Lift Up Your Hearts!

Tired of waiting for Netflix to offer anything beyond the second season of the Duggar family's TV show (they're now on Season Six), I discovered the Duggar Family blog, which despite the name is a fan blog, not run by any of the Duggars themselves.  Apparently with the blessing of host channel TLC, this site has links to all episodes from the first specials through Season Five!

Now this discovery bodes ill for my overflowing inboxes, my piles of files and files of piles, and my endless backlog of past-due work and future projects.  I had to figure out a way to redeem the time, and I did.  Because the videos are hosted on YouTube, each episode is divided into three parts of five to ten minutes each.  Not only does this slice them into manageable portions that can be squeezed into odd bits of time here and there, but it also suggested my new exercise plan:  I only allow myself to watch while exercising.  The anticipation of watching a show gets me started, the distraction of the show keeps me going until the end, and the exercise requirement sets a limit on how much I'll watch in a day.  I'm a very wimpy exerciser.  Some people can watch a whole movie while exercising; I'm doing well to manage eight minutes at at time.

It's a lot more fun to watch the shows guilt free, knowing I'm doing something healthful and productive!

The following headlines were presented as the top three on my Orlando Sentinel news feed this morning:

Transgender woman denied drinks during  ladies night

Florida suspect accused of eating brain due in court

Mom accused of strangling 2-year-old with bra returns to court

The Sentinel is a mainstream, respected newspaper, with several Pulitzer prizes to its credit.  Apparently, supermarket tabloid fare has become the new normal.

I realized yesterday that—until September, anyway—all of our nephews are now teenagers.  And what a fine bunch of young men they are!

Here are the results of my trial of SurveyMonkey, which, by the way, I think is pretty cool and hope to find more uses for.  I have closed the survey, as there has been plenty of time to respond for those who wish to, and I'm starting to get spam.  (That's why one of the comments has been blacked out.)

I considered blacking out the name in the second comment from the bottom, but "Fasnachtschüechli" is as good an identifier.  :)  That's as close, I note, as anyone got to a Fasnacht/Carnival/Mardi Gras festival.  I missed Zurich's by a few days.  (But I did enjoy Fasnachtschüechli!)

Thanks to everyone who participated!

For six weeks in Switzerland I was the official dishwasher, and enjoyed it.  In my appliance hierarchy, a dishwasher ranks below a microwave; chiefly, I'm afraid, because without the latter it's a pain to heat up my cup of tea, which I'm forever leaving somewhere to get cold.  Nonetheless, I am inordinately thrilled by one of the first purchases we made upon my return: a Bosch dishwasher, not the top of the line but not the bottom, either.

Our old dishwasher (GE "Potscrubber 1200") didn't owe us a thing, having served us well for a quarter of a century.  The cost, spread over time and ignoring inflation, was less than $20 per year.

Does anyone expect an appliance to last 25 years anymore?  Believe it or not, the dishwasher was not our oldest appliance, either:  we've had our stove and freezer since 1977!  The freezer is as good as ever, if you don't count the cosmetic angle; the stove is limping somewhat, but all four burners, the oven, and the microwave still function well.  On the positive side, the short life of today's appliances makes one aspect of shopping easier:  if you decide you don't like what you bought, you don't have as much time to wait before getting another chance.

For the most part, I loathe shopping and the decision-making that goes with it.  Thankfully, my wonderful husband did the preliminary research while I was washing dishes overseas, so the remainder of the process was almost painless.  We went with the Bosch on our brother-in-law's recommendation—in his business, he learns a lot about such things—as well as for its German engineering.  That it was made in North Carolina is nice, too.  We bought it from Lowe's and were very pleased with the installer (who is also an amateur luthier, we discovered).  We've had the new machine for four days, and here are a few things I've noticed that are different from our previous dishwasher.

• It's much quieter.  We chose not to get the model with a delayed start option, because this is so quiet there's no need to wait to run it, even if you have company or are watching a movie.
• The cleaning process is much longer.  In this it is much like European clothes washers, which favor low water consumption over quick work.  So far it has not bothered me that it takes over two hours to wash the dishes.  There is an express (30-minute) cycle I can use if necessary.
• The default settings include an "I'm done, come unload me" set of five loud, nagging beeps, which repeat at intervals—I don't know for how long, as I've not yet been able to ignore it past two sets.  There's a way to turn the volume down, or off altogether, which I may resort to, as the beeps sound like an alarm clock, not what I want to hear at midnight when I'm deep in slumber.
• Ta-da!  I've saved the best for last:  The dishes get CLEAN!  For reasons unknown, our old dishwasher never really worked right after we returned from our two years in Boston.  We nursed it along—for years, really—trying one thing and another, with varying success, but finally threw in the towel.  Hence the new dishwasher.  Since the new models are designed to function better if you don't rinse the dishes first, I'm having to change my well-ingrained habit of getting them pretty much clean beforehand.  (To quote the Bosch rep, "It's a dishWASHER; let it do its job.")  We're still testing its limits, and marvelling at the clean dishes.

Here she is, the incredible Ashley Locheed!  On the right is some dude named Englebert Humperdinck.  (Not the composer of Hänsel und Gretel.)  The venue is in Singapore.

Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them by John Ortberg (Zondervan, 2003)

This book started off with two strikes against it, but survived.

First, it was recommended as a “must read” from someone I care about, and coupled with a feeling of time pressure, which in my oddball psyche immediately sets up a cycle of resistance followed by guilt leading to more resistance, etc.  Don’t ask me why, but I’ve been like that as long as I can remember.  It was decades before I discovered that most of the books recommended to me, as a child, by my parents were really good stories.  I was out of school before conceding that some (not all) of the books I was forced by my teachers to read were actually interesting.  And I still haven’t finished Colossians Remixed, which I started in 2005….  Stupid, I know.  It's not that I don't ever take other people's reading recommendations; many of my favorite books I learned about from someone else.  But for whatever reason, obligation + time pressure = irrational barrier.

Second, I realized immediately that it is written in a style I cannot stand, which I call “modern American evangelical pop culture,” though I suspect it’s much more widespread than that.  It’s annoying enough that magazine articles use pull quotes and sidebars, which make sustained reading difficult by distracting from the main text, but I find it inexcusable in book format.  Ditto the dumbed-down writing, and the highly informal style, more appropriate for blogs than for books.

Despite these annoyances, I finished the book and am glad I read it.  The first hurdle was easy to overcome because I was reading a borrowed book with a fixed return deadline.  My breakthrough with the second was a stunning realization that I hope will aid me in appreciating more books written in this (all too common) style.

The revelation came when someone commented that popular speakers who want to write books need especially good editors, because what works well in a talk often translates poorly into written form.  John Ortberg, as it turns out, is a pastor.  A preacher, not a writer.  And he could have used a better editor.

So I changed my attitude.  Instead of strictly reading the book, I imagined that I was listening to a TED talk.  Voilà!   Suddenly the inane asides drew a laugh, the offensive jokes lost much of their sting, and the casual style seemed more natural.

Finally able to concentrate on the content of the book, I was able to finish and to appreciate it.  I’m not as enthusiastic as the person who recommended it to me, but Ortberg definitely has some good ideas about friendship, community, and our expectations.  Fortunately, not having the book with me, I can’t illuminate the point with quotations.  I say “fortunately” because there are several I would be tempted to brandish with a “See?  See?  He agrees with me!”  Which is not usually a productive form of communication.

Everybody’s Normal is not a great book.  But it could be a valuable book study for a group desiring to take their community life beyond the surface level.  For individuals, too—but I think greater benefit would accrue in a situation where the chapters (or even paragraphs) could be the focus of discussion.

Today's Stone Soup:

Less on the Scrabble side, more on the Boggle side—when you have meals to fix and children to tend, long games don't work well—but this is my family!  I don't know Words with Friends; can anyone enlighten me?

This survey has no purpose, other than to let me try out SurveyMonkey.

There's supposed to be an embedded survey below. [Update:  there isn't.]  If not, you can (supposedly) participate by clicking on this link:  Take our Lenten Practices Survey now.

Which is worse, losing your technical edge, or losing your technical edge and pretending you didn't?

When I was young, "Made in Japan" implied useless, cheap, junky.  I'm thrilled that it now means quite the opposite.  Excellence is a good thing, and I see no reason to mourn when other countries compete at our level or even best us in some areas.  A little competition keeps us on our toes.

But why does it take innovations from Japan so long to cross the Pacific?

When Janet lived and worked in Japan for a year, she noted that home computers were much less common than in America.  I was surprised this was the case for such an advanced nation, but then again, most people don't have clothes dryers there, either.  What did surprise me was to learn that in this Japan was not behind America, but ahead.  Most Japanese did not need personal computers because they did nearly everything they wanted to on their mobile phones.  They accessed the Internet; they paid their bills; they read and composed their e-mails.  This was in 2005, years before smartphones took America by storm.

Then there were the toilets.  Ever since we visited Janet in Japan I have been wondering why Home Depot doesn't sell Japanese toilets.  Now, finally, the National Association of Home Builders includes one in this years showcase home.  But why does this review from the Orlando Sentinel pretend it's a new, American invention?

I cannot get the toilet in the master bath out of my mind. Kohler clearly has some smart woman on its design team, because, ladies, this commode is for you.

At the touch of a wall-mounted LED pad that looks like an iPhone, you can auto-magically raise and lower the lid without touching it. That right there is better than a European vacation. And you can heat the seat (men, you will never understand), and play music. Not only that, this smart piece of plumbing sprays, dries and has adjustable flushing. From what I can tell, this toilet of tomorrow does everything but send a urine sample to the lab.

I"m glad American companies are catching on.  But what took them so long?  And why do we pretend things are new and amazing when they've been around elsewhere for years?

From this distance, I find it difficult to remember what our children did when.  But today I delved back into past diaries, looking for information on when it was we bought our current dishwasher.  (More on that in a later post.)  Here is something amusing I found:

[Today] Janet had her kindergarten registration.  [The first grade aide] filled out [her] card, and when Janet not only knew her phone number and address with zip code, but also spelled "Wightman" for her, she said, "I guess you're ready for kindergarten!"

I had not remembered that Janet could spell her last name before going to kindergarten, I but I guess that when you have a name that everyone misspells, you learn to spell it early.  She would have heard her parents answering the "What is your name?" question enough times that for all I know she thought her name was really "Janet Wightman W-I-G-H-T-M-A-N"!

I can't be griping all the time.  Here's some great news for homeschoolers—and others who don't fit in the standard school model—who have suffered, as we did, from age discrimination by community colleges.  Here are some excerpts from the encouraging story in tomorrow's Orlando Sentinel.  (I know.  Don't ask me why a column dated February 19 is available on the 18th, but it is.)

Two years ago, [Lake-Sumter Community College] refused to admit as a dual-enrollment student a then-12-year-old Center Hill girl who was more than academically qualified to study at the two-year community college.  Instead of enthusiastically embracing Anastasia Megan, a brilliant young woman home-schooled by her parents, college administrators took the most backward stance imaginable and fought to keep her out.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in Atlanta, to whom Annie's family complained, recently closed the matter after LSCC eliminated its age requirement, trained employees to stop discriminating and offered Annie a chance to apply.

However, by the time LSCC offered to consider Annie in July 2011, it was clear that her course of study already had outstripped what the community college could provide.   Starting in August, Annie, now 14, and another of the triplets, her brother Zigmund, will attend Queens University in Ontario, Canada. She was among 300 successful applicants to the college of business and commerce from a field of 5,000. ... Annie's brother is entering the university's engineering school (Annie's second choice), and the third triplet, Elizabeth, is enrolled in a high-school International Baccalaureate program.

[S]uch a ruling by the Office for Civil Rights is likely to have an effect on community colleges statewide. It's all about access in community colleges, and that's the way it ought to be.  The Megan family neither asked for nor received a nickel in damages. The Megans didn't hire a lawyer.  LSCC, however, spent about $12,000 on attorney fees fighting to discriminate against a kid whose achievements were remarkable.  Asked why the college ever would fight to keep any student out, [College President Charles Mojock] said: "That was then, and this is now. We live and learn too."

After six nephews, four grandsons, and 29 years, we once again have two little girls who fit these adorable outfits.  Picture credit for the second goes to Heather and Jon Daley; the first is scanned from an old, washed out Polaroid-style print, but you get the idea.

Janet and Heather, December 1982

Joy and Faith, January 2012

Brave Companions:  Portraits in History by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster, 1992)

I need to remember to read more from David McCullough.  The man can write.

Brave Companions deserves a long, thoughtful review.  I could write a blog post on any and all of these fourteen portraits (thirteen of people, one of a city) and three additional essays.  McCullough draws stunning pictures of people—famous and unknown, artists and aviators, writers and scientists—whose actions and personalities made (and are making) history.

But I barely had time to read the book, let alone write about it, and I must now return it to its rightful owner.  If you, however, find yourself with sufficient time to enjoy a short book (232 pages) that's easy to read in short bursts (except that you won't want to put it down), you can't go wrong with Brave Companions.

I'd read it for the writing alone; the history, personality, and adventures are a bonus.

On Monday, Vivienne received the blessing of the Swiss government; today we travelled to the American Embassy in Bern for a simlar benediction from the United States.  As I did when Joseph was born, I came along to hold diaper bags and other items not allowed in the embassy, which includes purses (or bags of any sort) and cell phones (or electronics of any sort).  Fortunately, winter coats were acceptable, as were a couple of diapers stuffed in the pockets.

Really, it's a very un-welcoming experience, a visit to this little bit of American soil in Switzerland.  Embarrassing, when you think of the impression we are making on others.  (Okay, so Hollywood does a worse job, but at least they're not official.)  There is no waiting room, unless you count the small antechamber outside, where those waiting in line are subjected to the summer's heat or winter's cold—though a roof provides some protection from rain, if it isn't too windy.

But we were prepared.  Joseph and I were well-dressed, and had the stroller with us.  As soon as Vivienne and her parents passed through the security check, he and I started out on our adventure.

Last year I was alone, and spent most of the waiting time in a cafe, drinking tea and writing, because that was more fun than exploring the city in a downpour.  With the temperature in the mid-teens (Fahrenheit) there was no risk of rain today—though we did have light snow, so Joseph and I headed up the hill to the more famous parts of Bern, including the Bundeshaus (Swiss equivalent of our White House and Capitol Building) and the Zytglogge (medieval clock tower).

The shops of Marktgasse were much as I remembered them: hideously expensive and filled with things I wouldn't want to buy anyway.  But we did stop a Coop City to look at t-shirts, buying nothing because they were a third more expensive than similar shirts in Luzern.  Joseph, on the other hand, thought Marktgasse was great, because of the heavy tram traffic.  He never uttered a word of complaint about the bitter cold, but any time I turned the stroller away from a passing tram, I heard about it!

Did I mention that it was c-o-l-d?  Here's the fountain at which we refilled our water bottles.  (As usual, click on the pictures for a larger view.)

After we had been gone over an hour, I thought it time to wend our way back to the Embassy.  Here's a park we passed through—and the same park a year and a half ago, in the summer.

When we arrived back at the Embassy, I stopped on the street, hesitating to bring the stroller up into the (semi-) sheltered area, because we had no official business there.  But one of the security guards recognized us, and told us to come on up, because it was too cold to wait on the street.  Of course, it would have been really nice if he had invited us inside, but that was beyond his power, and I was grateful enough to be sheltered from the wind.

Less than 10 minutes later, the new American citizen was back on Swiss soil, and our adventure ended, seven hours after it began, with some very welcome hot cocoa at home.

I've enjoyed all my visits to Bern, but may I suggest that the next baby be born in the spring or in the fall?