I'm done here. Thanks for reading.
The Church
Other Places
September 2008
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Photo Albums
messtake
When I drop a carton of milk on the kitchen floor, I don't need any help. I mop up the spill. I drive to the store and buy another carton. The only reason a toddler's mistake is called a "mess" is because they don't know how to clean it up as well as a grownup.
TTSSF
If I ever get a tattoo, I may use these letters which are an acronym for Try The Simple Solution First. Last week I wrote a piece for a very important meeting at school. I was already five minutes late for the meeting when I finished and hit 'print.' The printer sat there, mute. No little carriage jiggle, no blinking light, no response whatsoever to my urgent request for output. I tried to open the printer queue and clear it. I tried deleting the job and doing it again. Nothing worked. In the end I emailed the document to myself and ran out the door to my meeting. I didn't try to fix the printer problem until the weekend. I was too frustrated and knew it was going to take too long to fix. When I did get to it, I tried every trick I knew, including restoring my computer to an earlier time and uninstalling the printer and reinstalling it. Nothing worked. Finally, reading through a troubleshooting guide (which is always the last thing I read in these situations), I read this:
Step 1: ensure the printer is turned on and connected to the computer.
Immediately I muttered to myself, "That cable better not be loose..." Yep. The cable was disconnected. I really need a tattoo.
You decide
Text book editions: evidence the "smartest people in the world" don't know their facts one year to the next.
OR
Text book editions: evidence the "smartest people in the world" are money grubbing crooks who use knowledge for personal gain.
Just wondering
Once in a while I see a car with the Darwin "fish" symbol:
I know people believe in evolution. Obviously some people believe in it so strongly they feel the need to let everyone know they believe in it. I have a question, and it is a real one, not a trap or an attempt to draw anyone into an argument; I'm genuinely curious. What does believing in evolution do for you? How does it help you cope with life? What is the utility of this belief?
water skidding
I think water skiing principle #1 is an important principle of relationships: know when to let go.
exercise makes strange bedfellows
Irish dance music + man who looks and yells like a Marine D.I. + stationary bikes + dark room + 6 am = wicked good workout
anybody see what I see?
every time I walk into our back bathroom during the mid morning I see this:
what do you see?
4th floor miracle
My friend Marce got some bad news one day. He was feeling tired all the time, worn down (understandable seeing he was a Navy doctor in the midst of deployments and training). So the doctor went to the doctor. Several hours of testing revealed his guts eaten up with cancer. Stage 4. Bad news. He told his wife. The whole world stopped, turned over, and spun on its head. All other plans ceased and the new plan became two months of intensive chemo as an inpatient. And so he went to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital, 4th floor, oncology ward 4J. He went bald. He got skinny. Early one morning, about half way through chemo treatments the cancer docs told his wife he wouldn't make it through the night. He moved to ICU and hung on by a thread. His Navy career was over, his plan to be a Navy doctor ended, his death benefits were practically signed. But he didn't die. He went back to the 4th floor and ward 4J. Another round of chemo dripped into his ravaged body. One day his wife packed up all his stuff and they moved back home. Slowly his life grew back with his hair. He got back into the Navy, got back into residency as an emergency room doc and got back something no one expected: the ability to procreate.
About a month ago Marce's oncologist called and set up an appointment. When the oncologist calls it makes your heart skip a beat. When the oncologist calls and demands a meeting even when you tell him your wife is going to be induced to have a baby today, your heart skips and moves into fast motion. So on the morning he took his wife to the hospital to have a baby, Marce had to make time to see the oncologist. He went to the office. The doc pushed and pinched and squeezed (in the doctorly kind of way), looked him in the eye and said, "You're done."
"I'm done? You mean with the health screening?"
"No, with cancer. You're done. I don't need to see you anymore."
Marce left the oncology doc and tended to his wife. Her labor was long and hard. Jake was born early in the morning. Mother and baby, both healthy had a room in Portsmouth Naval Hospital. They were in the Mother-Baby unit, 4th floor, ward 4K, across the hall from the oncology ward.
fired works
Some of my neighbors broke out the old fashioned sparklers for the kids last night and got more bang for their buck than they ever expected. Three or four little girls twirling sticks in their front yard attracted no less than three cop cars. The owner of the house got a citation and the kids cried. Meanwhile over in Norfolk at a friend's house some real fireworks got fired up. Every year, across the swamp from us, a guy sets off at least a thousand dollars worth of the big stuff. It looks like a Cold War Russian rocket launcher going off. On our side of the water the explosions are a little more modest but still fun. The guy who owns the house lets us use his back yard. This year he didn't want to do it. He is moving soon and his neighbors have complained in the past and he just had a bad feeling about it. As soon as it got dark the over the swamp gang started up with a few preliminaries. We answered back. Everybody cheered. They took another turn. Then we took the whole load and started setting them off in rapid succession. About half way through our stock two flashlight toting cops came out of nowhere and lit us up.
"Who's the owner of the house?" Nobody moved. "The owner of the house???" they said again. It was surreal. My friend stepped back and raised his hand.
"I'm the owner," he said.
"Come with us please," the two cops said.
They escorted him around the house to their car. He got cited for a misdemeanor and gave up a box of leftover fireworks. Fifteen minutes later the other side of the swamp erupted in the best show of the night. It kept going for another hour. We cheered and sang. How they managed to do it was a mystery too much to stand, so a group from our party drove over to find out what the deal was. There was a cop at the party. They got a warning - then put off all their stuff. The difference for them: their neighbors were all at the party too, not sitting in their living rooms watching CNN's coverage of fireworks on the Mall in D.C.
A few things about all of this:
- we really have become a nanny state when sparklers and little girls brings a cop to your house (it is a different world)
- its good to know your neighbors, its better to be part of a community
- I had an indescribable feeling when they took my friend around front. I knew he wasn't going to jail and that nothing really bad was going to happen and yet it hurt my heart. He didn't want to do the fireworks and here he was taking the fall for doing it, the embarrassment, his son crying because daddy was in trouble. It was an ever so slight taste of how Christ stood in for us because of our decisions. We can't step up. I couldn't say I was the owner of the house, only the owner could take responsibility for our actions.
PUBLIC ENEMY NO.1
gone missing
The Greeks believed they had divine help with their creative processes. The Muses were a group of river nymphs who would grace a person with inspiration at a needful moment, especially during writing or dancing or acting. There were at least nine Muses, but I can't find any of them lately. If you see one, send her my way.
torn up
Our house has been torn up and put back together (almost) this week. New roof. New windows - the old ones were close to becoming more wind screen than wind shield. New bedroom furniture - bedroom reconfigured completely backwards of what it was. New office in place of the old formal dinning room. Question: how many years of NOT using a room does it take before you can make it into something useful. Answer: approximately 14. The kitchen is getting overhauled too. New sink. New cabinets. Lot of changes around here. This is close to the pain of moving all together. Things I've had perfectly in place for years are now in boxes waiting to find their new perfect place. I'm trying to get used to sleeping in a different direction. Because of the upheaval there are a hundred nagging little dominoe projects that keep falling into each other knocking hours out of my days. And the cats! The cats will not leave us alone. They are under foot every time you turn around. I got up in the middle of the night to go do jury duty and stepped on both of them, haunched up right next to the bed. This morning they're both skulking around again. I have been getting very annoyed with them, but today I realized what's going on for them. These two cats are indoor cats. Neither of them has been out of this house in forever. What to me is a minor inconvenience in part of my world, to them is a banging, shuffling, shifting world-quake. Everything they know is moving at once. No wonder they're a bit disoriented and clingy. How many of us see people with 'minor' problems and have little or no compassion? Our attitude is, "what's the big deal? Get over it." Sometimes you need to walk a mile in someone else's paws before you understand.
new vistas
The best teachers cause your perspective on a subject to implode, explode and then reintegrate into a new and invigorating view; even of the most familiar topics.
another day in the doctor's office
Here are some images from my visit to the neurologist's office and the oh-so-fun Evoked Potential Test. It started out with a mind numbing, eye rubbing visual response test where red and black cubes flashed back and forth (or up and down....or maybe it was side to side). It was boring but painless. Then we moved on the the real fun. Electrodes on each wrist and ankle, right wrist left wrist, right ankle left ankle about 15 minutes each of sending a current through the nerves which made my thumbs and toes twitch at just the right frequency. When the technician first turned up the juice I almost got her with a cartoon-like reflex leg jerk. Lucky for her she was off to one side. You know the worst part of all these tests they do on you? All the people administering the tests get these read outs that look like God knows what (really) and they look at them with tight lips and narrowed eyes and then and then and then....nothing. They won't say anything about what the tests show. "The doctor will talk it over with you when you see her." One of these days I'm going to get one of these guys in my office for counseling. I'm going to give them the personality tests I administer and when the results come in I'm going to invite them in for a session, put the test results in a folder on my desk, tell them I've got the results and then schedule them to come back in three weeks.
testing...testing
Being good at taking tests is not the same as attaining subject proficiency. I was the top graduate of Engineering Officer of the Watch school in the navy and perhaps the most incompetent engineer to ever take over a division. I bested everyone in Tactical Action Officer school and I was the least effective person on my ship standing that watch position. On the other hand I muddled through navigation and seamanship classes in the middle of the pack but turned out to be very effective directing the maneuvering of a ship. As evaluating progress increases in significance actual progress often diminishes, lost in the student's misdirected energy. Evaluation and progress must be integrated and understood as one thing in both the mind of the teacher and the pupil to produce the maximum effect in the growth and learning process. The teacher must convince the student of the necessity of evaluation and have them buy into it as part of obtaining the goal. Students must be taught to value evaluation not as a learning bulimic who enjoys the taste of knowledge and then spits it out, but as a normal person enjoying a meal tastes each bite of information and makes it part of themselves. Had my first test since returning to grad school this year... (hope I get a good grade, I think)
the wrong bully
James Gold rolled over the final 9 players at the final table of the 2006 World Series of Poker. He was the last man standing out of a field of almost 9000 people who plunked down 10k apiece for a chance to win the twelve million dollar top prize. Back in 2003 an amateur player named Chris Moneymaker (his real name) won the main event facing a field of 893 gamblers. In a key moment of the tournament Moneymaker bluffed a seasoned pro named Sammy Farha out of a large pot, a play which many believe was the key to winning the tournament. It was a classic moment. Farha is what you see if you close your eyes and try to picture a professional card player. Slicked back black hair, dark wrap-around shades, button up shirt open at the neck, sports jacket, a glass of bourbon close at hand and an unlit cigarette hanging precariously from the down turned edge of his mouth. Card shark. Bully. Moneymaker is what you see if you close your eyes and try to picture a guy standing in line to buy tickets to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. A slightly chunky red neck boy with a bad hair cut, a pair of Oakleys more in style on a bass boat than at a card table, and a standard issue, well-used ball cap. In front of Farha he looked like a steak dinner cooked up ready to eat. But it didn't turn out that way. The redneck bested the bully and he did it without simply catching cards. He played the game and won.
The next year over 5000 people showed up for the tournament. Last year over 6000 bought in. It has become a place where all the underdogs come to fight the big time players. You can see it in their eyes. They all want to be the next Moneymaker. They all want to beat up the bully just like he did. A lot of these players end up knocking off the best professionals. Most of the final table participants in this year's tournament would be in the part-time poker player category rather than full time professional. When Gold ran away with the final table he put out last year's player of the year, Alan Cunningham, along with 7 of the other players. Watching him hoist fistfulls of cash over his head in victory made me do a little math. With a 10k buy in and the number of people playing the casino collected about 84 million. The total number of people 'cashing' in the event (making any money back) was about 850, and the prize money paid (including the $12 million winner's prize) was less $35 million. The casino, glittering, shining and singing, welcoming all comers with great smiles, pocketed about $50 million, give or take a few hundred thousand. Chris Moneymaker and all the wannabes after him are picking on the wrong bully aren't they? It's easy to throw away a lot of time and money fighting the wrong things.
cause a man with a briefcase
Can steal more money
Than any man with a gun
I said gimme, gimme what you got
Said gimme, gimme what you got (Don Henley - Gimme What You Got)
