About the tsunami

This column by Bob Herbert from today's New York Times both expresses a lot of what I'm thinking about the disaster in southern Asia and makes me feel stupid for carrying on about my mp3 collection and other trivial matters as I did in my post from earlier today. But then again, life goes on, for most of us anyway. I still can't get a handle on what is happening on the other side of the globe, or what I would be doing if I were closer to that situation...

Our Planet, and Our Duty
By BOB HERBERT

Published: December 31, 2004

One moment the kids were laughing and skylarking on the beach, yelling and chasing one another, sweating in the warm bright sun. The next moment they were gone.

The world is used to horror stories, but not on the stupefying scale of the macabre tales coming at us from the vast and disorienting zone of death in tsunami-stricken southern Asia. Einstein insisted that God does not play dice with the world, but that might be a difficult notion to sell to some of the agonized individuals who have seen everything they've lived for washed away in a pointless instant.

The death toll now is more than twice the number of American G.I.'s killed in all the years of the Vietnam War. Not just entire families, or extended families, but entire communities were consumed by waters that rose up without warning to destroy scores of thousands of people who were doing nothing but going about their ordinary lives.

On Tuesday The Times ran a big front-page picture taken in a makeshift morgue in southern India. It certainly captured the horror. It looked for all the world like a sandy playground covered with dead children.

Imagination pales beside the overwhelming reality of the tragedy. There were, for example, the grief-stricken throngs, clawing through mud and rubble, peering into the faces of the severely injured, wandering through piles of decaying corpses, in search of loved ones.

The Boston Globe quoted a young man whose college sweetheart was among the more than 800 people killed when a train carrying beachgoers in Sri Lanka was slammed by a 30-foot wall of water that lifted it from the tracks and hurled it into a marsh. "Is this the fate that we had planned for?" cried the young man. "My darling, you were the only hope for me."

Perhaps a third of those killed were children. Many were swept away before the eyes of horrified, helpless parents. "My children! My children!" screamed a woman in Sri Lanka. "Why didn't the water take me?"

The killer waves that moved with ferocious speed across an unprecedented expanse of global landscape flung their victims about with a randomness that was all but impossible to comprehend. People in beachfront dwellings ended up in trees, or entangled in electrical power lines, or embedded in the mud of hillsides. People died in buses, cars and trucks that were swept along by the waves like leaves in a strong wind. Sunbathers were swept out to sea.

In that environment, Einstein must stand aside for Shakespeare, whose Gloucester said: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."

Any tragedy is awful for the relatives of those who perished. But this is a catastrophe of a different magnitude. "This," as one observer noted, "is like confronting the apocalypse."

"What makes it especially frightening is that whole communities have been annihilated," said Dr. John Clizbe, a psychologist in Alexandria, Va., who, until his retirement a couple of years ago, had served as vice president for disaster services at the American Red Cross. He said, "We've known for years now that the emotional devastation that survivors feel and experience is often greater than the physical devastation."

The recovery process is easier, he said, when there is a supportive community to bolster those in need. But in some of the most devastated regions of southern Asia, the regions most in need of support, those communities have vanished.

It's a peculiarity of modern technology that people anywhere in the world can sit back and watch in real time, like voyeurs, the life-and-death struggles of their fellow humans. The planet is growing smaller and its residents more interdependent by the day. We're fully aware that our planetary neighbors in southern Asia are desperately drawing upon the deepest reservoirs of fortitude and resilience that our troubled species has at its disposal.

What this means is that we're the supportive community. All of us. This catastrophe would at least have a silver lining if it moved the people of the United States and other nations toward a wiser, more genuinely cooperative international posture.

William Faulkner, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, said: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."

That's what Faulkner believed. We'll see.

Just another day

Even though it's Dec. 31, the last spot on the 2004 calendar and a significant moment for that reason. One nice thing is that it's pretty warm outside. And sunny too, which we prize up here in Michigan, this time of year.

I updated my profile here on Blogger.com. Updated my photo, though I think it's too small. I will fiddle with it more later. The picture is over a month old. It's a shot of me reading through the materials that came with my digital camera, one of the very first I took with it. Nothing very distinguished - but it's suitable for the moment. I will have a nicer portrait made and I'll post it when I get my hair trimmed and feel like sitting for a pose of some sort or another. Since the camera is mine, I am not in too many pictures - Julie still likes to use her 35mm camera for her photos.

The household is quiet today, except for my music. Right now, the song is "Smiles" by Spiritualized. I have 5778 songs on Itunes that haven't yet been played, which amounts to 17+ days worth of music. So I have a folder titled "unplayed musique" that I've set on shuffle. Every so often I will delete songs that have been played from the list so that I don't get any repeats. Now I'm listening to the Chemical Brothers' "Buzz Tracks" which is a relatively rare cut from their "Setting Sun" single release of 1996. The ChemBros have a new album coming out in January (!) called "Push The Button" that I'm pretty excited to hear. Their first single, "Galvanize" has already been circulating over the web, though not officially released yet. I have the long and short versions already, but I will buy the product when it's released. I am a big fan of the Chemical Brothers and what is now considered "old school" Big Beat techno.

I suppose it's time for me to take a shower and get something productive done around here. I don't want to overtax myself though since I'll be up late tonight and probably up early tomorrow morning to help my boys with the newspaper deliveries.

Next song is "Mock Tudor" by Orbital. Wow, a lot of edgy electronic English music coming up on the shuffle. But just to let you know how eclectic and diverse my collection really is, here's a sample of what's coming up in the playlist:

Mama Kin by Aerosmith
Da Doo Ron Ron by the Crystals
Use of Time by 311
Heart of the Sunrise by Yes
He's So Shy by the Pointer Sisters
Shot Down in Flames by AC/DC
Come On Ride The Train by Quad City DJ's
Humble Mumble by Outkast
Bread and Wine by Peter Gabriel (from the "Last Temptation of Christ" soundtrack)
Alone Again Or by Love
When the Music Starts by Lenny Dee
Love Is by Vanessa Williams
Juxtaposed With U by Super Furry Animals
Spinning Away by Brian Eno
Open Sesame by Kool and the Gang
Batdance by Prince
She's A Lady by Tom Jones
Chant by Public Image Ltd.
I Believe I Can Fly by R. Kelly
Love Is The Drug by Roxy Music
Rise Up O Men of God by Phil Keaggy

that's probably enough! :o) I love my music collection!

Year's End

We are getting pretty close to being done with 2004, of course, so it's time for me to do some reflective wrapping up of what this year was like and what I will most likely find memorable about it.

What comes to mind first is that it was an election year, the occasion where George W. Bush apparently won a second-term (even though there are still rumblings about voting improprieties coming out of Ohio that seem to be just on the edge of breaking out into a bigger media story.) This election had been a focal point for a lot of people over the past few years, the time when we figured Bush would get his comeuppance for the mismanagement of his presidential responsibilities and the scales of justice would be righted for the flawed election of 2000. But instead, the left's "consensus candidate" John Kerry, came up short in his bid to unseat Bush as he turned out to be a flawed nominee himself. The net effect of this election result is that I'm left feeling burned out and cynical about the political process and pretty hesitant to look toward elected representatives to be any kind of assistance for promoting the kind of change that I'd like to see happen in our society. It remains to be seen if this is just a passing sensation, an understandable weariness after a run of several years where I invested more than was probably healthy in the hopes that a democratic election would serve to repudiate what I consider to be a misguided and inappropriate set of policy initiatives pursued by the Bush administration. I'm pretty much back to where I was in my early 20's, viewing the political class and government in general as a bunch of self-serving power brokers whose values and ideals are directed toward securing the welfare of a very narrow segment of our general population. Kerry's flaccid response (what seems to me a kind of "disappearance") after a campaign in which so many invested passionate hopes and energies also fuels my cynicism. He just seems to have accepted the outcome a bit too easily, secure in his own personal fortune and the senatorial privileges that he can return to without breaking anything resembling a sweat.

So let me leave politics behind, though I will also mention the war in Iraq. I continue to struggle with the fact that the USA launched this invasion in the first place, seeing every day's catastrophic headline as sheer vindication of my antiwar sentiments in general and my specific opposition to Bush's plans for Iraq dating back to 2002. It still appalls me to think of the brutal destruction and chaos that our armies have unleashed, and I grieve for the soldiers who are over there, whether they are the dead, the wounded or the simple survivors. It's just a tragic, pathetic situation that did not have to be that way, but regretting it is ineffectual so I am just stuck lamenting the folly and misery of it all.

And of course it is difficult for me to not mention here the current calamities still unfolding over in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other regions of southern Asia and eastern Africa. 120,000 dead as of tonight, by official estimates, and that number will continue to rise. The numbers put even the horrors of war into a relative context, and make me wonder just how people can honestly see God as "directing" such natural disasters, even though I know that a lot of peoples' beliefs lead them to such conclusions, because of the theological emphasis on God's absolute sovereignty that has developed in some traditions (including the Reformed, which is so prevalent in this area.) I don't really intend to disparage anyone's beliefs in particular, or come across as condescending, but it just escapes me as to what kind of "comfort" or "assurance" people can take in the idea that God had a purpose or reason to set such events in motion. It doesn't exactly "make sense" to me to see them instead as random forces of nature that happened to sweep up many thousands or millions of lives into a state of radical disruption and death, but it's preferable and more comprehensible to regard God as a "passive spectator" in the larger sense, just like the rest of us are around the globe, far from the danger zone, wondering just what we can or should do to alleviate in some small way the suffering that is mediated to us by televised images and written accounts. Even though it's a "current event" happening at the tail end of the calendar year, and thus is more prominent in my attention than many other things that happened in 2004, I can't help but imagine that this will go down as the Major Historic Event of this particular year, just like the 9/11 attacks will always characterize the year 2001 for me and most people in what we habitually call the "civilized world."

What else was there? The Summer Olympics. A positive because Greece pulled it off without any major problems or screw-ups. A few doping scandals, not that big a deal to me. The Boston Red Sox won the World Series. That's pretty significant. "The Passion" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" stirred up a lot of conversation that wasn't strictly connected to their respective cinematic merits. Pop music was almost entirely dominated by hip-hop acts as far as the most popular songs were concerned. U2 released a new album to keep the flickering flame of rock music burning a bit longer (in terms of mass cultural impact.) I saw quite a few bands at the Van Andel Arena, which have all been chronicled here in this blog. My media collection grew quite a bit as I discovered the joys of used DVDs and the I-Tunes music service and software (as well as ripping music from library CDs and some file-swapping websites.) I now have an almost complete collection of the #1, #2 and #3 Billboard Hot 100 singles dating all the way back to the 1950's, as well as a lot of more eclectic music that appeals to my personal tastes. 12, 608 tunes, 37.3 days, 51.64 GB at the moment, though I have a few duplicates that I could weed out of tracks that have found their way on to my hard drive through multiple sources. That's a lot of music! I should find a way to catalogue my collection on line somewhere, on my website probably would be the best place. There may be a few people who'd be interested in finding out what it is that I listen to and watch on video.

I also got a new job as a staff trainer. That's pretty significant. Though the full impact of the change has yet to be felt - I have further trainings and certifications to go through before I am able to do all of what is expected of me, and by the end of March, when those trainings are done, my weekly routines will be substantially different than what I've become accustomed to, even over the past couple of months as I've transitioned into my split responsibilities.

My children are all a bit older - I now have three boys in high school, the middle-school years are behind us as a family. I'll have two sons entering college in the fall, as well as my daughter beginning her junior year. Basically, I'm expecting to be broke for the next several years.

This will have to suffice for now as my impression of 2004. I may add some more tomorrow, but these are the mountain peaks that stand out to me. I'll sleep on it tonight and see if I come up with any more "biggies" that escaped my memory just now.

Post-Christmas Post (Part 2)

OK, the Christmas vibe is rapidly receding as I resume more of my normal work duties and life routines, so let me capture my thoughts here before it dissipates completely.

My basic observation is that unlike many critics who routinely roll out their messages of how Christ has been left out of Christmas these days, I see plenty of reminders about what the "true meaning of Christmas" really is all around me and I figure they are too numerous to miss for anyone to make the claim that the story of Jesus' birth isn't adequately emphasized. I'll say that here in Michigan at least, that's how it is. The Grand Rapids Press almost seemed to be going out of its way to please this segment of its readership, with full page ads, editorials, columns and cartoons all pointing out in various pious ways what the holiday was "really" about.

Now I am quite happy to celebrate and commemorate the Nativity story, God's presence among us, his dwelling with us and entering the stream of experience in this world that so many of us find vexing or worse, and the general upsurge of benevolent sentiment that comes with the season. But that is no longer "all" that Christmas is "really" about. Christmas also has a social, cultural and economic significance that has to be reckoned with and is nothing to be ashamed or dismissive of. And there are many of my neighbors who simply don't have any reason or interest in participating in the religious aspects of the holiday, and I don't think they should be made to feel secondary because they don't participate in Christmas on that level.

Basically, what I'm saying is that the old laments about how we've lost touch with the essence of Christmas are worn out and tired, needlessly repetitious, apparently made by people who feel the need to chastise our society simply for being what it is. Christmas is a fine season just the way it is, somewhat disruptive in certain ways, but altogether worth going through. One could even consider it a kind of character-building challenge to successfully navigate oneself through all the hassles, pressures, assorted aggravations and overdoses of schmaltz and sentimentality that are all but impossible to avoid.

But I do feel bad for all those people who got stranded at airports and/or lost their luggage over the holiday. What a bummer.

Post-Christmas Post (Part One)

I spent a mostly computer free weekend doing various Christmasy things with my family so obviously haven't had much to say here or on my email lists, but now I'll take a few minutes to do so before I head back in to work.

It was a nice holiday break overall. Pretty similar in many ways to Christmases of the past several years as far as who I spent it with, the kinds of gifts we exchanged, the sentiments expressed, where our family and relatives are basically at in life. We've been blessed with stability and a higher-than-we-should-take-for-granted level of predictability to our lives. I say this thinking about the millions of people whose lives were radically disrupted (and thousands that were lost) in the tsunami waves that hit southern Asia yesterday. That's a very staggering scenario to contemplate - mainly, it overloads my circuits and I find that I simply don't have much of any sensible response to it. I still have a lot more to learn about exactly what happened...

But back to my story. Here's a rundown of gifts I received: shirts, gloves, a recharger/USB port for my digital camera, a big ol' coffee mug and a bag of Starbucks French Roast from my Secret Santa (which is MINE ALL MINE!!! since Julie doesn't like what Starbucks does to their coffee), the "Opus" retrospective from Berkely Breathed (creator of "Bloom County"), the LOTR:ROTK XPD ED 4-DVD set, the Disney Treasures "Mickey Mouse in Black and White, Vol. 2" collection, and some gift cards and items to be exchanged because they bought me something that I already had. (Which I plan to exchange for the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 2 and perhaps a few other goodies to be determined later.) As you can tell, I like media, DVDs especially, and since I already mostly have the stuff I need, I figure DVDs make me an easier person to buy for.

My big gift for Julie was a KitchenAid Artisan mixer in pistachio green which matches our kitchen walls. She was very excited and pleased with it, which made me feel great! This is the Cadillac of mixers, so I'm told, and the kids pitched in on the veggie slicer accessory. So we are set to enjoy even more good fresh homemade meals. Julie and I spent some time yesterday afternoon rearranging our kitchen counters to accomodate this new appliance (or is it a utensil?) It's cool.

We also enjoyed watching Brandon's "Napoleon Dynamite" DVD last night. This is a beautiful and funny movie that you should see if you haven't already. Even if it's not your style of humor, watching this film will help you understand the younger generation, if you want to rationalize it that way. My boys have seen it five times now and still find it hilarious and perfect. We all enjoyed watching the deleted scenes and will soon be watching the film with running commentary to get additional insights into this brilliant work of cinematic art.

I have more to say but I must be going now, so this is only Part One of my Post-Christmas Post. I'll be back later today to expand on what I've already said.

A Generous Orthodoxy

I won't spend a lot of time here describing the book, but last night I just finished reading Brian McLaren's "A Generous Orthodoxy," which continues his candid exploration of how today's Christians are adapting to the postmodern cultural environment. I'm going to be offering more extensive commentary on my pomoxian email list (link found elsewhere on this page) if you want to track that discussion. But I just mention it here because I've made my Blogger.com dashboard my start page on Firefox, for the purpose of prompting me to update this blog more frequently. And since that's the most significant news I have to mention at the moment, I mentioned it here.

Also, I've made significant progress on my collection of #1 mp3's. I now have every Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper from 1960 forward, and only about a dozen or so needed from the 1950's, mostly obscure tracks, though for some reason I'm having a harder time finding a couple of Pat Boone songs, which surprises me because he was Mr. Hitmaker in that era, close to what the Beatles and Supremes did in the 60's and the BeeGees and Elton John did in the 70's, and George Michael and Hall & Oates did in the 80's and Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston did in the 90's and Usher did this year...

Christmas Pageantry

Elsewhere in cyberspace awhile back, I had promised to blog on the variety of Christmas concerts I attended last week. Starting with a high school band performance featuring two of my sons (not in soloist roles, just part of the orchestra - Curt on percussion, Derek on saxophone), then moving on to Michael W. Smith and a couple of nights later, Martina McBride.

As it turned out, all three nights were enjoyable in their own way, but none of them left me with anything particularly profound or insightful to say. The high school program was just like a lot of other such concerts I've been to, pleasant to see the students making progress and running through a traditional mix of holiday classics. Michael W. Smith offered a professional, occasionally powerful and moving set of tunes, mixing various combinations of male and female vocalists into his efficiently-rendered arrangements - very clean, slick, mostly predictable and not at all "risky." The audience was the most subdued and homogenous group of the many events I've seen this year at the Van Andel Arena. Like going to a really big (10,000 +) church. Martina McBride presented a much more sophisticated, showbiz variety package, emphasizing both state-of-the-art multimedia technology on large three part synchronized video screens and old-fashioned sentimentality, spending a lot more time on the Santa Claus side of the Christmas holiday than either of the two previous programs (though of course she did finish with a selection of sacred Christian holiday music, concluding with "O Holy Night" - which she certainly has a voice powerful enough to carry it off as a grand finale.) So much for that. I had a good time at all three events... but there was another Christmas concert that touched me so deeply that I have to mention it here.

It happened this past Thursday night. Wedgwood Christian Services, my employer of almost 16 years now, put on a Christmas program for the first time in a few years. The youth we work with in residential settings have, in the past, stirred up enough difficulty and/or anxiety on our part to preclude us from trying to organize them into a choir or otherwise asking them to assemble for the sake of public performance. I won't get diverted here in describing our clients in detail - suffice it to say that they can be very high maintenance and create problems that hindsight would have us wondering just what exactly we were thinking before we even got the project started.

But we've had a number of changes around our organization this year, including the promotion of two part-time chaplains to full-time leadership roles, and they took it upon themselves to organize a program, perhaps against their better judgement, but doing the right thing nevertheless. So it happened that the girls from the home I supervise were enlisted to perform for the program.

Now I have to mention that our team is blessed to have a number of gifted, bright staff, and two of them, Shana and Michelle, have brought their talents into the mix in wonderful ways, instructing our girls in the arts of singing and dancing, respectively. They each spent time over the past week or two putting together musical numbers and rehearsing them in time for Thursday's event. As I've alluded, we did have some drama along the way, including a near-fight that erupted at the dress rehearsal on Wednesday, which wound up restricting two girls from attending. Then there was also the flap that erupted when, on Thursday morning, we found out that the song the girls were going to dance to, "Let's Get It Started" by the Black Eyed Peas, was considered inappropriate for a Christian Christmas program (which makes sense to me, it just wasn't communicated clearly enough in advance but that's another issue, not mine...) Michelle and Shana impressed me all over again by collaborating on finding a more suitable song for the girls to dance to from Shana's collection of Christian music, and then convincing the girls that they could make the adjustments necessary to have a successful dance routine.

So Thursday evening rolled around at just about the usual time we'd expect it to, and we gathered in Wedgwood's chapel, wondering just exactly what would transpire after all the fuss and toil. Well, I can't adequately capture here how captivating a sight it was to have somewhere between 30 and 40 "Wedgwood Kids" on stage singing praise songs, a few brave souls stepping forward for their solo parts, in front of a truly packed house. About 180 people filled the chapel, requiring extra seats to be brought in that lined the walls of the sanctuary. Our girls did a fantastic job - not "professionally flawless" by any means, but they kept their focus, they each overcame the considerable anxieties and distractions that might have otherwise prevented them from going forward with their parts of the show. And in the process, they really did awaken in me a renewed sense of appreciation for what Christmas can be about if we approach it in the right frame of mind. Christmas at its best is about patient waiting drawing to a close, hope finding its fulfillment, with the promise of even better things to come gaining credibility because we've seen with our eyes and heard with our ears the visible manifestation of God's presence among us.

I can't argue convincingly to any skeptic that this is what I experienced on Thursday night, and I am not all that confident that everyone in the room experienced God's glory in the same way that I did, but I am reasonably sure that many of us caught a glimpse of something divine and were touched on a level that isn't always so easy to reach by ordinary entertainments and diversions. This was, beyond measure, the most meaningful and memorable Christmas pageant I've been to in quite a long time.

Hot 100

My latest obsession is collecting mp3's of all the songs to have hit the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. I recently got a book that lists them all, from Rock Around the Clock in 1955 through Elton John's tribute to Princess Diana, the updated "Candle in the Wind" from 1997. I also found a website that lists all the #1's, #2's and #3's since then so that I have an idea of what songs to gather from here on out. I have 294 different #1's, out of somewhere between 900 and 1000, I don't have an exact count. I enjoy listening to them in order and thinking about the fads that have transformed pop culture over the past 50 years or so.