Fresh Air

Part of the process that got me blogging again after a week off was taking a trip out to Lake Michigan yesterday afternoon. The sun was out though the temperatures remain too low for traditional sunbathing around here. Which meant that we had the beach entirely to ourselves. It felt great letting the wind blast across my face, hearing the rush of the waves again, wide open horizons - very cleansing and refreshing, just what I needed.

Sick of the hypocisy.

One reason I didn't blog much last week was that I was feeling profoundly cynical and fatigued by things happening in the news so chose not to speak out of the negative mindset (not to mention the discouraging effect it has on even wanting to sit down and type.)

The weariness sprang from several stories: Alberto Gonzales and his failure to remember things that ought to be expected of anyone in a middle-management level of responsibility - Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank whose anti-corruption efforts were undermined by revelations of his cronyism when it came to giving his girlfriend a job - George W. Bush's veto threat of the congressional attempt to put some accountability into war-funding while he asserts moral and tactical leadership privileges despite his demonstrable incompetence to handle such duties - Randall Tobias, the abstinence-only advocate who resigned on a day's notice after his name and number were disclosed by the owner of an escort service-slash-prostitution ring.

I have a hard time taking these people seriously - their hypocrisy has been exposed and yet they continue to cling tenaciously to power despite being so badly discredited - (except for that last guy, who at least recognized his obligation to quit once his secrets came to the light...)

Why do I continue to hold on to this expectation that people in positions of institutional authority ought to be expected to conduct themselves properly? What necessitates this on-going gulf between what these people claim to represent (goodness, morality, leadership, accountabilty, honesty, etc.) and what they actually do?

Family update

My dad moved back south to Panama - he left yesterday morning after arriving mid-January. We went through a pretty full range of emotions over the course of those months - the trip necessitated by my grandmother's illness, from which she passed away at the end of February. I enjoyed having him so close for an extended period of time - almost got used to seeing him around from day to day!

Here's a picture of us at a Grand Rapids Rampage Arena Football game.

I'm back after a week away from blogging.

I'm now going to conduct experiments in micro-blogging. Very short entries!

Earth Day

This has been a very busy weekend, an enjoyable one for me. Since this past Thursday, I attended a combination abstinence rally/fashion show (part of my work responsibilities, not an event I sought out specifically because I wanted to hear the message), went to a Grand Rapids Rampage football game with my dad (the Rampage lost, which makes us 0-for-3 for local pro sporting events, since we've also seen the Grand Rapids Griffins and the West Michigan Whitecaps lose in front of their hometown audience over the past month or so...), got a lot of yardwork done (now that the sun has come out again after a rude snowy interlude) and, this afternoon, took a nice leisurely stroll through the Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. Tonight, we watched the finale of the Discovery Channel's "Planet Earth" mini-series. That is an impressive collection of nature footage. There's some pretty amazing stuff going on in the non-human habitations of this world.

I don't feel like writing much more tonight though - I also spent a fair amount of time on the computer today laying out a newsletter for work that I plan to publish tomorrow. It's a compendium of some of my co-workers' thoughts on the Don Imus/Rutgers University women's basketball team controversies. So I'll leave you with this lovely family photo, taken in front of Leonardo Da Vinci's gigantic sculpture of a horse.

I Missed the Protest!

For the first time since George W. Bush became President of the USA, I failed to make an appearance in protest at one of his periodic visits to Grand Rapids. This is the fourth time he's made the journey to what are presumably "green pastures" for him as a politician (I mean that in financial terms as much as to imply that this is a politically-friendly area for him to come to.) The first time was in 2003, the day after his infamous State of the Union speech where he linked Iraq to the yellow cake uranium from Niger (which turned out to be forged evidence that had already been discredited a few months prior to that citation.) The second time was a political campaign stop in 2004 where he visited the day after John Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Then there was the Calvin College commencement in 2005 that is pretty extensively chronicled here. (It seems like there might have been one other event that I'm forgetting about at the moment but I won't bother looking it up.)

Today's appearance was at East Grand Rapids High School, where my dad graduated, coincidentally enough, shortly before I was born. The purpose of Bush's trip was to deliver a "major policy speech on Iraq," at least that's how it was publicized around here. The sponsor of the event was the local branch of the World Affairs Council, a group of mostly well-connected and moderately affluent (or moreso) internationally-minded citizens who pay substantial dues each year to hear speakers from various globalist organizations at nicely-appointed dinners and roundtable sessions. I'm on their mailing list but the fees are a bit steep for me at this point in my life. The WAC considers this quite an honor for them but they are quick to point out that they are quite non-partisan in their intentions - why just the other week, they had former Clinton-admin. Secty. of Defense William Cohen speak at their spring dinner! (Cohen is, of course, a Republican...) All in all, there are more strident and ideologically extreme organizations in town so I won't pick too hard on the WAC, but unfortunately, I think they were just starstruck and fawning enough to keep Bush's bubble nicely intact as I figure his list of safe havens for makig these speeches has to be dwindling with every corresponding dip in the job approval polls.

I watched him step off of Air Force One at lunch today but had to head back to work afterward rather than join either of the two protest events that had been scheduled in response to his appearance. I would have liked to have gotten away for an extra hour, just to keep my string intact and hang out with some of my friends for awhile. But I saw one of the protests on TV and was struck by a feeling of "been there, done that" when I saw them out there with their signs... so I don't feel like I missed all that much.

I also listened to the first part of his speech on the radio, sitting in my car for a bit after returning to the parking lot at work. But after a few minutes of that, I realized that he wasn't going to say anything new or substantially interesting. The gist of it was to simply push the clock back a bit by vaguely asserting that progress in Iraq is beginning to be made and it won't be until the summer before we really know if the surge is accomplishing its purpose or not... which basically gives him (assuming that this strategy does indeed buy him some time) an additional few months to maintain the status quo before he has to come up with some other rationale for kicking the can a few months more down the road while he plays out the string for the rest of his term in office.

After the speech was over and I was back at my desk creating a new training module, I took a pause to check the news headlines to see what kind of a ripple his speech had made in the hot stories of the day. Google News turned up nothing. MyYahoo.com didn't register any indication that Bush had traveled anywhere or said anything out of the ordinary. I went to Reuters' top stories report and combed the entire list - nada. So I guess this was really just a very routine, minor-level excursion aimed at getting Bush out of the White House before the weekend. Or maybe give him an excuse for not watching the video of Alberto Gonzales' flameout in the Senate chambers yesterday. I suppose that presidents have to do something during the weekdays so why not a trip to nice conservative Grand Rapids to enjoy a little hour of star-power in front of a bunch of local VIPs and some hand-picked, cream-of-the-crop high school students who are suitably impressed that a real live POTUS is in the house?!?

I wonder if he's heading down to Crawford or Camp David for the weekend to soak up some springtime rays?

Righteous

I've been reading a book that came out last year, "Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement" by Lauren Sandler, a writer for Salon.com who's covered religion for NPR over the past few years. Her book is made up of sketches and notes from a variety of "scenes" where various Christian groups are using culturally innovative ways to connect with young potential converts. I'm about halfway through, still trying to figure out what to make of her reports.

On the one hand, I find it all very interesting to get some glimpses into the different ways that young people are approaching spirituality and how the church is adapting to the cultural needs and expectations of our times. On the other, some of what she relays to the reader is potentially discouraging if it's taken at face value. She has a fairly clear and up-front bias. Even though she expresses empathy and even sometimes admiration for the people she's writing about, her perspective is as a secular Jewish non-believer, a skeptic who often seems to feel pity and a kind of superiority toward the young converts. She also seems intent on striking the nerves of readers who presumably would be alarmed and/or disturbed at this swelling fundamentalist army that aims to plunge America into another era of regressive political futility. While I hardly consider myself an apologist or a supporter for the right-wing skew that characterizes many of the ministries she covers, I think that she could have been more dispassionate about the long-term "threat" she implies. It could be that she's fairly young herself and doesn't quite have the perspective on how ordinary it is for young people, especially those who "find religion" to veer toward absolutist movements that grant a lot of authority to highly opinionated leaders.

Her fear seems to be that the mobilized foot soldiers of evangelical/fundamentalist youth ministries will swing the political agenda sharply to the right, to the point where basic freedoms and rights are compromised. I suppose that it could happen, but I also don't think that these movements or their followers will have the kind of long-term zeal or staying power that her worst-case scenarios give them credit for. She has a knack for finding extremists and of course, those folks give the best quotes and often are seen as leaders in their circles. But having been through a few stages of youthful, fanatical "true-believerism" myself over the years, I understand that over the course of time, these tendencies have a way of moderating and settling into a broader, more practical middle ground as the realities of life impress themselves upon us.

And I should be clear, she's not running around pushing panic buttons here. She has her pet issues - she seems especially troubled by the young women who adopt the "submissive wife" role in deference to their husbands, even though the men may not have some of the practical skills or reliable judgment that their wives possess. The chapter that deals most extensively with this features a look at the "other" Mars Hill Church (at least, from my West Michigan perspective), the one led by Mark Driscoll up in Seattle.

I don't know much about Driscoll other than what I read here, but he did cross my radar with some knuckle-headed comments he made in the aftermath of the Ted Haggard scandal last year, when he spoke of how some pastor's wives fail to adequately serve their husband's sexual needs, seemingly making some excuses or allowance for the extramarital affairs that create crises in the pulpits of American churches. This book only augments my opinion that he's a crafty and effective communicator who knows how to tap into some basic psychological needs but does so in a way that is manipulative, condescending and distorts biblical teaching into an endorsement of machismo that should not stand unchallenged. I'm not impressed by Driscoll's philosophy of ministry, to say the least, and to the extent that she takes aim at figures like him, the book is pretty right on according to my measure.

Books like this definitely interest me because they offer a helpful perspective on the evangelical subculture that I live in such close proximity to. I think that the agency I work for does a great job balancing integrity of faith and mission while also avoiding the simplistic extremism and distorted hyperliteralism that is on display throughout Sandler's narrative. It's because we take "professionalism" as seriously as we do our spiritual mission, and we avoid a "make converts at all costs" mentality that might otherwise drive us to unethical extremes in pursuit of one tightly defined goal. We are content to let God work it out in the lives of the people we serve, avoiding, for the most part, anything that would be considered coercive or condescending to the young people who live and grow in our care.

Jazz Festival in Hastings

We spent last night listening to some jazz in the small town of Hastings, MI. My son Derek is in a high school combo that did a set at a coffee shop on Hastings' version of "Main Street USA." They sounded pretty good for it being one of their first public performances! At the end of their session, they were paid a nice compliment by a musician in the audience who joined them for a reprise of their opening number and proceeded to blow things open with a rousing trumpet solo! All in all, a nice night out, a fitting way to celebrate the return of spring as we saw a lot of sun today that melted away most of the snow (other than the plow piles pushed to the edges of parking lots...)

World Wii Web

Check this out. I'm blogging on my TV. Nintendo has upgraded the Internet browser capability in its Wii system. [I noticed it glowing blue this morning as I was leaving for work, which meant that the unit was downloading software automatically from the ever-growing pulsating brain at the center of the Nintendoverse.]

It's considerably slower to write using the Wii-mote to type with the on-screen keyboard, but I can see us frequently using this 21st century version of Web-tv. It provides a nice option for visiting websites without having to crowd around a small monitor.

There are still some significant limitations though. Uploading pictures to this blog won't work. Flash apps require more memory than Wii currently has available. But it's cool to have this option.

Finally, I haven't posted much this week. I really hate to complain about the weather any more and the risk was too high that I would do just that once I started typing. So I hope you appreciate my self-control.

Easter Parade

Easter Sunday was basically a highly arranged, compact "covering of bases" yesterday as we took care of numerous obligations but managed to have a pleasant time of it anyway. Starting with the paper route in the morning, earlier than usual, then off to church, then back home with my dad and Cay for a very tasty, aesthetically pleasing dinner prepared mainly by Julie with help from Lys and Derek, followed by a viewing of some old home movies that my dad surprised us with...

Let me pause to describe these movies. They are old 8mm or Super 8 reels - two newsreels from World War 2, an old Mickey Mouse cartoon, and a couple of spliced together collections of home footage featuring my dad when he was just a tot, grandparents and other relatives when they were young, some location shots of a less-developed Grand Rapids and environs and a bunch of cool old cars. And lots of pictures of fish caught on various camping excursions. Documented for the sake of posterity. It was really fun and fascinating to see these little glimpses of the past, seemingly random peeks into what the folks with the camera found fascinating at the moment.

Then it was time to head over to my mom's place, where we ate some more and talked about the stuff that families talk about when they get together. Spoke with my brother who splits his time between Washington and Alaska, heard about his job working on a herring boat off the Aleutian Islands. And after that, we went to Julie's mom's for a short visit to celebrate Julie's birthday which turned into a longer visit as I tried to solve a computer problem that Julie's sister was having. She uses CompuServe dial-up (!) and isn't able to make purchases on-line for some reason. I surmised that the websites may not want to do business with the CS browser (maybe it's less secure, or just unrecognizable?) so I set up MSIE 7 for her and was able to make some progress. But boy let me tell you, dial-up is so slow and I also wonder if her computer has adequate memory to handle the newer programs. But this is boring tech stuff that I have no business subjecting my readers to. Sorry!

Anyway, we got home around 10 p.m. and felt pretty much wiped out so that explains the lack of a blog post yesterday. Now I have to get off to work and I have responsibilities to lead a devotional time at the Supervisors meeting so I gotta think of what I'm going to say!

Crimson and Clover

Tonight we celebrated Julie's birthday even though it's really tomorrow. But since tomorrow is Easter and will be busy enough with church and family get-togethers throughout the entire day, we made tonight her special occasion. She got a few nice things, including some garden decor that I will show here once the weather makes gardening seem like a plausible enterprise again (we've regressed quite miserably into winter-like weather of late...)

But the big gift is her very own and very first iPod. A green one, since green is her favorite color. She didn't know she was getting it but the brushed metal case matched her wardrobe choice so nicely. And my own iPod matched my shirt so well that we just had to take the picture! Too bad she didn't have it out of the case, which led to a glare that faded out the lovely green color. Still - isn't that cute? Our iPods and our shirts are complementary colors!

"Yeah! (ba na na na na naa)
My love's such a sweet thing (ba na na na na naa)
I wanna do every thing (ba na na na na naa)
What a beautiful feeling! (ba na na na na naa)

Crimson and Clover, Over and Over... Crimson and Clover, Over and Over...!"

Pretty Good Friday

I'm taking today off of work, even though I didn't have any particular purpose in mind for how to spend the day when I scheduled it. My youngest son Derek is off school this week but he spent the night at a friend's house so I had the house to myself this morning. I decided to watch a film I've never seen before, "The Last Temptation of Christ." Being that it's Good Friday, I thought it appropriate to watch a "Jesus movie" in order to stir some reflections on the significance of this day.

Of course, TLTOC stirred up a lot more than mere reflections when it was released back in 1988. The outrage felt by many conservative Christians at the time created a lot of headlines as protests and pickets formed at theaters who dared to show the film. Many of the strongest critics admitted that they never even saw the movie but still felt confident in their opposition based on some of the liberties that the script took with the biblical gospels. Most of the alarm was generated due to the film's depiction of Jesus and Mary Magdalene engaging in the procreative process (I won't call it a sex scene because it was not erotically portrayed in any way.) There were also some "shockers" that, given the religiously sensitive context of the story, felt at times to be a little gratuitous (e.g. Mary Magdalene's portrayal as a prostitute serving multiple customers in sequence, and the weird freak-out scene surrounding John the Baptist at the Jordan river.) It's largely due to the scandal and opposition that TLTOC generated that I have never seen the film until today. But I picked up a copy on VHS from the library a couple months ago and finally got around to watching it by myself. My wife has no interest in watching it.

So... what did I think? After one viewing, I'd give the film a 7 or 8 out of 10. Some of the dialogue and recasting of the biblical story struck me as awkward and heavy handed and not nearly as profound or deeply spiritual as I think the filmmakers intended it to be. Those critical impressions occured more frequently in the earlier portion of the film (which is rather long, by the way - a bit less than 3 hours.) Perhaps it just took me a little while to make the adjustment to how Jesus is typically portrayed on film.

I didn't take notes, nor did I memorize lines, but I'm thinking of some of the debating that takes place between Jesus and Judas as they ponder some of those "meaning of life" dilemmas that we all kick around at some time on our journey through this world, some of us more perpetually than others. The way that some of the questions were phrased and points emphasized felt kind of dated to me - the Peter Gabriel soundtrack, while good and evocative, along with the cinematography and acting techniques, had a very "80's" feel to them. So I wind up seeing TLTOC as very much a period piece, an example of the spiritual zeitgeist of the late 1980's.

The movie's final hour or so was rather impressive as it got into the passion narrative, the crucifixion and the "last temptation" referred to in the title. This portion presented some ideas and images that were really quite imaginative and very well done, not to mention suspenseful, exciting and unpredictable. Jesus' encounter with Paul the apostle was completely unexpected and thought-provoking, to say the least.

Over at the IMDB, this movie seems to have a lot of zealous admirers who've bestowed perfect 10 scores on the film. I am not ready to applaud the effort that whole-heartedly. I think that in working as hard as they did to humanize Jesus, that is, experiment with his story and make him accessible to the audience in a new way, they drained some of the dramatic tension that exists at the heart of the narrative. I also think the movie could have been edited down a bit... there were some draggy portions that didn't seem to add much to the overall experience. Still, I admire Martin Scorcese's artistic nerve and vision to undertake such a project. I don't take much offense at the divergence from Scripture because the film declares itself to be a "fictional exploration of eternal spiritual conflict." It uses familiar elements from the Jesus story, introduces some new ideas and discards others. One could make the case that this practice goes all the way back to the original gospels themselves, as well as the apocryphal scriptures that built on the earlier traditions to propose answers to the spiritual questions of their times.

Anyone else seen it, either recently or a long time ago? I'm interested to read your impressions.

300

Speaking of testosterone (as I did in yesterday's post)... Has anyone seen the movie "300" and if so, what do you think about it? I saw it Monday. I was impressed with the production and the overall power of the images but it left me feeling somewhat ambivalent, being the non-violent, anti-war, conflict resolving kind of guy that I am.

I don't want to take a preachy, moralistic tone, denouncing the violence and glorification of combat that are too easy and obvious targets that one could focus on from a politically left-ward perspective. The fact is, I've come to some resolution over the fact that even though I oppose militarism and violence in real life to a pretty strong degree, I enjoy its depiction on the screen, in some contexts at least. For this movie, the idealized carnage was aesthetically pleasing if one doesn't get too offended at the rendering of spurting blood and the gushing sound effects that accompanied the various thrusts and slashes of swords and spears. Though the film derives its story from a historical incident, it swiftly moves into the realm of fantasy in its depiction of the warriors on both sides and the presence of various monstrous figures in several critical scenes.

What we have here is really more of a myth than anything else, and the film has developed a massive and enthusiastic audience, easily becoming the biggest money-maker of the year so far ($129 million so far, with around $500 mill estimated for an overall worldwide take eventually.) It may not finish #1, with Spiderman 3 set for release later this spring, but I imagine that 300 will be in the top 5 at least and maybe even #2 when the final numbers come in. I think it's going to do big business in the DVD market and, like the Matrix and Lord of the Rings, will set a new kind of benchmark for how big-budget fantasy/sci-fi epics have to look and feel in order to be regarded as worthy of blockbuster status. Back to the myth thing. The movie clearly embraces the "myth of redemptive violence," that is, the idea that ultimate purpose, value and meaning can be found through inflicting acts of violence on enemies in pursuit of a worthy cause. That's a pretty plain surface message and I suppose one could leave it there. I know that a lot of people in that huge audience will see it that way. But I think there's more going on there. Not that I'd argue that "300" is anything approaching an anti-war movie - but I sense a disconnect in the current cultural context, where a lot of people who are digging the movie have absolutely no interest in really putting their lives on the line for the noble cause in the way the movie depicts the Spartans as utterly eager to do. And there's the whole war in Iraq angle - the unpopularity of the conflict in the general American public, not to mention the controversy over how the Persians are depicted as dark-skinned brutes led by an effeminate freak of a king and his degenerate harem of unbridled hedonists...

So there's a lot here to discuss and deconstruct, if anyone wants to get into it with me...

Spring Broke

Sorry to bore you with complaints about the weather, but it sucks at the moment. We are getting an inch or more of snow, with hard biting winds as well. I thought we were past that, what with it being baseball season and all that. We're supposed to go to the West Michigan Whitecaps Opening Day game next Monday, and from what I hear, this cold spell is going to last for the next week or so.

That's not right - it's gonna kill the daffodils!

Baseball Season Begun

Actually the major leaguers have been playing ball for a few days but today is the first day resembling a full slate of games, which is what I like. Seeing lots of box scores, most if not all the teams playing, stats beginning to compile, the long saga of another season starting to unfold before our eyes and ears. It's good.

I'm in two fantasy leagues this year, same as last year. After just two days, it's way too early to conclude much but one team is doing well, one team is not. The weird thing is, the team that's doing well features many of the same players who are on the team that's killing me in the other league. So I can't really complain.

Already Fernando Rodney (reliever for the Tigers) is in my dog house. I'm pretty close to cutting him, I just need to find a dependable middle reliever. Rodney has been hit hard in both of his outings this week and I'm in no mood to string him along. He was good for me last year but 06 is over!

I'm also helped by the Yankees rainout today. One of my opposition teams (in the league where I'm doing well) is grossly overloaded with the Pinstripers. The guy named his club BIG Pimpin' and his lineup features these players: Giambi at first, Cano at second, Jeter at short, A-Rod at third, Matsui in the outfield, and you can throw in Gary Sheffield as well, an ex-Yankee who's now a Tiger. I think it's a mistake to go so strong with one team, even if it's a good one like the Yankees. If they face a good pitching staff, his whole roster suffers. And like I already mentioned, a rain-out means a whole lot of nothing in the morning sports pages.

I hope they make up the game sometime in late August.

Spring Brake

Anyone visiting this blog regularly notices that I haven't been posting much lately. That's because I've been busy with other things. And even when I'm on the computer, I haven't felt much like trying to summarize all the stuff that's going on into the fairly lengthy posts that I'm accustomed to.

But I'm going to try something different in order to get the flow going again. I've made the Blogger.com dashboard my home page now so that it will be easy to drop quick thoughts on the site without having to think much about it.

So having said that...

This morning I spoke to two groups of teenagers who are currently housed at the Juvenile Detention facility in Grand Rapids. I had been invited several weeks ago to speak to them about Wedgwood (where I work.) It was pretty interesting, to say the least. I spoke to a group of about 60 or 70 (or maybe more) boys first, then a group of 16 girls a bit later on. The boys' group started at 8:30 a.m. so the guys were a bit groggy but a few of them were talkative and that made things a bit more interesting as we exchanged our ideas of what made for good and not-so-good treatment. A significant number of the guys had some experience with my agency, not all of it "positive" according to their reports. I respect that. I know that placement is hard and far from the ideal. But I also know that it can present an opportunity to make some needed changes for young people whose lives have gotten out of control. It's up to them to do something with that chance they're given.

The girls' group was smaller, more interactive and more enjoyable. A couple of the girls had been in our homes recently and knew a lot of the staff that I know, so that warmed things up right there. I didn't get into what had gotten them into juvie, of course. That would be rude. But we had a good talk that gave us all some perspective on this residential treatment thing that we are all a part of, in some way or another (those of us in the room at the time, not everyone who might potentially read this.) Several of the girls had good things to say to me about Wedgwood, good things to say to each other about what they'd learned with us and a healthy acceptance of their own responsibility to manage their futures as best they can, looking for and accepting the support available to them when the time was right to do so.

I don't suppose that we can ask for much more from them than that.

Maybe that explains some things...

Research indicates that people with high testosterone levels derive momentary pleasure from angry looks that others give them in response to teasing or other provocative behaviors.

I think I've worked with clients like this... and encountered a few such folks in various internet forums that I've been a part of. I wonder if research can validate that these "hi-test" people are capable of getting their kicks vicariously by sending obnoxious emails and imagining what the recipients must look like after reading what they sent?