Lift Up Your Hearts!

According to this WebMD article, napping helps babies process and retain new information.  Extrapolating to all ages, maybe a good book or educational video, or a stimulating intellectual discussion, would be a profitable pre-bedtime ritual.  And maybe we should stop being so hard on students who snooze during class....

Beginning January 1st, one of my favorite comic strips, FoxTrot, will be published on Sundays only. I love FoxTrot primarily because it assumes intelligence and knowledge on the part of its readers; only the negative and condescending way Roger, the father, is portrayed dampens my enthusiasm. The more positive approach of Frazz, along with its respect for readers' intelligence and knowledge, is why that strip is now number one on my list.

But I will still miss seeing FoxTrot every day.

A break in the weather (in which the winds on the mountain are predicted to be "only" 60 mph) is expected to set off an intensive search and rescue operation for the three climbers stranded on Mt. Hood. Please pray for the success of the effort, and for the safety of the searchers. The mountain is still very dangerous, with high risk of avalanche because of the recent storms.

Some of you who read this blog know Frank James, brother of one of the climbers. All those years of teaching seminary students have made him a highly articulate spokesman for the family, as you will see if you follow the news conference links below. I know I should be just as concerned if those involved were total strangers, but the personal connection always makes it easier to realize that these faceless strangers are human beings, somebody's husband, father, brother, and son. (Listen to Frank's description of their mother in the first video; it will make you smile despite the gravity of the situation.)

Thursday's news conference
Friday's news conference
KATU home page for updates
The mothers speak (in three languages; warning: this is hard to listen to)
Saturday morning
Saturday night
Sunday morning
Sunday noon
(for later updates see Comments)

Terrorism? War? Disease? Crime? Not being able to communicate? For the places I'm likely to go, the biggest danger is none of these, but in being an Ugly American. An Ugly, Ignorant American.

Consider, for example, the experience of a friend, who recently returned from East Africa.

He was hiking, with a group of fellow tourists, under the direction of a native guide, and overheard the following conversation between the guide and an American elementary school teacher.

Teacher: What religion are you? Do you worship spirits? Ancestors?

Guide: I'm a Roman Catholic.

Teacher: Oh. Do you celebrate Christmas?

Friend: (Inarticulate noises, recognized by his father as the signs he is trying hard to stifle both laughter and rage.)

Guide (bemused, but polite): Yes, I celebrate Christmas.

Teacher: Oh. You don't celebrate Kwanzaa?

Friend: (Indications that rage is winning out over laughter. His father attempts to lead him away from the scene. Too little, too late.)

Guide (confused, but still polite): What's Kwanzaa?

Teacher (incredulous): It's an African holiday!

Friend: (In a mixture of incredulity and embarrassment that he bears the same nationality as the Teacher, erupts with a heated exposition of the history of Kwanzaa.)

I'm not sure which is more disconcerting: The ignorance of this person; that she is a teacher, and has doubtless passed her ignorance on to many innocent young children; or that telling this story has revealed other people who don't know that Kwanzaa is not of African origin, but was invented in 1966 by an American who wanted "to give a Black alternative to the existing holiday [Christmas] and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society."

I've already written (here and here), about some of the dangers of epidural anesthesia during childbirth.  Today's reports bring still more bad news to those who see epidurals as an important part of the birthing process: an apparent link between fentanyl (a component of the anesthesia) and subsequent problems with breastfeeding.

I do feel sorry for Lake Brantley High School's band. When our kids played in it, many of the members secretly (or not so secretly) wanted the football team to lose so they wouldn't extend the marching season by making the playoffs. (An understandable side effect of the unreasonable rule requiring students to play in the marching band if they wanted to be part of the concert band.)

Still, even the hardest-hearted (that would have been me, had I known) must have felt a thrill when Brantley became the first Seminole County football team to play in a State Championship game, which was held at Miami's Dolphin Stadium last night.

They lost the game to the powerhouse Miami Northwestern team. But they won more than they lost, according to Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi. Some excerpts from today's column:

Lake Brantley High didn't win the Class 6A state championship Saturday night, but it accomplished something even more admirable. None of the Patriots' players was arrested or paid off this past week.

Miami Northwestern's star running back was arrested last week on a felony charge of lewd and lascivious battery.... Any questions about whether [he] would be allowed to play against Lake Brantley on Saturday night were quickly answered when he was introduced before the game and received an ovation 10 times louder than any other player on the team.

If you wonder where college and professional athletes get their sense of privilege and pretension, look no further than the state's powerhouse high-school football programs. [Miami Northwestern isn't the only Florida high school football team with documented ethics violations.] Brantley's coaches and administrators obviously didn't get the memo: If you want to win the state championship, leave your conscience at home.

Get this: Lake Brantley actually has something called a "citizenship policy" that precludes athletes from participating in games not only for breaking major rules but for simple conduct violations. There have been instances when Patriots athletes have missed games for unexcused tardiness. "If one of our kids had been arrested, he wouldn't be playing in the state championship game," Lake Brantley Coach George Clayton said.

Lake Brantley may not have won the state championship Saturday night, but it did something even better in my book. The Patriots put the class back in Class 6A.

We went for a long walk around the neighborhood tonight, looking at the many inventive and beautiful Christmas light displays. But the very best light show of all occurred just as we reached home: the night liftoff of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Daytime launches are wonderful enough, but night launches are sublime.

In a moment of weakness, I brought home a Rubbermaid bin full of family books, papers, and photographs from my sister's house when we were there for Thanksgiving. It only made sense: I'm the genealogist in the family; I have many other boxes of family material already; these are things I need to sort through, analyze, and scan eventually; and my sister was cleaning out her basement.

On the other hand, what was I thinking?

My sister's house is MUCH bigger than ours, and I know I'm not going to get to these particular papers for a long time yet. I brought the bin into the house, and stared in some despair at the overstuffed closet in my office. Living in Florida, we have no basement, and neither the attic nor the garage can provide suitable storage for papers. So before the new box could go into my closet, a major makeover was required.

Not exactly what I wanted to do this month, but it's done, the closet looks wonderful (if still over-full), and I feel great. What's more, I had taken two empty Rubbermaid bins out of our garage to pack for our trip, brought home one full of papers to keep (now stored in my closet), and still managed to return THREE Rubbermaid bins to the garage this afternoon!

Whoo-hoo! Now I just have to deal with the rest of my office...and try to forget that each of the bins piled in my closet represents an enormous amount of work waiting to be done. As Janet said, my to-do list isn't long, it's high.

The Seminole Indians never surrendered to the U. S. Government; perhaps they knew that time and patience would be the keys to eventual success. Florida's Seminole Tribe has conquered the Hard Rock Empire. As far as I know, no blood was shed in the acquisition, but nearly a billion dollars changed hands.

(For those who care, I use the politically incorrect term, "Indians," because that's what the local Seminole folks said they preferred.)

The sad part of the story is that I remember when many of the Seminole leaders argued that they didn't want to become involved with casinos because that would be immoral. I can't really blame the Indians for taking advantage of any legal means to lift up their people, but it's sad.

I also fear for them, not only because sudden wealth often leads to disaster, but also because I doubt there is any situation in which large amounts of money can be made that does not attract the attentions of organized crime.

In the meantime, it is sweet revenge on the descendants of their conquerors—as if tobacco weren't enough.

I'm not holding a grudge, and have recently fallen in love with Japan and her people, but history, remembrance, and memorials are important, so it is sad to note that FDR's date which will live in infamy is mostly ignored.

Yet Ed Hayes came through, as did BC and Mallard.

Yesterday I tried to buy Porter some razor blades. It may be the biggest shopping season of the year, but some people are making it awfully difficult to spend my money.

It was bad enough last week when it took just short of a passport and my firstborn child to buy a small package of Sudafed. There was no extended paperwork nor photo ID requirement to buy razor blades, but the process was actually much more annoying.

I was at our local Albertsons grocery store and quickly found the brand of blades Porter had requested. But instead of slipping easily off the rack and into may cart, the package was stopped by a rude, red button that said, "See Sales Associate." Right. If there was one thing I couldn't see, it was a sales associate. Anywhere.

After standing in line at the pharmacy, I found a lady willing to page someone to help me. Back at Aisle 14, I waited. And waited. And investigated all the varieties of Curel hand lotion and several other products available in that aisle. Good ploy, perhaps, to get me to browse the shelves, but I was getting annoyed. So back to the pharmacy I went, not patient to stand in line this time, going right up to the counter and asking for a repeat page.

The page was duly repeated, but so was my experience. By this time Janet had returned from doing all the rest of the shopping, so she waited in Aisle 14 while I went to the service desk. No one there could help me, they said cheerfully, as only the store manager is entrusted with a key. (Maybe they should keep the razor blades in the safe.) I asked if I should just tell my husband to grow a beard. They paged the manager, and I retreated once more to what was becoming my least favorite aisle of the store. Janet and I had a nice chat. Alone.

Since it had now been about 20 minutes since I had begun my quest for the Elusive and Apparently Dangerous Razor Blades, I applied the three-strikes-and-you're-out rule. While Janet proceeded to the checkout line, I stopped one more time at the service desk to let them know I was giving up, and to ask for a complaint form. Thus spurred into action, the lady behind the desk rushed out and flagged down another employee. I don't know who he was, but he wasn't the manager, and had just come in from the loading dock. Whatever—he was my hero. With profuse apologies, he walked with me to Aisle 14, reached up to the display, and with a neat flick of his box cutter, liberated the package of razor blades. "They don't trust us with the key," he explained, "so we have to do this frequently."

I love a person who can quickly assess a problem and as quickly solve it, even if—or maybe especially if—the solution is a bit unorthodox. Whoever he was, he should go far, having shown more concern over the potential loss of a customer—and a $20 sale—than anyone else in the store, including the manager.

Jonathan, who just turned three, met me on the stairs with a blue cable in his hand. As I passed, I remarked, "That looks like a Cat 5 cable." "No it's not," he responded, "It's a USB cord." (He was right.)

Central Florida news teams were positioned to cover what they thought would be the big news of the night—the election—and had to scramble when the weather took center stage.

Have you ever stood in the ocean and had a wave suddenly break over your head? Now imagine that the wave doesn't recede, but continues to pour over you for half an hour, and you have a picture of yesterday's rainstorm. If there's been a heavier downpour in all our 20-some years here, I don't remember it.

I like weather, if I'm watching it from a safe position, and might have thoroughly enjoyed the experience if Janet had been home with me. Instead, I took the storm as a call to prayer, since she was out running errands. I'm sure I was almost as glad to hear the sound of the garage door opening as she was to be driving in. On the main highway, a truck (driving at all of maybe 35 mph) completely enveloped her little car with spray as it passed, blinding her for several seconds. Once in the neighborhood, the main street, even at the top of the hill, was flooded to the sidewalks, and visibility was nearly zero. Just after the storm passed over us, it turned vicious, spawning a tornado that divested some houses in Oviedo of their roofs.

I don't know what effect the storm might have had on the election, but I'm sure that many people driving home from work through the deluge decided not to bother to stop at the polls on the way. I had voted earlier in the day, my usual hodgepodge procedure of voting for whoever I like best, Republican or Democrat. I suppose you could say I "won," since the election went my way on about 2/3 of the issues. However, I'm not rejoicing, since I lost on the only issue I really cared about. Seminole County had the opportunity to authorize a very small ad valorem tax for the purpose of purchasing environmentally sensitive lands and developing recreational trails and pedestrian bridges, and it failed 51% to 49%. I'm guessing too many people voted reflexively anti-tax. Not that I blame them entirely, as that is my own tendency, but in this case the cost was small and the benefits enormous; we have lost a great opportunity.

To Whom It May Concern:

If you need to reach us, try the good ol' telephone, or leave a comment here. For some bizarre reason our e-mail is down, even though our general Internet service is working fine. I've only been able to get a few e-mails all day, and none at all in recent hours,

It appears to work for sending, though I don't really know that, either. I'll have to remember to check when it comes back up and see if what I sent was actually received.

"When it comes back up." Soon, I hope. But at present the technicians have no projected duration of the outage....

Last night we heard the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra play Pierre Jalbert's deeply moving In Aeternum, which he wrote as a memorial to his niece who died at birth. Naturally, my thoughts were about Isaac as I listened, running a gamut of emotions, including anger during an intense part of the work with a heartbeat motif running through it—that brought back memories of the doctor who interrupted the family's last moments together to tell them Isaac's heart rate was slowing down.

I had the privilege of speaking briefly with Jalbert afterwards and was able to tell him (though not fully express) how much the music meant to me. You can hear an exerpt of In Aeternum here.

(Some readers of this blog will be interested to know that Jalbert is a native son of Manchester, New Hampshire!)

Having been set up by last night's experience, I was not prepared to handle this morning's news from the United Kingdom: The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology is recommending active euthanasia for severely disabled newborns.

In these days of extreme medical care, the right and wrong of a situation is often a messy shade of grey. I fully support the right of a family to bring a loved one—young, old, or in between—home to die in friendly, familiar, natural surroundings, even if medical intervention would extend that person's life. This has nothing to do with actively, purposefully killing a helpless, innocent human being whose existence has become difficult or expensive, and the two issues should not be conflated. That respected doctors should hold such a position does nothing to bolster my already-waning trust in the medical profession.

I have no doubt that financial considerations weighed heavily in this recommendation, and I am saddened and angry for the new parents who—at the moment of their greatest grief and heartache—will face pressure from the UK's National Health Service to allow their babies to be cheaply killed rather than run up expensive medical bills. Nor do I have any illusions that the trend will stop with newborns.

John Harris, a member of the official Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University, welcomed the college's submission. "We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term, but cannot kill a newborn," he told The Sunday Times. "What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it OK to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not the other?"

If conception is not enough of a momentous occurrence to mark the beginning of a life worthy of protection...if viability outside the womb is not...if the moment of birth is not...then we are left with nothing at all.