Against the Wind

Cliff says it best

This is the day we have all been waiting for. I have never seen the city this excited about anything. This week people have been randomly shouting “WHO DAT!” to total strangers and giving one another high fives. I love it. I don’t know how long it’s going to last but if things get out of hand and people start bickering at least we have a point of reference to remind them of how it feels to be unified about something. It’s been very hard for me to get the same nervous and paranoid feeling that I usually have for a big Saints game. I really wanted the team to play in the Superbowl and I never really changed my agenda to winning it. I am already so satisfied that I can’t get it going for today. I hope the team isn’t feeling the same way I do.

Some people in the national media really got upset when we beat Brett Favre and have refused to give us any respect for being in the championship. If you listen to some of them it was like the Vikings were ahead in the game 28-0 and Brett’s intercept was worth 28 points at the end. For years I have listened to these experts give good teams credit for not beating themselves and taking advantage of the other team’s mistakes. The Saints did it to Brett Favre and suddenly they are not worthy of being in the game. That kind of stuff has made me not watch a lot of pregame coverage. I wasn’t letting their sour grapes take my joy.

I don’t think our team has gotten enough credit. Football is a team sport. No one player can be so good that he can make up for the other 52 guys. It just doesn’t happen. If that was the case Peyton Manning would have 8 Superbowl rings by now. Other guys have to step up. That’s what made this season special for the Saints. There hasn’t been enough mention of the fact that we played a full season with an untested backup left tackle after Jamaal Brown was injured. That usually spells doom for a team and he more than held his own. There hasn’t been enough mentioned that one of our starting defensive tackles was hurt early on and that there was a stretch in the middle of the season where both starters were hurt and a bunch of guys no one heard of played their hearts out and held up just enough for us to win those games. It was around this same time that both of our starting cornerbacks were hurt too and we fought through it with Randall Gay, a rookie, and some guys we had to sign off the street. We beat New England on Monday night with this lineup. I would for someone to mention that our fullback Heath Evans got hurt and our leading receiver from last year only played in a few games yet we still managed to lead the league in scoring. We didn’t have one running back with 2000 yards but we had three backs combine for over 1800 yards. Don’t get me started on Anthony Hargrove. We have had the ultimate example of 53 guys working together to do something special and these groupies want to make it seem like we are a charity case. We are a really good team and there’s no reason we can’t beat the Colts.

We are in the big game. Rickey Jackson made the Hall of Fame. The city feels good about itself. I can’t ask for much more. Let’s finish strong and see what happens.

It’s contagious folks. I wore black and a subdued (tan) version of gold to church. I worshiped in a sanctuary of Saints’ jerseys and Fleur de Lis. The Colts have done this often. It’s all new here and we’re loving it. The Barcus Parade is time shifted, and the election happened yesterday almost unheralded. Mitch Landrieu is our mayor. I hate the dynastic implications, but he was probably the best of the lot. Now if his sister could at least show some shame for being a bought vote…

But for today, we dress in Black and Gold and let the good times roll.

Serendipity is God working anonymously. That was the gist of a poster in great collection of proverbs Linda sent me…one of the e-mail pass alongs.

I was writing about how my leisure, my hours and time spent in my own company was just about as good as it gets in my journal today. Then I ran into the mother of essays on “slack.” Now I don’t need to try to explain, as Gagdad has done it for me. He commences

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a simple man with simple needs. Way back in high school — after graduating high school, to be precise — when it came time to chart the course of the pathless Gagdad path, I reduced it all to two non-negotiable demands.

First, I needed to somehow support myself without ever working on a full time basis, since I knew even back then that my real interplanetary cosmonautical mission would never be remunerative. I don’t know why I was so confident about it, but even when I had no skills, no prospects, and no future, I was quite certain that I was having more fun than the people who did have those things.

In other words, I noticed that the people who tried to purchase slack with money ended up having less slack, because it took so much time and energy to acquire the money. In truth, these people weren’t really in it for the slack, but for other things such as power, prestige, vital excitement, attention, etc. More often than not, they’re just running away from their own mind…

and follows with a thoughtful exposition on why free time, leisure is so important to finding your spiritual self. To use an expression I miss seeing, “do yourself a favor” and read the whole thing.

Today has been exceptionally pleasant, slackful in the extreme. The scheduled activites were walking with C. Her husband had cataract surgery on the first eye yesterday. He has an eye that is nearly blind and has been so since youth. The doctor decided to operate on the bad eye first and see how much vision they could recover there before attacking the good eye next week. We headed over to the Boy Scout boardwalk over the swamp and enjoyed a few egret and a gray blustery day.

I had already started the last bread loaf for the church’s fellowship dinner this evening. I’m thinking I did manage to be a worthy church lady. It’s not my best thing, but I’m trying.

Quentin got off the bus here. He’s hatched a great money maker for this summer. He’s going to make comic books and sell them. Whoa baby! Knock yourself out. The first step required for this afternoon was watching some You Tube videos and playing some computer games. All in the name of research. Nine year olds need slack too! He’s a sweetheart. Does his homework quick as a flash, and runs for my computer connection.

I awoke thinking I’d get working on a really old dormant quilting project. I’ve got a design going and am making progress. My first plan isn’t playing out, fabric choices and quantities became an issue, so the new design is today’s photo.

Miscellany

Editor B hits our Superbowl rivals with some serious smacking down. He hails from Indiana and has gone traitor. I enjoyed the fun. Worth a click through if you enjoy trash talk.

Shrinkwrapped is doing a series on AI and is on the third installment on coding empathy. I found it at least intriguing.

Dissenting Justice pointed me to the Onion story on DADT. The gays are just too precious a resource to send into battle!

The next clip is for Bartley, though I highly doubt he reads my blog. Sons in law have other things to do! Looks like a great bicycle event though.

Proverbs 10:27

The fear of the LORD adds length to life,
but the years of the wicked are cut short.

Emily from the Sunday School class, asked what does it mean to “fear the Lord?” Is fearing the Lord an old fashioned concept? Or does it just lead to the appropriation of the authority of the Mighty God by a priestly class?

Read as an injunction to honor and reverence the “First Things” this simple Proverb seems simplistic. I’ll keep trying to add life to my fast fleeting senior days. Lots of wicked ones live just as long!

So a photo moment…We didn’t get to gather for the Christmas holidays until Tania and Bartley came on Christmas Eve. Marianne cooked a great meal for everyone. And while she was cooking the gray day suddenly burst a perfect double rainbow. We all ran outside with our cameras.

My brother and I had a nice long chat this evening. His latest adventure, other than working to perfect guitar manufacture? He got a letter from Census. They wanted to interview him for the census. No biggie really… toss the letter aside, go on with business.

*The next day the census person came to his door, wishing to be admitted. “What? have you received your letter? We have the right to come in and question you, but I can come back when it is more convenient.”

“Do that, then.” Leaves card and leaves.

Go dig for letter. LONG letter, the effect of which is that his number came up for some “special treatment” having nothing to do with redistricting of congress. He’s to be involved in some statistical study for some other branch of government, contracted out to census. By the way, there’s a $500 fine for each willfully wrong response, a $100 fine for no response.

What ever happened to the 5th amendment? Somewhere near the end of the document in very small print is a statement that participation is voluntary.

Next day, again the same lady shows up for the interview. “Sorry, I don’t care to participate in this.” Lady tries to strong arm him, bro digs out the letter and points to the fine print stating that his participation is voluntary, and again states that he declines to participate. Lady splutters, phones supervisor, leaves card and leaves.

Next day, the supervisor shows up to solicit participation in this fun activity. She also leaves a card asking him to reconsider and call. My suspicious bro. now calls our uncle, the retired country lawyer. He’s flummoxxed, but says, voluntary is voluntary, and by no means volunteer anything, including your home phone number by calling them.

Monday morning a Fed Ex truck pulls up in front of his house with a large sheaf of papers to deliver. No where in this sheaf of materials is the word voluntary used.

Tuesday the supervisor calls when brother is out.

Wednesday, Fex Ex returns with more papers. By now bro is losing sleep wondering what to do about all this harrassment. He has an aha moment while talking with his pillow.

Thursday, he dressed up in his workshop flannels and head to his Congressman’s office.

Receptionist duly tells him about census and its functions. “No,” he says. “We’re not talking short form, long form or any other form. They want to follow me; question me every two months for the next few years.”

“Wait a minute.”

Out comes an aide, a legal type…armed with knowledge of census, explaining that they’d been briefed about long forms and what those entailed. Bro showed the legal type the original letter that said the magic “voluntary” on it, as well as the two sheaves that had been delivered via Fed Ex, along with the highlighted information about $500 and $100 fines for wrong/no answers. Hmm says the guy. Leave me your number, and I’ll research this.

“No, I’m not giving census ammo to harrass me via phone. But here’s my address. You can write me about your findings.”

Next day a letter comes from the congressional office. Turns out participation is indeed “voluntary.” But to opt out, procedure requires you to say NO very emphatically and very often. Bro had not jumped through near enough hoops, but he short cut the whole strong arming routine by bringing in his congressman’s office.

Point of story? Who knows how big the survey sample is, but if you get something other than the short form for the census, be suspicious. They are mandated by law to find out who lives at your address, and not a lot more. Don’t give in to bullying! If you say no, mean no, and back it up. You’ve committed no crime, and the feds don’t have the right to enter your home unless you let them. This isn’t about “nice” or sociability.

Bro got himself off the hook, he thinks. People who are not as determined to unvolunteer may be in for a lot of problems with this.

*Dates and days are approximated here… I didn’t take notes as we were talking.

I’ve devoted yet another week to my own pleasure. Home now and looking forward to seeing my pillow up close and personal. So reading Proverbs, with injunctions to avoid sloth is a bit hard. But I know I’m supposed to be working at something. Just not sure what.

Proverbs 10:26

Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes,
so is the sluggard to those who send him.

I think in Poor Richards Almanac is an admonition for the worker to be worth his hire. Similar, but the sluggard who not only doesn’t lean into his task but purposely dallies, must indeed feel like vinegar. I know they do at the DMV.

I’m just back from a trip, and really want to share some photos from the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, but now I’m trying to get back into my groove… so from Christmas

“It’s like this, Dad!” Marianne tries to explain to Carlo the latest moves.

In Biloxi with limited internet access, I’ve tried following some news online and some stocks. I almost wish I’d not done that. I left with 5% trailing stops on all my positions, and BHO no more than scolded us in the SOTU than the bottom fell out of the stock exchange. Some analyst said it was because the iPad presentation was so disappointing. Sell on news, buy on rumor is the old saw for playing the market. I’m nowhere that I’m going to get any worthwhile rumors, so I have to do the best I can on my own intuition and hunches.

I still want an iPad, or something similar to allow me to see video clips and such without having to futz through the wait with my old desktop. Watching television content online seems like a marriage made in heaven to me. I’d pay for a couple channels. But only a couple.

So the disappointment of the iPad doesn’t seem like the cause of market decline nearly as much as the fact that POTUS is gunning for financial institutions, while Fanny and Freddy continue in their profligate ways as wards of the state with no repercussions. POTUS also puts his arrogance on display, swinging at the Supremes, inviting congressional legislation while the justices are sitting there with congress lined up behind them. How classless and clueless is this Chicago pol? There seems to be no bottom to his inane incivility.

I’ve filled my time this week with a vacation close to home. Sara who I play bridge with online about four times a week, came with her husband and her friends to a timeshare in Biloxi. I was lucky enough to be invited, so here I am. There’s a regional bridge tournament here, so I got to play a bit in that, walk on the beach and make some stops at some local restaurants, quilt shops and cultural attractions.

By far my favorite from today was the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs. Ocean Springs is a beautiful little coastal town, and I wouldn’t object to living there a bit! I should buy a small house near the beach, live there but leave the for rent sign up? I could lease it out by the week for vacationers.

This poor computer is trying to find photos I stored on my camera. Anyway, I may have an example of Walter Anderson’s art for viewing. Walter Anderson is a native son, from a reasonably affluent New Orleans family born in 1921. He was clearly artistic as a child, trained in art, and went about making money from his art with little pottery pieces he and his brother made to sell. That business managed to survive the depression, but Walter, trying to follow his muse, ended up physically ill with malaria, dengue fever and finally a deep depression which sent him so far into mental debility that he spent a time in a sanatorium. He was truly the tormented artist. But he got commissions to paint the inside of the Ocean Springs community center and the auditorium of the local high school in murals. Other buildings in Ocean Springs have his work faded on the exterior as well. He was tortured as vanGogh, prolific as Picasso, and lived as something of an eccentric on Horn Island, a barrier island off the coast of Ocean Springs. His paintings belong in the same artistic pantheon as major impressionistic artists. He’s a voice from the wilderness, and magnificent.

Sigh… I’ve given up on attaching the photo from my phone. I’ve no interest in messing about with it more.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to post this blog.

Showering, I recalled a college mate telling me how she always ran her friends and boyfriends off because that saved her the pain of them leaving. She at least controlled the going, since they were leaving anyway.

Linda mentioned a little girl living near her with attachment issues after her mother tried to drown her. No kidding, huh?

These images and a third were swirling about in my bean as I’m lathering and doing an auto baptism. The third is the description of the dreadful Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. He was a mix of conceit and humility…

Yup, there I am. Actively driving away any real possibility of intimacy, attachment issues, and oddly over proud, under confident, and ready to look tomorrow in the eye.

Maybe I can become a hermit and quit bathing.

Yesterday’s blog was an attempt to get something, anything down about the frustration of being in the eye of the storm, while journalists yammer, often wrongly, and aid groups hustle most effectively to keep the dollars rolling in, less effectively on the ground when the need is most severe.

The picture of that is the mountain of used clothing that sat in the parking lot of one of our local shopping centers…donations by kind, empathetic people around the country. They sat there, were picked over and eventually moved with a dump truck or two to landfills brimming with the material remains of our lives. Dead clothes from up north mingled with dead drywalling, soggy carpeting, warped flooring, tree debris, and symbolic of the fact that ill directed attempts to help make the giver feel good about having done something, but they are somewhere between mildly ineffective, and downright couterproductive.

However, the churches, now that’s another story. Not the huge church in a box deal so much or maybe they just didn’t have the branding to make their work known… but aid funnelled through Presbyterian disaster assistance, UMICOR, United Methodist something something, Baptist relief… and countless others… they were on the ground providing food, temporary shelter, running crews to help people rebuild, regroup.

So when Ina May sent out a letter from her hectic life yesterday, I asked to pass it on. She’s not yet given permission, so I may have to pull it. But if you’ve not gotten anything to Haiti yet, this is the way to do it. Through your own denominational relief, The Salvation Army or Missions who already have people on the ground ahead of the disaster.

From Ina May, my mother’s sister:

Things have been interesting around here lately. We found out our friends who are missionaries to Haiti were to be at a Mission Conference by Wichita with the Kansas Baptists. They were to be in the KCK area by the middle of the week, so we called them. It turned out they were able to come here Wednesday noon and be here for the Wednesday night church dinner.

The missionaries are Kihomi and Nzunga, originally from the Congo. They have been working in Haiti for about 10 years now. Kihomi is great working with the women in the churches. She has them organized into areas with leaders to watch over the needs of the people in their churches. Another friend of mine in St. Louis has always been close to Kihomi and is forever gathering up stuff to send to Kihomi to distribute in Haiti. Kihomi has been speaker at our region conference a couple times and has been at our church before, so our women especially know her.

They arrived Wednesday noon, and I was able to pull out a bunch of “Sara soup” from the freezer for lunch. Just as we were ready to eat, Kihomi got a call from one of the Baptist women in Haiti who was finally able to get a call through. They had not heard directly from anyone, so they were anxious to get word about them. Several pastors had died, one woman survived but all four of her children were killed (Nzunga’s comment was “She will die, she has nothing to live for now”), on and on. It is TERRIBLE destruction, and when you know the people, it is worse. Both Kihomi and Nzunga had not been able to sleep since the earthquake. Wed night Don gave them a sleeping pill, and they finally got some rest.

Wednesday evening we went to church for the church dinner. Some came from First Baptist and a church in KCK because they knew they would be there. After dinner they spoke and showed a video of their work in Haiti. They work in Limbe where there wasn’t that much damage. Nzunga is administrator of the Haitian Eye Clinic which does great work in that area of Haiti. The good thing about it is that he has direct access to get funds into the Eye Clinic and people there who can get money out. Kihomi’s network of women who are going around to the different churches assessing needs etc can get aid right to the people who need it. We had an offering that night of $830 for them to send right away. Money can also go through International Ministries, but it will be awhile getting there.

Thursday morning they slept late, had a leisurely breakfast, and were on their way by 10:30 toward their next speaking assignment in Louisburg, KS. There was a couple from Chanute driving them around all the time and staying with us too.

Anyway, I don’t think Ina May will mind my extracting from her letter… Give and give generously, but think about how where it’s going how effectively it will be used.

Sara mentions how heart breaking the stories are for Haiti in her letter reporting on Nita’s progress.

The tragedy is horrendous. But it made me think sort of like the writer of this blog. NOLANik tells about how we who did a disaster up close and personally will never thing of a disaster quite the same. Mostly, we’ll never much believe what we read.

…it is unsurprising to see the American media struggle to get the story straight in Haiti, a city that many of the journalists now there were likely completely unfamiliar with a week ago.

I hadn’t quite grasped this reality until I saw competing headlines, one in the New York Times on Sunday and another in the Washington Post on Monday, telling stories about the impact of the storm on the rich in Port-au-Prince that seem completely at odds with one another.

This is as much as anything what some bloggers refer to as a “tab dump” Collected links from the last couple days, and a photo or two.

Betsi I think emailed me the link to this love story.

This is where I’d like to be. But I don’t like a single car that well.

Shrinkwrapped has a wonderful parable at the beginning of his blog, but his point is that “nation building” may continue to be a nonstarter. That seems to be a “meme” that is getting more traction. But nation building is not the whole point. Sounds like an excuse to retreat to isolationism to me. The fact that determined psychopaths want a bomb doesn’t make the strategy of counting on our oceans to act as a big enough buffer…. Meanwhile in Iraq, the old Hebrew temples and monuments to Isiah, Jeremiah and other major prophets are being defaced.

Iraq is the newly minted “democracy” for which so many Americans sacrificed so much. now they are behaving just as Muslims have behaved for a thousand years: Once a majority, they force non-believers into dhimmi status and erase all signs of the hated infidel. This is a story as old as the Temple Mount and the Hagia Sofia and as recent as the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

I didn’t note what the video was when I saved the link. So here’s a mystery video!

We’ve had weather too. December saw a rainy spell that has all the rivers high ahead of the spring thaw. (picture below) Mississippi River Floods are a scary thought. After the ground was totally sogged, the freezes followed. A tree on church property fell into the neighborhood behind, so someone’s house was damaged. I am aware of this from being out driving with Rev. Barbara this afternoon. I just called on a whim and said, wanta take an Sunday afternoon drive. She said, come on down, and we had a nice afternoon. A little gray overhead, but we drove through Pearlington, Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Delisle and then over to spend a few cold minutes at Ft. Pike. She came from Nebraska so hasn’t had a chance to go see a lot of the local scenery.

Pleasant times here.