Band Camp

I am not going to make the (by now) customary "American Pie" (the movie) reference by titling this post "There Was This One Time At Band Camp..." even though it did come to my mind for a moment. For one, I have never actually seen that movie (or any of its sequels) and for another, it's been terribly overdone. I Googled "this one time at band camp" and found dozens of blogs that used that line for their headers or somewhere in the text... But I guess I've only reinforced the cliche, haven't I?

Well, I have been away for the past couple of days, helping out as a "Band Dad" down in Berrien Springs, MI, on the campus of Andrews University, where the Wyoming Park High School Marching Band holds its annual week of drills and rehearsals in preparation for the autumn football and band competition season. My youngest son, Derek, plays the saxophone and is entering his sophomore year. One of my twin sons, Curt, was part of the drum line for the past four years, before graduating last May. This was my first band camp experience.

I probably would have been down there the whole week (the group left last Sunday afternoon) but I had just been off work during the preceding week, so I just went down on Wednesday afternoon and stayed until the group left on Friday morning. The campus is about an hour-and-a-half drive from where I live, which afforded me a nice opportunity to crank up some jams on my way down as I enjoy having a nice CD player in my car again. My old Intrepid had a good six-disc changer but the mounting rack in the trunk broke mysteriously last year, which messed up the system, and I never got around to replacing it, given the car's age and other ailments (not to mention other financial priorities.)

Andrews University is affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which means their campus is meat- and caffeine-free. Most of the band's meals are eaten in the school's cafeteria, so the kids miss their customary diets of hamburgers, hot dogs, pepperoni pizza and Mountain Dew. But on Wednesday night of each band camp, they indulge in a big cookout with burgers and dogs (but only caffeine-free soda, for whatever reason.) So I got there just in time for the big carnivorous feast, which for me was not such a big deal, other than the fact that it was a fun event and a nice opportunity to blend into the scene.


The Tag Arena

After dinner we played some tag and hung loose for awhile. Then it was time for me to find my dorm room and get into the actual purpose of the gathering, which was having the kids practice their music and marching.

Entering the dorms and over the next few days of exploring the campus, I got an up-close look at this intellectual hub of contemporary Adventism. I found the campus' artwork strikingly similar to the "mythic realism" (my own term, I don't know what art scholars would call it) utilized by the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons in their iconography. Numerous portraits of Jesus with pale skin,brown hair and beard, wearing a pure white robe and a broad blue sash, in the finest classic 1950's Sunday School style. (At least, that's the era that I associate with such portraiture, though I know the tradition goes further back than that.) One picture had him embracing the planet Earth with a starry spacescape backdrop, but it didn't show what his feet were standing on.


Here's the one that I saw at AU...


... and another one I found in my Googling that I thought I'd include just coz.

Another one had Jesus standing with his arm around the shoulder of a student sitting at his computer, the student dressed in an Andrews University T-shirt. (Perhaps a reminder to the student that Jesus was watching where he was surfing on the internet?) (Sorry, I couldn't find that pic anywhere on the 'net.)

The student body seemed quite ethnically and culturally diverse - I got the sense that the Adventists bring a lot of students from all over the world to get training here so they can return to spread the Adventist's version of the gospel in their home countries. This diversity is attractive to me, but the Adventist theology seems a bit of a puzzle to me, especially their emphasis on a more imminent interpretation of end-times prophecy. I won't go into a full discussion of SDA beliefs here because that wasn't the focus of my trip, so I'll just conclude with my observation that there was just a whiff of cultishness to some of the literature and the overall atmosphere of the place. But I ought not to speak ill of our hosts or presume to know more than I do about a subject I haven't really investigated all that closely!

I enjoyed watching the band do their thing. Since my trip with the group to New York City last spring, I have a larger appreciation of what goes into the presentation of a half-time marching band program at a football game. No more will I just chatter obliviously over the music or head straight to the concession stand - even if my own kid doesn't happen to be on the field! Our group did a fine job but I will spare the details of how they got to the finished product.

Here are a few pictures of them in practice though...




My son Derek is the sax player in the red shirt to the right



A few comments about the program itself though: They are performing music from the original "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" movie, which includes "The Candy Man" (popularized by Sammy Davis Jr., and sung by my fifth grade choir when the film and song were current releases) and of course "The Oompa-Loompa Song" which our band performs with some Oompa-Loompa-inspired choreography. The task of learning the music and steps was complicated somewhat by the untimely birth of the band director's son (his wife's water broke on Sunday just as the band was preparing to leave for camp, some three-and-a-half weeks before her due date - the couple's "nightmare scenario" for when the child would be born, I'm sure!) So the Assistant Director had to handle the task with the able assistance of last year's student intern teacher, and they both rose to the occasion quite remarkably in the regular director's absence.



My own unique contributions to the camp were as follows: I used my verbal de-escalation skills to help calm down one of the guys who strongly resented being the object of a fairly innocent prank (a couple of his friends hid all his clothes in a different room.) The prankee didn't think it was right that he had a stunt pulled on him, since he's a senior and pranks should only happen to underclassmen. That necessitated some intervention from me and a few others, and we had a hall meeting to put the lid on further antics (although we did give the senior guys limited permission to do something the last night of camp - they chose to saran-wrap a GMC Suburban belonging to one of the Band Dads, and also to tie shut a few of the doors in the middle of the night. Harmless stuff, easily remedied of course.)


Ever seen a shrink-wrapped Suburban? Now you have!

We also had a big dance on Thursday night which was a lot of fun. I admit that I cut it up a bit out on the dance floor. Did some pogo dancing to Green Day, broke it down vigorously to "Play That Funky Music White Boy," did a rockin' version of the Twist on "Twist and Shout" and waved a multi-colored hand-held disco ball in a rousing singalong rendition of "We Are The Champions." Plus the customary run-throughs of the Chicken Dance, the Hokey-Pokey, the Cha-Cha Slide, the YMCA, the Isley Brothers' "Shout," a conga line, the Macarena, some classic Motown ("Ain't No Mountain High Enough"), a remixed blend of "Hit Me Baby One More Time/Hollaback Girl," and a bunch of other suitably groovy tunes that kept us all pretty loose and sweaty as the evening wore on. The night ended with a traditional "Senior Circle" where a few members of the Senior class grab a mic and make various inspirational statements that produce a flow of tears and hugs and similar bonding moments that bring the evening to a suitably emotional and memorable climax.


Here I'm standing with a couple of girls who are seniors this year and frequently hang out at my home visiting Curt - please don't think I was hitting on them at the high school dance! My reddish skin tone is partly sun-burn, partly from the disco inferno!


The WPMB Senior Class of 2006.

After that, we headed back to the dorms, and from there it was pretty much a matter of packing everything up the next morning and getting the kids back to school so they could make their final preparations for the world premier of their show, in full uniform, before a crowd of a few hundred parents, friends and well-wishers on Friday afternoon.


Getting ready to pose for their first official uniformed band photo.


The closing formation... I would post more from the middle part of the program, but I don't want to give away any secrets, lest our competitors stumble upon this blog!

Which is what we did, and it went well, generally speaking. The band still has some refining and polishing up to do, but it's a fun program and with the release of the new "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" movie, the music is timely once again. Of course, they couldn't have asked for a more supportive audience. But even outside of my own bias, I can say confidently that this group achieved something significant and set the stage for a memorable new year of fun, friendship and music-making. Not a bad accomplishment for a week in the middle of the hot, lazy summer!

Last Week

My wife and I have spent the past few days doing some serious work on clearing out and rearranging my basement. It's been quite a process, sifting through twenty-some years of accumulated stuff (though we've thinned it out from time to time previously as well.) We took the "Clean Sweep" approach, hauling everything out to our garage, cleaning the storage area (which is approximately one-third of the total basement floor space), then sorting all the stuff in the garage into various piles - stuff to keep, stuff to donate, and the trash went into our mini-van, where I took a floor-to-ceiling load to the landfill on Thursday morning. Yesterday was the day we dropped off two loads of donatable stuff to "In The Image," a local free store that distributes goods to the poorest families in Grand Rapids. We decided to do this rather than hold a garage sale or donate them to some other organization that would sell the items. I figure, we got our use out of it and I'd rather just make it available to people who would like to take the items home - whether its old clothing, books, small furnishings, whatever. A nice and quick way to unload things we no longer need to have sitting around.

I also had a chance to attend an event in town, the kickoff of the "Hot Spots Cool City" campaign to set up free wi-fi access in various neighborhoods around Grand Rapids. The one I attended was sponsored by the Community Media Center, located in the Wealthy Theater right next door to the Institute for Global Education, where I'm a board member (though I missed our most recent meeting to work the Hilary Duff concert...) As a result of this effort, IGE has free wireless internet access until mid-September. I installed wireless network cards and got us on-line, which felt good and fun to do. Apparently Mayor George Heartwell wants G.R. to be on the front edge of providing broadband access to as many of our citizens as possible. That would indeed help make Grand Rapids a "Cool City!"

I also had a crown put on one of my left lower molars.

Today is my daughter's 20th birthday! Happy Birthday, Alyssa!



And as promised in my comment below, the "birthday cake photo."



We're about to go watch "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and later we'll be going out to the Ichi-ban restaurant for some authentic Japanese food. So I have to go get ready to do that. Now you're caught up with most of what I've been doing lately!

Hilary Duff

So yes, it was a teen scream fest last night at the Van Andel Arena as thousands of girls and their moms came out to see multi-media pop sensation Hilary Duff and her band in performance. I'm not at all sure that there's serious interest among readers of this blog on the artistic merits or cultural significance of Ms. Duff's efforts, but I'll carry on and let you decide if you want to follow me all the way to the end.



Basically, what we had here was a live incarnation of the Disney Channel's slick and shiny esthetics, purveying a safe, manageable and professionally delivered entertainment package that catered flawlessly to the desires of both parents and children as all parties involved have found their way to a common vibe, wavelength, sensibility, whatever you want to call it. Hilary, as you may know, established her reputation over the course of several seasons playing the character of "Lizzie McGuire" on a TV show (and later, a movie) of the same name. She's recently branched into other movie roles (most recent release being "The Perfect Man" which I haven't seen, nor do I plan to) and obviously, the pop music arena as well. She has released two albums on her own and has a third set for release next month (which everyone in the arena was reminded of a few times by her onstage, and numerous posters advertising the release, titled "Most Wanted", displayed around the arena.) She also has an older sister, Haylie, who's also in the entertainment biz, most notably in the role of Summer Wheatley in "Napoleon Dynamite," so I'm a bit predisposed to think favorably about the Duff clan.

She's had a bit of success, charting the single "So Yesterday" as her most prominent hit. Though her overall sales and notoriety haven't approached that of previous teen stars like Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera, I'm willing to venture that Hilary will have a longer career than Britney, at least. She has chosen to stay closer to the clean image that makes her a family-friendly (but not hopelessly square) entertainer. I think that will play out better and generate much less backlash than what we saw happen with Spears and Aguilera. Duff's role model appears to be Mandy Moore, who was a contemporary of Britney and Christina, but who's moved on to become more of an actor and less of an object of interest to gossip columnists and tabloid photographers.

Musically speaking, it was a well-paced, crisp, toe-tapping affair that put the emphasis on Duff's still-squeaky and fairly thin but serviceable vocal talents. The girl does seem like a real teenager, even though she's fabulously cute and on her way to becoming super-model beautiful. I was able to get a few glimpses of her on stage, and from what I saw, she's not much of a dancer. She mostly stood still or ran from one spot on the stage to another, occasionally kicking her long thin legs a bit but otherwise, not presenting much of a challenge to her choreographer or the guys tracking her on the video cameras that put her image where the audience was used to seeing it: on screen. I don't even think she indulged in a wardrobe change either - she had the same red-and-white striped shirt and black pants on from the middle of the concert until the end. The most impressive feature of the stage show was a really big electronic video backdrop that produced a wide variety of images, light patterns and even a cascade of falling "Matrix" figures on one of her songs that I saw (I didn't get the connection though!)

Duff's lyrical messages are nothing all that complex - mostly the kinds of dilemmas familiar to teenage girls, from what I could make out. Fine, that's what she's about, and I can respect that! There was a bit of a girl power message, and some clear intentions on her part (and presumably her fans) to be taken seriously on terms that they can understand. Her last song before the "So Yesterday" obligatory encore, was "Rock This World" (at least, that was the chorus) and the very last song she performed was "Girls Can Rock" - so it's obviously important to her that we recognize that Hilary Duff rocks! OK, I'll agree - she rocks!

And back to the audience for a minute before I wrap up - I would guesstimate that the gender balance was probably 15 females for every 1 male, and just about all of those were either dads or brothers. I don't recall seeing any groups of just guys, as I might imagine could be drawn to a Britney or Christina show. The theme of the night was "Girls Night Out" and it was pretty cute to see all the moms'n'daughters make their way to the concession stand. Many of the girls were grade-schoolers, almost all were dressed up to some degree or another, and there was a lot of excitement in their faces in anticipation of seeing a girl who's been a role model and steady presence in their lives for several years now, growing up right along with them on TV.

And if you've ever heard the phrase "Mommy Hottest," well, the Arena last night was a pretty lively example of what that's all about! Hilary Duff definitely draws an attractive audience, of all ages!

So while it would be easy for me to take a more condescending approach to what could be considered a shallow, plasticized and predictably safe mass entertainment product put forth by the Svengali's managing Duff's career (and profiting handsomely along the way,) I will give more benefit of the doubt and give her an overall PoMoXian thumbs-up for spreading a little warmth and sunshine to a loveable bunch of kids who were, after all, much better behaved and focused on having a fun time than most of the audiences I serve in my capacity of concession-vendor at the Van Andel Arena!

So What Have I Been Up To?

To my faithful and ever-growing blog readership: I humbly apologize for keeping you all hanging the past however many days it's been since I last posted. There's been a lot going on for me as of late and it's pulled me away from the computer and generally forced my attention away from doing the mental work associated with writing and keeping up with my assorted e-relationships. While the load is not lightening up entirely, I perceive an opening and so I'll take advantage of the moment to drop a quick note.

Tonight, I'm going to work another show at the Van Andel Arena, featuring a performance by teen pop star Hilary Duff!



Her music and image don't really indent my sphere of attention all that much, but I have given her tunes a listen recently in preparation for the show and I'll give her credit for being as "genuine" a teenager as her showbiz lifestyle would seem to allow. I appreciate that she's not as vamped up as Britney Spears was when Ms. Spears' career was in its prime. Hilary's management has adopted a shrewder strategy that keeps her persona relatively wholesome which I think will translate into longer term appeal and less of a backlash as Britney, Christina Aguilera and more recently Lindsay Lohan have had to endure.

So if you are interested, I'll have the concert review and sociological observations that you've come to expect whenever PoMoXian attends a major entertainment event!

And I'll be back later with more details of what I've been up to (mostly domestic household improvements, but some other more interesting things than that, too.) But now, it's off to the arena, before Hilary Duff's popularity becomes "So Yesterday!"

Jumping On The Bandwagon

Even though I have never read a Harry Potter book or even seen one of the movies, I am going to tie in to some of the hype by linking these two articles that indicate just how confused contemporary Christendom seems to be on the topic of Harry's goodness or badness as an influence on today's youth.

Here, Pope Benedict XVI (in his earlier identity as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) expressed concern that Harry Potter books erode Christianity in the soul.

Here, a self-proclaimed "traditional Christian" opines that Harry Potter books fall over themselves with Christian meaning.

Maybe Benedict's views have changed, just like John Granger's have?!? Maybe it's a Protestant/Catholic thing? Maybe it's a modern/pomo thing? Maybe people are just reading into it what they want to find there?

Let me know if you can make any sense of it! :o)

Got My New Car

So I was blessed to drive the new (to me) 2001 Ford Taurus SE home today. Stopped by after clearing all the financing and paperwork to fill up the tank. Gas prices are "down" to $2.369 p/g but I went ahead and splurged on the midgrade for $2.459 anyway, treating my new prized possession to a taste of the good stuff. We'll see how long that lasts...

Put her on the freeway heading home, taking M-6 heading west, a nice new highway, just opened last year, but wasn't able to open her up too much since I get off one exit past where I get on. And besides, it's a Ford Taurus so it's not like I have some hot number out to prove something. It's your standard 3.0 V6, not bad but nothing special. And that's actually what I like about this car - it's utter averageness. It's around four years old, it's got a decent but not awesome sound system, it's brown which is plain but not completely generic, clean inside but not lavishly appointed. Just an ordinary car that I hope will not give me any problems for a long time.

So after getting off the freeway, I cruised at a leisurely pace north on Byron Center Ave., happy to lay back in the right lane and let people pass me as I listened to the Beatles on my CD player. I just grabbed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on my way out the door, figuring I wanted to listen to something appropriately classic on my first drive. So perhaps one reason I was driving so slow as I drew closer to home was that "Within You Without You" playing, a dreamy, hippie-ish example of vintage 1967 "raga rock" with appropriately cosmical lyrics to match. Then "When I'm 64" ushered me into my fine suburban middle class driveway and I was home, stepping out into the swelter of a midsummer's afternoon, not dripping with sweat as I have been since my beaten down old '93 Intrepid hasn't had A/C in awhile and I wasn't sure it was worth the money to charge up that system - I did that to an old car I had years ago, but it turned out to be a waste of money because the cold air didn't last all that long, and now I'm scarred and reluctant to invest much hope in that option.

I am debating between two nicknames for this car. One is "the Brown Bull" and the other is "the Chocolate Jellybean." Which do you prefer? Or do you have another suggestion? I won't draw a premature conclusion here. But it's a sign that I like this car - I haven't really ever had a nickname for my cars. Usually they are just functional items that I simply rely to get from one place to another. This one, I hope, will live up to the fond expectations that I have dared to express here.

How To Stop Terrorism

Julie was reading the paper this afternoon and briefly exclaimed her frustration at the daily reports of extremists who blow up other people and often themselves, driven by whatever form of ideological insanity has overtaken their hearts and minds. She was just getting sick of having to read about these people! One of the London bombers left behind a wife and an eight-month old daughter! In Iraq yesterday, a suicide truck bomber destroyed a crowd of children who had gathered around US soldiers who were passing out candy while they did some kind of neighborhood search! What is the problem with these people?!?!

Here's an article on how to stop terrorism that I got linked to through my Gmail account. Read it and see if you think that Rev. John Dear is on to something or not.

Car, College and Zoo News

OK, lots going on and I'm kind of busy to blog about it all, but here are the highlights.

We're getting a new car, at long last. I've been driving a '93 Intrepid for several years now and it's getting beat up. Time to give it over to Brandon. We found a 2001 Ford Taurus for a very good price, almost $2500 below Blue Book value. It was in a collision and got some body work done but I've seen the parts that were replaced (hood and front fender) and it doesn't look like it was whacked all that hard. It drives great, has new tires, is very clean. I feel good about it.

Here's a picture of the car in the same color (but not the actual car itself) that I hotlinked off a dealer's website.



We spent the day today registering Curt to attend Spring Arbor University later this year. He actually moves on campus on Labor Day. I'll have more to say as we get further into the process, but it's a good Christian school that did a pretty impressive job recruiting my son. Curt has been seriously interested in being a high school teacher for the past couple of years now and SAU has a strong reputation for producing highly qualified and in-demand teachers. And they came up with some pretty generous scholarship money which caused us to even entertain the possibility that he might attend a private university.



This past Sunday, we took a trip to the John Ball Zoo and I have a few pictures that I would like to post here.











I know, it's just pedestrian personal business, not even all that interestingly told, but it will have to suffice for now. My muse seems to be on a bit of an extended summers holiday herself, so about all I can do is document significant events and leave it at that.

Update on the car: I also ran a Carfax VIN report which gave me good news, confirming it as a one-owner car with no significant collision history, a clean record as far as service, recalls, mileage, etc. was concerned, and basically alleviated any lingering concerns that I was inheriting somebody else's problem. Since I now have 30 days of unlimited access to reports on other vehicles, I am going to run them on my other vehicles and see what kind of interesting information I can discover.

Which reminds me of a funny, true story that happened to me. Years ago, in 1986-87, I had a job as a legal process server. After I had bought a used car from the local paper from a guy who lived a few miles away from me, I wound up serving him a summons to appear in a lawsuit that was connected to a car accident that his daughter was involved in when she was driving the very car that he had sold me (and never disclosed to me when I asked him about the vehicle's history!) When I dropped the summons on him, I good-naturedly pointed out the irony of the situation, where I was serving him papers regarding the car he had sold me, he just muttered curses at me and said "I hope the damn thing breaks down on you!" as he slammed the door in my face.

As it turned out, I did have some major transmission problems with the old clunker (it was a 1980 Pontiac Phoenix that looked a lot like this one)but it did hold up long enough to get me all the way from California to Michigan later on in 1987, when I moved our family back there a month or so after our twins had been born. Which is another great story that I'll just have to tell some other time - it's late!

Late and Quick Holiday Weekend Wrap-Up

Mainly since I don't want to seem like a total flake, I am going to finish what I started and post a few pics about my Independence Day weekend even though I am not inclined to write all that much tonight...



This supposedly is a picture of my wife Julie and I, picnicking by the Grand River last Sunday afternoon. To me at the moment, it looks like a long string of HTML code. (I'm using Blogger.com's on-site upload for the first time, rather than uploading to a storage site and linking from there like I normally do.)


Derek and Lys


Curt and Brandon


We hung out in the rain on the banks of the Grand River in the rain waiting for a pretty good fireworks show.


And what would the 4th of July be without a flag cake and having friends over to light off some fireworks out in the street in front of our house? Well here's the cake and the friends (the Olsen family who will soon be moving down to Cincinnati so I'll have two sets of friends down there to visit in the future...) but we didn't bother taking pictures of the fireworks. Don't worry, you're not missing much!

I could say more, but really... is it at all necessary? No, of course not. Enjoy the photos, rest assured, I had a pleasant, all-American summer holiday weekend. The weather was great except for the fireworks show on 7/4. Life continues to be good. Now... on to more important things!

London Bombings

Here's a comment I dropped on the PoMoXian list for anyone who reads here but not there:

On 7/7/05, kal wrote:

This is not an attack on London, but an attack on Western
Civilization, concluded Limbaugh, sounding a lot like bin Laden who
calls every action attributed to any Western country "an attack on Islam".

Blair and al-Qaeda (on its alleged website) both agree: The opposite
side has no respect for human life. To many Muslims in the Middle
East, who know too well the history of Britain and its involvement in
the mass massacres and enslavement of many nations in the past,
Blair's talk about disregard for human life is like a Catholic priest
condemning Michael Jackson for child molestation. So each side's
response to the statements of the other side can be summed up as: Look who's talking.

Directly and deliberately attacking and killing civilians to achieve
political goals is immoral and can have no possible justification,
preached the USA to Middle Easterners through its media outlets in
Arabic. Unfortunately, they all know about Hiroshima.

And tens of Britons died, and tens of thousands of Iraqis died, and
there is no end in sight. Who started what, and who's to blame for
what, and does any of that even matter?

Hi Kal,

First let me say that I am deeply saddened and appalled by the attacks that took place in London this morning. Random violence anywhere is sick enough, but with all that's happened in that great city over the past week... the Live 8 concerts, the Olympics announcement, all the celebration and positive energy that these events have generated... and now this tragic and brutal assault. My heart is heavy to think of the families and communities impacted by these killings.

For myself, it's best not to dwell on the pronouncements of Rush Limbaugh and other such grandstanders and fomenters of discord. At least for me personally. I suppose he's an opinion-shaper so it's important to know what he's saying, but I could already figure that he would make hay for his pro-war, pro-violence, retaliatory approach, and that he would cast it in the kind of apocalyptic terms that mainly feed the frenzy.

Whatever the source for the comments you quoted above, they are a sobering reminder of how the cycles of violence are long-lasting and hard to stop once they get rolling. I fully support efforts to apprehend anyone involved with planning and executing the attacks, and I recognize that security measures will have to be enacted that will impinge on some of the freedoms we take for granted. But I earnestly pray that those in positions of authority will not exploit the tragedy as a means to escalate the conflict into an even higher level of war and aggression than we've already seen.

I don't make the irresponsible connection that some have made, that this wouldn't have happened if Blair had refused to involve the British in the Iraq invasion. I agree that al-Qaeda and other organizations harbor incessant hostility towards the "Western" (non-Islamic) way of life. But I don't think the kind of security that free people really yearn for can be purchased simply by lashing out in vengeance against the enemy. And I don't think that leaders who want to speak with moral clarity will truly be able to do so until they come to grips with the violence and cruelty perpetrated by the very regimes and powers that they now preside over. Which is why the reluctance of Bush and Blair to actively renounce violence and exploitation as tools of empire makes some of their pronouncements ring hollow, just when we hope they would point our societies to a better, nobler way.

Dave

Introducing... Colossians Remixed

I just got a copy of this book tonight. I'm going to be discussing it at a book club this coming Friday, so I have a bit of reading to do before then. The subtitle is "Subvverting the Empire" and I'm pretty intrigued by what it might have to say. I plan to do some more commenting about this on both my email list and this blog as I get into. It's about time I got back on-topic, I'd say.

I will also finish up my holiday weekend summary with some comments about "Batman Begins" and some photos of stuff that our family did, but it is too late, I have an early morning wake-up call and simply lack the energy and will to do a proper entry beyond what I've already written.

How to resolve astrological trauma? About $300 million ought to help...

I'll get back to documenting my own life later, but this article was forwarded to me by a friend and got me laughing. I hope you find it just as amusing as I did!

Holiday Weekend (Spontaneous Meet-up)

I'm going to simply summarize what I've been up to lately and see where it takes me. We had an ordinary but busy few days of it over the Fourth of July. I hope what I have to say is interesting enough to prevent you from giving up on ever reading my blog again!

Friday was just a typical day at work, and when I got home I was all about winding down for the evening and hoping that I wouldn't regret my decision to pick up the crisis team pager for the next three days. Curt and Brandon went out with their friends to see a late show of War of the Worlds but that was a kid thing, I didn't really want to tag along and it wouldn't have been proper to either, and Julie's decided that the film is too freaky for her anyway. So I'll have to figure out some other time to check out that one.

Instead, we stayed home and watched my DVD of Zeffirelli's version of Romeo and Juliet, which offers a sumptuous Renaissance fantasy of the star-crossed lovers' tragic plight. It made me think of my friend Julie B who's in Italy with her family right at this moment.

At dinner time I got a call from a stranger asking "is this Dave Blakeslee?" And of course I am, but usually when I get calls that start out like that, they are people looking to collect money or get information. You see, there's this shadow version of myself living in the area, same name at least, and he seems to have run up a spottier record of infamy than I have acquired up to this point in my life. So I figured "here we go again" and I was all ready to go into my spiel about "there's this other Dave Blakeslee, we are often confused for each other," and the guy identified himself as Ken Smith and I said "I don't know any Ken Smith, you must be looking for the other guy" but then he repeated his name more clearly, it was Tim Smith, from the PoMoXian email list! and suddenly I remembered a message that the above-mentioned Julie Bogart had relayed to me, that Tim and his family were on their way up from Mississippi to visit some other friends of theirs in Grand Rapids and that he was interested in meeting me if I was willing, but Julie never sent me his cellphone number like she mentioned she would which is understandable considering that she had to get her family of seven people ready to go overseas for a few weeks!

(deep breath here.)

So Tim and I had a very brief chat, since I was eating dinner and wanted to get back to it, but afterward I called him back and we set up a meeting for the next morning.

So Saturday I traveled oh about 10 miles or so to the northeast side of town, up on Knapp St., the older residential end of the street, to meet Tim and his wife Missy and their daughters. It was a wonderfully enjoyable occasion, meeting a guy who I had only known through his email posts to my list and a couple of others over the past few years. We hit it off quite well, I thought, and had an interesting conversation about the nature of faith and belief and how our experiences shape our perceptions, sometimes uncomfortably so, to the point where we get into some rather difficult predicaments when our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus and seek the truth brings us into profound disagreement with others with whom we have been close over the years. I won't try to recreate the various turns that our chat took, but I'll take this opportunity to recommend that if any of you have an email or chat buddy that you are curious to meet in real life, act on that impulse (as long as your motives are honorable and not sleazy) and I am confident you will have a happy and memorable experience. I will always read Tim's posts with a fuller appreciation of the real person behind the text on my screen.

And Tim's wife Missy is great too. She's not as much into the email computer thing, but she "knows" me through the stuff I've written that Tim has found worthy to pass on. I found her to be very insightful and the overall effect of our time together, I would characterize as affirming and encouraging. Delightful folks that I would love to spend more time with again later on.

Hmm, this is a long enough post. I think I'll stop here and pick up with Pt. 2 in a while.

Christian Alliance for Progress

I just became aware of this organization, the Christian Alliance for Progress, through a link in an email that Google sent me. It's a fairly new effort, just launched last month (June '05). I've surfed the site a bit and signed on to their mailing list, just to see what kind of take they have on the whole "non-right-wing Christian political perspective" thing that Sojourners, the Center for Progressive Christianity and other such groups have been trying to mobilize for the past several years (or longer, really.) It seems that this effort to counter-balance the "Religious Right" has yet to seriously take off as a formidable cultural force, but I suppose these things take time to build momentum. I was talking to a young co-worker on Thursday who I saw was reading Jim Wallis' God's Politics. For her, Wallis is a new discovery and as a woman in her early 20's who claims that she's never paid much attention to politics until now, I'm pleased to see that his book has sparked an interest. Especially since she's a bright person whose opinions and conduct leave positive impressions on others as they get to know her.

Perhaps there is hope after all! (Oh, I know there always has been... I just having been feeling it all that much lately. But I'm better now!)

Paul Harvey's "Manifest Destiny" Flashback

Even though he's a beloved, iconic figure to many, long-time radio commentator Paul Harvey is giving indications that it may be time for him to join Billy Graham in retiring from the public sphere, before he disgraces himself and his listeners with any more of this kind of diatribe. Sugar candy, anyone?

Holiday Weekend About to Start

In just a few minutes I will be off work, sort of. I'm carrying the Crisis Team Pager this weekend, from 5:00 pm EDT on 7/1/05 until 9:00 am EDT on 7/5/05. For doing this, I'll get a fairly generous stipend added on to my next paycheck, and I'll also get additional hourly wages to compensate for any time I actually have to spend working. The Crisis Team is Wedgwood's "backup plan" in case a staff is needed in a hurry to deal with any of the unpredictable emergencies that can take place in an agency like ours.

So I may have some stories to tell, though of course professional discretion and confidentiality will trump my desire to divulge all of the details.

I'm still not in much of a topical-discussion mood, so I won't say anything about the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor except that I am feeling some kind of a macabre fascination at the prospect of an all-out battle royale in the chambers of the U.S. Senate as the process of confirming a successor slowly gets underway. Part of me hopes that our nation will be spared a divisive upheaval, but another part of me thinks, "this has been in the works for awhile, let's just let the sucker blow and see what happens, what kind of a mess it'll make."

Such feelings of cynicism toward The System and Mainstream Society, it seems like I haven't felt this nihilistic toward The Powers That Be in years! But this is more a passing mood I think. Still, not the kind of thoughts one would normally like to entertain on an Independence Day weekend...