1133rd

I had the tremendous honor last night of saying the invocation and benediction at the community sendoff of the 1133rd National Guard transportation unit, who are heading toward their second tour of duty in Iraq.



I sat on the dais with a selection of dignitaries, including the Lieutenant Governor of our fair state, and the Adjutant General for the National Guard in this region. And after my closing prayer (read directly from the brand new Pastoral Care book, which arrived yesterday) I looked up and saw the eyes and cheeks, shiny with tears, of these uniformed men and women who had stood so correctly at attention during all the boring speeches.

They were so young, and so brave. And something in me broke open a little bit.

Breakfast this morning was cereal: generic raisin bran and generic grape nuts, with milk. Also, mango light yogurt and coffee.

horse racing

This morning, once again, the conversation on my NPR call-in show was on the topic "Can John McCain win?"

This is a useful conversation to have in small doses. And it is very useful to insiders and campaign workers. They need to have this conversation.

But the general public should only rarely be involved in this conversation. (Arguably it is useful during the primary season.) The question that most people should be concerned about is not "CAN win?" but "SHOULD win?"

Then (God-willing) we would talk about issues, leadership styles, relevant personal information, and such, rather than polling, leads, margins, and all the "objective" data that is only useful for self-fulfilling prophesies.

We are talking about meta-campaign stuff that is not actual democracy, but horse racing. And I am frustrated with it. Humbug.

I recognize that it is harder for media to maintain an image of objectivity when they report on qualifications and issues rather than horse-racing. But I wish we were talking about meaty things instead of fluff.

Anyway, back to the campaign for a few more weeks.

Breakfast today was yummy bread from a Wisconsin monastery: Sinsinawa Mound's Honey Wheat, toasted with butter, and their Large Cinnamon Loaf, toasted with butter. Also, a bit of generic egg substitute, scrambled with milk and microwaved in a Pyrex dish.

Bindi the tragic girl

I'm writing an especially ignorant blog tonight, O true believers. I've never even seen the show I'm going to talk about. But I have seen the commercials, and in today's drive-by culture that's enough, right?

Is anybody else bothered by this "Bindi the Jungle Girl" show? It's apparently an award-winning nature show on Discovery Kids starring Bindi Irwin. She's a cute little kid with pigtails and total innocence in the video I've seen.

Yet I can't watch a moment of the commercial without thinking of her father's tragic death. For Bindi is the daughter of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, who spent his life putting himself in alarming proximity to dangerous animals for the sake of entertaining video. And while filming a show he suffered a fatal stingray barb to the heart. Classic illustration of Pride, Fragility of Man Before Nature, Thinning the Herd, and all that sort of thing.

And I think about the fact that the guy had kids, and I get sad. And then I see that this show exists, and I wonder about the thought process involved:

Producer #1: Crikey! Bummer, right?
Producer #2: Eh, and a pity about the little girl.
Producer #1: I wish there was something that we could do for her.
Producer #2: Well, we don't know how to do anything but produce tragically hazardous Nature Gone Wild television programs.
Producer #1: Let's give her her own show, then! That'll make her feel better.
Producer #2: Sure, let's build the whole show around her, so that she is absolutely indispensible. And if she ever throws a tantrum on the set, or has feelings about the show that she doesn't know how to deal with, we can just threaten to film a stingray episode!
Producer #1: That's a good one! How do you think she'd look with a boa constricter around her neck?



For lunch I had deli ham and deli balogna on Wonder Bread with mustard, butter, and mayo. Also, leftover cornbread. And a Diet Coke.

p.s. Slightly less ignorant: I looked it up, and apparently Bindi began filming the show before her father's tragic death. Which makes it a bit less creepy, but how could she go on with the thing? And how can all these people make their profit by a show where all the economic incentive is to put this girl closer and closer to the tragedy of her father, while on camera? And if she lets her pain get to her, and quits the show, then she is supposed to feel like a washed-up celebrity? What else can she do with her life at this point?

I'm also reminded of the creepy video of Steve Irwin feeding a crocodile while holding his infant son with one arm. Allegedly the child was in no danger.

silence is golden

While looking for James P. Carse's book "The Religious Case Against Belief" (I'll probably end up having to actually buy this one. The local library and bookstores are too small.) I stumbled upon an earlier piece he had written called "The Silence of God." It's not what you think, some modernist Job-like rant against an absent God who owes us something.

Rather, the book praises silence. A particular kind of silence: the expectant silence of a good listener. The silence that lets you speak, share, and perhaps surprise the listener and yourself. I like this kind of listening. I crave this kind of listening. I seek to do this kind of listening ("be the change..."), though I'm not as good at it as I want to be.

It's hard to be a good listener. Most of us want to be God, that is, to be the one with something to say. And so it is hard to stop everything else long enough for someone to actually say something to you. Especially if they don't couch it with entertainment.

One of the most annoying things I do is to complete people's sentences, because I am too impatient to wait for them to finish. Maybe this would be fine if I always got it right. But all too often I don't know where they are going, and my impatience is offputting enough that I miss out on the surprise someone would have given me.

With books and movies and art I usually seek out things that will surprise me, or teach me, or reveal something I haven't noticed before. And with people I often seek out the weirdos and freaks and outcasts who most people wouldn't want to listen to. But with the people I am closest to, I have often done a poor job of letting them actually tell me who they are.

But the need for a good listener is primal. Many of us crave it so much that we become performers, defensively seeking always to entertain so that people will keep listening. I took a job where, periodically, people have to listen to what I say, and it is the most satisfying part of my week. But maybe all I really want is for someone to pay attention.

(Theologically, Carse's argument suggests that God is a benevolent player, creating us as toys/fellows who are interesting to behold. And the whole point of our existence is therefore to BE, as fully as possible. This may be an argument against the value of divine foreknowledge: if the Creator really wants to listen to us being ourselves, it might spoil the fun if there could be no surprises. )

There is an excerpt of Carse's book availble on the internet that reads like a study guide. I can't recommend it. It is so tersely written that I could only skim it, dipping into random paragraphs in turn, like a set of Confucian analects, rather than continuous reading. I strongly suspect that I am misrepresenting what he has to say. But that's because I'm not as good at silence as I'd like to be, even as a reader.

Lunch yesterday was leftover brisket, personally smoked by my favorite father-in-law. We made it into sandwiches, with rich and sassy barbecue sauce. I strongly suspect I'll have the same thing for lunch today.

returns

Okay, so there's this Batman movie. It has gotten some press. You may have heard of it.

And I so am frustrated with Heath Ledger for spoiling the plan. Christopher Nolan has expressed in interviews that he imagined the thing as a trilogy. And the ambiguous ending of Ledger's character, together with the otherwise-unjustified appearance of the Scarecrow at the beginning of the film, suggests strongly that Ledger was meant to appear in the third film. How dare he succumb to that Olson twin's death-dealing? Grr.

And does anybody else feel like the film was still an origin story? The first movie was clearly an origin story, but this year's model still felt like it spent all but its last few seconds setting up the situation that the director really wants, with Batman all cool and underground and forced into hiding and stuff. Batman was always cooler when he was a loner, hated by the law enforcement establishment (except Gordon, usually), instead of the Super-Friend heroic public figure we get in most of his eras.

Maybe the third film will have him finally set in a world, instead of setting up one. And to me, the world the third film will inhabit (if it keeps moving in the same direction) is awfully similar to the emotional situation for the original "Dark Knight Returns" graphic novel by Frank Miller, minus the futuristic setting.

Sorry for the fanboy post. Just trying to write something rather than nothing.

Breakfast today was English muffin with Promise and syrup, coffee, and a bowl of generic honey nut cheerios, generic grape-nuts, rejected Alpha-Bits and way too much milk (which is probably why the four-year-old rejected the Alpha-Bits).

travellin' through

I finally watched "Transamerica" tonight, and my wife is right. That is just my sort of movie. Humane, cynical about humanity but generous towards humans, and funny little moments about how little we know ourselves and each other.

I have too many commitment issues to get a tattoo; I can hardly imagine what it would be like to desire gender reassignment surgery. Yet the film raises all sorts of useful questions about who we really are, who we pretend to be, the lies we tell one another and ourselves. And the way that most of us just want somebody to see us for once. To pay enough attention to get us. And yet we keep cutting ourselves off from those who might be able to get to know us that well. Because it's dangerous to be close. It's hazardous to let somebody in--because you never know if you can trust them.

And sometimes the most open people in the world can be the most guarded. I think of a Pedro Almodovar movie where the lead character talks about how drag queens are the most natural people in the world because they have constructed their entire nature from scratch. This is not an exact quote.

Anybody interested in constructing some new reality?

Lunch today was Perkins--coffee and this biscuits and sausage gravy platter from a special menu that emphasizes breakfast all day, as if that were not the whole reason I go to Perkins in the first place. Along with all the fatty things, I ordered my scrambled eggs made with Egg Beaters. A drop in the bucket. And did I mention the best condiment of all: really slow service. They seem to have forgotten my order altogether, and the whole rest of the party was almost finished with their meal before I got mine. And it tasted so good because of the embarassment and hunger. Mmm.

Old-Timers

Last Wednesday:

"Hello"
"Hello, how are you?"
"I'm fine, and you?"
"Is your [report] done?"
"Yes, actually."
"Do you want the news now or later?"
"Well, now."

And then my life changed. My father has a diagnosis. It's not good. It's pretty far along, but we have no idea how it will progress from here. His sister was diagnosed with the same disease and was dead three years later.

I'm still in shock. My work is suffering. I want to go home. I want to quit my job. I want to start an oral history project about him while he can still share stories.

I'm feeling guilty about not being nearer. And about not being closer. I'm feeling guilty about burdening people with my family's health issues. I'm feeling guilty about my work and my family and about not knowing how much to share with people, because my parents don't seem to be telling people. I feel guilty about not knowing how to communicate with my family.

And I'm afraid that it's hereditary. That I'll get it. That my kids will get it.

Okay. Deep breath. Start over. My father has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Stage 5 of a possible 7. Mom claims he is responding well to medication. I don't know what else to say at this point. Help me, Lord.

Lunch today was a recipe we tried for the first time earlier this weekend: refrigerator homestyle biscuits rolled flat, then filled with ground turkey and fat-free cheese, with a dash of salt. Fold over, fork the edges closed, and bake. Basically a diet empanada. Yum. Also, unfilled biscuits (made for the toddlers) with butter and honey. Water, and the dregs of the Starbucks ground coffee we received in a Christmas gift.

Why omit Ovid?

Why didn't they tell me about this? All these years I've been reading my Edith Hamilton, reading my Bullfinch, reading my secondary sources. And then at a library book sale I pick up a well-worn copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in the Horace Gregory translation.

And the heavens open, and I am a mythologist again.

I mean, seriously, I used to think of myself as a somewhat educated fellow. I read the required Homer (including the boring Telemachus parts) and the extracurricular Homer (beautiful bloody battle bits, though repetitive). I read me some Aeneid and some Divine Comedy and some Milton. My best friend in college was a Classics major. But nothing has been as much breezy fun or as diversely educational as this strange, comprehensive poem that would serve so well as a beginning mythology text.

Everything you need is there. Why don't teachers use this version to teach Perseus? Why don't museum curators print selections beside ancient illustrations? This is so well written, so readable, such an education in pacing and transition control... Are people so afraid of primary texts that they would rather read badly written Cliff's Notes than actual good, terse, muscular writing? (Don't answer that.)

Or do Gregory's oddly VH1-ish introduction and oddly located chapter summaries scare people away?

If I ever teach a mythology class, this will be a significant chunk of the curriculum. I'll probably have to throw in some other cultures to be more politically correct. But Ovid is a pretty ideal Dead White Male.

This nerd says check it out.

Breakfast today was homemade monkey bread made by a very intense four-year-old. Torn-up raw refrigerator biscuits in a loaf pan with melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon poured over the top, then baked for much longer than I expected. Lunch was much less interesting.

Crimes in Social Science

I'm enjoying slogging through Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect. It seeks to reveal how normal people do evil, with special attention to the author's own famous study: The Stanford Prison Experiment. Thirty some year later, the guy finally gets around to writing a book about it. Makes me feel more hopeful about my own procrastination.

Anyway, a passage on conformity experiments brought back my own brief days as a social scientist. For the eighth grade science fair, my scientifically superior friend WBL suggested that we replicate a famous (but not yet to me) experiment by Solomon Asch, where subjects are asked to compare the length of lines with each other, and answer which lines were the same length. The trick was that confederates of the experimenter would be taking aloud the same test at the same time, and they would conspire to answer certain predetermined questions incorrectly. The experiment would be to see how often subjects would bow to peer pressure and give the wrong answer.

Quite often, as it turned out, both for Asch and for ourselves. But I have always felt queasy about the way we did the experiment. To begin with, our "confederates" were our friends--people known to be honors students near the top of the class. And nothing was anonymous. And for some reason we didn't always use lines, but sometimes used questions that people genuinely might not know the correct answer to. And perhaps most egregiously, we failed to debrief our test subjects so that they would know what was going on. How do you suppose these friends and acquaintances of ours felt after they suspected that they had been had?

It was fun to participate in a social science experiment, and we did establish that peer pressure is indeed strong. But I fear that the exercise largely functioned as a chance for us honors student nerds to feel superior to the people we invited into our experiment. And to exert power over others with the one form of superiority that we had: test-taking skills. These people would be justified in never trusting me again.

I felt queasy at the time about this (though perhaps not as queasy as when I was buying and selling people's souls in high school). But I never spoke up or stopped the experiment. I just did a poor job at presenting it at the science fair, because I felt guilty. And reading Zimbardo's book, I feel like I was living inside Milgram's famous electric shock experiment--I was willing to cause possible harm to my peers for the sake of a silly experiment. And I did nothing to get out or stop it.

I am very suspicious of using power over people. But sometimes I do it. And it makes me sick. This is why I am not a social scientist--a weak stomach.

Lunch today was forgettable, but supper was interesting: instant rice, frozen broccoli from a nuke-in bag, chow mein noodles, and leftover generic spaghettios. I am trying to be supportive of a loved one's restricted diet. Eating without fat is remarkably difficult, though.