Some people need to decaffeinate.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Monday, March 01, 2010
Said, and Done
This is a long screed, even by my standards. Some background must be painted first:
For the past eight and a half years I have been Communications Director for the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), an organization that uses the word "synod" in the sense of a diocese or district office. It's been a good gig and I've mostly enjoyed it, especially in the past couple of years as I've been able to expand more into digital communications efforts as opposed to Yet Another Newsletter.
That all came to a screeching halt a little more than a month ago, however, when my position was eliminated because of significant budgetary shortfalls. (And not just me: Since my departure, one of my former co-workers is also now everyone's former co-worker; and another has been cut to one-quarter time. Nor are they out of the woods yet.)
Why the budget crunch? In the main, is has to do with a vote taken at the ELCA's national gathering--Churchwide Assembly, in their parlance--last August. First they dopted a Social Statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust"; then, as if that wasn't bad enough, the voting members adopted a set of Ministry Policies Resolutions that, among other things, committed the ELCA to finding a way for people in "publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church."
Meaning: If an ELCA congregation wishes to call a pastor who is a "practicing" homosexual, it's okay with the home office. Previously, gay or lesbian pastors were expected to be celibate, same as unmarried heterosexual pastors. (You can read the summary on their website.)
At that point, something that may be accurately described as all hell breaking loose occurred. A small but astoundingly noisy contingent decried the action as a repudiation of Holy Writ and began a concerted effort to rouse the rabble and move away from the heresy enacted by their church's governing body forthwith. The biggest noisemaker in this scenario was and is an outfit that calls itself Lutheran CORE (COalition for REnewal). They've done an excellent job of keeping pots stirred, fires stoked, and emotions at fever-pitch.
It's no stretch to say that my final six months (as it turned out) with the synod largely were devoted to helping my boss, the local Lutheran bishop, calm people down. Our message was unwavering: There's a lot of ground to be covered before anyone really knows how everything will sort out, and it's easier to burn down the building in the heat of passion than to build it back up again. Plus, no matter what policies and procedures are ultimately worked out, no congregation will be forced to call a pastor they don't want.
And usually our efforts--pastoral letters, video messages, resource materials posted to the website--would indeed have the effect of getting people to calm down and take a couple of deep breaths.
Which Lutheran CORE couldn't have, of course. Calm, reason, thoughtfulness--these are not the sorts of things you can launch a revolution from! The CORE organizers have been very good at keeping the coals raked up.
One of their tactics has been to convince individuals and congregations that they should withhold their giving to ELCA, since ELCA is the bad guy who's wrecking "their" church. Unfortunately for me, the traditional path of money to the ELCA is collection plate -> synod -> ELCA, so withholding contributions to the national organization meant withholding contributions to the local office. Thus the budget shortfall.
It's been nice working with you. Here's your water wings.
Now, at this point, I no longer have a dog in the fight. I care about the fate of my friends back at the office, but I no longer have a professional stake in the organization's future. Shoot, I'm not even Lutheran! However, I did dedicate nearly a decade of my life to the enterprise, and I am the sort of person who takes pride in his work. So to see it all crumbling down because of self-righteous, self-centered bigots is pretty galling.
So too is the fact that the people behind Lutheran CORE have displayed complete indifference for the pain and suffering that they are causing throughout their church. (And beyond: Sooner or later budget shortfalls will inevitably affect the work that the ELCA does around the world.) It's completely understandable, of course: They're having loads of fun strutting around, holding secret meetings, organizing task forces, and, generally, biting the hand that feeds them. (At the time of my leaving the synod's employ, the number of local pastors who had resigned from the ELCA roster because of their much-vocalized disgust at its heresy was exactly zero. That's the same number of them who had removed themselves from the ELCA health plan in protest. And as for the number of them who had disassociated themselves from the nasty ELCA's pension plan? You got it: Zilch. Can you spell "hypocrisy?")
And so it is that I was rather peeved when a blog post on the Lutheran CORE website popped up in my Google Alerts (which I set up to keep tabs on news about or affecting my erstwhile employer and have not yet canceled) a couple of weeks ago. The post, "ELCA taking hard line against those who dissent from actions on sexuality or redirect benevolence giving" is a long one, which you can read here.
The part of it that ticked me off is this offhanded bit:
Some cuts. See, that's all it is for them, for they have nothing on the line. They take no risk, they suffer no consequences. Some cuts. Like, we'll cancel the daily deliveries of fresh tropical fruit and designer water. Oh, and we can all share just one limo to and from the office, can't we? After all, "some cuts" must be made, yes?
Expletive!
So I jotted a comment to the blog post, which was written by an acquaintance of mine. I predicted at the time that the comment would not be approved for posting to the blog, a prediction that to date has been accurate. I also opined that there was a 50-50 chance that I would receive some kind of acknowledgement or reply outside of the blog, which has not happened either. But that's okay. I have a blog too, after all.
Here's the comment I sent:
In this funhouse-mirror view of things, they are not hate-filled, stone-hearted bigots. God is! And as good God-fearing Christians, they must of course carry out his narrow-minded, prejudicial agenda, yes? So don't blame them--they're only doing what God wants!
Such tiny, narrow boxes "believers" insist on cramming their God into, no? In that regard they are in fact no different from the ancient pagans, who attributed to their gods the full range of human shortcomings and foibles. Human beings are prone to anger, suspicion, anxiety, pettiness...stands to reason their Creator must be too!
It is more than a little telling that, in the course of their incessant talk about the desires and intentions of the Creator (which are stunningly in sync with their own desires and intentions), one small possibility never seems to occur to them:
Maybe they're wrong.
A great many of these folks insist long and loud that God "never changes," that the Bible is his immutable word and that it too is immutable and not subject to interpretation except by themselves to their own ends. To the latter: Nonsense. The Bible is and always has been wide open to interpretation. The idea that its contents--whatever importance one chooses to give them--are invariably crystal-clear, straightforward, and self-explanatory is sheer silliness. Were it true, there would be no need for the mountains of books about the Bible; no need to annotated editions of the book. There would be no point in Bible study, if the Bible is as clear-cut as some insist, for there would be nothing to discuss; one might just as well hold discussion groups on the owner's manual for a toaster. There certainly would be no reason for homilies and sermons, were the Bible verses on which they are founded so transparent that anyone could read and understand them as easily as the instructions of a tube of toothpaste.
To the former: It has always seemed to me that God is all about change. Golly, doesn't the Bible make that clear? He seems to be all about throwing out the old and ushering in the new. Did not he send his son to establish a new covenant? Or was it merely to review the terms of the old one? From the first line of Genesis, it's all about upsetting the apple cart, shaking up the status quo, changing things! Strange, then, that religion puts such a high premium on tradition, on precedence, on fossilization. It seems to me another example of human beings creating God in their own image, of building a nice, safe, matchbox-sized container for him, cramming him in here, and insisting it can be no other way. For to contemplate any other way is scary.
In that context, then--God as the elemental agent of change--it seems not impossible that the Creator is doing what he does best, viz., stirring things up. I have more than once had the thought that it may be that the Creator has decided that Creation is at the right point to deal with a new idea, that it's okay for people to be different. Perhaps God has decided that humanity has reached a point in its development where it can and should and must begin to accept the fact that sexual orientation is just one tiny little part of the whole being, and in turn accept the fact that homosexual individuals are, well, acceptable. This would indicate that God has a higher opinion of humanity than I do, but that would come as no surprise.
Why would God think that this is the time, given the hatred, suspicion, and downright inhumanity that humanity displays? Beats me. If he does so think, presumably he has his reasons.
And if he does so think, then all of those "Christians" working so hard to "save" their church are in fact positioning themselves as speed bumps in God's plan. If God wants change, as I believe is possible and even likely, then what does that make those who are standing in the way of change?
Which would fit into my opinion that these people who are so determined to make sure that the other is kept out, that only like-thinking, right-minded, "pure" people are admitted, have been so deluded and turned inside out by Old Scratch that they honestly think they're gloriously marching to God's drumbeat when in fact they are pitching for the other team. The idea that God wants bigotry, hatred, and exclusion as the foundation of anything done in his name is ludicrous. Old Hob, on the other hand, would find such building materials right up his alley.
And that's why I believe that ultimately any new church body created by Lutheran CORE is doomed to fail. Well, one of the reasons:
First, whatever they may develop would be an institution founded on negativity, an institution founded to be opposed to something--in this case an acceptance of people who sexual orientation is different than what we like, which makes it different from what God likes, which makes it wrong--rather than to put forward any nurturing, meaningful, or enlightening ideal.It would be an undertaking founded on the notion "We are right and everything going on around us is scary and wrong." It would not be the first such undertaking, and it's unlikely to be the last. But even to a cynic such as yours truly, it's hard to imagine that there is that large a pool of frightened, hate-filled people to sustain the enterprise, much less that the pool will continue to grow. It seems that the best and most successful human endeavors are established on principles of advancement, improvement, forward-thinking--not retrenching, insulation, parochialism.
Second, and perhaps most important (given my cynicism), is the apparent nature of those leading the charge to their shimmering new future: They strike me as angry, frightened, smug, self-aggrandizing malcontents. Such personalities, in the long run, make poor leaders, for sooner or later, and probably sooner, they will be disappointed. It is inevitable, for being disappointed in other people is a cornerstone of their existence. They are in a constant state of anticipation of the next slight, the next brush-off, the great disappointment. So all will be skittles and beer at the outset, for they will be free of the heretical oppression of the ELCA, happily swimming with others who think and believe and look like them, everybody in lock step doing the Right Things and thinking the Right Thoughts, and it will be good.
But these are human beings we're talking about here, folks, and eventually one of them will have a Different Thought! And then it will be beer and skittles no more. It will in fact be Great Disappointment. And again it will be Sturm und Drang all over again, and distrust and suspicion and accusations and ill-will and on and on. For that is the nature of such people. They have already demonstrated that they cannot and will not accept different ideas. They have already demonstrated that they cannot and will not accept the doctrines of live and let live or to each his own or agree to disagree. Why would we expect them to suddenly change their stripes once they've succeeded in tearing apart their old church in the pipe dream of building their new, shiny, better one? There is no reason to think that the first instance of disagreement or discord will not cause the entire endeavor to re-fracture and the cycle to repeat itself ad nauseam.
But knowing that their efforts are doomed to collapse on them gives me no pleasure, for the ultimate failure will occur only after thousands of people, maybe more, have been hurt.
And as is always the case, it will be all the wrong people. It already has been.
For the past eight and a half years I have been Communications Director for the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), an organization that uses the word "synod" in the sense of a diocese or district office. It's been a good gig and I've mostly enjoyed it, especially in the past couple of years as I've been able to expand more into digital communications efforts as opposed to Yet Another Newsletter.
That all came to a screeching halt a little more than a month ago, however, when my position was eliminated because of significant budgetary shortfalls. (And not just me: Since my departure, one of my former co-workers is also now everyone's former co-worker; and another has been cut to one-quarter time. Nor are they out of the woods yet.)
Why the budget crunch? In the main, is has to do with a vote taken at the ELCA's national gathering--Churchwide Assembly, in their parlance--last August. First they dopted a Social Statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust"; then, as if that wasn't bad enough, the voting members adopted a set of Ministry Policies Resolutions that, among other things, committed the ELCA to finding a way for people in "publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church."
Meaning: If an ELCA congregation wishes to call a pastor who is a "practicing" homosexual, it's okay with the home office. Previously, gay or lesbian pastors were expected to be celibate, same as unmarried heterosexual pastors. (You can read the summary on their website.)
At that point, something that may be accurately described as all hell breaking loose occurred. A small but astoundingly noisy contingent decried the action as a repudiation of Holy Writ and began a concerted effort to rouse the rabble and move away from the heresy enacted by their church's governing body forthwith. The biggest noisemaker in this scenario was and is an outfit that calls itself Lutheran CORE (COalition for REnewal). They've done an excellent job of keeping pots stirred, fires stoked, and emotions at fever-pitch.
It's no stretch to say that my final six months (as it turned out) with the synod largely were devoted to helping my boss, the local Lutheran bishop, calm people down. Our message was unwavering: There's a lot of ground to be covered before anyone really knows how everything will sort out, and it's easier to burn down the building in the heat of passion than to build it back up again. Plus, no matter what policies and procedures are ultimately worked out, no congregation will be forced to call a pastor they don't want.
And usually our efforts--pastoral letters, video messages, resource materials posted to the website--would indeed have the effect of getting people to calm down and take a couple of deep breaths.
Which Lutheran CORE couldn't have, of course. Calm, reason, thoughtfulness--these are not the sorts of things you can launch a revolution from! The CORE organizers have been very good at keeping the coals raked up.
One of their tactics has been to convince individuals and congregations that they should withhold their giving to ELCA, since ELCA is the bad guy who's wrecking "their" church. Unfortunately for me, the traditional path of money to the ELCA is collection plate -> synod -> ELCA, so withholding contributions to the national organization meant withholding contributions to the local office. Thus the budget shortfall.
It's been nice working with you. Here's your water wings.
Now, at this point, I no longer have a dog in the fight. I care about the fate of my friends back at the office, but I no longer have a professional stake in the organization's future. Shoot, I'm not even Lutheran! However, I did dedicate nearly a decade of my life to the enterprise, and I am the sort of person who takes pride in his work. So to see it all crumbling down because of self-righteous, self-centered bigots is pretty galling.
So too is the fact that the people behind Lutheran CORE have displayed complete indifference for the pain and suffering that they are causing throughout their church. (And beyond: Sooner or later budget shortfalls will inevitably affect the work that the ELCA does around the world.) It's completely understandable, of course: They're having loads of fun strutting around, holding secret meetings, organizing task forces, and, generally, biting the hand that feeds them. (At the time of my leaving the synod's employ, the number of local pastors who had resigned from the ELCA roster because of their much-vocalized disgust at its heresy was exactly zero. That's the same number of them who had removed themselves from the ELCA health plan in protest. And as for the number of them who had disassociated themselves from the nasty ELCA's pension plan? You got it: Zilch. Can you spell "hypocrisy?")
And so it is that I was rather peeved when a blog post on the Lutheran CORE website popped up in my Google Alerts (which I set up to keep tabs on news about or affecting my erstwhile employer and have not yet canceled) a couple of weeks ago. The post, "ELCA taking hard line against those who dissent from actions on sexuality or redirect benevolence giving" is a long one, which you can read here.
The part of it that ticked me off is this offhanded bit:
Many ELCA congregations have chosen to redirect their benevolence giving away from the ELCA churchwide organization because they believe the actions of the assembly violate the clear teaching of the Bible and the ELCA Constitution which states that the Bible is “the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of (the church’s) proclamation, faith, and life.” The changes in benevolence giving have resulted in some cuts in churchwide and synodical budgets. (Emphasis mine.)
Some cuts. See, that's all it is for them, for they have nothing on the line. They take no risk, they suffer no consequences. Some cuts. Like, we'll cancel the daily deliveries of fresh tropical fruit and designer water. Oh, and we can all share just one limo to and from the office, can't we? After all, "some cuts" must be made, yes?
Expletive!
So I jotted a comment to the blog post, which was written by an acquaintance of mine. I predicted at the time that the comment would not be approved for posting to the blog, a prediction that to date has been accurate. I also opined that there was a 50-50 chance that I would receive some kind of acknowledgement or reply outside of the blog, which has not happened either. But that's okay. I have a blog too, after all.
Here's the comment I sent:
Let's call things as they are, David, for once. "The changes in benevolence giving have resulted in some cuts in churchwide and synodical budgets"--what we mean by "some cuts" is that real people are being really hurt by the callous indifference of those who love their church so much they can't wait to rip it to shreds. Self-aggrandizing and self-serving pastors who exhort their congregations to withhold funds from the ELCA and the synod have the direct effect of putting people out of work.
I am one of them. And neither the first nor the last.
This bizarre obsession with what other people hundreds or even thousands of miles away may or may not be doing with their body parts has had a very real and very painful effect on me and my family. But it seems that all of these "concerned" pastors are far too busy unzipping to see who has the biggest theology to care about who gets hurt by their posturing and posing.
Is that your idea of "church?" Is that your idea of "Christianity?" If so, you are welcome to them both.
It really is quite astounding to me how eager these people are to destroy that which they keep referring to as "their" church. Of course, they see it as saving, not destroying, but that's because they have let their collective Messiah Complex get out of hand. Only they see what's going on; only they can lead the charge to save "their" church. Anyone who disagrees is as best deluded, at worst evil. For only they know, absolutely and without doubt, what God wants. Only they can properly interpret the various obscure Bible verses that may or may not apply, therefore any other interpretation must perforce be wrong. See above in re deluded or evil.I am one of them. And neither the first nor the last.
This bizarre obsession with what other people hundreds or even thousands of miles away may or may not be doing with their body parts has had a very real and very painful effect on me and my family. But it seems that all of these "concerned" pastors are far too busy unzipping to see who has the biggest theology to care about who gets hurt by their posturing and posing.
Is that your idea of "church?" Is that your idea of "Christianity?" If so, you are welcome to them both.
In this funhouse-mirror view of things, they are not hate-filled, stone-hearted bigots. God is! And as good God-fearing Christians, they must of course carry out his narrow-minded, prejudicial agenda, yes? So don't blame them--they're only doing what God wants!
Such tiny, narrow boxes "believers" insist on cramming their God into, no? In that regard they are in fact no different from the ancient pagans, who attributed to their gods the full range of human shortcomings and foibles. Human beings are prone to anger, suspicion, anxiety, pettiness...stands to reason their Creator must be too!
It is more than a little telling that, in the course of their incessant talk about the desires and intentions of the Creator (which are stunningly in sync with their own desires and intentions), one small possibility never seems to occur to them:
Maybe they're wrong.
A great many of these folks insist long and loud that God "never changes," that the Bible is his immutable word and that it too is immutable and not subject to interpretation except by themselves to their own ends. To the latter: Nonsense. The Bible is and always has been wide open to interpretation. The idea that its contents--whatever importance one chooses to give them--are invariably crystal-clear, straightforward, and self-explanatory is sheer silliness. Were it true, there would be no need for the mountains of books about the Bible; no need to annotated editions of the book. There would be no point in Bible study, if the Bible is as clear-cut as some insist, for there would be nothing to discuss; one might just as well hold discussion groups on the owner's manual for a toaster. There certainly would be no reason for homilies and sermons, were the Bible verses on which they are founded so transparent that anyone could read and understand them as easily as the instructions of a tube of toothpaste.
To the former: It has always seemed to me that God is all about change. Golly, doesn't the Bible make that clear? He seems to be all about throwing out the old and ushering in the new. Did not he send his son to establish a new covenant? Or was it merely to review the terms of the old one? From the first line of Genesis, it's all about upsetting the apple cart, shaking up the status quo, changing things! Strange, then, that religion puts such a high premium on tradition, on precedence, on fossilization. It seems to me another example of human beings creating God in their own image, of building a nice, safe, matchbox-sized container for him, cramming him in here, and insisting it can be no other way. For to contemplate any other way is scary.
In that context, then--God as the elemental agent of change--it seems not impossible that the Creator is doing what he does best, viz., stirring things up. I have more than once had the thought that it may be that the Creator has decided that Creation is at the right point to deal with a new idea, that it's okay for people to be different. Perhaps God has decided that humanity has reached a point in its development where it can and should and must begin to accept the fact that sexual orientation is just one tiny little part of the whole being, and in turn accept the fact that homosexual individuals are, well, acceptable. This would indicate that God has a higher opinion of humanity than I do, but that would come as no surprise.
Why would God think that this is the time, given the hatred, suspicion, and downright inhumanity that humanity displays? Beats me. If he does so think, presumably he has his reasons.
And if he does so think, then all of those "Christians" working so hard to "save" their church are in fact positioning themselves as speed bumps in God's plan. If God wants change, as I believe is possible and even likely, then what does that make those who are standing in the way of change?
Which would fit into my opinion that these people who are so determined to make sure that the other is kept out, that only like-thinking, right-minded, "pure" people are admitted, have been so deluded and turned inside out by Old Scratch that they honestly think they're gloriously marching to God's drumbeat when in fact they are pitching for the other team. The idea that God wants bigotry, hatred, and exclusion as the foundation of anything done in his name is ludicrous. Old Hob, on the other hand, would find such building materials right up his alley.
And that's why I believe that ultimately any new church body created by Lutheran CORE is doomed to fail. Well, one of the reasons:
First, whatever they may develop would be an institution founded on negativity, an institution founded to be opposed to something--in this case an acceptance of people who sexual orientation is different than what we like, which makes it different from what God likes, which makes it wrong--rather than to put forward any nurturing, meaningful, or enlightening ideal.It would be an undertaking founded on the notion "We are right and everything going on around us is scary and wrong." It would not be the first such undertaking, and it's unlikely to be the last. But even to a cynic such as yours truly, it's hard to imagine that there is that large a pool of frightened, hate-filled people to sustain the enterprise, much less that the pool will continue to grow. It seems that the best and most successful human endeavors are established on principles of advancement, improvement, forward-thinking--not retrenching, insulation, parochialism.
Second, and perhaps most important (given my cynicism), is the apparent nature of those leading the charge to their shimmering new future: They strike me as angry, frightened, smug, self-aggrandizing malcontents. Such personalities, in the long run, make poor leaders, for sooner or later, and probably sooner, they will be disappointed. It is inevitable, for being disappointed in other people is a cornerstone of their existence. They are in a constant state of anticipation of the next slight, the next brush-off, the great disappointment. So all will be skittles and beer at the outset, for they will be free of the heretical oppression of the ELCA, happily swimming with others who think and believe and look like them, everybody in lock step doing the Right Things and thinking the Right Thoughts, and it will be good.
But these are human beings we're talking about here, folks, and eventually one of them will have a Different Thought! And then it will be beer and skittles no more. It will in fact be Great Disappointment. And again it will be Sturm und Drang all over again, and distrust and suspicion and accusations and ill-will and on and on. For that is the nature of such people. They have already demonstrated that they cannot and will not accept different ideas. They have already demonstrated that they cannot and will not accept the doctrines of live and let live or to each his own or agree to disagree. Why would we expect them to suddenly change their stripes once they've succeeded in tearing apart their old church in the pipe dream of building their new, shiny, better one? There is no reason to think that the first instance of disagreement or discord will not cause the entire endeavor to re-fracture and the cycle to repeat itself ad nauseam.
But knowing that their efforts are doomed to collapse on them gives me no pleasure, for the ultimate failure will occur only after thousands of people, maybe more, have been hurt.
And as is always the case, it will be all the wrong people. It already has been.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Another Handful of Quotations
A few that have been gathering digital dust for a few months. Many if not most come from the wonderful newsletter A Word a Day.
Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)
Silence is the severest criticism. -Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician (1823-1871)
I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)
The best armor is to keep out of gunshot. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)
The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke. -Ximenes Doudan, journalist (1800-1872)
We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small. -Comte Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, writer (1618-1693)
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. -Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)
Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. -Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938)
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. -Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)
A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)
Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. -Dan Barker, former preacher, musician (b. 1949)
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. -Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist (1821-1881)
Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on? -James Richardson, poet, professor (b. 1950)
We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old -- reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure. -John Perkins, economist and author (b.1945)
Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)
In other countries poverty is a misfortune -- with us it is a crime. -Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer (1803-1873)
What you cannot enforce, do not command. -Sophocles, dramatist (495?-406 BCE)
Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)
Silence is the severest criticism. -Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician (1823-1871)
I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)
The best armor is to keep out of gunshot. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)
The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke. -Ximenes Doudan, journalist (1800-1872)
We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small. -Comte Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, writer (1618-1693)
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. -Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)
Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. -Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938)
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. -Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)
A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)
Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. -Dan Barker, former preacher, musician (b. 1949)
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. -Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist (1821-1881)
Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on? -James Richardson, poet, professor (b. 1950)
We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old -- reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure. -John Perkins, economist and author (b.1945)
Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)
In other countries poverty is a misfortune -- with us it is a crime. -Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer (1803-1873)
What you cannot enforce, do not command. -Sophocles, dramatist (495?-406 BCE)
Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Some People Can't Be Helped
I have written previously about my often vain attempts to help people who erroneously send e-mail to me. For every person who graciously responds and offers appreciation for having been informed they have the wrong address for whoever they're attempting to contact (sometimes another William Reynolds; sometimes, oddly, not), another half dozen or so do not. And, worse, they continue to send me e-mail that is clearly intended for someone else. (See here for the sad tale of my trying to let a Mary Ann Reynolds's friends know they didn't have her proper address.)
Today's adventure stands as another shining example of some people's boundless stupidity, and how even the most well-meaning of nice guys (me, for instance) can't rescue them.
I happened to be online this morning when e-mail popped into my Yahoo account from someone named Sandi with the subject line "Training Certificates - 1-21-10." Something made me think it wasn't spam, so I opened it. Obviously it was intended for some other William Reynolds (not, alas, a unique name) who had attended a seminar with the enticing name "Basic Math for Water Operators" last month in Illinois. Being, as previously mentioned, a well-meaning nice guy, I immediately dashed off a note to Sandi to inform her that she had the wrong Reynolds.
No reply, but I wasn't surprised. As I mentioned above, that sort of thing happens constantly.
But a fellow wishes that people would at least pay attention. For a little while ago here comes e-mail from Sandi with the subject line "Sales Receipt from Illinois Section." And, sure enough, attached is a PDF receipt for the other Reynolds's seminar fee.
Too bad the invoice didn't include Mr. Reynolds's e-mail address; I might have still been nice guy enough to e-mail him that I've tried to help him out but have met resistance.
But there was no such address, and I have once again reached the end of my nice-guyness. I tried, my conscience is clear, and if people are too busy sending e-mail to incorrect addresses to check their own e-mail alerting them to their mistake, well, what can I do?
This is what that guy means when he says you can't fix stupid.
On the plus side, I have instructions for printing out a certificate to show I successfully completed Basic Math for Water Operators, which should look cool on the old résumé.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Guess I'll Find Something Else to Do Tomorrow
I hate it when you can't golf just because
- A. It's South Dakota
B. It's February
C. There's like two feet of snow on the ground
D. It's raining and turning over to snow and ice overnight
Also, when did the TV weatherpersons decide to start using "overnight" as a noun rather than an adjective, as in "rain turning to snow during the overnight." During the overnight what? If the idea is to save effort (avoiding the drudgery of having to say "the overnight hours," for instance), the why not simply say "rain turning to snow overnight"...thus saving three whole syllables!
Anyhow, golf seems to be a bust. Curling, anyone?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Ode to a Coffee Maker
My coffee pot, it seems, is shot.
It once worked fine; it now does not.
I shouldn't complain -- I've used it a lot.
It was pretty good, now it's not so hot.
And I know what comes next: I've got
to start the search for a replacement pot.
It once worked fine; it now does not.
I shouldn't complain -- I've used it a lot.
It was pretty good, now it's not so hot.
And I know what comes next: I've got
to start the search for a replacement pot.
Two Years On. Or So.
Here's a great old photo I came upon this past week whilst cleaning out an old desk at my folks' house. It is your humble correspondent and his dad, taken, I would judge, in the spring of 1957. (Clues: I was born in December 1956, I am obviously not very old in the photo, I am not particularly bundled up but Dad is wearing a long-sleeved shirt so I suspect a warm spring day and not a hot summer day.)
I love those old scallop-edged snapshots; I wonder why they did away with them. For that matter, I wonder why the scallops existed in the first place--purely decorative, or was there some other purpose?
According to the Minnehaha County Coroner, my dad died two years ago today, January 31. But it has always been a date pulled from the air. I found my dad in his bed on February 1, 2008, when he failed to turn up for our weekly luncheon. He lived alone, so who is to say whether he died before or after midnight?
(Had the bureaucratic coin-toss landed on the other side, we would not have had to refund his February Social Security payment. Thanks a bunch, county!)
When my mom died, we knew with certainty the date, for my parents, as was their custom, had been up till the wee hours of February 7, 2003, going to bed well after midnight. No question marks there at all.
But with dad...well, there's always just that little bit of mystery. Is today the anniversary? Or tomorrow?
To be safe, I shall drink a toast to him this evening and again tomorrow.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Department of Unhelpful Advice
Here's the fine print on a recent piece of e-mail from MyPoints (which I like pretty well, except when they do things like send me a link to a survey, which, when I follow it, then informs me that I have already taken the survey. Which would be a pretty neat trick since it arrive in my mailbox literally minute before):
In other words, Mac user, don't be a Mac user. If you want to do business with us, you should switch to an inferior operating system that you probably don't care much for (seeing how you're a Mac user and all), because that's way easier for us than to have to program our stuff to be cross-platform.
Thanks, MyPoints, but no thanks. After 25 years on the Macintosh, it's far more likely that I will drop you than the Mac.
Indeed, one of the little silver linings in my having been recently downsized out of my job of the past nine years (first hired, first fired, I guess) is that I no longer have to work in Windows on a daily basis. It's been a constant nuisance to have to dive through various hoops to accomplish that which could be done on a Mac in a fraction of the time. (How often did I bring things home to do on the Mac in an hour rather than spend an afternoon trying to accomplish the same things in Windows?)
On the subject of MyPoints: The gist of the service is that they send you e-mail; usually you get a few points, which you collect and spend on stuff later on, for clicking the link to the sponsor's website and reading their material, taking their survey, whatever. You get additional points for following up on their offer or completing the survey or what have you. (You also can log into MyPoints and shop their vendors via their website, amassing points in that fashion, too.) The system works well, and some of the offers have been useful. But it seems to me lately that a greater-than-usual number of offers don't include the points-for-reading feature. If you buy you get points, but you get no points for merely following up on the offer. A sign of tough economic times?
And despite the disclaimer reproduced above, I have almost never had any trouble with MyPoints from my Mac platform. Once in awhile a survey sponsor will insist that I have to access their site using Internet Exploder on a Windows POS computer. Not so; I have the option of clicking the close button, and I avail myself of it.
That, I think, produces the "best results."
Thursday, January 14, 2010
I Know Several People Who Could Stand to Read This
C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity (1952):
- Finally, though I have had to speak at some length about sex, I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the centre of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.
Nor has it escaped my attention that most of these people--most, though not all, pastor--decry "society's" overemphasis on sexuality and yet themselves seem incapable of talking about anything else. Merely an observation.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Playing God?
Here's a fun story from the Telegraph:
- Russia plans to stop asteroid crashing to Earth
- Russia wants to send a spacecraft to knock the large Apophis asteroid off a possible collision course with Earth.
- The ambitious plan envisages the co-operation of Nasa, the European and Chinese space agencies to pull off a mission with echoes of a Hollywood blockbuster.
- Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's space agency, said it would assess the difficulties of knocking the asteroid Apophis out of harm's way.
- The 885-foot-wide asteroid was first discovered in 2004. Astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37, but have since lowered their estimate.
The rest of it is here.
Now, setting aside for the moment the fact that I already saw this movie, I am left with the same question I have whenever I read about this sort of thing, viz., do we know for a fact that it would be a good idea to stop an 885-foot-wide asteroid from crashing into the Earth?
Sure, it sounds like the sort of thing we should take on. But here's the thing: My chums on the right-wingnut fringe of society keep insisting that stuff like stem-cell research, cloning, genetics research, unplugging a dead person's respirator, etc., etc., is wrong because it's "playing God." And they always say that as if it's a bad thing, playing God, although, I dunno, I can certainly think of worse examples to imitate.
But let's go along with the idea that "playing God" is a bad thing. And let's skip over my usual question, namely, "Don't we 'play God' much if not most of the time?"...like, say, every evening when I take my cholesterol medication without the slightest thought given to whether God wants my HDL to go down and my LDL to go up, or whatever's supposed to be happening. We'll leave all that for another day.
But back to the asteroid Apophis: How do we know that God hasn't sent it hurtling toward Mother Earth because that's how he plans to end the world? To my knowledge, most religions preach some kind of end-of-days scenario, however vague or specific they prefer to make it. Maybe Apophis is it!
Maybe this is supposed to happen!
And maybe our attempt to prevent it from happening is, well, "playing God." Which, we previously agreed, is a bad thing.
At this point you might say, "Well, you know, if God wants this to happen then it will happen. Nothing we can do to thwart God, after all."
To which I say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, buckaroo! How come you're not so sanguine about, say, genetics research? Or cloning? I mean, if God doesn't want us monkeying around with those things, either, then can we not safely assume that all the effort will simply come to naught and we have nothing to worry about?"
One might--might!--almost form the opinion that it's only "playing God" if it's something of which we disapprove. Otherwise it is both hunky and dory.
So, first thing we need to do is get Bruce Willis. He knows how to handle asteroids.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Not So Fast!
Here are several of the headline articles in today's edition of Salon's e-mail newsletter, "Today in Salon":
- * Andrew O'Hehir on the best movies of the decade
- * Directors of the decade: No. 3: The Coen brothers
- * Stephanie Zacharek on the best movies of the decade
- * Films of the decade: "Spirited Away"
- * Films of the decade: "Up the Yangtze"
Well, it is. In about a year.
It's not difficult, nor is it tricky. Whenever we reach this point in a decade, someone tries to argue that it has to do with the Julian calendar, or the Jewish calendar or which year Jesus of Nazareth might have been born, or sunspots, or whatever. In fact, none of those has anything to do with when a decade begins and ends.
A decade is a span of ten years--presumably we can all agree on that.
No matter where you start counting, you don't have a "zeroth" year. You start with Year One. So the first decade -- Mayan calendar, Chinese calendar, insurance company calendar -- is Year One through Year Ten.
And there's our pattern: Decades begin in years that end in 1 and end in years that end in 0.
Like 2010, for instance.
So in the commonly used Gregorian incarnation of the Anno Domini or Christian Era calendar, the current decade began on the first day of 2001 and will conclude on the last day of 2010. Because we count them from 1 through 10, not from 0 through 9.
I don't make the rules; I merely enforce them.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
A Christmas Carol
This from Delancyplace.com:
In today's encore excerpt - at the end of the 19th century, Charles Dickens' short novel, A Christmas Carol, had readership second only to the Bible's:
- "If only Ebenezer Scrooge had not, in the excitement of his transformation from miser to humanitarian, diverged from the traditional Christmas goose to surprise Bob Cratchit with a turkey 'twice the size of Tiny Tim.' But alas - he did, and as A Christmas Carol approaches its 165th birthday, a Google search answers the plaint 'leftover turkey' with more than 300,000 promises of recipes to dispatch it. As for England's goose-raising industry, it tanked. ...
- "The public's extraordinary and lasting embrace of Dickens's short novel is but one evidence of the 19th century's changing attitude toward Christmas. In 1819, Washington Irving's immensely popular 'Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent' had 'glorified' the 'social rites' of the season. Clement Moore's 1823 poem 'The Night Before Christmas' introduced a fat and jolly St. Nick whose obvious attractions eclipsed what had been a 'foreboding figure of judgment' as likely to distribute canings as gifts. Queen Victoria and her Bavarian husband, Albert, 'great boosters of the season,' had installed a Christmas tree in Windsor Castle each year since 1840, encouraging a fad that spread overseas to America by 1848. ...
- "What is true is that Christmas, more than any other holiday, offered a means for the adult Dickens to redeem the despair and terrors of his childhood. In 1824, after a series of financial embarrassments drove his family to exchange what he remembered as a pleasant country existence for a 'mean, small tenement' in London, the 12-year-old Dickens, his schooling interrupted - ended, for all he knew - was sent to work 10-hour days at a shoe blacking factory in a quixotic attempt to remedy his family's insolvency. Not even a week later, his father was incarcerated in the infamous Marshalsea prison for a failure to pay a small debt to a baker. At this, Dickens's 'grief and humiliation' overwhelmed him so thoroughly that it retained the power to overshadow his adult accomplishments, calling him to 'wander desolately back' to the scene of his mortification. And because Dickens's tribulations were not particular to him but emblematic of the Industrial Revolution - armies of neglected, unschooled children forced into labor - the concerns that inform his fiction were shared by millions of potential readers. ...
- "Replacing the slippery Holy Ghost with anthropomorphized spirits, the infant Christ with a crippled child whose salvation waits on man's - not God's - generosity, Dickens laid claim to a religious festival, handing it over to the gathering forces of secular humanism. If a single night's crash course in man's power to redress his mistakes and redeem his future without appealing to an invisible and silent deity could rehabilitate even so apparently lost a cause as Ebenezer Scrooge, imagine what it might do for the rest of us!"
- Kathryn Harrison, "Father Christmas," The New York Times Review of Books, December 7, 2008, p. 14.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Crime Spree
This is one of the topic heads from today's e-mail update from the City of Sioux Falls:
"Vandalism spree." Doesn't "spree" sound like something fun and innocent? Like a shopping spree? Who came up with the idea of attaching it to crimes--killing spree, vandalism speee, etc.? More to the point...why? Seems like it just spoiled an otherwise perfectly good word.
- Date: 12/7/2009
From: Crime Stoppers
Title: Crime of the Week: Vandalism Spree
The Sioux Falls Police Department would like the public's help finding those responsible for eight or more cases of vandalism that occurred over the weekend starting Friday November 27, 2009 in the Southwest part of Sioux Falls. ...
"Vandalism spree." Doesn't "spree" sound like something fun and innocent? Like a shopping spree? Who came up with the idea of attaching it to crimes--killing spree, vandalism speee, etc.? More to the point...why? Seems like it just spoiled an otherwise perfectly good word.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
No Wonder Mondays Seem So Long
It's official, as illustrated by this e-mail that I received today (Tuesday) from HP: Monday is no longer an event but rather is now a process.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Two Unfortunate Trends
Of course, there's way more than two--but two that have caught my attention lately as I browse the interwebs are these, each of them annoying in its own way:
In both cases, the intent to me seems to be to pad, to dally, to make something small seem bigger than it is. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the reason for that is to keep eyeballs on a given site for a longer time, so as to please advertisers. If there are many people like me, however (and experience teaches that there aren't), these sites may in fact be losing audiences by being dilatory time-wasters. In which case, the trends should go away. Sooner would be better.
1. Multi-Page Lists
If you're going to give me a list of Ten Important Things Your Doctor Is Too Stupid to Know So You're Probably Doomed, then for crying out loud, give me the #@$%! list! Don't expect me to click a link or two, then bring up Item One with a row of icons below it for Items Two through Ten. I can pretty much guarantee you, I will run out of patience before Item Three. Indeed, I might well call it quits at Item One, when I see all of the scrolling and clicking that awaits me, and just take my chances with my doctor. If you're going to give me a list, give me a list--Items One through Ten, right there in front of me.
2. Pointless Videos
I enjoy a funny, poignant, provocative, or entertaining video as much as the next guy, and maybe even more. But the interwebs today seems plagued with a plethora of pointless videos--by which I mean videos that could just as easily been written pieces. A recent CNet Downloads Dispatch included a link to their list of Top Five Worst Downloads. Fun! So I click on the link and am taken to...a video. Which means first, a commercial. Already, I could have skimmed a written list during the commercial sponsorship. There was nothing wrong with the video, and the presenter was charming enough, but neither was there any reason for the video to be a video. The graphics consisted mainly of screen shots of the software dogs zooming in behind the presenter. There were no demos or anything else that required a video presentation. So it amounts to a time-sink: I could have read the copy and looked at screenshots in half the time it took to play the video. And I wouldn't have had to shut off my music to do so.
If you're going to give me a list of Ten Important Things Your Doctor Is Too Stupid to Know So You're Probably Doomed, then for crying out loud, give me the #@$%! list! Don't expect me to click a link or two, then bring up Item One with a row of icons below it for Items Two through Ten. I can pretty much guarantee you, I will run out of patience before Item Three. Indeed, I might well call it quits at Item One, when I see all of the scrolling and clicking that awaits me, and just take my chances with my doctor. If you're going to give me a list, give me a list--Items One through Ten, right there in front of me.
2. Pointless Videos
I enjoy a funny, poignant, provocative, or entertaining video as much as the next guy, and maybe even more. But the interwebs today seems plagued with a plethora of pointless videos--by which I mean videos that could just as easily been written pieces. A recent CNet Downloads Dispatch included a link to their list of Top Five Worst Downloads. Fun! So I click on the link and am taken to...a video. Which means first, a commercial. Already, I could have skimmed a written list during the commercial sponsorship. There was nothing wrong with the video, and the presenter was charming enough, but neither was there any reason for the video to be a video. The graphics consisted mainly of screen shots of the software dogs zooming in behind the presenter. There were no demos or anything else that required a video presentation. So it amounts to a time-sink: I could have read the copy and looked at screenshots in half the time it took to play the video. And I wouldn't have had to shut off my music to do so.
In both cases, the intent to me seems to be to pad, to dally, to make something small seem bigger than it is. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the reason for that is to keep eyeballs on a given site for a longer time, so as to please advertisers. If there are many people like me, however (and experience teaches that there aren't), these sites may in fact be losing audiences by being dilatory time-wasters. In which case, the trends should go away. Sooner would be better.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Turkey Drop
From the great WKRP in Cincinnati:
Happy Thanksgiving - WKRP Turkey Drop - kewego
http://www.sharkhost.com Happy Thanksgiving from Sharkhost.com! This is a blast from the past, WKRP in Cincinnati Famous Turkey Drop. Sharkhost does not own any copyright to this material. Web host, web design, marketing and promotion.
http://www.sharkhost.com Happy Thanksgiving from Sharkhost.com! This is a blast from the past, WKRP in Cincinnati Famous Turkey Drop. Sharkhost does not own any copyright to this material. Web host, web design, marketing and promotion.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Say, Say, Say
Another batch of quotations that have been piling up in this and that corner of the hard drive. As is often the case, I think that all of these are from the excellent newsletter A Word a Day.
- Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)
- Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is. -Jean Anouilh, dramatist (1910-1987)
- The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly. -Ogden Nash, author (1902-1971)
- He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. -John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)
- Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
- If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last! -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)
- Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
- We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)
- It is not life and wealth and power that enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power. -Buddha (c. 563-483 BCE)
- To freely bloom - that is my definition of success. -Gerry Spence, lawyer (b. 1929)
- Prison: Young Crime's finishing school. -Clara Lucas Balfour, social activist (1808-1878)
- Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. -Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)
- A good listener helps us overhear ourselves. -Yahia Lababidi, author (b. 1973)
- The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)
- Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it. -Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (b. 1948)
- He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses. -Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)
- Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others? -Martin Luther King, Jr , civil-rights leader (1929-1968)
- He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it. -Dante Alighieri, poet (1265-1321)
- All high truth is poetry. Take the results of science: they glow with beauty, cold and hard as are the methods of reaching them. -Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician (1823-1871)
- Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period. -Nicholas Sparks, author (b. 1965)
- No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. -Alexis de Tocqueville, statesman and historian (1805-1859)
Monday, November 23, 2009
"A Voyage Long and Strange"
This from Delancyplace.com:
In today's Thanksgiving encore excerpt - the discovery of America. Author Tony Horwitz muses on the discovery of America after hearing from a Plymouth Rock tour guide named Claire that the most common question from tourists was why the date etched on the rock was 1620 instead of 1492:
" 'People think Columbus dropped off the Pilgrims and sailed home.' Claire had to patiently explain that Columbus's landing and the Pilgrims' arrival occurred a thousand miles and 128 years apart. ...
"By the time the first English settled, other Europeans had already reached half of the forty-eight states that today make up the continental United States. One of the earliest arrivals was Giovanni da Verrazzano, who toured the Eastern Seaboard in 1524, almost a full century before the Pilgrims arrived. ... Even less remembered are the Portuguese pilots who steered Spanish ships along both coasts of the continent in the sixteenth century, probing upriver to Bangor, Maine, and all the way to Oregon. ... In 1542, Spanish conquistadors completed a reconnaissance of the continent's interior: scaling the Appalachians, rafting the Mississippi, peering down the Grand Canyon, and galloping as far inland as central Kansas. ...
"The Spanish didn't just explore: they settled, from the Rio Grande to the Atlantic. Upon founding St. Augustine, the first European city on U.S. soil, the Spanish gave thanks and dined with Indians-fifty-six years before the Pilgrim Thanksgiving at Plymouth. ... Plymouth, it turned out, wasn't even the first English colony in New England. That distinction belonged to Fort St. George, in Popham, Maine. Nor were the Pilgrims the first to settle Massachusetts. In 1602, a band of English built a fort on the island of Cuttyhunk. They came, not for religious freedom, but to get rich from digging sassafras, a commodity prized in Europe as a cure for the clap. ...
"The Pilgrims, and later, the Americans who pushed west from the Atlantic, didn't pioneer a virgin wilderness. They occupied a land long since transformed by European contact. ... Samoset, the first Indian the Pilgrims met at Plymouth, greeted the settlers in English. The first thing he asked for was beer."
Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange, Henry Holt, Copyright 2008 by Tony Horwitz, pp. 3-6.
" 'People think Columbus dropped off the Pilgrims and sailed home.' Claire had to patiently explain that Columbus's landing and the Pilgrims' arrival occurred a thousand miles and 128 years apart. ...
"By the time the first English settled, other Europeans had already reached half of the forty-eight states that today make up the continental United States. One of the earliest arrivals was Giovanni da Verrazzano, who toured the Eastern Seaboard in 1524, almost a full century before the Pilgrims arrived. ... Even less remembered are the Portuguese pilots who steered Spanish ships along both coasts of the continent in the sixteenth century, probing upriver to Bangor, Maine, and all the way to Oregon. ... In 1542, Spanish conquistadors completed a reconnaissance of the continent's interior: scaling the Appalachians, rafting the Mississippi, peering down the Grand Canyon, and galloping as far inland as central Kansas. ...
"The Spanish didn't just explore: they settled, from the Rio Grande to the Atlantic. Upon founding St. Augustine, the first European city on U.S. soil, the Spanish gave thanks and dined with Indians-fifty-six years before the Pilgrim Thanksgiving at Plymouth. ... Plymouth, it turned out, wasn't even the first English colony in New England. That distinction belonged to Fort St. George, in Popham, Maine. Nor were the Pilgrims the first to settle Massachusetts. In 1602, a band of English built a fort on the island of Cuttyhunk. They came, not for religious freedom, but to get rich from digging sassafras, a commodity prized in Europe as a cure for the clap. ...
"The Pilgrims, and later, the Americans who pushed west from the Atlantic, didn't pioneer a virgin wilderness. They occupied a land long since transformed by European contact. ... Samoset, the first Indian the Pilgrims met at Plymouth, greeted the settlers in English. The first thing he asked for was beer."
Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange, Henry Holt, Copyright 2008 by Tony Horwitz, pp. 3-6.
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