Lift Up Your Hearts!

Ready for Anything:  52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life, by David Allen (Viking Penguin, 2003)

Having been so impressed by the ideas, if not the writing, of Allen's Getting Things Done, I was eager to read more.  His latest book, Making It All Work, isn't yet available at our library, so I grabbed Ready for Anything.

As I began reading, I thought this would be a short review because there wasn't much new, that the book would be valuable as inspiration (very important!) but wouldn't add much to what I'm already working on.  Now that I've finished, however, I know that this will be a short review because there is too much here, that there is much benefit I could reap by buying the book and taking time to work through the ideas and exercises.  I'm not ready, as I'm still in the early stages of implementing the Getting Things Done ideas, but it will be a worthwhile later step. (More)

I'm a day late, but this is for our children, who loved Branagh's Henry V from an early age; for our grandchildren, who I trust will do the same in their time; for my nephew, who can speak the speech from memory; and for all who have ever felt the strength of we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. (H/T Andy B.)

Non nobis domine!

When I was a child I always had problems cleaning my room, largely because of my bookshelves:  I'd get started straightening them out, and end up lost in a book.

Now I'm working on a larger clean-up project, my assortment of external hard drives, which are littered with files, some essential and some decidedly not.  It's a lot of work to sort one from the other, and the tendency to run down rabbit trails is even greater.  Yet it is not without its rewards, such as finding this note I'd made about one of five-year-old Janet's discoveries.  It sounds very much like something Noah would say!

Did you know that "elbow" starts with a long "L"?

Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture, by Adam S. McHugh (IVP Books, 2009)

This isn't actually a review—yet.  But this is clearly a book I need to read, so I've ordered it from the library despite my already intimidating "to read" list.

Adam McHugh was interviewed in the most recent Mars Hill Audio Journal, and I was hooked immediately.  (Something like this happens every time I think about letting my Mars Hill subscription lapse.)

McHugh tells the story of one little girl who was astonished when mother commented that she was being awfully quiet—because it was anything but quiet in her own mind.

Introverts have constant activity going on in their heads; neurological studies have shown that the brains of introverts actually show more blood flow, more activity, than the brains of extroverts; this, it is speculated, is why they need less external stimulation.  IN fact, they need solitude in order to be able to deal with all that neurological action, and if they don't get it, their brain chemistry becomes imbalanced.

So.  Li'l Writer Guy is not my own invention, but the normal manifestation of an introverted brain. (More)

This fits well with New Year's Resolution #10.

Nice music, too.  (H/T Jon.)

New Year’s Resolution #8 was “Enjoy Spontaneity.”  This is far from my natural inclination; I like plenty of warning, and generally agree with the old Holiday Inn commercial that “the best surprise is no surprise.”

Actually, that’s not completely true.  Surprises can be nice.  But my idea of a great “surprise getaway,” for example, runs along these lines:  “Hey, honey!  I have a great idea for a weekend adventure and I want it to be a surprise for you.  Is your schedule clear for three weeks from now?  You would need to pack clothing both for hiking and for eating in moderately nice restaurants, and also a warm jacket.”  That gets me a mystery adventure where someone else has done all the planning, and yet I can plan for it.

Fun, but hardly a model of spontaneity.  So you will see that our trip to Miami last week was really quite spontaneous, for me. (More)

MMG is one of my Facebook friends. I've known her since before she was born, so technically she's more the daughter of our friends than my own friend.  Yet thanks to Facebook, in recent years I've had more contact with her, and know more about what's going on in her life, than with her parents.

This is a particular blessing, not only because it keeps up a connection that would otherwise have been lost, but because I enjoy her perspective on life.  She and I differ and disagree in multitudinous ways, from thoughts about God to the importance of televised hockey games.  As Hercule Poirot is fond of saying, she "gives one furiously to think."  But best of all, she is adept at finding (and posting) links from all over the Web, some of which lead me down very interesting paths.  Here's a recent one:

A cool presentation of part of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson.

And here's one more by Robinson, a second TED lecture that also overlaps a bit with the above .  With all Robinson has been saying about education, this is the first time I've heard him mention homeschooling (very near the end of the lecture).  He's neither positive nor negative, but acknowledges it as a legitimate form, which is progress, anyway.  (This one is only about 18 minutes long.)

I've written about Robinson before, notably in:  Sir Ken Robinson, Creativity, and Education, and also a review of his book, The Element.  And of course I can't miss the opportunity once again to plug John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education, which confirms and elaborates on what Robinson says about the industrial model of education.

Here are a few side notes I've taken from the above talks.

• There are no school systems anywhere that Robinson knows of that teaches dance every day, giving it as much importance as mathematics—which he believes to be a mistake.  Long ago I concluded that music should be given that same importance; that learning music should be no more optional than learning to read or to brush one's teeth.  But I apologize to our dancing daughter for not recognizing the similar importance of dance.  Sigh—if only the value of dance had been separated from silly little girls in frilly tutus, I might have been more understanding.
• "We still educate children by batches.  We put them through the system by age group.  Why do we do that?  Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are?  It's like the most important thing about them is their date of manufacture."  Amen and amen.
• Since 1970 in America, spending on education has more than doubled in terms of real money, class size has steadily declined, but literacy has remained the same.  Robinson believes this supports his thesis that the education system cannot be reformed but requires revolutionary change.  John Taylor Gatto and John Holt gave much of their lives to reforming the schools, and in the end concluded it couldn't be done, instead throwing their support and work into alternatives.  Robinson still has hope that the revolution can occur within the public educational system.
• The paradigm shift Robinson recommends is that we discard the industrial model on which our current view of education is based, and instead adopt an agricultural model.  I believe he's right, but with all the diversions he took in his longer talk, I wish he had pointed out that many would claim our schools are indeed based on an agricultural model:  that of agri-business and the CAFO.  The agricultural model we need for education is that of Polyface Farms, in which the "pigness of the pig"—the individuality of the student—is respected.
• Robinson has many important things to say about schools.  But for all that I agree with him, he is working from a view of humans—of life, the universe, and everything—so fundamentally different from my own that it's a wonder we have so much in common when it comes to education.  He comes to his conclusions based on his belief that human beings are insignificant in relation to the cosmos, that people are basically good but wrong circumstances cause us to go bad, and that we have risen from a lower state and continue to improve.  My own conclusions come from the Christian belief that human beings are of infinite value (importance being unrelated to size), that we have within us the potential to be far better than we can imagine, but that the evil streak within us is innate and cannot be eliminated by improving our circumstances.  And yet those fundamental differences lead us to many of the same conclusions!  Maybe we're right. 

It has not been a good couple of months for my relationship with spiders.

I grew up on Be Nice to Spiders, the delightful story of how cleaning up all the spiderwebs at the zoo made the animals miserable because the flies multiplied out of control.  We read it to our children, too, which is why Heather hesitated to take action when the spiders multiplied out of control at her house.  That was my job when I visited in September; heartless Grandma, oblivious to Jonathan's plea, "If there are any wolf spiders, don't kill them!"  I'm afraid I didn't take the time to ask for identification as I tackled the basement infestation.  We left plenty to take care of the flies, and I'm pretty sure none of them were wolf spiders.  (More)

No, I'm not really leaving Facebook.  It's too useful a tool for keeping in touch with people I would otherwise be prone to neglecting.  I think it best to keep my participation minimal, however.

I've never done apps, for example, because I mostly find them annoying.  Today's Wall Street Journal provides another good reason to avoid them, a massive security breach.

That revelation was enough of a push to make me rescind my previous decision to share my blog posts as notes on Facebook.  Not that the recent breach had anything to do with notes; it merely makes me less comfortable with the platform and less willing to take whatever risks there might be when I've seen no discernable benefit.  Having my posts duplicated on Facebook does make them more accessible to some people, but (1) Facebook usually posts them in clumps, so that most are hidden under a "see more posts" link; (2) there are few comments made, so if people are reading them I rarely know about it; and (3) I prefer to have all comments here, anyway, to keep the conversations in one place.

So, I apologize to the few of you who I know do read my posts on Facebook, but after this one posts I'll be stopping the feed.  Please come here instead; you are more than welcome.

I'm awed, amazed, thrilled, and grateful for the successful rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners.  I really am.  But there's a disquieting thought that keeps intruding on my celebration.  It seems curmudgeonly, at best, to point out that for most of their ordeal the miners have had contact with the surface, food, water, tobacco, medical advice, a very expensive and intense rescue effort, and the good will of the entire world.  I admire the men no end for managing to work together and survive such a horrendous experience.

But when I read over and over the concerns about the men's mental health, and how they will bear scars for life because of their ordeal, and of all the effort put forth to help them, including training in how to deal with the media (another tribulation!), I can't stop thinking of the men who for longer months endured captivity and torture during the Vietnam War.  Or the 444-day ordeal of the victims of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  Or [fill in any one of a number of terrifying imprisonments].  Where was the concern for them?  Where the effort to ease their return to society?  Where, even, the money pouring in for interview, book, and movie deals?

Maybe we've become more concerned and compassionate over the years.  Maybe we just like a good, dramatic story.  I wouldn't take anything away from the support given these miners—but wouldn't it be nice to see that solidarity, that love, that attention, and those financial resources poured out for the ones who suffer even now, all over the world, mostly in obscurity?

Non Campus Mentis:  World History According to College Students, compiled by Anders Henriksson (Workman Publishing, New York, 2001) (Later retitled Ignorance Is Blitz)

This compilation of major historical events was pieced together from the essays and exams of students at a variety of colleges in the United States and Canada.  If you know a reasonable amount of world history and geography, you will find it hysterical, at least till you get to the quiz in the back of the book.

It would be a good book to read aloud at a party, although you would miss some pretty funny misspellings.  Reading it aloud in the car, however, as we did, would be unwise:  If you think texting puts the driver at a disadvantage, you should see what happens when he's doubled over with hysterical laughter.  (More)

Can you believe I get tired of hearing that my blog is absolutly brilliant, and the commenter can't wait to share it with his friends?

Well, I do, and so I'm trying out comment moderation.  If I'm going to have to spend log in several times a day to remove spam, I might as well spend that time approving comments.

The down side is that if you write a comment here, you won't see it right away, at least not at first.  Jon has enhanced the moderation software to allow previously-approved commenters to bypass the moderation process, though you'll have to go through it again if you write from a different IP address.

I trust it will go smoothly, but if your comment gets lost, please let me know.

This resolution has been coming up on my agenda for months, only to be replaced by what seemed to be a more urgent or appropriate idea.  But now its time has come.

I love you.

What a powerful phrase—perhaps the most blessed concept in any tongue.  But what does it mean?  What do we mean when we say it?  (More)

Can it have been almost four years since Kelly James, Brian Hall and Nikko Cooke died in a blizzard on Mt. Hood?  I'm not usually one to follow closely television's relentless coverage of unfolding tragedy, but knowing Kelly's brother, Frank, made the events personal.

In the Shadow of Mt. Hood is an article written by Frank James in the September issue of Christianity Today.  (It's available online if you follow that link.)  I'm a bit reluctant to provide excerpts this time, as there is nothing he says that's not important.  (Those of you who know that I knew Frank when he was an elder in our PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) church, and know how I feel about most PCA sermons, will understand how significant it is for me to make such a statement.)  But here is a taste, anyway:

Grief is a relentless predator. Those who have lost loved ones tell me that one never completely escapes it. Strangely, a part of me does not want the grief to stop, because the grief itself is a connection to Kelly. Yet another part of me is so weary from carrying the burden of a broken heart.

In the midst of our family tragedy, I made a peculiar discovery. One would think that grief and disappointment with God would lead to bitterness against him. In my nightmare, I not only prayed intensely in private but also publicly declared my faith and confidence in God on CNN—but Kelly froze to death anyway.

There is disappointment, sadness, and confusion, but oddly, there is no retreat from God. Instead, I find myself drawn to God. To be sure, he is more enigmatic than I thought, but I still can't shake loose from him. There seems to be a kind of gravitational pull toward God.

"Harm reduction," a new term to me, though not a new concept, is a controversial approach to social problems, in which illegal, immoral, or otherwise harmful behaviors are attacked, not at the root, but at the branches:  distributing condoms to slow the spread of AIDS, needle exchange programs for drug addicts, and legalized prostitution, for example.  It is palliative care: attempting to ameliorate the symptoms of an apparently incurable social disorder.

Whether you approve of the idea or think it only exacerbates the problem—like Needle Park in Zurich, one of Switzerland's early experiments, which succeeded in reducing AIDS infections and drug-related deaths, but attracted addicts and professional drug dealers from all over Europe—the following story is heartwarming.  It brings to mind Mother Teresa, who, if she couldn't cure the ills of the lowest and the poorest in Calcutta, at least gave them the touch of a loving hand, and a clean, safe, comfortable place in which to die.  (More)