After all the travelling we did in the last quarter of 2008 and in January of 2009, I, the homebody, was really ready to enjoy a few months with nowhere to go. But "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley," and in this case I'm thrilled.
Ever since we moved away from Boston, I'd been waiting for Porter to get a job assignment back there so I could stay with him while doing research at the New England Historic Genealogical Society Library on Newbury Street. He's been all over the country, but never to Boston...until now.
Last week there was an important class being held just outside of Boston, which Porter wanted to attend. Unfortunately, IBM has had a freeze on educational travel for quite a while. There's a way to appeal for an exception, but the process can take time. In this case, Porter learned at 5:00 on Friday afternoon that if he would take care of the airfare and car rental, and do what he could to save money on hotel and meals, he could go. That meant leaving in less than 48 hours! He's used to travelling on short notice (though not usually that short), and I guess it's a testament to how much more travelling I've been doing myself recently that I was able to manage it as well. Those of you who know me know that flexibility and decision-making are not my strong points, but how could I pass up a trip to Boston (even mid-winter) when I could fly on his Southwest companion pass, stay in his hotel, and spend a week at my favorite library?
We even managed to fit in our weekend commitments, such as dinner with friends (Friday), a gardening class at Leu Gardens (Saturday), and church (Sunday), without panicking over preparation time missed. We managed to get two of the last seats on the one Sunday flight still available, and were winging our way to Providence while most of the rest of the country was celebrating Super Bowl Sunday.
One friend asked if we purchased our winter clothes for the trip. We didn't, but it was fun remembering that both the boots and the gloves had come from Boston in the first place. :) Despite the heavy clothes, we still managed to fit everything into carry-on luggage only—further evidence of having had more air travel experience. We're not up to Rick Steves' standards yet, but much better than we were.
I've used this post as an opportunity to learn a bit about making my own interactive Google maps, so you can see some of the locations and travel routes here.
Porter's class was in Bedford, which turns out not to be convenient to any part of Boston's good public transportation system. No hotel approved by IBM was within walking distance of a reasonable station, so Porter graciously braved the Boston rush hour traffic to transport me to and from the Anderson/Woburn RTC station on the Lowell line. The Anderson RTC is relatively new—too new to be on any of the maps we had from when we lived there—spacious, pleasant, and warm. The last feature turned out to be particularly important this week, for although the temperatures had moderated from the bitter cold snap of the week before, this Florida girl still finds below-twenty temperatures a bit nippy.
On our way from the Providence airport to Bedford, we drove through Norwood, checked out our old apartment (they've built a whole new house in the formerly-vacant lot next door) and other landmarks, and ate at the Thai Thani restaurant: it's small but pleasant, and one of our favorite in-town places to eat when we lived in Norwood. Because of the Super Bowl we were the only customers.
Our first hotel, a DoubleTree, was only a few minutes from the class site, but Porter found a Radisson in Chelmsford for $50 less per night. For Diamond members like Porter, Hilton properties often provide enough gratis food for both breakfast and dinner, so we had thought we might justify the more expensive hotel by saving on food expenses. However, this was definitely not that kind of DoubleTree. The breakfast was okay, though nowhere near the sumptous fare of the DoubleTree we stayed at in Scotsdale, Arizona. But dinner? We made one meal out of the potato chips, cookies, and oranges that were provided, then packed our bags and moved to the Radisson. As it turned out we also saved a little on meals there, though the hotel provided nothing, because from then on we skipped breakfast in order to get me to the train station before the notorious Boston rush hour traffic became totally unbearable.
Monday—while we were still at the DoubleTree—I spent in our hotel room, because the NEHGS library is closed on Mondays. True, there's plenty more I could have done in Boston, but it was good for Porter to be able to concentrate totally on preparing for his class instead of driving me around, and good for me to have a full day to prepare for the rest of the week. I spent the day glued to the computer, flipping between my database and the NEHGS Library catalog, making a list of the resources that I thought might be helpful. Having neglected genealogy for the better part of the past year—and knowing that even with four days ahead of me there would never be enough time to begin to cover all I wanted to—I needed to maximize my efficiency. Besides, the intensity of diving into my work as soon as Porter left the hotel and not coming up for air till he returned was good preparation for the following days.
After breakfast on Tuesday Porter took me to the station, where I bought my tickets and climbed aboard the commuter train to Boston. Natsukashii! When we lived in Norwood I would take the Franklin Line into Back Bay or South Station, but the Lowell Line into North Station was similar enough. There have been some changes since our time, however: the subway tokens have given way to a more modern, card-based fare system. At North Station I purchased a 7-day unlimited subway pass; for the number of rides I actually took I didn't quite get my money's worth, but the flexibility made the $15 purchase worthwhile.
The Green Line T was always my least favorite of Boston's subway lines, and that's one thing that hasn't changed. But my first ride was pleasant enough. As I exited the Copley station I was blessed by gently falling snow. By evening the snow was not such a blessing, but it made for a very pleasant walk to the library.
It seems incredible that it was four years ago I wrote the following:
[Li'l Writer Guy] rather likes to imagine he’s seated in some academic cloister, inhaling the intoxicating scents of polished wood, leather, and books old and new. On the table before him are the paraphernalia of his profession: stacks of books, pads of paper, writing implements, bookmarks, his laptop computer. Lost in thought, he stares out the window, but he’s not seeing the cityscape. Now and then he rises, and paces between the table and the stacks. At the end of the day, he reluctantly packs up, puts on his coat, and steps into the outside world, blinking owlishly and realizing dimly that time has not stopped for others as it has for him. (Any resemblance of Li’l Writer Guy’s fantasy land to the New England Historic Genealogical Society Library is not coincidental.)
And yet my return to that fantasy land might have been after an absence of a mere week, had not the photocopy system changed in the interim so that my card was no longer good and I lost whatever value had been stored in it. I'm sure it was less than $5, however, so I wasted no time on regrets but set right to work.
The above description pretty much covers it. I set up my computer at a desk on the sixth floor, now thoughtfully equipped with surge-protected power strips and free wireless internet access. Occasionally I stopped to admire the falling snow out the window, but mostly tripped back and forth among the desk, the stacks, and the copy machine. The main difference between imagination and reality is that in the fantasy version there is plenty of time and I'm not desperately scooping up as much data as I can carry. Someone asked me what, in particular, I was researching. The answer is, nothing in particular—and yet everything. By virtue of the power of exponential expansion, a mere 10 generations back gets one person over 1000 ancestral lines to investigate. Perhaps someday I'll come to the library for the purpose of doing an intense investigation of one or two questions, but for now I'm still at the stage where there are hundreds of books that might shed light on my family.
At about 4:50 the lights began to flicker, and I realized that I was off by an hour in thinking the library closed at 6:00. I sent Porter a hasty Pidgin message and scrambled to pack up. Reversing my morning's travels, I ended up back at the Anderson station where I had a fairly lengthy wait for Porter to arrive, as the beautiful snow had turned into a storm sufficient to snarl the already dense rush hour traffic. Since by the time we arrived at our new hotel Porter had been driving in the dark and the snow for over an hour, we elected to eat dinner at the hotel dining room and then crash into bed. It was a portent of things to come—so much for the plans I had had to accomplish things unrelated to genealogy in the "off hours."
On Wednesday we wasted no time on breakfast, but went straight to the train station. The traffic on 495 was fine, but we weren't on 93 very long before it slowed to a crawl. I made the 8:30 train, however, and was soon picking up where I had left off so hurriedly the day before. Most of this day was devoted to one particular line of Porter's, and I believe I made an interesting and exciting discovery, but I'll say no more yet because there's still work to do before I'm satisfied of its authenticity. The library is open till 9:00 on Wednesdays, so I stayed late, though not till closing. The traffic was much better, due to both the later hour and the improved weather—although it was quite cold (in the teens), the roads were clear of Tuesday's snow. We ventured across the street from the hotel for some decent, though not spectacular, Chinese food at Hong & Kong's before collapsing into bed once more.
Thursday we left a little earlier, and the traffic was so much better I caught the 7:38 train. A good thing, too, as the rest of the trip was delayed, first by the breakdown of a train ahead of us, then by multiple breakdowns on the Green Line. By the time a Green Line train came there were so many people waiting that the trip would have made a sardine claustrophobic. As we approached the Arlington station I remembered having looked at the map and wondered why the NEHGS travel directions specified going to the Copley station instead of Arlington, so I happily exited the car one stop early and found that it was, indeed, a better choice. I walked into the library two minutes after it opened and once again set to work. The day was pretty much the same except that I didn't even notice this time that I'd missed both breakfast and lunch, I was working so intently.
At closing I took a different path, walking to the Back Bay station where I caught the Franklin line to Norwood. That would have been really natsukashii except that the train was so crowded I had to stand up the whole way, making it impossible to look out the window and wax nostalgic as we passed the old, familiar stations. The reason for this trip was to visit some friends from our Norwood church. Porter joined us soon after I arrived, and we had a great time re-connecting. If I have any regret about this trip it is that we did not have time to see several other people we would like to have visited. Guess we'll have to come back. :)
Friday was the last day, and a short one as Porter's class ended at 3:00. Although the Green Line was still delayed, I arrived at the library before it opened, so I ordered a cup of tea at TeaLuxe across the street, which our friend Madeline had introduced me to at one of my first visits to the NEHGS. After that it was full speed ahead once more. There wasn't enough time; there never is. But I was ready to leave, feeling saturated with data and having $46.75 worth of copied pages to digest upon returning home. (My original plan had been to enter the newly-acquired data each night after dinner, but that went by the board the very first night. I have many weeks' worth of work ahead of me.)
If my goodbyes to the NEHGS were a bit on the sentimental side, my Green Line farewell was made with much less reluctance. At least on my part—the T itself was perhaps unwilling to let me go, as five trains came in the outbound direction before one going my direction. At least that one was going as far as North Station. Part of my quarrel with the Green Line on previous days was that most of the rush hour trains went only as far as Government Center, two stops before North Station. I never did see a train that would have taken me beyond that; what those going to Science Park or Lechmere were supposed to do, I don't know. At any rate, this one—so crowded I rode just inside the door, well in front of the while line everyone is supposed to be in back of, and hoping no sudden jerk would impel me out of the car—did get me to the station, where I caught my final Lowell train. This time when he picked me up at Anderson, Porter took 128 to the Mass Pike, thence to 395 and 95 and finally to Old Saybrook for a delicious dinner with PJS and B&A. If the primary purpose of this trip was for Porter's class, and the secondary for my genealogical research, the most important one was to visit family. We spent Friday night in Granby with DSTB, where we delivered a box full of the most amazing and diverse collection of bottle caps that ever thrilled a nine-year-old boy. We all had fun sorting them on the kitchen table.
We were joined Saturday by PJS for a day of game playing. Of course Uncle Porter and the boys played PlunderChess and Lord of the Rings Risk, but I really enjoyed Hoopla. Another highlight was attending a Suzuki cello group lesson at the Hartt School of Music. After dinner we headed for Salem, where we really had time for nothing but a night's sleep, going back to Saybrook early in the morning for the 8:00 service at Grace Episcopal Church. We checked out a few things related to our upcoming marriage celebration, and truly enjoyed meeting and hearing the rector, Father Charles. It's a beautiful church. We had chosen the 8:00 service because it was Rite I, and because we had a brunch date at 10:00, but unlike our church's Rite I service, this one had no music at all, which made it feel a lot less like worship. Perhaps this summer we can attend a later service.
I loved experiencing the cold and snow of Boston, and I loved even more the weather gift of this day: a touch of spring. The sun was out and the temperatures above freezing, so ice was melting and the ground gave out the most delicious scent of warming earth.
After brunch and some more visiting time—though again not with everyone we wanted to see—it was time to drive back to Providence and catch our Southwest flight home. We walked in the door about 8:30, exhausted and happy.
Why do I like our church? Well, for one thing, during yesterday's service there was not one mention of the Super Bowl. :)
I did afterwards, in the form of a friend who is a florist commenting that she had the day off because no one schedules a wedding during the Super Bowl, which led Porter to comment that Super Bowl Sunday may be the only holiday truly observed and respected in America.
Although we watched only about 30 seconds of the game, that half-minute included the game-winning touchdown. Porter feels towards the Steelers only slightly better than he does towards the Yankees, but I send congratulations to all of our Pittsburgh-area, and Pittsburgh ex-pat, friends.
With a hat-tip to Bill H., another Steeler fan, here's the Super Bowl ad you didn't see. I believe NBC should have the right to choose the ads it shows, but I like this one, so you can see it here. No ad revenues generated. :) It's safer to watch it right from here; if you go to the YouTube site itself, I recommend avoiding the viewer comments, and I don't vouch for any other videos that might be suggested.
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Category Random Musings Everyday Life
I concluded Volume 4 by decrying modern society's "increasing belief that we are entitled to pursue our pleasures without hindrance." The segue into Volume 5's two articles may not be as clear to you as it is to me, but here they are.
The first is Patrick Deneen's Rational Control. While I enjoy and appreciate many of Deneen's writings, his attacks on individualism make me nervous, as I've said before. But I think I may be beginning to understand his point of view better, as being not so much in favor of collectivism and state control as in recognizing the need to make our me-first, me-only, me-now self-indulgence subservient to the needs of the community, particularly the community of family and neighbors. In this I can agree with him wholeheartedly.In this essay Deneen speaks of "rational controls," by which he means, "the replacement of virtue by automated controls that act on our behalf in ways that would be virtuous if we were to have effected those same outcomes voluntarily." Quoting Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield,
What is rational control? In the brand new building where I work at Harvard, the lights go on and off, the shades go up and down, and the toilets flush automatically. Rational control has replaced individual virtue, which is subject to vagaries and may not be active or awake. As instruments of rational control, the seatbelts in your car are inferior to airbags because the former you have to buckle on your own and the latter save you without your having to lift a finger. These examples are small matters of convenience, but they add up. As intrusions into your privacy, your own control over your life, and your virtue, they also add up. In their very minuteness, they reveal the comprehensiveness of rational control.
Pardon the following extensive quotations, but Deneen says it better than I could abstract. The emphasis is my own, however.
[O]n this question of individual responsibility for virtuous action, vs. forms of automatic "rational control," lies one of the true and decisive dividing lines between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives as a general rule hold that individuals can and should be responsible for their own actions—whether virtuous acts of generosity (hence their preference for philanthropy rather than taxation) or individual culpability (why they are tougher on criminals)—while liberals emphasize the social dimension of obligations and responsibilities. In a recent book entitled Unjust Deserts, its authors Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly argue that the accumulated wealth and accomplishments of our society are the consequence of the collective accomplishment of generations of humans, and that all contemporary enrichment of society rests on the shoulders of a common inheritance. Thus, no individual "deserves" what he or she earns—since they have not really achieved anything on their own at all—and all living humans should benefit from this common inheritance through widespread income redistribution.
While I’m not prepared to sign aboard the redistibutionist bandwagon...I find myself thinking that there is something deeply conservative to the liberal side of the argument. Whatever conservatism is—and it is many things these days—to my mind it is a defense of the idea of an organic social fabric that needs conserving and defending against the depredations of modern liberal anthropology, politics, and economics. Such conservatism—Burke’s conservatism—takes a dim view toward individualism. It has a high regard for the idea of generational inheritance and obligations. Such conservatism understands that an individualistic form of liberalism threatens the viability of community—its educative features, including and especially those that teach us forms of obligation and common care, as well as the limits upon our individual will, our greed and ambition. Liberalism was premised most fundamentally upon the liberation of individuals from the confines...of such communities, and conservatism was born of the effort to thwart this undermining of the res publica.
Yet, our contemporary conservatives are the most ardent defenders of individualism and our liberals are the proponents of a more social and even socialized understanding. This reversal is not only because of the intervention of Communism—of course that’s of central importance—but, I would argue, because of liberalism’s introduction of "rational control" as the means of achieving some of the very social ends that might once have been similar to those pursued by a Burkean conservative. Liberalism seeks to put acts of social justice on "auto-pilot," above all because the form of society that [has] helped make liberalism ascendent relies upon a profound weakening of any sense of social solidarity or understanding of generational gratitude and responsibility. In liberating us from the confines of community, the immediate, instinctive and palpable sense of a community was replaced by a generalized, abstract and generally theoretical vision of Society. Having liberated us from the confines of community, now we are freed to care for the universal "community" of humankind—except that there is no such community. Any such care cannot be cultivated, but must be achieved by forms of "rational control." Indeed, in making their case for the generational inheritance of social forms of knowledge, Alperovitz and Daly cite innumerable academic studies proving the inherited sources of collective human knowledge, whereas in a Burkean community, our inheritance would be obvious in the lessons we learn at the feet of our grandfathers and father, in the kitchen beside our grandmothers and mother. In such a community, you don’t need a book to understand the inherited nature of knowledge...but the doing of a thing learned and taught from one generation to the next.
What liberals seek are the effects of virtue without its causes or the conditions that make it possible. Liberalism was born of a deep and pervasive mistrust of paternalism...but it ends with a grotesque version of paternalism without fathers. We inhabit a society in which lights are turned off, in which shades are lowered and toilets are flushed, but in which we effect none of these actions, and in which we are not required to even think why we would take such actions. We act socially without socialization; responsible actions are effected albeit without responsibility.
Modern conservatives should understand that their defense of individual responsibility is ultimately a defense of the communal, the source of a cultivation in virtue. Virtue is never the accomplishment of any one individual—I will agree with Alperovitz and Daly to this extent—but it is enacted and fostered by individuals, in concert with a healthy community of continuity, memory, and gratitude. Conservatives should properly understand the nature of their own commitments to the role and place of the individual...as humans between the beasts and the gods, formed by and in communities and responsible ultimately for passing along the goods of those lessons learned to a new generation.
As long as this post is already, I can't resist adding Broken Window Theory Validated? from Tim at Random Observations, because in my mind it is linked with both Deneen's article and the mindset that leads to the destructive pursuit of pleasure. Even if the link seems tenuous to you, the article he quotes is instructive, and the comments that follow are interesting as well.
In as series of studies, researchers found that in the presence of disorder or minor illegal acts (graffiti, littering, illegal fireworks, supermarket carts not returned to their proper places), people were much more likely to commit, not only similar offensive acts, but also more serious crimes, such as theft, than when such evidence of disorder was not present.
The final experiments involved leaving an envelope hanging out of a mailbox with a €5 note visible in the window where the address normally appears. When the mailbox was clean, 13 per cent of passers-by stole the envelope. When graffiti was applied to the box, this proportion went up to 27 per cent. When the graffiti was removed and litter placed around the box, the proportion of thefts was 25 per cent.
The researchers conclude: "The most likely interpretation of these results is, as before, that one disorder (graffiti or littering) actually fostered a new disorder (stealing) by weakening the goal of acting appropriately."
And from the comments:
I wonder how that applies to low speed limits. Does seeing a lot of people breaking the speed limit tell people that breaking the law is okay?
For me, yes. If I'm in a zone labeled "55" (thus implying you should really be driving about 52 to be on the safe side) and everyone is driving 60-65, I drive at the prevailing speed. Outliers (far faster, far slower) are, I've been led to believe, a major cause of accidents. So I believe it's better to choose safety over legality.
I actually have wrestled with this at times.
And with that, I'll go attend to the obvious evidence that leaving a few things out after returning from a trip has worse consequences over a three-week span than one dirty dish.You leave one dirty dish on the kitchen counter on Monday, and by Tuesday, it's been joined by 10 of its friends. By Wednesday, the adjoining room has been infected with old newspapers and homework. Thursday rolls around and you'd be ashamed for company to come over. Friday...well...you'd be worried OSHA might stop by.
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Category Random Musings
Casting the Net is where I post various items I find interesting but about which I choose to limit my commentary—because otherwise my backlog would be even more unendurable than it is, and you'd never see them.
Jennifer at Conversion Diary alerted me to the article she wrote for Inside Catholic, entitled Eight Responses to the Pro-Choice Mindset. Some of her arguments simply won't fly with ardent supporters of the right to abortion, because they come down to recognizing the unborn baby as a person, which of course is the core issue.
Or is it?I once said that I'd die to keep abortion legal and easily accessible, and I meant it. I was vehemently pro-choice, as were most of the women in my social circles. We believed abortion was a critical right for women and could not imagine how anyone could be pro-life. We were products of a culture in which human sexuality had been severed from its inherent connection to the creation of human life. Our generation had been taught in our public school sex-ed classes not that sex creates babies, but that unprotected sex creates babies. We were assured that the creation of new human life was tangential to sexual activity, something that was not only optional but completely controllable. In fact, babies were considered downright antithetical to sex.
"Sex is primarily for pleasure." This deep misunderstanding about the nature of human sexuality is one of the key driving forces behind the modern abortion movement. When women accept the "truth" that sex only has as much meaning as they want it to, that it is not inherently a sacred and tremendously powerful act, they are set up for disaster. This is like saying that loaded guns can be used as toys so long as you put blanks in the chamber: To misunderstand such a significant act on such a fundamental level is a recipe for catastrophe.
As long as people believe that it is perfectly acceptable to engage in sexual activity even when they think a baby would ruin their lives, the temptation to dehumanize and disregard new life will win out. In order to foster a pro-life culture we must help women see that it is not the new life that traps them, but the lie that sex can be severed from its life-giving potential in the first place.
If our society is ever to respect the unborn, we must first respect and fully understand the nature of the act that creates those unborn lives in the first place. As long as the connection between sexual activity and its life-giving potential is severed, the temptation to devalue human life will win out.
Reading this brought to mind a seemingly unrelated post (hat tip to Jon): Grace for Gays at Following Judah's Lion. The author, a Baptist minister, meditates on the nature of a truly Christian response to homosexual people.
I completely admit that the Scriptures and the obvious physiological distinctions make it clear that God’s design was between a man and a woman. But what is not so clear to me is how we as the recipients and sharers of God’s grace should interact and reach out to those who cannot deny what they feel.
Have we no compassion, and can we show no sympathy for their situation or are our theological positions enough to insulate us from experiencing their pain? And exactly what requirements are necessary before one can believe on Christ for redemption? How many sins do we have to forsake before we can approach Him, and must we be aware of how God views the entire catalogue of our sins before we can become a legitimate believer?
[A]re grace, mercy, and love incongruent to our Biblical beliefs about sin? I do not mean just informing a gay person about his sin, but exhibiting those spiritual fruits to someone in spite of their lifestyle.
No one should practice sin as a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. But I have come to this conclusion, only practicing sinners will enter eternity under the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. My heart grieves to watch a 20 year old young man leap to his death because he has been rejected by almost everyone he loves and within that experience he has come to violently hate himself.
That surely cannot be New Testament Christianity.
I quote extensively from the article because I believe it is worthwhile, and I know a number of my readers lack time, inclination, or both to read the original. But what triggered the connection with Jennifer's article was this paragraph:
I have no idea why [the homosexual] lifestyle seems to have become more prevalent in today’s world. Perhaps it is because most had to suppress it in former generations, or maybe it is because the continuing revelations of Adam’s sin are becoming more pronounced in these last days. I do not know, and neither does anyone else.
I do not know, either, but I have a strong suspicion that a major factor might be Jennifer's point about the change in our understanding of the nature and purposes of sexual behavior. coupled with the sex-saturated nature of modern culture and an increasing belief that we are entitled to pursue our pleasures without hindrance. To renounce one good—be it sex, food, wine, television, or any other pleasant thing—for a greater good is difficult, a discipline rarely taught and almost never expected.
A bout of illness a few weeks ago taught me that I could go several days without eating—without suffering (except for missing out of some great Swiss food), and feeling all the better for the fast (except when I tried to run through the Frankfort airport and noticed the lack of fuel). And yet at home I still find turning down the second (or third, or fourth) cookie exceedingly difficult. Teaching this kind of discipline to our children, and providing for them opportunities to practice the skill, may be more important than we think.Permalink | Comments | Edit
Category Random Musings
George Friedman's The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century is not yet available, but there's a long and fascinating excerpt at InvestorsInsight. If some of Friedman's predictions seem nonsensical, the same cannot be said about his conclusion that the least reliable predictor of the future is our expectations. In the immortal words of investment prospectuses, "past performance is no guarantee of future return."
Friedman dramatically illustrates his point by imagining what observers standing at each even decade from 1900 to 2000 might reasonably have expected the future to be like. In most cases they would have been proven wrong within a decade.Here are some of his unreasonable predictions—but consider his reasoning before rejecting them altogether:
American power and influence is not on the wane, but rather ascending.
The war between the United States and the radical Islamists is virtually over and will be little remembered in 100 years.
America's next challenge will be Russia, which will rise, bring on another Cold War, then collapse once again.
Despite appearances, China will be a threat only to itself.
Japan, Turkey, and Poland will become major world powers along with the United States
Increasing tensions will result in a mid-century global war. This war will be science fiction-like in its execution, and will lead to dramatic technical advances, including space-based solar power, which will jump-start a massive economic boom.
The most important dynamic of the 21st century will be falling birthrates leading to world population decline. Countries hungry for laborers will openly compete for immigrants rather than turning them away.
Thanks in large measure to the immigration-induced population and power shift, the final crisis of the 21st century will be a major conflict between the United States and an increasingly influential and aggressive Mexico.
Friedman may be 'way off base in his conclusions, or he may be prescient. Where I am certain he is correct is in his assertion that we must expect the unexpected. To that end I'm beginning what I hope will be several posts on ways we might prepare to meet whatever is coming our way.
To conclude the beginning, here are a couple of Friedman's thoughts that I found both frightening and comforting:
It is the delight of all societies to belittle their political leaders, and leaders surely do make mistakes. But the mistakes they make, when carefully examined, are rarely stupid. More likely, mistakes are forced on them by circumstance. We would all like to believe that we—or our favorite candidate—would never have acted so stupidly. It is rarely true. Geopolitics therefore does not take the individual leader very seriously, any more than economics takes the individual businessman too seriously.
The twenty-first century will be like all other centuries. There will be wars, there will be poverty, there will be triumphs and defeats. There will be tragedy and good luck. People will go to work, make money, have children, fall in love, and come to hate. That is the one thing that is not cyclical. It is the permanent human condition.
From this you might begin to guess the tenor of my upcoming posts. Some things never change, and therefore there are ways to face the uncertain future, ways that involve work but not worry, preparation but not panic. I take as the theme of my approach this admonition given by God to the Israelites, who had been conquered and dragged away into exile in Babylon (Jeremiah 29:5-7):
Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 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.
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Category Politics Random Musings
There's a reason the Oxford University Press had to include "common sense" in its new Junior Dictionary. In 2003, a construction worker, egged on by his boss and co-workers, dived into a shallow river. The not unsurprising result? He broke his neck. Now he is paralyzed, his mother cares for him full time, and the company he worked for is bankrupt. A tragedy all around.
Another, less heart-rending but no less serious tragedy is the further erosion of the notion of personal responsibility for our actions. In 2007 a judge ruled that the company was negligent, and this week a jury decided that the man
He's not likely to collect, since apparently there is no one with deep pockets to bleed for the man's stupidity and that of his foolish coworkers. For the jury's stupidity we will all suffer.should receive $1.5 million for past medical expenses, $89,000 for lost earnings, $21.7 million for future medical expenses, $583,000 for loss of future earnings, and a whopping $52.8 million for pain and suffering.
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Category Random Musings
Rather than hijacking Heather's post, I'll ask my question here.
The pay toilet has long since disappeared from American public life, but is still common on Europe, a fact which often strikes visiting Americans as barbarous. I feel similarly about paying high prices to drink water in European restaurants. Other surprises I have found in my travels—for these are first-world, modern, and wealthy countries—is home refrigerators the size of those in U. S. college dorms (and no separate freezers), severely restricted laundry hours in apartments (sometimes as infrequently as once every two weeks), and the scarcity of clothes dryers.
There are, of course, many more things I've found delightful in all the countries we've visited, but the question of this post is: What do visitors to the United States find barbarous or bizarre here, that we accept without a second thought? To some friends visiting from Brazil it was being required to stop at red traffic lights even when there was no visible cross traffic. To others I'm sure it's the lack of clean and convenient public transportation. The Swiss must be shocked at the unreliability of schedules here.
What can you add to the list, dear foreign readers and those who have friends from other countries?Permalink | Comments | Edit
Category Random Musings
For the amusement of our friends and family, particularly those who were in New Hampshire last week, we are under a hard freeze warning.
Okay, okay—stop throwing things!All persons in east central Florida venturing outdoors this morning... should dress in layers and wear a hat.
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Category Everyday Life
What do you expect to find in a public library? I would like—though no longer expect—to find a large selection of old, unusual, and out-of-print books, music, and videos, the kind I am unable to buy from Amazon or borrow from Netflix. Shouldn't that be a basic purpose of libraries: to be a treasure store of valuable materials outside of whatever happens to be popular at the moment, especially those not otherwise easily obtainable? Unfortunately, most libraries seem to be divesting themselves of these materials in order to make more room for the the latest favorites. To be sure, this is also a function of libraries, and I appreciate being able to borrow a book when all I want to do is read it; I prefer stocking our own bookshelves with materials I already know are worthwhile. (One casualty of the libraries' jettisoning old books is that our shelves are overflowing; I can no longer prune our collection of lesser books on the grounds that I can always borrow them from the library if needed.) Most libraries, I believe, are out of balance in the way they address both functions, and our culture is suffering for it.
Thanks to my sister-in-law, who should have her own blog because she and my brother send me interesting ideas much faster than I can write about them, and to the Percival Blakeney Academy blog, I now know that this phenomenon is not limited to libraries, but has had a major impact on the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary.The battle over which words to include and which to exclude is not new for dictionary makers. With language constantly changing and growing, keeping a dictionary to a reasonable size requires excising some words when others are added. This is especially difficult with a children's dictionary, which must be extremely limited. That said, I believe the Oxford University Press has fallen into the libraries' error, depriving children of important information in favor of what's new and popular.
Words taken out:
Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe
Dwarf, elf, goblin
Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar
Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade
adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.
Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow
Words put in:
Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue
Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro
Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph
Removing spinach to make room for chatroom? Replacing devil with MP3 player? Poultry with trapezium? And what about block graph? I'd love to know the new dictionary's definition, as all my dictionaries and Wikipedia failed me. I suspect they mean a simple, graphical way of presenting data, and not the higher-level math of graph theory, or this definition I found via Google: "a block graph...consists of a plurality of logic blocks interconnected by nets which carry logic signals between the logic blocks." In any case, its inclusion at the expense of emperor seems bizarre.
On the other hand, they do include common sense for the first time. I'd like to think that, like MP3 players, Euros, and celebrities, common sense has been included because it has become popular and commonplace. But I doubt it.Heather and Jon gave us a gift certificate for the El Bodegon restaurant, because they know we've been mouring the demise of our favorite tapas restaurant. We thought we'd celebrate our anniversary again tonight (the first celebration having been in Switzerland) and try it out.
Our intentions to use the gift certificate went by the board, however. We arrived during tapas happy hour, and learned that we couldn't use both discounts. We couldn't resist two-for-one tapas, so we'll need to return to use the gift certificate. This is a good thing. :) The meal was thoroughly delightful:Pimientos del Piquillo Rellenos (Roasted Piquillo peppers stuffed with crab meat in romesco sauce)
Gambas al Ajillo (Spanish Style Shrimp in a garlic and sherry wine sauce)
Patatas Bravas (Wedge potatoes with a Spanish spicy tomato sauce)
Champiñones al Ajillo (Mushrooms sautéed in garlic and Sherry wine)
The meal was accompanied by slices of toasted bread, which served the noble end of soaking up the delicious leftover sauces, making it some of the best garlic bread ever.
We finished the meal by splitting a dessert:
Tarta San Marcos (Homemade Vanilla Cake made with Orange Liqueur)Thanks, Heather and Jon! We'll try again to use the gift certificate another time....
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Category Reviews Everyday Life
It doesn't really matter that Barack Obama was not my candidate of choice (see my election series, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 for some of the reasons why); as a friend said, "I didn't vote for him, but I hope he's the best president ever." What boggles my mind is the adulation, ethusiasm, and outright joy that Inauguration Day 2009 brings—it's not all media hype. I can't imagine any presidential inauguration inspiring that kind of joy in me. At best I usually manage feelings of relief that the worst candidate did not win. But perhaps that's just a character flaw: I find it hard to get that enthusiastic about anything. We recently returned from our daughter's fabulous wedding to a wonderful man, and though I am pleased and enthusiastic and joyful, even for that event I can't imagine participating in the kind of jubliant demonstration associated with Obama's inauguration. Be that as it may, I truly wish our new president the best, and pray for him, because he will need it.
And yet my primary commentary on this Inauguration Day is a thank you to outgoing President Bush. History alone will tell, but as far as I can see the evidence so far pronounces George W. Bush a good man but an unfortunate and often unwise president, the same judgment I gave to Jimmy Carter. Nonetheless, he had his successes, and a very important one was highlighted by yesterday's Mallard Fillmore.
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Category Politics Random Musings
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Category Everyday Life
I've noticed a disturbing trend in recent writings condemning individualism and independence, from the oft-quoted "It takes a village to raise a child" (best response to date: "I've seen the village, and I don't want it raising my children") to several of the essays on Patrick Deneen's excellent blog, What I Saw in America, to the many Christian writers who are taking pains to distance their religion from currently unpopular, Western—and particularly American—ideas. Collectivism is in.
Some of this is a much-needed correction. Basic human sinfulness (there is no better word for the phenomenon) has bent a respect for the rights and responsibilities of every human being into an excuse for me-first, me-only, me-now self-indulgence that has torn apart community on every level, and especially in our families. Individual rights without individual responsibility is not a workable equation, and the fault must be addressed.Nonetheless, it's worth noting the risk of tumbling into the opposite fault. Some recent conversations with people about their experiences with some African countries alerted me to a cultural problem that I did not, until now, connect with collectivism. I've removed the country-specific references in the excerpt below, because it is representative of a more wide-spread mindset.
One of the most striking things about [this country] compared to many other developing countries is that there seems to be no spirit of entrepreneurship. When we were standing along the main street, one of the missionaries pointed to the stores across the street: "that one is owned by a Lebanese, the next one by an Indian, then a Nigerian", etc. None by [the locals]. It's obviously not impossible to start a business, given the number of small businesses, but [they] wait for someone else to do it and then hire them to do the grunt work.
It was a remarkable essay by Matthew Parris (hat tip to John Stackhouse) that connected these points for me. In As an Atheist, I Truly Believe Africa Needs God, he muses on a return to his boyhood home of Malawi (then Nyasaland) and his reluctant conclusion that the heart of Africa's problems is spiritual.
Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world—a directness in their dealings with others—that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.
There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.
I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.
Anxiety—fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things—strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.
Perhaps if Christians in America looked more like those whom Parris observed in Africa, we wouldn't be so eager to reject a way of life "influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught."Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
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Category Random Musings
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Category Hurricanes and Such Everyday Life
From Conversion Diary:
So that's why I accomplish the most whenever something else urgently needs to be done. I find it especially true when leaving on a trip. Suddenly all the items that languished contentedly on my to do list for weeks demand to be addressed before I leave, even though they're much less important than, say, packing my suitcase.Want to get to get things done like never before? Try writing a book.
I guarantee you, every time you sit down and see the blank screen with the blinking cursor, you will suddenly feel an urgent need to clean the baseboards, get those crumbs off the kitchen floor, de-lint the couch, Windex the skylight, clean the gutters, do your taxes and mop the garage. If you can swing a contract that puts even more pressure on you to write something good and thus brings out writer's block in its worst form, you can count on having your to-do list cleared off in about a week.
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Category Random Musings
