Lift Up Your Hearts!

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years:  What I Learned by Editing My Life by Donald Miller (Thomas Nelson, 2009)

I started (mentally) writing this review when only a few pages into the book.  The review began something like this:

Given which of us is the famous author and which is not, it would not be wise to say Donald Miller can't write.  But what is definitively true is that, whether he can or not, he doesn't write in a style that I enjoy reading.  It's narcissistic, informal bordering on stream-of-consciousness and slangy bordering on vulgar.  Considering the endorsements from big-name Christians (Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Gary Haugen, Max Lucado) I was expecting a little less nonchalance about casual sex, drug use, smoking, and nihilism.  And it jumps around like one of those modern movies where you don't know what's real and what's not, what's then and what's now.

Before I met the filmmaker guys, I didn't know very much about making movies.  You don't think about it when you're watching a movie, but there's a whole world of work involved in making the thing happen.  People have to write the story, which can take years; then raise a bunch of money, hire some actors, get a caterer so everybody can eat, rent a million miles of extension cords, and shoot the thing.  Then it usually goes straight to DVD.  It's a crap job....

But I like movies.  There's something about a good story that helps me escape.  I used to go to movies all the time just to clear my head.  If it was a good movie, the experience felt like somebody was resetting a compass in my brain so I could feel what was important in life and what wasn't.  I'd sit about ten rows back, in the middle, and shovel sugar into my mouth until my brain went numb....

I'd go to the movies because for an hour or so I could forget about real life.  In a movie, the world faded away and all that mattered was whether the hobbit destroyed the ring or the dog made it home before the circus people could use him as a horse for their abusive monkey.

Really, how much of that can a reader be expected to take?  But there's a reason I finish a book before publishing the review.  It gets much better, mostly because Miller eventually starts focusing on things other than himself. (More)

Photo credit Grammy (probably)

Happier at Home:  Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life by Gretchen Rubin (Crown Archetype, 2012)

Before I finished The Happiness Project, I knew I wanted to read its sequel.  You have to admire a person who can spend a year concentrating on her own happiness and then write a best-selling book about it.  Twice.  Seriously, I do admire Gretchen Rubin, whose simple-yet-profound ideas are inspirational and potentially life-changing, as I've found those of Don Aslett, Stephen Covey, Malcolm Gladwell, Mary Pride, David Allen, Marla Cilley, John Holt, Glenn Doman and others in my eclectic tribe of inspirational writers.  If you're looking for formulas and specific techniques, however, you won't find them here.  I read books like this for ideas and inspiration, preferring to throw them all into the mix of my thoughts and see what precipitates.  As Rubin herself says, just because something is fun for someone else doesn’t mean it’s fun for you.  But behind her approach to maximizing happiness are principles that are as universal as her applications are specific.

Enough review; on to the quotes! (More)

Earthen Vessels:  Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith by Matthew Lee Anderson (Bethany House, 2011)

It took me much too long to read this book, especially considering I had been looking forward to it.  Because the Incarnation—the taking on of human flesh by God, the creator and sustainer of the universe—Christmas!—is a critical distinctive of Christianity, our human bodies should matter to our faith.  The Church must not dishonor that which God himself honors so highly.  Yet it is all too easy to fall into the common belief that who we "really" are is something unrelated to our physical form.  Thus a particularly Christian look at the body should make an instructive and informative book.

Unfortunately, Anderson does not deliver, at least not for me.    I was expecting a book that would address the Church as a whole, but Earthen Vessels is specifically aimed at a very narrowly-defined Evangelical (uppercase E), American subdivision.  Rather than being a book for all Christians, much too much ink is spent trying to reassure those whom "talking about Lent, Advent, and other seasons makes ... nervous."  For them, there is much of substance in Anderson's work.  But I imagine Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, mainline Presbyterians, and many others gritting their teeth and saying, "All right, already!  Can we get past Step 1, please?"  This is particularly frustrating because the other major flaw of the book is its attempt to cover too much ground.  Consumerism, sexuality, tattoos, cremation, vampires, the Sabbath, worship, yoga ... it's too much.  Especially for a book of only 231 pages.

On top of it all, I'm always frustrated with writers who assume their readers are conversant with what's shown on television.  "We are a nation of people who want to be vampires like Edward Cullen."  [Anderson does have the courtesy to explain that Edward Cullen is a character on an American TV show called Twilight.]  Excuse me?  Never in my weirdest dreams have I desired to be a vampire.  I know nothing about the "zombie apocalypse" and care less.  My car does not feature "Counting Crows blaring on the radio."  Until I looked it up, I had no idea whether Counting Crows was a music group, a song, or a talk-show host.  Assumptions such as these lead me to wonder if Earthen Vessels has anything at all to say to me:  If his diagnosis is so obviously wrong, why should I trust his prescription?

And why, I wonder, do I find more that speaks to me in books written 50, 100, 500, or 2000 years ago than I do in many of today's writings?

My own dissatisfaction, however, should not condemn the book in the eyes of those who like to count crows, believe in the undead, and/or are made nervous by the mention of Lent.  Anderson's logic is not always clear, let alone faultless, but he has some good ideas and puts many interesting and important points on the table for discussion. (More)

I appear to be in the mood for quick posts sharing other people's brilliance.  They're much more entertaining than what I can come up with on my own at the moment.  Try me again after Li'l Writer Guy is revived by a week with four creative and lively grandchildren.  :)

This gem is from thduggie's blog, the work of a creative and lively son-in-law.  Thanks, Stephan!

Once again, Eric Schultz (The Occasional CEO) has come up with just the right note.  My list of his serious posts I want to share and comment on grows longer, but this one popped right to the top.  So true, so true.

As I said in a comment to his post, it reminded me of a Christmas scene from 2003:  Like this one, it's a living room setting with five people. Three are busy with computers on their laps. (This was almost 10 years ago: no iPhones, no iPads.) The fourth is also intently focussed, not on a computer screen but on the fifth, a newborn baby. No, not that newborn baby, but I did title the picture, We Three Nerds.  Oh, wait.  This is my own blog; I can include the picture itself.

Sorry it's such a lousy picture.  Our camera at the time was an old Sony Mavica, at one time high tech, but it created small files and saved them to a 3.5 inch floppy disk, which couldn't hold even one picture from my present (inexpensive, Kodak) camera.

Don't you love what you can do with statistics and charts?  This chart is from a great article in the New England Journal of Medicine:  Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates.  For a less scholarly report on the data, see this Reuters article.

The article begins like this.

Dietary flavonoids, abundant in plant-based foods, have been shown to improve cognitive function. Specifically, a reduction in the risk of dementia, enhanced performance on some cognitive tests, and improved cognitive function in elderly patients with mild impairment have been associated with a regular intake of flavonoids. A subclass of flavonoids called flavanols, which are widely present in cocoa, green tea, red wine, and some fruits, seems to be effective in slowing down or even reversing the reductions in cognitive performance that occur with aging.

One day, while apparently bored in a Kathmandu hotel room—I'm guessing it was night, or cloudy—the author, Franz H. Messerli, began to think.

Since chocolate consumption could hypothetically improve cognitive function not only in individuals but also in whole populations, I wondered whether there would be a correlation between a country's level of chocolate consumption and its population's cognitive function. To my knowledge, no data on overall national cognitive function are publicly available. Conceivably, however, the total number of Nobel laureates per capita could serve as a surrogate end point reflecting the proportion with superior cognitive function and thereby give us some measure of the overall cognitive function of a given country.

The results astonished him, though perhaps he should not be surprised:  he is Swiss.

There was a close, significant linear correlation (r=0.791, P<0.0001) between chocolate consumption per capita and the number of Nobel laureates per 10 million persons in a total of 23 countries.  When recalculated with the exclusion of Sweden, the correlation coefficient increased to 0.862. Switzerland was the top performer in terms of both the number of Nobel laureates and chocolate consumption.  [emphasis mine]

The only possible outlier ... seems to be Sweden. Given its per capita chocolate consumption of 6.4 kg per year, we would predict that Sweden should have produced a total of about 14 Nobel laureates, yet we observe 32. Considering that in this instance the observed number exceeds the expected number by a factor of more than 2, one cannot quite escape the notion that either the Nobel Committee in Stockholm has some inherent patriotic bias when assessing the candidates for these awards or, perhaps, that the Swedes are particularly sensitive to chocolate, and even minuscule amounts greatly enhance their cognition.

Which perhaps explains why I need to eat more chocolate than Porter does, he being 1/4 Swedish.

Dr. Messerli reports regular daily chocolate consumption, mostly but not exclusively in the form of Lindt's dark varieties.

The above quotations were all from the NEJM article; the final ones from Reuters.

Messerli ... said that despite the tongue-in-cheek tone, he does believe chocolate has real health effects—although people should stay away from the sweeter kinds.

"[D]ark chocolate is the way to go. It's one thing if you want like a medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize, ok, but if you want a physics Nobel Prize it pretty much has got to be dark chocolate."

In case you were wondering, the date on Messerli's article is October 10, 2012.  I guess they couldn't wait six more months.

We're now into the fourth season of Murdoch Mysteries, and I'm sorry that will be our last season for a while, unless we move to Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, or some other place in DVD Region Code Four.  (I've been an anti-fan of region codes since 2006, when we discovered we couldn't watch our Japanese copy of Swing Girls.)

My new respect for Murdoch Mysteries may have something to do with my disappointment on Except the Dying, the first book of the series on which the TV show is based.  Now that I know I like the show's characters and approach better than the book's, I'm happier with it.  But it's also true that Season Four toned down the love affair, and though the 21st century social attitudes are still there, so far they haven't been as in-your-face.  Most of all, either it has taken a less-serious turn, or I have finally recognized that it's not intended to be an accurate portrayal of late nineteenth century Toronto—or anyplace else.  In its use of of modern technology it is more like the old TV show The Wild, Wild West, or maybe A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, though it's been a long time since I've seen the one or read the other, so my memory may not be quite accurate.

In any case, I'm finding easier to take the show for what it is, and enjoy it.  Especially the way it laughs at its own anticipate-the-future tricks.  While Murdoch invents gadgets to help catch criminals, George Crabtree—still my favorite character by far—is always seeing a different side.  Murdoch builds a complicated house model to help him picture the movements of the suspects, complete with conservatory, library, hall, potential weapons, and a token for each person.  All he sees is the crime, but Crabtree recognizes the potential for a great new board game.

Scaling Down:  Living Large in a Smaller Space by Judi Culbertson and Marj Decker (Rodale, 2005)

Prepare NOW; don't let the headache of dealing with your estate be your children's last, vivid, and painful memory of their parents.

A good friend has recently been embroiled in our generation's nightmare:  moving her widowed mother out of her house-of-many-years and into assisted living, then having to clear out the house and sell it.  (Thank you, Dad, for having made the process as easy as it gets, and to all my siblings for staying friends and even having some fun through it all.)  Scaling Down is one of two books she recommended; it was available in our library, so I decided to check it out.

I wasn't expecting much, having already dealt with that heart- and headache.  And if you're like me, you'll almost give up in the first chapter, where you're asked to write a "mission statement."  But hang in there; the book's about a lot more than selling the old homestead, and you can easily ignore the annoying bits.  Anyone who is merging two households, moving into a smaller space—or moving, period—fending off sibling rivalry over Grandpa's Kitchenaid mixer, or simply feeling overwhelmed by "stuff," can benefit from the book's suggestions.

One thing that differentiates Scaling Down from other decluttering books is the authors' sympathy for the emotional complications attached to our belongings. Although they are very practical and sometimes in my judgement a little too harsh in their methods, they do provide some helpful ideas for keeping the feeling and/or memory without keeping everything.  Collectors, for example, are not asked to give up their collections, but to be wiser in their collecting:  financing quality by selling off quantity.

The chapter headings:

• How Did We Get Here?
• I Need to Do This But...
• But Aunt Winnie Gave It to Me!
• Collaring the Paper Tiger
• The Tyranny of Collections
• The Secret Live of Clothing
• Clearing Out Your Family Home
• Your Cuisinart or Mine?
• Moving in a Hurry
• The Saga of the Rain Bonnets
• Finding Good Homes [for your stuff]
• "This is Your Life!"
• Shop Till You Drop ... Out
• How to Keep from Cluttering Your New Place
• Starting a New Adventure
• Using Your Space for You

Did you catch "How to Keep from Cluttering Your New Place"?  I know from painful experience that without the exercise of an iron will, bigger refrigerators, bigger closets, and bigger homes all soon become just as crowded as the smaller counterparts they replaced.

Another surprising, but potentially life-changing idea is expressed by the last chapter:  Using your space for you.  Actually, it's a major theme throughout the book:  You stuff, from clothes to cupboards to collectibles, should be what pleases you, what makes you feel comfortable and happy, what works for the vision you have of what your home should be.  Quantity rarely provides that, but we keep buying things for all the wrong reasons, having never taken the time and effort to discover what we really like.  I suppose that seems obvious, but there are a lot of things I keep for no reason other than that I have them, and they work.  We still have the kitchen wallpaper that was there when we moved in, even though I'd never have chosen it out of a wallpaper book.  I don't think that's all bad—and I still dread the idea of even looking through a wallpaper book, let alone tearing up my kitchen—but the authors do have a point.  And I do like their answer to this objection:

"I don't want to make any changes that would hurt my home's resale value."

This statement strikes us as sad.  It is similar to someone buying a new car, then saying, "I'm only going to drive it when my other car is in the shop, because I want to keep the mileage low for the trade-in." That attitude makes you the caretaker of the property, keeping it nice for some future owner, instead of behaving like it's yours.  If you've always dreamed of a vaulted-ceiling library, and your garage is the perfect place to create one, why not do so?  You'll have years of pleasure, and if you or your heirs get a little less because it's too nice to park a car in, your satisfaction is worth the difference.  Most of the time individualizing a space actually adds to the selling price.  But even if it doesn't, don't sell yourself short.

I won't be buying the book, at least not yet.  But I'll keep it in the back of my mind, and might get it out again when I need to be re-inspired.  Not only is an organized, uncluttered home one of the best legacies we can leave our heirs, it also makes life a lot nicer in the meantime.

Recently, I bought a new 500GB hard drive from Western Digital.  This despite the fact that the salesman told me external drives will soon be a thing of the past.  All will be in The Cloud.  I'm all for cloud storage, but I still like to have some of my data on a drive I can hold in my hand.

I still read books, too.  Paper ones.

But back to the matter at hand. 

What you see is the entirety of the instructions for installing the drive.  And it really was that simple:  I plugged one end of the cord into the drive and the other into a USB port on the computer; Windows 7 recognized the device, installed the drivers, and almost before I could blink, it was ready to go.  I wasn't expecting anything less; what made the experience noteworthy was subsequently reading the somewhat different instructions located in the instruction manual—which is a pdf located on the drive itself.  They begin as follows:

1. Turn on your computer.
2. Connect the My Passport drive to your computer as shown in Figure 3.
3. If a Found New Hardware screen appears, click Cancel to close it.  The WD SmartWare software that is on the drive installs the proper driver for your My Passport drive.

They continue with instructions for making that installation happen.  But as should have been obvious to the manual-writers, the "Found New Hardware" screen isn't up long enough to cancel it.  And in any case, you can't read the instructions to cancel the installation until after you've finished the installation.

I ignored it all, and the drive works fine.

H/T Stephan.

or ?

I keep writing about our new church while the main post of introduction is still rambling about in my head.  But so it goes sometimes.

Today we celebrated Feast of Saint Francis with the Blessing of the Animals.  Although we've been in several churches that observe this practice, this is the first in which the blessing was done during the service, and thus the first we've experienced.  (It's technically not true that we have no pets, but I declined to bring our uncountable number of worms—well over 2000, I believe, and they don't stay still enough to count; plus, they keep hatching.)

For the occasion, we combined our two services into one, and held it outdoors in the warm (but not too hot) Florida sunshine.  The rest of the service was a normal, Episcopal, mostly Rite II worship service.  The Blessing of the Animals occurred after the Passing of the Peace and before the Eucharist.  (And in case you were wondering, after touching all those animals, the priests did wash their hands before serving Communion.)

By far the majority of the beasts were dogs, but I also saw cats and rats (but no elephants) and birds, including an owl (barn owl, I think, but I didn't ask), which came with someone who works at a birds of prey rescue center.  And, there was ... a snake.  A sweet little corn snake, and not only did both priests handle it, one let it climb around over his neck.  So yes, we are now attending a church of snake handlers. 

Through the magic of YouTube I can also include a record, for myself if no one else, of the two anthems we sang.  Not of us singing them, however.

First,  Praise His Holy Name by Keith Hampton.

[Update 10/11/2019.  I'm pretty sure there was orginally more post between this and the final paragraph, but it seems to have disappeared.]

And those who know me well will get an inkling of why I love this church when I say that I happened to be standing right in front of the speaker (this being an outdoor service, we relied on an electronic keyboard for accompaniment), and while I would rather have not been so close, it was bearable, even without earplugs, unlike many of my previous experiences.

We watched the first half of the PBS documentary Half the Sky last night.  (Quarter the Sky?)  The conclusion is tonight.  I highly recommend it, but not for grandchildren.  Here's the trailer.

The shows will be available for one week at PBS video (maybe not in Europe, sorry).  Here is the link for Part 1.  I'll update with Part 2 when it is released, which should be tomorrow.  And here's Part 2.

Note on flu shots:  This year they're pushing the intradermal shot.  Personally, I think it's because they can use a lower dose, and therefore make the supply go farther.  But they're hyping it as less painful ("90% smaller needle").  No matter how many times I told him needles don't bother me ("I gave blood yesterday!"), the nurse practitioner who administered the shot kept emphasizing the small needle and consequent reduced pain.

Based on a sample size of two, I'm here to say that that is bunk.  Both Porter and I agreed that the intradermal shot hurt more than a regular injection, not less.  I hope our grandkids appreciate the sacrifice.  :)

 Last Saturday was the opening concert for the Orlando Philharmonic's 20th Anniversary season.  Pausing only briefly to wonder how the "new kid on the block" can be twenty years old already—I've done that several times already, the latest being only last month, with the first of our nephews to leave the teenage years behind—I'll just say that Maestro Christopher Wilkins once again began the season with a blockbuster program guaranteed to fill the house.  One work:  Mahler's Third Symphony.  No intermission.  Nearly 110 minutes long.  The first movement alone is longer than the entirety of Beethoven's Fifth.  The orchestra did a great job, but I have to say that they were upstaged by the members of the Florida Opera Theatre Youth Program.  Some of those kids were as young as seven, they were highly visible on a platform well above the orchestra, the part that they had to sing was brief and late in the symphony, and they did not fidget.  They sat still, they kept their hand in their laps most of the time, and they at least appeared attentive.  In short, they did better than me.

I was not familiar with Mahler's Third; it's not programmed often, and I can see why:  the orchestra is much larger than that required for most performances, and there's a large chorus as well.  E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E.  I'm glad the OPO took the plunge to offer it.  I do have to say, however, that—unlike Mahler's First, which was love at first hearing for me—this one may take a little more exposure for me to appreciate.  I found most of the movements reasonably enjoyable, but the sixth and last was interminable.  I don't think that had to do with the fact that we'd been sitting for so long as that to my ears it didn't seem to get anywhere.  Slowly.

Still, it was a good experience, quite possibly once-in-a-lifetime.  We don't even have a copy of Mahler's Third in our extensive music library, though that of course could be remedied.

It's been the required eight weeks since I last gave blood, so I made an appointment to do so.  It's pretty convenient now; you can do it online, and there's a Big Red Bus scheduled to be nearby at frequent intervals.

I have been tempted to ask if they handle the blood better than other aspects of the donation process.  Tempted, but I haven't given in, there being no point in unnecessarily angering the person who's about to plunge a needle into my arm.  But I do wonder sometimes.

My appointment was for Friday, at our local Best Buy parking lot.  When I received my appointment confirmation, I was confused, because the address they gave me was not the Best Buy address.  Nevertheless, I was assured that the bus would be at Best Buy.  And, indeed, there was a big red vehicle in sight as I approached, but it proved on closer inspection to be a Budweiser truck, which deals in a different sort of liquid altogether.

I decided to check out the actual address I had been given, but the bus wasn't there, either.  "Weren't you informed?" asked the friendly person on the other end of the phone when I called the blood center.  "The drive was changed to Sunday."  No, I had not been informed, unless you count the e-mail I had received on Friday, reminding me of my appointment.  It was simply a form notification, which I hardly looked at, as Google Calendar had been there, done that for me already.  My mistake, I suppose, because although nothing was said about a date change, the e-mail did have Sunday as my appointment date.

No problem, though, just about 20 minutes of time wasted.  I returned today, and there, where it was supposed to be, was the blood bus.  It was busy but not crowded, and all went almost smoothly.

I say almost, because as I said last time, they wanted details for all of my trips overseas.  It shouldn't have been a big deal, since I was prepared this time with the dates of my Swiss trips.  (I'll admit to being a little fuzzy on the number and extent of side trips to Germany, France, and Italy, which are always a few hours here, a few hours there.)  So I was surprised when there seemed to be some concern, and the lady came back to me after consulting the master book, asking, "What cities, what regions did you visit?"  "All over the map," I replied, "but mostly in Basel and the Luzern area."  Back to the book she went.  Finally, she returned to me, with the page in question:  "We're concerned about malaria," she said.  "You see this region over near Mozambique...."  The light dawned.  "Switzerland," I sighed.  "Switzerland.  Not Swaziland."

After that, actually losing a pint of blood was a piece of cake.

Except the Dying by Maureen Jennings (St. Martin's Press, 1997)

I had been looking forward to reading the first of Jennings' detective stories, the inspiration for the Murdoch Mysteries television series; as I stated in my review of the shows, I'd hoped the book would be less anachronistic than the TV version.  In that I got my wish:  Except the Dying presents a much more believable view of the seamy underside of late 19th century Toronto.  Much to my surprise, however, I plan to continue to enjoy the shows without reading any more of Jennings' other stories.

The movies are perhaps the greater more pernicious lie:  the prostitutes are clean and well-mannered; the abortionists are thoughtful, civilized gentlemen; the streets are free of manure and of emaciated children; not a spittoon nor a chamber pot is to be seen.  Which is worse, to make the darkness light or the light darkness?  The book's lurid detail of evil and filth overwhelms the story, and stains the small glimmers of goodness.  How I long for the more restrained writers of the past, who could describe a cesspool without making the reader feel as if he had fallen into it.

Except the Dying is not a terrible book.  Jennings writes well, and with more historical accuracy than the TV writers.  But as for me, I have had enough.  There are more uplifting books waiting to be read.

Whenever I see a title that looks as if it comes from something I feel I should know, I renew my gratitude for Google.  (Google the search engine, that is, even though I have mixed feelings about Google the large company.)  Except the Dying is from a poem by Emily Dickenson:

The last night that she lived,
It was a common night,
Except the dying; this to us
Made nature different.