I'm tired and have too much to do. Therefore, I'm procrastinating. I'm putting our guesses about Little Baby Daley's arrival here where it's easy to update as they come in.
JW: September 1, 11:00 p.m., girl, 8 lbs. 5 oz.
DL: September 2, boy, 10 lbs. 2 oz., 22 in.
JMD: September 3, 3:00 p.m., 9 lbs. 15 oz, 21.5 inches.
PW: September 4, 3:00 a.m., girl, 7lbs. 12oz.
SS: September 4, 19:56, boy, 4210 grams, 51 cm (7:56 p.m., 9 lbs. 4.5 oz., 20 in.)
LW: September 5, girl, 8 lbs. 8 oz.
HD: September 6, 6:00 a.m., 9lbs. 8 oz.
SL: September 6, 9:06 p.m., boy, 9 lbs. 6 oz.
NA: September 9, boy, 9 lbs. 9 oz.
More to come.Okay, I'm being really lazy today and merely posting a link to someone else's post, but there are too many other things to attend to, and John C. Wright has another good one: Albino Jesuit Assassins ... IN SPAAACE! I mean, really...with a title like that....
Anyway, enjoy! I have to get on with life.John Stackhouse has another perspicacious post, this time on the homogenization of music in contemporary churches. I know nothing about the "white gospel" style he laments in Disappearing (Musical) Languages but his experience strikes a sympathetic chord, since my musical "mother tongue" for worship is equally endangered.
That's much more encouraging than being told to "get over it" and learn to like the new "languages." It's helps to realize that when it comes to church worship music I am a Native American child forced to speak only English in school, a deaf child forbidden to sign, or a Scot required to use the language of his conquerors. Prudence tells me the value of learning the dominant tongue, but a higher wisdom calls me to preserve that which is in danger of perishing. Call it the genealogical impulse.[T]he Welsh, among others, would tell us to keep alive the languages we love. Those who still speak them must take them up as sacred causes, maintaining these vital ways of perceiving and articulating the world without which humanity is diminished.
It's been harder than I thought to write the "why I blog" post that's been on my backlog for ages. So I'm just going to do it.
I suppose my blog can most charitably be called "eclectic." Some blogs are political, some personal journals, some accumulate interesting articles and news stories, some keep far-flung families in contact, some are formed around a specific cause or issue. I aim to be jack-of-all-trades, and if that means being master of none, I see nothing wrong with that. It depends on your audience. Five-star restaurants require highly-trained and gifted chefs, but I'd take my mother's home cooking and the family dinner table any day. Fine. But why? Why do I put so much time and effort into blogging? What do I hope to accomplish? (More)Last night our neighbors called to ask if we had noticed a terrible odor. They had just returned home after a few hours away and smelled something awful as soon as got out of the car; it was so strong they couldn't tell if it was widespread or localized. We stepped outside of our house and smelled no more than the normal hot-and-humid Florida vegetation smells.
Until we approached their house, that is. We were then hit with what was, indeed, a foul odor. But not, I was certain, a what-died-in-here? odor; it was something chemical rather than biological. Don't get started on the truth that biology is also chemistry; I'd say it was an inorganic smell rather than organic, but that's not true either. I know what I meant, and you would, too, if you'd smelled it. (More)That's what I wrote in a comment on a previous post. Now I've learned that I'm not the only one to notice the half-generational difference. Apparently those born between 1954 and 1965 are now being differentiated from the rest of us Baby Boomers by their own designation: Generation Jones. I don't set much store by this idea of naming generations; as with many attempts to classify people, I believe individual characteristics are more important than mere demographics. Still, patterns are interesting, especially when they relate to something I've observed myself.I've often noted that there is a significant generation gap between my siblings and me; even seven years makes a big difference. Not that it keeps us from being a closely-knit and loving family, but it's noticeable. Although for a number of reasons my upbringing was somewhat different from theirs, that's not what I'm talking about, but rather changes in the surrounding culture and "conventional wisdom" between my formative years and theirs. Perhaps change always happens this way, and I only noticed it because there is that half-generation gap between us. It does serve as an interesting bridge between our generation and that of our children. It was a bit of a shock when I realized that certain customs...that our children thought of as "the way it's done" were those of my siblings' era, and quite different from my own views of "normal."
My to-do list is too long for me to indulge much in long stories or philosophical musings, so today you get just plain fun. Sometimes I think I'm the last person in the world to see things that have apparently been circulating on the Internet for years, but just in case I'm only the second-to-last, don't miss this.
Be sure to check out Matt's site for more details and other videos. You know how many teenaged boys dream of getting paid to play and design video games? Well, Matt had that dream job, and chucked it over for this. And I thought Janet was good at getting paid to travel.
(Parental advisory note: Once you get past the name of the site, which only matters if you can read, the video is perfectly safe and enjoyable for all ages. At least this one is; I haven't checked them all. See above comment about time limitations.)We celebrated my birthday with a three-way phone call (Florida/Pittsburgh/Basel), good wishes from family and friends, and a dinner at the Kobé Japanese Steakhouse. We'd been to the Kobé before, but that was probably 15 years ago. Their teppanyaki service doesn't remind me in the least of our experiences in Japan, but that doesn't mean the food wasn't good. We didn't even spring for the $80 Wagyu beef; the $18 sirloin was quite delicious enough. And the $15 birthday bribe was worth a bit of mild embarrassment.
Today was a bigger birthday, with a slightly bigger celebration. For our part, we once again joined the Greater Geneva Grande Award Marching Band for Geneva, Florida's genuine, old-fashioned, small-town Independence Day celebration, the only Independence Day parade in Central Florida to occur on July 4th. I love Geneva's celebration—I hope that it is not a bad sign that the cow-chip toss game used plastic "chips" this year—and I love the band even more. It was 15 years ago that we first marched with some of those great folks! (More)For a monolingual person, I have an inordinate love of languages. Not only is multi-lingualism increasingly important in today's world, but it does wonderful things for the brain—from increased brain growth in babies to decreased dementia in the elderly. I wish the great resources available for teaching young children another language had been around when our kids were little, and I wish I had more aggressively pursued what there was. Be that as it may, I am only a language dilettante, enjoying learning a few phrases of Japanese before our trip there, brushing up on my minimal high school French, and listening to the language CDs from the Hippo Family Clubs. I wish I were multi-lingual, but face the reality that at my age it just isn't going to happen.
Nonetheless, I should be able to learn, if I put the time and effort into it, enough of a language to get along reasonably well with basic, necessary communication. Which brings me to the question of why I find myself attracted to almost any language other than the two that would be of the most immediate practical use to learn: Spanish and German. (More)I shouldn't be surprised when what is said in comic strips mirrors opinions expressed by essayists in more serious venues. After all, both get their inspiration from the same human condition, and humor is an efficient and effective way to make a point. Nonetheless, I always take note when I hear the same message from widely divergent sources, as happened when I read in close succession Francis Schaeffer's The God Who Is There and John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. When an evangelical Protestant theologian living in Switzerland and a self-described lapsed Catholic schoolteacher from Pittsburgh, writing on issues that apparently differ markedly, make the same historical and philosophical point, perhaps I had better listen.
The conjunction of Mallard Fillmore and Mike Thomas, about which I wrote yesterday, is less portentous, perhaps, but today's has signficant social and philosophical implications. (More)As I wrote earlier, one important idea I took from Marcus Buckingham's The One Thing You Need to Know is the value of expending more energy in our areas of strength than in where we are weak. Self-evident? Maybe, but in practice we often tend to do the opposite.
John Stackhouse's review of another Buckingham book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, inspired me to reserve it at our library. Although the "I gotta be me" philosophy taken to extremes can lead to unwholesome, selfish attitudes and dereliction of duty, we err in the other direction by not recognizing that God made us who we are and not someone else for a reason. To ignore that design is not only to insult our Creator, but also to risk missing out on the good he would do to and through us. (More)In an earlier post on the Lisbon Treaty, I stated
I"m watching, and here's an example I saw today. The U. S. Supreme Court has nullified a Louisiana law allowing for a sentence of the death penalty following conviction for the rape of a child under 12. (More)[I]n the U.S. we have seen state laws gradually subsumed more and more by national regulation, so that fleeing to Pennsylvania from a repressive law in New York is not as easy as it once was. I'm not saying this is always bad, but it can be, and bears watching.
The role of joking in the way we deal with one another is a concern of mine, as I've said before. Thanks to Groshlink I've found another excellent essay on the topic, The Gospel and Humor by Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Unfortunately, the article is in PDF format, and you have to weave amongst some other articles to read it, but it's worthwhile. To get you started—and to give those who won't follow the link a taste of what he says—here are some excerpts. (More)
