in poor taste

I recently saw this promo for a discussion on Delphi Forums:

 

If you have morning sickness...
	What do you eat for breakfast?
-	In WINTER BABIES 07-08

 

I've heard of sevearl ways to deal with morning sickness, but I must confess that eating winter babies is none of them. I wonder how they would react if people responded to this promo with suggestions for recipes.

rejection

Alas, a piece I wrote for the Wittenburg Door did not get the reception I had hoped. I just received this in my e-mail:

I must confess I really wanted to like this one, David, but I struggled with it. I wasn't really sure of the point you were making and it felt like it ping-ponged between a couple of good (but competing) ideas. So, alas, I guess I'll reluctantly pass on it.

 

Thanks for letting us see it and I hope you'll continue to send us stuff!

Rats. This isn't the first rejection letter I've received, nor even the first from The Door. But it's still disappointing.

 

And, in all honesty, I must admit that I'd rather be rejected by The Door than published by several other magazines I can think of. Must try again.

hail the tripods

One of the joys of having children is introducing them to things that you enjoyed when you were their age.

 

When I was younger, Boys Life magazine carried a serial comic based on "The White Mountains" and the other Tripod books by John Christopher. The story didn't translate well, mostly because of the format they published it in. Each issue contained a single page of the comic, drawn on a grid of nine or twelve panels. A lot of the material that Christopher created to establish the characters, the setting, and even the nature of the alien rule over the earth, went right out the window. There just wasn't space.

 

In 1987, when I was an exchange student living in New Zealand, one of the channels showed "The Tripods," a BBC miniseries based on Christopher's books. I saw part of the first episode, and part of one that came nearer the end of the series. In that segment, Will the main character had just discovered that the alien masters were planning in a few years' time to eradicate all terrestrial life, I presume to make the planet more suitable for themselves.

 

I hadn't read the books yet, but I was pretty sure the Beeb had taken a few liberties with its adaptation. In the comic the only alien race on the planet was the Masters, a race that looked something like giant turds with faces and tentacles, but here in the series he was talking with some other alien that appeared as a green triangle and that also was appalled by the Masters' plans for the planet ... but which was unwilling to stop them, since he saw humanity's survival as humanity's business.

 

Fast forward to around 2000. I had bought the entire series from Amazon and was zipping through them with the speed of an arrow. Somewhere inside me a Cub Scout was in heaven.

 

The books are a nice, easy read; in fact, Evangeline just finished reading the entire series herself about a week ago, even though there are no girls worth mentioning in the books. They're set roughly a hundred years in the future, after an alien race has fully domesticated the human race through a mind-control technique that involves affixing a metal cap to the heads of children when they turn 13. The cap removes the aggression that humans have, purges their curiosity about the world around them, and makes them the happy, docile servants of the Tripods and the aliens behind them.

 

The main characters in the trilogy are three boys, named Will, Henry and Jean-Paul, who learn about feral humans -- free men who have never been capped, and who are learning all they can from their base in a mouintain hideaway about the alien conquerors so they can liberate the earth and the human race.

 

The books were published in 1970, I think, and some aspects of the writing definitely reflect that period. The people of the earth are docile, uninquisitive about the world around them, and really not all that bright -- the classic depiction of stoners. And yet the Tripods also are linked to God, through the juxtaposition of an image of a Tripod at the Dome of the Rock, and the great awe and generally religious reverence which humans hold the Tripods in.

 

My best guess, without having done any formal research into the matter, is that Christopher is urging people to think for themselves and try to save the world, without the limits imposed by religion or by the "tune out and drop out" culture of the sixties. A prequel to the series, published in the 1980s, shows the Tripods gaining control over more and more people by subverting television broadcasts, a more contemporary "think for yourself" sort of message.

 

I had told Evangeline about the BBC series, and I told her that if she were interested, we could try to watch it once she had finished the books. I was disappointed to find that the BBC show ran for two series -- the first following "The White Mountains" fairly faithfully, and the second taking tremendous liberties with "The City of Gold and Lead," not just with the glowy green pyramids, but also by making the masters a friendly and congenial sort of master race who even have given their slaves a nightclub of their very own so they can relax and feel at home. (Christopher had depicted life in the masters' cities as hellish, with ovenlike temperatures, leaden poisonous air, and abusive masters. The average lifespan of a slave was about three years, tops.)

 

Bad enough that the second series isn't available on DVD or video at all. Worse still is that the BBC never filmed a series based on "The Pool of Fire," with the result that the free humans discover they have only a few years to drive the masters off the planet or perish, and we never get to see them make an attempt.

 

We've been watching the show in eight- or nine-minute segments, courtesy of the high speed Internet access we have at the university and one or two other places we go with the laptop. So far we've watched the entire first episode, and not only has Evangeline enjoyed it, so has my inner Cub Scout, and so has my 4-year-old.

Hernando Cortés and the humiliation of Mexico

Evangeline doesn’t like Hernando Cortés very much.

With a trip to Mexico in the offing to attend their uncle’s wedding in September, we decided it would be a good idea to expose the girls to Mexican history and culture. So on a recent trip to the library, I checked out a couple history books about Cortés the famed conquistador from Spain, and a couple books of Mexican fairy tales and prepared for a summer of low-intensity homeschooling.

The main thing I remember about Cortés is that he was the conquistador who toppled Aztec civilization and led to the Spanish colonization of Mexico. I remember a few other bits, like the Aztecs cautiously welcoming him because they though he might be their god Queztlcoatl, but that’s about it. When we studied Cortés in sixth grade, my general impression was that he was a giant of a man who had destroyed an evil empire and brought European civilization to the Americas.

Perhaps Evangeline is more sensitive to genocide than I was in sixth grade, or perhaps our presentation of history has changed a bit, but she was upset to discover what he did. Though I’m sure she shares his disgust at human sacrifice, she was repulsed at the way he and his army carried off Aztec art to turn it into gold. She was appalled at his willingness to taking human life to save his skin, even the lives of his allies. And she was aghast at what he did to the Aztec civilization.

During the reign of Montezuma, Aztec civilization had reached a peak higher than anything in the Old World. Tenochtitlan had 150,000 people, making it more populous than any city in Europe. The priests had charted and knew the path of every star and planet in the night sky, and could predict solar and lunar eclipses to the minute well in advance of when they came. The Aztecs had built themselves up from an alien tribe in the middle of Mexico into the most powerful empire in Central America. They had buildings of phenomenal beauty, had established their city on a swamp through a rather innovative form of architecture, and ― this was news to me ― actually had made public education compulsory, not just for boys but for girls as well.

So they were a prosperous people, at the top of their game, when Cortés and his crew came in like a flight of miniature dragons, took the gold, smashed the Aztec gods and forced the people to convert to Christianity. The Spaniards also allied themselves with the Tlaxacans, another warlike tribe the Aztecs had never conquered, and decimated Tenochtitlan.

And, of course, the Spaniards unwittingly introduced the smallpox virus to the Aztecs, which probably killed far more people than the big guns Cortés had brought.

Evangeline’s a sensitive and imaginative soul. I rather imagine she was able to picture quite well the fear, and the despair, that went through the Aztec people as their civilization came crashing down. I was going to let her read my copy of a book that presents the whole story in Aztec terms, but I think I’m going to pass on that after all. She needs a happier story instead.

hoodwinked

The Nova Bastille library showed “Hoodwinked” Monday afternoon as the first installment of its summer movie program.

 

Rachel was a little disappointed they had picked it for their first movie, since they had showed it last summer too, but it’s a good movie. It gives a humorous treatment to the popular Red Riding Hood fairy tale, by telling and retelling the story from the point of view of each major character: Red herself, the Big Bad Wolf, Granny, and even the woodcutter.

 

As a bonus, none of the characters is quite what you’d expect from the fairy tale as the Brothers Grimm popularized it, and the entire story takes place against the backdrop of corporate espionage under investigation by both the police and an investigate journalist who is played by one of the main characters.

 

Natasha saw a preview for the movie and disparaged it as something that wanted to be “Shrek” but couldn’t manage it. For myself, I loved the movie both times. I thought it was witty in the extreme, presents a strong female character in Red Riding Hood, and manages to go the entire movie without relying on potty humor or pretending to be deep, like “Shrek” did.

 

I also recognized the voices of John Belushi and Anne Hathaway ― not marquee stars, I suppose, but still fairly impressive for what I believe was an independent film effort.

 

Evangeline also was disappointed that they showed “Hoodwinked” again this year. She was at art camp, and would have loved to have seen the movie a second time. She immediately got on my case to buy a copy so she can watch it “lots of times.”

 

And that, of course, is why the good Lord invented allowance.

Play it, Sam: Finding the value of our shared musical heritage

My children love to sing, and I couldn’t be prouder of them for it.

We played a game of Encore on Sunday night with a friend of ours and her son, and my girls performed in style. They knew theme songs from TV shows that were canceled decades before they were born (Schlemiel! Schlimazel!), they knew songs about folk heroes like John Henry and Casey Jones, they knew songs about their country, and they knew songs from Broadway.

I’ve lost track of how many songs my girls know. Even though she won’t be 5 until this fall, Rachel has amazed me by knowing the words to “Blowin’ in the Wind” and by singing show tunes from “Les Misérables,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and even “Man of La Mancha.” Evangeline’s pretty much the same.

Music, I have come to realize, is as fundamentally a part of being human as speech itself is. We tap our heels, we whistle, we clap our hands, we snap our fingers and we stomp our feet. And we sing.

Or at least we used to. Anymore these days, music is a spectator thing. We listen to iPods and radio stations, but if someone starts to sing along, we usually tell them to shut up, because they’re ruining the song.

It used to be at a ballgame that everyone would rise to her feet and sing the national anthem before the game would start. It was a communal effort, a joint profession of allegiance to something bigger than ourselves, something that united us all under one flag, no matter our race, heritage or class. Nowadays we all shuffle our feet and listen as one person sings it over the intercom, or (what’s worse) we stand patiently as a recording plays.

When I was younger, the congregation at my parents’ church would sing hymns that had been around since before the English language. I wouldn’t have complained if the organ had caught fire, and I wouldn’t have minded something more interesting than “We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations,” but even if the songs were dull and the organ was uninspiring, worship was something everyone took part in. If you had been around long enough, you didn’t even need to look at the hymnal to know the words.

Good luck finding a similar experience today. The music is a little fresher than “Nearer my God to Thee,” and the electric guitars and drum sets are guaranteed to wake you up rather than lull you into a coma, but something’s been lost. Watch the congregation, and you’ll find that more and more people are listening to the worship team, and if anyone’s singing, it’s often a half-hearted thing done through half-shut mouths. The music is louder than when I was a boy, but fewer people are joining in.

It’s not quite the same thing, is it?

As a culture, we are losing something important. When songs attain that coveted status where children learn them from their parents, without benefit of music or lyrics sheet, they create a solid anchor to the past for each generation that comes. They become a medium for passing knowledge, sharing history, and creating identity.

My girls have laughed to some of the same songs that entertained a young Laura Ingalls Wilder on the frontier a hundred fifty years ago, and they’ve sung some of the same tunes that John Lennon and Pete Seeger used to protest the Vietnam War when I was still learning to crawl. These songs are part of their heritage, and they’re part of what makes them American.

They’re a part of our identity, and we’re letting it slip away.


Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

put on a happy face

I had the weirdest dream last night.

 

As everyone knows, I have psoriasis over a good portion of my body. It's on my scalp, my arms, my legs, my back, and a few places on my belly. It's actually clearing up -- slowly -- with a topical lotion I've been applying, but it remains highly visible on parts of my body not covered by clothes.

 

In any event, lsat night I dreamed that I was a doctor. I suspect I was some sort of dermatologist, since the people who kept coming to me for medical help were all suffering from some sort of skin condition like mine.

 

For reasons that remain unclear to me, my reaction to every patient was to draw a smiley face on their psoriasis patches with a magic marker. Everyone thought it was hilarious, except for my supervisor. (The principal at my daughter's school.)

'follow me'

When Jesus called his disciples, he told them "Follow me." Given that he was physically present, there was an immediate and obvious sense to that command that his disciples would have had no problem understanding: Go where he goes, listen to him, see what his priorities are, and make them your own. What exactly does it mean for believers today?

Seeking justice for the weak, caring for orphans and widows, opposing the proud, serving the meek and lowly, and so on, are all major parts of gospel, much moreso than they are given credit for in today's evangelical churches. Jesus indicates that the Samaritan of the parable has eternal life because of things like caring for the wounded man on the road to Jericho; he warns that even religious people who do not clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned, and so on will be cast into the darkness, and so on.

The major mistake of the social gospel of the early 20th century was that it stressed the moral duties of a Christian, sometimes to the exclusion of the faith's supernatural aspect, reducing Christianity to a system of ethics. On the other hand, one of the major failings of evangelical/fundamentalist/Pentecostal thinking of the last century or so has been its Gnostic emphasis on saving people's souls and placing too little regard on more earthly matters like those listed above.

The failing of the much-maligned social gospel, at least as I see it, is that it comes across as an ethical or moral system of values, rather than as a relationship with people; i.e., it becomes a condescending sort of piety based on what we do to help "those poor people" rather than the true gospel of Christ, which sees other people -- even "sinners" -- as Christ, and exalts the weak and lowly as people we can learn great things from, like when Jesus upholds the poor woman who offered two copper coins as an example of generosity, commends a professional killer and various lepers for their faith, compares a socially outcast shepherd to God himself, and so on.

The big thing in evangelical and Pentecostal circles is the "personal relationship" with Jesus. Perhaps I'm being difficult, but what exactly is a "personal relationship" with God like? God never writes, he never calls, and he never sends me flowers. For all I know, he's seeing someone else on the side, broken off our relationship, and decided we're through.

I'm supposed to see him as some sort of role model for relationships, but the truth is that I hear more regularly from my younger brother in Indiana than I hear from God. My brother at least makes the effort to call me once a month or so, or to send me weird e-mails that only he and I think are funny. The whole idea of a "personal relationship" with God is something that doesn't really make sense to me, at least as I understand the concept of a relationship. At times I'm sure the application of that concept in the Western church has become downright chummy if not irreverent in the way its abandoned any sort of reverence and awe for the Almighty.

ups unfair to same-sex couples

When New Jersey recognized same-sex civil unions, the language of the law specified that couples in a civil union had all the same rights and privileges of married couples. All that was different is the term. Pretty clear, right?

Not to UPS. The delivery service has decided that it is not going to extend health benefits to couples in civil unions, because the law doesn't require it. Any such policy, it argues, would require concessions at the collective bargaining table.

So let's get this straight: The law doesn't apply if we don't want it to, and even if the law didn't say point-blank what it says in black and white, we still can use the letter of the law to disregard its spirit, and save money by not doing the right thing.

I'm done with UPS until they set things right.

america-hating liberals

I can't believe the rank negativity I keep hearing from some liberals in regards to the war in Iraq.

In the years since the Bush administration began its initiative to remove Saddam Hussein from power, we've seen the emergence of a healthy, democratic society in Iraq with deep respect for personal freedoms and artistic expression. The Islamofascist groups like al Qaeda that practically ran the place under Saddam have disappeared, creating a largely secular society with tolerance for other belief systems. (And do you think it's any coincidence that more than half the boys born in Iraq since the invastion have been named "George?")

Iraq has become our nearest and dearest ally in the Mideast, second only to Israel, and the peace and prosperity it's enjoying have led to democratic elecitons in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Khazakstan, just to name a few. The proliferation of democracy and Western values in the Mideast also has encouraged Hamas to lay down arms and seek a peaceful relationship with Israel; and the few Taliban who didn't disappear after the invasion of Afghanistan have emerged, shamefaced, from hiding, and joined the initiatives in that country to bring lasting stability.

Honestly, we all know how much liberals hate America, but they shouldn't let that blind them to all the good things our current president has done for the world.

defeaning silence of outrage

There is a deafening silence of outrage over Libby's sentence commutation from some of the same voices that screamed (with some justification) over the pardon Clinton gave convicted financier Marc Richard in 2000. And I expect that many of the people outraged with the charge and conviction of perjury against Libby are some of the same people who defended the perjury charge and impeachment proceedings against Clinton during Zippergate -- and vice-versa.

John Farmer, a former New Jersey state attorney general and now a political columnist for the Star-Ledger, has a fairly good analysis of the Libby situation, I think. (And he does it without resorting to demeaning polemic or character assassination, no less.)

First he notes that the other aspects of Libby's sentence stand, including a quarter-million dollar fine, which he already has paid and no doubt will be reimbursed for by one fund-raiser or another, a book deal, or something else.

At the conclusion of the trial, Fitzgerald noted that Libby met with NY Times reporter Judith Miller at the behest of Dick Cheney. Cheney's involvement in the incident was obscured by Libby's perjury. So what did Fitzgerald do? He did what any sensible prosecutor would do -- and as Bush himself reportedly said, Fitzgerald is a first-rate prosecutor -- he went after the small fry, so that the small fry would in turn provide the evidence for an investigation of the bigger fish, Cheney.

Cheney's invovlement in the effort remains speculation in part, of course, although Libby indicated that he his meeting with reporters to out Valerie Plame may have received the personal sanction of Cheney. And Cheney had some reason to out Plame, since her husband had written an op-ed piece in the NYT that discredited the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy yellowcake from Nigeria, a claim that the administration had been using to justify the war in Iraq, a war that Cheney had been pushing from the get-go.

So it makes sense, if Fitzgerald has reason to suspect Cheney is behind the outting, to get Libby on a smaller charge, in order to get information on Cheney. And it makes sense in turn for Bush to commute Libby's sentence (if not ultimately to pardon it) in exchange for Libby's continued silence.

Even if no law technically was broken in outting Plame as a formerly undercover intelligence agent, as opposed to an active one, it was still a stupid thing to do. First, it ends her effectiveness for any future operations; secondly, it exposes other agents she worked with, the place she worked, and the techniques used to greater scrutiny, and limits their effectiveness; and thirdly, it's just plain petty and should be beneath the office of the vice president.

For balance' sake, a friend of mine refers me to the American Spectator, which has a mouthful to say on the subject, from a conservative viewpoint. For my part, I always taught my students that if they couldn't make an argument without personal attacks and juvenile behavior, then they didn't have one. I think that's a standard we need to enforce more vigorously in the public sphere as well.

Given the ad hominen attacks -- like "publicity-mad demoness Valerie Plame" and "full on publicity hound Mr. Fitzgerald" -- this article has no bearing on intelligent and reasoned discussion. Comments from "The American Spectator" are hereby stricken from the record.

 

Ten percent is all I have left

I reached the conclusion about four to six weeks ago that Christianity is about 90 percent bullshit.

By this I do not mean just how it is practiced today, by prosperity charlatans and Prayer of Jabez nonsense, but the very thing itself. Our doctrines, our mythology, our concepts of God and sin, our attitudes toward the Bible, and so on, by and large would make an excellent fertilizer if someone could figure out how to bag it.

That 10 percent, though, is impossible to let go of. I find that it won't let go of me.

What's in that 10 percent is Christ, and his resurrection. It's been said with some truth that if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. I don't believe anyone could invent Jesus.

I've seen some attempts, and they're always pathetic. They make no sense, or they represent perfectly one philosophy, one viewpoint, one nation, or one ideology. The Jesus depicted in the gospels is impossible to pigeonhole on politics, economics, taxes, education, environmental policy, or anything. He is so freaking subversive, so determined to embrace all people yet still managing to offend everyone he shouldn't, that he defies the ability of humanity to imagine.

As for his Resurrection, Occam's Razor suggests that the simpler explanation is probably the true one. And so we ask ourselves, which is more likely: that this group of incessantly bickering and fighting disciples willfully perpetrated a fraud of unprecedented scale on the world, gave their lives in some of the most horrible ways imaginable, and no one brought out a body to confound the fraud -- or that Jesus actually rose from the dead?

My money's on the Resurrection because, quite frankly, it's simpler.

But none of that is entirely germane to the discussion of church. I know the standard explanations given for the expectation of church attendance, and I'm really not interested in rehashing them. I'm trying to take a step back and ask what it is that I really want, whether that counts as a reasonable expectation, and how I can go about realizing those goals in church. I'm trying to find my way to offering what I have to offer in a way that works with this church and its structure.

Does that make sense? Ten percent is all I have to work with, and it will have to be enough.

keeping it kosher

I knew a Jewish woman in college who was very critical of our meal plan for not having more kosher options, and yet who thought nothing of eating pork chow mein when we were at a Chinese restaurant. Her explanation -- in total seriousness -- was that everyone knows that pork is kosher when it's at a Chinese restaurant. Perhaps there is a similar exemption for hot dogs; i.e., they're always kosher at a Fourth of July barbecue.

time to face facts

I might as well face it. I can't worship in church. The dynamic is all wrong for me, and always has been. I worship much better in a small, intimate group, and worship best of all when I'm being the creator God made to be, putting words to paper and crafting new stories, new characters, and new ideas.

 

I might as well face it. There is almost no sense of belonging for me in church. The size of the congregation is so large, the busyness is so acute that I have as much sense of connection with others as Tom Hanks stranded on a desert island. Except he had a volleyball.

 

I might as well face it. I haven't heard one thing in a sermon in church that's stuck with me, for about fourteen years now. I've heard great speakers, lousy speakers and speakers who fell somewhere in-between, but even the great speakers haven't given me much to think about once the service is over. It all gets swept aside in the announcements and the post-service isolation. Talking to people nonstop for thirty to forty minutes at a time is the worst way imagineable to teach, and yet churches nationwide at least swear by it. I learn more about God, about myself, about my fellow wanderers, pilgrims and sinners, in sixty minutes of reading a good book than I learn in sixty weeks of sermons.

 

So why do I bother going?

 

 

child time redux

My heart broke Sunday for a girl I don't know at a park in Linwood, N.J.

 

I was at the park with the girls while we were visiting Natasha's Aunt Beatrice for the Fourth of July weekend. I had been pushing the girls on a spinning tire swing, after running around the playground roaring and being monsterish so they could scream with delight and run away from me.

 

I was taking a break, watching them play pirates on a playset they had coverted into a pirate ship, when a woman and her daughter got out of their sport-utility vehicle. The girl ran to the tire swing, and promptly was rebuffed by her mother. "Go play somewhere else. I'm not going to push you."

 

Ouch.

 

I'd like to think that the woman had some hand injury that kept her from pushing the swing, but her hands worked just fine. I saw her text-messaging on her cell phone the whole time they were at the park. I wanted to shake her, to scream, "She's not going to want your attention forever, go play with her now while she still wants you!" but I didn't.

 

Instead, I went over to my girls, the good pirates who make breakfast for other people and don't plunder other vessels, and became a bad pirate to chase them around. They laughed, they screamed with delight, and they ran away and around the playground for a good twenty minutes or more. I was a bad pirate in many ways, avasting and shiver-me-timbersing with the worst of them in accent and in behavior, but I had a great time, and my kids did too.

 

I just hope the woman I saw realizes what she's missing before it's too late. Her cell phone is something she'll probably replace in another year or so, especially now that the iPhone has arrived with even more useless bells and whistles, but time with a child is something no one can upgrade or replace. Once it's gone, it's lost forever.

child time

The girls saw their Uncle Kevin this weekend, a first for Rachel and an effective first for her sister.

Evangeline first met Uncle Kevin a little more than five years ago, when he married his first wife. She was about two years old and went to New Orleans for the wedding with her mother, staying with my aunt and uncle and giving my mother a good reason to visit her older sister for the first time in years.

 

I was, I admit, a little uncertain how well the girls would hit it off with their uncle. The last time I saw Kevin was in 1998, at my own wedding, and I had seen him only once before then. I had no idea how he would react to having kids around, and I know from experience that the girls, particularly Evangeline, can be shy around new people.

 

Things got off slowly at first. We arrived at the house of Natasha's Aunt Beatrice a little past noon, and were joined an hour or so later by Uncle Kevin and his fiancee, and Natasha's grandmother and greatgrandmother. The girls, particularly Evangeline, played games by themselves and did little to socialize with their relatives, however we urged them.

 

Around four o'clock, the water pistols came out, and that's when things started to get better.

 

I'm not sure who started it -- I know I had a role in it -- but before long, the girls had taken a liking to shooting Uncle Kevin and Aunt B, and their father. And Uncle Kevin grabbed a gallon jug full of tap water, and started throwing it at people, particularly at Aunt B, although he threw smaller amounts at the girls. The wall had been broken.

 

It came tumbling down the rest of the way the next morning, when the girls got into a knock-down, no holds barred pillow fight with their uncle. I wondered from time to time if the air mattress would burst, or if the pillows would, but everything held together the entire time, including Uncle Kevin, despite cries of "Sit on him, Rachel!" and everything else.

 

The momentum of the pillow fight carried over to Tuesday morning, when the girls ganged up on me. Somehow I became Bizarro, Rachel became Wonder Woman, and Evangeline became Jump Girl, with the two superheroines determined to bring me to justice, even when I stole the Tinkerbell pillow Magic Lasso of Truth.

 

Lots of fun. I wish every parent and uncle could know the selfless wonder of whalloping young children with pillows.

atlantic city

This Monday just past marked my first visit ever to the Atlantic City casinos. To borrow a phrase from Alan Quartermain, I'm waiting to be impressed.


I wasn't there to gamble. In fact, about ten minutes after we entered the casino where my mother-in-law was staying, I realized that I had a pocketful of change that I had left back at the house when I knew we were going to a casino with hordes of hungry slot machines. It had never occurred to me to bring the coins.

But walking into the casino, I was struck, well, by everything. The place was one vast assault on the senses. There was loud music playing overhead, bright lights coming from the gambling areas, a man walking around on stilts and greeting people as they came into the hotel, garishly colored carpet and walls, and of course the auditory onslaught of the slot machines themselves.

Later I saw a woman dressed as a statue and a man carrying a fishing rod and wearing fuzzy slippers, with a plastic shark affixed to his rear end. As I said to Evangeline, the whole thing is designed to ravish your senses and keep you off balance so you don't keep enough of your wits about you to do the math and save your money.

On the other side of the casinos was the beach, which I must confess was much more to my liking than the twenty-story monstrosities that loomed over it in a never-ending row.

I don't get the appeal to gambling. I understand the allure of easy money, and I understand why a number of cities see legalized gambling as a cure for high property taxes. Amid all the lights and the glow and the simulated ringing of slot machines, it seems glamorous and it holds money just out of reach like grapes before Tantalos. But I don't get the appeal personally.

Evangeline wanted to know what was going on, and why she wasn't allowed into the gambling areas, so I explained how casinos essentially offer a chance at easy money but always rake in far more than they give out, that gambling is an essentially predatory industry that taps the elderly, the needy and the desparate for its wealth, and that it's a fairly common (though not standard, by any means) for people to lose their houses to cover their gambling debts, and that for all the purported good the casinos have done for Atlantic City, they've also fed the underside of the city, with increased drug and alcohol abuse, increases in poverty, and so on.

And because I wanted to paint a more balanced picture than just the one side, I tried to point out that legalized gambling has helped Atlantic City relieve the tax burden on its populace, although that only works because it's a destination gambling resort.

As more places try to tap into the perceived lucrative market of legalized gambling, all they'll end up doing is redistributing the burden within their own areas. (After all, who's going to drive somewhere to lose their money if they can do it at home?)

And I told Evangeline that casinos have a list of people who they must escort off the premises if they are found gambling, because of a registered gambling problem.

Still, as she considered all this, Evangeline said gravely that she would put an end to gambling, if she could. (Great. I've created a moralist.) Alas, child, it is not that easy. Once something becomes legal, it is virtually impossible to make it illegal without considerable opposition, and even making it illegal usually just means driving it underground.

This struggle between finding the world as it is and working toward what we believe it should be is something that should occupy us for the whole of our lives.

Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

knees

I took Evangeline for a bike ride this evening after dinner. With my bike still out of commission, this meant my usual trick of walking and sometimes running after her.

 

Two years ago, when Evangeline was in kindergarten, I gave myself bursitis by giving her a piggyback ride up a steep hill while visiting a Revolutionary encampment in Jockey Hollow. Since then, my right knee has been more inclined than before toward objecting some efforts to walk. In the past few weeks, it's twice nearly thrown me to the ground, once walking down the street when I stepped wrong on the sidewalk, and the second time when I tried to do the chicken dance.

 

Today, I was chasing her across the street, not one but both knees acted as though someone had just kicked me in the kneecaps. It was all I could do to stop from falling down in the crosswalk, and I walked funny for several minutes afterward. Even now, five hours later, they still hurt a little.

 

What's up with that?

no longer young, still stupid

On Monday this week, I was reminded once again that my youth is beating a hasty retreat before the advancing forces of middle age.

 

When I was growing up in Saunders Station, Pa., one of the highlights of the year was the annual pilgrimage to Kennywood Park, the self-professed roller coaster capital of the world. With perennial favorites like the Jackrabbit, the Thunderbolt, and the Racer, it was the place to go. Even all-out losers like Melvin Fenwick, the boy who got his underpants caught in the Velcro of his shoes in sixth grade and whom it took three teachers seven minutes to set him loose -- yes, even he went to Kennywood.

 

I haven't been to Kennywood since perhaps the first year I was married to Natasha, but I still have fond memories of the many summer hours I spent there, including on rides like the Enterprise, which turned me upside-down and relied on centrifugal force to keep me there. Just reminiscing about these rides has me looking forward to this August, when we hope to make the journey from Iowa to Pittsburgh and I expect to initiate Evangeline and possibly Rachel into these sacred mysteries.

 

Alas, the events of Monday suggest that I may not handle them as well as I once did.

 

On Monday, Natasha's Aunt Beatrice took the four of us on a visit to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J. There she treated the girls to a ride on a helicopter, and bought $100 worth of tickets for the rides, which included a carousel, a roller coaster or two, and the other sort of Tilt-and-Whirl amusements you would expect to find at a tourist trap marring an otherwise pleasant beach. (Though to be honest, the casinos were far worse.)

 

The four of us -- Aunt B sat this one out, having fared poorly with the kiddie roller coaster she went on with Rachel -- went on a ride that goes along a circular track, spinning the cars wildly in one direction and then another. I've been on many such rides in my youth, and always enjoyed it.

 

The first time the car changed its spin, I felt my stomach heave viciously. The soft pretzel I had eaten a piece of an hour earlier began to clamor for fresh air. I closed my eyes, shutting out all sight of the wildly careening landscape, and tried to imagine myself astride a giant snail, sitting on a lawnchair reading the newspaper, stuck at a traffic light -- anything that didn't involve motion. I imagined that this exercise would help, and I suppose it did, marginally.

 

When the ride finished, I climbed out of the car, and took hold of the railing to steady myself. The world was still, and so was I, and all was well. The pretzel repeated its request for fresh air and a view of the outside world, but my resolve held. I walked with my family to a three-dimensional maze of tunnels, steps and slides, a giant Habitrail for children who think they are hamsters, and watched my children disappear into its labyrinthine corridors. All was steady.

 

And then, five minutes later, Aunt B clapped her hands and walked toward the maze. The pretzel made its request, the motion carried, and the unprecedented happened: I threw up after an amusement park ride.

 

I haven't given up hope for a Kennywood visit this August, but I will say this: When the girls finished off the evening with a ride on the carousel, I stood on the ground and watched.

uniter in chief

I recently was told that President Bush has been trying to unite the different factions in the country, and not just in hating him. He also has worked with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) on the recently failed immigration reform initiative.

Doubtless I'll be stomped to death for this if I'm incorrect, but I believe this is the first major initiative of the president's where he has reached across the aisle and worked with members of the other party. Six-and-a-half years into your presidency is a little late to start uniting.

Given the tone of his primary campaign in 2000, given the scorched-earth tone of the presidential election of 2004, and given his go-it-alone attitude on everything from backing out of the Kyoto Accords to deposing a foreign government against the express wishes of the international community and the United Nations (and given his oft-demonstrated willingness to shut out advisers who disagree with him or who offer advice he doesn't want to hear) ... you can count me among those who say he's not a uniter. I'll go a step further and say he's a lousy president too, all things considered.

I'll give the president credit, and say that (by and large) he is trying to do what he thinks is right. The problem is that too often, he's come at things with a with-me-or-against-me attitude, has not put forth a convincing case for his beliefs or attitudes, and still has expected people to see the perceived innate rightness of his actions. You can't govern like that, at least not in a democratically elected government like ours, where you need to build consensus, and persuade both allies and opponents, and yet that is how he consistently has tried to govern.

His presidency did get off to a good start, I suppose, with solid support for initiatives like No Child Left Behind and some of the other changes he made. Whatever capital he started out with, and it apparently included enough that some Democrats crossed the aisle to work with on those aforementioned efforts early in his first term, he's had one series of one high-profile mistep after another, not just with the war but domestically as well: the Miers appointment, the Gonzales appointment, and the recent immigration fiasco.

Of course, this is nothing new. If you look at Bush's record prior to the presidency, you'll see a man who consistently just squeaked by. Take someone like that and give him the most powerful office in the world, and he'll still just barely squeak by. The difference is that it's a much more spectacular squeak.

Bush had more clout on Capitol Hill early in his presidency and could get more accomplished because the GOP controlled both houses of Congress, and things were running in a more or less parliamentarian manner; i.e., the Legislative Branch backed many of the initiatives of the Executive Branch rather than Checks-and-Balance'ing them.

With the unpopularity of this war growing out of control and the lack of strategy beyond the "Depose Saddam" stage becoming clearer day by day, his rank-and-file support has been disappearing like rats from a sinking ship.

I'm hoping our next president is someone who really is going to unite us, someone who's going to be able to wave a banner and get the nation to rally together -- someone who won't fabricate a common bogeyman, someone who won't play to the lowest common denominator, and someone who takes a stand for something positive instead of standing against other things.