A Fox or Two

The Public Effects of Private Vices

2011-10-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

"In a society in which sex is de-personalized, and thus degraded, even conscientious parents will have enormous difficulty transmitting to their children the capacity to view themselves and others as persons, rather than as objects of sexual desire and satisfaction."

-Robert P. George, "Pornography, Public Morality, and Constitutional Rights"

Broody Chicken Video

2011-09-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

From when we had broody chickens a couple weeks ago. This hen was not very happy to see me:

Garden Update for Pop and Mom

2011-09-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures for Pop and Mom (Marijke's parents):

Cherry tomatoes ripening:

Our first heirloom tomato, a real mutant:

This is when I started clearing weeds from the bottom of the garden in order to expand it:

Picking up our load of mushroom compost a couple weeks ago:

Our second heirloom tomato, perfect in every way:

We are starting to get LOTS of tomatoes:

Some of our corn has turned out great. Most of it has not turned out great; in them, most of the kernels have not "plumped."

I ran over Matilda (just kidding):

I took this picture this morning - Tom rototilling our compost into the garden:

We planted 11 5' rows of potatoes, with more to come:

Christ and a Christian's Failures

2011-08-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

Christ’s dislike of what is amiss in us does not turn into hatred of our persons, but into the victorious subduing of all our infirmities.

-Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed

A Puritan Definition of the Gospel

2011-07-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

What is the gospel itself but a merciful moderation, in which Christ's obedience is esteemed ours, and our sins laid upon him, wherein God, from being a judge, becomes our Father, pardoning our sins and accepting our obedience, though feeble and blemished? We are now brought to heaven under the covenant of grace by a way of love and mercy.

-Thomas Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 36.

A Tree Fell Over, Irrigation, Insects, etc.

2011-06-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

We harvested and dried the garlic we planted in November. All I did was plant a couple rows of cloves from Trader Joe's garlic, and voila! Much larger and more flavorful garlic bunches than we started with!

SERMON ILLUSTRATION ALERT!

Yesterday, a tree fell over on the property. It was not even windy and the tree looked pretty much fine - the tree was just rotten on the inside and then - wham! - fell over. No humans or dogs or chickens were harmed, although a fence and some green bean plants may not come out of this singing and dancing:

The chickens are now laying a whopping seven eggs a day!

Pop, here is the irrigation system I pieced together from your sprinkler heads:

Here is a beetle hanging out on our purple green beans. If you look closely beneath the beetle, you can see a very small green bean growing.

Here are some ladybugs hanging out on the asparagus:

And a mosquito catcher (?) on the corn:

Ladybug on the corn:

We are harvesting one zucchini every couple days or so:

Asparagus shoots:

One of the tomato seedlings I rescued from composty obscurity is now bearing plants:

Today's harvest:

Questions to Ask About Our View of Addiction

2011-06-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

Edward Welch gives Christians some excellent questions to ask about their own views of addiction (whether their own or others'):

"Is sin or sickness my primary problem? Do I think of addiction as something I have or something I do?
Do I summarize my life by asking, 'What do I really desire? Christ or ______ (alcohol, pornography, shopping, and so on)'?
Am I emphasizing both voluntary and slavery?
Am I being defined more by my past addiction than by the blood of Christ?
Do I stand in judgment of the church because I think it has naive views on addiction?
Do I come to church to educate it or because I need to worship the Lord with others? DO I need the ministry of others even as they need me?
Am I meeting regularly with Christians of various backgrounds, or am I finding my fellowship with people who don't know Christ but know my struggle with alcohol?
Am I keeping in mind the larger goal, which is to glorify God?" (Welch, Addiction: A Banquet in the Grave, 119).

Robert George on Gay "Marriage" in New York

2011-06-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

Because these domestic partnerships are not actually marriages, despite the appropriation of the label; there is no intelligible basis in them for the norms of monogamy, exclusivity, and the pledge of permanence that structure and help to define marriage as historically understood in our law and culture. Of course, many people’s understanding of, and authentic commitment to, these norms has already eroded substantially since the 1960s under the pressure of sexual-revolution ideology....And the erosion of these beliefs (and practices in line with them) will further wound our communities — especially mothers, children, and the poor.

-Robert George, Princeton Professor of Politics

CS Lewis' Hell, aka Facebook

2011-06-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

From a great piece on increasing isolation between people and generations by Matthew Shaffer:

Judging by some qualities, such as nationality, Facebook expands the diversity of our acquaintances. But it is, at its base, a tool for social autonomy. It enables easy association with those to whom we incline while not compelling friendships with those whom we find more difficult, such as the elderly. We are likelier to talk to the elderly when confined by physical spaces — at a café, in a church, on the street — and the more that our lives are digitally mediated, the more those physical contacts vanish.

Facebook appears to have been modeled on C. S. Lewis’s Hell. It is the acme of modernized society, allowing us unrestrained control over our relationships — we literally choose the face that others see, and can start or end a friendship by tapping a finger. These friendships never become inconvenient, because no obligation can impose itself through the digital medium.

The irony of Facebook, and of modernity’s expansion of social autonomy generally, is that total, unlimited cosmopolitanism in the end produces more parochialism, homogenization, and even chauvinism than geographical confinement does: I can now commune with people all over the world of all nationalities and tongues and races who are just like me.

Springtime Dog and Garden

2011-06-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

I am trying to be better about blogging consistently and variously, but until then, you are just going to keep getting more pictures of our dog and vegetables.

Matilda is large enough these days to where she can't fit through the many holes in the fenceline. So, we can let her wander around outside. She often likes to sunbathe on the threshold of our backdoor:

A couple weeks ago, we harvested our leeks after six months of photosynthesis:

Matilda's muzzle (her nose/mouth) is getting much more elongated and whippet-ish:

I sure am glad that our house is being guarded by something that was a wolf 10,000 years ago:

We are growing a lot more green beans this year. Here are some bush beans that will oxymoronically produce purple green beans.

Here's the "annex" of our garden. In the foreground, you see two tomato plants which I found growing as seedlings somewhere else in the garden I never planted them. They came from tomato seeds in our compost and I "rescued" them by transplanting them.

Directly behind the tomato plants, you see four small bushes. From the bottom left and going clockwise, we have sage, thyme, oregano, and rosemary. They all started off as small potted herbs from Trader Joe's. Behind the thyme, you can see a basil plant from Trader Joe's, which has almost completely floundered in the June gloom of Arroyo Grande:

Our artichokes are coming along swimmingly:

Besides the two tomato plants mentioned above, we also have 9 other ones growing elsewhere. I've tied them up on PVC pipes (remnants of a failed irrigation system) with a method called the "Florida Weave." Basically, tall stakes/pipes stand between every few plants and then the plants are woven to them as they grow taller and taller. This keeps the plants (which are fairly close together) growing vertically instead of into each other:

We have been harvesting a zucchini every couple days from our two zucchini plants:

Dave Foote (Landlord aka Feudal Lord aka Lord of the Manor) says that corn should be "knee high by 4th of July." 4th of July is a week out and we are already knee-high. Hooooo-ey!

Some Roma tomatoes coming in. We are hoping to make tomato sauce out of these plants:

Garden Update + Puppy

2011-05-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

These pictures are about a month old. I am trying to get caught up:

O the Chickens, they are a-changin:

Part of my ceaseless war against gophers is defensive, primarily in the form of chicken wire baskets that seedlings are planted inside of, in the ground. They are a real pain to make and install, but not as much of a pain as finding within an hour of waking up that gophers have sucked another one of your plants into the bowels of their vile hollows:

I planted Asparagus crowns, which look like large roots. You have to let them grow for a year before the crown has gathered enough energy from the sun to produce spears large enough to eat. Our adolescent Asparagus will be running free until next spring:

At the time of writing, most of these potato plants have already been harvested for potatoes. But you can see the original five rows of spudly blessedness here:

Here is an overview of the entire garden from its southwest corner. On the bottom right, above the decrepid sheet of plywood, you can see where I prepared a bed for tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini. On the bottom left, you can see the above-pictured potato plants. On the top left, the astute observer will notice our small herb garden (sage, rosemary, thyme, and oregano), some of the lettuce, and a small bed which was being prepared for cornrows (not the Snoop Dogg-ee Dogg variety). On the top right is our original winter garden, which at the time of this photograph still nurtured broccoli, carrots, peas, kale, and garlic. Currently, the only remaining plants from the first winter garden are the onions, parsley, and leeks.

In the last couple months, we've also gotten a puppy! Her name is Matilda and she is a whippet. which basically makes her a small greyhound. Whenever we take her to a vet or puppy class, we have received comments about how rarely whippets are seen on the west coast. She came from a breeder in Georgia. Here you can see her playing with what we call her "frienemy":

She has already doubled in size, and should eventually be about a foot and a half high at the shoulder. She is pretty good at sitting, coming, and using our persian rug to relieve herself:

We are really working on getting her to not bite our skin, even a little bit. The puppy class teacher told us that when she bites us, we are to either make a high-pitched "yip" (like another dog would) or an ominously-fierce yawp (like a mother-dog would). Marijke can do the yip pretty well, but my problem is that my voice is not high enough to yip nor loud enough to yawp.

Augustine's Conversion

2011-05-10T14:53:00.000-07:00

I am reading through The Confessions of Saint Augustine again with the college student leaders. In Book 6, Augustine is describing the events that led up to his conversion. I was really moved by his description of seeing a beggar joyfully eating a meal:

"For what he had obtained through a few coins, got by his begging, I was still scheming for by many a wretched and tortuous turning--namely, the joy of a passing felicity. He had not, indeed, gained true joy, but, at the same time, with all my ambitions, I was seeking one still more untrue. Anyhow, he was now joyous and I was anxious. He was free from care, and I was full of alarms. Now, if anyone should inquire of me whether I should prefer to be merry or anxious, I would reply, “Merry.” Again, if I had been asked whether I should prefer to be as he was or as I myself then was, I would have chosen to be myself; though I was beset with cares and alarms. But would not this have been a false choice? Was the contrast valid? Actually, I ought not to prefer myself to him because I happened to be more learned than he was; for I got no great pleasure from my learning, but sought, rather, to please men by its exhibition--and this not to instruct, but only to please. Thus thou didst break my bones with the rod of thy correction."

-Confessions, 6.6

Portland Trip

2011-04-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, Marijke and I took a five-day trip to Portland. She had never been there and so I had a really fun time showing her around. We stayed with our good friends Joel and Sarah, who I met while living there.

On our first day there, we ate at the Grilled Cheese Grill, a restaurant stand with various kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches. The seating is inside a school bus with a psychedelically painted ceiling:

A coffee shop on Belmont Street:

Joel, looking pretty tough:

Marijke, also looking pretty tough:

Marijke and I went on many walks through Joel and Sarah's neighborhood:

Daffodils abounded in nearly every front yard:

Perhaps our favorite part of the trip was our spree through Powell's Books. Powell's is the size of a city block. Here, Marijke is browsing their selection of PG Wodehouse novels. We also bought The Collected Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, War and Peace, and a biography of Elizabeth I.

The Intolerable Compliment of Taking Evildoers Seriously

2011-03-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

But in the meantime, and in general, I think we ought to pay evildoers, including ourselves, the “intolerable compliment” of taking them seriously as moral agents, of holding them accountable for their wrongdoing. This is a mark of our respect for their dignity and weight as human beings. After all, what could be more arrogant than treating other persons as if they were no more responsible than tiny children or the mentally maimed?

-Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It's Supposed to Be, 66.

Is Marriage About Having Fun?

2011-03-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

I think for the most part, young people get married because their dating experience has taught them that they are really good at having fun with each other. They have enjoyed wining and dining each other. And they want to cement that fun with marriage. It is really nice being married to somebody that you enjoy and have fun with, but ultimately marriage isn't about fun. Fun can be one of the great byproducts of marriage, but ultimately a marriage is a picture of Christ's relationship to his bride, the church, and his love for her. It is our opportunity and our obligation in marriage to image that—to be a walking, talking portrait of that kind of love.

-Winston Smith, Premarital Counseling, Pornography, and Marriage

The Paradox of Modernity's Comfort and Simultaneous Risk-Aversion

2011-03-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

The paradox of material and technological progress is that we seem to become more risk-averse the safer it makes us. The more comfortable we become, the less eager we are to take the risks that are the only route to future progress. The irony is that one reason Japan has survived this catastrophic event as well as it has is its great material development and wealth.

Modern civilization is in the daily business of measuring and mitigating risk, but its advance requires that we continue to take risk. It would compound Japan's tragedy if the lesson America learns is that we should pursue the illusory and counterproductive goal of eliminating all risk.

- Editors, "Nuclear Overreactions", Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2011.

I Found My Doppelganger - and He's a Teenaged German Xtreme Athlete!

2011-03-12T18:26:00.000-08:00

Has anyone heard of "Sporthocker"? It's an extreme sport where German teenagers run around twirling plastic stools and then sitting on them in an Xtreme fashion. My friend Matt Hall tipped me off to this picture of a Sporthocker-enthusiast, who looks eerily similar to me:

Here's a youtube video if you want to watch some Xtreme Sporthocker:

What We Learn From the Sovereignty of God

2011-03-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

If examining the sovereignty of God teaches us anything, it teaches us that real satisfaction comes not in understanding God's motives, but in understanding his character, in trusting in his promises, and in leaning on him and resting in him as the Sovereign who knows what he is doing and does all things well.

- Joni Eareckson Tada, in "Is God Really in Control?", who was paralyzed from the neck down in a 1967 diving accident.

Peter Hitchens on the inaccuracies of The King's Speech

2011-03-03T08:13:00.000-08:00

Peter Hitchens (Christopher's brother) is an English journalist and I've been intrigued by his critiques of The King's Speech (which I really enjoyed overall). His atheist brother Christopher has also sharply criticized the movie for it's blatant inaccuracies:

"I can’t speak for my brother, except to say that he, like me, thinks that historical inaccuracy is important - and that there is no justification for the inaccuracies in this film. I suppose the plot would be difficult if the job weren’t hereditary, though I suppose you could have someone trying to recover his voice after some disease or accident had robbed him of it (and his chosen profession) . But the fundamental message - entirely unjustified by the known facts of the story, which is far from lost in the mists of time - is (I sum up loosely) ‘cheeky, hard-up, informal and classless Aussie jackaroo saves stuck-up repressed royal snob from stammer probably caused by snobbish repression, largely by making him swear and by mocking the grandeur of his position’. It has everything for the modern leftist, not least some pretty severe mockery of the Church and of such flummeries as solemn oaths."

Read more here, about how the movie makes the subtle assertion that a monarchy's only legitimate reason to exist is to oppose fascism, and how in reality the British (and the West in general) did not actually oppose Hitler until the war had already been going on for a couple years.

On Anglophilia

2011-03-02T18:33:00.000-08:00

In keeping with the anglophilic nomenclature of our pets, our puppy will be named Matilda. Besides being the protagonist in a great children's story (the original inspiration for the name), Matilda also happens to be the name of a de facto English monarch who "ruled" England for most of 1141. She was the actual Holy Roman Empress and Queen of Germany from 1114-1125. Her grandfather was William the Conqueror, who invaded England in 1066 from Normandy (Northern France), leading to the demise of the Anglo-Saxons. Empress Matilda's father was Henry I and her son was Henry II.

Our Puppy Matilda

2011-03-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

Here is a couple pictures of our whippet puppy Matilda. The breeder will ship her to us from Georgia during the first week of April:

Martin Luther on Prayer

2011-02-28T12:42:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've been rediscovering the joy and privilege of personal prayer. Prayer has always been difficult for me - in the midst of a busy week, it has usually seemed at best unproductive or at worst pointless in terms of "getting things done."

But lately, I've joyously found that prayer is at its core a conversation between a Father and his little children. To know and believe that God is my Father motivates me to pray in a way that suck-it-up self-discipline never has. Martin Luther encourages Christians to pray like this:

Now through your mercy implant in our hearts a comforting trust in your fatherly love, and let us experience the sweet and pleasant savor of a childlike certainty that we may joyfully call you Father, knowing and loving you and calling on you in every trouble.

Doug Wilson on Worshipping the State

2011-02-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

In order to accept the fact that the government has no more money, and can't just summon it up from its mysterious place of origin indefinitely, one has to get into a frame of mind that is perilously close to repentance. That's deeply unsettling. In order to accept this new state of affairs (in which the government is le busted, as the French say) a man has to stop believing the government's promises, and stop investing a religious faith in those promises. He has to admit that his god is a god that has failed. His god wrote a check that failed to clear. He knows that there are checks in the world that fail to clear. He understands that. But how could a divine check fail to clear? When that moment of stone cold realization settles in, the only conclusion is -- modus tollens -- that the signatory on those checks was not so divine after all...

You see, if the state is not an effective savior, then someone else must be. His name is Jesus. If the state is not the provider of all things, then someone else must be. He is the Lord. If the state is not solvent, then solvency must be located in the heavens, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thugs and miscreants cannot vote it away.

- Doug Wilson

A Finished Coop and Some Digested Vegetables

2011-02-11T15:42:00.000-08:00

Last week we started taking the chickens outside for a little bit every day. Sometimes we'd even read books with them down in the pen:

Marijke likes sitting on the ground because the chickens have gotten so friendly that they will often come up and sit on our laps:

Last weekend, my friend Phillip helped me make the gate for the pen. Because almost nothing about the fence is square, the gate has to be held closed with a large rock:

A couple days ago, I buried some large PVC pipes, strung a rope between them, and draped bird netting over it. Experienced chicken owners keep telling us horror stories about how their chicken died from hawks/foxes/coyotes/raccoons/their dog/their cat/their neighbor's dog/falling off the coop, and so we are doing everything we can to protect them:

Some more of our winter vegetables are coming in. Broccoli:

Snow Peas:

Today, I planted about 25' of potatoes and put a few Artichoke seedlings into the ground, protected from gophers by chicken wire cages. I also realized that some of the potatoes I planted a couple months ago (but assumed had rotted) are actually growing!

Daffodil, Snow Peas, and a Fence

2011-01-28T20:15:00.000-08:00

In October we planted a few dozen bulbs around our front door and garden. We now have our first bloom, a small daffodil:

The Snow Peas are flowering and coming in. Right now, they are only a couple inches long and admittedly, pretty cute:

Speaking of cute, here is a miniature broccoli head:

I finished building the coop and have been working on the fence for the last couple weeks:

Here are the next boxes, where the chickens will hopefully lay their eggs. The roofs lifts up so we can grab eggs like a couple of velociraptors:

The chickens will ascend a ramp and enter the coop through a door, which is flanked by the nesting boxes:

The backside has a couple of doors that swing down so that we can easily clean out the coop from time to time. You can see the roosts inside, which are basically sticks that the chickens perch on while they sleep:

And here is my fifty pound bag of synthetic fertilizer. Mmmm...

The Adolescence of Poultry

2011-01-28T07:50:00.000-08:00

Our chickens have entered adolescence and we're doing everything we can to keep them away from pot, tattoos, and punk rock.

Their feathers (as opposed to fuzz) are coming in and so the Rhode Island Reds are actually turning red:

So far, we've only found two "people" foods the chickens will eat out of our hands: cheese and rice:

YAR MATEY!

Bok Choy - Out of the Garden and Into the Stomach

2011-01-17T17:42:00.000-08:00

Last night we made stir-fry and so did some Bok Choy clear cutting in the garden. It was time to use the Bok Choy, since it has started bolting. Bolting is what happens when leafy vegetables get too warm (or old) and then quickly put out vertical flower-bearing stalks. This usually has a negative impact on the leaves' taste.

Behold the harvest!

Mmmm...

The Chicks Are A-Growin'

2011-01-16T21:28:00.000-08:00

The chickens may be less than two weeks old, but their physical appearance is changing dramatically. Our chickens are growing up quickly and we are preparing ourselves for all the inevitable chats with them about the kinds of boys to avoid, whether or not they can shave their legs, and how they definitely will not be getting their ears pierced.

We took them out on the lawn today to enjoy the warm sun and learn what pecking in the grass is all about. We surrounded them with a makeshift cardboard wall to keep them from wandering away or getting eaten by prowling tigers.

Here, the chickens figure out what grass is:

A yellow chicken asserts its dominance in the pecking order by putting a black chicken in a headlock. RESPECT MY AUTHORITY!

The never-ending quest for an earthworm continues:

The chickens are learning how to use their wings. It seems one of the most important ways to use your wings is to hurl yourself at another chicken while flapping madly:

Chicken chilling:

Chicken Coop, In Progress

2011-01-09T21:13:00.000-08:00

Over the last week, Dave Foote (landlord, hobbit-wannabe) and I have been building our chicken coop. It is built to hold 10 chickens, but I bet it could hold more, especially since they will have lots of pasture to run around in.

Anyways, we framed the entire thing last weekend, and this weekend we cut all the walls and started attaching them. The front of the coop will have a ramp leading up to a single square door. On either side of the door, there will be nest boxes with hinged roofs (for easy egg snatching). The back side will have a couple of doors that swing down so I can scoop all the chicken poop out and turn it into compost. Composting bird droppings is a smellier and more involved process than composting vegetable scraps.

The other night we wanted to find out how much space a chicken needs to be considered "free range". Apparently in the US, the only thing that "free range chicken" means is "has been outside at least once in its lifetime". So, "free range" is another marketing gimmick, at least until the term means anything like what it sounds like.

Anyways, here are some more pictures:

My current pile of manure sacks, beneath an old bathtub:

The front of the coop. You can see the doorway in the center, with the holes for the nest boxes on the sides:

The backside, with openings for the "poop scoop" doors (You can see our compost bins in the background):

Today, I cut and installed the floor, along with the roosts (basically, sticks that the chickens sleep on). I'll post some more pictures later.

Marijke as Chicken Mama

2011-01-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, Marijke wanted hold all the chicks in her lap, in order to get them used to us.

Yesterday, Marijke decided to take it a step further by holding them in her lap, in their box.

So, my lovely wife climbed in:

It's Chicken Time!

2011-01-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

On Thursday morning, we got a call from the post office saying that our baby chicks had arrived. We ordered 10 females, but got a bonus 10 males to go with them! Apparently, the females would not have been warm enough to survive the shipment, so they needed a posse of males to keep them warm. We didn't know what to do with the males, but a family from church took them and will eventually butcher them. Mmmm...

Anyways, our chicks are very cute. They are growing pretty fast. Within a day, they had already started growing feathers on the tips of their wings (as opposed to the cute fluff they have now). At first, we thought they had just been pooping on each other, but it was just little feathers.

It's amazing how much they can do so quickly. At two days old, they can eat, drink, hop, and wobble around. Now (at four days), they scurry around their "pen" (cardboard box) in our kitchen and are already trying to fly. They like to cuddle in a pile, and then one will run up and jump on top. It's kind of like that game where people hold on to each other in a line, and then they see how many people can jump on top before the whole thing collapses.

They do lots of stretching, which I would do too if I had spent a month in an egg. They cheep a lot. They poop a lot. They scatter their food everywhere. They peck at the cardboard box, which sounds like someone is knocking at the front door.

And...we've decided on their names!

The darker chicks are the Black Star breed. They are named after British politicians and leaders: William Wilberforce, The Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson, Winston Churchill, and Sir Thomas More.

The lighter chicks are Rhode Island Reds. They are named after British monarchs: Richard the Lionheart, William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, Bloody Mary, and Victoria.

Cursed is the Ground!

2011-01-01T08:59:00.000-08:00

"Well, how can you ever expect to be a pastor who can teach on sin and suffering if you've never had a vegetable garden?" - Dave Foote, Landlord.

I had just told him of my horror upon finding a small mound of dirt and a dilapidated garlic plant on its side. I knew it when I saw it: a gopher had struck the vegetable garden, even if they are supposed to be inactive in the winter.

I had planned ahead, though, and had gopher traps ready for this very event. When I went down to set the traps, though, I found something far more terrible than a dead garlic plant: the clove it came from! The gopher hadn't even eaten the garlic! He only decapitated it and left it to rot! What senseless destruction!

One day, though, God will wipe every tear away, and hopefully destroy every gopher. Maybe.

[17] And to Adam [God] said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
[18] thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
[19] By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
(Genesis 3:17-19 ESV)

CURSED IS THE GROUND!

Winter Garden Update

2010-12-31T19:38:00.000-08:00

Things are going swimmingly in the winter garden, even if everything is growing slowly because of the low temperatures and short days.

Here are some pictures:

Spinach!

Artichoke Seedlings:

A view of the main bed:

Carrots on the left, Bok Choy on the right.

Snow peas on the left, broccoli on the top right, leeks on the bottom right:

Lucky the dog and our watering can.

Garlic on the top, kale on the bottom.

Carrots and arugala:

I'm growing freesias for Marijke:

Our bok choy has gotten the worst insect damage, which has not been much:

I think kale looks really neat:

Some more bulbs growing outside our front door:

Our front door, complete with "foxknocker":

A Mutual Adventure in Knowing

2010-12-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

"The time and energy we so often expend in trying to get other people to do and be what we wish, whether sexual or not, could be more constructively channeled into building relationships with those people. Relationships are neither an exercise in manipulation nor a joint enterprise of individual fulfillment; they are a mutual adventure in knowing."

Dale Kuehne, Sex and the iWorld, 186.

Envy of the Rich

2010-12-18T21:05:00.000-08:00

It seems that envy of the rich, or animosity toward the rich, is such a deeply engrained characteristic in many people's minds that they are not willing to let the rich keep more of their money even if this would mean collecting more government money in taxes and increasing personal freedom in society as a whole. The most important thing is thought to be taking more money from the "wealthy," who presumably are thought to have gotten their money unjustly or are thought not to deserve the money they have earned.

-Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible, 289.

Diminishing Returns since the Fall

2010-12-16T12:03:00.000-08:00

"No matter what we try sexually, relationally, or chemically, nothing satisfies us. Indeed, the more we depend on these, the less return they provide. The tragedy of the fall is that we get nothing for which we hoped and lose all that we wanted. Instead of freedom, we become enslaved to our senses and impulses and quite literally try to find love in all the wrong places." - Kuehne, Sex and the iWorld, 137.

Expression vs. Communication

2010-12-16T07:44:00.001-08:00

The more instantaneous our technology, the more we are losing the ability to communicate. Twitter and text-messaging result in economy of expression, not in clarity or beauty. Millions are becoming premodern — communicating in electronic grunts that substitute for effective and dignified expression. Indeed, by inventing new abbreviations and linguistic shortcuts, we are losing a shared written language altogether, in a way analogous to the fragmentation of Latin as the Roman Empire imploded into tribal provinces. No wonder the public is drawn to stories like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, in which characters speak beautifully and believe in age-old values.

Victor Davis Hanson, "In Defense of the Liberal Arts"

Reynolds on the unchanging moral fact of marriage

2010-12-13T08:56:00.000-08:00

John Mark Reynolds (from Biola) writes about recent polls showing that more and more Americans are finding marriage outdated and irrelevant. I was particularly struck by his observation that future generations will look back in horror on our trampling of one woman-one man marriage, since moral facts are unchangeable.

Values endure, but fashions change. Recent surveys showing growing numbers of Americans are not that into marriage tell us something interesting about us, but nothing about love and marriage.

Survey says: we are becoming decadent. Morality says: it will not endure. Moral facts are no more fragile than physical facts. It is any given civilization that is fragile. Americans may reject romance, but love will endure, because Americans can no more harm marriage than they can loot Heaven. We can damn ourselves, but future humanity likely will shake their heads at our folly and use us as a moral lesson.

Marriage will endure, because it is the only worthy response to real romantic love. Romantic love is spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical. It is what happens when a woman or man discovers that there are other humans, equally people, but different from self. This other “side” of humanity seems designed to complement our souls.

It is the deepest form of sexism to believe that women or men could be replaced in such a relationship. Whatever the survey says at the moment, men and women complete each other in a unique way. Call a social contract or any other kind of love “marriage” and the romantics amongst us will simply invent a new word to describe this particular and powerful union.

The Sexual Ethic of Christians Indifferent Towards Homosexuality

2010-12-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

The sexual revolution occurred decades ago, and Christians are now presented with another opportunity to challenge [the sexual revolution]. Yet in challenging it, Christians must understand that at its heart the sexual revolution is not about homosexuality or same-sex marriage but about human sexuality and relational fulfillment. The primary reason Christians have not had the fortitude and conviction to challenge our culture on the issue of same-sex marriage is that a growing number of Christians now doubt the traditional Christian teaching on human sexuality and feel it is wrong to condemn consensual sexual behavior...

...The sexual behavior and attitudes of many Christians deviate so significantly from traditional Christian teaching that it is no wonder an increasing number of Christians have been unwilling to hypocritically impose different standards on practicing homosexuals.

- Dale S. Kuehne, Sex and the iWorld, 27-28 (emphasis mine).

50 Million Americans Murdered Since 1973.

2010-12-05T15:29:00.000-08:00

"Another argument against abortion is the incalculable loss to the nation from the deaths of more than one million babies per year. Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, nearly 50 million children have been put to death through abortion. Some of those would now be thirty-seven years old. Others would be thirty-six, and thirty-five, and so on, down to 1,200,000 of them who would be in their first year of life....

....I agree that it is important to consider all the issues that Republicans and Democrats stand for before deciding how to vote. But it is hard to see how any issue could have more importance than stopping the wrongful murder of more than 1,000,000 innocent preborn children every year, year after year after year...

...[Concerning the 2008 election], the nation has willingly chosen to be represented by people with these convictions. What will God's evaluation of our nation be in light of this decision? Or do we not think that God is still sovereign over the affairs of the nations?"

-Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible, 165, 177, 178.

This goes out to all my hippest Christian friends

2010-12-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

"Cool. Would you like to talk with me about individualism, and how bad it is?"

The Most Interesting Presentation of Statistics I've Ever Seen

2010-12-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

Fascinating:

Back on Blogger

2010-11-30T11:25:00.001-08:00

I'm back on blogger.

All the bad news, none of the Good News

2010-06-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

I just finished Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus. In reading all this ancient literature, I'm realizing how similar a lot of it is to the wisdom literature of the Bible, but with a lot less hope and assurance that God actually cares about us. For example, I just read this passage where the Chorus is bemoaning how short and full of suffering is:

"Who craves excess of days,
   Scorning the common span
   Of life, I judge that man
A giddy wight who walks in folly's ways.
For the long years heap up a grievous load,
   Scant pleasures, heavier pains,
   Till not one joy remains
For him who lingers on life's weary road
   And come it slow or fast,
   One doom of fate
   Doth all await,
   For dance and marriage bell,
   The dirge and funeral knell.
Death the deliverer freeth all at last.

Not to be born at all
Is best, far best that can befall,
Next best, when born, with least delay
To trace the backward way.
For when youth passes with its giddy train,
   Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
   Pain, pain for ever pain;
   And none escapes life's coils.
   Envy, sedition, strife,
Carnage and war, make up the tale of life.
Last comes the worst and most abhorred stage
   Of unregarded age,
Joyless, companionless and slow,
   Of woes the crowning woe."

Our culture has a lot to learn from the ancient world as we continue to naively expect the government, education, and science to make our lives comfortable and problem-free.

War

2010-06-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

"Fix it in your minds, everybody. Dithering causes wars. Wishing that wars would never, ever happen does not make them cease to happen. It does make them happen a little bit later, and a lot messier." From Doug Wilson

Oedipus the King

2010-05-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

In my reading list of "Great Western Books", I pretty much skipped over the Greek playwrights (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Eurpides, Aristophanes). Recently, I decided to go back and read at least one or two plays because they are short and very rewarding if I put in the work of thinking about what they are trying to say.

Anyways, I'm halfway through Oedipus the King, about a man who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. Tiresias, the blind prophet, is a character that really stands out to me as he calls out Oedipus for his murder and incest (I first came across Tiresias a few years ago in TS Eliot's "The Wasteland", where he is a blind prophet decrying the decay of Western civilization).

The main theme of Oedipus the King is the tragedy of someone rashly thinking themselves wise or "in the know" when they are in fact a fool who really doesn't know anything:

"Alas, alas, what misery to be wise
When wisdom profits nothing!" - Tiresias

"To one who walketh warily his words
Commend themselves; swift counsels are not sure." - The Chorus

On Expectations

2010-05-27T12:11:00.001-07:00

"We who live in the 21st century West have the least messy, least dangerous, least uncertain lives of any human beings in history. We should be very grateful for that, but we should not let our good fortune utterly distort our expectations of life, and we should not react with unrestrained indignant shock anytime the limitations of our power make themselves seen or the cold and harsh capriciousness of nature overcomes our defenses. We should expect a firm response from the institutions we have built to protect ourselves—science, technology, and modern government—but we cannot expect a perfect response. Not from Bush, and not from Obama." - Yuval Levin

The Haps

2010-05-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

The latest with the Foxes:

-We made yellow curry (almost) from scratch last night. Next time, we're using "light" coconut milk because we felt like human twinkies afterwards.

-On Friday, I subbed the terror of all classrooms: JUNIOR HIGH P.E. I am not a yeller, but I had to do a lot of yelling that day. No, thank you.

-In the garden, our arugula and spinach have bolted, meaning that it's gotten too hot for them and they are done for the year. In their place, we are preparing to plant some zucchini.

-Last night, I finished Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture, about the unique cultural elements of Western warfare that has made it the dominant civilization in the world. This quote from the last chapter really struck me:

"Fewer Americans - soldier and civilian alike - are voting than ever before. Most have not a clue about the nature of their own military or its historic relationship with its government and citizenry. The rise of a huge federal government and global corporations has reduced the number of Americans who work as autonomous individuals, either as family farmers, small businesspeople, or owners of local shops. Freedom for many means an absence of responsibility, while the culture of the mall, video, and Internet seem to breed uniformity and complacence, rather than rationalism, individualism, and initiative. Will the West always, then, possess persons of the type who fought at Midway, or citizens who rowed for their freedom at Salamis, or young men who rushed to reform their battered legions in the aftermath of Cannae?"

He goes on to answer "Yes" but only as long as the Western institutions of free citizenry, individualism, and constant audit continue to exist.

His final paragraph:

"Western civilization has given mankind the only economic system that works, a rationalist tradition that alone allows us material and technological progress, the sole political structure that ensures the freedom of the individual, a system of ethics and a religion that brings out the best in humankind - and the most lethal practice of arms conceivable. Let us hope that we at last understand this legacy. It is a weighty and sometimes ominous heritage that we must neither deny nor feel ashamed about - but insist that our deadly manner of war serves, rather than buries, our civilization."

Resentment towards Capitalism

2010-05-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture, which gives a history and analysis of seven critical battles in the rise of Western power. I just finished the chapter on the Battle of Lepanto (1571), where a combined southern European navy defeated the Ottoman navy near Corinth. Hanson describes the role that a developed capitalism played in the West's superior and victorious fleet.

I thought his thoughts on why people resent capitalism were interesting:

"The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it" (p272).

"Authenticity"

2010-04-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

From Doug Wilson:

"This quest for authenticity, in its current configuration, is actually a quest to feel superior to other people, and because everybody has gotten in on this very attractive proposition, this presents a considerable marketing challenge. As a consequence, we have low sales resistance, no shortage of authenticity-mongers, and lots of niche markets for different manifestations of superiority. These good folks will sell you a smaller carbon footprint, a burlap tote bag, a slate shower, a Che poster, an Indie movie that only the true-hearts understand, a trip to the rain forest, a bit of jewelry for your nose, and lots and lots and lots of other stuff."

Spinach and Meat

2010-04-28T09:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a headline in the SF Chronicle caught my eye: "Organic, small farmers fret over FDA regulation". Basically, the FDA is raising it's standards for farms in an attempt to combat E. Coli. The problem is that more regulations will probably drive small and organic farmers out of business while benefiting the large farming companies who can afford to keep up.

Something similar happened about a hundred years ago in the meat-packing industry. The popular myth (thanks to Upton Sinclair) is that evil meat packing companies were running around throwing poison, people, and rats into their meat products until the valiant government came in and "reformed" them, saving the helpless people (hooray!).

Actually, large meat-packing companies were self-regulating themselves before the creation of the FDA (just like the terms "organic" and "natural", having cleaner meat products was a good way to sell more). The large meat-packers actively supported the creation of the FDA because they knew it would drive their smaller competitors out of business. From Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism:

“The Federal inspection of meat was, historically, established at the packers’ request,” Sinclair wrote in 1906. “It is maintained and paid for by the people of the United States for the benefit of the packers.” The historian Gabriel Kolko concurs: “The reality of the matter, of course, is that the big packers were warm friends of regulation, especially when it primarily affected their innumerable small competitors.” A spokesman for “Big Meat” (as we might call it today) told Congress, “We are now and have always been in favor of the extension of the inspection, also to the adoption of the sanitary regulations that will insure the very best possible conditions.” The meatpacking conglomerates knew that federal inspection would become a marketing tool for their products and, eventually, a minimum standard. Small firms and butchers who’d earned the trust of consumers would be forced to endure onerous compliance costs, while large firms not only could absorb the costs more easily but would be able to claim their products were superior to uncertified meats.

Sometimes "reform" doesn't do everything you intend for it to do. Economics is so interesting to me because it forces me to realize that I can't be content to act with good motivations alone - I also have to consider the consequences of my actions. Oftentimes, the best motivations can result in terrible consequences (e.g. the entire history of Communism).

When it comes to snails, the beer can is half-empty.

2010-04-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

Since Marijke works more than I do these days, I have become somewhat of a househusband. While doing our grocery shopping at Food 4 Less the other day, I was brooding over how pests are decimating our liberty-loving bean sprouts. I sprayed our garden with pesticide, but some of the plants are still being ravaged by the merciless hordes of mollusks and insects.

As I walked past the alcohol aisle, I remembered a friend telling us that snails had an uncanny attraction to beer and could be easily duped into drowning in it. A new way to kill snails and keep them off my crops? I'm in. So I searched for the cheapest single serving of beer I could find - I ended up with 40 ounces of none other than the Champagne of Beers - Miller High Life, baby. Here at the Fox household, we settle only for the best.

So, to celebrate Earth Day, I buried an empty can in the ground (it's top level with the ground) and poured some snail-poisoning beer in it. I hope all those wretched snails rot in their malty grave.

A Cataclysmic Change in our Garden

2010-04-15T19:22:00.000-07:00

Something changed in our garden today. This morning, it was an organic garden. This afternoon, it wasn't.

I got really sick of bugs eating everything to the ground.

I talked to Dave Foote, who has a fine green thumb (especially with orchids), and he suggested some pesticide spray ("Don't worry, all the really nasty stuff is illegal in Calfornia now").

Good riddance aphids.

Good riddance cutworms.

Good riddance flea beetles.

So, our garden is far less hip than it was yesterday. Oh well.

On a happier note, our beans are finally starting to germinate. I was afraid they had rotted away in the soil.

From the Kitchen to the Garden to the Kitchen

2010-04-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

I present to you, the lifecycle of compost:

Here is our yellow "scraps bowl". We put raw food scraps in here. No bread, no oil, no meat, no fat, and no seeds; just fruit and vegetable scraps, wilted flowers, and sometimes coffee grounds. After a few days, it starts to smell, and Marijke says, "Tim, I asked you to empty this a few days ago. Now it smells. Please take it out."

The scraps go from our scraps bowl to the affectionately-titled "incubation bin" outside our kitchen window on the patio. You can see some moldy orange skins and some blackened banana peels:

The scraps break down and turn into a brown sludge that smells absolutely terrible (think, "baby diapers"). There is no drainage out of this bin, so the scraps just kind of stew in "compost tea". If we were more motivated, we'd dispose of our scraps in the backyard (so that the liquid would just go into the ground), but we don't feel like walking all the way down there just to empty a bowl of scraps. As long as the lid stays snapped down, the smell doesn't waft into our house.

When the bin gets about half-full (which takes a couple months), I dump it out into the actual compost pile. I mix it in with some dead leaves and whatever other plants/weeds I "harvest" out of the backyard. A compost pile has to be at least 3 cubic feet in order to work correctly, so we have to "save up" the different elements before mixing it all together. Here's what the pile looks like after a few months of sitting outside in our makeshift compost bin:

I stir the compost pile every couple weeks and throw in whatever earthworms I find. Finally, I dig around the bottom of the pile for the dark-brown, earthy, bonafide compost and mix it into the garden soil. Mmmmm:

Calvin on the Purpose of Scripture

2010-04-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

I loved this imagery from John Calvin (emphases mine):

"...God, the Maker of the world, is manifested to us in Scripture, and his true character expounded, so as to save us from wandering up and down, as in a labyrinth, in search of some doubtful deity" (Institutes, Book I, Chapter 6, Section 1)

"We should consider that the brightness of the Divine countenance, which even an apostle declares to be inaccessible, (1Ti 6: 16) is a kind of labyrinth -- a labyrinth to us inextricable, if the Word do not serve us as a thread to guide our path; and that it is better to limp in the way, than run with the greatest swiftness out of it." (Ibid., Section 3)

On Pagan Easter

2010-04-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed John Mark Reynolds' essay on the supposed pagan roots of Easter. Some highlights:

The Devil hates Easter for good reasons, but some Christians worry about it for bad reasons. Some worry that Easter is really a pagan holiday.

It is not...

It was the death of Jesus that created Christianity. Something happened after that death that took fairly conventional Jewish men and made them say remarkable things. It is true that earlier faiths had “dying gods,” but not dying gods who had first become men. It is true that some religions had tied agriculture to the death and life of their god, but the Jesus of the gospels is distinctly not an agricultural deity. I don’t think of the “circle of life” when I think of the story of Jesus, since Jesus died once for all....

Easter, or Pascha, is not one of those borrowings. The empty tomb is the center of the feast and not a fertility symbol. God became man and conquered death on Easter. He did not conquer the natural cycle of seasons or winter.

God is a great poet and so He died when the flowers were in bloom. In the beauty of the lilies Christ died across the sea, to modify the old hymn. This was God’s great good joke on paganism. They prayed for a corn god to end winter, but He came Himself and ended death.

The cycle of seasons would continue but the curse of sin was broken forever.

Jesus don't play that!

2010-03-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

"So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor." Luke 20:20

I'm reading through the Gospel accounts of Holy Week in the order of what happened each day. On Tuesday, Jesus enters into controversy with the religious leaders at the temple. I've been really struck today by how blunt and abrasive Jesus is with people he knows are just trying to jerk him around:

Mark 11:28-29 - Jesus evades the leaders' question about John's authority by posing his own question, then refuses to answer theirs: "I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things...Answer me."

Mark 12:9, 12 - Jesus overtly condemns the leaders in the parable of the vineyard: "'What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others'...And [the leaders] were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them."

Matthew 21:43 - At the end of the same parable, Matthew records Jesus as saying, "Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits."

Mark 12:17 - Jesus again parries a hostile question about whether or not to pay taxes to a pagan government: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Mark 12:27 - Jesus doesn't mince any words with the Sadducees about whether or not there is a resurrection: "You are quite wrong." (Matthew 22:29 - "You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.")

Matthew 23:33 - In this chapter, Jesus ominously runs through a list of the wicked, outwardly-religious, deeds of the religious leaders, concluding in verse 33: "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?" ("[The leaders] will receive the greater condemnation." - Luke 20:47)

It's amazing that the same Jesus who powerfully rebuked and argued with his detractors is the same Jesus who refused to get off the cross when they hissed, "He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen one!" (Luke 23:35)

Calvin on Knowing God

2010-03-28T23:11:00.000-07:00

I've been slowly working through John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and I just read this today (emphasis mine):

"And here we must observe again, that the knowledge of God which we are invited to cultivate is not that which, resting satisfied with empty speculation, only flutters in the brain, but a knowledge which will prove substantial and fruitful wherever it is duly perceived, and rooted in the heart. The Lord is manifested by his perfections. When we feel their power within us, and are conscious of their benefits, the knowledge must impress us much more vividly than if we merely imagined a God whose presence we never felt. Hence it is obvious, that in seeking God, the most direct path and the fittest method is, not to attempt with presumptuous curiosity to pry into his essence, which is rather to be adored than minutely discussed, but to contemplate him in his works, by which he draws near, becomes familiar, and in a manner communicates himself to us." (Book 1, Chapter 5, Section 9)

Calvin opens the chapter by saying, "the perfection of blessedness consists in the knowledge of God". I'm realizing that when referring to being a Christian, most theologians throughout history have used very different terms than I am used to. The "Christianese" I have grown up around uses terms like "my walk with God" and "personal relationship with Jesus". I understand what these terms mean, and I think they are legitimate in what they are trying to say, but now I'm wondering where terms like this originated. The term Calvin uses seems much more common: "knowing" God. Calvin doesn't mean it in the way that Aristotle does (abstractly reflecting upon and considering the perfect diving being), because he spends a whole chapter writing against an abstract, merely informational knowledge of God. He means it relationally: "rooted in the heart".

I'm going to spend a while reflecting on what it means to "know" God relationally, because it seems like this is a more Biblical term (in the sense that it shows up much more in the Bible than the idea of a "personal" relationship, even the latter term gets at the same idea).

"And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." John 17:3

Our first orchid has bloomed!

2010-03-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Dave (and Roxanne) Foote, we are becoming orchid heads:

A Series of Failures

2010-03-22T18:50:00.000-07:00

I've made some mistakes over the last few days.

Firstly, I failed at blending black bean soup. I was firmly holding the blender lid while keeping as much distance as possible, since it had spewed leek and potato soup before. As soon as I hit the switch, it began smothering the kitchen in liquefied black beans. The splattering soup was scalding my hand, but I knew that I had to endure the pain or else our kitchen would end up far soupier.

Here is the aftermath:

Secondly, I knocked a wine glass over and it shattered all over the floor. I didn't clean up very well, because the next day my lovely wife sliced open her immaculate toe on a rogue shard. That's not how to be a good husband.

And finally, I nearly impaled myself yesterday on a wooden stake. We were setting up stakes strung with twine in order to grow some green beans. Marijke asked me to come push a stake a little further into the ground. Being the virile lion-heart that I am, I agreed. However, being the incognizant blockhead I also am, I leaned forward too much while pushing it down and snapped it in half. I fell forward onto this freshly-forboding skewer and gave myself a serious cut from my sternum to my armpit. Thankfully, my belle of a wife rebuked the stake and nursed my wounds.

Those green beans better be good.

The Gulag Archipelago

2010-03-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

I decided to take a break from Ovid for a while. I finished 9 of the 15 books from The Metamorphoses and now I'm starting The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He wrote this autobiography/history about the vast Soviet penal system from 1917 through the 1956. Much of it is the personal testimonies of his fellow inmates, committed to memory by Solzhenitsyn. I just finished his chapter on arrest and was really moved by his explanation of why so few people resisted arrest:

   "'Resistance! Why didn't you resist?' Today those who have continued to live on in comfort scold those who suffered.
   Yes, resistance should have begun right there, at the moment of the arrest itself.
   But it did not begin."

Why did the vast majority of innocent, publicly-arrested people not resist arrest? He gives three reasons:

1. "Some still have hopes of a favorable outcome to their case and are afraid to ruin their chances by an outcry...we do not realize that from the very moment of arrest our fate has almost certainly been decided in the worst possible sense and that we cannot make it any worse."

2. "Others have not yet attained the mature concepts on which a shout of protest to the crowd must be based. Indeed, only a revolutionary has slogans on his lips that are crying to be uttered aloud; and where would the uninvolved, peaceable average man come by such slogans? He simply does not know what to shout."

3. "And then, last of all, there is the person whose heart is too full of emotion, whose eyes have seen too much, for that whole ocean to pour fourth in a few disconnected cries."

He then goes on to describe his own arrest (for corresponding with a seditious Ukrainian friend) and why he didn't immediately cry out at its injustice:

"As for me, I kept silent for one further reason: because those Muscovites thronging the steps of the escalators were too few for me, too few! Here my cry would be heard by 200 or twice 200, but what about the 200 million? Vaguely, unclearly, I had a vision that someday I would cry out to the 200 million."

And how he has. The Soviet Union has disappeared along with its gulags, but the gulags of countries like Iran, North Korea, China, and Cuba are still around. Reading The Gulag Archipelago makes me think outside of my very comfortable life and offer up prayers for those suffering under totalitarian regimes abroad. May God swiftly judge those regimes!

Cool Cal on his Presidency

2010-03-19T06:47:00.000-07:00

Calvin Coolidge, president from 1923-1929, was asked what he thought of his achievements in office and he said this: "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business."

March 16, 1964

2010-03-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

Fourty-six years ago today, Lyndon Johnson declared the beginning of a federal "war on poverty".

This from an article by Robert Rector:

"Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, government has spent $16.7 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars) on means-tested welfare. In comparison, all the military wars in U.S. history have cost a total of $6.4 trillion (also in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars)."

LBJ originally intended the War on Poverty to deal with the causes, and not just the consequences, of poverty. It was supposed to eventually draw people out of welfare, and shrink the amount of people getting welfare.

In 2011, the government will spend $953 Billion on welfare programs: "If $953 billion in annual spending were divided equally within this group, benefits would average more than $8,000 per person, or $32,000 per year for a family of four."

But, Rector points out a couple reasons that the War on Poverty will continue to be ineffective at really dealing with poverty:

1. Single-parenthood. "When Johnson launched the War on Poverty, 7 percent of American children were born out of wedlock. Today the number is 39 percent...Today, out-of-wedlock childbearing and the resulting growth of single-parent homes are the most important causes of child poverty. If the poor women who give birth out of wedlock married the fathers of their children, two-thirds would immediately be lifted out of poverty."

2. Lack of employment. "Even in good economic times, the average poor family with children has only 800 hours of work per year. This is the equivalent of one adult working 16 hours per week...If one adult in each poor family worked full-time through the year, the poverty rate among these families would drop by two-thirds. "

These reasons for poverty are not popular to talk about. "...political correctness insists that the principal cause of poverty is the unwillingness of taxpayers to sufficiently increase welfare and education spending, despite massive increases in government funding in these fields for decades."

I had a great conversation last night with a friend about the proper role of the Government and Church in society, especially as it concerns education and poverty. The Church has been commanded by her Lord to care for the weak and poor, but, overall, has forgotten this and the government has stepped in to ineffectively fill the gap. The Church could and should do a far better job at dealing with poverty than the government is: it's more localized, more accountable, and most importantly, bears the all-encompassing Gospel of Jesus.

Hercules: Wild at Heart and a true Tender Warrior.

2010-03-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

Hercules could have started an Ultimate Fighting/Marriage Counseling center and done pretty well with it.

I read this colorful tale in Ovid's Metamorphoses this week:

Hercules has just rescued/married his new wife, Deianiea, and they are returning to their homeland. They come to a wide river, guarded by a centaur named Nessus. The centaur offers to take Deianiea and their stuff across the river, so that Hercules can swim across afterwards. They agree, but when he gets across the river, Hercules realizes that the Centaur is running off with his wife! Here's what happens:

"And Hercules cries out: 'You beast,
where do you think your feet can carry you?
It's you I'm talking to - you biform Nessus!
Hear what I say: don't prey on what is mine!
...
In any case however much you trust
the half of you that is a speeding horse,
you will not get away: I'll wound you yet -
not with my feet but with this fatal shaft!'

His action fit these final words: he shot
an arrow and it caught the fugitive
right in the spine - and drove deep, coming out
through Nessus' chest; and as the centaur wrenched
the barbed tip out, blood spurted from both wounds -
the front, the back and in that blood was mixed
the Hydra's venom - Hercules had dipped
his arrows in that poison after he
had killed the beast of Lerna."

A CLONING BREAKTHROUGH!!!

2010-03-11T18:16:00.000-08:00

I AM CLONING TOMATOES.

I'd heard that if you plant a young tomato plant with it's stem underground, the stem will grow roots. Yesterday, I was cutting Tomato seedlings out of tiny seed-starting pots (there were originally a few seeds planted per pot, but you eventually have to cut it down to one plant) and I thought, "What the heck, I'll try sticking these cuttings in the ground and see if they grow."

So, I planted about 10 tomato cuttings around our backyard and 9 of them are still standing up straight! It may work!

To help the vulnerable seedlings out, I cut the bottoms off milk jugs and stuck the tops over them. It's like a mini-greenhouse:

Last year we had 4 tomato plants and it was about twice as much as we could use. If all these tomato plants keep growing, we will practically be able to start a tomato stand.

On the Observational Astuteness of American Fourth-Graders

2010-03-10T08:54:00.000-08:00

I've been substitute teaching lately. Yesterday, I subbed for a 4-6th grade Math and English tutor. During the morning math class for 4th graders, a student asked me how old I am.

Me: "How old do you think I am?"
Pupil 1: "Oh man, I don't know! Like 18?!"
Pupil 2: "You look really young!"
Pupil 1: "Yeah, you look like you haven't even gone through puberty yet!"

I wanted to say, "Look who's talking...", but what I really said was, "Nope, I'm 25."

All pupils: "Whoa......"

The Arsonist and the Scorched

2010-03-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

Our culture (and, I think, my generation in particular) is pathetically self-absorbed. I hear a lot of people talk about accepting themselves, believing in themselves, loving themselves, finding themselves, and on and on and on. Truth to most people is whatever is "true for me". The common Oprah-type spirtuality is a rehash of a long-lived American folk religion: therapeutic self-love and acceptance that self is or is part of the divine spirit/force/energy/whatever.

Now, I understand that there are some people who have grave psychological self-image issues. They legitimately need help - but the amount of therapeutic pity partying in our radically-individualistic culture is absurd and woefully misdirected.

I have been working through Ovid's Metamorphoses. His story of Narcissus (the young man who falls in love with his reflection and ends up wasting away because he can't have himself) was particularly striking, especially as I see so many people around me in love with themselves (emphasis mine):

"in sum, he now is struck with wonder by
what's wonderful in him. Unwittingly,
he wants himself; he praises, but his praise
is for himself; he is the seeker and
the sought, the longed-for and the one who longs;
he is the arsonist - and is the scorched...

...Why try
to grip an image? He does not exist -
the one you love and long for. If you turn
away, he'll fade; the face that you discern
is but a shadow, your reflected form.
That shape has nothing of its own: it comes
with you, with you it stays; it will retreat
when you have gone - if you can ever leave!" (Book III, in the mid 400s)

CS Lewis says in an essay called "On the Reading Old Books" that we "need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means old books…People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes." The ancients understood something that modern Westerners have completely missed, that self-absorbtion leads not to harmonious self-fulfillment, but ultimately to pathetic self-destruction.

The Bible affirms the same things more fully and truly, explaining that our personal idols (self, family, church, success, etc) ultimately lead to destruction (Job 8:13-19).

God does not just stop with the condemnation of self-destroying idols. He calls people to recognize that they are not God, and that the solution to their guilt and sense of brokenness is not more of themselves, but more of Him:

“‘Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord.

I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the Lord;

I will not be angry forever.

Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God and scattered your favors among foreigners under every green tree,and that you have not obeyed my voice, declares the Lord." Jeremiah 3:12-13

Some Western Ideas

2010-03-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've read a couple of essays in Bauer's Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion that have been really fascinating and challenging. The first was on the idea/fear of extinction-by-population-explosion and the second is on the idea of Western guilt for poverty in the developing world ("The West has never had it so good, and has never felt so bad about it" (p. 66)).

A common theme in these essays has been the source of economic ideas. Bauer points out that all of the following are Western ideas, things that are/were not taken for granted everywhere:

-"Insistence that the West has caused Third World poverty is collective self-accusation. The notion itself originated in the West...people in the Third World, especially articulate people with contacts in the West, readily believed what they were told by prominent academics and other intellectuals, the more so because the idea accorded with their interests and inclinations" (69).

-"Marxism is a Western idealogy, as is the belief that economic differences are anomalous and unjust, and that the reflect exploitation" (69).

-"It was through [contact with Western countries in the 19th and 20th centuries] that human and material resources, skills, capital, and new ideas, including the idea of material progress itself...flowed from the West to the Third World"(71).

Last quote:

"So far from condemning Third World people to death, Western contacts have been behind the large increase in life expectation in the Third World, so often deplored as the population explosion by the same critics" (68).

As a Christian, I am commanded to love God with all of my heart and all of my mind. If I am to care for the poor in as godly a way as possible, I can't merely be content to have positive motivations or feelings about my actions: I must also reflect upon the consequences of my actions. Feeling bad about how terrible I think the West is might make me feel good, but it isn't going to materially help the poor (that is, make them more wealthy/productive) in any long term sort of way, as God as called me to do. Helping the poor means a lot more than feeling guilty and giving out impersonal handouts to atone for it.

"Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?" James 2:15-16

Evolution of the Hipster

2010-03-03T20:53:00.000-08:00

This spread from Paste magazine makes me laugh a lot, especially after having lived in Portland, which may be the hipster capital of the world:

Things that especially amuse me about this:

-The Toms shoes on the 2009 Hipster. It sure is a good thing that charity is fashionable now. It's a great way to motivate members of "Generation Me" to sort-of-kind-of give their money away.

-The V-necked, fixed gear hipster of 2008, but he should be wearing tight cut-off jean shorts and possibly one of those cycling hats.

-The "koi fish" tattoos on Hipster 2007. I knew a guy a few years ago who had baby Jesus riding a koi fish tattooed on his forearm - when I asked him what it meant, he said, "I don't know. It's just cool."

I wish this came in adult-size.

2010-03-02T18:19:00.000-08:00

Or even better, in a couple-size:

I don't know if there's anything more romantic than a husband and wife sleeping under the stars warmed by imaginary taun-taun guts.

Marriage Follow-Up Post

2010-03-01T12:53:00.000-08:00

Last night while cleaning up after dinner, I thought of/appropriated another paradigm for understanding God's intention for marriage.

John Frame's triperspectivalism (three perspectives) has really helped me to understand various theological and philosophical concepts. The three perspectives look like this:

Normative: rules, commands, etc.
Situational: history, environment, circumstances, other people etc.
Existential: internal, personal realities, etc.

Basically, Frame argues that we can find and use these perspectives to understand many things about God, ethics, the Trinity, the Bible, and so on. The three perspectives overlap and inform each other, but all are important to fully understand something.

For example: Jesus is equally King (normative), Prophet (situational), and Priest (existential).

Another example: The triune persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit could be understand as normative (the Father rules as Lord), situtational (the Son has been made flesh among us), and existential (the Spirit indwells and transforms us).

Another example: You can study the Bible from all three perspectives:
   -To study the Bible normatively would be to find what God says about doctrine (such as the correct view of sovereignty),
   -To study the Bible situationally would be to find what God says about what is and should be happening in the world among people (such as "social justice" issues)
   -To study the Bible existentially would be to find what God says about my personal life and relationship with Him

If you read the Bible from only one perspective, you are going to miss a lot of what it is saying. The Bible speaks to all three perspectives and we need to understand the Bible from all of them.

Anyways, I think something similar could be extended to marriage:

A normative view of marriage: Stay married because God says so.
A situational view of marriage: Stay married because it's good for your spouse/children/society etc.
An existential view of marriage: Stay married because it brings personal satisfaction and/or change.

Marriage is not about only one of these things, but all three. To divorce one perspective from the others will make for an unhealthy marriage. The three perspectives are dependent upon and speak to each other.

Some Advice about Marriage

2010-02-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

There is an elderly man who comes to Peet's every afternoon with his wife. The other day he told me that he has been married for 52 years. I asked him what his secret was:

"Oh, I don't know. People who got married in the 1950's just stayed married."

Quite a contrast to the marriages of today, where it's far more common to just can the marriage when things aren't quite as enjoyable as you'd like.

Biblically, marriage is not something to just be endured for the sake of staying together, nor is it something to be ditched when one or both persons are no longer "fulfilled". Neither is marriage to be halfway between these, where a person somewhat endures and somewhat browses around for something better.

Rather, God intends marriage to take a third, Gospel-centered way - marriage is about growth into Christlikeness, not personal happiness or wish-fulfillment, and in which love is far more about a commitment to be loving than a desire to feel loved. A marriage that sees itself as God intends it, not merely an unshakeable castle nor as the worship of pleasant emotions, but rather as a life-long means for fulfilling God's mission for individuals and society, will turn out to be both stable and enjoyable.

"Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones." - Proverbs 3:7-8

Economics, etc.

2010-02-26T21:37:00.000-08:00

Since the last time I posted to the ol' blog, a lot has happened. Namely, I was wed to the lovely Marijke Maria Van Pelt (which now makes her a Fox, and sometimes a Van Fox Pelt depending on our mood). Nothing over the last five months stands up to that, so I'm just going to flop right back into blogging like a goldfish into water.

My interest in economics continues to grow. I recently started P.T. Bauer's Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion (1981), which is a series of essays revolving around the idea of wealth-redistribution (from the wealthy to the poor) inside and between countries.

A couple of points that really struck me:

Bauer points out that redistributive economic policies do not only redistribute wealth, but also responsibility:

"Old age, ill-health, the bringing up of children and interruption of earnings, these are contingincies of life to be paid for out of one's income, and for which adults can be expected to provide by saving or insurance. In many Western countries provision for these contingencies has come to be taken over largely by the state....As a result many people's post-tax income becomes like pocket money which is not required for major necessities and hazards of life because these are paid for by taxes largely levied on themselves.

This policy treats adults as if they were children. Adults manage incomes; children receive pocket-money" (14).

His comments on how the rich and poor are oft perceived really stood out, especially since so many of my Christian peers have a wooden view of wealth as something that is automatically wicked and exploitative. Bauer speaks of the "environmental determinism which underlies so much contemporary discourse on social affairs. The poor are seen as helpless victims of their environment, people at the mercy of external forces and without wills of their own. The implication is that they are without the primary human characteristic of responsibility...The rich, [however], are seen as having wills of their own which are somehow deployed for selfish and even villainous ends...The poor are seen as passive but virtuous, the rich as active but wicked" (24).

The essay is entitled, "The Grail of Equality" and this sentence describes how its definition has morphed in our culture:

"The idea of equality over the past two centuries has progressed, or declined, from equality before the law, through equality of opportunity, to equality of result (or even equality of one quantifiable aspect of the result)" (11).

What do you think?

On Oratory

2009-09-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

I hear a lot of people talk about what a great orator President Obama is. Regardless of how little I agree with his ideology, I do agree that he's a pretty good speaker. However, when I reflect upon the fact that he has an army of speechwriters and an arsenal of teleprompters, a little bit of the Barackian luster is lost.

I have been reading a book by Paul Johnson on American history. The revolutionary Patrick Henry is well known for his exclamation, "Give me liberty or give me death!", but I never knew the context of this little phrase. Use your imagination to picture this gem of theatrics:

"He proposed to the burgesses that Virginia should raise a militia and be ready to do battle. What was Virginia waiting for? Massachusetts was fighting. 'Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?'

Then Henry got to his knees, in the posture of a manacled slave, intoning in a low and rising voice: 'Is life so dear, our peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!'

He then bent to the earth with his hands still crossed, for a few seconds, and suddenly sprang to his feet, shouting, 'GIVE ME LIBERTY!' and flung wide his arms, paused, lowered his arms, clenched his right hand as if holding a dagger at his breast, and said in sepulchral tones: 'Or give me death!'

He then beat his breast, with his hand holding the imaginary dagger. There was silence, broken by a man listening at the open window, who shouted: 'Let me be buried on this spot!' Henry had made his point."

Teleprompters make for interesting speeches, I guess, but not nearly as interesting as pretending to stab yourself.

Samwise Gamgee on Pain and Suffering

2009-08-10T20:52:00.001-07:00

Marijke and I have been working our way through the Lord of the Rings films. Last week we finished The Two Towers and Sam's final speech made me tear up a little bit (Movies hardly EVER make me get teary-eyed):

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened.

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Thoughts on Alleviating Poverty

2009-08-10T16:18:00.001-07:00

I came across an acquaintance's post on facebook today that was a kind of protest against the supposed labor practices of a department store coming to SLO. It was a rant long on emotion and good intentions, but very short on economic understanding. One of the poster's points was something like, "Now we all know that our free market is horrible..." I kind of sighed because lately I've been really interested in helping people (Christians, especially) understand the nature of wealth and poverty, helping them to go beyond impassioned, well-sounding diatribes uncritically learned from Marxist professors or authors.

I wanted to tell this person, "Do you realize that the free market has done far more to take people out of poverty than any kind of top-down social policy or 'program'?". The solution to poverty, by it's very definition, is....WEALTH! The world has never seen a more effective system at producing wealth (aka reducing poverty) than free-market capitalism, even with its flaws. Economics is not something mysterious and fuzzy - it is rooted in empirical data and the historical record. People have tried just about everything when it comes to making economies work, so we can look back and, with reasonable certainty, be able to tell what will or will not create wealth.

One of my favorite quotes by Paul Johnson, a British historian, is applicable: "The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."

I just finished a book by Jay Richards called "Money, Greed, and God" and it was fantastic. He gives ten points at the end of the book that summarize an excellent and thoughtful book:

The Top Ten Ways to Alleviate Poverty; or, Creating Wealth in Ten Tough Steps

1. Establish and maintain the rule of law.

2. Focus the jurisdiction of the government on maintaining the rule of law, and limit its jurisdiction over the economy and the institutions of civil society.

3. Implement a formal property system with consistent and accessible means for securing a clear title to property one owns.

4. Encourage economic freedom: Allow people to trade goods and services unencumbered by tariffs, subsidies, price controls, undue regulation, and restrictive immigration.

5. Encourage stable families and other important private institutions that mediate between the individual and the state.

6. Encourage belief in the truth that the universe is purposeful and makes sense.

7. Encourage the right cultural mores - orientation to the future and the belief that progress but not utopia is possible in this life; willingness to save and delay gratification; willingness to risk, to respect the rights and property of others, to be diligent, to be thrifty.

8. Instill a proper understanding of the nature of wealth and poverty - that wealth is created, that free trade is win-win, that risk is essential to enterprise, that trade-offs are unavoidable, that the success of others need not come at your own expense, and that you can pursue legitimate self-interest and the common good at the same time.

9. Focus on your competitive advantage rather than protecting what used to be your competitive advantage.

10. Work hard.

D-Day

2009-06-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

It's D-Day tomorrow. Many of my peers arrogantly like to sneer at America and complain about everything wrong with her. As someone who has lived overseas for more than a couple months, I think they are utterly foolish. Instead of getting iPods or Macbooks for graduation, high school graduates should be sent off to a non-western country for six months - perhaps it would help my generation to be much more appreciative and much less narcissistic. Anyways, I'm very thankful for what America and her allies did 65 years ago on those beaches in France.

I could almost have a blog entirely about all the bizarre and interesting things that go on in my life while kicking it through the REM cycle. Last night a rainstorm woke me up and the first thing I thought was, "Is it really pouring in June?". The second thing I thought was, "Who cares?". After falling asleep again, I had a NIGHTMARE that my entire garden got eroded by rain. The night before last, I had a dream that I somehow commanded lots of Transformers. It was totally cool.

Speaking of gardens, Ben and I built a second, larger one that sits next to our driveway. Gardening is proving to be quite an interesting hobby. More than that, though, it's good for my soul and mind. As I learn to garden, parts of the Bible that I have read before take on a deeper and richer meaning. While the Bible was written for everyone everywhere at every time, it was written to ancient peoples completely dependent upon agriculture. Experiencing a small amount of sowing, pruning, and reaping in my own backyard helps me to better understand verses, like these ones I've read recently:

James 5
⁷Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. ⁸You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

Isaiah 58
¹¹And the LORD will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters do not fail.

Jeremiah 17
⁷ "Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
⁸ He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit."

Habakkuk 3
¹⁷Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
¹⁹GOD, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me tread on my high places.

Marijke and I are off to a wedding in Livermore today, then it's over to San Francisco tomorrow for an American-themed birthday party. And after that, ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN.

Possibly one of the best songs ever

2009-05-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

For me, Toto is one of those bands that I get a deep hankering for every once in a while. I remember my parents going to a Toto concert when I was in 3rd grade and them telling me, "That guy's voice used to sound a lot better". In 3rd grade, I thought the song, "Africa" was incredible. And 16 years later, I still do.

Music Video:

Engagement: A Male's Perspective, or, How Tim and Marijke Got Their Groove Back

2009-05-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

If I had to guess, I'd bet that most engagement blog entries are written by the woman who has been proposed to, rather than the man who has done the proposing. Last night, I did that proposing, and I will tell you the story like a bard of old.

Yesterday, I took one lovely Marijke M. Van Pelt out for a spot of English tea in Cambria. We went to a teahouse I had heard about called The Tea Cozy. It is the type of place you would normally take your grandma - one visit was enough to last me about 10 years.

A man served us tea and scones. The man pronounced "scone" in a way that rhymed with "lawn" rather than "loan". He seemed sort of prudish, and when I asked him if I could diverge from the normal menu and have only one scone instead of two, he looked down his nose at me and said, "Well, I SUPPOSE you could have one scone, but I for one can NEVER have just one." Marijke and I politely asked for just one scone each.

With our tea dranken, our scones eaten, and my brain filled with the knowledge of what a tea cozy actually is, we left Cambria.

One the way to Cambria, I pointed out a spot along the ocean that I used to surf at. I nonchalantly said, "We should stop by there on the way back south. It is really pretty." So, when we passed it again, I pulled over and we started walking through a field along a path that led to small coastal cliffs.

Here is Marijke right as we started walking, almost completely unsuspicious of the events about the transpire. What a babe:

And here she is, walking straight into the arms of DESTINY:

And then...an OMEN of impending blessing and joy! We saw a white crane standing in the path before us. It might have been an egret or heron, but I am going to assume it was a crane because the story is better that way. The crane is a bird rich in lore and mythology. According to various cultures, the crane is an omen of longevity (Korea, China, Japan, and Vietnam), wisdom (China), joy (Ancient Greece and Rome), loyalty (Medieval Europe), and contemplation (Africa). If you ask me, I'd say we are in for something good.

Mythology and lore aside, Marijke wanted me to take a picture of the beautiful white bird. I lifted my camera to take a picture, but the crane began to fly away. As I tried to take a picture of the flying bird, Marijke stood between it and the camera. In the pictures below, we see her trying to get out of the picture frame.

"Tim, no, not me! The bird, the bird!"

"TIM! THE BIRD! TAKE A PICTURE OF THE BIRD!!!!"

And here we see the crane flying away after having finally delivered her divine oracle of good will and hope.

Marijke thought that running from a crane was the most exciting thing that was going to happen to her that evening, but she was in for a WILD RIDE OF MATRIMONIAL JEWELRY!

So, we walked down to the water and I proceeded to tell Marijke how much and why I loved her. I tried to stop her at a premeditated spot, but she said, "Why are we stopping? Let's go down to the water." I had to play it off and act cool, so I said, "Uh...yeah, I don't know why we should stop. Let's keep walking."

We got down to the water's edge and, upon one knee, I did the deed. I asked Marijke to be my wife. I don't quite remember what happened right then, but Marijke promises me she actually said yes. I don't remember hearing a "yes", but I do remember lots of crying and screaming and jumping.

Crying:

Screaming:

Blinging (a picture from later that night):

After this, Marijke excitedly called a bunch of her friends and family and then we went to dinner in Morro Bay.

I'm going to have a wife. And what a wife!

Paul Johnson on History

2009-05-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

Paul Johnson on history:

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."

My Green Thumb

2009-05-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, Marijke and I planted a garden. What began as a cute hobby for a couple has turned into a megalomanic quest for me. As Captain Ahab hunted the White Whale with a cruel determination, so do I pursue homegrown vegetables with a micromanaging obsession.

The hunt for vegetative self-sufficiency began with building a small 1' x 4' planter box. While in Home Depot, my dad told me by phone how to best build it. If you have never tried to figure out how to build something without an actual drawing, let me tell you something: It's about as hard as benchpressing a train - but, I did it.

With the box built, Marijke and I filled the box with soil and planted our crops. From seedlings (very small plants), we planted beans, tomatoes, and basil. From seeds, we've planted parsley, chives, and oregano.

I never thought being a gardener would require so much tyrannical choosing between life and death for my unassuming plants. So far, I've executed one entire basil plant (it was too small and sickly) and have torn leaves from some of the other basil plants and one of the bean plants. At first, my conscience plagued me for selecting which plants would live and die ("Is this plant abortion?!" "Is this plant euthanasia?!"), but as my megalomania has grown, so has my commitment to the purity and strength of my garden.

The weak, diseased, and unproductive shall be cast aside! The strong, vibrant, and fruitful shall be fortified! And in the end, I SHALL EAT SEASONED BEANS AND TOMATOES!

I am really glad that plants don't have souls, or else I'd be in some major ethical hot water.

A few days ago, I noticed the first signs of seed germination. There is something miraculous and mysterious about how a little dry seed can slowly turn into a plant. I find myself checking the small seedlings every day and monitoring their progress. I am also catching myself scanning front yards for signs of growing garden plants.

Gardening may be one of the funnest and most interesting things I've ever come across. I will keep you updated, internet.

Odds and Ends

2009-04-15T08:08:00.001-07:00

This post is going to be a postmodern pastiche of thoughts. It is honor of my last two days in Portland, which is very po-mo.

Here are some things that I've seen in the same park, three weekends in a row:

First weekend: about 40 people walking around downtown Portland in wedding dresses. About half of them were men. I have no idea what they were doing.

Second weekend: a wedding party having their pictures taken. The bridesmaids were all wearing nice black dresses, except that they were all wearing different-colored rain boots. Cute.

Third weekend: a man with a large beard and huge dreadlocks feeding pigeons out of his hand. Sometimes I would look over and he would be holding a pigeon next to his head while he held in the other hand at arm's length a digital camera, to take a picture of himself (with pigeon about two inches from his face).

Also, I have been having incredible dreams lately:

Three nights ago, I dreamt that my best friend Ben and I had come across a new tank and somehow, we knew how to drive it. We were just driving around blowing stuff up and ripping up people's yards. It was an amazing dream.

Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was a commercial pilot...IN THE FUTURE! I was flying all these futuristic airplanes around futuristic cities. It was an amazing dream.

Last night, I dreamt that I became friends with Kanye West and hung out with him a lot. It was an amazing dream.

Thomas Merton says, "Las Vegas sucks"

2009-03-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

There is someone at my work who is a daoist of sorts. He is into all kinds of monkish things and we got into a conversation about Thomas Merton, who was a Catholic trappist monk in the 1950's and 60's. My daoist friend let me borrow a very small book called "Thoughts in Solitude" by Merton. I was really intrigued by his commentary on how modern man has changed the desert with his Las Vegas's and nuclear weapons tests:

"The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else...the desert is therefore the logical dwelling place for the man who seeks to be nothing but himself - that is to say, a creature solitary and poor and dependent upon no one but God, with no great project standing between himself and his Creator...

Yet look at the deserts today. What are they? The birthplace of a new and terrible creation, the testing-ground of the power by which man seeks to un-create what God has blessed. Today, in the century of man's greatest technological achievement, the wilderness at last comes into its own. Man no longer needs God, and he can live in the desert on his own resources. He can build there his fantastic protected cities of withdrawal and experience mentation and vice...they are brilliant and sordid smiles of the devil upon the face of the wilderness, cities of secrecy where each man spies on his brother, cities through whose veins money runs like artificial blood, and from whose womb will come the last and greatest instrument of destruction.

Can we watch the growth of these cities and not do something to purify our own hearts? When man and his money and his machines move out into the desert, and dwell there, not fighting the devil as Christ did, but believing in his promises of power and wealth, and adoring his angelic wisdom, then the desert itself moves everywhere. Everywhere is desert. Everywhere is solitude in which man must do penance and fight the adversary and purify his own heart in the grace of God."

Some CS Lewis quotes

2009-03-19T00:17:00.001-07:00

As you may or may not know, I did my senior project on CS Lewis' conversion. Except for rereading a couple books of his, I haven't read too much Lewis since then. My girlfriend Marijke recently gave me his God in the Dock, which I think is the only theological work of his I haven't read. It's a collection of essays, articles, and lectures and I thought I'd post some quotes I read tonight. They are from a question and answer session he participated in:

"Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is the best...As you perhaps know, I haven't always been a Christian. I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity..."

On disunity in the Church:

"So it seems to me that the 'extremist' elements in every Church are nearest one another and the liberal and 'broad-minded' people in each Body could never be united at all. The world of dogmatic Christianity is a place in which thousands of people of quite different types keep on saying the same thing, and the world of 'broad-mindedness' and watered-down 'religion' is a world where a small number of people (all of the same type) say totally different things and change their minds every few minutes. We shall never get re-union from them."

On going to church:

"When I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; . . . I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit..."

On an interesting name for a bakery company

2009-03-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

I was in El Salvador last week visiting my very lovely girlfriend Marijke. It was a great week, filled with cooking, walking, and warding off Lord Voldemort (Senor Voldemuerte). We went and saw He's Just Not That into You, which is probably the most incredible movie of all time. As we left the movie theater and walked past the shotgun-toting guards, I turned to Marijke and said, "You know, I am really into you" just to make sure she didn't let the title of the movie get to her. We also went to the beach and I tried to hide my gnawing fear of sting rays behind a facade of testosterone and bulging biceps.

But let's just be honest: I was freaked out and as soon as I felt a fish hit my leg, I thought, "I'm out of here." I stuck to the shore for the rest of the day. Don't worry; Marijke still likes me.

Anyways, throughout the week I ate some grain/fruit bars and on my last day there, I noticed the name of the company that made them: Bimbo. Seeing this odd and humorous name for a bakery struck a hauntingly familiar chord in my soul, for it made me think of something that happened to me in childhood.

I must have been about 7 or 8 at the time and we were driving on the freeway through the former sugar-beet capital of the world: Oxnard, CA (If you know me very well, you know that I am not a very big fan of Oxnard, but it's where I was born, so I can't be too much of a hater). Anyways, I looked out the window and I saw a windowless panel van passing by. I thought, "That's interesting. Why wouldn't a van have windows on it?" I noticed the name plastered on the side of it: BIMBO BREADS. My deepest childhood suspcions were confirmed: With no windows and such a ridiculous and obviously-fake name for a company, this was CERTAINLY a CIA spy van. In my great 7-year old wisdom and experience, I was convinced that I was seeing my first real-life spy van. Ever since then, I have been slightly wary of windowless vans.

But now I can let down my guard if I ever see another Bimbo Breads van, since I now know that it's a real company that sells real goods that I really ate last week.

As a sidenote, here's something interesting I saw this morning: A young pregnant woman with a very large afro walking down the street with a baby on her hip. I thought, "That's interesting - I've never seen someone with a large afro who is both pregnant AND carrying a small child. I don't think I'll ever see this again." I paid careful attention because I knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime event. One day, I'll be telling my grandchildren about it.

anarchists are blockheads

2009-01-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

My job is of a very heroic type. Some heroes rescue infants from burning buildings. Some heroes arrest Nazis in Argentina. Some heroes punch Great White sharks right in the eye.

Me? Well, I empty trash cans and (try to) get rid of anarchist graffiti.

Yesterday at my janitorial job, we got a call that there was some grafitti on the outside of the building. My valiant custodial comrade and I emerged into the morning sunshine armed with nothing more than our audacity and some grafitti removing wipes.

The vandals used some kind of thick latex paint, so we couldn't actually get the paint off the wall, but I was really struck by what they scrawled in large letters:

NO LIMITS, NO LAWS

Next to it, they had put one of those funny anarchist A's.

I immediately thought, "No limits? Really?"

"NO LIMITS" sounds like a pretty limiting statement to me. They chose to write in English and not in any other real or imaginary language. That's a pretty narrow and limited thing to do. And it seems that by using a paintbrush instead of a catfish to paint, they were voluntarily submitting to some kind of limit.

I've just finished reading GK Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, which is maybe why I've been thinking more about anarchists lately. On the surface, the short novel is about anarchists who want to take down the government, but who Chesterton is really critisizing are the anarchists who want to take down God.

"NO LIMITS, NO LAWS" seems a pretty foolish thing to believe, and an even more sophomoric thing to write on the outside of a building.

What I Learned in 7th Grade Health Class

2009-01-19T18:41:00.000-08:00

Last night I was washing my face and, like I always do when annihilating clogged and menacing pores, I thought, "Gotta make sure I really clean the T-zone..."

The "T-zone"? I was suddenly struck by this strange little word and I thought about how I learned it. I learned about the "T-zone" in my 7th-grade health class. In case you were born in a cave or were homeschooled or something, I'll explain what the T-zone is: It's the "T" formed by your forehead and nose. It's where acne is most likely to wage chemical war on your face with weapons of mass destruction.

As I continued washing my face, I thought more about my 7th grade health class and tried to remember every and anything I could about it. Here is what I remember learning from that class:

-Make sure you clean the T-zone really well, or no one will like you, probably.

-Pregnancy and smoking don't mix.

Our teacher had this strange doll that was kind of like a pregnant lady, except that her belly was see through and her mouth was perfectly formed to hold a cigarette. When the teacher lit up a cigarette, she would jam it in the dolls mouth, then pump the doll's torso so the doll would "smoke" and you could see all the junk that goes into a uterus with the wee little baby. I remember it very vividly and I think the whole thing worked, because I still think, "Man, if I am ever pregnant, I am never going to smoke."

I remember when I saw the teacher light up a cigarette, I had this incredible sense of disbelief. I couldn't believe that a TEACHER, of all people, was actually lighting a REAL cigarette at school, in front of all of us impressionable pre-adolescents. It felt like I was partner to some inexcusable crime.

-The only other thing I remember from that class is that my teacher was morbidly obese and throughout the year I would always think, "Well this is ironic."

los angeles traffic can't handle this

2009-01-07T20:56:00.000-08:00

I recently returned to Portland after a couple of holiday weeks in beautiful California. For the second half of my time there, I rented a car with which I could gallivant around the southern third of the Golden State. I reserved the cheapest and smallest car available, but when I arrived at the car-rental station, the kindly woman told me, "I'm sorry, we don't have any of those left. All we have left are Mustangs, but we will charge you the same. Is that ok?" I obliged and received my keys to my new red Mustang.

I felt so obnoxious the whole time I had it and constantly tried to reconstruct internal dialogues people might be having with themselves as I drove by them on the 405 freeway:

"Of course...he WOULD be driving in the fast lane. What a tool!"
"Who does that yuppie think he is?! I bet he thinks he is so much better than me and my PRIUS!"
"GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE, NINCOMPOOP!"

Certainly the 'STANG was much funner to drive than my humble Celica. As I merged onto California's concrete arteries, I sometimes punched the gas like a heavyweight champion boxer. I took full advantage of automatic power windows on BOTH sides of the car. I accidently burnt some rubber as I backed out of a parking space on a steep incline. I imagined myself carelessly tossing an half-empty grande Starbucks latte onto the 5 freeway, the wind blowing across my sunglassed head while listening to talk radio.

Thoughts on Christmas from Diedrich Bonhoeffer

2008-12-25T10:42:00.000-08:00

Diedrich Boenhoffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian in Germany before and during World War II. Along with Karl Barth, he split off from the main Lutheran Evangelical church because of their support for Hitler. Their new "Confessing" church was actively involved in resisting the Nazis and part of a plot to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer originally left Germany to lecture in America about the dangers of Nazi Germany, but returned to Germany in 1939 because he felt like he needed to support and encourage the Christian church there. He was arrested a few years later and wrote many letters from prison. He wrote the following quote towards the end of 1943. He was sent to a concentration camp in 1945 and was hung a month before the war ended.

“From the Christian point of view there is no special problem about Christmas in a prison cell. For many people in this building it will probably be a more sincere and genuine occasion than in places where nothing but the name is kept. That misery, suffering, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God from what they mean in the judgment of man, that God will approach where men will turn away, that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn — these are things that a prisoner can understand better than other people; for him they really are glad tidings, and that faith gives him a part in the communion of saints, a Christian fellowship breaking the bounds of time and space and reducing the months of confinement here to insignificance.”

Thoughts on History from my friend Livy

2008-12-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

I have a friend named Titus Livius. We close friends of him call him Livy for short. Livy was born in northern Italy in 59 BC. He died in 17 AD. He had a pretty famous acquantance named Augustus, who also happens to be that dude named Caesar who also happened to make Joseph and Mary take a hike from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Livy wrote about the history of his country from about 750BC to 9BC. I am reading his history books right now and they are absolutely fascinating. The following quote comes from the very beginning of his work; I was struck by its insight and its concern coming from a man whose nation (as he knew it) would exist for another few hundred years. His attention to the decline of morality (and subsequent lack of desire to do anything about it) especially struck me. The part I've italicized struck me as eerily contemporary.

"I invite the reader's attention to the much more serious consideration of the kinds of lives our ancestors lived, of who were the men, and what the means both in politics and war by which Rome's power was first acquired and subsequently expanded; I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid."

If I were to ever be a history teacher, I would certainly read aloud on the first day of class the second part of this quote.

the hills are alive

2008-11-30T20:58:00.001-08:00

For the last two nights, the Von Trapp children have performed at my work.

Yes, that's right. THE Von Trapp children. Actually, the grandchildren of THE Von Trapp children of Sound of Music fame.

Who would have thought that there were still real Von Trapps running around singing and yodeling about Christmas and Edelweiss and saying goodbye? Not me, for one.

There are four Von Trapp children; three girls, one boy, and all of them hormonally-raging teenagers. The youngest is the boy, but luckily puberty is leaving his vocal range in tact.

After seeing the Von Trapp children in concert (more like cleaning toilets while hearing them over the speaker system), I have come to a brilliant resolution:

Resolved, to vehemently fight off Nazis with my beautiful wife then dress our many children in lederhosen, teach them how to sing (or ROCK) and tour the world with them, making billions and billions of dollars in the process.

i'm a magnet for bizarro

2008-11-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know what the deal is, but I have the uncanny ability to end up in strange and awkward situations in bathrooms with other men.

Last night, I went to see the Batman movie with my roommate Chris. It far exceeded all the hype given to it. I left with my mind blown and my face melted, just as I did when I saw the first Batman on opening day in 1989 (I remember being mind-blown and face-melted, even though I was only 4).

I went to the bathroom before the movie started, and as I began my stint at the urinal, I heard someone say:

"Hey, that looks like a nice pisser!" A man in his late twenties approached the urinal next to me and began his business there. He then said,
"So, you got lots of lady friends here tonight?"
"Nope...I'm just here with my roommate."
"Oh, that's cool, that's cool. I bet with those glasses you have lots of lady friends."
"I have a girlfriend and she's great."
"Oh yeah, yeah, well you should have a girlfriend with glasses as cool as those ones."
"Thanks..."
"Sure thing, sure thing."

I ended the conversation with a friendly, "Well, I'm done. I'll see you around."

I don't know how I end up in these bizarre situations so often.

I Found the Winner in Me

2008-11-17T22:56:00.000-08:00

There are some times in a man's life when he is so excited about something that he wants to just rip his shirt off right there.

Like the first time he kicks in a carved pumpkin (Don't worry: Real men kick in their own pumpkins. Kicking in little kids' pumpkins is for cowards and milquetoasts.)

Like the first time he throws a broken TV off of a building into a dumpster.

Like when he doesn't cut himself shaving for the first time in weeks.

Tonight, I did not cut myself shaving. I am a VICTOR!

For some reason, I still have issues with shaving my face. I've been shaving for a while, but somehow I often end up with nicks. If you had interviewed me when I first started shaving and said, "Tim, you are quite the awkwardly-pubescent teenager and you are clearly just learning how to shave. Do you think that in 8 years you will still be figuring out how to not hurt yourself when you shave?", I would have replied with a hearty, "No! Certainly I will have it down by then!"

Well, I would have been wrong. I don't have it down. But I am learning. And tonight gave me hope that I don't always have to cut myself.

Riddle

2008-10-28T20:43:00.001-07:00

Here is a riddle:

What picks up used syringes up off the bathroom floor, gets majorly hit on by a drunk gay guy, and watches the Oregon Sympony perform all of "Peter and the Wolf"?

Hint: It's a custodian.

Answer: It's me, at work.

I have a very interesting job. Between vehemently and respectfully turning down a man's romantic entreaties and cleaning bathrooms, I get to do stuff like read for fun. I also have learned more about cleaning chemicals and how recycling works in Oregon.

Right now I am listening to Elvis Costello. When he was first starting out as a musician in the mid seventies, he worked as a computer programmer as a day job. So I have been thinking about the possibility of me making it big as a rock star and later, people will read about me on wikipedia and it will say "He worked as a lowly custodian during the day, but at night, he totally cut loose and rocked his brains out!"

But I'm not counting on it.

Life in Zion...er..I mean, Portland

2008-10-21T13:44:00.001-07:00

You know you are in Portland when you see pumpkins on people's doorsteps carved to look like the messiah (aka Barack Obama).

Tomorrow night, I will be cleaning the bathrooms during a ZZ Top concert. Should be...interesting? What WAS interesting and exciting was the part of a piano concerto I got to watch over the weekend.

Sometimes I Read

2008-10-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

I recently started reading St. Augustine's City of God for fun. He wrote a few years after the barbarians first sacked Rome. He wrote it to counter the many pagans who blamed the Christians for Rome's downfall, since the Christians didn't sacrifice to the Roman gods. He goes on to describe the contrast between the city of man (the state/world) and the city of God (what God is doing now and in the future), and how man's only true hope is in the city of God. I wanted to read it because I've been thinking a lot lately about America and how she isn't quite as strong as she used to be. In this political season, there are a lot of people running around (especially here in Portland) who seem to put all of their hope in a political figure or agenda. For being 1600 years old, Augustine's words are eerily relevant.

I read this part today and it blew me away because of how much it reminds me of Americans today. Augustine is referring to an old Roman general named Scipio who voted in 146BC against destroying Carthage, the capital of Rome's number on enemy. The senate voted to go ahead and destroy it, and Scipio dutifully carried it out. Scipio didn't want to destroy Carthage because he feared that in the absence of an enemy, the Romans would grow so comfortable that they would drown in the vomit of their own luxuries.

Augustine is telling his detractors that the destruction of Rome has done nothing to curb their licentiously destructive and vain lifestyles and points to the pagan example of Scipio:

"This was the foul plague-spot, this the wreck of virtue and honour that Scipio sought to preserve you from when he prohibited the construction of theaters; this was his reason for desiring that you might still have an enemy to fear, seeing as he did how easily prosperity would corrupt and destroy you. He did not consider the republic flourishing whose walls stand, but whose morals are in ruin.

But the seductions of evil-minded devils had more influence with you than the precautions of prudent men. Hence the injuries you do, you will not permit to be imputed to you; but the injuries you suffer, you impute to Christianity. Depraved by good fortune, and not chastened by adversity, what you desire in the restoration of a peaceful and secure state, is not the tranquillity of the commonwealth, but the impunity of your own vicious luxury.

Scipio wished you to be hard pressed by an enemy, that you might not abandon yourselves to luxurious manners; but so abandoned are you, that not even when crushed by the enemy is your luxury repressed. You have missed the profit of your calamity; you have been made most wretched, and you have remained most profligate."

i have slain unemployment (for now)

2008-10-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

I'll admit that I've been a bit slow on updating the ol' blog for the last couple weeks. And I am not going to apologize for it.

Nope.

Because I don't take crap from anyone.

Because I don't need to.

BECAUSE I AM A UNION MEMBER.

That's right, friends. I have officially joined a union. And by "joined a union", I really mean, "having no choice and being forced into a union in order to get my current job".

After finishing one and a half majors and starting another, I am officially and rapidly scaling the success ladder.

I have made it in the world.

I am somebody.

I work twenty hours a week.

I AM A UNIONIZED CUSTODIAN.

You heard right again. I got a job polishing brass, cleaning bathrooms, and picking up trash at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts. This has turned out to be a great job so far...I have a bunch of down time while working and can read for school/pleasure, roam around, eat the occasional free cookie, and view whatever performances happen to be going on. Last night I got to watch about 45 minutes of the ballet "Swan Lake". It was fantastic. I have little exposure to the ballet world, but I am learning and trying to appreciate it more.

In a couple weeks I'll be working during a ZZ Top show. I've heard that they are bringing 7 tour busses. One for each of the band members (beards and all) and four for everyone else.

So far, I am pretty unsure of why the heck the union is important. So far, the only thing I can tell it does is limits the number of hours I work. The union says "you can't work more than 32 hours a week". I say, "Yes I can. You don't know me." They say, "No you can't." Maybe I will find out more as the job goes on, but so far the union seems pretty silly.

I am so culturally with it

2008-09-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went to the Portland Polish Festival. I:

-ate potato pancakes (platskis). Amazing.
-ate a cheese dumpling. Equally amazing, but also death-defyingly rich.
-listened to a polka band play the hokey pokey once and the chicken dance twice.
-got elbowed in the face by a random festival-goer.
-accidentally knocked over a little boy while polka dancing. Don't worry, he got over it and I got more careful.

slowly going the way of washington mutual

2008-09-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

Goodbye Washington Mutual. I'd been hearing for a while that Washington Mutual was in some major hot water and when I read the news last night, I saw that Wamu was finally toast. Goodbye, Washington Mutual. Hello, JP Morgan.

All this talk in the news about banks and governments taking on banks' bad debt and investments had me thinking today about its echoes of Biblical and theological truths (read: penal substitution). As I was reflecting on how Jesus took the hit and "bought up" our crappy investments (read: idolatry), I remembered something I read by Martin Luther on Christ as the church's groom a couple years ago I thought I'd share. It's from his Freedom of a Christian:

"[Faith] unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom...Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life and salvation will be the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's and bestow upon her the things that are his.

If he give her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?"

notes from the aboveground

2008-09-24T23:18:00.001-07:00

Right now I am listening to Green Day's album Dookie and it is incredible. This album is one of the first ones I can remember listening to. I listened to it when I was in 5th or 6th grade and it brings back memories of pretending to be dinosaurs and Star Wars characters on the playground.

I started reading Robinson Crusoe a few days ago. I figured, "I am in a new place, trying to figure out what the heck I am doing. Sometimes I feel like all I have is God. Robinson Crusoe went to a new place and all he had was God. I bet that would be a good book to read now." Now, I am certainly not as lonely, and my food hunting is as easy as driving to the grocery store, but there is a slight affinity to my boy Robby and for that I am enjoying the book.