In a post back in April regarding Barack Obama (Thoughts on Obama's Woes) I raised questions about what Obama really does believe, and how much Jeremiah Wright's theology had informed his political sense. I actually wrote in that post...
I cannot believe I am saying this, but I have done a big 180 turn. I hope Hillary finds a way to win the nomination, as much as the idea of another Clinton (or Bush) in the White House makes me sick. I am not saying this because I think McCain will win against her more easily. I am not sure that that is true. I am saying that if I had to choose between Obama and Hillary, if those were my two choices, at this point I would choose Hillary.
Well, along with everyone else I have been trying to figure out why she fights on. The only two answers I come up with are either 1) she is not able to accept reality, or 2) she is positioning herself for 2012. In either case, I have found her ongoing hopeless bid just lacking in good form. If she really wants to see Obama lose in 2008 then that really stinks. If she is in la la land that stinks too.
So, I was just getting ready to repent in dust and ashes for what I wrote above, when Obama's camp expressed such outrage over Bush's comments in Israel, when Bush compared the idea of meeting with Iran's leaders (and other terrorist state's leaders) as tantamount to appeasement, bringing to mind Chamberlain's famously inept meetings with Hitler.
It's one thing to come out and express disagreement. Do so. Disagree. State your case. But to cry "foul," as if Bush's comments amounted to political dirty tricks, to me is plain wimpy. Is Obama going cry "foul" every time McCain disagrees with him, or describes his positions as being unwise or inappropriate. Good grief.
I think Bush's view has merit. He may be wrong, and goodness knows he is almost pathologically incapable of articulating vision and making a reasonable case for anything. But a reasonable case can be made that for our President to meet with the likes of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be to legitimize Ahmadinejad and empower him, especially amongst his own population.
How do you sit down and talk with someone committed (according to his statements) to wiping Israel off the face of the earth? How do you sit down as "equal" parties with a dictator who is funding terrorism all over the Middle East? Maybe we should ask the good people of Beirut what they think about that?
It is minimally a valid question. It is also valid to compare doing so with appeasement of dictators, since, well, Ahmadinejad is, along with the conservative Iranian clerics, a dictator.
One may disagree with Bush's view. If so, disagree. Make a case. Explain why talking to Ahmadinejad isn't like appeasement. But don't cry "foul." Don't be a big baby. This is real life big time politics and real life grown up stuff.
Are we in for an election season where Obama will cry foul every time his positions are criticized or characterized in a way he does not like? Is this the strategy - trying to act so "different" and "above the fray" that real political discourse is not allowed? Is this going to be a "wus" campaign of the highest order? I dread it.
I was all ready to repent in dust and ashes of expressing support for Hillary, given her ongoing deluded or self obsessed campaign, and then I was ready to repent of so repenting when Obama's people played the baby card, and then Hillary went and followed suit. Now I don't know what to do.
Back to Obama - that seems to be the strategy - be very very very nice to me or I'll use the media to make you put to be a very mean person (all the while doing the same thing of course).
Will a REAL leader please stand up here?
Friday, May 16, 2008
Graduation Blues
I think the light stripes in the pink bag really draw out the light tan in the pants, don't you?This was graduation Sunday at UNC Chapel Hill - cold, wet, miserable, but thankfully perhaps the shortest graduation ceremony ever!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Grasshoppers Postgame Fireworks 4-25
Taken at the April 25 Greensboro Grasshoppers game, downtown Greensboro, NC. I have more fireworks pictures here.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
2007 4 by 800 4 A Champs!
The State 4A Track Championships are Saturday May 10 at NC A&T. Looking ahead it made me think of last year.Last year about this time Anna Gillespie, Brook Howertone , Sarah Bowen, and Chelsea Holinlgsworth came from behind and won the North Carolina State 4A 4 x 800 Championship, to their and everyone else's surprise! They were finally awarded their championship rings the following fall 2007 at the conference Cross Country finals at Hagen Stone Park. Apparently it was a humdinger of a race! I would have liked to have seen it but my daughter Madeline and I were sitting in the car on Yanceyville waiting for the longest train in the history of the world to pass - the one and only time I've ever had to stop at the Yanceyville RR Crossing. Oh well.
Brook is out this year with an injury so it's hard to know how it will go, but they did win the 4A midwest Regionals in Charlotte last weekend.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Heather
Heather, my second daughter, graduates from UNC Chapel Hill this weekend. Seems like she just started there yesterday. Shoot, it seems like she was just born yesterday! She's a great kid.This picture was taken during Spring break 2007 at Linville Falls. We had taken a little Father/Daughter day to drive down the Blue Ridge Parkway.
You can see other pictures of the family along the way here.
OK, I was all set to be composed about all this, but Have You Ever Seen the Rain just started playing on Pandora. Of all the very many songs Heather and I each like, I think that may be number one.
And it seems appropriate to the moment. It's a sunny day, and I'm all smiles, but the rain is falling, inside.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Good Bye, Mohawk We Will Miss You
A little over fifteen years ago my wife and four young daughters went to the city animal shelter and picked out a little white kitten to bring home as our first family pet. Back then the little kittne had a strip of black hair down the middle of her head, and so we named her Mohawk.Mohawk has been a good and faithful pet. In my first years of work here I was out it seemed almost every night and Mohawk kept my wife company after the kids went to bed.
Perhaps because she was taken away from her siblings at such a young age Mohawk never really learned how to "play bite." So, horsing around with Mohawk has always been a dicey matter. When she bites, even in play, it draws blood!
But it's fun to "box" with her. She has no front claws, and she likes to stand up on her haunches and bat your hand as you play box with her. When she was younger you could also chase her around the house on your hands and knees. She would "hide" and pounce out at you from behind a door or between a chair and table. That was always fun.
I wish pets lived longer and we didn't have to go through the inevitable so many times over the course of life. I have a high view of animal life and their dignity - without being a neurotic pet owner. I think the relationship bonds we form with animals are real and significant. It is truly hard when we have to say goodbye.
Mohawk's body is no longer working as it ought; she seems very stressed (mostly by our other cats), and it is hard to pet or hold her without it seeming to cause pain. She has lost a lot of weight. We have to keep her in the bathroom more and more just to keep her from ruining the rest of the house. It's time, and that is very sad.
We'll have a few more days with her and then I will take her in. I've had to do this many times in my life. It's never easy, but there is a kind of honor in it.
Mohawk has been with us for all of my 11 year old daughter's life, most of my 17 year old daughter's life, and was my oldest daughter's first pet. She has been a great and constant companion for my wife all these years. There will be many tears in my house in the days ahead.
For more pictures of our felines past and present look here.
Bill Mallonee Concert - Wanna Go?
Bill Mallonee and Muriah Rose will be playing at The Evening Muse in Charlotte on Friday May 23 at 8:00pm. I'd love to go down with a van full of folks - or more! Tickets are $9.00 in advance.
We'd need to leave by around 6:15. Check out Bill's music at his MySpace site - http://www.myspace.com/billmallonee. He has some great deals going on his music at the store of his primary web site. I recommend Summershine, Audible Sigh, Locket Full of Moonlight, and Circa (his newest). Very much worth the money! he may well be the best singer songwriter in the US that you've not yet listened to.
If you're interested and want to ride down or caravan e-mail me at jsgillespie@mindspring.com.
Joel
We'd need to leave by around 6:15. Check out Bill's music at his MySpace site - http://www.myspace.com/billmallonee. He has some great deals going on his music at the store of his primary web site. I recommend Summershine, Audible Sigh, Locket Full of Moonlight, and Circa (his newest). Very much worth the money! he may well be the best singer songwriter in the US that you've not yet listened to.
If you're interested and want to ride down or caravan e-mail me at jsgillespie@mindspring.com.
Joel
Contentent Equals Recession
Well, any day now I should get my tax relief check. I don’t begrudge the people who hatched this plan though it seems very shallow and superficial. Mine will go right into paying off a small part of a line of credit. Sorry, no economic stimulus from me.
This whole “economic stimulus package” deal has brought back into my mind one of my greatest disappointments with the present administration, which really is a disappointment with our culture, and points to one reason that it is in decline.
When, after 9/11 we were exhorted as “patriots” not to let the terrorists cause us to be afraid or to change our way of life, and instead show them how undeterred we were and go "shop until we drop," well, my heart sank. Here, in the face of what I believe was a real war and a real enemy, we’re challenged not to sacrifice or volunteer but to shop. Well, it trivialized the whole deal.
As a Christian pastor I have often said to my congregation that if Christians in the United States were to hear and listen to their own Scriptures the nation would almost certainly enter into recession. Our economy is built upon the foundational principle of normal everyday people being discontent with what they have and thus spending money on what they don’t need.
What if, I wonder, those who profess to be Christians really listened to and heeded words such as the following:
“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’” (Hebrew 13:5).
“Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs” (I Timothy 6:6-10).
"Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?" For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you" (Matthew 6:31-33)
So imagine people refusing to buy what they don’t need, keeping things longer without upgrading or trading in, living on less, doing without, living in smaller houses, driving smaller cars, God forbid, not even having the full cable package, and, gasp, even saving some money and having more money to give away to others in need. The economy would tank.
But in the end we would be stronger and better off I think. I'm tired of the trivialization of life by those who profit by creating a sense of discontentedness, these drug dealers and pushers selling the rush that comes with imagining and buying shiny new things.
Enough is enough already.
I think we the American people, despite the growing demand for oil in China and India, could impact the price of oil by buying less of it. But we’re drunk on it. We can’t stop. We scream and yell at the big bad oil companies, and maybe they are, but we can’t let ourselves off the hook. We the people have power if we would use it. We could buy less.
We scream and yell at the big bad mortgage companies and banks for letting us borrow more than we should. Well, we don’t have to borrow to the limit of what we are allowed by the banks. They tell me I could afford a $350,000 house. Are you kidding? Are they crazy?
I don’t know much about monetary policy but I would imagine that our dollar would be stronger if we all saved more money and borrowed less.
I am one of those folks right in the economic “class” that Barach Obama likes to talk about. Even doing pretty well I have a bunch of kids and we have incurred a lot of medical debt. I am thankful I have insurance or we’d be really sunk. I realize that when it comes to medical policy normal supply and demand rules don’t apply, since the doctors and insurance companies in some ways both control supply and dictate demand. But even here we the people are not helpless. If we got serious about how we’re killing ourselves with obesity and tobacco and sugar and lack of exercise, and if we ourselves took more responsibility for preventative care, we could take back some power in the supply/demand monopoly held by the power brokers of the medical world.
And back to contentment. There is a joy that comes with living within one’s means, a great sense of satisfaction. We’ve lost that joy. We need to reclaim it.
We’re not lab rats and Pavlovian dogs. We don’t have to say “how high” when the merchants of discontent say “jump.” We need to tell them to go to hell.
We the ordinary American people have power; let’s use it. We control more than meets the eye. Let’s tell Madison Avenue where to stick it and start living like we are responsible and free moral agents.
I know, we the people can’t by ourselves allocate billions of dollars for R&D for alternative energy. We can't build refineries. We can't do a lot of things. There are things only elected officials can do. But we can send pretty powerful signals, not just by words and votes, but even more perhaps by actions.
When patriotism is reduced to “shopping” we’re in deep trouble. Enough is enough. Let’s give ourselves a bitter pill of a good recession on purpose. We’ll get through it. On the other side we’ll be stronger if in fact we have taken back more power and responsibility.
So, damn the torpedoes, let's swallow the bitter pill together. We'll be better off in the long run.
This whole “economic stimulus package” deal has brought back into my mind one of my greatest disappointments with the present administration, which really is a disappointment with our culture, and points to one reason that it is in decline.
When, after 9/11 we were exhorted as “patriots” not to let the terrorists cause us to be afraid or to change our way of life, and instead show them how undeterred we were and go "shop until we drop," well, my heart sank. Here, in the face of what I believe was a real war and a real enemy, we’re challenged not to sacrifice or volunteer but to shop. Well, it trivialized the whole deal.
As a Christian pastor I have often said to my congregation that if Christians in the United States were to hear and listen to their own Scriptures the nation would almost certainly enter into recession. Our economy is built upon the foundational principle of normal everyday people being discontent with what they have and thus spending money on what they don’t need.
What if, I wonder, those who profess to be Christians really listened to and heeded words such as the following:
“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’” (Hebrew 13:5).
“Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs” (I Timothy 6:6-10).
"Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?" For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you" (Matthew 6:31-33)
So imagine people refusing to buy what they don’t need, keeping things longer without upgrading or trading in, living on less, doing without, living in smaller houses, driving smaller cars, God forbid, not even having the full cable package, and, gasp, even saving some money and having more money to give away to others in need. The economy would tank.
But in the end we would be stronger and better off I think. I'm tired of the trivialization of life by those who profit by creating a sense of discontentedness, these drug dealers and pushers selling the rush that comes with imagining and buying shiny new things.
Enough is enough already.
I think we the American people, despite the growing demand for oil in China and India, could impact the price of oil by buying less of it. But we’re drunk on it. We can’t stop. We scream and yell at the big bad oil companies, and maybe they are, but we can’t let ourselves off the hook. We the people have power if we would use it. We could buy less.
We scream and yell at the big bad mortgage companies and banks for letting us borrow more than we should. Well, we don’t have to borrow to the limit of what we are allowed by the banks. They tell me I could afford a $350,000 house. Are you kidding? Are they crazy?
I don’t know much about monetary policy but I would imagine that our dollar would be stronger if we all saved more money and borrowed less.
I am one of those folks right in the economic “class” that Barach Obama likes to talk about. Even doing pretty well I have a bunch of kids and we have incurred a lot of medical debt. I am thankful I have insurance or we’d be really sunk. I realize that when it comes to medical policy normal supply and demand rules don’t apply, since the doctors and insurance companies in some ways both control supply and dictate demand. But even here we the people are not helpless. If we got serious about how we’re killing ourselves with obesity and tobacco and sugar and lack of exercise, and if we ourselves took more responsibility for preventative care, we could take back some power in the supply/demand monopoly held by the power brokers of the medical world.
And back to contentment. There is a joy that comes with living within one’s means, a great sense of satisfaction. We’ve lost that joy. We need to reclaim it.
We’re not lab rats and Pavlovian dogs. We don’t have to say “how high” when the merchants of discontent say “jump.” We need to tell them to go to hell.
We the ordinary American people have power; let’s use it. We control more than meets the eye. Let’s tell Madison Avenue where to stick it and start living like we are responsible and free moral agents.
I know, we the people can’t by ourselves allocate billions of dollars for R&D for alternative energy. We can't build refineries. We can't do a lot of things. There are things only elected officials can do. But we can send pretty powerful signals, not just by words and votes, but even more perhaps by actions.
When patriotism is reduced to “shopping” we’re in deep trouble. Enough is enough. Let’s give ourselves a bitter pill of a good recession on purpose. We’ll get through it. On the other side we’ll be stronger if in fact we have taken back more power and responsibility.
So, damn the torpedoes, let's swallow the bitter pill together. We'll be better off in the long run.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Small Church Blessings
I just updated a very out of date home page on our church web site, and wrote this little blurb. Maybe there is some food for thought here....
Greetings in Christ!
Greetings in Christ!
Welcome to the home page of Covenant Fellowship Church, an evangelical Presbyterian Church in beautiful Greensboro, North Carolina.
Back in the 1970's E. F. Schumacher wrote an amazing book that was both very popular and very challenging to the status quo of his day. It was entitled "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered." It is one of those books I think everyone should read, and which is perhaps more relevant today than ever.
I'd like to see someone write a book called "Small is Beautiful: Doing Church as if People Mattered."
It's hard to try to convey the virtues of being a smaller church (most churches are in fact "smaller" churches - we're about a hundred people) without it sounding like excuse for failure - such is the state of things today in McMansionland.
At Covenant Fellowship we're not trying to be small just to be small; we're trying to go about being the church in a way that mirrors as closely as possible what we read about in the book of Acts and the New Testament letters, and we're trying to do church in a way that focuses on the most essential things.
In Acts chapter two it says of the new church that "they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers....And all who believed were together and held all things in common."
There are many such glimpses we get into the life of the early church. When asked by folks what are we really trying to do, when all is said and done, the best answer often is simply that we are "just trying to be the church."
Good small churches don't try to be big churches. They don't aspire to be big churches. Big churches offer many services and ministries and programs a small church cannot offer. Small churches offer many qualities a big church cannot offer. The way to be a good small church is to embrace the smallness as a virtue.
For example, in our church we have very little overhead other than support of the pastor and rental of the Sunday worship space. Thus our members are free to throw themselves into the service of one another and of their neighbors in the community and world with no regard whatsoever as to whether it "grows the church" financially or numerically. This is amazingly freeing. It is wonderful.
In a church of our size all the people know each other, or can realistically know each other, including the little children knowing the retirees, and the single people being friends with couples and families. We don't need name tags. We know who is a visitor and who is a regular. We're not all divided up into a million sub groups. We're like an extended family. This is such a blessing. Our teens actually talk to and know and love our adults - amazing!
Children read Scriptures in public service and everyone has a chance to participate and speak their mind. On a recent Sunday we had a season of open prayer and several very young children - and I mean three to five years old - prayed along with the oldest among us. It was beautiful.
Our services are not rushed. There is no hype. There is plenty of time to catch up and reconnect. There is plenty of time to devote to the apostles' teaching, to prayer, to the breaking of bread, and to loving on another.
Despite our being small God has blessed us with an amazing array of gifted and talented and capable people whom he uses to encourage us in our life and worship.
We commend this way of doing church to anyone coming to our web site. Feel free to browse around, and feel free to visit with us on Sunday at any time. We hope that something in our site will be of encouragement and blessing to you,
In Christ,
Joel Gillespie,
Pastor, Covenant Fellowship
Back in the 1970's E. F. Schumacher wrote an amazing book that was both very popular and very challenging to the status quo of his day. It was entitled "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered." It is one of those books I think everyone should read, and which is perhaps more relevant today than ever.
I'd like to see someone write a book called "Small is Beautiful: Doing Church as if People Mattered."
It's hard to try to convey the virtues of being a smaller church (most churches are in fact "smaller" churches - we're about a hundred people) without it sounding like excuse for failure - such is the state of things today in McMansionland.
At Covenant Fellowship we're not trying to be small just to be small; we're trying to go about being the church in a way that mirrors as closely as possible what we read about in the book of Acts and the New Testament letters, and we're trying to do church in a way that focuses on the most essential things.
In Acts chapter two it says of the new church that "they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers....And all who believed were together and held all things in common."
There are many such glimpses we get into the life of the early church. When asked by folks what are we really trying to do, when all is said and done, the best answer often is simply that we are "just trying to be the church."
Good small churches don't try to be big churches. They don't aspire to be big churches. Big churches offer many services and ministries and programs a small church cannot offer. Small churches offer many qualities a big church cannot offer. The way to be a good small church is to embrace the smallness as a virtue.
For example, in our church we have very little overhead other than support of the pastor and rental of the Sunday worship space. Thus our members are free to throw themselves into the service of one another and of their neighbors in the community and world with no regard whatsoever as to whether it "grows the church" financially or numerically. This is amazingly freeing. It is wonderful.
In a church of our size all the people know each other, or can realistically know each other, including the little children knowing the retirees, and the single people being friends with couples and families. We don't need name tags. We know who is a visitor and who is a regular. We're not all divided up into a million sub groups. We're like an extended family. This is such a blessing. Our teens actually talk to and know and love our adults - amazing!
Children read Scriptures in public service and everyone has a chance to participate and speak their mind. On a recent Sunday we had a season of open prayer and several very young children - and I mean three to five years old - prayed along with the oldest among us. It was beautiful.
Our services are not rushed. There is no hype. There is plenty of time to catch up and reconnect. There is plenty of time to devote to the apostles' teaching, to prayer, to the breaking of bread, and to loving on another.
Despite our being small God has blessed us with an amazing array of gifted and talented and capable people whom he uses to encourage us in our life and worship.
We commend this way of doing church to anyone coming to our web site. Feel free to browse around, and feel free to visit with us on Sunday at any time. We hope that something in our site will be of encouragement and blessing to you,
In Christ,
Joel Gillespie,
Pastor, Covenant Fellowship
Oh Well
The only bond I really wanted to see passed (Parks and Rec) is one of the only ones that failed. And the two I really wanted to see fail, well, they passed. Hmm.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Those Pesky Bonds
I don’t get to vote in the primaries (being neither Republican or Democrat) but I do get to vote on the bond issues. I’ve been thinking about them for weeks, going back and forth in my mind. There was a time when I approved almost all local bond referendums. The slight increase in taxes didn’t impact me much, and I figured that the local leaders knew what we needed. Well, things are different now.
Here's what I think I am going to do. Feel free to try to change my mind!
1. Parks and Recreation (20.2 million). In terms of bang for the buck I think Parks and Recreation dollars serve the public good more than most other items that appear on bond issues, and I think the particular projects in this bond issue are worth the relatively small price tag. I vote yes.
2. Guilford County Jail (114 million). I am all for more people downtown :-) and I am sympathetic to the plight of folks having to bunk in hallways, but I am not convinced either that all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted, that the reason not to renovate has been adequately made clear, or that the impact on downtown parking and ongoing upkeep costs have been fully explained. I wonder too if the entire governmental complex needs a makeover. It is so ugly it is a blight upon a downtown makign a great comeback. I am hesitant on this, but for now, I vote no.
3. GTCC (79.5 million). I think GTCC holds many keys to the success of our area. Both our public schools and our colleges and universities are failing to provide the technical education needed for so many in our area to have the skills needed for decent jobs, and for us to be able to provide skilled workers for a growing and changing economy. I vote yes.
4. Guilford County Schools (412 million). I know of little else other than police and fire protection, and building and highway safety that is more important for a local government to provide than quality education for its citizen’s children. I am a huge advocate of a strong public school system, and the need for quality education for our children, especially in reading. Yet I find it ironic that a project deemed so necessary for our children will burden them with so much debt down the line. Personally, if we had to invest 412 million dollars in our schools I would put it elsewhere than in brick and mortar. In the end, good teachers, good curriculum, and good parent-school communication, and not nice buildings, are the most important things. I taught public school for five years myself. I think I was in five different rooms of greatly varying quality!
The quality of the room or facility was way less important than my knowledge of and love for the subject, my creativity, and my interest in, indeed my earnest care for the students. For me, the bottom line is that I do not trust our school board or central office to allocate and spend our bond money in an efficient and effective manner. Perhaps it is Terry Grier hangover. And we know the way the system works that this 412 million can easily become much greater, and we also know that plans can change and we may not get what we approve anyway. Until we somehow break the stranglehold that the great triumvirate (the teachers “union” – even if it isn’t really, the college education departments, and the local school districts have over teacher certification, until we shake off “One Child Left Behind” which has killed teacher creativity and morale, until we start paying teachers as if we really think what they do is significant, until we stop doing stupid stuff to boost the reputation of our superintendents rather than the well being of our students (like making students take AP classes), and until we offer more and better schooling options for families in the most ill served areas, I won’t approve any more large school bond referendums. I vote no.
5. Eastern High school (45 million). I can’t see 45 mil for a high school, and why it is that we do not have our major infrastructure facilities insured at replacement cost I have no clue, but the folks in the eastern part of our county need a new high school – it’s not their fault they are without a school building, and rented facilities will only work for so long. With suspicion about the cost, I vote yes.
Here's what I think I am going to do. Feel free to try to change my mind!
1. Parks and Recreation (20.2 million). In terms of bang for the buck I think Parks and Recreation dollars serve the public good more than most other items that appear on bond issues, and I think the particular projects in this bond issue are worth the relatively small price tag. I vote yes.
2. Guilford County Jail (114 million). I am all for more people downtown :-) and I am sympathetic to the plight of folks having to bunk in hallways, but I am not convinced either that all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted, that the reason not to renovate has been adequately made clear, or that the impact on downtown parking and ongoing upkeep costs have been fully explained. I wonder too if the entire governmental complex needs a makeover. It is so ugly it is a blight upon a downtown makign a great comeback. I am hesitant on this, but for now, I vote no.
3. GTCC (79.5 million). I think GTCC holds many keys to the success of our area. Both our public schools and our colleges and universities are failing to provide the technical education needed for so many in our area to have the skills needed for decent jobs, and for us to be able to provide skilled workers for a growing and changing economy. I vote yes.
4. Guilford County Schools (412 million). I know of little else other than police and fire protection, and building and highway safety that is more important for a local government to provide than quality education for its citizen’s children. I am a huge advocate of a strong public school system, and the need for quality education for our children, especially in reading. Yet I find it ironic that a project deemed so necessary for our children will burden them with so much debt down the line. Personally, if we had to invest 412 million dollars in our schools I would put it elsewhere than in brick and mortar. In the end, good teachers, good curriculum, and good parent-school communication, and not nice buildings, are the most important things. I taught public school for five years myself. I think I was in five different rooms of greatly varying quality!
The quality of the room or facility was way less important than my knowledge of and love for the subject, my creativity, and my interest in, indeed my earnest care for the students. For me, the bottom line is that I do not trust our school board or central office to allocate and spend our bond money in an efficient and effective manner. Perhaps it is Terry Grier hangover. And we know the way the system works that this 412 million can easily become much greater, and we also know that plans can change and we may not get what we approve anyway. Until we somehow break the stranglehold that the great triumvirate (the teachers “union” – even if it isn’t really, the college education departments, and the local school districts have over teacher certification, until we shake off “One Child Left Behind” which has killed teacher creativity and morale, until we start paying teachers as if we really think what they do is significant, until we stop doing stupid stuff to boost the reputation of our superintendents rather than the well being of our students (like making students take AP classes), and until we offer more and better schooling options for families in the most ill served areas, I won’t approve any more large school bond referendums. I vote no.
5. Eastern High school (45 million). I can’t see 45 mil for a high school, and why it is that we do not have our major infrastructure facilities insured at replacement cost I have no clue, but the folks in the eastern part of our county need a new high school – it’s not their fault they are without a school building, and rented facilities will only work for so long. With suspicion about the cost, I vote yes.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
My Dad's Birthday
My dad, Curtis Claunch Gillespie, Jr. This picture was taken at the Gator Bowl in 1979 I think, when Clemson played and got stomped by Pitt. I have always loved this picture. My dad was 48 or 49.Today April 30, 2008 would have been my dad's 78th birthday. He died a rather unusual accidental lonely death in June of 1989, a few days before I moved to Greensboro. I think of the line in "Mr. Bojangles" as describing myself - "after 20 years he still grieves."
My dad was a "man's man," a big burly fellow, very athletic in his days at Dreher High school in Columbia, with an entrepreneurial spirit and an artist's touch. He was a Southern gentleman. As I type I am looking at three amazingly beautiful roses he painted, which are framed and hanging on my living room wall above the piano. He was outgoing, and hit it off well with almost everyone.
He graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, in 195o I think, with a major in commerce. He met my mom while serving in the Air Force, stationed at the base outside Sherman Texas, her home town.
When I was about 10 years old he stepped away from a 15 year career in the insurance industry to start a dry cleaning business, which, with four kids, was a pretty gutsy move. I worked at Gillespie Cleaners all through Jr. High and High School, and off and on afterward. His mantra, "the customer is always right," has stuck with me over the years. So has the way he treated his employees, regardless of race or gender or economic class, or whatever. He had people working for him for twenty years, and I am talking "in the back" at a dry cleaners where it is hot and loud. I think that says a lot right there. They were like family to him, and to me. I miss them too.
When he died my brother Bobby took over the business. Bobby treated folks the same way.
Many people know that my dad had become a binge alcoholic by the time I was in Junior High school. He would be sober for several months, and then for whatever reason would slip, have a beer, and usually try to hide that he had, but we could always tell. That began a two or three week binge. He would end up on straight vodka, by the quart, totally passed out for a week or so. The stories I could tell! It wasn't fun, though there were a few funny episodes.
Some people who knew me then think of my dad or define him in those terms. But he was much much more than that, and I remember now mostly the good things. I feel compassion for him, in my memory, as to his problems. He went through terrible cycles, and I sat with him over the years as he went through unbelievable terrible withdrawals. I am amazed that they didn't kill him. It got better as he got older, thankfully.
He was a gambling man. Since he was always betting on some game, we were always listening to and watching sports. And he was all Tar Heel. Tar Heel blue ran deep to the core. So he was always betting on the Tar Heels. We had radios of all kinds, so even if North Carolina (the name we South Carolinians give to your state school) were playing in Alaska, he would find it on the radio. He waited a long time for a basketball championship between 1957 and 1982. I was there with my good friend Jim Hamrick in my dad's den watching the game with him and my mom in 1982. It was a happy moment.
He had a temper and could cuss like a sailer (like when he couldn't find his keys or a pen or his glasses, or when we had our music on way too loud), and he had no clue how to deal with children who came to age in the sixties, but he and I were always close, even when we argued. He always encouraged me, always told me he loved me, always hugged me when I left to go back to college or even just left to go back to my house, after I had left home.
We watched a lot of TV, and despite the fact that I was 13 in 1970, and was already into rock music, there was a lot of music we loved together - Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, and Bobby Darin, for example. We watched Johnny Carson a lot together too. We went to see John Denver together in 1976. And movies - we went to a ton of movies, many of which I had no business seeing!
I miss him more than I can say. I dream of him at least every week. My new employer at the time demanded I report to duty on July 1, a few days after he died, and I felt I never got to grieve. But then, I guess I always will, grieve, I mean.
I have many memories of my dad, and so much more I'd love to share, but this will do for now.
I wish you were here Dad.
You can see more pictures of my dad here.
Friday, April 18, 2008
God's Judgment and Our History
I wanted to address an issue that came up in each of my last two posts, and that is the issue of God's judgment on our nation (or any nation for that matter)
I address this as an historic orthodox Christian, affirming with other historic Orthodox Christians my belief in Jesus Christ as the risen/resurrected Lord of all who will return as King and Judge. This was the clear unambiguous teaching of Jesus Himself, and of the Apostles. The later (so called) Apostles' Creed puts it this way "from From thence he shall come again to judge the living and the dead." That line could have taken straight from just about any sermon in the book of Acts. It was the belief and teaching from he beginning.
I realize that those who are not Christians don't believe this, and I realize that more theologically liberal Christians don't much believe this either. I have no intention to persuade; I am only affirming a theological premise for what follows.
The Christian looks to what he refers to as the Old Testament and sees God in a very special covenant relationship with one particular nation of the earth - Israel. Along with the blessings of being in relationship with God, Israel also bore the burden of being under potential covenant curse or blessing according to how she lived according to the stipulations of the covenant. Curses and blessings were part and parcel of the Covenant itself.
But now (from the Christin point of view), God is not in a unique covenant relationship with any of the current nations of the earth. The Christian looks and works toward the ongoing preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ to all of the people/languages/nations of the earth equally. There is not really one nation that has a "special status," unless in some way, Israel does. (According to the Christian writers, the God of Israel, though seeing the purpose and point of Israel fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus, nevertheless has an ongoing special affection for the descendants of Abraham according to promise, i.e., via Isaac).
The Christian also sees the church itself (and possibly individual churches) as in a kind of covenant relationship with God where they may a level of blessing or cursing according to obedience or disobedience (see Revelation 2 and 3). Plus the Christian sees a large world-wide judgment of God against evil and rebellion when Jesus returns.
One also sees an ongoing battle as it were between the power of the state and the power of the state-sanctioned civil religion (on the one hand), and the people of God (on the other hand). If the book of Revelation says anything it says that over the course of history as a whole, good will win, God will win, His people will be vindicated, and death and sin and curse will be destroyed.
Again, a person who is not a Christian would not agree with any of this. I'm still laying groundwork for my point.
Here is the point. In the here and now of life in a fallen world we do not know God's secret counsel; we do not know "why" specific or particular bad things happen (whether the people be "good" or not), and we do not know whenever there is a disaster that it is due to God's special judgment upon a nation or a people. So, we don't know, Reverend Wright, if what happened on 9/11 was a matter of God's judgment in the "what goes around comes around sense." Nor do we know, Mr Cizic, whether God will judge America for not passing sufficient legislation regarding global warming. We do not know. we cannot know.
There are so many Christians who see America as having a "special nation status" with God, and who, as they see moral decay as evidenced by abortion and pornography and family breakdown and conspicuous consumption, expect God's imminent judgment. There are many Christians who see the United States as the focal point of evil in the world, and which can expect judgment at any time for its sins of greed and war mongering and environmental degradation and inattention to the poor, etc.
But we cannot read God's mind. We do not know the "why's" for many things that happen. Speculative after the fact comments like Jeremiah Wright's, or speculative ahead of time warnings like Cizic's really are just blowing smoke. They do now know. They cannot know.
In fact all human beings, including Christians, have a responsibility to do right, to pursue justice, and to seek the good of others. This applies everywhere to every nation (The Christian believes). But ours is just one of the many nations. As citizens and as a body politic we have responsibilities, and when we act stupidly or unjustly there may well be predictable consequences which are bad, or, as is often the case, we or some other nation may get away with evil for a very long time. Such has been the story of world history. Just how God's judgment intersects with our history we just do not know and will not know until the story is over.
For the Old Testament Psalmist as well as the New Testament Christian, the idea of God's coming in judgment was great news. Finally and at long last things will be made right. For the psalmist this was such good news he could see the trees clapping their hands with joy. For the Christian this is simply a basic core principle of life and prayer - "Thy Kingdom Come," or put another way, "Come, Lord Jesus."
I confess I can get grumpy at the anti intellectualism of our day that has led so many Christians, especially protestant Evangelical ones, to be so ignorant of their own faith. I even wish non Christians would become more knowledgeable of historic orthodox Christianity, just as I need to become more knowledgeable regarding Islam and Hinduism and modern Judaism, not just out of respect, but also so we can at least have an intelligent conversation. I still hold out hope.
In the mean time I wish Christian leaders, whether liberal or conservative, would quit invoking God's judgment (maybe "evoking" would also be true here), especially when their own theological hobby horse is involved. It's bad form.
I address this as an historic orthodox Christian, affirming with other historic Orthodox Christians my belief in Jesus Christ as the risen/resurrected Lord of all who will return as King and Judge. This was the clear unambiguous teaching of Jesus Himself, and of the Apostles. The later (so called) Apostles' Creed puts it this way "from From thence he shall come again to judge the living and the dead." That line could have taken straight from just about any sermon in the book of Acts. It was the belief and teaching from he beginning.
I realize that those who are not Christians don't believe this, and I realize that more theologically liberal Christians don't much believe this either. I have no intention to persuade; I am only affirming a theological premise for what follows.
The Christian looks to what he refers to as the Old Testament and sees God in a very special covenant relationship with one particular nation of the earth - Israel. Along with the blessings of being in relationship with God, Israel also bore the burden of being under potential covenant curse or blessing according to how she lived according to the stipulations of the covenant. Curses and blessings were part and parcel of the Covenant itself.
But now (from the Christin point of view), God is not in a unique covenant relationship with any of the current nations of the earth. The Christian looks and works toward the ongoing preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ to all of the people/languages/nations of the earth equally. There is not really one nation that has a "special status," unless in some way, Israel does. (According to the Christian writers, the God of Israel, though seeing the purpose and point of Israel fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus, nevertheless has an ongoing special affection for the descendants of Abraham according to promise, i.e., via Isaac).
The Christian also sees the church itself (and possibly individual churches) as in a kind of covenant relationship with God where they may a level of blessing or cursing according to obedience or disobedience (see Revelation 2 and 3). Plus the Christian sees a large world-wide judgment of God against evil and rebellion when Jesus returns.
One also sees an ongoing battle as it were between the power of the state and the power of the state-sanctioned civil religion (on the one hand), and the people of God (on the other hand). If the book of Revelation says anything it says that over the course of history as a whole, good will win, God will win, His people will be vindicated, and death and sin and curse will be destroyed.
Again, a person who is not a Christian would not agree with any of this. I'm still laying groundwork for my point.
Here is the point. In the here and now of life in a fallen world we do not know God's secret counsel; we do not know "why" specific or particular bad things happen (whether the people be "good" or not), and we do not know whenever there is a disaster that it is due to God's special judgment upon a nation or a people. So, we don't know, Reverend Wright, if what happened on 9/11 was a matter of God's judgment in the "what goes around comes around sense." Nor do we know, Mr Cizic, whether God will judge America for not passing sufficient legislation regarding global warming. We do not know. we cannot know.
There are so many Christians who see America as having a "special nation status" with God, and who, as they see moral decay as evidenced by abortion and pornography and family breakdown and conspicuous consumption, expect God's imminent judgment. There are many Christians who see the United States as the focal point of evil in the world, and which can expect judgment at any time for its sins of greed and war mongering and environmental degradation and inattention to the poor, etc.
But we cannot read God's mind. We do not know the "why's" for many things that happen. Speculative after the fact comments like Jeremiah Wright's, or speculative ahead of time warnings like Cizic's really are just blowing smoke. They do now know. They cannot know.
In fact all human beings, including Christians, have a responsibility to do right, to pursue justice, and to seek the good of others. This applies everywhere to every nation (The Christian believes). But ours is just one of the many nations. As citizens and as a body politic we have responsibilities, and when we act stupidly or unjustly there may well be predictable consequences which are bad, or, as is often the case, we or some other nation may get away with evil for a very long time. Such has been the story of world history. Just how God's judgment intersects with our history we just do not know and will not know until the story is over.
For the Old Testament Psalmist as well as the New Testament Christian, the idea of God's coming in judgment was great news. Finally and at long last things will be made right. For the psalmist this was such good news he could see the trees clapping their hands with joy. For the Christian this is simply a basic core principle of life and prayer - "Thy Kingdom Come," or put another way, "Come, Lord Jesus."
I confess I can get grumpy at the anti intellectualism of our day that has led so many Christians, especially protestant Evangelical ones, to be so ignorant of their own faith. I even wish non Christians would become more knowledgeable of historic orthodox Christianity, just as I need to become more knowledgeable regarding Islam and Hinduism and modern Judaism, not just out of respect, but also so we can at least have an intelligent conversation. I still hold out hope.
In the mean time I wish Christian leaders, whether liberal or conservative, would quit invoking God's judgment (maybe "evoking" would also be true here), especially when their own theological hobby horse is involved. It's bad form.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Thoughts on Obama's Woes
I have wanted to offer a few thoughts on the Obama - Jeremiah Wright story, and a few other Obama matters, and since I am wide awake at 11:30pm I think I'll do it now. I'll try to be brief - just ten short paragraphs!
First, putting aside Wright's more outrageous comments and his visit to Libya, well, and his theology generally, it is NOT the job of a Christian pastor to be "patriotic," whatever that means. It is the pastor/preacher's job to preach and teach what is true, and for the Christian pastor this generally means the truth of the Scriptures, and whether that sits well with the political status quo or any sort of civil religion or nationalism is irrelevant. Jesus talked about the destruction of his people's most cherished national shrine, their temple, which made him about as low on the patriot scale as one could get. Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Micah (some of Israel's great prophets) certainly would not have been considered patriots. This is an important matter for me personally, speaking to the core of religious liberty and the separation of church and state.
Second, as to God damning America I am reminded of Jesus' words. He was asked about the people who had been killed by Pilate. Were they worse sinners than others? He was asked about the 18 who died when the tower of Siloam fell upon them. Were they worse offenders than others? Jesus answer in both cases was the same - "unless you repent you will likewise perish." In other words, worry about yourself and don't speculate about those others and "why" they died. Jesus certainly did not say "yes" to the disciples' assumption that those people died specifically as judgment for their sins. Jeremiah Wright does not know that 9/11 was a matter of "what goes around comes around." He simply does not know that. Whether one is a right wing conservative or a left wing liberal, assuming one knows why things happen vis a vis God's judgment is risky business. I posted Thursday about an Evangelical Christian who was invoking God's judgment on America because of her inattention to global warming. He knows that how?
Third, Jeremiah Wright has been a long time advocate of what is called "Liberation Theology." Google the phrase and read the Wikipedia article. It's pretty accurate. Liberation Theology was really big back in the last two decades of the cold war, and since it sees social justice (and the achieving of social justice through political and oft times revolutionary means) as the essence of the gospel, many Liberation Theologians have tended towards Socialism of various kinds. Liberation Theologians have been generally anti-capitalistic and thus anti-American, so the marriage of Liberation Theology and Socialism was natural and convenient one. Liberation Theology was very big in Latin America as Socialism made a big move there.
Fourth, it has always been pretty run of the mill for Liberation Theology types to be also anti Israel. They look at the situation in Palestine and see the plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli control, and seem to have blinders about the dangers faced by Israel. I wonder how much Barach Obama absorbed Liberation Theology. I wonder how much it is in his head when he talks about himself as a Christian. I am pretty confident based on my years of reading the Gospels, and trying to understand them in their historical context, that Jesus would have rejected Liberation Theology out of hand (as much as he cared for the sick and poor and demon possessed).
Fifth, Jeremiah Wright's church is a mostly African American church within a very theological liberal mostly white denomination. Generally if a church group has the word "united" in it's name it means that it has decided that one can believe pretty much anything and be a part of it. We have long been in a situation where words that used to have a certain common meaning don't have their meanings anymore, especially religious, and even more especially traditional Christian words. This is certainly the case in "liberal" theology (which should not be confused with "liberal" politics). Liberal theology is, at its essence, anthropology; it is more about what people along the way have thought or said about God and less about what God has said about Himself.
Sixth, I don't buy the networking/climb-the-ladder argument as to Obama's reasons for attending that Jeremiah Wright's church. He just seems too smart and straight up to me for that. He must have actually agreed with many of the basic tenets of Wright's teaching, and since Wright was an advocate of Liberation Theology, I can't help but think Obama was sympathetic to that theology. I wouldn't even care except that people carry their deep convictions with them.
Seventh, without any question the person running for office that I personally like the most and am most drawn to is Barach Obama. But I simply do not know what he really stands for, especially how of much these Liberation Theology ideas he carries with him. It may not be the pastor's job to be a patriot, but a President of the United States has a profound duty to serve and protect the citizens of the United States (and, I hope the other free peoples of the world, such as Israel).
Eighth, it does bother me that Obama did not (not "has not recently" but "did not then") denounce William Ayers' post 9/11 comments. Those comments were not made 40 years ago when Obama was a child, and by Obama's own admission he has known Ayers in Chicago for many years. Ayers' comments post 9/11 should have been denounced by Obama apart from any political pressure to do so. It is an offense to the people who died on that terrible day that he did not.
Ninth, Obama's record is extremely non bipartisan. Has anyone running for President actually achieved bipartisan success other than McCain?
Tenth, and I cannot believe I am saying this, but I have done a big 180 turn. I hope Hillary finds a way to win the nomination, as much as the idea of another Clinton (or Bush) in the White House makes me sick. I am not saying this because I think McCain will win against her more easily. I am not sure that that is true. I am saying that if I had to choose between Obama and Hillary, if those were my two choices, at this point I would choose Hillary.
And seeing her put down those shots was a key moment for me :-)
All, for now.
First, putting aside Wright's more outrageous comments and his visit to Libya, well, and his theology generally, it is NOT the job of a Christian pastor to be "patriotic," whatever that means. It is the pastor/preacher's job to preach and teach what is true, and for the Christian pastor this generally means the truth of the Scriptures, and whether that sits well with the political status quo or any sort of civil religion or nationalism is irrelevant. Jesus talked about the destruction of his people's most cherished national shrine, their temple, which made him about as low on the patriot scale as one could get. Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Micah (some of Israel's great prophets) certainly would not have been considered patriots. This is an important matter for me personally, speaking to the core of religious liberty and the separation of church and state.
Second, as to God damning America I am reminded of Jesus' words. He was asked about the people who had been killed by Pilate. Were they worse sinners than others? He was asked about the 18 who died when the tower of Siloam fell upon them. Were they worse offenders than others? Jesus answer in both cases was the same - "unless you repent you will likewise perish." In other words, worry about yourself and don't speculate about those others and "why" they died. Jesus certainly did not say "yes" to the disciples' assumption that those people died specifically as judgment for their sins. Jeremiah Wright does not know that 9/11 was a matter of "what goes around comes around." He simply does not know that. Whether one is a right wing conservative or a left wing liberal, assuming one knows why things happen vis a vis God's judgment is risky business. I posted Thursday about an Evangelical Christian who was invoking God's judgment on America because of her inattention to global warming. He knows that how?
Third, Jeremiah Wright has been a long time advocate of what is called "Liberation Theology." Google the phrase and read the Wikipedia article. It's pretty accurate. Liberation Theology was really big back in the last two decades of the cold war, and since it sees social justice (and the achieving of social justice through political and oft times revolutionary means) as the essence of the gospel, many Liberation Theologians have tended towards Socialism of various kinds. Liberation Theologians have been generally anti-capitalistic and thus anti-American, so the marriage of Liberation Theology and Socialism was natural and convenient one. Liberation Theology was very big in Latin America as Socialism made a big move there.
Fourth, it has always been pretty run of the mill for Liberation Theology types to be also anti Israel. They look at the situation in Palestine and see the plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli control, and seem to have blinders about the dangers faced by Israel. I wonder how much Barach Obama absorbed Liberation Theology. I wonder how much it is in his head when he talks about himself as a Christian. I am pretty confident based on my years of reading the Gospels, and trying to understand them in their historical context, that Jesus would have rejected Liberation Theology out of hand (as much as he cared for the sick and poor and demon possessed).
Fifth, Jeremiah Wright's church is a mostly African American church within a very theological liberal mostly white denomination. Generally if a church group has the word "united" in it's name it means that it has decided that one can believe pretty much anything and be a part of it. We have long been in a situation where words that used to have a certain common meaning don't have their meanings anymore, especially religious, and even more especially traditional Christian words. This is certainly the case in "liberal" theology (which should not be confused with "liberal" politics). Liberal theology is, at its essence, anthropology; it is more about what people along the way have thought or said about God and less about what God has said about Himself.
Sixth, I don't buy the networking/climb-the-ladder argument as to Obama's reasons for attending that Jeremiah Wright's church. He just seems too smart and straight up to me for that. He must have actually agreed with many of the basic tenets of Wright's teaching, and since Wright was an advocate of Liberation Theology, I can't help but think Obama was sympathetic to that theology. I wouldn't even care except that people carry their deep convictions with them.
Seventh, without any question the person running for office that I personally like the most and am most drawn to is Barach Obama. But I simply do not know what he really stands for, especially how of much these Liberation Theology ideas he carries with him. It may not be the pastor's job to be a patriot, but a President of the United States has a profound duty to serve and protect the citizens of the United States (and, I hope the other free peoples of the world, such as Israel).
Eighth, it does bother me that Obama did not (not "has not recently" but "did not then") denounce William Ayers' post 9/11 comments. Those comments were not made 40 years ago when Obama was a child, and by Obama's own admission he has known Ayers in Chicago for many years. Ayers' comments post 9/11 should have been denounced by Obama apart from any political pressure to do so. It is an offense to the people who died on that terrible day that he did not.
Ninth, Obama's record is extremely non bipartisan. Has anyone running for President actually achieved bipartisan success other than McCain?
Tenth, and I cannot believe I am saying this, but I have done a big 180 turn. I hope Hillary finds a way to win the nomination, as much as the idea of another Clinton (or Bush) in the White House makes me sick. I am not saying this because I think McCain will win against her more easily. I am not sure that that is true. I am saying that if I had to choose between Obama and Hillary, if those were my two choices, at this point I would choose Hillary.
And seeing her put down those shots was a key moment for me :-)
All, for now.
Craving Liver
Ahhh, it's nice to be fiddling in Blogger again. I've been away a while. In fact, I've been pretty much down and out for a few weeks and just did my first decent walk - wow, spring has sprung in Greensboro! I saw four or five species of butterflies in my little 1.4 mile slow walk. One goal for this year is to learn my butterflies.
But for now all I can think about is liver.
Two weeks ago this coming Friday I awoke with a horrific migraine. Actually, I had had a spate of them that week. I didn't know why then. Now I do.
Anyway that Friday along with the normal bells and whistles that go with migraine I developed very bad vertigo - a whole new migraine symptom for me, or so I thought. I had to crawl around the house for two days - could not stand up. I felt off the chart terrible. Seems I was also dehydrated which kind of goes with migraine territory - more fluid leaving than coming in. I felt better as I hydrated and thought the dizziness was just due to that.
But it hung around, the dizziness, the malaise, so I finally went to see the doctor, my cardiologist, since I was most concerned about low BP and this awful loud "swooshing" sound in my head every time my heart beat. It was good check up, but he said I looked pale, and almost as an afterthought suggested I go to the lab and have some blood drawn to check for anemia.
The next morning they called to tell me my hemoglobin was 8.6, and would I go see a GI specialist that afternoon. So I went. They took more blood which then identified the problem as iron deficiency anemia, and recommended an endoscopy and colonoscopy. I was lying down or sleeping most of last week I was so fatigued and dizzy.
I had the colonoscopy and endoscopy this Tuesday. Getting ready for those tests is loads of fun. The main purpose of doing this was to rule out a BIG BAD cause and possibly detect one less dramatic one.
As far as the colososcopy, things down there are as clear as could be. Not a hint of a red mark, polyp, anything. I was supposed to be "out of it" but was totally lucid and enjoyed the tour of my bowels. I am a geek that way. So for now, colon cancer is out of the picture. As far as the endoscopy, there were two small ulcers in my stomach. They are small and were not bleeding at the time of the endoscopy. The doctor took a sample for biopsy to try to identify the cause. Usually there is a bacteria involved that can be treated once identified.
The doctor also took a small amount of tissue from the lining of the duodenum (uppermost part of the small intestine) in order to do a test to see if the cilia there are absorbing iron.
Oh, the really fun part was the audio - the colonoscopy after-effects. They have to push air in to inflate the bowel in order to see it clearly, and then, well, that air has to come out. So the nurse ordered me, ordered me mind you, to lie there and fart. She said the "f" word. I am still in shock.
Unfortunately my bowel didn't totally cooperate and decided to get rid of the air once I got home. That was kind of fun actually. It was better than those fart web sites!
So for now the plan is to try to get my iron levels up using iron supplements and some dietary additions. I have a physical in five weeks and that should give the docs a chance to know if the supplements and dietary additions are helping. It is kind of a slow process. Also, once the culprit is identified in the stomach there will be specific treatment for that too.
I got the sense the GI doctor remains worried about my having lost 40 pounds over the last 10 months, but I have radically changed my diet to eliminate simple starches and sugars, have been eating less generally, and exercising a whole lot more.
If none of that works then the next thing to do is test the bone marrow. We’ll hope and pray for the best. Right now all I can think about is liver.
But for now all I can think about is liver.
Two weeks ago this coming Friday I awoke with a horrific migraine. Actually, I had had a spate of them that week. I didn't know why then. Now I do.
Anyway that Friday along with the normal bells and whistles that go with migraine I developed very bad vertigo - a whole new migraine symptom for me, or so I thought. I had to crawl around the house for two days - could not stand up. I felt off the chart terrible. Seems I was also dehydrated which kind of goes with migraine territory - more fluid leaving than coming in. I felt better as I hydrated and thought the dizziness was just due to that.
But it hung around, the dizziness, the malaise, so I finally went to see the doctor, my cardiologist, since I was most concerned about low BP and this awful loud "swooshing" sound in my head every time my heart beat. It was good check up, but he said I looked pale, and almost as an afterthought suggested I go to the lab and have some blood drawn to check for anemia.
The next morning they called to tell me my hemoglobin was 8.6, and would I go see a GI specialist that afternoon. So I went. They took more blood which then identified the problem as iron deficiency anemia, and recommended an endoscopy and colonoscopy. I was lying down or sleeping most of last week I was so fatigued and dizzy.
I had the colonoscopy and endoscopy this Tuesday. Getting ready for those tests is loads of fun. The main purpose of doing this was to rule out a BIG BAD cause and possibly detect one less dramatic one.
As far as the colososcopy, things down there are as clear as could be. Not a hint of a red mark, polyp, anything. I was supposed to be "out of it" but was totally lucid and enjoyed the tour of my bowels. I am a geek that way. So for now, colon cancer is out of the picture. As far as the endoscopy, there were two small ulcers in my stomach. They are small and were not bleeding at the time of the endoscopy. The doctor took a sample for biopsy to try to identify the cause. Usually there is a bacteria involved that can be treated once identified.
The doctor also took a small amount of tissue from the lining of the duodenum (uppermost part of the small intestine) in order to do a test to see if the cilia there are absorbing iron.
Oh, the really fun part was the audio - the colonoscopy after-effects. They have to push air in to inflate the bowel in order to see it clearly, and then, well, that air has to come out. So the nurse ordered me, ordered me mind you, to lie there and fart. She said the "f" word. I am still in shock.
Unfortunately my bowel didn't totally cooperate and decided to get rid of the air once I got home. That was kind of fun actually. It was better than those fart web sites!
So for now the plan is to try to get my iron levels up using iron supplements and some dietary additions. I have a physical in five weeks and that should give the docs a chance to know if the supplements and dietary additions are helping. It is kind of a slow process. Also, once the culprit is identified in the stomach there will be specific treatment for that too.
I got the sense the GI doctor remains worried about my having lost 40 pounds over the last 10 months, but I have radically changed my diet to eliminate simple starches and sugars, have been eating less generally, and exercising a whole lot more.
If none of that works then the next thing to do is test the bone marrow. We’ll hope and pray for the best. Right now all I can think about is liver.
Evangelicals and the Environment
I wrote this as a reply to a piece on HumbleORadio. Check it out. It's a reflection about comments made about global warming and God's judgment by Rev. Richard Cizik, National Association of Evangelicals’ vice-president of governmental affairs.
Here's my comment:
It's hard anymore to define what "Evangelical" means. I have about given up trying. So many people have so many different associations with the word it almost just does not mean anything anymore. So, putting aside that rubric for a moment, there is in fact a growing sense amongst historic orthodox Christians (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) that concern for the glory of God and the good of man must include concern for the health of God's world. I am certainly one of those, being what many would call an evangelical Protestant. But I am uneasy about Cizik's position for several reasons. First, even assuming he is right on the science of global warming, how does he know America will face judgment from God if we don't attend to global warming? There are many sins, even environmental ones, that I think might be closer to the front of the line as to God's judgment. That's just empty talk. Just blather. He doesn't know that. The phrase "destroyers of the earth" in Revelation 11:18 could possibly be, but probably is not, a reference to environmental degradations. However, Israel's disregard for the land, their failure to give sabbath rest to the land, was one of the reasons for the time-length of their exile. God does care about his earth. Third, (and OK, I expect to get it here), as passionate an environmentalist as I am, I am not convinced as to the extent or causes of global warming, and I fear that many very real tangible environmental issues that involve public health - and the integrity and beauty of creation - are being put aside amidst all the global warming hoopla. Fourthly, Cizik speaks for himself. Certainly not for me.
We do have reason to believe as Christians that the "fall" included the fall of the whole of the created order. And yes, we also affirm and believe in a "new heaven and new earth." Until this earth is renewed by the events of those days, we have a responsibility to love God and love our neighbor, which means caring for God's creation motivated by both loves. And Cizik is right that evangelical Christian citizens should not care only about abortion and gay marriage. Many other issues matter in the ongoing role we have as lovers of God and neighbor, and even as we seek to present the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot preach the gospel with integrity to our neighbor if we are killing him with our waste products. And pray tell, how many people do you know, when they need retreat, when they need to get away and pray and be with their God, prefer parking lots and freeways and such? We need special places, not only for the sake of God's glory (as their beauty reflect back to him) and for the sake of the creatures (which God declared to be "good" and which he blessed), but also for the sake of our own spirits as we seek to hear God amidst the din of this noisy and dirty world.
Here's my comment:
It's hard anymore to define what "Evangelical" means. I have about given up trying. So many people have so many different associations with the word it almost just does not mean anything anymore. So, putting aside that rubric for a moment, there is in fact a growing sense amongst historic orthodox Christians (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) that concern for the glory of God and the good of man must include concern for the health of God's world. I am certainly one of those, being what many would call an evangelical Protestant. But I am uneasy about Cizik's position for several reasons. First, even assuming he is right on the science of global warming, how does he know America will face judgment from God if we don't attend to global warming? There are many sins, even environmental ones, that I think might be closer to the front of the line as to God's judgment. That's just empty talk. Just blather. He doesn't know that. The phrase "destroyers of the earth" in Revelation 11:18 could possibly be, but probably is not, a reference to environmental degradations. However, Israel's disregard for the land, their failure to give sabbath rest to the land, was one of the reasons for the time-length of their exile. God does care about his earth. Third, (and OK, I expect to get it here), as passionate an environmentalist as I am, I am not convinced as to the extent or causes of global warming, and I fear that many very real tangible environmental issues that involve public health - and the integrity and beauty of creation - are being put aside amidst all the global warming hoopla. Fourthly, Cizik speaks for himself. Certainly not for me.
We do have reason to believe as Christians that the "fall" included the fall of the whole of the created order. And yes, we also affirm and believe in a "new heaven and new earth." Until this earth is renewed by the events of those days, we have a responsibility to love God and love our neighbor, which means caring for God's creation motivated by both loves. And Cizik is right that evangelical Christian citizens should not care only about abortion and gay marriage. Many other issues matter in the ongoing role we have as lovers of God and neighbor, and even as we seek to present the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot preach the gospel with integrity to our neighbor if we are killing him with our waste products. And pray tell, how many people do you know, when they need retreat, when they need to get away and pray and be with their God, prefer parking lots and freeways and such? We need special places, not only for the sake of God's glory (as their beauty reflect back to him) and for the sake of the creatures (which God declared to be "good" and which he blessed), but also for the sake of our own spirits as we seek to hear God amidst the din of this noisy and dirty world.
Friday, April 11, 2008
China Pretty Much Sucks
"Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules."
...as quoted in The Sun, April 11.
If this is accurate, then I stand by my title.
I hope all our athletes, to a person, displays a Tibetan flag.
...as quoted in The Sun, April 11.
If this is accurate, then I stand by my title.
I hope all our athletes, to a person, displays a Tibetan flag.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Elm Street, Greensboro, NC
Looking up South Elm from 9th Floor of Guilford Building, Greensboro, NC. Check out my Flickr photostream here.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Out on a .....Rock
Looking N NE into Virginia, as compared to the photo below which is looking SW. Note the garnet sweatshirt! (the other SC school I attended)
Check out my Flickr Photostream here.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Greensboro as Seen from Hanging Rock
It's about 35 miles as the crow flies, well, if the crow flies straight! Can you make out the buildings? Taken with a Nikon 18-200mm lens.To see Winston Salem from Hanging Rock, and other photos in my Flickr photostream, click here.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
No Country For Old Men - Wow
I saw No Country for Old Men last night. I had seen it once already over Thanksgiving holiday. I liked it then. I liked it better second time around, especially the cinematography and Tommy Lee Jones' character, Sheriff Bell. Jones just seems to get better and better as an actor the older he gets.
The story takes place in desolate places which are nonetheless beautiful. I have recently been preaching through the temptation narratives in Luke where Jesus is guided out into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil. The wilderness is an empty and barren place despite its beauty. There is little there to support the human soul. The sparseness of the landscape in No Country seems a fitting place for this story about the emptiness of the human spirit and the corrupting influence of money and drugs, and never ending and oft times overwhelming badness of badness.
The film gets a lot of talk for its violence and for its really really bad guy. But there is way more to it. The dialogue is sparse but brilliant - witty, funny, sad, profound, and downright crazy. I don't want to give away the lines. You'll enjoy a lot of them the first time you see the movie and more the second. There are several cases of the same line being used in different situations ironically to mean a different thing.
The movie plot is at once simple and complex. Decent guy (Josh Brolin's character) is out hunting, stumbles across a drug deal gone bad (lots of dead bodies and one almost dead guy), finds money, takes it, has a fit of conscience, goes back to scene to give lone survivor water, gets chased away by yahoos, leaves truck behind, identity gets discovered by bad guys (on both sides) who want money back, and by sheriff, and then the chase is on. It is harrowing in parts. One is reminded a little of The Perfect Plan, not nearly as good a movie, but with a similar plot.
Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh is one of the most ruthless and persistent bad men in movie history, at times almost appearing freakish or Frankenstein-ish. But he has his principles.
I am not a movie reviewer by trade and don't have the verbal and descriptive tools in my kit. All I can say is that from the opening frames which are nothing short of utterly beautiful, and the opening monologue by Tommy Lee Jones character which is, well, pure art for me, beautiful words perfectly spoken, all the way through the unfolding plot to the non Hollywood ending, the movie just draws you into its brilliance as a movie.
For myself, well, it draws me into something else which I cannot put my finger on exactly. I don't want to cheapen my experience of the movie or the movie by throwing out cliche-like phrases to describe it. But as I watch No Country, I sense I am touching on something important, significant, metaphysical, touching on something "real."
Not exactly the kind of real as in Lord of the Rings where the whole story/movie seems in a way more real than real life itself. In the case of Lord of the Rings that seems the case for me, because, deep down, I believe Tolkien to be telling the "real" story of life, a story all but lost amidst the noise and murkiness of this world
"No Country" doesn't do all that, but it touches something close to real nonetheless, real as parable, real as metaphor. It is real only in part, in that it only tells (to me) part of the story. But it is a true part, a real part. The story rings true to the nature of life in this vale of tears, and in a typical American version of this vale of tears. Yes, this is an American fable after all, an American version of a universal story, so it must take place on American soil, in an American desert, with America (and Mexican) figures, not in Middle Earth, or New Zealand, with make believe figures.
I think in the end that that is what this movie is about, the desert. I think that's it. But I will have to go see again to be sure.
The story takes place in desolate places which are nonetheless beautiful. I have recently been preaching through the temptation narratives in Luke where Jesus is guided out into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil. The wilderness is an empty and barren place despite its beauty. There is little there to support the human soul. The sparseness of the landscape in No Country seems a fitting place for this story about the emptiness of the human spirit and the corrupting influence of money and drugs, and never ending and oft times overwhelming badness of badness.
The film gets a lot of talk for its violence and for its really really bad guy. But there is way more to it. The dialogue is sparse but brilliant - witty, funny, sad, profound, and downright crazy. I don't want to give away the lines. You'll enjoy a lot of them the first time you see the movie and more the second. There are several cases of the same line being used in different situations ironically to mean a different thing.
The movie plot is at once simple and complex. Decent guy (Josh Brolin's character) is out hunting, stumbles across a drug deal gone bad (lots of dead bodies and one almost dead guy), finds money, takes it, has a fit of conscience, goes back to scene to give lone survivor water, gets chased away by yahoos, leaves truck behind, identity gets discovered by bad guys (on both sides) who want money back, and by sheriff, and then the chase is on. It is harrowing in parts. One is reminded a little of The Perfect Plan, not nearly as good a movie, but with a similar plot.
Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh is one of the most ruthless and persistent bad men in movie history, at times almost appearing freakish or Frankenstein-ish. But he has his principles.
I am not a movie reviewer by trade and don't have the verbal and descriptive tools in my kit. All I can say is that from the opening frames which are nothing short of utterly beautiful, and the opening monologue by Tommy Lee Jones character which is, well, pure art for me, beautiful words perfectly spoken, all the way through the unfolding plot to the non Hollywood ending, the movie just draws you into its brilliance as a movie.
For myself, well, it draws me into something else which I cannot put my finger on exactly. I don't want to cheapen my experience of the movie or the movie by throwing out cliche-like phrases to describe it. But as I watch No Country, I sense I am touching on something important, significant, metaphysical, touching on something "real."
Not exactly the kind of real as in Lord of the Rings where the whole story/movie seems in a way more real than real life itself. In the case of Lord of the Rings that seems the case for me, because, deep down, I believe Tolkien to be telling the "real" story of life, a story all but lost amidst the noise and murkiness of this world
"No Country" doesn't do all that, but it touches something close to real nonetheless, real as parable, real as metaphor. It is real only in part, in that it only tells (to me) part of the story. But it is a true part, a real part. The story rings true to the nature of life in this vale of tears, and in a typical American version of this vale of tears. Yes, this is an American fable after all, an American version of a universal story, so it must take place on American soil, in an American desert, with America (and Mexican) figures, not in Middle Earth, or New Zealand, with make believe figures.
I think in the end that that is what this movie is about, the desert. I think that's it. But I will have to go see again to be sure.
Simkins PAC For Dummies
The more I read about Project Homestead, Mitchell Johnson, David Wray, Robbie Perkins, Jim Melvin, The Pulpit Forum, and The Simkins PAC, the more the dots are seeming to connect. Yet, I find I just don't have enough of a bird's eye view for it to make sense or to to be able to make a really informed judgment. I would love to read a carefully crafted summation - maybe about two pages - just to provide the simple story in overview form. I realize that any such summation would have an angle and could not possibly be long enough to provide necessary footnotes and supporting documentation. There is enough of that stuff in the multitude of blogs all over the place. It might be useful to read such summations from more than one perspective. In order to protect oneself from slander and such, the summation could begin with, "As I understand things at this point..." Perhaps also such an overview could be put into PDF form for printing. Joe, David, Troublemaker, Anthony, any of you up for this? Anyone else? I think it would help us plebeians out here.
Paul Potts
Well, everybody else in the world may have heard of him, but I first heard and saw his You Tube clip tonight, and found myself awed, and teraing up. It is amazing. Get inspired. Listen.
Friday, February 29, 2008
He Is Sam
In my piece a few weeks back, Joel Gillespie for President - Presenting My Cabinet, I wrote...
"For National Security Adviser I'd go with my good friend Sam. He knows everything about everything. Really, he does. He's amazing."
The other day I did a short little thing on the Kosovo/Serbia tensions entitled WW V.
Billy wrote a worthy and interesting response, to which I wrote a short response back, and then yesterday my friend Sam wrote this:
To offer a little perspective on this ...
The current Serb-Kosovar mess will not lead to another World War. I'd be surprised if it leads to much of anything, other than another enclave/breakaway province in the perpetually troubled Balkans. WWI hinged on the Balkans because of the bellicose alliances European nations got sucked into as they armed themselves to the teeth; it took only a match to set off a powderkeg. If it hadn't been the Balkans, WWI would've started over some other relatively petty assassination, border dispute, international incident, etc. Everyone wanted that war, until everyone saw how horrifying modern war could get -- and by then, it was too late.
Neither the Cold War nor the War on Terror (whatever that means) is WW3. Not even close. Only the Norman Podhoretzes of this world have the fevered lapses of intellect to imagine that a fairly normal state of global affairs is a "world war."
Can't compare U.S. military operations to other invasions because the purposes were different. The Germans invaded other countries for conquest, as did so many empires of the past. We pursued al Qaeda in Afghanistan because the Taliban was providing them safe cover; our purposes were very specific and limited. As a happy side effect of that, the Taliban's government fell. (Then Bush blew it, big time, by shifting all our military resources to an ill-advised invasion of Iraq, but that's way too much to go into here.)
Germany at the dawn of WWII (or at any other point) was nowhere near being "the closest thing to a superpower the world had ever known." How about the Roman Empire, Greek Empire under Alexander, Mongol empire during the Khan line, Carthage at the height of its powers, among many others -- all controlled far greater land, far greater wealth, far more people relative to the standards of their time. Germany was effectively countered by the Soviets in the east, the Allies in the west, and had a mighty short run. In most cases, the aforementioned empires crumbled from within. That is a better analogy to our own "soft" empire.
Also, the majority of grassroots insurgencies have been utterly demolished. Only the rare ones gain any traction whatsoever. Again, read a good history (Gibbon's is a good one) of the Roman empire. Do you know how many pitched rebellions the Romans crushed during their long reign? The Soviets and their various satellites and allies? Heck, Russia was long the land of the failed revolution before 1905 (the first big failed one).
Point being that you can't compare apples and oranges. I'm no warmonger, and I oppose our occupation of Iraq and want ALL of our troops to return home post-haste, including those at the nearly 700 bases we have worldwide. But I also don't compare even our misguided foreign policy with imperial conquest.
A far greater threat to our nation comes from within, and it is composed of economic decline, increasing balkanization via uncontrolled immigration (sans assimilation) and identity-group politics, and declining cultural standards -- which are, after all, what binds us together in the first place, to the extent it does.
Just my .02 "ameros"! (;-}
As I said above...
"For National Security Adviser I'd go with my good friend Sam. He knows everything about everything. Really, he does. He's amazing."
The other day I did a short little thing on the Kosovo/Serbia tensions entitled WW V.
Billy wrote a worthy and interesting response, to which I wrote a short response back, and then yesterday my friend Sam wrote this:
To offer a little perspective on this ...
The current Serb-Kosovar mess will not lead to another World War. I'd be surprised if it leads to much of anything, other than another enclave/breakaway province in the perpetually troubled Balkans. WWI hinged on the Balkans because of the bellicose alliances European nations got sucked into as they armed themselves to the teeth; it took only a match to set off a powderkeg. If it hadn't been the Balkans, WWI would've started over some other relatively petty assassination, border dispute, international incident, etc. Everyone wanted that war, until everyone saw how horrifying modern war could get -- and by then, it was too late.
Neither the Cold War nor the War on Terror (whatever that means) is WW3. Not even close. Only the Norman Podhoretzes of this world have the fevered lapses of intellect to imagine that a fairly normal state of global affairs is a "world war."
Can't compare U.S. military operations to other invasions because the purposes were different. The Germans invaded other countries for conquest, as did so many empires of the past. We pursued al Qaeda in Afghanistan because the Taliban was providing them safe cover; our purposes were very specific and limited. As a happy side effect of that, the Taliban's government fell. (Then Bush blew it, big time, by shifting all our military resources to an ill-advised invasion of Iraq, but that's way too much to go into here.)
Germany at the dawn of WWII (or at any other point) was nowhere near being "the closest thing to a superpower the world had ever known." How about the Roman Empire, Greek Empire under Alexander, Mongol empire during the Khan line, Carthage at the height of its powers, among many others -- all controlled far greater land, far greater wealth, far more people relative to the standards of their time. Germany was effectively countered by the Soviets in the east, the Allies in the west, and had a mighty short run. In most cases, the aforementioned empires crumbled from within. That is a better analogy to our own "soft" empire.
Also, the majority of grassroots insurgencies have been utterly demolished. Only the rare ones gain any traction whatsoever. Again, read a good history (Gibbon's is a good one) of the Roman empire. Do you know how many pitched rebellions the Romans crushed during their long reign? The Soviets and their various satellites and allies? Heck, Russia was long the land of the failed revolution before 1905 (the first big failed one).
Point being that you can't compare apples and oranges. I'm no warmonger, and I oppose our occupation of Iraq and want ALL of our troops to return home post-haste, including those at the nearly 700 bases we have worldwide. But I also don't compare even our misguided foreign policy with imperial conquest.
A far greater threat to our nation comes from within, and it is composed of economic decline, increasing balkanization via uncontrolled immigration (sans assimilation) and identity-group politics, and declining cultural standards -- which are, after all, what binds us together in the first place, to the extent it does.
Just my .02 "ameros"! (;-}
As I said above...
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Mercury Rising
I am a pretty voracious reader, and a science geek. But one of my problems as a blogger is that I am not a good note keeper/bibliographer. So whenever I write what I am getting ready to write I am never ready for the inevitable replies.
These thoughts were stimulated by the article in the News and Record today about the Duke coal burning plant west of Charlotte, as well as an article I read in Wired yesterday about technology and the environment.
NC needs more energy. Duke has got to produce it somehow. Coal is abundant. It is cleaner than ever. Up until recently there had been a lot of attention given to the carbon footprint of this plant. Now the attention is more on the mercury emissions. The opponents seem desperate. But they're on to something actually more serious now.
I think the mercury emissions issue is WAY more important. We have to know the impact of that amount of mercury - where it ends up, how it effects plant and animal life, and ultimately humans. Mercury is nasty stuff.
Coal plants, though cleaner than a generation ago, also generate sulfur dioxide (think acid rain), nitrogen oxide (think smog and ground level ozone), carbon monoxide, various hydrocarbons, various generic small particles, mercury, lead, other heavy metals, and of course carbon dioxide.
I really am not concerned at all about the carbon dioxide because I don't think we have even come close to establishing the degree to which CO2 has any significant effect on global warming, but the rest of those emissions, well, they concern me a lot.
We waste time and money wrangling about CO2 emissions while we send tons and tons of really bad pollutants into the air and water, deforest the last great jungles of the world, destroy one habitat after another, and kill off some of the most wonderful creatures we could even imagine existing.
If I were the devil, and I wanted the earth to become as ugly and horrible and inhospitable as possible, I think I would invent the issue of global warming (and especially the idea of carbon footprint) to divert everyone's attention from the really terrible ways we are already rendering our earth home barren and ugly and a wasteland.
For today, we need to know more about that mercury.
I believe we need a Marshall Plan for alternative and clean energy. We need to incentivize the technical know how of our universities and major industries to solve some of these difficult energy problems together. No, I don't think technology can save the world. But I have come to realize that it is the more affluent countries that become, in time, the cleanest, and that come to care most about the quality of the environment. It only makes sense.
I think we have barely scratched the surface as to car fuel efficiency, solar and wind energy, fuel cells, geothermal, wave and river energy etc.
To me the global warming carbon footprint bug a boo is a distraction. Let's go back to saving our planet from we already know is killing it.
These thoughts were stimulated by the article in the News and Record today about the Duke coal burning plant west of Charlotte, as well as an article I read in Wired yesterday about technology and the environment.
NC needs more energy. Duke has got to produce it somehow. Coal is abundant. It is cleaner than ever. Up until recently there had been a lot of attention given to the carbon footprint of this plant. Now the attention is more on the mercury emissions. The opponents seem desperate. But they're on to something actually more serious now.
I think the mercury emissions issue is WAY more important. We have to know the impact of that amount of mercury - where it ends up, how it effects plant and animal life, and ultimately humans. Mercury is nasty stuff.
Coal plants, though cleaner than a generation ago, also generate sulfur dioxide (think acid rain), nitrogen oxide (think smog and ground level ozone), carbon monoxide, various hydrocarbons, various generic small particles, mercury, lead, other heavy metals, and of course carbon dioxide.
I really am not concerned at all about the carbon dioxide because I don't think we have even come close to establishing the degree to which CO2 has any significant effect on global warming, but the rest of those emissions, well, they concern me a lot.
We waste time and money wrangling about CO2 emissions while we send tons and tons of really bad pollutants into the air and water, deforest the last great jungles of the world, destroy one habitat after another, and kill off some of the most wonderful creatures we could even imagine existing.
If I were the devil, and I wanted the earth to become as ugly and horrible and inhospitable as possible, I think I would invent the issue of global warming (and especially the idea of carbon footprint) to divert everyone's attention from the really terrible ways we are already rendering our earth home barren and ugly and a wasteland.
For today, we need to know more about that mercury.
I believe we need a Marshall Plan for alternative and clean energy. We need to incentivize the technical know how of our universities and major industries to solve some of these difficult energy problems together. No, I don't think technology can save the world. But I have come to realize that it is the more affluent countries that become, in time, the cleanest, and that come to care most about the quality of the environment. It only makes sense.
I think we have barely scratched the surface as to car fuel efficiency, solar and wind energy, fuel cells, geothermal, wave and river energy etc.
To me the global warming carbon footprint bug a boo is a distraction. Let's go back to saving our planet from we already know is killing it.
The Heart of Bush
I think this is a great story on Bush in Africa (written by Bob Geldof for Time/CNN online) - revealing the man, his heart, his humor, his quickness, and the contradictions that surround his tenure as President.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
A Medical Morality Tale
The six weeks leading up to my mother's death on February 27, 2001, were perhaps the most difficult of my life. I had the deep blessing and privilege of reconnecting with my mother in a new and deep way, and then she was taken. I have not talked very much about the circumstances of her death, but I think it is time to put the record out there. The purpose of this is not to bring grief to anyone, but to encourage everyone to be vigorous and proactive when dealing with members of the medical profession, particularly surgeons. The qualities needed to make them good surgeons are not those which make them easy to talk to.
After mom died, for the sake of my family, I wrote a letter to the doctors laying out the questions we had. I never sent it. They would not have answered them no mater how many wavers I signed agreeing not to sue were they to admit to anything. But here it is, the story of mom's demise in the form of a letter to her doctors:
(I've added a paragraph at the end as a response to Mary Johnson's wise comment)
After mom died, for the sake of my family, I wrote a letter to the doctors laying out the questions we had. I never sent it. They would not have answered them no mater how many wavers I signed agreeing not to sue were they to admit to anything. But here it is, the story of mom's demise in the form of a letter to her doctors:
(I've added a paragraph at the end as a response to Mary Johnson's wise comment)
Dear Doctors,
My name is Joel Gillespie. My mother. Mrs. Maurine Gillespie, was a patient of yours. As you know she passed away on
On behalf of myself and my three siblings, I want to express my gratitude for the care extended to my mom by all of her doctors and nurses during this terrible ordeal. We know that everyone tried very hard to get my mom through her ordeal, and that you are saddened by her death, as we are.
On our side, four adult children have lost a dear mother, and eleven grandchildren a dear grandmother. As we go through the process of grieving our mother’s loss, we find that that grieving process is somewhat hindered by the questions that accumulated along the way. It was often hard to have time to see and talk doctors, and have concerns and questions addressed. Some of these questions just sort of hang there without resolution, and this makes it harder to move on.
As we deal with our own grief and look to a future without our mother and our children’s grandmother, it would be most helpful for us to have as much understanding as possible about the course of events which led to her death. These questions may well point to our own medical ignorance. We simply don’t have adequate grasp of some of the anatomical issues and physiological processes and treatment realities involved. Some of our questions have to do with simply wishing to understand better how one thing led causally to another. Other questions have to do with why certain treatment decisions were made, and whether certain events could have been foreseen. Finally, some questions have to do with whether risks were adequately outlined prior to her surgery.
We would like to would request an audience with the various physicians who attended to our mother during her last weeks of life and have them answer for us as many of these questions as they could. This would be advantageous to our moving forward. We will be in touch regarding setting up such a meeting. Perhaps it would be good to meet with Dr. Orlandini, her primary cardiologist, Dr. Beard who preformed the ablation, and one member of the surgery team who worked with my mom, perhaps Dr. Sutton Jr. who met with my mom before the surgery.
In order that you might have opportunity to remember the details, and in order for such a meeting to be as fruitful as possible, I am going to try my best to articulate the questions as they stand as of this writing. I will try to write these out as straightforwardly as I can, and of course you must forgive any medical naivete which may reveal itself as I go along. I am writing rather clinically and ask you not to read tone or anything into the questions. There is no tone intended at any point.
Our first question has to do with the decision to take my mother off the medications prior to the ablation procedure. We understand that she needed to be symptomatic in order for this procedure to be successful. However, in going off the medications several days before the procedure, my mom was left in a very vulnerable state. He tachycardia intensified to the point that she was admitted to the hospital with a pulse in excess of 200 and a dangerously reduced blood pressure. Her lungs had significant fluid build up. The emergency room doctor noted that she was in failure. She likely had been in this state for some time. In our judgment she should have been more closely monitored during this period of time. Could such an extended period of time with such elevated heart rate so stressed her heart and heart valves that it contributed to her mitral valve failure?
In the ablation procedure the doctor identified two primary “bad” pathways. One of these was close to the “good” sinus node pathway. Our understanding is that in trying to knock out the bad pathway the good pathway was impacted, which ultimately led to the necessity of getting a pacemaker. In other words, he missed. Is it normal to try to take out a bad pathway so near to good pathway?
The process of getting her pacemaker to work properly was quite frustrating for my mom and for us. The pacemaker could not be made to stick. It kept coming unhooked from her heart tissue and then just dangling inside her heart, causing her heart to beat in all kinds of irregular ways. t would help us to understand better what sorts of things can contribute to such difficulty, and whether any of this could have been related to her subsequent mitral valve problem. In particular, could problems such as perhaps improperly coordinated contractions of her atriums and ventricles have contributed to her mitral valve failure?
At one point one of the nurses made comment about something “funky” having gone during the pacemaker procedure. We are curious as to what this might have been.
It seems probable now, after the fact, that the problem with getting the pacemaker leads to “stick” had to do with the friability of her heart muscle tissue, a friability caused undoubtedly by her long term use of prednisone for her late onset asthma. It was, in the end, this tissue friability that killed her, and which we believe should have been predicted. Perhaps the pacemaker problems in addition to the fact of her long term use of prednisone should have caused increased concern about her surgical risk after the mitral valve blew out.
One thing that has concerned us as well is the fact that there was knowledge of a “murmur” of some kind noted in the primary cardiologist’s records both in July and December. My mom had no history of heart murmur or of mitral valve problems. Should not this murmur have been checked out earlier through ultrasound? Could it have been early signs of valve trouble and could this have impacted the decision to proceed with the ablation? Did Dr. Beard know about this murmur?
After the catherization procedure revealed the blockages and confirmed the ultrasound’s finding regarding her mitral valve, it was explained by the surgeon that my mom indicated for valve replacement and bypass surgery. Risks were outlined to her as 8-10%, with the usual risks of stroke and heart attack (etc.) mentioned. Because of her history of asthma and prolonged use of prednisone the issues both of her lung capacity and problems with tissue healing were discussed, which also imposed risk as to her recovery, risks which were also rated at 8%. Her decision to have the surgery was difficult and calculated based on the information she received from the doctors prior to surgery.
After my mother managed to get through the bypass/valve replacement surgery and off the heart lung machine, the surgeon commented that when he got into her heart he found that its anatomy was very unusual, that the walls of the heart were thickened and that there were fatty deposits like little tumors in the heart, and that as a result it had been quite hard to get the tissue valve seated. Because of the time spent attempting to place the tissue valve, and then the additional time spent putting in the mechanical valve, she was then on the heart/lung machine much longer than was good, which had terrible consequences for her eventual recovery, particularly the four days spent on the respirator due to having to wait three days to close up her chest.
Prior to her open heart surgery, my mom had an ultrasound taken in the emergency room (which I refer to below as the “external” ultrasound). This ultrasound showed evidence of valve problems. The catherization procedure undergone the next day also showed evidence of such mitril valve problems in addition to coronary artery blockages. In addition, in the period of time after diagnosis of these problems and the actual surgery, she had on at least one occasion, perhaps two, taken the test whereby she swallowed the ultrasound camera which then enabled the doctors to see the back side of her heart. I refer to this as the internal ultrasound. She may have had another external ultrasound done as well.. Were not the external and internal ultrasounds intended to enable the surgeons to see her heart more clearly, and would not they have enabled them to understand her heart’s “unusual” anatomy. Could they enabled the doctors to make a different call regarding the decision to go with the tissue as opposed to the mechanical valve? Would they have enabled the doctors to mention the possibility of the valve not fitting right is as one of the surgical risks and challenges, which again could have impacted the decision to have the surgery?
During the surgery, when the surgeon came out to inform the family that my mother would most likely not make it through, he spoke of the reason as being primarily the friability of her tissue which caused problems in suturing. he acted as if it would have been a miracle for anyone in her condition, given her tissue friability, to have survived a surgery of this kind, even though he had said her surgery risk factor was 8 %.
Again, our question is whether this issue of friability could have been anticipated given her long history of the use of prednisone? And if so, in laying out risks of surgery should the surgeon have mentioned to my mom and to us the possible problem of tissue friability? It never came up prior to the surgery and in discussion of risks. This is the single biggest concern we have.
Although her life would have been more limited and less active had she not had the surgery, and though in time her coronary artery likely would have closed off and she would have died of a heart attack, my mom’s week in the hospital prior to surgery proved that she could live with the valve reflux if properly monitored and if given appropriate medications. Had the surgeon mentioned the risk of suturing given a likelihood of tissue friability due to use of prednisone the decision to proceed with the surgery could have likely have been very different.
The evening before my mom died the nurses had put her on the c-pap machine to help her breathe. According to what the nurses later told us they had to take my mom right off the c-pap because her blood pressure dropped quickly. We do not understand what the relationship is between her being on the c-pap and her blood pressure dropping. How does the c-pap cause one’s blood pressure to drop? Does being on the c-pap impact or stress the heart in some way?
When we last say my mom at
After my mom died the doctor explained to us that her heart had just stopped. But it had been explained to us already by the nurse that her blood pressure had dropped, setting off the alarms, but her heart continued to beat and that she had continued to breathe, and that attempts were made to reverse or correct her blood pressure drop, and that only subsequently did her heart actually stop.
It seems to us that some event caused her blood pressure to drop as it did. Either something caused her heart to stop beating effectively (a bypass graft coming undone, the valve misfunctioning, her coronary arteries getting blocked, etc.) or something caused her to lose blood internally, such as a hemorrhage.
As far as you can know what caused her heart to stop beating effectively, and is there an identifiable cause of that, such as being put on the c-pap machine?
(Added after Mary Johnson's wise comment...If my memory serves me correctly we decided within a very short time not to pursue any sort of lawsuit. Yes, mistakes were made, but my mother also made enough mistakes in her own self care for us to blame her demise on anyone else. I think I learned three things. First, doctors, particularly surgeons, tend to be overly optimistic about what they can pull off. That can lead to unwise care decisions. Second, once you're in the hospital it is almost impossible to have a good substantial talk with a doctor (this has been verified for me as a pastor a hundreds over as I have sat with anxious families). Third, after anything goes awry, doctors are so scared of lawsuits they do not want to talk. It would allow wonderful closure for a family if a doctor could say "I'm sorry, my hand slipped and I nicked the artery" or whatever. But they can't admit to anything because of malpractice suits breathing down their necks all the time. This helps nobody. I carry no grudge about the medical care, and cherish the memory of my mother. Nor do I really await any answers. I stumbled across this and thought, well, I wrote it, I may as well publish it somewhere . Maybe someone will benefit from it. I don't know, maybe not.)
Mom - We Miss You
Taken in early 1950's. Maurine Gillespie, my mom. I was not born yet so obviously I did not take the picture. It was damaged but I cleaned it up as best as I could with my limited skills in that area. This is my single favorite photo of my mom.Maurine (Sanders) Gillespie
b. March 27, 1932, Sherman TX
d. February 27, 2001, Columbia, SC
m. Curtis Claunch Gillespie, Jr. 1952, Sherman Tx
Mother of Michael Curtis, John Robert, Joel Sanders, and Mary Adeline
Grandmother of Rachel, Shannon, Stephen, Heather, Rebekah, Michele, Laurel, Mary, Anna, Sanders, Madeline, and Joshua
It would be a high honor on this the anniversary of her death if you would remember her with me and peruse pictures of here here.
Monday, February 25, 2008
The Things You Do For Love
The Drudge Report has a great small montage showing the idiocy of the Clinton campaign in trying to score points by circulating a photo of Obama dressed as a Somali tribal elder. The montage shows Hillary Clinton, George Bush, and Bill Clinton all doing the same. I guess Clinton's people wanted to show that really, you know, deep deep deep deep down, Obama is a secret Muslim after all. I am starting to wonder what Obama's political message really is, but this is ridiculous. Read the Drudge article, you'll like it.
Oh, and for real, last month I drove to Columbia SC to attend a certain public ceremony. In order to please my guests, I had to wear a tight heavily starched shirt, wrap this crazy thin garment around my neck and tie it into a double knot, put on a black wool suit, wear heavy black shoes, and stand there looking all serious and earnest. So, does that make me a mobster, a gangster, or worse maybe, a stock broker? Just kidding! and no, it was a wedding not a funeral.
Oh, and for real, last month I drove to Columbia SC to attend a certain public ceremony. In order to please my guests, I had to wear a tight heavily starched shirt, wrap this crazy thin garment around my neck and tie it into a double knot, put on a black wool suit, wear heavy black shoes, and stand there looking all serious and earnest. So, does that make me a mobster, a gangster, or worse maybe, a stock broker? Just kidding! and no, it was a wedding not a funeral.
Flower Power
Was looking for something else and came across this! If this does not at least partially qualify me for hippie-dom I don't know what will! More here. My daughter says I look like a girl. But "nice teeth" she adds. Taken I think in late summer 1974.
The Religiously Irreligious
Except, Nancy, I would say that few people have as much zeal - religious-like zeal - as the non specifically religious, the tolerantly and vaguely religious, indeed, the religiously irreligious.
The Real Axis of Evil
I was very glad to hear Obama talk about education, and especially about how our kids need education across a range of subject areas, and how we need to get away from teaching to tests.
This is all very good. I like it. But...
We got into No Child Left Behind in the first place because our public school system, broadly speaking, sucked. It was failing our kids. The fact is, it is an embarrassment. We should all be ashamed.
I am a strong believer in public education. I am a strong supporter of public school teachers. I was a public school teacher for five years. But our system of public instruction is broken beyond the ability of its traditional overseers being able to fix it. I think it is beyond reform.
There is an Stalin-esque alliance, an axis of evil, an unholy trinity that holds our public school system in a death grip. This alliance is made up of the state departments of pubic instruction, the university departments of education, and the various teacher's unions or associations.
There are good and well meaning people in each of these groups who care about our children, but the system as a system is guaranteed to look after its own interests and not that of our children or our families (or our teachers).
Throw in the federal government as in "No Child Left Behind," with it's earmarks and scoring systems, plus ladder climbing superintendents whose upward mobility depends on good scores and it all just gets worse.
Until this triumvirate is broken I see no hope for real or lasting or effective change. It will just be window dressing, moving the furniture around, sloganeering.
What OUGHT and what NEEDS to happen is that responsibility for education needs to pushed down as much as possible to the local level, even as we keep per pupil funding as even as we can. Education is simply one of those things in life that works best locally. It is, oddly, one of those things where, until local communities have to step up, they won't, and when they have to, or until they are no longer made irrelevant, they will step up.
We have to change the certification rules for teachers. Teacher certification classes mean little compared to a lot of other things that make for good teachers, like decent IQ's, knowledge of material, general knowledge, work ethic, love of students, etc. All those extra education-course requirements, along with the woefully low pay, just keep good teachers out of teaching. Students majoring in education typically have the lowest SAT scores of all the students on a college campus. Great, huh?
Smart teachers unshackled by teaching to the test (and freed from having to take a million teachers' classes at night just to be able to make a little more money) will have the time, energy, and creative freedom to plan great classes. When I taught high school physics, chemistry, and physical science I was given a course title, a lab closet filled with thirty year old junk, a chem lab with enough HCL, H2SO4, HNO3 and other stuff to eat a hole to the center of the earth, and enough sticks of Sodium to blow the water out of lake Murray. I had to pick text books, plan scope-and-sequence, order lab material, write my own tests (for which I gave partial credit on most questions since it was so much math based - so, no machine scoring for me), clean up those closets, you name it. Hard work, huge amounts of time, most nights up late preparing or grading (I think I made $13,000 my first year - oh, but I had all summer to holiday in Spain, right John?), but we had some fun and compelling classes.
We need to break up the school districts. I am not convinced these consolidated monster districts actually save us money but even if they do it's not worth it. It makes the system seem like the Queen Mary navigating the Haw River. It's just too big, too slow, too cumbersome, too "one size fits all." Break it up. Smash it. Give more leeway to the local principles. Give more freedom to the local teachers.
All the new construction in the world won't make up for poor teachers. Give me good teachers in ratty buildings over mediocre teachers in new buildings any day. With good teachers magic happens.
And Republicans, just be quiet already about merit pay. It doesn't work. There are no objective criteria that won't end up meaning more conferences, more classes, more time "in the system" under the sway of the unholy trinity. The only way to discern real merit is subjectively, and that will never fly, unless we follow a military model and promote those we know by observation worthy of promotion. I don't think that will work.
As I have said before, it is one of the hardest things in the world to be a good teacher. If you have not done it I don't think you have any idea how demanding it is. It's a 15 hour a day job. It's exhausting. And it's rewarding. But it pretty much becomes your life. I'm afraid it's also way too easy to be a bad teacher. If we raise academic entry requirements (as in, you know, med school) and raise pay substantially, teacher quality will take care of itself, and we'll just have to let the bad teachers retire out of the system.
I realize that my ideas won't in reality be passed either. But Obama is dreaming if he thinks that just casting off NCLB is going to bring in some golden era of education. It will just bring us back to the same mediocre place we were in before. That's a place I don't want to be. American public education will still suck.
Oh, and one more thing...speaking of special interests...we tend to think of such interests as corporate, Madison avenue, greedy old men in suits...but the aforementioned educational triumvirate is a triple play of special interests and lobbying. Just cross them, you'll see.
This is all very good. I like it. But...
We got into No Child Left Behind in the first place because our public school system, broadly speaking, sucked. It was failing our kids. The fact is, it is an embarrassment. We should all be ashamed.
I am a strong believer in public education. I am a strong supporter of public school teachers. I was a public school teacher for five years. But our system of public instruction is broken beyond the ability of its traditional overseers being able to fix it. I think it is beyond reform.
There is an Stalin-esque alliance, an axis of evil, an unholy trinity that holds our public school system in a death grip. This alliance is made up of the state departments of pubic instruction, the university departments of education, and the various teacher's unions or associations.
There are good and well meaning people in each of these groups who care about our children, but the system as a system is guaranteed to look after its own interests and not that of our children or our families (or our teachers).
Throw in the federal government as in "No Child Left Behind," with it's earmarks and scoring systems, plus ladder climbing superintendents whose upward mobility depends on good scores and it all just gets worse.
Until this triumvirate is broken I see no hope for real or lasting or effective change. It will just be window dressing, moving the furniture around, sloganeering.
What OUGHT and what NEEDS to happen is that responsibility for education needs to pushed down as much as possible to the local level, even as we keep per pupil funding as even as we can. Education is simply one of those things in life that works best locally. It is, oddly, one of those things where, until local communities have to step up, they won't, and when they have to, or until they are no longer made irrelevant, they will step up.
We have to change the certification rules for teachers. Teacher certification classes mean little compared to a lot of other things that make for good teachers, like decent IQ's, knowledge of material, general knowledge, work ethic, love of students, etc. All those extra education-course requirements, along with the woefully low pay, just keep good teachers out of teaching. Students majoring in education typically have the lowest SAT scores of all the students on a college campus. Great, huh?
Smart teachers unshackled by teaching to the test (and freed from having to take a million teachers' classes at night just to be able to make a little more money) will have the time, energy, and creative freedom to plan great classes. When I taught high school physics, chemistry, and physical science I was given a course title, a lab closet filled with thirty year old junk, a chem lab with enough HCL, H2SO4, HNO3 and other stuff to eat a hole to the center of the earth, and enough sticks of Sodium to blow the water out of lake Murray. I had to pick text books, plan scope-and-sequence, order lab material, write my own tests (for which I gave partial credit on most questions since it was so much math based - so, no machine scoring for me), clean up those closets, you name it. Hard work, huge amounts of time, most nights up late preparing or grading (I think I made $13,000 my first year - oh, but I had all summer to holiday in Spain, right John?), but we had some fun and compelling classes.
We need to break up the school districts. I am not convinced these consolidated monster districts actually save us money but even if they do it's not worth it. It makes the system seem like the Queen Mary navigating the Haw River. It's just too big, too slow, too cumbersome, too "one size fits all." Break it up. Smash it. Give more leeway to the local principles. Give more freedom to the local teachers.
All the new construction in the world won't make up for poor teachers. Give me good teachers in ratty buildings over mediocre teachers in new buildings any day. With good teachers magic happens.
And Republicans, just be quiet already about merit pay. It doesn't work. There are no objective criteria that won't end up meaning more conferences, more classes, more time "in the system" under the sway of the unholy trinity. The only way to discern real merit is subjectively, and that will never fly, unless we follow a military model and promote those we know by observation worthy of promotion. I don't think that will work.
As I have said before, it is one of the hardest things in the world to be a good teacher. If you have not done it I don't think you have any idea how demanding it is. It's a 15 hour a day job. It's exhausting. And it's rewarding. But it pretty much becomes your life. I'm afraid it's also way too easy to be a bad teacher. If we raise academic entry requirements (as in, you know, med school) and raise pay substantially, teacher quality will take care of itself, and we'll just have to let the bad teachers retire out of the system.
I realize that my ideas won't in reality be passed either. But Obama is dreaming if he thinks that just casting off NCLB is going to bring in some golden era of education. It will just bring us back to the same mediocre place we were in before. That's a place I don't want to be. American public education will still suck.
Oh, and one more thing...speaking of special interests...we tend to think of such interests as corporate, Madison avenue, greedy old men in suits...but the aforementioned educational triumvirate is a triple play of special interests and lobbying. Just cross them, you'll see.
Old and Wrinkled
I know this isn't an inspiring photograph. It's the bark of a very old Tulip Poplar tree on the Beech Bluff Trail off a finger of Lake Higgins that eventually crosses Fleming Road. There are also some very old Beech trees along that trail - hence the name. I like to wonder, "What has this tree seen in its day." I wish there were really Tree Beards in our world that could talk to us. Though Tulip Poplars do grow quickly, given the height and girth of this one, and the deeply fissured bark, I would not be surprised if it were a hundred years old, saved from the saw by the boggy creek bed and steep hillside. Its beautiful back in there - lots of birds - you should check it out.
Falling Slowly - My Favorite Oscar Moment
I had gone to the back of the house for just a moment, and when I came back Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova were on stage singing "Falling Slowly." "Anna, Anna" I called out to my daughter, "come here, quickly" hoping not to awaken the others in the house who were sleeping.
Anna, her sister Heather, and I had rented "Once" over Christmas holidays and fell in love with the music. One of the songs had even become Anna's cell phone ring tone.
When later they actually won the Oscar for best original song in a movie I called out for Anna again. Glen Hansard's acceptance speech was humble and delightful and fantastic, as were Marketa Irglova's words after they brought her back up (having whisked her off the stage a little too quickly first time around).
As I said in my rambling re-entry back into blogging this January, "Once" is a beautiful little Irish film. OK, yes, it is filled with typical Irish street language, so it's not for the kids. It has Indy film all over it, from the simple camera angles, to the linear story line, to the utter lack of special effects. In his acceptance speech Hansard said the movie's cost was only $100,000!.
It is a slow film, slow-like-life slow. It is about music, and about how circumstances brought two people together to make music for a week - a once in a lifetime opportunity. It's about wisdom, knowing how to know the difference between a fleeting relationship opportunity and the more substantive and real relationships that need mending. It's a really sweet film. Beware, if you watch the movie you WILL buy the soundtrack!
And how real life has imitated art. Now Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are touring together, when they can. Their voices really work together. They even toured with Bob Dylan this summer, and if you think that is like being relegated to the old folks tour, word is Bob Dylan has never been better, and lit up the stage this summer like never before.
So, listening to "Falling Slowly" was my favorite Oscar moment.
You can watch and listen to the movie clip from Once where their characters are putting together "Falling Slowly" together for the first time while in a music store here. here.
You can watch them on Letterman here.
My favorite song from the movie is Marketa Irglova's "If You Want Me."
Correction: My favorite song is The Hill. I like "If You Want Me" too.
Anna, her sister Heather, and I had rented "Once" over Christmas holidays and fell in love with the music. One of the songs had even become Anna's cell phone ring tone.
When later they actually won the Oscar for best original song in a movie I called out for Anna again. Glen Hansard's acceptance speech was humble and delightful and fantastic, as were Marketa Irglova's words after they brought her back up (having whisked her off the stage a little too quickly first time around).
As I said in my rambling re-entry back into blogging this January, "Once" is a beautiful little Irish film. OK, yes, it is filled with typical Irish street language, so it's not for the kids. It has Indy film all over it, from the simple camera angles, to the linear story line, to the utter lack of special effects. In his acceptance speech Hansard said the movie's cost was only $100,000!.
It is a slow film, slow-like-life slow. It is about music, and about how circumstances brought two people together to make music for a week - a once in a lifetime opportunity. It's about wisdom, knowing how to know the difference between a fleeting relationship opportunity and the more substantive and real relationships that need mending. It's a really sweet film. Beware, if you watch the movie you WILL buy the soundtrack!
And how real life has imitated art. Now Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are touring together, when they can. Their voices really work together. They even toured with Bob Dylan this summer, and if you think that is like being relegated to the old folks tour, word is Bob Dylan has never been better, and lit up the stage this summer like never before.
So, listening to "Falling Slowly" was my favorite Oscar moment.
You can watch and listen to the movie clip from Once where their characters are putting together "Falling Slowly" together for the first time while in a music store here. here.
You can watch them on Letterman here.
My favorite song from the movie is Marketa Irglova's "If You Want Me."
Correction: My favorite song is The Hill. I like "If You Want Me" too.
To B or not to B, That is the Question
OK, so I don't know what has come of Billy's call to boycott the Wyndham Classic. But seeing as I voted for Billy for mayor, and more or less agree with him about corruption in our local political system, I wanted to explain to him why I won't join the boycott.
The first reason is that I don't go to the tournament anyway. It's just too expensive, and I'd rather watch golf on TV.
Secondly, I think the GGO (in its various iterations) has been good for Greensboro over the years.
Thirdly, the GGO is much older than the current leadership of Greensboro.
Fourthly, and most importantly for me, I don't do boycotts unless there are extreme, unambiguous, and reprehensible, moral and/or human life issues at stake.
I've come to this position or approach through the ad-infinitum calls for boycotts from conservative Christian and liberal environmental groups over the years. The thing is, once I really start to get nit picky about it, it is hard to find any product that is not tainted by some policy or behavior I find objectionable. It's like the Kevin Bacon thing, except that for most of us our purchasing decisions place us less than six degrees from evil of some kind. I do believe I would have to remove myself from the world altogether not to need a good moral shower everyday.
But it is into a fallen broken sinful often wicked world I have been cast. Rider on a storm I am. If there is a clear unambiguous way I can keep money out of the hands of wicked men and women who would corrupt and despoil and kill, well, I would, and I suppose that by not buying porn, drugs, AK 47's, men's club memberships, and the like, well, I do what I can. But generally boycotting (with a mind and a conscience) just sucks me deeper and deeper into a dark abyss.
I am reminded of Isaiah's words:
"Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips"
The first reason is that I don't go to the tournament anyway. It's just too expensive, and I'd rather watch golf on TV.
Secondly, I think the GGO (in its various iterations) has been good for Greensboro over the years.
Thirdly, the GGO is much older than the current leadership of Greensboro.
Fourthly, and most importantly for me, I don't do boycotts unless there are extreme, unambiguous, and reprehensible, moral and/or human life issues at stake.
I've come to this position or approach through the ad-infinitum calls for boycotts from conservative Christian and liberal environmental groups over the years. The thing is, once I really start to get nit picky about it, it is hard to find any product that is not tainted by some policy or behavior I find objectionable. It's like the Kevin Bacon thing, except that for most of us our purchasing decisions place us less than six degrees from evil of some kind. I do believe I would have to remove myself from the world altogether not to need a good moral shower everyday.
But it is into a fallen broken sinful often wicked world I have been cast. Rider on a storm I am. If there is a clear unambiguous way I can keep money out of the hands of wicked men and women who would corrupt and despoil and kill, well, I would, and I suppose that by not buying porn, drugs, AK 47's, men's club memberships, and the like, well, I do what I can. But generally boycotting (with a mind and a conscience) just sucks me deeper and deeper into a dark abyss.
I am reminded of Isaiah's words:
"Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips"
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