Well, I'm proud to say that Evangeline is well on her way to becoming a full-blooded fangirl. That she enjoys being told tales from "Lord of the Rings" is no surprise. What is taking me by surprise is how far she's taking these things.
She made the connection between Mulan and her namesake last fall, which racheted up her interest in the Disney movie quite a bit. Last week, we were finishing our homeschool study on the American Revolution by reading a true story about a soldier named Robert Shurtliff. About halfway through the story, we discovered that Robert's real name was Deborah Samson. Evangeline's interest in the story leaped, and when I asked her why she thought Deborah Samson had disguised herself as a man and gone off to fight in the Revolution, she had an answer right away: "Because she knew that no man could hinder the British."
For our anniversary and for Father's Day, I received three different Spider-Man trade paperbacks written by J. Michael Straczynski of "Babylon 5" fame. Natasha has been reading these almost as fast as I have, and the past two days, she has been reading them to Evangeline including tonight, as a bedtime story. After we said our prayers, Evangeline confided in me that she's into Spider-Man even more than "The Incredibles" and would like to have a Spider-Man dress to wear.
What's a dad to do? Much of Straczynski's writing is either too mature or too advanced for her, so I'm going through my collection of trade paperbacks and figuring out which ones are safe for her to read. ("Sandman" is right out, as are "Kraven's Last Hunt" and "Maus.") Tomorrow I'm going to introduce her to Superman, via John Byrne's "Man of Steel" from the mid-1980s; and see if I can find some Spider-Man cartoons we can watch together over the weekend.
When I was a teen in high school, or even a college student, I never would have dreamed that I would marry someone who could enjoy intelligent, well-written comic books as much as I do. And now I have a daughter who enjoys them too.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
amazon strikes out
I recently canceled an order for $49.42 worth of books. That's not a significant portion of Amazon's receipts, I realize, but I want to say why I did this.
Quite frankly, I've noticed a significant decline in the service that Amazon.com provides its customers. In three separate orders this year, I've been beset with problems as Amazon keeps shifting the shipping date further and further back, with no explanation, even though all the items are listed as "ships within 24 hours." On the Super-Saver Shipping feature, which is supposed to ship items within a week, I'm noticing shipping estimates of three or four weeks, and when I log in after a week has passed, I'm finding that the shipping date has been pushed back further.
That's more than just a little disappointing. E-commerce in general and Amazon.com in particular have succeeded by and large because of the convenience they present. When I first ordered from Amazon.com ten years ago, it was convenient knowing I could order a book and have it in a few days' time, for birthdays, Christmas or for my own pleasure. That assurance is gone now, and I'm learning to do my shopping elsewhere, either at Overstock.com, which is also cheaper than Amazon when it has the items in stock, or at the bookstores in my area, which while it might not have every book in the world in stock, still has a decent selection and has them for me to pick up right then and there. Best of all, when they don't, I know I can order it and have the book in my hand within a week.
With Amazon, I just can't count on that anymore. With three strikes in a row now, Amazon is out of the running where I'm concerned.
Quite frankly, I've noticed a significant decline in the service that Amazon.com provides its customers. In three separate orders this year, I've been beset with problems as Amazon keeps shifting the shipping date further and further back, with no explanation, even though all the items are listed as "ships within 24 hours." On the Super-Saver Shipping feature, which is supposed to ship items within a week, I'm noticing shipping estimates of three or four weeks, and when I log in after a week has passed, I'm finding that the shipping date has been pushed back further.
That's more than just a little disappointing. E-commerce in general and Amazon.com in particular have succeeded by and large because of the convenience they present. When I first ordered from Amazon.com ten years ago, it was convenient knowing I could order a book and have it in a few days' time, for birthdays, Christmas or for my own pleasure. That assurance is gone now, and I'm learning to do my shopping elsewhere, either at Overstock.com, which is also cheaper than Amazon when it has the items in stock, or at the bookstores in my area, which while it might not have every book in the world in stock, still has a decent selection and has them for me to pick up right then and there. Best of all, when they don't, I know I can order it and have the book in my hand within a week.
With Amazon, I just can't count on that anymore. With three strikes in a row now, Amazon is out of the running where I'm concerned.
Monday, June 13, 2005
family values
A couple weeks ago, I decided the time had come to leave CHRefugee, a Christian humor forum where I have hung my hat as a moderator and regular contributor for the last three or maybe even four years.
My reasons for doing so are largely personal, so I won't get into them here, but I can't help but notice an interesting chain of events that began about two months ago. At the time, another forum moderator was having some marital difficulties and his wife asked him to leave the forum as a sign of his commitment to doing whatever it would take to save their marriage.
Here's how things progressed:
- My friend's wife tells him he needs to leave the forum.
- Moved by his farewell post, I start reassessing my involvement in the forum, and then leave.
- Prompted by the departure of two other forum regulars, two other forum members, including a third moderator, each start re-evaluating the amount of time they put into the forum that could be spent on real-life relationships. One leaves the forum, and the other vastly scales back his Internet time.
- Frustrated by the sudden departure of three forum liberals and the forum's ensuing tilt to the Right, two more forum members begin mulling their own possible departures. Not clear if that's happened yet, but judging by her blog entry and stuff she's written to me, Indigo is really frustrated.
It's looking at though my friend's wife single-handedly has managed to destroy a forum that survived being displaced by About.com, some pretty heated political debates, a number of forum-rocking personal crises, and a wide range of beliefs within the Christian spectrum.
As a side note, I can't help but be amused by one aspect of this: The Right usually claims to be the guardians and embodiment of family values, but it's all the liberals who are leaving the forum to spend more time with their families.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
The gospels of Judith Christ
A friend of mine recently tipped me onto a new book making a stir with its assertion that Jesus Christ was a woman and not a man.
"Judith Christ of Nazareth: The Gospels of the Bible, Corrected to Reflect that Christ was a Woman" is a collection of the four canonical gospels with all references to Jesus changed to reflect this conceit. That's it. It's not a serious attempt at scholarship; it's a clever trick meant to make us examine our attitudes toward women, and that's about it.
I'd like to think most people think it's an interesting idea, contemplate it a bit and then move.
Unfortunately there are other people for whom moving on is impossible. To them it's not a tempest in a teapot, it's a shitshow in sackcloth.
Over at CHRefugee, which I visited recently to see if it really was getting as ridiculous as a friend said it was, people were gleefully pointing out that Judith is the feminine form of Judas, as though that proved something, and talking about the "translation" as though it were a heresy straight from hell.
The only fair criticism that I saw was that the Bible, when it uses a pronoun to refer to God, invariably settles on the masculine set, and there is no evidence that Jesus was actually a woman.
To the point of the book: What diffrence would it have made had if Jesus had come as a woman? Offhand I can't think of anything. God chose to work through a patriarchal society to reveal himself, but he uses some pretty blatant feminine imagery to describe himself at times. There's the prophetic utterance "Can a mother forget the child that nurses at her breast?" or Jesus' own statement, "Long have I longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings."
The Holy Spirit, one of the three persons of the Godhead, routinely is described with feminine imagery, describing God as a comforter and a nurturer. The Holy Spirit's name in Hebrew, Ruakh Khadesh, is even feminine. My personal favorite is one of the names the Tanakh uses to refer to God: "many-breasted One." (I think that's El Shaddai.)
So why Jesus and not Judith? I would hazard a guess it's because of the culture he was in, and no other reason.
When I directed the church's Passion play one year, I wanted to cast my close, personal friend Anne in the role of Christ because she was the best actor available. Anne loved the idea, but didn't see how we could pull it off with a one-time performance, since by the time people got used to a female Jesus, the play would be over, with no other performances coming up.
As the father of two girls, I wish the Bible had more fully developed female role models than just Esther and Ruth. That no doubt is because of the culture the Bible was written in, but it's a shame that we don't know more about women like Priscilla, Lydia or Dorcas, Deborah or even Jael. All I can say about Priscilla is that Paul thought highly of her, she was a woman apostle and a contender for author of Hebrews, and a few other little tidbits like that. That's a loss for all of us.
If this is going to drive people batty so much, I'm tempted to scour the Bible for other men who were really women in disguise.
The best example would have to be Jacob, the father of the Israelites. Remember how he was smooth-skinned, Rebekah loved him more than Esau, he was good in the kitchen and had a voice that was noticeably different from his brother's? As a woman, Jacob even needed someone else to help him get his wives pregnant.
It would be much easier today, with fertility technology, but at the time he had help from two of the household servants, whom the Bible calls "maidservants" in an attempt to perpetuate the fiction that Jacob was a man.
In the end, these over-the-top reactions underscore the message of the LBI Institute responsible for publishing these tales of Judith Christ. There's a lot of sexism and misogyny in the church aimed at women. It's inconsistent with the liberating message of the gospel and ultimately counter to the prevailing message of Scripture.
God sees it, and man is she pissed.
I'd like to think most people think it's an interesting idea, contemplate it a bit and then move.
Unfortunately there are other people for whom moving on is impossible. To them it's not a tempest in a teapot, it's a shitshow in sackcloth.
Over at CHRefugee, which I visited recently to see if it really was getting as ridiculous as a friend said it was, people were gleefully pointing out that Judith is the feminine form of Judas, as though that proved something, and talking about the "translation" as though it were a heresy straight from hell.
The only fair criticism that I saw was that the Bible, when it uses a pronoun to refer to God, invariably settles on the masculine set, and there is no evidence that Jesus was actually a woman.
To the point of the book: What diffrence would it have made had if Jesus had come as a woman? Offhand I can't think of anything. God chose to work through a patriarchal society to reveal himself, but he uses some pretty blatant feminine imagery to describe himself at times. There's the prophetic utterance "Can a mother forget the child that nurses at her breast?" or Jesus' own statement, "Long have I longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings."
The Holy Spirit, one of the three persons of the Godhead, routinely is described with feminine imagery, describing God as a comforter and a nurturer. The Holy Spirit's name in Hebrew, Ruakh Khadesh, is even feminine. My personal favorite is one of the names the Tanakh uses to refer to God: "many-breasted One." (I think that's El Shaddai.)
So why Jesus and not Judith? I would hazard a guess it's because of the culture he was in, and no other reason.
When I directed the church's Passion play one year, I wanted to cast my close, personal friend Anne in the role of Christ because she was the best actor available. Anne loved the idea, but didn't see how we could pull it off with a one-time performance, since by the time people got used to a female Jesus, the play would be over, with no other performances coming up.
As the father of two girls, I wish the Bible had more fully developed female role models than just Esther and Ruth. That no doubt is because of the culture the Bible was written in, but it's a shame that we don't know more about women like Priscilla, Lydia or Dorcas, Deborah or even Jael. All I can say about Priscilla is that Paul thought highly of her, she was a woman apostle and a contender for author of Hebrews, and a few other little tidbits like that. That's a loss for all of us.
If this is going to drive people batty so much, I'm tempted to scour the Bible for other men who were really women in disguise.
The best example would have to be Jacob, the father of the Israelites. Remember how he was smooth-skinned, Rebekah loved him more than Esau, he was good in the kitchen and had a voice that was noticeably different from his brother's? As a woman, Jacob even needed someone else to help him get his wives pregnant.
It would be much easier today, with fertility technology, but at the time he had help from two of the household servants, whom the Bible calls "maidservants" in an attempt to perpetuate the fiction that Jacob was a man.
In the end, these over-the-top reactions underscore the message of the LBI Institute responsible for publishing these tales of Judith Christ. There's a lot of sexism and misogyny in the church aimed at women. It's inconsistent with the liberating message of the gospel and ultimately counter to the prevailing message of Scripture.
God sees it, and man is she pissed.
Monday, June 06, 2005
sweet victory
Today I did what many dream of, but few ever accomplish: I beat the bureaucracy.
The cutoff date for kindergarten registration in our school district is Oct. 15. Children born after that are out of luck, and must wait another year to attend kindergarten. The same date holds true for children who are entering first grade. Since Evangeline's birthday is two weeks later, I have been assured by dozens of petty bureaucrats that she would be in kindergarten next year, despite having completed kindergarten in a homeschool setting.
Today I proved them wrong. I have lost track of how many people I've called, but they range from the guidance counselor at the Lord Stirling School, where she would have attended school, to an official in the state Department of Education. I read the riot act to administrators at the charter school, and I read it again to the administrators in the public school district, but I finally got my message through: She has completed kindergarten. There is no reason for her to repeat it.
They listened -- thank God, or bene swa l'etenal, as they say in Haiti -- they actually listened. I have a letter from the superintendent of schools in our district accepting her kindergarten experience as valid, which means that she qualifies for first grde.
She'll be the youngest child in her grade next year, I expect, but she'll be in the grade that she's ready for, and she probably will have had a better kindergarten experience than her classmates. She can read chapter books now, speak a little Spanish, and has read fairy tales from all over the world, as well as everything else we've done with her.
Thank God the fight is over. Thank God I won.
Now I just wish they didn't all hate me.
The charter school itself runs from kindergarten through eighth grade and relies on heavy parental involvement. It operates multigrade classrooms -- Evangeline's is kindergarten through second grade -- and it has a big emphasis on the arts. Students in the upper grades this year just did a movie in conjunction with a grant from Lucasfilm.
Essentially, the school combines the advantages of homeschooling, such as learning at your own pace, individualized curriculum and flexibility, with the economies of scale of public schooling, like having a larger support staff, greater resources and other children to interact with socially. I'm sure that it also creates problems unique to a charter school setting, but I don't know yet what those are.
A friend of mine whose son went to the charter school for a couple years tells me that the guiding philosophy of the school is humanistic, which really comes as no surprise to me. To be honest, as long as they teach the kids to think for themselves -- or if they don't encourage it but at least allow it -- I'll be happier with it than I would with a Christian school, which usually teaches a fair amount of arrogance and unquestioning accept-what-you're-told thinking.
I told Evangeline that she would be going there next year, but I don't think it's entirely sunk in. Still, when we visited the school a couple weeks ago for an arts show it had in the halls and we started to get a feel for just how great a deal this was going to be, she did ask if she could start going to school there the next day, which unfortunately was a Saturday, so the answer was no for two reasons.
In many ways, I'd like it if Evangeline could continue to homeschool, as she definitely has benefited from it this year. She's reading at a third-grade level, we think, writes well, and has pretty much mastered simple addition. She's about to tackle subtraction soon too.
We've studied botany, hurricanes, electrify and magnetism, and various on-the-spot things about inertia, Newton's laws of motion and other oddball science that comes to mind, plus the field trips we've taken to places of interest scientifically and historically.
She's learned a lot about the American Revolution, and has had a decent exposure to the Spanish language, and has received more advanced gymnastics and art training than she would have received in a public school kindergarten. Music is probably about the same.
All this was done without the benefit of an actual curriculum. If we had had the money to actually buy a copy of a used curriculum, I can only imagine what she would have learned.
Unfortunately, Evangeline hates being homeschooled. Absolutely hates it. She doesn't hate being with me, and she doesn't hate being with her sister. What she hates is not being with other kids her age. Evangeline attended preschool for two years at Somerset Presbyterian Preschool, and she loved that.
She thrived in the preschool setting, with the other children, and she thrives in the gymnastics and arts classes where she other children to interact with. She has complained on a regular basis that she would rather be with other children her age, sometimes quite vehemently.
And so we enrolled her in the charter school, and so I fought for her to be in a more appropriate grade, even though that grade marking largely will come into play only if we move at some point and have to transfer her records to another school someplace else.
It may be that partway through first grade, Evangeline will realize that she had it made in homeschool, and we'll have to discuss withdrawing her from the school for homeschooling in the second grade. I don't know. We'll have to see.
That she is going to the charter school for first grade, of course, does not mean that I am through teaching her. I am not. We're going to continue many of our activities, go on field trips and whatever else we can, particularly during holidays and the summer season. I wouldn't be surprised if we continue with some academic lessons after school ends. (I plan to continue stuff over the next three months while regular school is out, as it is, albeit with a fair amount of flexibility to allow for day-to-day summer activity.)
But that's all in the future. Today, we beat the system, and that's enough.
Copyright © 2005 by David Learn. Used with permission.
The cutoff date for kindergarten registration in our school district is Oct. 15. Children born after that are out of luck, and must wait another year to attend kindergarten. The same date holds true for children who are entering first grade. Since Evangeline's birthday is two weeks later, I have been assured by dozens of petty bureaucrats that she would be in kindergarten next year, despite having completed kindergarten in a homeschool setting.
Today I proved them wrong. I have lost track of how many people I've called, but they range from the guidance counselor at the Lord Stirling School, where she would have attended school, to an official in the state Department of Education. I read the riot act to administrators at the charter school, and I read it again to the administrators in the public school district, but I finally got my message through: She has completed kindergarten. There is no reason for her to repeat it.
They listened -- thank God, or bene swa l'etenal, as they say in Haiti -- they actually listened. I have a letter from the superintendent of schools in our district accepting her kindergarten experience as valid, which means that she qualifies for first grde.
She'll be the youngest child in her grade next year, I expect, but she'll be in the grade that she's ready for, and she probably will have had a better kindergarten experience than her classmates. She can read chapter books now, speak a little Spanish, and has read fairy tales from all over the world, as well as everything else we've done with her.
Thank God the fight is over. Thank God I won.
Now I just wish they didn't all hate me.
The charter school itself runs from kindergarten through eighth grade and relies on heavy parental involvement. It operates multigrade classrooms -- Evangeline's is kindergarten through second grade -- and it has a big emphasis on the arts. Students in the upper grades this year just did a movie in conjunction with a grant from Lucasfilm.
Essentially, the school combines the advantages of homeschooling, such as learning at your own pace, individualized curriculum and flexibility, with the economies of scale of public schooling, like having a larger support staff, greater resources and other children to interact with socially. I'm sure that it also creates problems unique to a charter school setting, but I don't know yet what those are.
A friend of mine whose son went to the charter school for a couple years tells me that the guiding philosophy of the school is humanistic, which really comes as no surprise to me. To be honest, as long as they teach the kids to think for themselves -- or if they don't encourage it but at least allow it -- I'll be happier with it than I would with a Christian school, which usually teaches a fair amount of arrogance and unquestioning accept-what-you're-told thinking.
I told Evangeline that she would be going there next year, but I don't think it's entirely sunk in. Still, when we visited the school a couple weeks ago for an arts show it had in the halls and we started to get a feel for just how great a deal this was going to be, she did ask if she could start going to school there the next day, which unfortunately was a Saturday, so the answer was no for two reasons.
In many ways, I'd like it if Evangeline could continue to homeschool, as she definitely has benefited from it this year. She's reading at a third-grade level, we think, writes well, and has pretty much mastered simple addition. She's about to tackle subtraction soon too.
We've studied botany, hurricanes, electrify and magnetism, and various on-the-spot things about inertia, Newton's laws of motion and other oddball science that comes to mind, plus the field trips we've taken to places of interest scientifically and historically.
She's learned a lot about the American Revolution, and has had a decent exposure to the Spanish language, and has received more advanced gymnastics and art training than she would have received in a public school kindergarten. Music is probably about the same.
All this was done without the benefit of an actual curriculum. If we had had the money to actually buy a copy of a used curriculum, I can only imagine what she would have learned.
Unfortunately, Evangeline hates being homeschooled. Absolutely hates it. She doesn't hate being with me, and she doesn't hate being with her sister. What she hates is not being with other kids her age. Evangeline attended preschool for two years at Somerset Presbyterian Preschool, and she loved that.
She thrived in the preschool setting, with the other children, and she thrives in the gymnastics and arts classes where she other children to interact with. She has complained on a regular basis that she would rather be with other children her age, sometimes quite vehemently.
And so we enrolled her in the charter school, and so I fought for her to be in a more appropriate grade, even though that grade marking largely will come into play only if we move at some point and have to transfer her records to another school someplace else.
It may be that partway through first grade, Evangeline will realize that she had it made in homeschool, and we'll have to discuss withdrawing her from the school for homeschooling in the second grade. I don't know. We'll have to see.
That she is going to the charter school for first grade, of course, does not mean that I am through teaching her. I am not. We're going to continue many of our activities, go on field trips and whatever else we can, particularly during holidays and the summer season. I wouldn't be surprised if we continue with some academic lessons after school ends. (I plan to continue stuff over the next three months while regular school is out, as it is, albeit with a fair amount of flexibility to allow for day-to-day summer activity.)
But that's all in the future. Today, we beat the system, and that's enough.
Copyright © 2005 by David Learn. Used with permission.
deep throat
I was excited yet oddly disappointed to learn the identity of Deep Throat this past week.
The enduring mystery of who provided Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein the information that established them and the Washington Post forever in the journalism hall of fame has been the best, most enduring part of the whole Watergate scandal for the past 30 years. The mystique of having a mysterious insider into an administration or a story adds spice to news coverage, and the power of the press, as demonstrated in Nixon's eventual resignation, is what inspired community journalists like me to look for signs of nefarious evil-doing in the choice of roads to pave and the allocation of money to buy laptop computers for the elementary school.
And now that we have a name to put on the mystery, Deep Throat is no longer as compelling and absorbing a figure as he used to be. Rather than a dark, shadowy figure in the parking garage, Deep Throat was nothing more than the second-in-command of the FBI. He has a name, a face, possibly inglorious motives, and the whole nine yards.
"Deep Throat" has diminished. Bob Woodward has diminished. Journalism itself has diminished.
It's possible -- just possible, mind you -- that the decision to pave Valley Road may have been legitimate after all.
Friday, May 27, 2005
now that's a prayer meeting
Last night I was at a Bible study where we've been reading a bookabout prayer. In addition to a few of us trashing the book for itssimplistic views -- namely, the "Do these things to pray better" or"Six points for a more sucessful prayer life" approach that seems tobe so prevalent in Christian writing -- we set aside about 30 to 40minutes at the end of the meeting to pray for other people and groups.
Anyway, at one point I shared how it's bothered me that much of the church culture has been infused with nationalism, most visibly where the war in Iraq has been concerned. I knew one fellow back at the time of the invasion who was praying that God would destroy the Iraqi army utterly, and couldn't understand why other Christians felt squeamishor uneasy about such prayers.
So I suggested we pray for the Iraqi church. Under Saddam Hussein, they were allowed to worship freely, they could own businesses andthere was generally a spirit of some religious tolerance. With the nation now lurching toward an extreme version of Islamic fundamentalism, much of that tolerance is disappearing. Christian businesses have been targeted, Iraqi believers have been persecuted and in some cases martyred, and it'll just get worse if the new Iraqi government heads in the direction of adopting sharia as the basis orsource of its law. (And as I pointed out, it's quite likely that some of these Iraqi Christians were asking God very fervently to spare their country the turmoil that would result from an invasion. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were praying that God wouldsmash our armies, a couple years ago.)
We spent about 15 or 20 minutes praying for the Iraqi church, not for their safety, which is so often the cop-out that we Americans ask for, as if the illusory "safety" will last or give us what matters, but for the grace and courage they need to overcome their situations and draw their neighbors to Christ. We prayed for the martyrs' sacrifice to bring a revival to Iraq.
We also prayed for the terrorists, both the insurgents in Iraq and its neighboring countries, and for those who belong to groups like al Qaeda. We prayed not only that God would thwart their plans and throw them into confusion, but that he would bring them to repentance and forgiveness. Christ is a God who rejoices in setting people free, after all.
I wish I could attend prayer meetings like that more often.
Tangent: The more I think about this war in Iraq and the lines of thought it has begun in me, the more the whole notion of a "just war" seems odious. And yet, the thing that makes it more complicated is that God gives governments the authority of the sword, so that they are allowed to go to war withone another. I don't think it's ever a Good Thing -- I once read a paper that addressed the issue through graded absolutism; i.e., war ishateful to God, but some things are even more hateful -- but how can we, finite as we are, ever hope to see the grand scheme of things and whether a war is justifiable or not?
It reminds me on the one hand that this is undoubtedly a matter of personal conviction, but at the same time, it strikes me as a dichotomy between the actions of the kingdoms of this world, and the Kingdom of God. The war in Iraq is a conflict between the United States and Iraq (or the insurgents, whomever they represent). It's not, and never should be viewed as, a war between God's people and others who are not God's people. God has children in both countries, and plenty of other people who are calling themselves his children during the conflict but have nothing to do with him.
There's probably some pithy way to sum this up, but I can't think of one. It'll come to me in a few weeks.
Anyway, at one point I shared how it's bothered me that much of the church culture has been infused with nationalism, most visibly where the war in Iraq has been concerned. I knew one fellow back at the time of the invasion who was praying that God would destroy the Iraqi army utterly, and couldn't understand why other Christians felt squeamishor uneasy about such prayers.
So I suggested we pray for the Iraqi church. Under Saddam Hussein, they were allowed to worship freely, they could own businesses andthere was generally a spirit of some religious tolerance. With the nation now lurching toward an extreme version of Islamic fundamentalism, much of that tolerance is disappearing. Christian businesses have been targeted, Iraqi believers have been persecuted and in some cases martyred, and it'll just get worse if the new Iraqi government heads in the direction of adopting sharia as the basis orsource of its law. (And as I pointed out, it's quite likely that some of these Iraqi Christians were asking God very fervently to spare their country the turmoil that would result from an invasion. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were praying that God wouldsmash our armies, a couple years ago.)
We spent about 15 or 20 minutes praying for the Iraqi church, not for their safety, which is so often the cop-out that we Americans ask for, as if the illusory "safety" will last or give us what matters, but for the grace and courage they need to overcome their situations and draw their neighbors to Christ. We prayed for the martyrs' sacrifice to bring a revival to Iraq.
We also prayed for the terrorists, both the insurgents in Iraq and its neighboring countries, and for those who belong to groups like al Qaeda. We prayed not only that God would thwart their plans and throw them into confusion, but that he would bring them to repentance and forgiveness. Christ is a God who rejoices in setting people free, after all.
I wish I could attend prayer meetings like that more often.
Tangent: The more I think about this war in Iraq and the lines of thought it has begun in me, the more the whole notion of a "just war" seems odious. And yet, the thing that makes it more complicated is that God gives governments the authority of the sword, so that they are allowed to go to war withone another. I don't think it's ever a Good Thing -- I once read a paper that addressed the issue through graded absolutism; i.e., war ishateful to God, but some things are even more hateful -- but how can we, finite as we are, ever hope to see the grand scheme of things and whether a war is justifiable or not?
It reminds me on the one hand that this is undoubtedly a matter of personal conviction, but at the same time, it strikes me as a dichotomy between the actions of the kingdoms of this world, and the Kingdom of God. The war in Iraq is a conflict between the United States and Iraq (or the insurgents, whomever they represent). It's not, and never should be viewed as, a war between God's people and others who are not God's people. God has children in both countries, and plenty of other people who are calling themselves his children during the conflict but have nothing to do with him.
There's probably some pithy way to sum this up, but I can't think of one. It'll come to me in a few weeks.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
church and state redux
According to the New York Times, the pastor of the Waynesville, N.C., Baptist church who kicked out members for not voting for Bush last November, has resigned. Frankly, his resignation is probably the best solution to the whole mess.
Healing, if it happens, will be a long time in coming. It wasn't just the pastor who booted them -- those nine members were voted out, which means that even if the poison originated with the pastor, it wasn't limited to him. The article I read indicated the pastor needed a major police escort when he left the church, and also indicted he expressed no remorse for what he had done, only that it had worked out this way.
I just find it appalling when ANY Christian leader abuses leadership and authority like this, whether on the Left or the Right politically, or on some other minor issue. (And yes, compared to the Deity of Christ or other key doctrines, I would consider abortion to be a minor issue.)
Ugh. The whole thing leaves a dirty taste in my mouth
Healing, if it happens, will be a long time in coming. It wasn't just the pastor who booted them -- those nine members were voted out, which means that even if the poison originated with the pastor, it wasn't limited to him. The article I read indicated the pastor needed a major police escort when he left the church, and also indicted he expressed no remorse for what he had done, only that it had worked out this way.
I just find it appalling when ANY Christian leader abuses leadership and authority like this, whether on the Left or the Right politically, or on some other minor issue. (And yes, compared to the Deity of Christ or other key doctrines, I would consider abortion to be a minor issue.)
Ugh. The whole thing leaves a dirty taste in my mouth
bursitis
Worst part of pre-patella bursitis:
Vote in the poll!
I've been in worse shape -- the times I had amebic dysentery, and dengue fever spring to mind -- but to tell the truth, I feel fairly rotten.
We took the girls up to Morristown National Park on Sunday to see the Revolutionary War encampments at Jocky Hollow and to see the Wick house, where Tempe Wick lived. (There's a neat story about Tempe that Evangeline recently read as part of our study on the Revolution, and she's been begging to go see the house ever since she realized that it was a real place.)
My best guess is that I put some undue stress on my right knee when I carried Evangeline up a fairly steep hill to the (presumably rebuilt) cabins used by the Pennsylvania Line soldiers. Sunday evening my knee was becoming fairly uncomfortable, and around 4 a.m. Monday, it hurt so much that it woke me up. By morningtime, it was visibly swollen, red, and warm to the touch.
I ended up going to the doctor that afternoon, and he concerned enough he sent me to the emergency room with the warning that I might be there overnight, or longer. It turns out he was concerned they might have to operate on my knee.
Luckily, and I use the term with a measure of irony, all that happened is they drained some of the fluid from the joint to perform a culture, gave me an antibiotic IV drip and left me shivering in that stupid gown for about two hours until I reminded them that I would really, really like a blanket. (It took another two hours before I got them to understand that I really, really had to pee.)
The long and short of it is that I have bursitis, and am taking Keflex to kill the infection. I've developed a slight fever, have sore spots from the crutches and my knee is in steady pain. I'm also tired all the time, which is ironic, because I don't feel "sick," if you know what I mean.
Luckily, and this time I use the term with a smaller measure of irony, my mother came up today, with plans to stay for the next week since I'm unable to drive comfortably, even if I take my knee out of the leg brace.
The worst part has been that my girls are fascinated with the leg brace and have tried to play with it and with my leg. Ruth sat on my knee twice yesterday, and Evangeline unwittingly kicked in a few times. Today, Ruth kept trying to climb all over me, so I switched sofas. She immediately complained: "No, daddy, I want to climb down your leg!"
Sigh.
Still, it's nice to know that I have friends. Because Natasha was unable to pick me up at the hospital, she asked a friend if he could, and although the hour was late, he was more than happy to do it. Tonight he called just to ask how I was feeling.
I made up a list of reasons psoriasis was a good thing to have, a while ago. Now I'm trying to come up with a similar list of reasons to have bursitis. There has to be something good about it, although it is hard to appreciate when your knee looks big and round enought to be the grapefruit on someone's breakfast table.
- Having a knee swollen to the size of a grapefruit
- Spending six hours at the hospital, in one of those designer gowns
- Having a doctor jab your swollen and tender knee joint to drain fluid
- Getting highly irritated underarms from using crutches
- Wearing a leg immobilizer
- Children who complain that you cry when they sit on your affected knee
- Inability to help rebuild Temple in Jerusalem
I've been in worse shape -- the times I had amebic dysentery, and dengue fever spring to mind -- but to tell the truth, I feel fairly rotten.
We took the girls up to Morristown National Park on Sunday to see the Revolutionary War encampments at Jocky Hollow and to see the Wick house, where Tempe Wick lived. (There's a neat story about Tempe that Evangeline recently read as part of our study on the Revolution, and she's been begging to go see the house ever since she realized that it was a real place.)
My best guess is that I put some undue stress on my right knee when I carried Evangeline up a fairly steep hill to the (presumably rebuilt) cabins used by the Pennsylvania Line soldiers. Sunday evening my knee was becoming fairly uncomfortable, and around 4 a.m. Monday, it hurt so much that it woke me up. By morningtime, it was visibly swollen, red, and warm to the touch.
I ended up going to the doctor that afternoon, and he concerned enough he sent me to the emergency room with the warning that I might be there overnight, or longer. It turns out he was concerned they might have to operate on my knee.
Luckily, and I use the term with a measure of irony, all that happened is they drained some of the fluid from the joint to perform a culture, gave me an antibiotic IV drip and left me shivering in that stupid gown for about two hours until I reminded them that I would really, really like a blanket. (It took another two hours before I got them to understand that I really, really had to pee.)
The long and short of it is that I have bursitis, and am taking Keflex to kill the infection. I've developed a slight fever, have sore spots from the crutches and my knee is in steady pain. I'm also tired all the time, which is ironic, because I don't feel "sick," if you know what I mean.
Luckily, and this time I use the term with a smaller measure of irony, my mother came up today, with plans to stay for the next week since I'm unable to drive comfortably, even if I take my knee out of the leg brace.
The worst part has been that my girls are fascinated with the leg brace and have tried to play with it and with my leg. Ruth sat on my knee twice yesterday, and Evangeline unwittingly kicked in a few times. Today, Ruth kept trying to climb all over me, so I switched sofas. She immediately complained: "No, daddy, I want to climb down your leg!"
Sigh.
Still, it's nice to know that I have friends. Because Natasha was unable to pick me up at the hospital, she asked a friend if he could, and although the hour was late, he was more than happy to do it. Tonight he called just to ask how I was feeling.
I made up a list of reasons psoriasis was a good thing to have, a while ago. Now I'm trying to come up with a similar list of reasons to have bursitis. There has to be something good about it, although it is hard to appreciate when your knee looks big and round enought to be the grapefruit on someone's breakfast table.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
church and state
In Waynesville, N.C., the pastor of East Waynesville Baptist Church has kicked out nine members for not voting for President Bush. That's hideously over the top. I hope the IRS revokes the church's tax-exempt status.
A story on CNN indicates that the ousted members are considering a lawsuit. Also inappropriate. What is it they want, to be reinstated as members? I'd pass. Returning to a church with an atmosphere as poisonous as that church's surely has become, is just foolish.
How on earth did we ever get to this point, that we feel we have the right to define the dictates of other Christians' consciences? This may be more egregious than most, but it's hardly an isolated attitude. I've run into many Christians who looked down their nose at me for voting for Kerry, as I'm sure you have too.
It's a sad day for the Church when we get more concerned with the kingdoms of this world than with the kingdom of the next.
A story on CNN indicates that the ousted members are considering a lawsuit. Also inappropriate. What is it they want, to be reinstated as members? I'd pass. Returning to a church with an atmosphere as poisonous as that church's surely has become, is just foolish.
How on earth did we ever get to this point, that we feel we have the right to define the dictates of other Christians' consciences? This may be more egregious than most, but it's hardly an isolated attitude. I've run into many Christians who looked down their nose at me for voting for Kerry, as I'm sure you have too.
It's a sad day for the Church when we get more concerned with the kingdoms of this world than with the kingdom of the next.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
kevin smith's 'quiver'
You know, I've never been a tremendous fan of Green Arrow.
As superheroes go, he's not particularly remarkable. Oliver Queen is another billionaire playboy industrialist -- like Tony Stark, like Bruce Wayne, like Daniel Rand and like Marc Specter, to name a few -- who uses his fortune to finance a career of vigilantism. His schtick is that he's a peerless archer, a modern-day Robin Hood.
Queen has no superpowers, but because of his money he can buy trick arrows, like Hawkeye. Because he's in the DC Universe, Green Arrow usually associates with the Justice League, although I have vague memories from when I was younger of a title that he headlined specifically with Green Lantern.
I've been reading the collection of Kevin Smith's "Quiver," and it's enough to spark my interest in the character.
For starters, he is easily the most radically liberal superhero I can think of. He is the only superhero whom I can picture actually calling the police fascists, chewing out the City Council for closing a youth center, and even telling off Aquaman for having elitist royal attitudes.
But beyond that, this comic is just a solid introduction to the character and his history.
Oliver Queen died after the events of "Zero Hour," a 1994 DC companywide event that grew out of the death of Superman two years earlier. Superman's death was followed within a year by the appearance of four separate heroes each of whom might be a resurrected Superman. One turned out to be Kon El, his clone; the second, John Henry Irons, the superhero Steel; the third, Superman with a mullet; and the fourth, the supervillain Cyborg.
During this period of four Supermen, Cyborg destroyed Coast City, where Green Lantern lived in his civilian capacity as Hal Jordan. Driven insane with grief, Jordan tried to use his power ring to remake the universe so that Coast City was restored. In the end, it was Oliver Queen who killed his friend.
Queen himself died not long after on another adventure, and into his shoes stepped his son Connor Hawke, himself a skilled archer but one who did not use gimmicks like boxing glove arrows.
The mystery of "Quiver" is why Oliver Queen is alive again, and to an extent whether he even really is Oliver Queen. He has no memory of Coast City's destruction, cannot believe that Hal Jordan is dead, and is stumped when he first sees a cell phone. "What, do you think you're Batman?" is essentially his reponse.
It's this search for an explanation that drives the comic, and the reactions other members of the Justice League have to his unexpected return that make it interesting. Batman not only is suspicious of Queen's apparent resurrection, he provides some of the most cutting commentary about how derivative a character Green Arrow is, down to the Arrowcave and Arrowmobile, and even Arrowmobile.
The comic's momentum falters as the explanation for Queen's return begins to emerge, though it recovers as the story works toward its conclusion. It's a fun read, but it does beg the question: Is it really necessary to bring a hero back from the dead?
One of the things I've liked about D.C. Comics is that they haven't been pulling these penny-a-piece resurrections, except with Superman. The roster of dead superheroes, and the succession of their sidekicks and namesakes, has given the DC Universe a sense of history that Marvel lacks. Not only was Oliver Queen dead and someone else assuming the mantle of Green Arrow, there was a new Green Lantern in the Justice League after Hal Jordan's death, and a new Flash as well.
No one seriously expects members of the Fantastic Four to perish in the line of duty, or the Avengers; and if a hero does die, you know they'll be back soon enough. Even the villains recover from death. The Green Goblin had been dead for more than 20 years before he came back at the end of Marvel's ill-advised Clone Saga. That makes the menace of death much lower and the theatrics of superheroics much cheaper. There's no risk to what they do.
But in DC Comics, the death of Oliver Queen until now meant that there were real stakes for Connor Hawke's efforts with the Justice League. The fact that Kyle Rainer was the most recent and last of the Green Lanterns told him that he had reason to be afraid. Jay Garrick was still alive and powered as the Flash, but he was also in his 60s or early 70s. Wally West knows not only that Barry Allen died saving the universe, but that as the Flash he's responsible for a legacy that goes back before he was born.
Bringing heroes back from the dead cheapens their sacrifice, and erodes that sense of a grand and proud history. Kevin Smith has taught me to appreciate Queen as a character, but not that he was worth bringing back from the dead.
Copyright © 2005 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Queen has no superpowers, but because of his money he can buy trick arrows, like Hawkeye. Because he's in the DC Universe, Green Arrow usually associates with the Justice League, although I have vague memories from when I was younger of a title that he headlined specifically with Green Lantern.
I've been reading the collection of Kevin Smith's "Quiver," and it's enough to spark my interest in the character.
For starters, he is easily the most radically liberal superhero I can think of. He is the only superhero whom I can picture actually calling the police fascists, chewing out the City Council for closing a youth center, and even telling off Aquaman for having elitist royal attitudes.
But beyond that, this comic is just a solid introduction to the character and his history.
Oliver Queen died after the events of "Zero Hour," a 1994 DC companywide event that grew out of the death of Superman two years earlier. Superman's death was followed within a year by the appearance of four separate heroes each of whom might be a resurrected Superman. One turned out to be Kon El, his clone; the second, John Henry Irons, the superhero Steel; the third, Superman with a mullet; and the fourth, the supervillain Cyborg.
During this period of four Supermen, Cyborg destroyed Coast City, where Green Lantern lived in his civilian capacity as Hal Jordan. Driven insane with grief, Jordan tried to use his power ring to remake the universe so that Coast City was restored. In the end, it was Oliver Queen who killed his friend.
Queen himself died not long after on another adventure, and into his shoes stepped his son Connor Hawke, himself a skilled archer but one who did not use gimmicks like boxing glove arrows.
The mystery of "Quiver" is why Oliver Queen is alive again, and to an extent whether he even really is Oliver Queen. He has no memory of Coast City's destruction, cannot believe that Hal Jordan is dead, and is stumped when he first sees a cell phone. "What, do you think you're Batman?" is essentially his reponse.
It's this search for an explanation that drives the comic, and the reactions other members of the Justice League have to his unexpected return that make it interesting. Batman not only is suspicious of Queen's apparent resurrection, he provides some of the most cutting commentary about how derivative a character Green Arrow is, down to the Arrowcave and Arrowmobile, and even Arrowmobile.
The comic's momentum falters as the explanation for Queen's return begins to emerge, though it recovers as the story works toward its conclusion. It's a fun read, but it does beg the question: Is it really necessary to bring a hero back from the dead?
One of the things I've liked about D.C. Comics is that they haven't been pulling these penny-a-piece resurrections, except with Superman. The roster of dead superheroes, and the succession of their sidekicks and namesakes, has given the DC Universe a sense of history that Marvel lacks. Not only was Oliver Queen dead and someone else assuming the mantle of Green Arrow, there was a new Green Lantern in the Justice League after Hal Jordan's death, and a new Flash as well.
No one seriously expects members of the Fantastic Four to perish in the line of duty, or the Avengers; and if a hero does die, you know they'll be back soon enough. Even the villains recover from death. The Green Goblin had been dead for more than 20 years before he came back at the end of Marvel's ill-advised Clone Saga. That makes the menace of death much lower and the theatrics of superheroics much cheaper. There's no risk to what they do.
But in DC Comics, the death of Oliver Queen until now meant that there were real stakes for Connor Hawke's efforts with the Justice League. The fact that Kyle Rainer was the most recent and last of the Green Lanterns told him that he had reason to be afraid. Jay Garrick was still alive and powered as the Flash, but he was also in his 60s or early 70s. Wally West knows not only that Barry Allen died saving the universe, but that as the Flash he's responsible for a legacy that goes back before he was born.
Bringing heroes back from the dead cheapens their sacrifice, and erodes that sense of a grand and proud history. Kevin Smith has taught me to appreciate Queen as a character, but not that he was worth bringing back from the dead.
Copyright © 2005 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Saturday, April 30, 2005
Of course, you should always blame the media
When all else fails, blame it on the media. Surely it's that the liberal media has it in for the pro-life movement and hates crisis pregnancy centers. There can't be any other explanation for why the silent work of crisis-pregnancy centers doesn't get more coverage, can there?
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we believe that the news media won't make any effort to present our story, we don't spend any effort reaching out to the media and giving them a story that they'll run with. So the news media doesn't report anything positive about crisis pregnancy centers, thereby proving that they are in bed with pro-choice activists.
Media outlets love heartwarming stories about people helping other people in need. That's a big part of liberalism, don'cha know?
Forget the rhetoric, take the time to develop a serious media campaign, and spend the money it would take to implement it properly, and pro-life groups will find they're getting more coverage of their activities.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm not just a liberal journalist. Let's pretend that I'm also a pro-choice liberal journalist. Chances are that I'm going to be one of those who just takes abortion as a for-granted position, and it's not an obsession for me at all, any more than auto insurance reform.
Every time I run into someone who is strongly pro-life, they rant and rave about how Planned Parenthood is killing babies, how the media are deliberately covering up the dangers of legal abortion to protect their allies in the abortion industry, and how we always go for the sensational stories that make pro-lifers look like idiots and ignore the things they quietly do to help pregnant women.
Every now and then I'll encounter other wackos who automatically assume that I'm going to hell and publicly call on people to pray for my soul, without even stopping to find out anything about my spiritual state.
That's a fairly rude way to treat someone. It irritates the real me, who has been pro-life since his teen years. I can only imagine how much worse it would go over with a pro-choice me.
This isn't just about publicity and marketing. A lot of it is about plain old-fashioned manners.
Want coverage of other aspects of the pro-life movement than the loudmouths at demonstrations and protests? Then find some way to make "business as usual" sound compelling. It's not that hard -- there are literally thousands of public relations firms that do just that for their clients, every day.
Get the local Birthright or some other pro-life group to hire me, and I guarantee I will start getting them into the newspaper, and not just little three-inch press releases, either. Most advertising money is money poured down the drain, anyway.
I can't begin to tell you how many times as a reporter and as an editor small-business owners called us up to let us know about what was going on, or just loved it when we used their business for a news story. Nonprofits loved it too -- it always drove up the giving and got their message out to the community.
Conservatives and churches have bandied about the term "liberal media" so much that they've created a divide that doesn't have to be there. Groups that could benefit tremendously from the news media just don't think about it because they've been told so many times that the media have it in for them that they believe it. And so, rather than being in the world but not of it, we withdraw further from it, and create our own media to broadcast our message loud and clear to people who already know it by heart.
It is within our ability to get the right horns tooted, but to do that we need to take the initiative to do it, and make a better effort to get along with the people who work in the news media. Complaining that it's not our fault doesn't accomplish either of those purposes.
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we believe that the news media won't make any effort to present our story, we don't spend any effort reaching out to the media and giving them a story that they'll run with. So the news media doesn't report anything positive about crisis pregnancy centers, thereby proving that they are in bed with pro-choice activists.
Media outlets love heartwarming stories about people helping other people in need. That's a big part of liberalism, don'cha know?
Forget the rhetoric, take the time to develop a serious media campaign, and spend the money it would take to implement it properly, and pro-life groups will find they're getting more coverage of their activities.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm not just a liberal journalist. Let's pretend that I'm also a pro-choice liberal journalist. Chances are that I'm going to be one of those who just takes abortion as a for-granted position, and it's not an obsession for me at all, any more than auto insurance reform.
Every time I run into someone who is strongly pro-life, they rant and rave about how Planned Parenthood is killing babies, how the media are deliberately covering up the dangers of legal abortion to protect their allies in the abortion industry, and how we always go for the sensational stories that make pro-lifers look like idiots and ignore the things they quietly do to help pregnant women.
Every now and then I'll encounter other wackos who automatically assume that I'm going to hell and publicly call on people to pray for my soul, without even stopping to find out anything about my spiritual state.
That's a fairly rude way to treat someone. It irritates the real me, who has been pro-life since his teen years. I can only imagine how much worse it would go over with a pro-choice me.
This isn't just about publicity and marketing. A lot of it is about plain old-fashioned manners.
Want coverage of other aspects of the pro-life movement than the loudmouths at demonstrations and protests? Then find some way to make "business as usual" sound compelling. It's not that hard -- there are literally thousands of public relations firms that do just that for their clients, every day.
Get the local Birthright or some other pro-life group to hire me, and I guarantee I will start getting them into the newspaper, and not just little three-inch press releases, either. Most advertising money is money poured down the drain, anyway.
I can't begin to tell you how many times as a reporter and as an editor small-business owners called us up to let us know about what was going on, or just loved it when we used their business for a news story. Nonprofits loved it too -- it always drove up the giving and got their message out to the community.
Conservatives and churches have bandied about the term "liberal media" so much that they've created a divide that doesn't have to be there. Groups that could benefit tremendously from the news media just don't think about it because they've been told so many times that the media have it in for them that they believe it. And so, rather than being in the world but not of it, we withdraw further from it, and create our own media to broadcast our message loud and clear to people who already know it by heart.
It is within our ability to get the right horns tooted, but to do that we need to take the initiative to do it, and make a better effort to get along with the people who work in the news media. Complaining that it's not our fault doesn't accomplish either of those purposes.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
pro-adoption
One thing the muckraker in me has always wanted to do is to try to organize an adoption awareness event, and ask Planned Parenthood or some other pro-choice group to help support the event.
And then when they refused, I would have a field day with their commitment to choice not extending to choices that don't involve abortion.
Fortunately for everyone, the muckraker in me long has been underfed and reined tightly in by those dirty old ethics of mine. Setting someone up for a fall is just low, and I couldn't do it, even to a group that supports abortion on demand.
But it is an entertaining thought.
And then when they refused, I would have a field day with their commitment to choice not extending to choices that don't involve abortion.
Fortunately for everyone, the muckraker in me long has been underfed and reined tightly in by those dirty old ethics of mine. Setting someone up for a fall is just low, and I couldn't do it, even to a group that supports abortion on demand.
But it is an entertaining thought.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
plugging away at enrollment
I spoke to the superintendent's office today, and got the impression that they don't have a clue what they're doing, but I wrote down the name of the person I spoke to and what she said so I can use it later on, if it comes down to that. She had said that they have no problem with Evangeline entering first grade if she's already covered the kindergarten material. (Ha! This 5-year-old whizzed through addition and subtraction flash cards earlier today. In kindergarten, you only need to know your numbers.)
I'm calling the state Department of Education later today, I hope, to see if I can get info on exactly which statutes cover homeschooling and transfer into public schools.
I'm probably putting more effort into this than I need to, since the charter school is multi-grade level and they'll test Evangeline before the start of school to establish her baseline, but I'm still concerned about her being filed as K and having to spend an extra year in school if we end up staying in public schools for the rest of her education. (Like I said earlier, I'd rather homeschool her all 12 years, if possible, but we don't all agree on that as a family.)
I'm calling the state Department of Education later today, I hope, to see if I can get info on exactly which statutes cover homeschooling and transfer into public schools.
I'm probably putting more effort into this than I need to, since the charter school is multi-grade level and they'll test Evangeline before the start of school to establish her baseline, but I'm still concerned about her being filed as K and having to spend an extra year in school if we end up staying in public schools for the rest of her education. (Like I said earlier, I'd rather homeschool her all 12 years, if possible, but we don't all agree on that as a family.)
Sunday, April 24, 2005
sanity saver
We've found it very useful to have the rule that the same videotape or DVD may not be watched more than once in the same day. We've had that rule since Evangeline was born, long before she discovered the TV, and it's been a great rule for preserving sanity in the house.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
A Big Idea Come and Gone
Remember when VeggieTales was actually funny?
The brain child of Phil Vischer, VeggieTales is a computer-animated show about talking vegetables, like Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber, and a few others, including a family of carrots, some grapes and a bunch of asparagus spears. It's goofy, in an off-beat and creative way; billing itself as "Sunday-morning values and Saturday morning fun" as it marketed itself toward a primarily Christian market.
Unfortunately, VeggieTales series went downhill since about a year before they did "Jonah," their feature-length adaptation of the book of Jonah, and has never made it back up. Their latest offerings like "Larry Boy and the Rumor Weed" and "The Wonderful World of Auto-Tainment!" -- not to mention "Larry Boy and the Angry Eyebrows" or "Duke and the Great Pie War" -- show signs of being rushed through production in order to make a quick buck.
These are videos that either needed more work, or that never should have been considered. The lessons are still there, but they're expressed too forcefully, the story is belabored and stilted, and the humor is forced. These are tapes and DVDs that were not worth buying. In the case of "Auto-Tainment," we actually wrote to Big Idea to say how awful it was.
It's a shame, because the company was producing some high-quality stuff for a while, like "Larry Boy and the Fib from Outer Space" and "Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen." Subpar videos cheapen the brand.
We have three episodes on DVD of their 3-2-1 Penguins series, but I have to say that I haven't been very impressed with that series as a whole. They're more sophisticated than the more recent Veggie Tales offerings, but even so, they're just not engaging. The series has a science fiction motif, but the lessons are more typical of Sunday school fare than what we were accustomed to with VeggieTales: the story is subordinated to making a point, rather than telling a good story and letting the moral come out.
Evangeline has asked a couple times to watch them, and it's better than some of the stuff she could be asking to watch, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.
But I'm still really disappointed at the turn this show has taken.
Unfortunately, VeggieTales series went downhill since about a year before they did "Jonah," their feature-length adaptation of the book of Jonah, and has never made it back up. Their latest offerings like "Larry Boy and the Rumor Weed" and "The Wonderful World of Auto-Tainment!" -- not to mention "Larry Boy and the Angry Eyebrows" or "Duke and the Great Pie War" -- show signs of being rushed through production in order to make a quick buck.
These are videos that either needed more work, or that never should have been considered. The lessons are still there, but they're expressed too forcefully, the story is belabored and stilted, and the humor is forced. These are tapes and DVDs that were not worth buying. In the case of "Auto-Tainment," we actually wrote to Big Idea to say how awful it was.
It's a shame, because the company was producing some high-quality stuff for a while, like "Larry Boy and the Fib from Outer Space" and "Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen." Subpar videos cheapen the brand.
We have three episodes on DVD of their 3-2-1 Penguins series, but I have to say that I haven't been very impressed with that series as a whole. They're more sophisticated than the more recent Veggie Tales offerings, but even so, they're just not engaging. The series has a science fiction motif, but the lessons are more typical of Sunday school fare than what we were accustomed to with VeggieTales: the story is subordinated to making a point, rather than telling a good story and letting the moral come out.
Evangeline has asked a couple times to watch them, and it's better than some of the stuff she could be asking to watch, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.
But I'm still really disappointed at the turn this show has taken.
Friday, April 22, 2005
school bureaucrats
My wife and I are going to put our daughter into a charter school for first grade, but we're currently amid a minor bureaucratic struggle to get her past year of schooling to count for kindergarten. (She missed the cutoff date in our school district by two weeks, which is what initially decided us in favor of homeschooling.)
Well, according to a letter I received today from the superintendent of schools, Evangeline is allowed to enter first grade -- as long as we can provide "the appropriate certification regarding the program that [she] has completed." Well, duh. It's a homeschool, innit?
We didn't use a curriculum for kindergarten, since there are no state core curriculum requirements for it and it isn't even mandatory for a child to attend kindergarten in Iowa. I've got a list of all the books Evangeline has read herself or had read to her, records of the classes we enrolled her in outside the home, and a nice portfolio of some of the projects she's worked on here at home, albeit rather few worksheets.
Can anyone recommend resources, people or organizations that can help us with this? I haven't wanted to put her into public school at all since we found out we were expecting, but this is the route we've decided on as a family, and I hate for a bureaucrat to tell us we can't do it because they don't like homeschooling.
Well, according to a letter I received today from the superintendent of schools, Evangeline is allowed to enter first grade -- as long as we can provide "the appropriate certification regarding the program that [she] has completed." Well, duh. It's a homeschool, innit?
We didn't use a curriculum for kindergarten, since there are no state core curriculum requirements for it and it isn't even mandatory for a child to attend kindergarten in Iowa. I've got a list of all the books Evangeline has read herself or had read to her, records of the classes we enrolled her in outside the home, and a nice portfolio of some of the projects she's worked on here at home, albeit rather few worksheets.
Can anyone recommend resources, people or organizations that can help us with this? I haven't wanted to put her into public school at all since we found out we were expecting, but this is the route we've decided on as a family, and I hate for a bureaucrat to tell us we can't do it because they don't like homeschooling.
inerrancy
What exactly do we mean by biblical inerrancy? At what point do we say "This can't be metaphorical" or "This has to be exactly how it happened," before the whole thing collapses like a house of cards?
On the forum we've talked before about whether Jonah was an historical story, or just a parable, and I think only one guy said "Absolutely, it's historical." The rest of us hedged our bets and said, "Well, it could be, but it isn't necessarily." We've had similar talks regarding the manner of Creation and other such topics. The Jewish tradition is a big one for using stories to teach lessons, as evidenced by the frequent use of parables throughout the Bible. As I've heard it argued -- and I have no idea how accurate the claim is -- the insintence that all the stories in the Bible be interpreted literally is a phenomenon found only in the last couple hundred years, and not one that would have been espoused during biblical times.
"Lord of the Rings" also presents itself as factual, in a sense. If we had found it in a clay jar in a bog, we would have believed it to be a long-lost cycle of literature, particularly with its references to lost stories, transcriptions and so on. Who's to say the book of Jonah doesn't have an analogous origin?
Just because God can do something doesn't mean that he does. The story would be less fantastical if we had something else we could relate it to, such as another incident of someone being swallowed by a "great fish" and surviving the incident. Unfortunately, the only incident I'm aware of that was fabricated for a 19th-century sermon.
With many other biblical stories, such as the parting of the Red Sea, the Ten Plagues, and even the fire that consumed Elijah's water-soaked sacrifice, we have ideas based on observation and intepretation that give us some insight into how God may have worked his purposes. In the case of Jonah, we usually just have to shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, he's God, so he could do it."
But still, even in the more concrete events of the Bible, there's enough variation within the text that inerrancy can't mean completely accurate in every single freaking detail. The chronology of the gospels is nonexistent, for starters, even if we assume Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. One gospel has Jesus cursing the fig tree, and it withers immediately; another has him cursing the fig tree, and it's withered when they come back, about a week later.
Other details vary from gospel to gospel. How many angels were at the tomb? Who got there first? What did Jesus say right before he died? Did both thieves taunt Jesus, or just one? Did Judas buy a field and fall forward in it, or did he hang himself? How many demoniacs identified as Legion were lurking in the tombs when Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee? Why are there two lines of descent from David to Jesus? If memory serves, the Torah prescribes two different ways to prepare the same sacrifice, once in Leviticus and once in Deuteronomy, and each passage strictly forbids the other passage's technique. (And for that matter, did Moses really write all that Law *in advance* of the Israelites' entry into the Promised Land, or did Jeremiah or someone else just make that up years later when the book of the Law "was found"?
Now most of those aren't hard to harmonize, but it's not hard to find more, even without the skeptics gleefully jumping on every small detail, and not all the explanations we give are wholly satisfactory. To an extent, we can shrug our shoulders and say it's not important, because the ancient Hebrews told stories as a means of communicating Truth, and whether the stories were real often didn't enter into it. (I may be mistaken, but I believe our insistence on taking everything literally is a fairly recent development in hermeneutics; i.e, in the last couple hundred years.)
See, I'm just wondering where we stop and what our basis is for stopping there. If the myth time of Genesis 1-11 is meant to be a vehicle for truth and is not meant to be taken as literal history, then what reason do we have to believe that the Exodus really happened as described? And if Jonah is just a nice parable to remind the Israelites that God lives the Ninevites too, then what reason do we have to believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead and that the gospel isn't just another reassuring story? Once we begin playing with the canon like that, where do we stop?
Don't misunderstand. I'm not having a crisis of faith. I long ago accepted that I can answer many reasonable challenges to my faith, and that there are other challenges I have no idea how to respond to. It's not about who has the best argument, pro or con, since there's always somebody on the other side with a more intelligent argument. It's really about Jesus and who he is, and what the Cross represents.
But I'm wondering: Where do you draw the line at the old metaphorical interpretation or "It's not that important" reasoning?
The point of the text is more important than picayune nittygritty or even historical details. It really wouldn't bother me too much to find out that the titulus had the languages in a different order from the way they're listed in the gospels, for example, and it wouldn't really bother me to find out that the Earth is significantly older than Usher's 6,000-odd years.
BUT! At some point, the Truth of the story has to be borne out by the reality of the story. If, as some revisionist historians claim, there was no Exodus from Egypt, that the entire story is just a nationalist myth meant to comfort Israelites with a nice story that they were special and unique in all the world, that is a major blow to the faith, isn't it? If the role models of faith we're given in the Patriarchs or the prophets are manufactured just to convey a point about the importance of faith or to provide a demonstration of what faith ought to be, doesn't that render the lesson somewhat less legitimate?
All but the most ardent fundamentalists will agree that if anything stopped for Joshua it was the Earth's rotation, not the sun. But if even that didn't stop, well, then, doesn't that diminish the truth of the lesson that God was watching over Israel, somewhat?
At what point does the history stop being subordinate to the authoritative nature of the Bible? At Christ's life? (Note the discrepancies among the synoptics, and with the gospel of John.) And again, what about those dratted inconsistencies in Christ's genealogy? If he was descended from the king God had cut off ever having a successor on the throne, then doesn't that raise questions about the authoritative nature of the Bible, even on spiritual matters?
I never said I had all the answers, just a lot of questions.
Like I said somewhere else a while ago, I realized long ago that the truth of the gospel ultimately isn't going to be settled by argument. There are thousands of skeptics out there with arguments, many of which I can refute to my own satisfaction. Others, I can't, but I know people who can or I know how to find the answer myself.
What I can attest to is the transforming power of the Risen Christ, and what he's done in my life and the lives of those around me. If I'm following Christ the way he asks me to, others will be able to see it for themselves.
So I accept that I have doubts, that I have questions, and there are some things that just plain don't make sense right now. At the same time, God put a brain in my head for more than proper balance of the noggin, so I'm trying to figure out what those answers are. If I never figure them out, well, fair enough. My faith is past the point where a few vexing questions are going to unravel it.
On the forum we've talked before about whether Jonah was an historical story, or just a parable, and I think only one guy said "Absolutely, it's historical." The rest of us hedged our bets and said, "Well, it could be, but it isn't necessarily." We've had similar talks regarding the manner of Creation and other such topics. The Jewish tradition is a big one for using stories to teach lessons, as evidenced by the frequent use of parables throughout the Bible. As I've heard it argued -- and I have no idea how accurate the claim is -- the insintence that all the stories in the Bible be interpreted literally is a phenomenon found only in the last couple hundred years, and not one that would have been espoused during biblical times.
"Lord of the Rings" also presents itself as factual, in a sense. If we had found it in a clay jar in a bog, we would have believed it to be a long-lost cycle of literature, particularly with its references to lost stories, transcriptions and so on. Who's to say the book of Jonah doesn't have an analogous origin?
Just because God can do something doesn't mean that he does. The story would be less fantastical if we had something else we could relate it to, such as another incident of someone being swallowed by a "great fish" and surviving the incident. Unfortunately, the only incident I'm aware of that was fabricated for a 19th-century sermon.
With many other biblical stories, such as the parting of the Red Sea, the Ten Plagues, and even the fire that consumed Elijah's water-soaked sacrifice, we have ideas based on observation and intepretation that give us some insight into how God may have worked his purposes. In the case of Jonah, we usually just have to shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, he's God, so he could do it."
But still, even in the more concrete events of the Bible, there's enough variation within the text that inerrancy can't mean completely accurate in every single freaking detail. The chronology of the gospels is nonexistent, for starters, even if we assume Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. One gospel has Jesus cursing the fig tree, and it withers immediately; another has him cursing the fig tree, and it's withered when they come back, about a week later.
Other details vary from gospel to gospel. How many angels were at the tomb? Who got there first? What did Jesus say right before he died? Did both thieves taunt Jesus, or just one? Did Judas buy a field and fall forward in it, or did he hang himself? How many demoniacs identified as Legion were lurking in the tombs when Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee? Why are there two lines of descent from David to Jesus? If memory serves, the Torah prescribes two different ways to prepare the same sacrifice, once in Leviticus and once in Deuteronomy, and each passage strictly forbids the other passage's technique. (And for that matter, did Moses really write all that Law *in advance* of the Israelites' entry into the Promised Land, or did Jeremiah or someone else just make that up years later when the book of the Law "was found"?
Now most of those aren't hard to harmonize, but it's not hard to find more, even without the skeptics gleefully jumping on every small detail, and not all the explanations we give are wholly satisfactory. To an extent, we can shrug our shoulders and say it's not important, because the ancient Hebrews told stories as a means of communicating Truth, and whether the stories were real often didn't enter into it. (I may be mistaken, but I believe our insistence on taking everything literally is a fairly recent development in hermeneutics; i.e, in the last couple hundred years.)
See, I'm just wondering where we stop and what our basis is for stopping there. If the myth time of Genesis 1-11 is meant to be a vehicle for truth and is not meant to be taken as literal history, then what reason do we have to believe that the Exodus really happened as described? And if Jonah is just a nice parable to remind the Israelites that God lives the Ninevites too, then what reason do we have to believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead and that the gospel isn't just another reassuring story? Once we begin playing with the canon like that, where do we stop?
Don't misunderstand. I'm not having a crisis of faith. I long ago accepted that I can answer many reasonable challenges to my faith, and that there are other challenges I have no idea how to respond to. It's not about who has the best argument, pro or con, since there's always somebody on the other side with a more intelligent argument. It's really about Jesus and who he is, and what the Cross represents.
But I'm wondering: Where do you draw the line at the old metaphorical interpretation or "It's not that important" reasoning?
The point of the text is more important than picayune nittygritty or even historical details. It really wouldn't bother me too much to find out that the titulus had the languages in a different order from the way they're listed in the gospels, for example, and it wouldn't really bother me to find out that the Earth is significantly older than Usher's 6,000-odd years.
BUT! At some point, the Truth of the story has to be borne out by the reality of the story. If, as some revisionist historians claim, there was no Exodus from Egypt, that the entire story is just a nationalist myth meant to comfort Israelites with a nice story that they were special and unique in all the world, that is a major blow to the faith, isn't it? If the role models of faith we're given in the Patriarchs or the prophets are manufactured just to convey a point about the importance of faith or to provide a demonstration of what faith ought to be, doesn't that render the lesson somewhat less legitimate?
All but the most ardent fundamentalists will agree that if anything stopped for Joshua it was the Earth's rotation, not the sun. But if even that didn't stop, well, then, doesn't that diminish the truth of the lesson that God was watching over Israel, somewhat?
At what point does the history stop being subordinate to the authoritative nature of the Bible? At Christ's life? (Note the discrepancies among the synoptics, and with the gospel of John.) And again, what about those dratted inconsistencies in Christ's genealogy? If he was descended from the king God had cut off ever having a successor on the throne, then doesn't that raise questions about the authoritative nature of the Bible, even on spiritual matters?
I never said I had all the answers, just a lot of questions.
Like I said somewhere else a while ago, I realized long ago that the truth of the gospel ultimately isn't going to be settled by argument. There are thousands of skeptics out there with arguments, many of which I can refute to my own satisfaction. Others, I can't, but I know people who can or I know how to find the answer myself.
What I can attest to is the transforming power of the Risen Christ, and what he's done in my life and the lives of those around me. If I'm following Christ the way he asks me to, others will be able to see it for themselves.
So I accept that I have doubts, that I have questions, and there are some things that just plain don't make sense right now. At the same time, God put a brain in my head for more than proper balance of the noggin, so I'm trying to figure out what those answers are. If I never figure them out, well, fair enough. My faith is past the point where a few vexing questions are going to unravel it.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
needlephobia
I've never been able to get myself to give blood because my dislike of needles is so strong. Getting allergy shots every week for fourteen years probably has something to do with it, but I've also had one or two times where doctors had to give me an IV or draw blood and had to stick me a few times before they could get anything.
From what I've been told, it's a moot point anyway, since I lived in Haiti for two years, from 1992 to 1994. Supposedly, I'm ineligible to give blood until 2014, but I don't have that from anyone in authority. All anyone has been able to tell me is that there are travel-based restrictions, but they don't know what they are off the top of their heads.
From what I've been told, it's a moot point anyway, since I lived in Haiti for two years, from 1992 to 1994. Supposedly, I'm ineligible to give blood until 2014, but I don't have that from anyone in authority. All anyone has been able to tell me is that there are travel-based restrictions, but they don't know what they are off the top of their heads.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Finally getting treatment for psoraiasis
Things are going pretty well here, all things considered.
For only the second time in 18 years or so, I'm getting some serious treatment for my psoriasis. Psoriasis, if you don't know, is a skin ailment that's genetic in nature and that flares up under stress. It looks like red, raw skin with white scaly flakes, if for no other reason than it's red, raw skin with white scaly flakes.
I've had it since I was 17 and a small patch appeared on my back, the size of my quarter. It's gone up and down a few times, but it has never gone away entirely, and each time it's flared up, it's come back worse. At the moment, it covers most of my legs, my arms, parts of my stomach, my scalp, my shoulders, my forehead, and almost all my back.
Plus a few other spots.
A previous dermatologist had prescribed some topical steroids that worked like a charm and cleared up everything within about three weeks, so I was expecting something similar this time. The dermatologist I was referred to this time didn't want to do that. Steroids are steroids, after all, even when they're topical; and coating almost half your body with steroids twice a day isn't something most doctors recommend for the long haul.
So instead, I'm getting phototherapy. With a name like that, you'd almost expect it to involve talking to a psychiatrist about how your mother never loved you and always had you airbrushed out of the family pictures, but it actually involves being exposed to ultraviolet light, since that's pretty much the only things that clears up psoriasis naturally.
If you consider it natural to stand naked in a chamber lined with bright lights while you wear nothing but a pair of sunglasses shaped like swimming goggles, and hold a paper towel over your most personal anatomy, that is.
The downside to all this is that my share of the office visits comes to $10 a visit, and I have to visit the dermatologist's office three times a week for about four months to make this all work,so we're talking about $500 in co-payments.
The upshot to that is that I'm also taking a second medical treatment that involves injecting myself every Monday and Thursday morning with a psoriasis-treatment drug. Since both treatments are FDA-approved, I'm getting a combination of treatments with a proven track record of success, for free. I'm taking part in a study to see how much faster patients respond to the treatments when they're combined. So not only am I getting the doctors' visits (and the drug) for free, I'm getting paid about $800 to do it.
The only part that really bites is that I have to inject myself, and I really hate needles. (Thank God I'm not diabetic. I can't imagine injecting myself with insulin three times a day.)
The other big news is that I've just committed myself for the next two years to a role-playing adventure using AD&D, version 3.5. It's a major transition for me, since I haven't played D&D in about 20 years, since I was in middle school. I actually got rid of all my equipment back when I was in college. The only roleplaying I've done since has been a little bit of NeverWorld and some live-action roleplaying as a vampire about eight years ago.
For only the second time in 18 years or so, I'm getting some serious treatment for my psoriasis. Psoriasis, if you don't know, is a skin ailment that's genetic in nature and that flares up under stress. It looks like red, raw skin with white scaly flakes, if for no other reason than it's red, raw skin with white scaly flakes.
I've had it since I was 17 and a small patch appeared on my back, the size of my quarter. It's gone up and down a few times, but it has never gone away entirely, and each time it's flared up, it's come back worse. At the moment, it covers most of my legs, my arms, parts of my stomach, my scalp, my shoulders, my forehead, and almost all my back.
Plus a few other spots.
A previous dermatologist had prescribed some topical steroids that worked like a charm and cleared up everything within about three weeks, so I was expecting something similar this time. The dermatologist I was referred to this time didn't want to do that. Steroids are steroids, after all, even when they're topical; and coating almost half your body with steroids twice a day isn't something most doctors recommend for the long haul.
So instead, I'm getting phototherapy. With a name like that, you'd almost expect it to involve talking to a psychiatrist about how your mother never loved you and always had you airbrushed out of the family pictures, but it actually involves being exposed to ultraviolet light, since that's pretty much the only things that clears up psoriasis naturally.
If you consider it natural to stand naked in a chamber lined with bright lights while you wear nothing but a pair of sunglasses shaped like swimming goggles, and hold a paper towel over your most personal anatomy, that is.
The downside to all this is that my share of the office visits comes to $10 a visit, and I have to visit the dermatologist's office three times a week for about four months to make this all work,so we're talking about $500 in co-payments.
The upshot to that is that I'm also taking a second medical treatment that involves injecting myself every Monday and Thursday morning with a psoriasis-treatment drug. Since both treatments are FDA-approved, I'm getting a combination of treatments with a proven track record of success, for free. I'm taking part in a study to see how much faster patients respond to the treatments when they're combined. So not only am I getting the doctors' visits (and the drug) for free, I'm getting paid about $800 to do it.
The only part that really bites is that I have to inject myself, and I really hate needles. (Thank God I'm not diabetic. I can't imagine injecting myself with insulin three times a day.)
The other big news is that I've just committed myself for the next two years to a role-playing adventure using AD&D, version 3.5. It's a major transition for me, since I haven't played D&D in about 20 years, since I was in middle school. I actually got rid of all my equipment back when I was in college. The only roleplaying I've done since has been a little bit of NeverWorld and some live-action roleplaying as a vampire about eight years ago.
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