Against the Wind

Proverbs 2:6 - 8
For the Lord gives wisdom;
from His mouth come knowledge and understanding;
He stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
He is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.

Do you remember the National Observer? It was a weekly newspaper I enjoyed reading very much till its demise. It aimed at an audience that wanted deeper than average reporting on events and trends. As I recall, most articles were more than one page of newsprint. They were not short blurbs easily summarized in one paragraph. It seems there’s a new periodical aimed roughly the same way, with an online edition. StandingPoint out of UK is worth a look. I read the article on the assassination of Harriri, and the tribunal forming in The Hague. If that article is representative, this is not a bad place to check for informed analysis.

The blog I wanted to write yesterday was something about the continuing reports that AQ is on the run, and though it’s not a photo op on the battleship moment, the tides of the war are running very much our way. You’d never guess it to listen to the news. It’s a long way from over, but there’s some public questioning of the philosophical underpinnings of Jihad. The comments at the first link were all over the rightosphere, but I’m always curious to see how we’re to attack the philosophical basis of the fighters. Maybe we cannot. Maybe secular western civilization has nothing to offer them? We seem to doubt our own foundations. Wretchard wrote an essay excerpting the article for the New Yorker that I spent a couple hours on yesterday. The original linked above was 14 pages of dense reading. I also have trouble with getting agitated and having to walk away from it. (I’m learning not to run to the kitchen.)

Anyway, it’s late tonight, and I’m not particularly able to write or focus, so I’ll just leave with a photo from Greek Town in downtown Detroit. I love the old churches… and there’s a steeple in the back ground of one that had a lot of ornate stonework.

The flags are tattered and a restaurant where we enjoyed a wonderful Greek meal announced its closing shortly after we left town. It’s an institution that’s been there for 50+ years I think. I’m glad we were able to enjoy it before it folded. I had some wonderful pastitsio

Memorial Day is past and it’s official. For those of us who always worked on a school calendar, it’s now summer. So many little ideas sparking around in my head. I’ll grab one and go with it for a while.

Proverbs 2:1 - 5
My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.

A bit of understanding that has changed as I’ve grown old is the understanding of what constitutes success. Tara finally got word from LSU that she would not be in the class starting medical school this next semester. She’s mapped out the reapplication process, and is still grappling a bit with whether she’s SURE this is what she wants. The first hurdle is the MCAT which is the standardized test all the medical schools want. She felt she should have done better, but didn’t take the test last time until there was no opportunity to retake. She’s got 6 weeks to restudy all her note cards, and I’ve volunteered to take Cameron on for Fridays. She really wants to dedicate 8+ hours a day these next few weeks to preparation and she has a schedule on the calendar.

It’s safe to assert that I was never very successful. I’m not looking for strokes here, just thinking through the way my life played out. Our parents wanted us to succeed, and if brains were all it took, we all got brains. I can rationalize, offer excuses, but the bottom line is that I didn’t want to go the success route as a teacher. Too much of administration was pure bullshit; educational research is driven by politics, not some desire to find “best practices.” I know what it takes to teach and teach very well. I have no doubt that I was one of the best high school math teachers around. When I was pretty sure I knew all I was going to learn about improving my teaching, I wanted nothing more than to get out. My early retirement was the most “success” I’ve had in my little life.

But I further hope and pray I’ve not pushed my dreams and ambitions off on my girls. I hope all of them feel free to follow their own stars. So if Tara wants to go to medical school, really wants to go enough to go through the grind of reapplying I truly want it to be her desire, not something I’ve pushed as a second hand desire. I wanted to go into medicine but when I had a 19 hour semester, I gave up the biology courses with labs and chose to focus on the math courses. See the parallels? Tara got her degree with both majors.

Success is most like finding the self that God created in us, finding “who I am and what God intended me to be.” God certainly intended me to be a caring person, and I suspect a good wife, but that got boogared too. There is that dismal failure in my life, and I’ve found no way to redeem it.

I was reminded when I started thinking about dreams and projects, successes and failures this morning of a story.

My brothers, Dana and Robert, got good “boy educations.” Daddy mostly let them tinker with whatever they wanted to build, and helped them along. Maybe I misrepresent the case, they can speak to that better. But they made glass… Start with sand and cook it, HOT. The homemade backyard kiln fired up with flames thirty feet high or so. I don’t know if the local firemen got involved, but there were some tense times in kiln building. When Dana was in late Jr High, and Robert in third grade or so, they built model airplanes which were radio controlled. They spent endless hours out at Glue Dobber’s Field testing and flying aircraft. By the time Robert was in high school, he’d decided he wanted to make a flyable replica of a dirigible. He drew out plans, cut balsa, had dirigible parts in the attic, the garage, and all over the place. As it was to be coming together, some insurmountable snag was hit. One dark dinner time, Robert, with his heart in his hand asked, “If I abandon the dirigible, am I a failure?”

Sometimes we fail in an endeavor. But the refrain from Romans always comes back to me. “If God is for you, who can be against you.” So ultimately faith is the wind at my back. And if I’m not the marked success in ways the world recognizes, I’m still working out the plan. I’m still finding who I am and what God intended me to be. Even as I approach my 60th year.

Photo of the Day

If I ever get good at photography, architectural photography is what calls me. Specifically churches. This is the General Motors headquarters lobby, looking out over the Detroit River, and over to Windsor Canada. If there was ever a cathedral to commerce, this is it. Three massive towers of office buildings in downtown Detroit, and a Marriott hotel, to spare. The playing rooms for the bridge tournament were in the hotel ballrooms. The whole place is a three dimensional maze, spokes in wheels. Ford built it and found it to be something of a white elephant, and GM took it on. Some of the history and a photo very much like mine… down near the bottom. Wikipedia

Now for a link… slow day. Wretchard has a bit on Mark Steyn’s continuing battle with the tribunal in Canada that is something of a kangaroo court for speech proscribed by hate crime law. The battle continues.

Happy Memorial Day. How do you celebrate? What veterans do you thank? Our freedoms have come at the price of much blood. It’s the our job to cherish and protect them… in my case for the grandkids.

I fear the next hot spot is simmering. A couple of links related to Lebanon here. Michael Totten

While diplomats from Washington to Riyadh are pretending, for form’s sake, that (Doha) is a terrific breakthrough for stability and national unity, Charles Malik put it more bluntly and honestly at the Lebanese Political Journal. “The Doha negotiations were never meant to solve everything,” he wrote. “They were meant to stall the violence until after the summer tourist season is over.”

Barry Rubin, out of Israel, is more dramatic, invoking Churchill.

May 21, 2008, is a date–like December 7 (1941) and September 11 (2001)–that should now live in infamy. Yet who will notice, mourn, or act the wiser for it?

On that day, the Beirut spring was buried under the reign of Hizballah.
“The utmost [Western diplomacy] has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia…has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.”

Yes, that’s it exactly. On every point, Hizballah, Iran, and Syria, got all they wanted from Lebanon’s government: its surrender of sovereignty. They have veto power over the government; one-third of the cabinet; election changes to ensure victory in the next balloting; and they will have their candidate installed as president.

The majority side is not giving up but is trying to comfort itself on small mercies. The best arguments it can come up with are that now everyone knows Hizballah is not patriotic, treats other Lebanese as enemies, and cannot seize areas held by Christian and Druze militias. It isn’t much to cheer about.

It’s actually hard to write a blog today, because I butchered the information I was trying to get at yesteday. I’m jealous, but here it is as I wish I had writen. David Warren on the Al Durah affair.

My column today will be about just one incident in the Middle East, that happened nearly eight years ago. It was a significant incident in its own right, with repercussions to the present day. It is more broadly significant, because it provides a clear example of the way malicious dishonesty in media reporting costs lives, inflames conflicts, feeds ignorance, and spreads murderous racial hatred.

Then there is the horrendous waste and inefficiency that we’ve heard from the beginning of the war in Iraq has characterized the effort. Is it Bush’s Teapot Dome? Or is this just the continuation of the pile on?

In fact, it appears as if virtually every procedure and law designed to prevent just this type of malfeasance was circumvented.

This spending was done in the midst of a national emergency and some of the usual safeguards couldn’t be followed in the interest of national security and getting the job done quickly, right?

Nonsense.

Then before the photo, here’s a crime/detective novel or short story waiting to be written. Anyone want to try a round robin short story? Four right feet?
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90RLPGG0&show_article=1&catnum=0

From the Detroit Museum of History, a collection of trains. The Glancy trains. Heloise and I went yesterday to Hattiesburg and saw a couple gardens of day lilies. Incredible gardens, huge gardens. What on earth possess people to want to collect day lilies (or trains) to this extent. Anyway, I took some pictures and will share about the time the Christmas tree goes up!

http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/2008/05/worm-turns.html

The name of the insanity is Demopathy. Demopathy is any action or intentional inaction which uses the language, logic and/or law of democratic society to misappropriate, weaken, undermine, subvert, or overthrow democratic society.
When Jihadists and their enablers file Human Rights complaints or throw the cover of politically correct non-speech over their intention to institute a world-wide Shari’a Caliphate this is the quintessence of Demopathy. When the western mainstream media helps that same enemy to concoct frauds that impugn and parayze Israel and America it is nothing less than Demopathic treason.

Today I was listening to the Daily Audio Bible’s veering off into reading a book on building Christianity Restored. The reading called on us, the listeners to renounce cultish and ocult activities. These are taken as works of the devil. That sort of argument is pretty heavy handed and hard for me to listen to. I prefer an argument against a practise or a sect to aim more at my head than my fear (of the devil and/or dark forces.) I’ll leave to your imagination what all the call to renounce included, but suffice it to say some I’ve been involved in and renounced, some I’ve had experience with and consider worthy spiritual practices, some I think are so obviously bunk that putting them on a list of devil spawn elevates them beyond their merit. I was left again wondering how I “know what I know.” Can I define the filters that I’ve developed to decide what is worth listening to, or reading and believing and what is “from the dark side.”

I’ve long been amazed at the way news is presented. I have enjoyed a long habit of listening naively believing that the journalists and editors had no particular axe to grind. Like I said, I am pretty naive. I want to believe that people represent themselves honesty, and news is “just the facts, ma’am.” My rather sudden departure from the Democratic party about 9/11 has required some thourough rethinking of a lot of old assumptions.

One of the media’s worst use of propaganda as news is finally wending its way through the courts.
The Mohammed al Durah affair has finally resulted in a film clip shown over the world, purportedly showing Isreali soldiers killing a little Palestinean boy, cowering behind his father, it’s iconic film, but here’s the catch. It’s not what it was claimed to be. The film was from France2. A blogger, media critic, Philippe Karsenty brought attention to the film’s “problems” and the makers of the film, France2 and its reporter Enderlin sued for defamation.

Karsenty: The Al Dura controversy is the biggest media scandal in the world. It occurred more than 5 years ago and it twisted the brains of hundreds of millions of people, thinking that the Jews, or the Israelis, which is the same for many people in Europe, kill Arab kids on purpose. This image is now in everyone brain. It’s a forgery that developed anti-Semitism, but not only, also anti-Americanism and I’d say, anti-Western values all over the world. Never forget it occurred a year before 9/11.

But, I’m confident. At the end of the story, people will be forced to admit that we are right. There will be a lawsuit in 4 months because the French TV who broadcasted the Al Dura forgery, France 2, sued us for defamation. We’ll expose our case and their lies and incoherence. They’ll respond but, as we’ve seen their evidences, I’m really confident on the result of the lawsuit.

That article is two years old, the suit is over and Karsenty lost. But he appealed, and the news has been heralded often in the blogoshere that he’s just won the appeal.

Here at least in my mind, is a case of the truth finally finding its way out, but will the media report it? Very lightly if at all. Is it the nature of journalism to correct its errors? Are reporters accountable? Not so much.

Blogging and writing time have passed and then some. Must eat before going to direct a bridge game.

There’s a scar on the side of the mountain, the alluvial fan it’s called from the Lawn Lake flood of 1982. The power of that uncontrolled water, held by a breaking dam was awesome. And it came to mind because of my emotional jittering and joggling.

Today was the first week on WW and the weigh in. Tara, Marianne and I lost a total of 14 lbs, and most of the loss was to Tara. She lost 8 lbs. I’ve puttered along, using my half and half in my coffee, and whole milk in my cereal. But I added up all the points (of course I counted boiled eggs for 1 when they are 2) So if my head were anything about logic, I’d be quite happy. I’ve been mad all day. It took me a long time to figure out first of all that I was angry, and then I had to get past wild berzerker lurking within. Who knew there was that guy that needed to be tamed. I was mad. Mad at everyone but me. It’s as if a lot of emotional sludge broke through an old ill repaired dam, and my evening has been surveying the alluvial fan! I’m quite happy to have gotten going recording, and plotting and saying, “it’s ok if you just get the water right.” My scales say I’ve lost 10 lbs. and fie on theirs! It’s been a lot of change, and it’s not been easy. I got ripped off darn it. And congratulations, Tara. (But that should have been me.)

Anyway, I’ve been emotionally constipated for a lot of years so getting the dam broken is probably a good thing, and maybe I don’t have to deal with a whirling dervish of emotional stuff very often. But if I do, I do. And not stuffing the dervish back with food is hard when it’s a life time habit.

After WW, Marianne and Tara came and hung out at my house, and Marianne put in some plants and cleaned up a front flower bed for me. Maybe my gardening days aren’t over, but the huffing and puffing hard work about had her keeling over. My heart rate went up just watching. She put in seven little impatiens plants, but it’s some sort of a double impatiens that looks like a little pale pink rose. They’re pretty little flowers, so I hope they multiply and thrive through the summer. I need to get some mulch to put down around them. But I also need to get the lawn mower repaired. AGAIN. This is getting to be an ongoing crisis.

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Anyway, I’ve found the absolute best therapy for my wild wound up moods is the silence of a long road trip and the time alone. If I can force myself to turn off the radio, listen to the silence for a while, it really does finally calm me down. In some sense I relocate myself. So driving to Detroit was theraputic. But I did cram too much noise into the trip. I need enforced quiet too.

The scenery was pure interstate. But the contrast from Alabama

to Ohio

was just as you see it. I passed from late spring into winter and back again.

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Proverbs 1:27 - 33

…when terror strikes you like a storm
and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
when distress and anguish come upon you.
Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
would have none of my counsel
and despised all my reproof,
therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way,
and have their fill of their own devices.
For the simple are killed by their turning away,
and the complacency of fools destroys them;
but whoever listens to me will dwell secure
and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”

Linda looked ahead to see what was coming in the rest of Proverbs 1. She’s moving once again. In a lot of ways, our lives are so easy that we don’t really know what distress and calamity are. Still and all, life happens to everyone. We all have our calamities. Storms and losses happen. Some we make calamities for ourselves. Sometimes we sit still and make them up, like the bursting of imaginary dams.

Lord, let me live in humble thanksgiving!

Slow day blogging. Victor Davis Hanson had an excellent take on what the Repubs need to do to recapture the faith of the voters. Of course you didn’t want to read that anyway, and I can’t find it as I accidentally trashed my clip log.

Deb sent me this photo of the round robin after I slashed the piece I showed yesterday and added it to Gail’s center.

Tonight I’ve been working with Electric Quilt, the design tool to figure how to go on with my round robin. I’ve got an easy design and found fabrics which should work. So onward with that project. It’s a shorter turn around and I want to finish this one early so I have time to work on other things for a while.

So… back to proverbs.

Proverbs 1:20 - 26

Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: ‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you. Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you….’

It’s Saturday evening, and I’ve put the round robin in the mail. It feels odd to not be trying to stitch in every spare minute. Deb, I owe you some leaves and birds. Linda, I took a photo, but I can’t share for a couple of months as the element of surprise is part of the fun of this round robin venture. The website I’ve linked is a series of 81 photos of 4 or 5 round robin quilts in progress. I’m rather awed by their work. But it does make me think that there’s no point in me being glad for an evening with limited quilting on my plate. Some of these fancy additions are maybe within Deb’s reach anyway. Gail and I, not so much!

Here’s a bit of the round robin I finished about two months ago.

Doesn’t look like much, huh? Well, the piece was one of two that were sliced diagonally, and the resulting diamonds placed on the corners of Gail’s central medallion. She’s seen the piece now since I added this and says the “on point” variation is at least satisfactory. I’ve no idea what Deb added since. Now each piece as we get it back has had two additions since we last saw it. It’s really been a fun project, but it does seem to eat most of my quilting time.

Today I checked out the Latter Library in New Orleans and visited with Tania’s old high school buddy C– R–. Apropos of the last quote in this blog, she mentioned that in her neighborhood of Indian Beach near Bucktown, in white Metairie, her black neighbors are being harassed with KKK darkend in their grass, and crosses and such. C– says she’s going to head over and offer to resod, or help them at least find green yard paint and cover the blight. Her neighbors suggest she not get involved. The only way to deal with evil is to call it out. And it’s not easy. I hope she follows through on her good intentions.

Meanwhile the world continues to turn. It’s sometimes difficult to push down the waves of depression about the world and our country and people as a whole. But as Chesterton points out about images of Christian saints, their flesh and bones bodies are topped by eyes of singular intensity. Those saints saw the world around them, faced situations to make the strongest of us despair, and continuted in faith, in belief that in God all things are possible. In Him all things are possible.

Not happy links.

David Warren, the Canadian journalist, Catholic and conservative, says, what’s to say about the disaster in Burma? What needs to be said?

The more knowledgeable about Burma ask why I don’t explain to readers the nature of the Burmese regime, since they do not believe this is made at all clear in most media reports. Specifically they ask, why is an openly Leftist and atheist regime, closely allied with Communist China, that persecutes all religious believers, and especially Christians — presented as if it were a product of some exotic, lunatic, quasi-religious Right? How is that outrageously ignorant misrepresentation helpful to understanding what is happening in Burma?

One thing I do think worth clarifying from the news coverage. There is little or no mention of direct U.S. or Australian efforts to bring aid to Burma. This is worth noting because, in the first weeks after the great tsunami of 2004, almost all emergency aid was delivered by the U.S. and Australian navies, in a spontaneous operation of historical proportions that was itself largely ignored or belittled by the mainstream media, who devoted most coverage to the relatively small, slow, and inept efforts of the United Nations. Indeed, the very effort to give the U.N. more than their share of credit, resulted in their getting more than their share of blame when the routine incompetence of that organization fell under the spotlight.

Read it all if you have the heart.

The war in Iraq has turned. But everyone has a point of view which they need to shape the facts to fit. I’ve found sources that I think are reliable. Michael Yon and Michael Totten are both up on my lists. In City Journal, Michael Totten reviews Michael Yon’s book.

Despite Petraeus’s early successes in Mosul, the city is now perhaps Iraq’s most violent. It slid back into chaos when the general’s strategy was discontinued after he completed his tour there and before he was appointed the commander of American forces in Iraq. There are no final battles in counterinsurgency warfare, as Yon makes clear, but if there were to be one in Iraq, it most likely would take place in Mosul. Much of Iraq has now been pacified—most famously and astonishingly in the formerly convulsive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, as well as in Baqubah, most of Baghdad, and regions further south.

Moment of Truth in Iraq isn’t the journalistic equivalent of a war movie, but parts of it could surely be used as the starting point for a screenplay.

Another favorite blogger writer is Richard Fernandez, Philipino, I believe, and an inspiration inthat he writes often and in depth at Belmont Club.

…it fundamentally wrong to think that love and admiration for totalitarianism died in the Fuherbunker with Adolph Hitler. It almost immediately shifted its affections East to Uncle Joe. For him, no sacrifice was too great. Did America have atomic secrets? The highest duty of the most enlightened was to share them with Joseph Stalin in the interests of world peace.

Nothing can disguise the fact that six million Jews died, not in the Middle East, but in ovens which burned in the very heart of Europe. In countries that prided themselves in culture; that listened to Mozart; read books and vaunted their universities. When Golda Meir said with relief, on the occasion of the foundation of Israel that “For two thousand years we have waited for our deliverance. Now that it is here it is so great and wonderful that it surpasses human words” she was speaking of escape from a darkness within the very center of Western civilization.

Yet nothing great or wonderful is safe forever, and that darkness, that love for savagery, that admiration for the brutal, that was believed to have died beneath the ground in 1945 is on the march again. It is crawling out of books, lofty towers, places of culture in precisely the manner Camus warned us against. He said that the evil may be beaten, but it is rarely beaten forever; “that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

But we may not speak of it. And therefore it begins.

One quick question to those of you who have posted comments. Are they visible immediately? I’m not sure whether I have to moderate comments or not.

I visited M– H– in early March. She’s got a wonderful bulkhead in her newly rebuilt back yard… lost almost everything to Katrina. She invited me over on a Sunday, and we tossed bread to the gulls. More precisely, she tossed bread. I took pictures. None are as good as I’d wish, but it wasn’t for want of trying!

Mr. Pumpkin came through another open heart surgery ok. This is day two and he’s up and walking. He got up at 7:30 and called his wife the day after surgery. Amazing. These bridge playing octogenarians can sure take a licking!

So, Linda likes the Proverbs, and so do I. Here’s Proverbs 1:17 - 19.

Truly, to no purpose is the net stretched out before the eyes of the bird:
And they are secretly waiting for their blood and making ready destruction for themselves.
Such is the fate of everyone who goes in search of profit; it takes away the life of its owners.

I think this translation obscures as much as it shows. The first verse probably refers to those who heed wisdom… and avoid snares. But the “they” in the next line refers to whom? And I guess the last verse is about a life dedicated to material gain. I’m too much of an economist (not) to think that profit is evil in and of itself. I’ve finally made peace with money and its function. How very Republican of me, eh?

Another religion vs. science ramble. First let me state upfront that I don’t have any problem at all with science. Gagdad Bob in his blog One Cosmos was mentioning just how amazingly over endowed we human types are when it comes to intelligence. Most animal features and functions evolved to a purpose, or devolved and dropped away. But human intelligence! How over abundant is that to the need of finding food, procreating and propagating the species. We have an intelligence that builds cultures, makes music, prayers, and snares.

We’ve devised ways to pass history and wisdom from one generation to the next. Gagdad posits the existence of this luxurious intelligence must be to know something. Something more than observable physical reality. I’d never have come up with that explanation for why religion. Yet we humans will push for knowlege of why the universe, what cosmos, the questions of meaning, those questions beyond science. Meanwhile the baroque classics played in the old old Jesuit missions of Bolivia and the Irish enthusiasm of Carp camp both are pretty good proofs to my little mind that there’s more out there than what’s measured, observed and scientifically understood.

So foreward into a busy weekend. I’ve almost finished the round robin. It’s got to be done tomorrow or it’ll really, really be late. I’m looking forward to seeing my piece once again.

Who knew that a gull’s tail has a lot in common with a geisha’s fan.
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It’s late tonight, and using this program is some tough training as I try to change the way I eat. Long ago, I got back in the habit of eating breakfast, albeit late. A few weeks ago, I decided to give myself full meal hours, so I’d have time to cook and eat. Some changes were already underway. Today I didn’t suffer like I did yesterday. And I finally got to the grocery.

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I’ll get up early and quilt…I’m really up against it for finishing the round robin that should be i the mail tomorrow. I’ve just been doing too many other things. After this weekend things should lighten up a bit around here.
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Proverbs 1:10-15

My son, if sinners entice you,
Do not consent.
If they say, “Come with us,
Let us lie in wait for blood,
Let us ambush the innocent without cause;
Let us swallow them alive like Sheol,
Even whole, as those who go down to the pit;
We will find all kinds of precious wealth,
We will fill our houses with spoil;
Throw in your lot with us,
We shall all have one purse,”
My son, do not walk in the way with them
Keep your feet from their path,
For their feet run to evil
And they hasten to shed blood.
—-

Verderleun writes an essay about visiting the Historical Museum in Seattle. His encounter with an ancient gave him pause.

I’m not used to very old people being assertive. When I encounter it I am almost always taken off-guard. For the most part, our very old people, when exhumed from their storage facilities and placed out in public, seem embarrassed to be there in their decrepitude. It is almost as if we have told them to just go away and die very, very privately. That way we don’t have to be confronted with our own mortality made manifest in their frail infirmities.

This old man was having none of that and gestured to me again, almost like the Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.” In this case, though, I was cast as “the Wedding Guest.” I went over to him.

About this time twenty six years ago, I was eating some hospital jello and some other tired food from the cafeteria. I don’t recall ever being so hungry as I was. Someone at the hospital quipped, “They don’t call it labor for nothing.” It was an induced labor, we didn’t know whether to expect a boy or a girl. We had two girls and that day added the third. Carlo was terribly disappointed for a second or two. This was the only time he was in the delivery room with me, and he was so overcome by the miracle that his first reaction subsided immediately. Happy Birthday, Tara! You’ve been a blessing to all of us, many times over.

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Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, a thoroughly modern manipulation of marketing, and yet Proverbs 1:8-9

My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:
For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.

(Alternate translations make clearer that the neck chains are ornamental, not enslaving.)

Don’t we all remember the instructions of our fathers, as well as mother’s rules. How have your mother’s teachings been a necklace, or your father’s instructions an ornament of grace? I know that comments don’t work here, but think about it. These parents are our first link to our history, the first and most dominant reflections of God in our young lifes. They stay with us.

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I wrote that back on the 11th while still thinking I could resurrect the old blog. Not happening. Today, we’ll see if the photos work. This is a photo from late February when Quentin finally lost his first upper baby tooth. I had him act the model making all sorts of faces, I suspect this was a fierce pirate or some such.

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Thanks for the comments and encouragement. I’m still at it.

Quick daily stuff… Marianne and Tara and I have decided we MUST attend to these waistlines before Tania’s wedding. Today in addition to writer’s group, the three of us attended our first WW meeting. I thought I’d die of hunger through the day. Not likely, but I sure was miserable. I don’t know if it’s the diabetes or just my wild cravings, but when I get hungry, I get wildly ravenously hungry. I didn’t used to do that.