangeline understood that Jesus wants her to love people who don’t love her back, she very insensibly made an effort to do just that. I still stand in awe of a 7-year-old who tries to stop her best friend from needling one of the class bullies, because she knows it’s the right thing to do, and I pray that I may one day have faith like hers.
5. Full-bodied enjoyment of music. When most adults sing, it’s a rote activity. If you listened to us singing “Amazing Grace,” you would think our mothers had died; if you listen to us singing “Happy Birthday,” you would think we were sick with the stomach flu.
Kids are different. When Evangeline and Rachel sing, the whole world knows. Evangeline dances in church during the worship service, and when we sing during family devotions after dinner, they both belt out “Awesome God” like they mean it, flopping around the room like fish who have just jumped back into the water. Even a tender song like “Tell Me Why” is deeply heartfelt.
If I can sing just half as enthusiastically as they do, I’ll be doing pretty well.
7. Five Things You Like To Do
1. Reading. My mom used to tell everyone that I would read the comics section before I used the pages to line the guinea pigs’ tray. It’s true. I don’t read the great works as often as I used to ― these days it seems like it’s graphic novels more often than it’s Germanic revenge epics ― but reading remains one of my favorite activities. I love when I get to do it with my children.
2. Baking. I find tremendous satisfaction not just in making the meals myself, but in doing it from scratch as much as possible. Thus it is that I make our own pizza, dough included; as well as bread, bagels, pancakes, cookies, pretzels, hamburgers, buns, and plenty else, all from scratch.
3. Doodling. My older daughter especially has taught me about art, whether directly or in-,but I love taking the opportunity after reading a Brothers Grinn fairy tale with Rachel for us to draw a picture of it together. Evangeline tells me regularly that I’m doing it wrong ― no use of basic shapes, for instance ― but I have a good time anyway. I think I’m even getting decent at it, too.
4. Discovery. Bah. I may be 37, but it’s still fun to learn new things.
5. Music. The self-appointed Guardians of Pettiness think it somehow within their rights to disparage me for singing, learning to play piano, or otherwise indulging my musical interests, but I say, tough Turtlewax. I score quite high for rhythm and music as one of my learning styles, I’ve always enjoyed it, and to hell with people who think it’s polite to tell me I have no business doing so.
8. Five Things You Would Never Wear
Women’s clothing
Plain white button-down dress shirts
A kilt
A military uniform
Bell bottoms
9. Five Favorite Toys
WiFi-ready laptop
Corn Popper
Count von Count Beanie Baby
Cookie Monster Beanie Baby
Storm Happy Meal action figure
10. Five Things You Hate To Do
Bury myself up to the neck in sand and then smear honey all over my face
Roll around naked on a bunch of tacks, then rub myself down with alcohol
Clean my ear with a meat thermometer, then pound it all the way through to the other ear
Throw multimegaton warheads over the fence because my neighbors won’t turn down the stereo
Shove miniature replicas of the Statue of Liberty up my nose, so that the base gets jammed in my
Monday, October 15, 2007
bankruptcy and overspending
A fascinating article on the myth of personal bankruptcy and its roots in overconsumption:
http://bostonreview.net/BR30.5/warrentyagi.html
The article does an incredible job in exploring the financial pressures many middle class families are under, and surprisingly discovers that the average American family spends less on frivolous expenditures than a generation ago.
http://bostonreview.net/BR30.5/warrentyagi.html
The article does an incredible job in exploring the financial pressures many middle class families are under, and surprisingly discovers that the average American family spends less on frivolous expenditures than a generation ago.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
george w. wrecking ball
From a newspaper column by John Farmer:
The Republican Party is paying a fearful price for its loyalty to George W. Bush, something he rarely, if ever, has reciprocated.
Except for the whistling-past-the-graveyard propaganda put out by the Republican National Committee and its camp followers on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Republicans in Washington and around the country are beginning to believe Bush is their very own national nightmare. The Associated Press even quoted one unnamed GOP lawmaker saying "there's talk of us going the way of the Whigs."
C'mon, now, it's hardly that bad. It's just your ordinary garden-variety looming election disaster.
Farmer's essential thesis is that Bush has become a human wrecking ball where the GOP is concerned. Four senators and nine Representatives have chosen not to seek re-election this year, even though they are in districts or states that are, by and large, solidly Republican. He mentions John Sununu by name, noting that his association with Bush has him trailing badly in the polls, with dedicated conservatives crossing party lines to support his opponent.
Bush has insisted on a stay-the-course attitude pertaining to the Iraq war, despite the overwhelming unpopularity of that approach with the public. There's a place for being stalwart, and perhaps this is such a place, but it's also costing the GOP big time in political fund-raising. House Republicans have only $1.6 million so far; Democrats have more than 12 times that amount.
And Republicans are abandoning the principles of free trade, one of the hallmarks of conservatism. Farmer cites a WSJ poll that found that Republicans believe by a 2-1 margin that free trade is bad for America, costing too many jobs and bringing in shoddy products from overseas. (True, it's not like Bush has personally tainted toys with lead paint, but the measure of a president isn't how things that happen aren't his fault, but how he responds to them. Bush hasn't inspired the confidence he often seems to think he has.)
Agree or disagree with him, President Bush knows what he thinks is the right thing to do and will push as hard as he can in that direction without worrying about whether everyone's going to still like him by the time he leaves office. He reminds me of two people in this regard: The first is a bus driver who takes the bus through the guard rail and down the hill, crashing through bushes, smashing a fence, frightening livestock, and recklessly trying to ford a river. The passengers complain, and all he can say is, "Stop complaining. If you didn't want to go somewhere, why did you get on the bus?"
The other is his father, who also seemed unable to grasp that not everyone could see the superiority of his position and immediately follow it. The elder Bush was astounded when Clinton beat him; the younger seems unable to grasp why people disagree with his ideas, positions, and nominations when he's made no great effort to convince people that his judgment is sound. His "Trust me" around the Harriet Miers nomination was the most famous example.
Perhaps if he gave greater evidence that he was listening to advisers who weren't simply agreeing with him or (rather) giving him ways to advance his own ideas, but instead offered him contrary views that he could listen to and learn from, then perhaps his tenacity might be seen as an asset and less of as a liability.
health care
Count me really disappointed with the president and his decision to veto the SCHIP bill that Congress just sent him.
The bill, which Bush rejected on the grounds that it would cost the government too much and potentially would extend health benefits to people who already can afford them, was one with broad bipartisan support. From reports I've read, it had the support of some 44 state governors, many of them Republican; and also had the support of well-known conservatives Sen. Orinn Hatch (R-Utah). Hatch said Bush's decision was based on wrong numbers about the cost and relied on bad advice.
I'm disappointed. About 12 percent of families nationally can't afford health care for their children, and thanks to this veto, they still won't be able to get it, except for trips to the emergency room.
Just a quick and easy example, close to home: Evangeline requires weekly allergy shots that (thankfully) are covered by our policy through Natasha's employer. Because the shots are administered by a nurse and not by a doctor, there is no co-payment. (A doctor's visit costs us a $15 co-payment.) Insurance also covers the cost of the shots themselves, so these weekly visits cost us nothing more than gas and time.
Take insurance out of the question, and the picture changes drastically. Nurse's visits cost $21 a week, the allergy shots themselves cost a few hundred dollars per bottle -- she needs three different sorts of shots -- and the specialist we saw to get her allergies diagnosed correctly cost a couple hundred dollars as well.
I can't afford to pay that out of pocket. So what do I do? I listen to Evangeline coughing desperately late at night, watch her suffering through the day at school, and pray to God she doesn't get really sick, because then the only option before me is to take her to the emergency room, the sort of health care President Bush used to justify not expanding SCHIP.
It gets even worse if she's sick. Back in January, it seemed like I had taken Evangeline to the doctor's office at least six times for a nasty, persistent cough. At $100 a visit, that's $600, plus more out-of-pocket for antibiotics and heavy-duty cough medicine, all because it never occurred to the doctor until January to send her for a chest X-ray, where we learned that she had undiagnosed pneumonia.
Try paying for all that out of pocket.
Of course you wouldn't; you'd avoid taking your child to the doctor's until you were desperate for something to help, with the result that your child would be even sicker, infecting more children, missing more schooltime, and keeping you or your wife home from work, thereby exacerbating your financial situation.
That's not what I call a health care solution.
I suppose I could buy insurance privately, right? For a family in our state, with two children and an annual income of $41,300 -- that's about what we make -- the cost of a policy just to insure the children is about $5,000. That provides no coverage for prescriptions, and it only allows visits to a very small group of doctors. If the child has a pre-existing condition, like Eowyn's allergies, the insurance won't cover it for 12 months. So I'm still burning money on something other people take for granted.
By the way, that $5,000 figure is for two boys. Apparently, if I have two girls -- which I do -- that policy would cost $5,400. (These figures are courtesy of a column in the Star Ledger.) For the whole family, insurance could cost more than $12,000 a year in Iowa. I'd love to know how you feed a family, pay the rent, and take care of other utilities on the remaining $29,000.
Keep in mind that these costs are going up as insurance providers seek ways to boost their bottom line to impress the shareholders; health insurance premiums are up 78 percent since 2001. A number of small businesses are dropping health benefits, and even large employers are requiring greater employee contributions to their health plans. It's just getting too expensive to provide health benefits.
I can't find the exact figures right now; my understanding is that the Bush veto means that a number of families in New Jersey that have been eligible for NJ FamilyCare (our state's version of SCHIP) will not be eligible now because of projected cost increases. In other words, the veto isn't just keeping the program from expanding, it's forcing the program to drop people from the rolls.
As to the torture issue, I'll note that one doesn't generally seek legal advice or counsel out of idle curiosity. It's used to set policy. And given this administration's inclination to setting aside rules it disagrees with -- something it has been chastised for, not just in the public arena but in the legal system as well -- I am disappointed in the existence of these memos. It does not bode well for our nation that a sitting attorney general would opine in his official capacity that we have the right to engage in waterboarding or the other behaviors described in the NY Times article.
If Sen. Clinton (or Sen. Obama, my choice) becomes president and extends the domestic spying programs, I say shame on her too. I don't see the Vulcan logic in giving up my freedoms to protect my freedoms from people who want to take them away, and I find it disappointing that the administration has engaged in this behavior.
"Those who surrender their freedom to gain security will have and deserve neither." -- Ben Franklin
For a man who set out seven years ago to forge a path for "compassionate conservativism," Bush has beat down a different trail entirely. The legacy he's going to leave is not a compassionate one, nor even a very conservative one, from what I can tell.
If I had to guess at his motivations, I'd say he's probably trying to reduce federal expenses on the one hand, and probably believes he's bolstering our security efforts on the other.
For the first matter, I think the priorities are wrong; on the issue of torture -- and I can't see that simulated drowning is anything but torture, as with the other practices described -- I hold that it's morally unconscionable for a government to practice such acts, no matter what its motivation, and I also cite the arguments of Sen. John McCain, R.-Arizona, who has pointed out repeatedly that any "intelligence" gained from such actions is useless.
The bill, which Bush rejected on the grounds that it would cost the government too much and potentially would extend health benefits to people who already can afford them, was one with broad bipartisan support. From reports I've read, it had the support of some 44 state governors, many of them Republican; and also had the support of well-known conservatives Sen. Orinn Hatch (R-Utah). Hatch said Bush's decision was based on wrong numbers about the cost and relied on bad advice.
I'm disappointed. About 12 percent of families nationally can't afford health care for their children, and thanks to this veto, they still won't be able to get it, except for trips to the emergency room.
Just a quick and easy example, close to home: Evangeline requires weekly allergy shots that (thankfully) are covered by our policy through Natasha's employer. Because the shots are administered by a nurse and not by a doctor, there is no co-payment. (A doctor's visit costs us a $15 co-payment.) Insurance also covers the cost of the shots themselves, so these weekly visits cost us nothing more than gas and time.
Take insurance out of the question, and the picture changes drastically. Nurse's visits cost $21 a week, the allergy shots themselves cost a few hundred dollars per bottle -- she needs three different sorts of shots -- and the specialist we saw to get her allergies diagnosed correctly cost a couple hundred dollars as well.
I can't afford to pay that out of pocket. So what do I do? I listen to Evangeline coughing desperately late at night, watch her suffering through the day at school, and pray to God she doesn't get really sick, because then the only option before me is to take her to the emergency room, the sort of health care President Bush used to justify not expanding SCHIP.
It gets even worse if she's sick. Back in January, it seemed like I had taken Evangeline to the doctor's office at least six times for a nasty, persistent cough. At $100 a visit, that's $600, plus more out-of-pocket for antibiotics and heavy-duty cough medicine, all because it never occurred to the doctor until January to send her for a chest X-ray, where we learned that she had undiagnosed pneumonia.
Try paying for all that out of pocket.
Of course you wouldn't; you'd avoid taking your child to the doctor's until you were desperate for something to help, with the result that your child would be even sicker, infecting more children, missing more schooltime, and keeping you or your wife home from work, thereby exacerbating your financial situation.
That's not what I call a health care solution.
I suppose I could buy insurance privately, right? For a family in our state, with two children and an annual income of $41,300 -- that's about what we make -- the cost of a policy just to insure the children is about $5,000. That provides no coverage for prescriptions, and it only allows visits to a very small group of doctors. If the child has a pre-existing condition, like Eowyn's allergies, the insurance won't cover it for 12 months. So I'm still burning money on something other people take for granted.
By the way, that $5,000 figure is for two boys. Apparently, if I have two girls -- which I do -- that policy would cost $5,400. (These figures are courtesy of a column in the Star Ledger.) For the whole family, insurance could cost more than $12,000 a year in Iowa. I'd love to know how you feed a family, pay the rent, and take care of other utilities on the remaining $29,000.
Keep in mind that these costs are going up as insurance providers seek ways to boost their bottom line to impress the shareholders; health insurance premiums are up 78 percent since 2001. A number of small businesses are dropping health benefits, and even large employers are requiring greater employee contributions to their health plans. It's just getting too expensive to provide health benefits.
I can't find the exact figures right now; my understanding is that the Bush veto means that a number of families in New Jersey that have been eligible for NJ FamilyCare (our state's version of SCHIP) will not be eligible now because of projected cost increases. In other words, the veto isn't just keeping the program from expanding, it's forcing the program to drop people from the rolls.
As to the torture issue, I'll note that one doesn't generally seek legal advice or counsel out of idle curiosity. It's used to set policy. And given this administration's inclination to setting aside rules it disagrees with -- something it has been chastised for, not just in the public arena but in the legal system as well -- I am disappointed in the existence of these memos. It does not bode well for our nation that a sitting attorney general would opine in his official capacity that we have the right to engage in waterboarding or the other behaviors described in the NY Times article.
If Sen. Clinton (or Sen. Obama, my choice) becomes president and extends the domestic spying programs, I say shame on her too. I don't see the Vulcan logic in giving up my freedoms to protect my freedoms from people who want to take them away, and I find it disappointing that the administration has engaged in this behavior.
"Those who surrender their freedom to gain security will have and deserve neither." -- Ben Franklin
For a man who set out seven years ago to forge a path for "compassionate conservativism," Bush has beat down a different trail entirely. The legacy he's going to leave is not a compassionate one, nor even a very conservative one, from what I can tell.
If I had to guess at his motivations, I'd say he's probably trying to reduce federal expenses on the one hand, and probably believes he's bolstering our security efforts on the other.
For the first matter, I think the priorities are wrong; on the issue of torture -- and I can't see that simulated drowning is anything but torture, as with the other practices described -- I hold that it's morally unconscionable for a government to practice such acts, no matter what its motivation, and I also cite the arguments of Sen. John McCain, R.-Arizona, who has pointed out repeatedly that any "intelligence" gained from such actions is useless.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
disappointment with bush
This just makes me discouraged. I was hoping for something different. Christ have mercy.
This particular quote resonated with me:
Back around Easter, I passed around a column I had read, to several friends about torture and how every assault on a prisoner is an assault on the person of Christ. I was horrified when one friend, whom I generally respect despite our differences of opinion, said that he disagreed, and felt that God has given governments the authority to torture prisoners for matters of security.
I have to admit, I lost some respect for him on that one.
One thing that I find striking about Bush right now is how much he has changed in the eight years he has been in office. When he first came on, I was willing to give him a chance, because he had some goals that were worth exploring, such as his faith-based initiatives to help the needy. He even met with liberal groups and activists like Jim Wallis of Sojourners to discuss where the need was greatest and what he as president could do.
And now ... well, now he's vetoed a bill to bring health care to the nation's neediest children (after all, they already have emergency rooms), his administration has justified the nation's first-ever domestic spying program, they've insisted on the right to torture prisoners and to deny them third-party oversight; it's issued more signing statements than the previous 42 administrations combined, and (let's not forget) it misled the country into war while refusing to provide safe harbor for the refugees that war has created.
The stresses of being president are going to be hard on any one -- especially one who is president at as nerve-wracking a time as 9/11 -- but I can't say he has help up well under the stress.
This particular quote resonated with me:
"I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country's good, some people will do a lot of it for the country’s better," said John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy's top lawyer from 1997 to 2000.
Back around Easter, I passed around a column I had read, to several friends about torture and how every assault on a prisoner is an assault on the person of Christ. I was horrified when one friend, whom I generally respect despite our differences of opinion, said that he disagreed, and felt that God has given governments the authority to torture prisoners for matters of security.
I have to admit, I lost some respect for him on that one.
One thing that I find striking about Bush right now is how much he has changed in the eight years he has been in office. When he first came on, I was willing to give him a chance, because he had some goals that were worth exploring, such as his faith-based initiatives to help the needy. He even met with liberal groups and activists like Jim Wallis of Sojourners to discuss where the need was greatest and what he as president could do.
And now ... well, now he's vetoed a bill to bring health care to the nation's neediest children (after all, they already have emergency rooms), his administration has justified the nation's first-ever domestic spying program, they've insisted on the right to torture prisoners and to deny them third-party oversight; it's issued more signing statements than the previous 42 administrations combined, and (let's not forget) it misled the country into war while refusing to provide safe harbor for the refugees that war has created.
The stresses of being president are going to be hard on any one -- especially one who is president at as nerve-wracking a time as 9/11 -- but I can't say he has help up well under the stress.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
chthulhu
I believe it was Phil Foglio who wrote a cartoon around the concept of a game called "Escape from Cthulhu." The players open a box, and one of them reads the incantation printed on the inside of the box. A hideous monster appears behind them, with tentacles waving around a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and while the other players wig out, the player with the box reads the second step of the instructions: "Now escape."
I have to say that I've been rather struck by how seminal the Cthulhu mythos have proved to be, especially when you consider how poor Lovecraft was at the actual mechanics of writing. Movies like "Event Horizon" rely on the basic conceit of Lovecraft's work, Cthulhu was a fairly major character (under a different name) in Larry Niven's "World of Ptavvs," and the Old Ones even get mentioned in an episode of Star Trek.
I have to say that I've been rather struck by how seminal the Cthulhu mythos have proved to be, especially when you consider how poor Lovecraft was at the actual mechanics of writing. Movies like "Event Horizon" rely on the basic conceit of Lovecraft's work, Cthulhu was a fairly major character (under a different name) in Larry Niven's "World of Ptavvs," and the Old Ones even get mentioned in an episode of Star Trek.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
awakening needed
Hey, fellow Christian, I have a suggestion: Don’t ask people for money if you haven’t spoken to them more than once in the past five years.
If you had just written me a letter to say that you and your 12-year-old son were going to
Instead, I get a letter ― and not even a letter that was addressed to me personally, but an e-mail you sent to a couple dozen other people as well, all at the same time ― full of spiritual words about the Word of God, and how many millions of people are starving for that Word, and what an exciting opportunity it is for us to be involved in the work of the Lord by helping you get to Colombia.
May God forgive me for the times I have done this very thing.
You’re absolutely right: The fields are ripe unto harvest. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, and I don’t begrudge you the opportunity to go work in the fields for a few weeks and see how far before these overtended fields in
But if you want people to be a part of your “ministry” ― and don’t kid yourself, in a two-week trip God’s doing to do more to transform your life than he’s going to do to transform Colombia ― you’ll need to relearn a fundamental truth about the Kingdom of God that we’ve lost, not just here in Iowa but in all America, and probably throughout the West: It’s the people who count.
If you can’t make the effort to reach out to individual people, one on one, and share with them why you’re making this trip; if you can’t make a personal connection and pass the time with people, giving them a little of yourself before you ask them for financial support; if you can’t remember that the only convincing evidence for the gospel is that way people’s lives are set on fire by love for one another … then you don’t need money.
ignition point
Rachel has reached her ignition point.
For the last few weeks in particular, since we started this year of homeschooling, I’ve been working with her to instill actual reading skills. She’s found the consonant-consonant sounds frustrating, and at times has groaned over having to do reading class, and asked to do something less difficult, like writing class.
Well, a few weeks of Hooked on Phonics have been paying off. Last week I pulled out a set of books that stick to monosyllabic words and short vowels, and that break in the combination sounds one or two per book. As an incentive, the books come with little stickers that I’ve been letting her place in the front of the book once she’s proved she can read the entire book without help from a parent. Early last week she was still getting frustrated by cl- and st-, but by Friday she was eager for the next volume.
Monday put her over the top. She was excited to read a story that uses the short O sound to Natasha and then to Evangeline, and at evening’s end, she had decided on her own initiative to tackle the book with the short U sound. Virtually flawless.
And then, the big one: I took out our copy of Dr. Seuss’ “Hop on Pop,” about 60 pages of rhymes, simple words, unfamiliar sight word like they, and words that follow no pronunciation rules she’s acquainted with, like night. She needed help with those words, but because of the rhyming nature of the book ― sentences like “FIGHT NIGHT / We fight all night” ― she very quickly got the hang even of them, and could remember them from one page to the next with minimal prompting.
She’s reached the ignition point, and she’s about to take off.
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