Lift Up Your Hearts!

This year's Vetrans Day tribute is to all the U.S. (and pre-U.S.) veterans among our direct ancestors.

Pequot War, 1634-1638:  Thomas Barnes, Jonathan Brewster, Thomas Bull

King Philip's War, 1675-1678:  John Curtiss, Isaac Davis, Isaac Johnson

Queen Anne's War (part of the War of the Spanish Succession), 1702-1713:  Giles Doud

French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years' War), 1754-1763:  Samuel Chapman, Moses Whitney

Revolutionary War, 1775-1983: Jonathan Burr, Erastus Chapman, Agur Curtiss, Nathaniel Fox, Nehemiah Gillett, Christopher Johnson, Stephen Kelsey, Seth Langdon, James Pennington, Oliver Scott, Joseph Scovil, Henry Shepard, Elihu Tinker, Benjamin Welles, Moses Whitney

Civil War, 1861-1865:  Phillip Barb, Anson Bradbury, Robert Bristol, David Rice, Nathan Smith

World War I, 1914-1918:  Howard Langdon, George Smith

World War II, 1939-1945:  Alice Porter (Wightman), Bill Wightman

(If you notice a significant lack of any veterans from the Korean conflict to the present, you might guess my age if you didn't already know it.)

I'm sure there were more whose names I don't know.  There must be someone from the War of 1812, but I haven't found him yet.  I'm sure they weren't all always completely honorable, because they were ordinary people.  They didn't even always fight on the same side.  But one thing, for certain, they all had in common:  They gave their bodies, their lives, their health, and their futures to stand "between their loved home and the war's desolation."  For that I thank and honor them, and those who still make that sacrifice today.

No, it's not serious, and it's not an invitation for some wild-eyed idiot to try to change the election results by violent means.  Reggie Jackson wants us to stop fighting and start working together for the good of the country.

Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was elated with the re-election of President Obama on Tuesday, but if he had his way, Mitt Romney would be part of the administration, too.

"Just because President Obama is back in power is not as important as all of us pulling together, ''Jackson told USA TODAY Sports. "The best would be for Obama to be president and Romney to be vice-president. We need everyone to come together.

"I get so disappointed when I hear all of the negativity from Republicans against the Democrats and Democrats against Republicans. We need to come together as a nation. Black. White. Hispanics. Jewish. Native Americans.

"We need to have the resolve to work together. It's like when the Yankees have a great team, it helps baseball. When the Knicks and Lakers are great teams, it helps basketball. If the Republicans and Democrats can get together, it will make our country a strong, better place, for everyone.''

Amen and amen.

(Except maybe the part about the Yankees....)

On this day in 1989 the gates opened, and the German people themselves answered President Reagan's famous call.

Porter, who more than two decades before had crossed over to East Berlin (and back) at the terrifying Checkpoint Charlie, understands best the wonder and glory of the day, but our kids each have a souvenir piece of the Wall, thanks to friends who were living in Germany at the time.

Thanks be to God.

No one I know wrote this letter, but it was posted on Facebook by a friend I respect, who called it thought-provoking.  I agree.  I'd never heard of Steve Elliott, nor his Grassfire Nation organization, and a quick glance tells me he's a little too far to the political right for my comfort.  But no matter.  He's written a very wise letter, one that people of all political persuasions would do well to consider when events don't go their way.  The whole letter is worth reading, but here's the heart of it.  (Elliott openly invites sharing via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, so I'm hoping he won't mind my extensive quotations.)

I'm writing to you to explain why, even after a late and discouraging evening that stretched past 1:00 a.m. on the East Coast, I was back at the office before 8:00 a.m. this morning.

And why the sinking feeling I felt last night has already been replaced with a deep determination.

And why I'm going out to buy equipment for our new office this afternoon. 

And why we are going to build, build, build -- despite a stunning and, for me, unexpected defeat.

I want to share with you a letter that, although 2,500 years old, it could have been written this morning. For us. For faithful patriots who feel like they just discovered they will have to live at least the next four years in exile.

This letter was written to Jewish exiles who had been pushed out of Jerusalem and forced to live under a tyrannical ruler named Nebuchadnezzar.

The exiles wanted one thing: they wanted to be re-established back in Israel. They even had a prophet named Hananiah come to them and tell them that their time of exile would only last two years.

You can read about it in Jeremiah 28.

Hananiah was a false prophet. He died.

And so Jeremiah wrote a letter to the exiles. You've probably heard a part of that letter recited many times. It's one of the most commonly quoted passages in the entire Bible. Unfortunately, this passage is mostly taken out of its proper context and delivered as a "feel good" word that everything is going to be O.K.

One of my friends was quoting this verse yesterday morning:

 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Those words sound so good. The future is bright. God has a plan for prosperity, for a real hope and a real future. On the eve of the election, it must have meant a Romney win, the GOP takes the Senate and we start the rollback of the Obama regime, right?

Not exactly.

Here's the shocking context of Jeremiah 29 (and I offer to you, the context for November 6, 2012): the plan was exile.

That was the "plan" Jeremiah's letter was talking about. I encourage you to go read all of Jeremiah 29. Here is the immediate context:

This is what the Lord says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you ..."

The plan was 70 years of exile. Keep that in mind the next time someone quotes Jeremiah 29:11 to encourage you that your time of trouble will soon end. Not only was the exile going to last 70 years, the exile WAS the plan!

If you don't believe me, go back and read the beginning of the letter, from Jeremiah 29:4. Here you'll see the Lord (through Jeremiah) giving the Jewish exiles specific instructions on how to conduct themselves in exile:

--Build houses and settle down.

--Plan gardens and eat what they produce.

--Marry and have sons and daughters.

--Marry off your sons and daughters so they can have children.

--Increase in number; do not decrease.

Again, remember the context. A false prophet had just come and said the time of exile would only last two years. That prophet died. The truth is, the people will be in exile for 70 years. And the directive is to build families, grow businesses, think trans-generationally and increase.

It gets better. Because Jeremiah's letter makes it clear that building and marrying is not enough. People in exile must do something else -- they must be a blessing to the land.

"Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

So let's review. First, the plan is exile. Second, build. Third, bless. Simple, clear instructions.

But why was this important? Why a "plan" for exile with specific instructions on how to act in exile?

Historians tell us it was during the Babylonian captivity that the Israelites moved from a Temple/Jerusalem focused society to a synagogue and community focused society. Simply put ...

It was the lessons learned during their time in exile which enabled the Jews to survive 2,500 years in exile. But not just survive -- but to thrive and become the most prosperous, most successful and most innovative people group in the history of civilization.

Exile was the plan.

So that's why, today, I'm going to build. And I'm going to plant. I'm going to bless. And I'm going to pray.

For that is the final piece to the puzzle ...

"Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

So let's get building. Let's get planting. And let's get praying. And let's bless this land. There are lessons to be learned in exile.

Actually, it was a private letter, from Porter to the President.  But I liked it so much I begged permission to post it.

Mr. President,

Congratulations on your re-election.  I believe you now have 80 days to establish your legacy.  Just as it took a “conservative” Nixon to open the door to Red China and a “liberal” Democrat—Clinton—to establish welfare reform and NAFTA so, I believe, it will take the “champion of the 47%” to effectively reform (which is to say cut) Social Security and Medicare.

This coming lame duck session is your best hope to get this started.  With Joe Lieberman and others retiring they have a chance to do what is right for the country as opposed to what will get them elected in the next cycle. I believe these next 80 days will establish your legacy—as the President who courageously faced the “fiscal cliff” with meaningful reform—or as the President who muddled along relying on QE3, 4, 5 ad infinitum to inflate away the national debt and the national greatness.  Please take on the challenge.

Respectfully yours,

It can happen.  If President Obama has the will, the strength, and the courage he can lead his party to make the difficult but necessary choices that they would never have agreed to under a Republican president.  The Republicans will do well to support and encourage him in this, verbally and by making their own painful compromises.  The object is not to "win," not to score points, it's not even to get (re)-elected.  The object is to climb out of this economic pit and leave for our children an economy that is strong, sane, stable, and just.  The blame for this pit is well spread among Democrat and Republican; rich and poor; financial institution, big business, and average American.  The sooner we admit that, the sooner we can make progress.  If there is a fair solution to be found, it will succeed only insofar as it inspires everyone to participate—and yes, to sacrifice—beginning with those who by running for office made the choice to assume the responsibilities of leadership.

The American Dream was never about getting rich, nor about security, but about a country where hard work and thrift were rewarded by opportunity, and about parents whose goal was not their own comfort but the well-being of their children and grandchildren.

Dare to dream, Mr. President.  Dare to be a leader!

• If your candidate loses, the next four years will not be as bad as you fear.
• If your candidate wins, the next four years will not be as good as you hope.

So, winners, please do not be downcast tonight, but do your best in the next four years to support a president who will need all the encouragement and prayers he can get. Losers, please do not gloat tonight, but do your best in the next four years to support a president who will need all the encouragement and prayers he can get.

I love Air New Zealand.  Back in 1997, we flew Air New Zealand to ... well, to New Zealand!  It was the longest flight I've every taken; nonetheless, it was the most enjoyable.  They actually encouraged us to get up and walk laps around the spacious jet, instead of restricting us to one small aisle and requiring us to remain seated most of the time.  The food was great, too.

Unfortunately, I don't see the opportunity to check out what might have changed in the ensuing 15 years, but if this safety video is any indication, they're still a great airline.  I've flown enough to be bored and blasé when the attendents begin to instruct us how to fasten our seat belts, but this presentation would have my full attention.  I enourage you to watch it full-screen.  Thanks, Dawn, for sharing it!

As a homemaker, I don't find Mondays to be the horror that many people do.   But at the moment I'm feeling a little more sympathy with that point of view.

I will soon find myself in the Phildadelphia area with a day to spare.  A Monday, to be precise.  "Ah ha!"  I thought.  "A perfect day for some genealogy research."  It's not all that infrequently that I find myself somewhere interesting, genealogically speaking, but my time is almost always taken up by Higher Priorities, i.e. family.  But I will be briefly at loose ends this time, and was looking forward to a lovely day spent with books, papers, and my computer.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, holds some important clues for one of my genealogical brick walls.  My first stop I intended to be at the Lancaster County Historical Society's library.  It looks promising, but it is

Closed on Mondays.

Okay, on to Plan B.  The Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society also has some of the books I'm interested in.  But alas, it is also

Closed on Mondays.

Well, how about a Plan C?  Harrisburg is the home of the Pennsylvania State Library, which holds potential material for both my eastern and my western Pennsylvania family, and it's not all that far from Philadelphia.  But, you guessed it:  it is

Closed on Mondays.

Garfield would approve.

Mea culpa!  It's been nearly a year since my post about Stephan's Dots book (numbers in four languages), and I never did update it with Joseph's response.  It was an immediate hit, and is still one of Joseph's very favorite books.

Here are a few videos showing Joseph and the book in action:

The book arrives!

The book has proved very durable under heavy use, and if the $70 cost seems extravagant, I'd say Joseph has definitely gotten his parents' money's worth already.

Update 10/16/19:  As has happened with several old posts containing videos, I'm pretty sure a chunck of the post between the video and the final sentence was accidentally removed in the process that switched the videos from Flash to <iframe>.  Someday I may try to recover them ... but realistically, probably not.

At first, I thought I was reading about an incredible medical breakthrough, instead of the evacuation of a hospital in New York City.  No, that's not true.  At first, I passed over the numbers, as I often do.  So, I suspect, do most people.  (Okay, not Joseph.  But most people.)

New mom Jo-An Tremblay-Shepherd said, "The power went off completely, and all of the monitors, you're seeing all these monitors here, and there's a lot of buzzing and whatnot and everything just went."

Tremblay-Shepherd's son, Jackson, born 27 weeks prematurely, was carried in the dark by a nurse who also held his oxygen tank.

But the back of my mind wouldn't let it go.  Born 27 weeks prematurely?  So I stopped to calculate.  Normal gestation is 40 weeks, 40 minus 27 is ... 13?  Thirteen weeks?  The quintuplets I pray for were born at more than twice that age, just shy of 28 weeks, which is 12 weeks prematurely, and although they are doing well for their age, life has not been easy for any of them.

So I turned to Google, and learned that the youngest premature baby to survive was born at 21 weeks, five days.  At 13 weeks, the baby is but three to three-and-a-half inches long.

So, obviously, the CBS News article was wrong.  The baby was no doubt born at 27 weeks gestation, not 27 weeks prematurely.  Not much more than a typo.  But it set me thinking:  How many of the numbers that assail us in news articles and broadcasts do we absorb without thought, let alone fact-checking?  How much information that is just plain wrong has become part of our national consciousness?  What inaccuracies, mistakes, and downright lies do we propagate unthinkingly?

Scary.

It's easy to request books from the library, but if others are in line before me, I never know when they will become available.  Three books, requested at different times and with different numbers of people ahead of me, suddenly became available at the same time—just before my trip to New Hampshire.  (Yes, I realize I haven't written about that yet....)  No problem, I thought.  I have two long plane rides, with intermediate stops, and I'm sleeping all by myself in the new house, so I'll have plenty of time to read.

I always think that, and it's never true.

The short version of the story is that I found myself with three books to read and four days before they were due back at the library.  And all of them so popular they couldn't be renewed, because you can't renew a book that has a hold on it.  The fine assessed for overdue books isn't large, but when people are waiting, I feel an obligation to be on time.

Four days, 750 pages, three reviews.  What is this, college?

Actually, the third review is only half done.  Last night I hurriedly typed in the quotations I had marked for the last book (I hope they're legible; I realized at one point that I'd typed a sentence with my fingers skewed on the keyboard), then jumped in the car and made it to the library five minutes before closing.  But when you get an extension on a paper deadline, the first thing you do isn't sit down and finish the paper.  (Wait.  Maybe that's why I didn't do better in college.)

On Sunday we went to a picnic that we attend annually.  The food's great, and the people pleasant, but even though the friends are mostly Porter's, I always feel that I should, as my father put it, "be more sociable." Thus I rarely do what i'd prefer to do on a sunny day in the park:  read a book.  But I was under the gun this time, so I brought one with me to read on the car ride.  I chatted happily during the meal, but when we were finished eating and the others at my table had drifted off to other activities and conversations, I once again pulled out my book.

One of my favorite truisms about the difference between introverts and extroverts is this:  An extrovert believes it's okay to interrupt someone sitting and reading, on the grounds that that person is surely only reading because he has no one to talk to.

Sure enough, I had read not one page when someone came and sat down with me, wanting to know what I was reading, and why.  I didn't really mind the interruption, as she was a pleasant person, so I explained the situation.  She was sympathetic, and soon left me to my book, but not without shaking her head incredulously at the idea that I would write a book review when no one was paying me for it.

Sometimes I wonder myself.

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)