Things I love

In no particular order:

Enjoying the company of good friends. They can do the talking if they want to, and I'll listen.

The rich smell of earth carried gently out of the entrance of a cave.

The clean, non-earth smell of a limestone cave with no mud.

A good rehearsal in a production with good, committed actors.

A warm hug that lasts longer than the don't-misunderstand-this limit, because they know I won't misunderstand it.

Picking a perfectly ripened fruit from the garden. This goes for fruits, beans, whatever.

Solving a problem successfully. Computer, printer, you name it.

Getting a phone call from someone I love for no reason.

Long walks on the... well, anywhere. A hiking trail, a beach, a sidewalk.

Children laughing and playing with each other.

Moms and dads playing with their children.

Hearing wives say good things about their husbands.

Being appreciated. Oh, don't we all, though?

Hearing the hedgehog giggle on Frontierville.

Hearing the words "It needs more butter."

Eating in a foreign country. That little ham sandwich bagette thing in Paris tasted better than escargot at home.

Old photos

Lately I've been on a project.

It's been rewarding, and time consuming, and my eyes are starting to cross.
I've been scanning family slides, dating from the 40's to the 80's. Slides that old look monochrome, either blue or green or yellow, depending on the film used, and you would think that it would be impossible to coax true colors out of them. Sometimes it is impossible, but often you can get amazing results with a little patience.

The first set I tackled was my dearly departed dad's collection. There were slides in there that I had never seen, probably because on those occasions when he set up the projector, he mostly showed the ones that we were most likely to enjoy seeing. But he never threw away anything, and so there were some rejected slides that I am thrilled to discover - though, granted, I probably wouldn't have appreciated them as a ten year old lad.

Take a look at this one:

OK, you can tell that it was shot from an airplane, sure. But where is it? That, my friend, is the city of Tokyo, in 1945, before the end of the war.

Here is one taken in Alaska, in the Aleutian Islands, where he was stationed. Did you know we had bases set up in Alaska during WW2? Well, it made sense. When you hop from island to island on the way to Japan, Alaska is a great place to start.

 Anybody know what kind of plane that is? I didn't care back in the day, but now it looks kind of interesting.

Look at these guys trying to stay warm. They were all Air Force buddies of my dad, but of course I didn't care. I didn't know them. I didn't try to stay warm with them. I suspect that one could really learn to appreciate a hot cup of coffee when it's this cold all the time.






Now, here is another one, from 1946, at least I think it is. This was in the rejects box, and I did some serious color correction to bring out the natural colors. I have no idea who these people are, except that they are relatives of some kind. I wasn't even born yet, so I didn't know them until they were grown up. But it doesn't matter. Look at the stuff on the table. Look at the appliances in the background. I think it's a great little photo.

I'm probably not doing as great a job as a professional might, but then I'm giving each slide a lot more individual attention, so who knows?

But now, take a look at this slide, taken in Morocco after the war.

Look at the way the locals are dressed, sure, but notice the guy on the bicycle! I think I saw this movie.

But here is one that I think I remember seeing when I was a kid, but probably when Dad returned from Morocco, and not again, because it was in the reject box. Thing is, at that time, it was strictly forbidden to take pictures of women because - I don't know, but whatever it was, it didn't really hurt anybody, and so he slyly took a shot as he walked down the street in front of the gas station, and he somehow managed to not get beheaded for it. By now, the woman in the photo has been stoned to death for sneezing wrong or something. Or she's died of old age before reaching 50. You know how it is.

Tech Challenge

I am so proud of what I managed to do this morning.

I have been trying for almost a year to make it possible for GA's laptop computer to send files to our printer. In theory, it's supposed to be easy. She just looks at the network, selects the printer, makes it the default, and off she goes. The instructions published on the MS website say so.

But this is Windows XP fighting with Windows Vista. You see, I have Vista on my desktop in the study, and she has XP on her laptop in the living room. The printer is connected to the router via an ethernet cord, not tied directly to the desktop machine. The Vista machine can see it, and has logged it as the printer with no problems. But the XP machine... nope, can't even see it.

I Googled and Googled, looking for any possible solution, and I found dozens and dozens of people trying to find a solution on various forums. They were given all sorts of suggestions - make sure both the printer and the laptop have a share name with eight characters or less with no spaces, have it look for the location as \\computer\printer substituting the network share names, have it look for the IP address, make sure the IP address of the printer and laptop match the address that the router assigns them (how in blazes would they not? It's the router that assigns this!), install the printer driver on the laptop before trying to see it on the network... the list goes on and on. And nothing works.

Then I dug deep into the help files on the Vista machine looking for this problem. There, I found an article that explains that the XP machine has to have an LLDT installed. It's basically an overlay or hotfix or upgrade that lets the XP machine respond to a Vista inquiry. If you Google that, you'll find several uses of the acronym, but you have to disregard everything that doesn't mean Link Layer Topology Discovery. And you'd better be prepared to do a lot of research, because Microsoft doesn't make this one easy, though it should have been obvious that this was going to be a problem.

Seems that they produced a fix that you could simply run in Service Pack 1 and 2, but if you have Service Pack 3, as most people with XP do by now, it won't work. You'll try it from several different directions using the MS website, but after a while you realize that their website is linking to itself in a circle, and you're going round and round following their crazy instructions.

But at least now I had the information I needed. I knew that I somehow had to get that LLDT installed on the XP machine - I just couldn't do it using Microsoft's instructions.

The solution? Download and save the file they offer for SP1 or 2, ignoring the link for SP3 provided, then find a geeky website that explains exactly how to manually extract the various files from the darn thing. You'll be running the command line from outside Windows, and moving various files to various folders under Windows sys32. And you'd better do it exactly as the geek tells you, which I did. And I'll be darned. It worked. Oh, granted, it still didn't find the printer using XP's printer search function, but it did allow me to enter \\computer\printer (substituting the share names of course) and thus make it work with the laptop.

But I still wonder why the wizards at Microsoft felt that the most up to date version of XP would never be used with a Vista machine in the same home. They were so sure about this that they didn't bother to even give us a way to do this upgrade without finding a geek somewhere to guide us through it. The good news is that it gets us used to finding geeks and ways of getting around the crap they sell us. See "hacking" for more details.
Heh heh.

TV Death

I was watching a show on the Spike channel today, a series called "1,000 ways to die." Many of them were bizarre, most were good Darwin Award candidates. One really caught my attention.

Assuming they didn't just make these up out of thin air (which is possible), there was a grumpy old Scrooge sitting in his house during the Christmas season, when a group of carolers came to his house to sing for him.

He went to the door with a bowl of fruit, and began throwing apples and oranges at them. They didn't say whether he actually shouted "Bah! Humbug!" at them. As they ran away, a two pound hailstone fell from the sky and hit Scrooge in the head, killing him.



I wonder how I could find out if that really happened. I know at least one of them was likely made up, simply because - well, I'll relate that one.

Two drug dealers get shipwrecked, and are washed up on shore on this island, and are then eaten by cannibals. Now, who was supposed to have reported this incident? Not the drug dealers. Not their business associates. Maybe the cannibals?

 At the time I assumed that the idea was to simply list the ways to die, and being eaten by cannibals made the list, so they fabricated a possible scenario. But what about the Scrooge? That would have to be specific. I kind of want it to be true. Ya know?

Bees knees

I just finished eating a delicious plum that I bought from our local fruit stand (a co-op outfit). It was incredibly sweet, and probably nutritious. It reminded me of the day I bought it, when I saw a halved water melon on the table which was generously feeding about six or seven bees, arranged in a neat circle, as if the bees were having a meeting.

There was a time, when I was a mere lad, that I might have shooshed the bees away from the melon, or at least resented them for alighting on a melon meant for humans.


Not this time. I was glad to see them there. I have since learned that bees are such an important part of our food system that if they go extinct, so do we. We depend so much on their pollinating behavior.

It brought to mind the diseases that are threatening bees, though that isn't as dire as it appeared to be a couple of years ago. But I worry sometimes about the genetic engineering going on these days. They have potatoes that produce their own bt, an organic pesticide used by organic farmers. They produced corn a few years ago that unexpectedly proved deadly to passing monarch butterflies. Sure, they're a little more careful after that wake up call, but when you mess with DNA and such, trying to improve the plant, sometimes you get good results and sometimes you get surprises. They should be especially careful about trying to develop plants that are toxic to insects, seems to me, since insects are also our friends.

I read a book recently (The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan) that compares our current obsession with the Russet Burbank potato - the one that we like to bake and make long pretty french fries from - with the potatoes grown in Ireland in the 1800's. It was the Lumper, a nice potato that they reproduced solely by cutting the pieces and putting them in the ground, thus guaranteeing the same potato, genetically speaking, as all the years before. Meanwhile, a fungus evolved called the Phytophthora infestans which the potato had no resistance to. And since the good people of Ireland were only growing the one kind of potato, the result was a famine. No variety in the gene pool, you see.

I probably shouldn't worry so much, since there's not much I can do about it, and also since these things rarely go as predicted anyway. But I sure appreciated those bees, and I didn't mind at all that they were having their board meeting on that melon.

Of course, it wasn't my melon.

Mission trip to DR part 3

Dominican Republic mission trip, 2010

more from the journal

7-31-2010 – Saturday

So today was the first rehearsal.

They brought the counseling team up the mountain to Eddie's little church to see our “dress rehearsal.” How often do you have a dress rehearsal as your first rehearsal? Molly took most of the load this time, since she remembered the blocking I gave them as well as I did. Um... probably better.

To my shock and delight, it went quite well. There was some confusion as to when to do certain things, before or after a bit of narration, but many of the kids were off book! And wonder of wonders, they spoke loudly and clearly. Our pig farmer dropped out, so we plugged Trevor (one of our own kids) in his place. That inspired us to use some of us Americanos as the pigs. This delighted everyone.

After siesta, we went back to the church to present some gifts to pastor Eddie and his family, and then we all prayed for him – it was very much like the old days back in the 70's, very Jesus-people-ish.

There was no rehearsal for the rest of the day, because we did Vacation Bible School, and my body chose that moment to start warning me that it had to cool off or else – I had been hot for too long, even though this wasn't as long as it had been the day before. But that's the way grace works, you know – you get just what you need when you need it. So I slipped out of the church and sat down under a tree across the street, where there was a nice breeze as well as a good shade. Several older kids, too old for the VBS session inside, said Hi in English, and came over to sit with me and chat among themselves, leaving me alone but staying with me while two of the boys showed off nearby.

After cooling down, I went back inside to help some kids make owls out of old defective CD's. Don't ask.

That evening, the outing was for “exotic salty snacks” and “exotic juices,” which I politely declined because I was really tired, and besides I wanted to catch up on my journal. As it turns out, this was a trip to the mall in downtown Santiago, which was essentially pseudo-America in Santiago, so that those of us who might be experiencing culture shock, or missing home, could feel like they were back in America for an hour or so. It was a perfect night for me to stay in the dorm and rest, because the last thing I wanted was an American mall to walk around in.

8-1- 2010 – Sunday, performance day and so much more

Sunday morning, we went to another church for morning worship. And again, I loved every minute of it, because worship service for these people is actually worship, rather than a structured routine preaching session like we have at home. They provided a translator for our benefit, and they worked him to death. I followed some of the Spanish in the teaching, and I could tell that the poor guy was completely thrown by some of the words used. I had been a little concerned whether it would be OK for us to bring our water bottles to church, since this was a little more formal than what went on up in the mountain, but everyone assured me it would be OK, and it turns out that everyone else brought them too. Good thing, because it got a little warm in the building.

After lunch, and a chance to take a very short nap in the dorm (as well as shower and change clothes), we went back up to the mountain church. The plan was to have one more rehearsal (the real dress rehearsal), break for supper at Eddie's mother's house, and then come back to the church for the play to be presented. I knew that by this time, my job was over. It was their play now, and I was going to stay out of the way and see what they did with it.

On the walk back down the hill, we experienced that rarest of Dominican cultural events, dualing cantinas. Two cantinas, to our left and to our right as we passed between them, were playing music so that unless you were in one or the other, what you heard was a cacophony of clashing notes. It was oddly surreal, and after passing through it... I wondered if maybe they would turn it down by the time the play began. I wondered if we could present the play in the dark, in the event that God had to pull the plug to stop the sound. When we got back to the church... we had no power. But the cantinas did. I wasn't sure how this was going to work out.

People began arriving, some of whom, I suppose, were church members, and some of whom were the parents of the cast of our play. They stayed outside on the lawn and on the street, patiently waiting. I sat down inside, wondering if the power was going to come back on, wondering if the kids were going to remember their lines, wondering if – if there was going to be enough room in the church, because there were an awful lot of people out there!

Some guys started bring in stacks of white plastic lawn chairs, and setting them up as extra seats for each row, then as extra rows. People started coming in. Somebody was outside trying to fix the “inverter,” whatever that is, as that was apparently the problem with our electricity.

Pastor Eddie decided to go ahead and start us singing and praying in the dark, and it was wonderful. The lights came on briefly, and then went out again.

Eventually, well after the planned curtain time, we had to start the program. Somebody drove a motorcycle around to the side of the church and aimed his headlight into the side door, which was also our stage left entrance. The light was perfect, showing us each face, and Jesus and Peter made their entrance for the beginning of the Servant parable.

The king sat proudly on his throne, passing judgment on Servant #1, the debtor, then forgiving him, then jailing him when he saw him trying to collect a much smaller debt from another servant. Servant number one displayed the perfect smugness, and I was so proud of him for it. The play rolled right along, with no flubbed lines or missed entrances. It was wonderful to see, lit from the side, and so there it was, the third miracle.

The nice lady who had originally been in place to direct the thing was there to see it, and we were surprised to discover that she had sent us the three acts for us to choose one of them, not all three. But we had done all three, and a good time was had by all.

8-2-2010 – Monday

Monday was a day at the beach by comparison.

OK, it was literally a day at the beach. This was recuperation day, where we got to relax under a shade tree listening to the surf, and shop for souvenirs. Life is good.

8-3-2010 – Tuesday, time to go home.

We got up early Tuesday morning to be at the airport in time to go through security and catch our flight, which was delayed by an hour because the pilots had to have more rest according to regulations, not their fault.

When we arrived in Miami, we knew it was going to be close, because we had to go collect our baggage from the carousel, then go through customs, then place the bags in an area for re-loading on the next plane.

All but 13 of us had successfully deposited their bags in the designated spot, and suddenly a stern American Airlines employee forbade us to put any more bags there. Never mind that the bags hadn't been taken away yet. Never mind that there wasn't even anyone there to take them away yet. Never mind that there was no possible reason that we couldn't just leave ours with the rest of them, as if we had been at that point maybe two minutes prior instead of at the present moment. Never mind that we still had time to catch our flight if we could just drop those bags off and continue on our way, as we had been instructed to do. No. Her little stop watch said it was time, so she said “This flight is closed. Go to ticket counter.”

“But -”

“No. closed. Go to ticket counter.” Off we obediently went to the ticket counter, which had a line about thirty people long, and which was not moving at all. We wasted about ten minutes trying to call American Airlines for help with this situation. Finally somebody got somebody's attention, and they led us to another ticket counter to arrange some sort of way to get back to Kentucky. While waiting in line there, we heard the PA system announcing the availability of our seats for stand by passengers.

Another miracle. There were thirteen seats available on a flight to Atlanta, where we could then board another flight to Louisville. The pretty lady with perfect posture at the counter began processing the passports and tickets. Slowly. Very slowly. By the time ten of us were ready to go, the other three seats were gone. So our ten began the dash to the next gate, while they figured out something else for the other three.

We were now split three ways, and somebody said this was a record, though two way splits had occurred in the past. So we got to Atlanta, and now we had to change to Delta, which meant that we had to present the tickets from American Airlines to be converted to Delta boarding passes. One by one, we got them done, and I was the last one in line. He said, as he handed me my pass, “OK, you're good to g--- wait a minute.”

A pause. “What? What's wrong?”

“The person at AA didn't put the ticket number on this. I can't let you board.”

I stared at him as if he had crab claws coming out his nose.

I alerted some of the rest of the team, who immediately started praying. Potentially, we could set a record, with a four way split. With me being all alone in the bowels of the airport system.

“Well what do I have to do? I have to get home.”

“I can't let you board.”

The team continued praying. Then the man said, “there's one other thing I can try, but I don't think it's going to work.” He started clicking keys again. It worked. He printed me my boarding pass.

As we boarded, I handed that pass to the Delta ticket taker dude, who said “Enjoy your flight – wait a minute.”

“No, no NO!”

He took my pass and went back to his screen, clicked on the keyboard, and finally said “OK, you're good to go.”

All this because one airline employee was a slave to her stop watch. The name of that airline, again, was American Airlines.

Just sayin. :)

We got back to Louisville at more or less the same time, that is on the same evening. It was one of the most wonderful weeks of my life. I wouldn't trade a moment of it, not one hot sweltering moment.

Mission trip to DR part 2

Dominican Republic mission trip, 2010

...more from the journal

7-29-2010 – Thursday

Today we started actual classes for the drama effort in the Iglesia Cristiana up on the mountain. We used my water bottle for a prop, asking the kids to use it in a way that they normally would not. We got results such as keys, a phone, a microphone, and a hair dryer, all creative ideas. We broke for siesta and walked past the first of two cantinas and up the road to pastor Eddie's mother's house. She fixed a massive meal of delicious chicken, rice, beans, shredded cabbage, avocado, eggplant and a fruit mix with mango, pineapple and some things I'm not entirely sure how to identify, but which tasted wonderful. Later, we walked further up the hill to Eddie's uncle's house. He invited us in through his house to see the view from the backyard, where we could see Moca in one direction and Santiago in the other. He has a parrot, too, which is trained to laugh, and which is delightful in spite of the fact that he bites. You just have to keep clear is all.

For the afternoon session, I had the kids read some lines, and made them say “Rejoice with me” as if they meant it – you know, acting. They all did, until the last guy in the line, and he delivered it perfectly deadpan. I tried him a few more times, encouraging him to say it as he normally would to his friends, and he was still deadpan. His friends assured me that that was indeed the way he would say it to them. That's OK – we had some non-speaking roles. I really love these people.

On the way back, in the van, (big) Bobby began playing with David, and we all laughed so hard on the rest of the trip that my eyes still burn from the tears. David is a wonderful fellow who smiles with his whole face, and who does some wonderful Laurel and Hardy impressions, my personal favorite. It's so beautiful to see him with his sister Jessica, to see the love their family shares.

Tonight is ice cream night, so I look forward to the evening outing, to see what flavors we can buy from the ice cream shop. But first we have dinner in a few minutes, so the journal gets stored away for the time being.

7-30-2010 – Friday

Ice cream night was excellent. We went to Bon, which is supposed to have some character above the O so that we pronounce it boan, but I don't remember what it was. No matter, the ice cream was good. They did not list the flavors on the wall anywhere, so you just had to sort of know what they had, except that our escort knew and confirmed my hopes that they served rum raisin. You see, that is my favorite flavor of ice cream, and while it's really good in the USA, you go anywhere in the hispanic world, and you will taste the most wonderful ice cream in the world if you think to ask for rum raisin.

Anyway, today we blocked the play. I will be honest and tell you that this was easily the hardest day I had while in the DR, because we used the siesta time after eating to have the casting committee meet (Dawn, Sarah, Molly and yours truly, plus Wendi because she speaks English and knows who the kids are), and we spent the entire time getting it done, with no real chance to wind down. We filled the most difficult, least flexible roles first, then plugged in the ones that could, in some alternate universe, have been female - because, predictably, we had more female actors than male, and who knows? Maybe the King's personal finance officer could have been a girl.

Amazingly, we matched each of the 24 kids to a role in the play (with nobody being relegated to third shepherd from the left, you understand) though not all had speaking roles. Each person was at the very least a non-speaking accountant who flipped a page and had to actually “act.” None of the kids had to take dual roles. It was perfect. There's your first miracle.

About halfway through the first act, I realized that it was going to take a second miracle to get the blocking done by 4:30, so we could finish up and get down the mountain, so that the kids could go home and study their lines and commit to memory what they were supposed to do. We were rotating them through, so that while Molly and I (Molly is awesome, translating my confused direction into Spanish) were working on one act, the kids in the other two acts were in the back of the room working on costumes, while others on the team were outside creating scene panels to serve as our set. Dawn was working the costume department. Molly and I were sort of double teaming them – I would give some direction, and she would translate, and then when the kids had questions, she would translate that back for me. It was order within chaos, with chaos being the more visible. We finished blocking Act I, sent our actors away to take their turns with costumes, and gathered our actors for Act II – and discovered that a couple or so had disappeared for whatever reason. One couldn't be there Sunday, another couldn't for some other reason. After crossing them off the cast list, and considering who to load down with a dual role, they came back, upset that they couldn't have a role, so we re-instated them. As I said before, we had exactly one role for each kid, a miracle.

So, by the third act, Molly and I were getting seriously tired. I was trying to follow her Spanish (and that of the kids) and not doing too badly, considering the noise coming from the costume department on the other end of the room. We were getting the idea across to them pretty well, and the kids were doing their best, and I didn't even take time to check my watch.

And we made it to the end of the Prodigal Son parable, which was Act III, at 4:32. I was astounded, pronounced it an official miracle, and went outside to get some fresh air, and maybe, just maybe, some shade. I did not collapse, and neither did Molly, and so I told the kids to review their scripts, lines and blocking before they went to bed – and I had no idea if they would really do it.

Empanadas and “the monument” were the outing for the evening. I looked forward to them both, as I had used the monument as a starting point when searching for geocaches, hoping to score yet another country for my profile. There are no caches in the area, however, so I left my GPS unit home. At the monument, we had an impromptu talent show, some very silly but harmless stuff such as backward flips and funny impressions.

The empanada stand is run by one little old man, who could not be expected to handle the rush of business that we would represent with our rather large group. So by prior arrangement, two of our drivers/escorts got behind the counter, took our orders, and later our money. He had us adopt creative fake names for this exercise. Ginger became Spice Girl, I was el Jipo, Caleb was the Mad Raccoon. Fun stuff. This made it easier for them to keep track of us.

Then back to the dorm for “devo,” the name for “devotion time,” which I personally loved, with praise and worship singing, courtesy of Patrick and his magic guitar.

Mission trip to DR part 1

Dominican Republic mission trip, 2010

I recently had the exciting privilege of working with a missions team in the Dominican Republic, helping to establish a drama ministry for a tiny church up in the mountains. What follows are excerpts from my journal while there, in three parts.

7-28-2010 - Wednesday

Today we visited “the Hole.” The island here is volcanic in origin, and there is an extinct caldera within the city of Santiago. It was used as a garbage dump for years, and still is, though no longer with government approval. But you know how it is, when people get into a habit – garbage still finds its way into the caldera, in significant quantities, regardless of how many people currently live there, and regardless of a general disapproval. About 800 families live in the hole, with an average size of five, so about 4,000 people manage a life among open sewers, with garbage floating merrily in the creek/river that flows through it. The de facto government of the Hole is one or more drug dealers, and that gives you an idea of the main source of employment in such a situation. The drug dealer who rules the area approves of what is done for the children by GO ministries, and "has their back," so to speak. And before you react with horror that a drug dealer is a governing body, consider that in many countries around the world, corrupt governments actually interfere with charity efforts, and steal goods before they can make it to the intended recipients. I'm not saying that the government of the Dominican Republic is such a government – obviously they are not. But many in Africa are, so keep perspective.

GO ministries has built a small (by our standards) church, actually a two-story building with a chapel upstairs and a feeding center downstairs. Six days a week, they feed the children who live in the Hole – the day we visited, they feasted on rice with a spoonful of beans on the top and a small piece of chicken on the side. That's actually a nutritious, generous meal, and in my opinion, a good tasting one. These children ate joyfully and gratefully, and we were allowed to bring the color-coded bowls of food to them. Different colored bowls signified the size of portions, slightly more for the older, larger children, and the kids know which color to accept.

After lunch, as we took a tour of the area, children asked to be picked up, hugged, smiled at, and generally – well, loved. That's kind of what we all want, isn't it? We were more than glad to do that; they are beautiful children, with alert, shiny eyes and huge smiles.

Supplies for building the chapel/feeding center had to be brought down into the caldera by wheelbarrow – just what was needed for one day, because it would disappear overnight otherwise.

Most of the conditions here I expected. Toilet paper goes in a wastebasket, not into the ceramic throne, because the plumbing simply won't handle it. Don't drink the tap water, don't even get it on your toothbrush – just as in Mexico. Drink lots of water to replace what is leaving your body via perspiration, long before you're aware of a thirst reflex, lest you dehydrate. In fact, today, one of the teenagers did indeed forget to drink enough water, began throwing up, and required an IV. Hey, it happens.

So far, no culture shock for this old man. But the Hole was a whole new experience for me.

I'm making an effort to learn names, and remember things like who I talked to this morning about the scene panels. The week is young, and so I got the first such test completely, and embarrassingly, wrong. Of all people, it was Patrick who had been showing me the drawings, and I should have remembered him if only because he is Sarah's husband. But there you are. In my defense, consider that some of the names I'm supposed to keep track of go like this: Dan, Danna, Don, Dawn, Dennis, Denise.... and that's just the D's for goodness sake. :)

The people in this group are very friendly as well as tolerant of my weirdness, and I could see them becoming good friends if I lived near them. I also like the sense of humor that runs through the group like a lifeline – when the rooster next door woke us up way before dawn, some suggested that we go next door and buy it, and donate it to the ministry.

Tomorrow we begin the drama camp. That will be.. um... Thursday. So we cut some fabric for making costumes, and started working on props, and this afternoon I had a “Gare” moment, when Sarah showed me a shawl and asked if that would work for the woman in the lost coin parable. Of course it would, but it was so like the many times we had costume “parades” for Gare, our director at Backdoor theatre back in Wichita Falls. It began to sink in that I was really directing this play and taking a measure of responsibility for it. And I began to wonder if I was going to disappoint these people who are counting on me to shape it. When we finish casting the play, I think I had better make an opportunity to tell them about the concept of the “audience of one” whom they'll be performing for. (That's “God,” for those of you who are friends of mine but outside the Faith).

What I wish other drivers knew

You've heard about the TFM's. This isn't about them.

This is about your standard, government issue morons (GIM's). This is about the things they used to teach us back in high school drivers education, when you had to take a drivers test with a DPS officer in the seat beside you. Back when there was pressure. Back when they made sure you understood some basic concepts, even if you were going to forget them soon, in the excitement of having wheels to ride around town in, looking cool in your five year old Chevy.

This blog was inspired the other day by a few GIMs on Highway 6 in Fort Bend county. Maybe a couple of them on highway 288, Brazoria county. It doesn't matter - the point is that GA and I saw other drivers doing things that were dangerous and yet didn't really gain them any appreciable advantage, and it got me thinking about... why. And I realized this could be a public service. Why, if only three drivers see something they've been doing, and stop doing it, the world will be a better place.

So here are some things I wish other drivers would not do, in no particular order.

Weaving in Traffic.  The most commonly enforced law is "speeding." That's not because it's the most dangerous thing you can do (unless you're doing 120 mph or something). It's what you have to do that allows you to speed, that's so dangerous. Sure, it's the easiest ticket to give out, so it's a great source of revenue, but let's face it: if the highway is nearly empty, and the curves are banked, and your tires are good, you can roar along at 80 mph and usually get by with it. (Of course, I never do). But often the highway you're using has lots of other people on it, so that to go 80 mph in a 65 zone, you have to weave in and out of the traffic. And every time you change lanes, you're risking a collision because you didn't quite clear the car in the other lane, or maybe the other guy is in your blind spot. And no matter how careful he is, sometimes he can just decide to change lanes at the same moment you do. More importantly, when you weave, you are passing people on the right - which is dangerous in itself.

Passing on the Right. When you do this, you necessarily put yourself in the blind spot of the car you're passing. There is a moment when you are completely invisible to him. Suppose he decides to pull over on the shoulder. Or change lanes. He is perfectly within his rights to do so, and if he cannot see you in the instant he decides to do that, there will be an accident. And it will be your fault.

Tailgating. Oh, most drivers know this is a dangerous thing to do, but there is the occasional driver (usually female - sorry, girls) who doesn't understand the Law of Inertia. That law states that a body in motion tends to stay in motion, and a body at rest tends to stay at rest. More to the point, if your car is moving at 70 mph, it will tend to keep moving at 70 mph, and will fight your brakes to do that. If the car in front of you encounters any problem and has to even slow down, you could be in trouble. You are putting both of you in danger, because now he cannot safely slow down or stop should the need arise - he is now quite uncomfortable, because he knows that if something does go wrong, anything at all, he is going to have to make a split second decision whether to be hit from behind or avoid the problem in front. Be assured that he is not smiling upon you as you ride on his bumper. He is rather saying very rude things about you and possibly your mother.

Back in Drivers Ed they told you to put a car length between you and the car in front of you for every 10 mph you're moving, for exactly this reason. The theory is that if you're going 70 mph, it will take you 7 car lengths to be able to slow down your car enough to avoid a serious accident, after allowing for your reaction time and the time it takes your brakes to overcome the inertia of the car using the friction of the brake pads and the friction of your tires on the pavement. In practice, nobody does that, but to put it so that anyone can understand it, if your car is 3 feet behind the other one, and he has to slam on his brakes, you will hit him before you can even move your foot to the brake pedal. And inertia doesn't just apply to your car, though it sort of feels that way to your perception - you, too, are moving at 70 mph, and when your car suddenly slows to zero because of the crushing impact, your body is still traveling. It will only slow when it encounters your seat belt at that same 70 mph! It will hurt. If you have your arms braced on your steering wheel, which is likely, they may be broken.
I used to have a diesel rabbit back in the day. When somebody tailgated me, I pushed the pedal all the way down, because then my car spewed a cloud of black smoke on the moron behind me. Very satisfying.

Failing to slow down on a gravel road. Here's a news flash. When you see a sign that says "Slow down to prevent damage to windshields," they don't mean to prevent damage to your windshield. They're talking about the other cars, which are being pelted with the rocks your car is throwing if you go more than 20 mph on a gravel road. When you are driving on a newly graveled road, SLOW DOWN!





Dinging the other car in a parking lot. When you open your door in a parking lot, please don't just fling the door open as if there is nothing else in its arc. Open it slowly, and be mindful of the possibility of making a dent in somebody's door. It really isn't that much trouble.


Leaving your shopping cart right where it is. Come on, people. Just look around and see the places they've reserved for the carts. Nobody is asking you to roll it all the way back to the store, but I see people leaving a cart right on the line so that two spaces are blocked, when there is a return aisle less than ten steps away. This is especially bad here in the Houston area. OK, if you have a baby in the car seat, you don't want to leave him to push the cart very far from the car, and we all understand that. But ten paces? Come on.

Texting while driving. People, this is an insane thing to do. It is impossible to focus on the traffic around you, or stay in your lane, or maintain a consistent speed, or be aware of hazards - in short, to drive safely - if your attention is on the next letter your thumb needs to press so you can send your "LOL C U @ lunch" text. Do NOT do this. If you do, you deserve the accident you are going to have, and I hereby declare you to be a certified moron.

Stopping past the white line at an intersection. Back in the day, my driving instructor called this "running over a pedestrian." Sure, you don't actually run over a pedestrian when you stop over the white line, we hope, but what you are doing is parking your car on the crosswalk so that pedestrians have to step out into traffic to cross the road. You gain nothing by pulling your car into that area at a red light, unless you're in the right lane hoping to make a free right turn. Which brings me to the one thing that makes me want to get out of the car and knock on a car window...


Pulling up to be even with the car in the other lane for no @#%&^!! reason. OK, I'm planning to turn right after stopping at the red light. I stop at the white line. The other car does, too. I look both ways, and there are no pedestrians approaching. So I pull up to the second white line to see if it is clear on the left. When I do... the car to my left pulls up, too, though he cannot go until the light turns green. I sigh in frustration, and pull up a little more to see around him (he will usually be in a huge SUV). He pulls up to match me. Now I can pull up no further, and I cannot see if it's clear to go. So I have to sit there and wait for the green light, all because this moron in a huge gas guzzling SUV with three "My Kid is an Honor Student" bumper stickers is... yup, talking on his cell phone and letting his subconscious do the driving.

 So think about it. Do you do any of these things? Are you a danger to yourself and to others? Please drive safely, because I love you and want you to be able to come to my funeral when I die of old age.

UTB - Rich men in heaven?

There is a well known concept in scripture, spoken by Jesus himself, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven.

Now this tends to give the Bible student pause, because it's not really a parable, but more of a statement. So people have tried to explain this away in sermons and studies and Sunday School lessons, as best they can. It's a hard one.

One explanation is that the eye of the needle is actually the name of one of the gates entering Jerusalem. It's a rather small gate, so that a camel must kneel to get through it. Now that carries a good lesson in itself, because it means that the rich man must also kneel to get into heaven. But there are a couple of problems with this interpretation. One problem is that I can find no reliable source that says that one of the gates is named the eye of the needle. The other is that it makes the "rich man" element irrelevant, because all of us must kneel in that sense - the sense that we must submit to Christ and become spiritually humble, whether rich or poor. We're all in the same boat, there. Oh, you could argue that rich men will find it harder to humble themselves and kneel, but it doesn't really wash. It has more to do with pride than with wealth. So I can't accept this idea.

Another explanation: Jesus was saying that it is impossible for rich men to get into heaven. There is one very large problem with this interpretation. And happily, this problem also leads to the correct understanding of the verse.

"Rich" is a relative term. I first understood this on a trip to Mexico back in my younger days. My friends and I came across a man sitting on a horse. His family was with him, and they were all living in a shelter in the forest (yeah, we were caving). The horse was not his; he worked on the land, and his employer provided the horse. He was very nice, and in our conversation with him he mentioned that we were "rich."

"Oh, we aren't rich," we replied, and he smiled and said "You're here, aren't you?" And he was right. If we could afford to travel in our leisure time and visit caves in Mexico, then by his standards, we were indeed quite rich.

I pondered this concept for days afterward, and realized that "rich" is completely relative, like hot or cold. Richer than who, poorer than who else? To me, the doctor or dentist is rich. To him, the politicians are rich. To them, the successful actors in Hollywood are rich. To them... and so on.

I was considered rich by anyone who could not afford a car less than five years old, because I had a car that new. That person in turn is considered rich by someone who can't even afford the used car. Next down the ladder is the person who can't even afford the gas for it if he had that car. Then you have the homeless. Though that guy, living in a cardboard box, thinks he's at the very bottom of the food chain, he might be considered rich in the eyes of the child in India who picks over the garbage heaps trying to find food to eat.

So... who is rich, in the objective, absolute sense?

Well... there are now, and there have been for many centuries, a group of people, a class of people, who are so rich that they can't spend their money, or give it away, in quantities large enough to make any difference in their lifestyles. They have international wealth, they own banks, they are banks. No, I'm not going to address conspiracy theories or the Bildergergers, or the secret Federal Reserve people. But you and I know that there are international bankers who control most governments in the world. They control elections all over the world. Not conspiratorially, necessarily... but they do.

It was once said that controlling armies is not as powerful as controlling purse strings. There is truth in that. Much truth. And those people have some mighty big purses.

These people own our politicians partly by making money available to them for campaigning, but mostly by controlling what is said in the mass media. They own the newspapers, they own the TV networks, they own it all. You've seen it: somebody who would take his oath of office seriously is made to look like a fool the minute he gets any traction with the voters. Totally incompetent morons are made to look dignified. Scandals are simply ignored. And each of those politicians knows that his career, his wealth, his "power" can disappear overnight if he fails to please the people who can make or break him.

These rich - let's say Rich™ in order to distinguish from the merely rich - these Rich™ men have kept the wars of the world going, so that those countries will have no choice but to borrow from them the money needed to buy weapons and finance their defense. They buy the weapons from who? The Rich™ of course. So money is made from war, by selling better and better weapons, and earning interest on the loans made to buy those weapons. The research for designing those new weapons? We pay for it. People die, and die, and die - and poverty is kept as the natural state of things - in order to make the Rich™ richer.

They pour nasties into the rivers and spew poisons into the air to make themselves more money, then they tell you to vote for their political party - either one - to put a stop to it. When you do, nothing stops. They provoke hatred for the USA by setting a foreign policy in place that interferes with other nations and peoples, keeps vicious dictators and regimes in place, violates our own Constitution, and all to force a situation where they have a better environment to do "business" - and they leave us to pay for it in blood and a bloated military budget. They give us two parties to choose from, one promising war, the other peace, but what we get is what they want, every time. They don't just own the banks, they own us.

With every day that goes by, our system of limited self government becomes less limited and more out of reach of our control. The Constitutional Republic that was originally given to us by God becomes more godless with every legislative session.

In return we get jobs. We get taxes. We get enough to keep us satisfied, so we won't rise up. We stay asleep.

I'm not saying all this to inspire you to rise up, or vote differently. You won't anyway. I'm saying it to lead to this: if you were God, filled with love and mercy for your children, and you were now about to hand out justice with that mercy... would you let the Rich™ into heaven?

It is, indeed, harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

UtB: the warning - flee if you will

I've been wanting to do this for a long time, but I kept putting it off because I couldn't decide whether to create a whole new blog for it or not. I've decided to blend it in with this one, and leave it to you, the reader to skip the posts with this topic.

The danger is that some of you may be so intolerant as to abandon this entire blog (or me personally) for taking a direction that offends you. So I'm going to trust you to be at least open minded enough to stay with me, but to just avoid the posts with UtB in the headline.

So from time to time, I will take that risk, and if you leave me, that's OK. I won't leave you... I will still read your posts as I have before.

So... the topic is Understanding the Bible, or UtB. Now, if you are intractably opposed to Christianity, monotheism, Biblical literalism or any branch of Gospel doctrine - read no further in this post, but please read the other posts just to make me feel good. If you believe that Fundamentalists are a scourge unto the earth - though I am personally not a fundamentalist in the normally understood sense - then you can stick around if you want to, but you've been warned.

Not that you have to share my beliefs to be reading this. But it would help if you are at least sort of agnostic. Or maybe firmly in the camp of atheism, but tolerant of others' spirituality. Thing is, you won't get squat out of any of this if you don't at least have some curiosity about what's actually in the Bible, other than the stuff they tell you in Sunday School.

Bottom line: don't give me any grief about what I say here if it's just "You Christians are idiots, and only fools can fall for that crap." If you want to point out something I missed in my reasoning, sure, go for it. But I'm not doing this so I can argue with you.

My guidelines for understanding scripture are fairly simple.

I start with the assumption that all scripture is true in its originally written context, either literally or metaphorically. By that, I mean that scribal errors happen, and holes in the papyrus happen, and translation is often woefully inadequate. Here are some examples:

• Scribal errors: There are two history books in the Old Testament which Chronicle the history of some Kings of Israel, covering the same information. The numbers do not exactly agree. It is as if the equivalent of a decimal point had been shifted. But to me, the exact number of men in an army is not all that important.
  
• Holes: There is a letter in the New Testament in which a sentence makes no sense at all in its context (1 Peter 3:19). The narrative seems to jump to a bizarre utterance and then go back to the topic at hand. Reading it literally, the writer, in the middle of discussing something normally and intelligently, suddenly suggests that Jesus went to hell to preach to the dead and give them another chance (in conflict with the plain meaning of other passages), in a way that jars the reader if he's paying any attention to what he's reading. But if two adjacent words in the original language were to have added a letter to the end of one word, and another letter to the beginning of the next word, it would suddenly make sense, and the flow of the narrative would be normal. This suggests to me that there was a hole in the paper.
• Translation inadequacies: The English word "love," tragically for our understanding, is forced to take on duties for the Greek words philos, eros, and agape, which mean respectively "close, loving friendship" and "sexual or romantic love," and "sacrificial unconditional love." Most of the New Testament is translated from Greek, which is an astoundingly rich language, with many terms that simply do not translate easily. This comes into play when trying to choke down the Revelation of the Apocalypse, as an example.
  

I also make the radical assumption that since the Word of God is truth, either metaphorically or literally, that when I see a contradiction between two passages in the Bible, it is because I don't yet understand one or both of the passages.

I also make the assumption that my five senses, as flawed as they are, are given to me as a set of tools to make sense of the world. If what I experience in my world conflicts with the Word of God, then I have misunderstood the word of God, and I reconsider what I thought was the truth in it. Note that I do not reject the word itself - I reject my flawed understanding of it.

These assumptions have served me well. Remember that logic is a tool, and requires that you begin with some assumptions that you consider to be reliable. If your assumptions prove false, then logic requires that you abandon them rather than following a chain of reason based on bad data.

And it's OK to make leaps of logic, and consider theories that you cannot prove, and follow them to a conclusion of some kind. The important thing to remember is that if you base your conclusions on them, they are not necessarily true either. You have to keep in mind which things are assumed, which are proven, and which are merely hypothetical. This is not always easy to do. What is possible, what is proven, what is likely, what is unlikely? Confuse these and your logic will take you to nonsense. (Nonsense can be fun, and often is, but you can't plan your life around it, and you can't find truth in it. If you do find truth in nonsense, then it isn't really nonsense by definition).

So bear with me, don't worry about agreeing with me, and feel free to contradict me as long as you're respectful about it.

The first installment of UtB may not follow immediately. That will give you time to insulate yourselves against the horrors of anything I might say.

Red Tacos for a Blue Lady

I still do not miss Wichita Falls. I miss Backdoor Theatre, of course, but not the city.
But the Falls does have some things to offer, about two to be exact, which most people don't even know about. The theatre, of course, that is the single most worthwhile thing in that place, as under-supported as it may be.

The other one is Casa Mañana, downtown. I just read on Facebook that they had a fire, and so it's temporarily closed, and that is tragic. When GA and I are in WF at the same time, we always try to go to the Casa for their delicious red tacos. Don't try Googling it, because the closest you'll get is the old Freddy's on Iowa Park Road, which is closed. But you can read some comments about it here.

If you ever have an opportunity to have lunch or dinner in that wicked, drug ridden city, you must go by Casa Mañana, and order something- anything - that includes at least one red taco. When it is served to you, check the table for a little squeeze bottle with a red liquid inside. That is the red sauce. Put a dollop on one bite of the taco, and prepare to be enthralled. If you like it, put it on the whole darn thing.

Back in the day, they served them swimming in that sauce, and that is why they are called red tacos. Now that they let you put your own sauce on it, to taste, they come to your table not so red. The shell of the taco is between hard and soft, kind of thick, crunchy and flexible.

I'm not sure what's in the sauce, but I think I can taste wine, and maybe some catalina dressing. No matter, it's delicious. And you can't get it anywhere in the world except in the City that Faith Built. (They don't use that motto anymore... now it's the City of Meth Labs or something). You can find something close in Monterrey, Mexico, or in a couple of border towns, but it won't be exactly the same. Besides, the drug crime in Mexico is even worse than in Wichita Falls.

The tortilla chips are awesome, too. Pay a little extra, and order the queso. Mix a little of the salsa they bring to you, and dip those chips for a taste treat.

And it's healthy, too. OK, I'm lying on that part, but there are some pleasures that are worth destruction of your arteries. Oh, and don't ask to see the health permits. Consider this to be an adventure, and don't worry about the ambiance. It may look like a pig sty, but trust me, you've eaten in some fancy schmancy restaurants that are actually less clean.

Now I'm starting to miss that awful place. Meaning the awful city, not the Casa.

Poe little me

These days I don't do much caving. I'm not really too old to do it, but it is harder than it used to be. I'm glad I have a new interest to augment it - not replace it just yet - and it's good that it takes me to such interesting places.

Geocaching doesn't cost much after the initial investment, buying a GPS unit. And if you have an iPhone, you can even get an app that will do what your GPS would have done, only better. Well, better in the sense that you don't have to have a computer with you to find nearby caches.

As a direct result of geocaching, I have seen an oak tree on the gulf coast that is over a thousand years old. I never knew such a thing existed in Texas - and even if I had, I likely wouldn't have traveled all that way just to see it.



Most recently, I had turned down a chance to travel to Baltimore MD with GA, until I began preparing her a list of caches near where she would be staying on her business trip. When I realized that there was a cache just outside the cemetery where Edgar Allen Poe was buried, I changed my mind.


I timed it in such a way that this cache would be my 200th, a milestone cache, so it appears that way on my profile. GA and I visited the site, scored the cache, and then I recited (well, I read) Eldorado while seated next to his grave.

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Or something like that.

There is a church built over many of the graves in this cemetery, because somebody passed a silly law requiring that cemeteries must have some sort of church on the premises. No, I didn't crawl under the church to see the tombstones better.



Life is good.

Imagine analyzed

Warning! Controversy ahead!

I'm going to start out by saying that I am a fan of John Lennon. I love the man. I love his music, and I love the music of the Beatles, and I think that Mr. Lennon was a very honest, sincere man. I don't think he ever knowingly lied to himself or to us in his music. That said...

Many, if not most people, will tell you that Imagine was his signature song, the best he ever wrote. I am telling you it is not. I can think of several that are more profound and better written: In My Life, Nowhere Man, Strawberry Fields, and The Word all come easily to mind - and yes, I know that The Word was a sly dig at Christianity. It was nevertheless better written than Imagine by leaps and bounds. If we examined his catalog, I am certain that we could find a dozen more songs that stand above Imagine.

In the three decades since he released this song, I have heard dozens of people singing it reverently as if it were a profound work of art. It is not. It is bullshit set to music.

Let's look at the lyrics, and pay attention to their actual meaning, rather than the image (image is the root word of imagine).

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Seriously? Let's imagine there is no afterlife at all. We die and we become worm food. We cease to exist. When mom or dad passed away, they were gone for good, and we will never see them again. Same with our children. We all just... die. Do you really want this?

Even if there is no heaven, and those of us who believe in it are completely, tragically wrong - and I do not believe that we are wrong about that - what possible good does it do to dismiss that belief? Are we to imagine a world where we are to fear death, with no hope of anything on the other side? Please.

Imagine all the people
Living for today

I know lots of people who live for today, not bothering to plan for tomorrow. They are short-sighted fools, they are quickly impoverished and they become burdens to their families and to society. They live a sad, ignorant existence. Not that we should only live for tomorrow, mind you. Wise people live for today and for tomorrow, planning for both, and holding on to memories of the past. But to "live for today" -as advised by this song - is a huge mistake. Please, my friends, enjoy today, but live for both today and tomorrow.

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for...

No countries? OK, let's imagine that. It's what we started out with. The whole point of a country, or nation, or tribe, is that we can pool our resources and talents and cooperate for the common good and for defense. No countries? I have imagined it, and I don't like it. Now, lots and lots of countries, all with governments that are sharply limited in their power, restricted to preventing fraud or theft... that I can happily imagine. Yes, most of our dying is because of governments, kings and presidents and religious leaders... if and when they gain too much power. But if you have no countries at all, no governments at all, somebody will form one, and it will not be for the benefit of all. We are cursed with the power mad among us, and that is human nature, and so the more countries the better, all small and limited. So... let's go with Imagine no kings or powerful governments.

Now the next line:

...and no religion too

is accidentally correct. What he meant was no belief systems asking us to kill each other to advance the cause, but since most of us don't realize that "religion" - at least when organized - is not at all the same thing as spirituality, or relationship with the Creator, I still question his lyric. Religion does usually get in the way of the connection between God and his created beings on earth, and it is often a powerful tool when used to manipulate, as was done by the religious leaders who crucified Christ (and I don't mean the Jews themselves), and today by those who mislead in the world of Islam (and I don't mean the deceived in that religion, but the deceivers), and by popes and crusaders bent on commanding armies in the name of God.

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

OK. Peace would be great. But try going unarmed to achieve it. See where you get.

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

My friend, even if we all somehow agreed in the principles of this song, we would still be enslaved by our very nature. Get a roomful of people to agree that they don't need a leader. See how long they can go without one appearing anyway. I don't care how sincere they are in cooperating without one. Someone should try this for college credit.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

We don't have to imagine this. It's been tried over and over. It's called communism (or its less forceful cousin socialism), and it always results in the same thing: dependence and poverty. If you own nothing, and neither do your neighbors, then there is no point in hoping somebody will share - which they won't, because they will be fighting for every scrap of bread they can get for their hungry children. You want to see greed and hunger, man, just eliminate the concept of private property. You will have it in abundance. See Cuba. See North Korea. See Russia immediately after the revolution. See any country anywhere that abolishes property rights. You cannot have freedom without independence, and you cannot be independent without the right to own property.

Now the music is beautiful, I agree. Mr. Lennon was and is a legend. But this song is crap.

I find more sense in I Am the Walrus. Seriously. But he got that one backwards, too.

Vegas

Facebook has now improved the photo uploading feature.
This, of course, means it no longer works.
That's OK, I'll put the photo here, and then see if Facebook will let me link to it
Here we go:



Here is what I would have liked to use as my new profile picture, taken at the Improv at Harrah's. You should know that "Improv" refers to the name of the venue, not to any improvisation you might expect. We saw three very funny comedians, including a guy who used to be on Family Ties back in the day. I never once watched that show, so I didn't recognize him, but there you are.

Mud fiction

Lisa crouched behind the dead tree at the edge of the pool. She wiped mud from her face, just the mud that was too near her eyes. The rest provided good disguise. The growl echoed again, somehow hiding its direction from her ears, sounding as if it came from behind, from the front, and from both sides.

It was an evil, angry growl, but she had had enough of fear. She was defiantly still, waiting for the animal or person or thing to show itself, to grow confident enough to attack.

The growling stopped. Lisa knew that it was now considering an assault. Threats always stopped just before action. She gripped her knife, and prepared for the moment sure to come.

The frog sprang from its tiny mudhole lair, baring its fangs, and shrieking its bloodlust - and almost got its teeth into Lisa's neck. Fortunately, she was faster, always faster, and in the midst of its jump, caught it by the throat with her left hand. She tightened her thumb and finger into a small noose, choking the evil amphibian as it hissed and threatened death.

She twisted it into two pieces, silencing its hunger forever - and ate it raw. She kept the legs to sell to the next restaurant, or camp, or traveler - but devoured the rest with satisfaction. She took a long breath of the stifling, hot night air, and rinsed her hands in the swamp water - then stood up, and looked around in the dark for a limb with which to climb out of the bog. Finding none, she dug her fingers into the slightly dryer, firmer soil above the water line, and made her way to the gravelly trail.

She heard music in the distance. She made sure her knife was well hidden, and strolled happily to find whatever camp might offer an opportunity for... gain.

The moon sagged behind another cloud, and even the mosquitoes seemed afraid to get too near.

Guns

This from an article in the Washington Times:

"An important detail that is neglected in news coverage is that all the multiple-victim public shootings in America - crimes in which more than three people were killed - happened where legal concealed handguns are banned. The Wytheville post office is such a gun-free zone, not to mention that the felon who committed the crime was banned from possessing a firearm anywhere. The Oklahoma City attack was stopped because the man who stopped it could carry a concealed handgun."

Read the entire article here.