tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46824662605634969312024-03-13T00:43:41.454-04:00Reformed TrombonistA mild-mannered trombone player with delusions of adequacy and a bone to pick (so to speak) with liberals, he fights a never-ending battle for loud trombones, theologian-in-chief John Calvin, and good beer. Will settle for free beer. No compromise on the trombone volume, however.Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.comBlogger154125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-34309118782737086302023-12-20T20:32:00.011-05:002023-12-21T10:19:09.592-05:00Merry Christmas 2023!<div>I've been writing these Christmas letters for about forty years, and still have yet to win a Pulitzer</div><div>Prize. Those New York reporters have it in for me. Merry Christmas, you friends of the Dise family, you! You can't deny it, much as you might like to. You know who you are.</div><div>Every year, the same story: what do I write about this time? The aging process is turning into a rich topic. The good health we once took for granted has become officially recognized as a precious commodity. This past summer, there were wild fires in Canada whose smoky badness came down as far south as our neck of the woods. This gave Debbie a pretty rugged summer; she inherited respiratory issues from her dad's side of the family. She consulted with a pulmonologist and has been diagnosed with something called cystic lung disease, for which there is no cure. We still don't know how this will ultimately affect her health, but she and her pulmonologist will need to come to some sort of agreement on strategy for treatment. As for now, she can no longer fly on planes, or live above sea level, which would over-stress her lungs, and this includes too much flute-playing. She played her final concerts last week at the nursing homes (her own private ministry) and one of the nursing homes had all their residents sign a card thanking her for her years of playing for them. Debbie needs at least one full-time job, so now she's teaching violin lessons to some of the young'uns at church, and at least one of the not-so-young'uns. It's probably good for her. Violinists don't fret.</div><div>It only makes sense that health is an issue. If you stick around long enough, you get close to the Bible's specification for longevity. "The length of our days is seventy years — or eighty, if we have the strength." -- Psalm 90:10 Since it's something we can't change; it becomes something we laugh about. I remember the old Homer and Jethro version of a '50s pop tune, "Don't Let the Stars Get In Your Eyeballs," crooning, "Her teeth are like the stars above, because they come out every night." Or the old Rodney Dangerfield joke, "Last night I called the Incontinence Hotline. They asked me to hold." In fact, Rodney seems to own the entire catalog:</div><div>• “I wanted to marry Mrs. Right. I just didn't know her first name was 'Always'."</div><div>• “I sat next to an old woman at the bar. I asked her, do I come here often?"</div><div>The best advice I know how to give is this: live near a hospital, but try to stay away from it. Hospitals are dangerous.</div><div>Meanwhile, Debbie keeps her spirits up through church and friends. She is still the music director at our little church -- I haven't had a trombone Christmas or Easter gig since she took that job almost twenty years ago -- and, well, that job is who she is. Her flute playing is excellent, but her organizational skills are simply over the top. (I couldn't organize a bee sting with my entire arm stuck in a nest of them.) She lets me play a trombone solo in church occasionally, and has quite bravely started scheduling me to sing solos.</div><div>My own primary occupation in retirement has been helping a friend edit a novel. If you were to line up all my English teachers from grade school and college and inform them of this, I think they'd all get a nice laugh. However, in my own defense, I had to do quite a bit of writing at my old programming jobs. My pet peeve was, and is, poorly written documentation. About twenty-three years ago, I remember a programming assignment which included updating the user documentation. When I got around to looking at it, it looked like the verbal equivalent of a butcher shop. Ugh. Lots of dangling participles, so to speak. So, I set a couple of days aside and performed the old Herculean maneuver known as "cleaning the Augean stables." Hercules diverted a river, whereas I used a word processor, but both approaches were based on the same basic idea, flushing several loads of crap. When I finished with it, I thought, oh no! No good deed goes unpunished, and awaited my swift trial and painful execution. But, as it turned out, the customer personally went to my boss and thanked him for my editing. It doesn't pay to be too cynical. Strive always for sufficiently cynical. Anyhow, my novelist friend keeps writing and re-writing and re-re-writing the various chapters, and that keeps me busy, too. I don't even have time to visit the beer halls anymore. And if you believe that, I have a novel to sell you, cheap.</div><div>We like to travel. Well, okay, I like to travel. Debbie, not so much. I loved Omaha, but now that we're back in Virginia, we're in closer proximity to many our friends who weren't so accessible from Omaha. Florida drivers are as bad as any we've ever seen, and it doesn't help matters that, like us, they're also old. It's after dark, we're coming along at 65 mph on a state highway, and suddenly, in front of us, in our lane, is a big-rig truck just sitting there, no lights on, and I'd better change lanes, like, now...!? Florida is a bit like the Wild West. They raise a lot of cattle there, did you know? And oranges. And reptiles. Visiting our friends Kurt and Patty Rauscher, we know the good places to eat. If you ever get to Cape Coral, FL, visit The Lobster Lady. We made that trek a couple of times this year. Debbie's oldest brother, Bill Jr., passed away, and his memorial service was held near Foley, AL, quite close to where Debbie's parents had lived for the twenty years or so before they came to live with us. Bill Jr. loved to tease and needle Debbie, but he did save her from drowning when she was eight years old. Thanks, Bill! Whenever we get down that way, we like to work in visiting as many friends as possible, and it just so happens that our retired pastor, Wally Sherbon and his wife Jan always welcome us with open arms -- love visiting them in Birmingham, AL. They're native Pittsburghers, so we always have fun things to talk about -- like, what's wrong with dem Stillers?!</div><div>We celebrated our 40th anniversary this year. April 2nd. Our friends from church, David and Debbie Cunningham, bought us tickets to go to a show by Home Free, an acapella group with a country music emphasis. We're big fans.</div><div>Later in the spring, we met with a couple of musician friends from my impoverished student days in Pittsburgh, Kevin and Ann Schmalz, and booked a couple of days at a nice hotel right where the Three Rivers converge. We went to a Pittsburgh Pirates game (the Pirates lost, drat!) and attended a Pittsburgh Symphony concert, performing Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" (the Pittsburgh Symphony won). Pittsburgh is still one of my favorite places in the world, and I always thought I'd like to do it all over again, this time with an income.</div><div>As for my own music, I've gone full circle in the past two or three years. I sold off the trombone herd a couple of years ago and quit performing because of shoulder pain and -- to be honest -- a loss of interest in playing, which turned out to be temporary. When I caught COVID/double pneumonia two years ago, that just seemed to ice the cake, to say bye-bye to playing trombone. But then, I discovered I'd lost a third of my lung capacity. Those stupid little incentive spirometers didn't seem to be helping much, so I bought a tuba and the act of playing it every day restored my lungs. Nevertheless, I really suck at playing tuba. Our next-door neighbors concurred with this sober judgment. So I started looking for a bass trombone and found a couple of nice ones. I'm playing with the Tidewater Winds again, and that's really about the extent of my playing at present. I do love playing bass trombone. I always feel like Rocky, swinging as hard as I can at the musical challenges, hoping for the knockout blow. If I'm still standing and the music is unconscious, I count it as a win.</div><div>It's been a hard year. I went to five funerals within two months. Debbie's brother Bill. An old pal from the Air Force, Ray Crenshaw. A classmate from high school, Denise. Two old friends from our church, Jerry Valentine and Bud Richardson. Jerry was a deacon in all but the title, helped with church maintenance, and was a master carpenter. He's done work for Debbie and me, but simply refused to let us pay for it. Bud was a Marine drill sergeant during the Vietnam War and I could hear the pain in his voice when he said, "I only had twelve weeks to teach them how to live through it." Cheers to all you great people!</div><div>Debbie and I wish you all the very merriest of Christmases, the happiest of New Years, and may the Lord</div><div>bless you up, down, and sideways!</div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-5221286655532857672022-12-22T16:19:00.002-05:002022-12-22T16:19:42.132-05:00Merry Christmas 2022<p> <b style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Merry Christmas 2022!</b></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"> </p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Another year in the can. Only the editing remains. This year, 2022, a fistful of deuces. When I was a kid, 2022 was off in some distant future, when we imagined we'd have already colonized Mars and owned jet cars, like George Jetson. So we thought. Instead, we spend all day staring at our phones and posting pictures of cats on Facebook. Ain't technology grand? In my day, we actually owned real cats for when we needed a laugh.</span><span style="color: #500050;"></span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: #500050;"></span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Been a busy year! I started it by getting sick. I don't remember very much of it. But I sure slept a lot. Debbie once found me sleeping on the bathroom floor at 2 am. I lost ten pounds on the COVID/pneumonia diet. Debbie had to force me to drink water and enticed me to eat by dangling sugary donuts and cookies, stuff that normally I love. My memories of all this are sketchy -- there's about a 10-day period that are only a wispy hint of a memory. A couple of things I do remember. She called an ambulance and the next thing I knew, two burly medics were asking me questions. From my perspective, I answered them quickly, but from Debbie's, there was a fifteen-second lag between questions and answers.</span><span style="color: #500050;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: black;">"What's your full name?"</span><span style="color: black;"><br />"..............Lee............<wbr></wbr>.Doyle...............Dise."<br /><br />"What year were you born?"<br /><br />"..............Nineteen.......<wbr></wbr>...fifty............four."<br /><br />"Do you know the name of the President of the United States."<br /><br />"...........I............wish.<wbr></wbr>..........I..........didn't."<br /><br />When my oxygen levels sank into the low eighties, the hospital admitted me. Once there, my memory started tracking again because now I was on oxygen. And I started eating. Four days in the hospital. My most memorable moments were spent with the Dragon Ladies. Vampires, really. Around 3:30 am, they came for my blood. One of them brandished a corkscrew wine-bottle opener and stabbed my forearm, to let it breathe a little before drinking. One woman, hanging from the ceiling, said, "Relax! I am the blood whisperer!" A few screams later and they left.</span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: #500050;"></span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Finally, home to rehab. I was very weak and had lost about a third of my lung capacity to something called "pulmonary infiltrate" -- the educated way of saying, too much crap in my lungs. I had to drag an oxygen machine around with me for three weeks. I got tired of blowing into the stupid little spirometer and bought a tuba instead. Now, I could improve my lung capacity and annoy my neighbors at the same time. In March, we drove to a small town outside of Philadelphia to buy the tuba. I actually did a lot of the driving, and we got to see much of the beautiful Pennsylvania landscape, complete with mountains and Amish horse wagons on the road.</span><span style="color: #500050;"></span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: #500050;"></span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"></span>In April we drove out to Omaha to attend the burial of a wonderful friend, Dale McHenry. He was dean of the business school at the community college, where Debbie worked as his secretary. They moved nearby to Williamsburg, VA in the late '90s. Debbie and I followed a year later to Virginia Beach, and we maintained our friendship. A good man. While in Omaha, we visited other friends and former colleagues. It is gratifying that so many of my old colleagues came out to have pizza with us twenty-two years after leaving Omaha. I try never to take friendship for granted. On the return trip, we met an old friend, Sam Caccamo, in Indianapolis for dinner. When it comes to stereo equipment, he's the pusher and I'm the junkie. We checked into a motel just east of Columbus, Ohio, and in the middle of night the fire alarm in our room went off. I hadn't completely recuperated yet and thus had no trouble sleeping through the alarm and the intrusion of the firemen who arrived to investigate, leaving Debbie to deal with them. We took the scenic route home through Winchester, Virginia. My high school band marched many a Cherry Blossom parade there, a short fifty years ago. The parade route was about five miles long and usually on the hottest day in May -- they coordinated their schedule with a sadistic weatherman.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"> </p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Debbie is quite the history buff, so in September, we took a mini-vacation in Gettysburg, PA, to visit the Civil War museum and enjoy some of the local cuisine. There's a restaurant in the town of Westminster, MD, called The Rock Salt Grille. I recommend it, it's worth driving out of your way to get there. We met up there with my old friends from college, Kevin & Ann Schmalz, and I ordered the most expensive sandwich I've ever bought. $22. They call it a Seafood Club, and consists of a huge crab cake, shrimp salad, bacon, and homemade whole wheat bread. Also met up with some old Penn State college chums, Rick and Linda Hoover. Rick was a computer programmer like me, but holds a Ph.D. and has probably forgotten more about software than I ever knew. Rick was the Penn State Music Department's designated hitter -- that is, he's a percussionist. I played countless concerts and gigs with Rick. Linda is a singer. We all know the same people, whose ears were lit on fire that evening. The most interesting exhibit at the Gettysburg museum is the Cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg. Think of a cyclorama as a painting in the round. Gettysburg's is longer than a football field and tall as a four-story building. But it told only one story, namely, the great and bloody tragedy of the Civil War.</span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><br />In October, we rented a house on North Carolina's Outer Banks, near the Kitty Hawk Memorial, where the Wright Brothers flew the world's first airplane in 1903. We entertained several visitors in succession that week. We failed to deplete Kitty Hawk of its beer. Excellent seafood. Met up with an old high school chum, Bruce Loughry, lives down that-a-way. We hadn't seen each other since we were both mugged at Hampton's Buckroe Beach, back in 1971. Bruce is a musician, too, a rocker and plays guitar. Our rental house had a panoramic view of the Albemarle Sound and the mornings were glorious. Odd floor plan, though. Our bedroom doubled as the foyer. Panoramic view was restricted. We went with my brother Jack and his wife Gracey to the Wright Brothers museum, and watched "Leave It to Beaver" with our Pastor, Ken and his wife, Michele, while drinking scotch. Now, I finally understand Eddie Haskell.</span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Debbie is never one to allow any sort of organizational or leadership vacuum to go unfilled. There were two openings on the condo's board of directors. She and another woman promptly stepped forward as the <s>sacrificial lambs</s> volunteers. Her new title is Director at Large <s>and In Charge.</s> She says that means she has no official duties, but those might rain down upon her at any moment. Best as I can tell, the Board does a good job. We've been here five years and haven't needed a "special assessment" yet -- and we just had to replace our roofs, which is a good sign they've been planning ahead. My own planning abilities are limited to noticing when we are out of beer.</span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">This week, our church has an evening candlelight service on Friday and a Christmas service on Sunday. Debbie is music director and has warned the church that I'm singing a solo. The year started out hard, but is ending more gently. We try to follow P.J. O'Rourke's advice on having fun: "Have it all now, it doesn't keep." </span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Christmas is both serious and fun. We live in a serious world with serious consequences, but are saved from them because the Lord of all creation paid us a visit, first wearing swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, and finally a crown of thorns. He was born so we can be born again. That's what puts the cheer in Christmas.</span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: normal; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">Love, from Lee & Debbie</span></p>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-36491876041431399032020-12-28T14:42:00.012-05:002020-12-29T08:02:57.059-05:00Merry Christmas 2020!<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It i</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;">sn't often that we don't have our Christmas letter finished and sent out by... well, you know, Christmas. No excuse. Just lazy. They say, if you want something done, ask a busy man to do it. I haven't been very busy. Most Decembers, I'm up to my eyebrows in assorted trombone-playing ventures, including performing Tchaikovsky's </span><i style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;">Nutcracker</i><span style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;"> ballet. On trombone, of course. Without a marketing survey to consult, I'll hazard a guess that me performing a </span><i style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;">pas de deux</i><span style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;"> in a tutu would have only very limited appeal. Well, who knows, it worked for Red Skelton. But I doubt they could find a dance partner able to lift me. But this year, our Governor has given us glad tidings of great Oy! Musicians are not "essential workers." Musicians won't take my advice. Instead of calling it a concert, call it a "protest" against institutionally-racist silence in the concert halls. That ought to be worth a politically-correct free pass.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When the WuFlu hit us last March, I started working from home. I love the convenience. The commute to work consists of stumbling from the bed to my easy chair. Done! No, I don't miss going to the office at all. I like it here just fine. No dress code, except when Debbie gets tired of seeing me in my PJs at two in the afternoon. The coffee machine is about ten feet away. So is the fridge. So is the stereo. When we all need to talk, we can teleconference, otherwise email works just fine. The programs themselves don't care where I write them -- they're very cooperative in that limited scope. If and when things ever do get back to normal, it'll be hard to readjust to waking at 5:30 AM and driving forty minutes through heavy traffic. I do sometimes miss the piquant environment of our little techie building, which is an old Fifties elementary school minus the aesthetic appeal. It does have a nice waterfront view; unfortunately, it's the kind of waterfront created by poor drainage. Mosquito Beach, Virginia. For the kids, we have a Canadian goose petting zoo; only problem is they're hard to catch, and sometimes they chase you. And they do leave little tokens of appreciation scattered along the sidewalks. My brother used to own a '71 Ford Maverick painted the same color. Watch your step. It isn't easy being green.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But the big news this year is I've retired, so to speak, from trombone playing. We're selling off the herd. I'm keeping my best tenor 'bone just in case I change my mind, but it isn't likely. It has been an amicable parting. I wasn't giving them the love they needed for so many years, and it grieved me to see them pouting in the closet. But when they started talking to divorce lawyers, I knew it was over. I had been playing trombone since Fall of my seventh grade year, which was... lessee... September of '66. That's fifty-four years. A good run, I think. With all that experience, I should play much better than I do. But sometimes you get fifty-four years of experience, while other times you get one year of experience fifty-four times. I might be somewhere in the middle. But, to be honest, I haven't been sounding very good for the past couple of years, and finally realized I should quit while I'm still behind. I've been writing our orchestra's program notes for a couple of years -- I don't know whether that will continue, but I'm hopeful. It's a lot of work, but I find it quite enjoyable. Still have lots of musician friends, so I'll feel like I'm part of the gang even if my tommy gun is no longer firing.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">One of my old music colleagues owns a music store and he agreed to sell my trombones on consignment. So we loaded up the herd into the splendiferously comfortable and luxurious '05 Honda Element, and felt every glorious bump in the road between here and Omaha. Along the way, we stopped and visited our pal Sam, who owns a beautiful old house in the little burg of Bloomington, Indiana. We had a wonderful visit with him and some of his church friends. The next day, Google Maps took us to the Illinois home of an old Air Force trombone colleague. Illinois is a corn field with Chicago at the top. He and his wife live near Joliet, which, if you will consult the music historians, is where Jake and Elwood performed "Jailhouse Rock" at the local prison. Great beer, great pizza, even greater conversation. After a couple hours, we scooted off to Omaha. It's always fun to see my old colleagues in Omaha -- musicians and programmers. We had dinner with our friends, Tom and Mary, and Tom arranged a get-together with a lot of my former colleagues from my defense contracting days. It was quite touching, to be honest. More than twenty years have passed, and they still remembered us well enough to enjoy an evening of beer and food with us. I have the best friends one could ever hope for. On the drive back to Virginia, we remembered that Sam had warned us about all the speed traps in rural Indiana and Illinois; he said they'll even ticket for five mph over the speed limit. Rural areas are starved for cash. I made it a point to travel the speed limit and no faster. Sam turned out to be a prophet, which for the cops turned out to be a loss. Coming through southern Indiana, the speed limit on I-64 was 70 mph, so that's where I set the cruise control. Then, suddenly, a truck went screaming past doing well over ninety. He was followed within a couple of minutes by a low-flying German luxury sedan. Then, as we rolled around a curve, we saw that an Indiana state trooper had the truck already pulled over, while another Smokey Bear was attacking the sedan. Debbie and I chuckled all the way to Louisville. A good time was had by some!</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">If anything, Debbie's musical involvement has intensified. She has turned her flute into a ministry -- both at church where she plays every Sunday, and as a regular performer at nursing homes. Before the WuFlu hit, she was giving concerts on nursing home premises. But now, mostly, she performs for the old folks via Zoom. Her concerts usually have a theme -- big band jazz, for example. She does a nice job of researching her selections and provides a cheerful commentary in between numbers. She also occasionally puts on concerts in the little park across the street here in our condo farm, and people bring their lawn chairs. The recreational coordinator absolutely cannot get Debbie's name right. She is "Dee Dise" as far as the coordinator is concerned, and no amount of being corrected phases her. I don't like it -- sounds too much like what you do when you want to get rid of all your Dises.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sadly, Debbie's mom, Audrey Wallace, went into a nursing home a couple of months ago. She had recurring leg infections, fell twice, and can no longer walk. She just turned ninety this year. Please pray for her.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm looking seriously at retiring this coming year. I hope to spend more time writing and maybe even getting published, but we haven't made any final decisions just yet. I'm pessimistic about the political situation, but I have to remind myself that a Christian has no business being a pessimist. We have the most wonderful Father in Heaven, to whom we pray every day, "Deliver us from evil." He is Master of the world; we just live here temporarily. It's nice, but a nicer place awaits us. This Christmas season, as the song says, remember that the Child that Mary delivered will someday deliver us. In the coming year, may blessed peace find you, and may others see it work in you.</span></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-27096725321401914292019-12-24T15:54:00.002-05:002020-12-28T14:41:16.240-05:00Merry Christmas, 2019!<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-size: small;">Merry Christmas, 2019!<br />
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Time to party like it's 2019!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We're less than ten days away from 2020, but the Year of Hindsight hasn't arrived just yet.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There are still a few beers to drink and, as luck would have it, just a few brain cells that need killing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Problem is, it's easy to kill brain cells but hard to kill only the right ones.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We should be able to place all of our painful memories in a Hefty bag and toss them off a bridge, and then donate all of those worthless '60s Sitcom themes clanging around in our heads to the Salvation Army.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But no.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Beer is a general anesthetic, not a specific remedy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The best brain surgeon in the world can't extract the memories of those mistakes you made at work, or those notes you cacked in a symphony performance, or Corporal Agarn smacking the soldiers with his hat again on "F Troop."<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The purpose of painful memories may be as simple as learning to forgive others by learning to forgive ourselves; the purpose of whimsical memories might be as obvious as learning that not quite all of life is serious business.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Our Lord, when in human form, spent a lot of time simply eating and drinking with his disciples, having a good time -- so much so, He was even accused of being a glutton and a drunk.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What better time to remember His example than on His birthday, when we gather to eat too much and drink too much with the people we love?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Lord had serious work to do, and so do we, but now is the time to rejoice in His presence and our blessings.<br />
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Debbie and I have had 2019 all to ourselves!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So, what did we do with it?<br />
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Well, last January, we traveled to visit our friends Kurt and Patty Rauscher at their beautiful home in Bokelia, Florida.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>On our way down, we stopped at Greenwood, South Carolina to visit Ray and Sonja Crenshaw, friends from our Air Force band days.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We stayed at a charming hotel in downtown Greenwood that exuded Southern charm like Scarlett O'Hara on the front porch of a plantation house, twiddling her parasol at the Tarleton brothers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>On this trip, we eschewed the freeway system, mostly because, in Georgia, all freeways lead to Atlanta, a great place to avoid if you're trying to arrive anywhere else at a decent hour.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We crossed the Savannah River into Georgia (I think it was the Savannah) on a road built atop a dam.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The setting was gloriously beautiful. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Rural Georgia was charming, in a rural, red-clay sort of way.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Bokelia is located on one of two islands in Florida named "Pine Island" -- they did that just to confuse us, and Google Maps. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This particular Pine Island is a barrier island between Cape Coral and the Gulf of Mexico.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It should be named Mangrove Island, but nobody asked my opinion.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If you're never seen mangrove trees, they festoon the coastal areas in the tropics and subtropics like tattoos at a Goth convention.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Their superpower is the ability to tolerate both fresh and salt water, and also to grow in the sand.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They look like they'd be fun to swim around, but the 'gators think the same thing, so, no, don't do that.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I've known Kurt since I was in 8th grade.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We both played in our high school band and both attended Penn State.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Retired now, Kurt was an Air Force pilot instructor, a civil engineer, an A-10 pilot for the Air National Guard, and a pilot of Delta Airlines.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Quite a resume! <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There seemed to be a bit of a frosty cold snap going on, weather-wise, and I remember the wasps nesting outside the house, their metabolisms slowed to a crawl, just barely able to creak their necks and glare at us in impotent rage.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Kurt took me out in his boat and we proved again that fishing isn't as much fun as catching.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We all had the obligatory lunch at our favorite Cape Coral watering hole, named "Ford's Garage" -- Henry Ford had owned a summer home in this part of Florida.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">This year, Debbie accompanied me to the American Trombone Workshop at Fort Myer, in Arlington, VA.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This was a first.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What's a flute player to do among a... what do you call a group of trombonists, anyway?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We were talking about this just the other night backstage during intermission at a "Nutcracker" performance.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I was walking toward the water fountain and there was our entire French horn section.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I asked them, "A group of geese is called a 'flock' and a group of crows is called a 'murder', so what do we call a French horn section?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">One of them smiled and said, "How about a 'coven'?"<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I like it.<br />
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Probably a lot of terms could apply here.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think "a dignity of trombonists" has a nice ring, but dignity can sound a lot like dullness, and I don't like to dignify that evil slander.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We should have a contest.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>To my surprise, Debbie seemed to enjoy herself.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Like me, she gets the most out of hearing the student groups perform.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But I do love to hear the pros as well, and the US Army band musicians always acquit themselves quite well.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And I love going to the exhibit hall and trying out all the new instruments and mouthpieces, surrounded by the cacophony of other trombonists doing likewise.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That's it!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A cacophony of trombonists!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think we can all agree on that one.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>While I was bonding with my fellow cacophonists, Debbie was picking through the trombone music for something I can perform in church.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Debbie had surgery late in August on her left foot.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>When we lived in the Fontanelle Hills neighborhood in Bellevue, NE, back around '92, she took a walk one evening through the neighborhood.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It's a hilly little neighborhood -- not quite all of Nebraska is tabletop-flat.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was almost dusk, and Debbie didn't see that one of the sidewalk sections had raised up about two inches, and so she banged the big toe of her left foot into the concrete.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Oww.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That was an event that's very much like a gift that keeps on giving, but minus the "gift" part.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This year's operation was the third one on that foot since then.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Arthritis had settled into where the big toe joins the foot bone, and there was no more cartilage remaining.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So the surgeon fused her big toe to the rest of her foot.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I thought, egad! and had visions of the surgeon welding the bones together.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No, not quite, though the reality was bad enough.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What they do is implant a titanium plate and hold it together with a bunch of screws.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If that sounds painful, that's because it is.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But Debbie got past the pain part of it fairly quickly.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Before you know it, she was zooming around on her knee-scooter, and then able to walk on her left foot with one of those infamous boots.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Now, she only has to wear a compression sock to keep the swelling down.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They say she'll have problems with the swelling for about a year.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Meanwhile, she's doing fine, and there is no more arthritis pain -- a permanent plus among this temporary parade of minuses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Trombone-playing doesn't get easier with age.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I read recently that the only instrument that takes more energy to play than the trombone is drums.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I don't know whether that's really true, but playing trombone does involve holding a six-pound mass of metal to your lips and blowing for extended periods, and I've got the bursitis in my left shoulder to prove it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Also, to play trombone well, you have to at least simulate a good body posture, and that's a problem when your normal state is invertebrate, like mine.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I got sucked back into the Tidewater Winds and suffered another Lost July.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I had dropped out of the group about five years ago because of the grueling schedule plus having to work my day gig at the same time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But the director, John Brewington, is a great guy and I hate to say "No" to him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The playing is fun, but I'm not getting any younger.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This summer, I shared the trombone section with some terrific talent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If your misplaced pride can stand it, it's great to perform with better players.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The principal trombonist kept looking, in vain, for my volume control.</span></div>
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Meanwhile, Debbie has turned playing flute at the local nursing homes into a ministry.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Living in a nursing home looks like a bleak existence from the outside, and Debbie feels it's her duty to try to brighten their lives a bit.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>She is still the music director at our church, and she runs things very efficiently, like a German bureaucrat who can play flute.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Debbie's mom, Audrey, has taken to condo life like a pro, same as us.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Debbie and I love our condo. I could see buying a second home somewhere else. uBt unless the Virginia Democrats turn Virginia Beach into a gulag, which may not be outside the realm of possibility, we love it here and are here to stay.<br />
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Merry Christmas, from Debbie, Audrey, and me.</span></div>
<br />Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-36586028247356700332018-12-24T12:26:00.002-05:002018-12-24T12:47:45.987-05:00Merry Christmas, 2018!<div style="font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When we lived in Omaha, we dreaded the coming of winter.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My theory is that people raised in cold climates adjust better to warm climates than vice versa.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Growing up across the river in Hampton and Newport News, we did have some very chilly times over there.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Why, I remember one cold spell, when I was in elementary school, where there was snow on the ground for an entire week, with temperatures as low as seven degrees Fahrenheit.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Wow!</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I thought that was cold!</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But nothing had prepared me for northern winters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My very first week in Pittsburgh, in an afternoon in January of '77, I discovered what cold really was. I was waiting on a street corner for a bus to take me back into town after a trombone lesson in the suburbs with a symphony trombonist. It was a bright sunny day -- a bit breezy, gusts up to about 35 mph, with temperatures down around 25. That is, 25 below. I was wearing a suede leather coat that was good down to about 25. That is, 25 above. I missed the bus back to town, and the next one was due by in an hour. It was a very educational hour. Though a born complainer, I swore I'd never, ever, complain about how hot it got, never, ever, again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(But... well, I did. Once. It was about four or five years later, in Phoenix, AZ, in August, and our Air Force band bus' air conditioning broke down. No excuse, but just sayin'...)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">All that to say this: we've been in Virginia Beach now for almost twenty years. But we still shiver at the thought of Omaha winters, where the temps can settle in at well below zero for weeks on end. Coming here, we'd laugh when everybody complained about temps in the thirties. Hah! As my dad would say, I can take that on my eyeball! Thirty-five degrees is short-sleeves weather in the Midwest! I kept thinking the locals here were sissies, right up until, after a couple of winters here, I became one. A sissy, that is. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Last New Year's Eve, I was delighted to suffer Nebraska winter yet again. I performed in a New Year's Eve concert with the Plymouth Brass in Lincoln, an hour's drive from my old stomping grounds in Omaha. I got to visit my friends, Tom and Mary Salem. Tom is that rare oddity, or odd rarity: an ex-boss who's still a friend. :) That's a rare commodity, right there! Also got to visit with many other friends, including a couple of my old Warwick High School band buddies, David Newton and his wife, Donna Limburgh Newton. Anyhow, Nebraska spent the entire week reminding me of the biggest reason we left. It was coooooolllllddddd. How cold was it? It was so cold, politicians had their hands in their own pockets. It was so cold, Kim Kardashian was wearing clothes. (Bah-dum-bump! I'll be here all week. Try the veal.) Welcome back to Omaha, Lee! Here's what you've been missing. I rented a little Kia Soul for the few days I spent there, and though it's a nice little car, it's shaped like a storage bin. Having a boxy car means stopping a lot for gasoline, and outside pumping gas was not where anyone wanted to be. On the night of the concert, Tom and Mary rode down with me to the concert in the boxy little gas guzzler. Great concert! Lots of fun! I had to catch the night owl shuttle just a few hours later, so it didn't make sense to go to sleep. When I dropped off the rental car (that's one Soul I didn't mind losing) at the Omaha airport, it was 25 below -- Omaha's way of saying, "So long! Come back, y'hear!" Laid over in Chicago at 7 AM, heck with Starbuck's -- I found a Chili's and drank beer until I boarded the plane for Norfolk. Now, I've been known to drink a beer or two, but -- honest -- never before 8 AM. Until that trip. With no sleep, I absolved myself because it seemed like 34 o'clock, plus it always helps to think of beer as liquid cereal. Breakfast is the most important meal, after all. Sorry, kids, you won't find this on aisle nine next to the Froot Loops.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Debbie had retired from teaching in August of 2017, but one of her old principals moped that she couldn't find a replacement, and, like Al Pacino in "The Godfather", "Just as I was breaking free, they pulled me back in!" It worked out nicely. The money paid for Debbie's new flute, and probably a few of my evening martinis. But we knew last year would be her last year teaching. So we changed a few other things. We'd been eyeballing a nearby over-55 neighborhood for a while, named West Neck, and when opportunity knocked, we took it. Or got taken by it. Our realtor was very efficient and sold our house in just three days, for $5 grand over our asking price. And now we have a new address and everything. We did lose some square footage, and I really do miss our old sun room, where we'd watch the trees and the rabbits, the raccoons and the possums, the robin-eating hawks and the occasional snake, all while drinking mind-altering martinis. But our new digs are nice and warm and cozy, and only about three miles from where our house was. We're even closer now to the great eastern Virginia swamp. The horseflies are so big, they have to use runway lights. During spring and summer, the ponds are crowded with cormorants and turtles; there are snapping turtles in the area, but we haven't seen one yet (one of our neighbors has). Our new community comprises several distinct neighborhoods. We live in one of the two condo neighborhoods, "Codgerville" and "Geezerton." At 6 AM every morning, we all walk out to the street, clasp hands, and chant, "Get off our lawn!" There's a famous retirement community in Florida named The Villages, very much like this place but on a much larger scale. However, in The Villages, they often sell their cars and buy golf carts. Here in Codgerville, we have to keep our cars, though maybe some of us shouldn't. A couple of months ago, one of our neighbors turned the corner and drove into West Neck's decorative brick gate. That's vandalism, senior citizen-style. Graffiti is for punks and whippersnappers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We've moved a lot, but we're still not used to it.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This time, Debbie had the help of the New Life Church Women's Folly Support Group, who together with Debbie did all the packing.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The moving company sent over four very strong young men -- our realtor, Karen, had some sway with the moving company and told them, "Send us your A team."</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Work can be enjoyable when others are doing yours.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Boxes piled on boxes piled on boxes.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But that's Debbie's strong suit.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Very organized and efficient, that woman.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My job is to make the martinis and tell her what a great job she's doing.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'm sort of the morale improvement officer.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We hired the Geek Squad at Best Buy to install the TV and sound system on the wall -- best money ever spent.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We have a dozen or so electronic devices, all connected to this one little easy-to-use remote control.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">YouTube gives us symphony concerts right here in our living room.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They even have some old Homer & Jethro tunes from my humor-deprived childhood -- still love those corny jokes.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They were kinda the Weird Al Yankovics of country music back in the day.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Beautiful, inspired lyrics such as:</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Her teeth are like the stars above, because they come out every night."</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Speaking of YouTube, there's an a'capella country group named "Home Free" that has a terrific YouTube presence. Home Free is five guys who just sing, no instrumentalists, but are able to make you think you're listening to a band play. They are very good! The week after Thanksgiving, I took Debbie to hear them perform in Richmond, about two hours up the road. Then we ate the best ribs on the planet at "Buz & Neds BBQ", and on the way home, visited a historical site here in southeastern Virginia named Bacon's Castle. It's an interesting story. Rewind back to the 1670s. Virginia was a British colony. There was a man, named Nathaniel Bacon, who was unhappy with the colonial government, which was corrupt, and -- probably more to the point -- didn't drive away the Native American tribes. Bacon got a few hundred men together and they took matters into their own hands, starting a war against the Indians, and that meant trouble as well for Governor Berkeley. A rebellion ensued. Bacon's Castle actually belonged to a rich farmer named Arthur Allen; Bacon's men had commandeered Allen's house and hunkered down, and drank all of Allen's wine while they were at it. But things didn't end well for Mr. Bacon; he died of dysentery before their dispute with the Governor was settled. Lord Berkeley promised a reprieve for the remaining men if they'd lay down their arms and take a loyalty oath. But anyone who understands government won't be surprised to learn the Governor hanged 29 of the men anyway. Bacon's Castle is billed as the oldest English-built house in America -- built in 1665, remodeled in the 1840s. It's interesting how the architecture had changed during the intervening years. A house built in 1600's Virginia would look a lot like a house built in 1600's England, with low ceilings and small windows -- anything to keep the heat in. However, by the 1840s, Virginians had figured out that Virginians suffer hotter and more humid summers than Englishmen, so the add-on parts of the house sported tall ceilings (about eleven feet) and big windows. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Resuming our drive home, we passed by Smithfield, famous for its hams and pork products. An unusual juxtaposition, that -- driving from where Bacon died right past where bacon is cured.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This Christmas season, Debbie and I wish you the greatest happiness as you come together with family and friends to celebrate the birth of our Deliverer, the One who gave the greatest gift of all.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For, greater love has no man than to lay down His life for His friends.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Unto us, a child was born; unto us, a Son is given.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Keep the Christ in Merry Christmas!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Love,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Lee and Debbie</span></span></div>
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Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-52917563444828576822018-09-03T13:02:00.000-04:002018-09-17T18:42:11.791-04:00A Conflict of Moral Visions<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Insighful article, here: <a href="http://manningthewall.com/trump-haters-give-me-something-better/">http://manningthewall.com/trump-haters-give-me-something-better/</a>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The writer, Phil Christensen, says,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Trump Haters, you have a binary problem. Or perhaps, I should say that your problem is a binary way of seeing the current political landscape in general, or President Trump in particular. It’s love or hate. There’s no room for nuance, there’s nothing in between. Not for you.</b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And then he really gets scathing:
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Left Discovers Morals.</b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Insisting on restraint and respect will get no argument from me. Of course if you gave <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-sexual-assault-allegations-against-bill-clinton-2017-11">this one</a> a pass, don’t expect me to buy into your new-found morality....</b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Read the whole thing.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Just one quibble: the Left is very moralistic and always has been. The difference is that they roll their own moral code, rejecting all that came before them as primitive gibbering. Why heed a book containing wisdom that's ages old? and way outdated? That's so silly! Instead, take these silly notions we invented, like, yesterday.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's a fundamental distinction. While the Good Book says that God is unchanging and that the Word of the Lord shall abide forever, the Left's book needs rewrites on an hourly basis.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To contrast further: Christian theology claims that the Lord has all power and authority over all of Creation. Having established His moral authority, He instructs us on how to adopt His own moral perspective and put it into practice. In the Christian paradigm, morals are about relationships, and specifically about building the same quality of relationships that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have with each other. Maintain a loving relationship with the Lord ("Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul, and mind") and also with our fellow man ("Love thy neighbor as thyself"). This is the Lord's will, and doing the Lord's will is our commandment. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If morals were Einsteinian physics, the Lord's will is our constant, and everything else -- our thoughts, behavior, position, circumstances -- are the variables that must bend to accommodate the Word of the Lord. Situations may change, but the basic principles are bedrock: always do that which shows the most love for the Lord and your neighbor. It's an impossible task, and at times it seems thankless, but it's our task nonetheless. Paul says patience is the first attribute of love, but when I'm in my car, I can't even stop myself from being impatient with other drivers. But the Lord forgives, He admonishes, He corrects, He prepares a table for us. He loves us in spite of our rebellion, for reasons known only to Him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Compare this to the cramped moral world of the Left. What new morals did they invent for us yesterday?
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Well, the Left talks a lot about helping the poor, but at the end of the day, they advocate an economic system that seems better designed to create more poor people. The important thing is, before you build anything, you need to ask the Left's permission.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Left talks about having compassion for Jack when he thinks he's Jill, or vice versa, but we must never bring up the horrible fact that transgender suicide rates are off-the-charts high, nor do they consider we may be dealing with a mental illness. Like the Left's morals, gender is arbitrary, and reality must bend to accommodate this insight. There are 57 genders, like Heinz's sauces, and there will be more tomorrow. The more complicated, the better. The point is, now you have to ask the Left's advice about how to address someone, or suffer their judgment. And if it were simple, why, you could figure things out on your own, and we can't have that.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Left talks a lot about fairness, but then they reveal their strategic brilliance by never specifying what fairness means -- the better to christen any resultant change as an improvement. Years ago, to be fair meant to accord the same rights and apply the same standards to everyone. Today, it means giving preferred groups a leg up, in order to, you know, make up for past injustices. But somehow, the quest for cosmic fairness always winds up looking just like political favoritism. I can't think of a single terrible thing the white man ever did to Native Americans that justifies giving preferential treatment to a rich white woman like Elizabeth Warren. But that's only because I'm not a leftist, and therefore I lack a leftist's moral authority. The point is, now we have to ask the Left whether there's some microscopic injustice Elizabeth Warren suffered because Andrew Jackson slaughtered Cherokees two hundred years ago. Only the Left can decide these things; you can't.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Left ardently defends the freedom of the press as long as they think it means them, but brazenly challenges our laughable conceit that freedom of speech applies to the rest of us too. Dissent is the highest civic duty until the Left is in charge, but then once they are, well, hey, you know, hate speech isn't free speech -- and your speech always becomes hate speech when you disagree with the Left. I'm not allowed to offend others with my speech, but they can scold me for holding such outdated, outmoded, and offensive beliefs. Well, that offends me. Do my feelings count? No, of course not. If I want to know what I'm allowed to say, why, I had better ask my betters -- namely, those on the Left.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even the Constitution itself must bow to the Left's whims and whimsies. Show of hands: who believes Democrats would be whining today about the Electoral College if Hillary had won that but lost the popular vote? Me neither.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The sole certainty in an uncertain world is the Left's moral righteousness. The sole constant of Leftist morality, their tenet of faith, the one thing they'll stick up for 100% of the time, the hill they're willing for the rest of us to die on, is just this: they are our moral superiors, so let them run everything. They'll make a better world for us. They promise.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That's not even a principle. It's too arbitrary to be called a principle. We'll call it a notion: the Left gets to have all the power it wants, and they want all of it, every drop of it. William Buckley used to call liberals "shower adjusters" because they want to reach into your shower and adjust your water for you. He meant that as an <i>ad absurdum</i>, but these days it seems more scary than absurd.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Invoking the physics analogy again, if our only constant is that the Left must own all the power, then everything else -- truth, beauty, reason, evidence, love, honor, even reality itself -- must become variables. We let Bill Clinton's peccadillos slide because it was just about sex and, besides, he's a Democrat; however, the Stormy thing ought to end Trump's presidency! Obama said you can keep your doctor, but Trump tells lies! Hillary okayed selling 20% of our uranium reserves to the Russians and the Russians sent a check to the Clinton Foundation, but Trump! Russia! Collusion! Obama literally herded and corralled newsmen, but Trump is mean to journalists! Obama scolded the Supreme Court in person at his State of the Union address, but Trump attacks our established institutions! The only way to square these circles is to announce solemnly, but seriously, that squares are circular and you deplorables and irredeemables are just not wise enough to see that.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When I was in school, the medieval Christian notion of "the divine right of kings", based on some of Paul's comments about how the Lord puts our rulers in place, was widely ridiculed. Also the notion of God-given rights. How quaint. The Flying Spaghetti Monster loves us! But, funny, when we removed Christ, somehow we didn't forge ahead to the Greater Day, free of want, that was promised to us by leftist eschatology. Instead, we reverted back to the more primitive, pre-Christian divine god-king paradigm. Evan Thomas said the news corps was reluctant to criticize Obama because "he's like a god." They were also reluctant to criticize Hillary because First Woman President! I'm With Her! Right side of history, and all.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In short, moral authoritativeness shifted from Jesus Christ to a bunch of witch doctors, now called "experts." Reality is too complicated for us to grasp, and yet they will continue making things more complicated, by wreaking arbitrary havoc on reality wherever and whenever they deem it necessary to hold onto power.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Our Lord deserves our love and honor because He has earned it. If Leftists have earned the same, they have successfully concealed that fact; yet, the Left still wants it. Every bit of it. And they'll chase you like the hounds of Hell until they get it.
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Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-23660489036374898132017-12-19T17:00:00.003-05:002017-12-19T21:21:39.617-05:00Merry Christmas 2017!<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Debbie and I have achieved an age where, considering the things we've done this year, we should be a lot more tired than we are. Plus, I harbor a suspicion that the adjective "tired" is going to become, more and more, a fixture in our lives. It's like baseball great Mickey Mantle said when he achieved his sixties: "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." Ah, the vicissitudes of life! When I was in my twenties, I remember, vividly, thinking, why, I'm only a youngster, nobody takes me seriously. And now that I'm in my sixties, I'm thinking, vividly, why, I'm just some old dude, nobody takes me seriously. There may have been some point in time x between 23 and 63 when I was actually taken seriously -- what? Once? On a Saturday afternoon? Well, if that ever happened, and I'm not saying it did, it's gone now. I'm back where I started. Fine with me. Russian literature has a tradition wherein some of the wisest things spoken are spoken by the village idiot. So I'm very well qualified to say something worthwhile in Russian, if only I knew any Russian.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Debbie had been teaching orchestral strings at the fifth grade level here in Virginia since 1999. But, with her damaged hearing (we think, due to chemotherapy back in 2001), this year she decided she had to retire. We attended a beautiful retirement dinner hosted by Virginia Beach Schools at the convention center. The food was great! And hey, there were bars! (There was wine at the dinner, but given a choice, I always pick the Scots over the French.) Fast-forward now to late September 2017. Debbie went to one of her schools to pick up her very last VBSCHOOLS pay stub. The principal greeted her and said, "I don't have a replacement for you! Puh- puh-puh-pleeeeze!!!! Will you come back and teach this year?!!!" Any one who knows Debbie knows that she could never turn down an offer like that. So she still has her hand in, teaching two classes a week at one elementary school. It's the one school where she taught that made accommodations for her, due to her hearing issues -- they added sound baffles in the room to deaden the echoes. It seems to be working for her, so far. Fingers crossed!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We took a vacation in the first week of July. We visited old college chums of mine from my Pittsburgh days, Kevin and Ann Schmalz, in upstate New York. Another old college chum, Dan Stofan -- one of the best bass trombonists I've ever known -- was there as well, with his wife Kathy Sherritts. Dan retired after more than twenty years playing with the Seville Orchestra, in Spain. When the calendar says July, upstate New York is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Just make sure you're somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line when the music stops and it's December. We drove down to West Point, New York for July 4th, Independence Day, to visit the United States Military Academy, which has been on Debbie's "bucket list", like, forever. West Point reminded me of Pittsburgh in that things aren't built just out and around, but also up and down -- lots of hills, lots of stairs, lots of nitroglycerin tablets, clutching my heart, defibrillation... Then, once I was revived (just kidding), the architecture was gorgeous, particular in the old chapels. The graveyards contained the earthly remains of many famous people. Marty Maher -- he was an enlisted man at the Academy, worked there for most of his life, Tyrone Power starred in a movie about him, "The Long Grey Line." General William Westmoreland, commander-in-chief of our forces in Vietnam. General George Armstrong Custer, killed at Little Big Horn by a boy named Sioux. General Norman Schwarzkopf -- "Stormin' Norman", who led the coalition forces to victory over Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. Humbling, to see a landscape filled with the people who gave so much on our behalf.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">After West Point, we took a scenic drive up to Massachusetts. I had an appointment the day after Independence Day with Osmun Brass, to have them work on a couple of old trombones I'd bought. Both are vintage Conns from the late 1960s. When I got finally those trombones back later on in the fall, I was more than happy with the work they'd done. I've been telling Debbie for years that she deserves a top-of-the-line flute, but she'd always insisted that her ancient Haynes (from 1969) was perfectly fine for her. Funny, though, how many flute factories there are huddled around Boston. Apparently, the two world flute-making superpowers are Japan and Massachusetts. We stopped in at Brannen Bros., and the next thing we knew, we were taking home one of their flutes on a trial basis. But Debbie finally settled on a Massachusetts-made Powell flute, after a long drive to a dealer in Charlotte NC, shortly after our Massachusetts trip. (I liked the sound of the Japanese Miyazawa better, but Debbie said it was harder to play in tune.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Then, we shot up the coast into New Hampshire and spent two wonderful days at a beautiful bed & breakfast in the town of Rye, just south of Portsmouth. I was delighted to discover New Hampshire liquor stores. They've figured out how to steal tax revenue from a neighboring state: they've set their prices low and placed their outlets strategically around the Massachusetts border. On a map, it looks like they're staging an invasion, with armies of cheap gin. State motto: "New Hampshire -- where Taxachusetts buys its booze." Beefeater Gin is only $24 a handle (it's $45 here in Virginia), and Debbie and I enjoyed some fine martinis. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I had the tiniest little bit of a health scare this past summer. I was in for my regular checkup at the dermatology clinic in June -- checkups are a must for both Debbie and me. Skin-wise, we're the fairest of the fair, and when I'm wearing shorts, you can't tell where the white socks end and my skin begins. I checked out just fine, and then I pointed to a mole just about half an inch below my left eye. "My wife doesn't like this mole and wants you take it off." The doctor told me, "Well, it's just a tag, so removing it will probably not be covered by your insurance." That's fine, I said, just take it off. They did remove it and, God bless 'em, they had it analyzed. A couple weeks later, I was called by a chirpy voice that announced, like I'd won the lottery, "Good afternoon! You have squamous cell carcinoma! We'll be sending you to a real doctor very shortly." Sorry, that's not fair. But they did send me to a real surgeon. Dr. Jolie ("jolly") removed the cancer and, as a bonus, gave me a deal on a brow lift that my drooping eyelids couldn't refuse. The wart that was on my knee is now at the end of my nose. At the office, they're calling me "Zsa Zsa".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We did take another little trip this year, this one to upstate New Jersey, about five miles south of the upstate New York border. The son of my good buddy Kurt Rauscher, Michael, married a lovely young lady named Kim, and the wedding was in Park Ridge, NJ. That's about a seven-hour drive from Virginia Beach, but the good news is that about four hours of it is through the swamp and marshlands of the DelMarVa Peninsula, on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay. The Virginia part of DelMarVa is as flat as Nebraska is supposed to be. Breakfast at the Exmore Diner, which will blast you right back to 1938. They serve scrapple, a Pennsylvania treat that has trickled, so to speak, all the way down the copper pipes to an hour's drive north of our home. If you have to ask what's in scrapple, you really don't want to know. I love it. Just fry it up, cover it in butter and/or syrup, and pretend it's food.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's been eighteen years since I played bass trombone in the Plymouth Brass, a group based in Lincoln, NE. A couple of weeks ago, my old friend Tom Kelly called me and asked if I'd like to perform with them for their 40th anniversary celebration, on New Year's Eve. Twist my arm! Virginia has been great for Debbie and me, but I do miss my friends from Nebraska -- both the musical friends and the programming friends. Having a chance to relive some of those memories is a great gift. It's going to be so much fun, as the theory goes, that I won't even notice it's fifteen below. Hah!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Best of all, this coming April, it will be 35 years since Debbie and I both decided we needed to become a team. This will be our 34th Christmas together as husband and wife. Unto us, a child is born; unto us, a son is given. And his name shall be called wonderful Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. It's good to take time and reflect not just on the gifts we're exchanging with each others, but also on the great gift that the Lord gave to us. Debbie and I both send our best to you this wonderful Christmas, and best wishes for a great New Year. </span></div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-78714971881161045452017-04-24T05:46:00.002-04:002017-04-24T06:00:06.447-04:00Lessons Learned in Reformed School<div class="MsoNormal">
Ken's sermon yesterday was based on James chapter 2, the
"Faith without works is dead" chapter. It helped me figure out how my faith had
gotten so wrapped around the axle for so many years.</div>
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The sermon was reassuring.
James has proven to be a tough book over the centuries. Martin Luther himself didn't believe it belonged
in the Bible -- "an epistle of straw" was his dismissive
epithet. The conundrum is essentially
this: after verse after verse of Paul
writing about salvation through faith alone, James comes along and suggests
maybe you should doubt your faith if it is unaccompanied by works (obedience to
God's law). Ken's analysis (hope I'm not
distorting it) is that we should view works as evidence of faith, not as its
prerequisite -- faith leads to works, not the other way around.</div>
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That said, it's easy to set up an impossible standard for
yourself, based a broader application of James' words than what he specifically
intended. In James' day, rich Christians
would show up at church bringing plenty to eat and drink for themselves, but
then refuse to share anything with the poor and hungry. James thought this practice was disgraceful,
and said so. But even faithful
Christians have sins they skirmish with on a daily basis -- the better the
Christian, so it seems, the more subtle and dangerous the sins that afflict him. Christ's perfection eludes us, and will keep
doing so until He cleans us up for eternity.</div>
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The Reformed Presbyterians I hang out with these days have a
term they apply to this cleaning-up process:
sanctification. It's a lifelong
process, and it's not always a linear one.
(Paul blames much of it, at least, on the war between the spirit and the
flesh -- in so many words, your flesh knows it is doomed to die and would like
nothing better than to take your spirit along with it.)</div>
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Now, a quick rewind back to my childhood. I became aware of and convicted of my sins
around the age of seven or so, give or take, and was baptized in our
independent Baptist church. I remember
the recipe for salvation was simple:
just ask the Lord to come into your heart and save you. All well and good. </div>
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However, I did not understand the concept of
sanctification. Nor do I recall, ever, a
single word preached on the subject. My
memory could be faulty on that score, or I may have been too young to grasp
it. But for whatever reason, that important
concept managed to slip through the cracks.
Instead, I believed that, as a Christian, I will no longer want to sin.</div>
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This led, quite naturally, to decades of self-doubt and
inner struggle. Even as a child, it
gnawed at me constantly. It started with
me committing some sin -- I lied, or swore, or stole from my dad's poker winnings. (Yes, I did that on more than one occasion;
Pop was a good poker player.) Then came
remorse for the sin. Then came the
question: why would you do this if
you're a Christian? Maybe you're not a
Christian after all...? I thought, wow,
I must have really messed up that prayer, and maybe I need to pray it again --
this time, with feeling. But then
another thought arrived quickly at its heels:
is my faith so poor that I have to pray for salvation twice? Won't the Lord be angry at me for doubting
Him?</div>
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I expected the sanctification process to be instantaneous,
and when it wasn't, The result? As the
younger folks would say, total buzzkill.
I went from doubting my salvation to disbelieving it almost
completely. I never doubted the Lord's,
but felt like the worst possible Christian, a complete phony. I still went to church, but it was torturous
and not very assuring. There's a
Gershwin song from one of his musicals ("Girl Crazy", I think) that
contains the perfect lyrical description of the way I felt about church: "They're singing songs of love, but not
for me." The scriptures offers us
many thing, including messages of hope and peace, but all I ever heard were the
condemnations.</div>
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I wonder how many others have abandoned the faith altogether
just because they couldn't resolve this dissonance? The only way I could function was to put it
out of my mind entirely, and be assured only that, some day, I was probably
going to Hell. I can't be the only
person who has ever gone through all that.</div>
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Gradually, over the decades since I came face to face with
that appalling dilemma, I was brought back.
Who or what brought me back? Well, the short answer is the Lord Himself
-- after all, that's an important part of Reformed theology ("irresistable
grace"). But in terms of
specifics? I was always intellectually
intrigued by Christianity. I devoured
anything written by C.S. Lewis, for example, and loved to read debates between
Christians and atheists (we Dises are a verbally contentious lot and love a
good argument). That was a start, at
least. Lewis is a good read for someone
who feels moved to embrace Christ but thinks doing would betray his
intellectual principles. However, I had
the opposite problem: I was fine with Christian belief intellectually, but had
trouble with believing it applied to me.
So something else was needed.</div>
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Then, I married a Christian woman. It really disappointed Debbie when I wanted
to skip church on Sunday, so I attended not because I wanted to, but because I
felt I should. This exposed me, of
course, to scripture, which is a means of grace. It will change you, but not if you don't hear
it. I found myself placed, out of my love for my woman, where I needed to be.</div>
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And then, we discovered our present church. Pastor Wally played a huge role. He'd look at me, smile, and say, "Cheer
up! You're worse than you
think!" Wally was an excellent
teacher, and we took a class he gave for prospective church officers, working
through the Westminster Confession -- I used to call it "Reformed
School." Our elders really do try
to teach us good theology. Our church
doesn't consist of perfect people proud of our perfection; we're just
struggling sinners who have faith in the Lord's promises, and try to help each
other with our struggles.</div>
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And there is certainly nothing special about me. That's a good thing. It means the scriptures aren't singling me
out as the only man since the dawn of Creation to whom the Lord's promises
don't apply. They most certainly do.</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-23846484562174766702017-01-02T13:14:00.002-05:002017-01-03T04:51:59.769-05:00Merry Christmas 2016!<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Merry Christmas 2016!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I don’t even
have to check the calendar to know it’s December. Lots of trombone gigs, for one thing -- we
trombone players use a little calendar book to keep track of all our gigs, it’s
called “Year at a Glance.” The Steelers are
starting their playoff charge. And Virginia’s
mostly sultry weather is tending now toward an icky, cold drizzle. The battle lines have begun forming around
Lynnhaven Mall, and pretty soon it will be all shock and awe, as the bank cards
stab, parry, and thrust toward the weary but disciplined cashiers. The teenagers are wearing their best winter
shorts and T-shirts. The liquor store is
selling box sets of holiday cheer with free festive shot glasses -- visions of
pink elephants adorned in Christmas lights dance in our heads. Church parking lots are making deals on
evergreen saplings destined for the living room, and then for the trash heap --
their short lives spent enticing children to smile and cats to knock them
over. Oh, and Rudolf’s nose is scheduled
for laser surgery. It’s beginning to
look a lot like Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Actually, a
lot happened beginning just the day after last Christmas. Debbie and I, along with several cousins and
friends, embarked on one of those Viking river cruises in Europe. This cruise was on the Danube River, starting
in Budapest, Hungary and ending in Passau, Germany. I’d never been to Europe before, and we thought
it might be a good idea to visit there while it’s still European. Our flight was a Delta/KLM flight (KLM is
Delta’s Dutch affiliate), and it would have been a wonderful flight, if only our
legs were retractable. Of all
nationalities, I have no idea how a Dutch airline can get away with that -- I'm
here to tell you, the Dutch are very tall people. The shortest stewardess was an inch or two
taller than me, and I’m 5’10”. All the
stewardesses were pretty and charming, and they got even more charming as they
started handing me glasses filled with complimentary Scotch. Strangely, I soon forgot all about my cramped
knees. We changed planes in Amsterdam,
and arrived in Budapest around lunch time the next day due to the time
difference. A tour bus took us to a
grand old hotel in the Buda part of Budapest – the sort of hotel where you half-expect
to see Peter Lorre’s watery eyes and sinister grin lurking around the
corner. Hungarian food is big on beef
and root vegetables, and heavy on the paprika.
Hungarian wine was not bad at all, and may have been the only menu item
that wasn’t based on turnips. Ba-dump! I’ll be here all week. Try the turnip popovers. Budapest’s architecture is a
hodge-podge. Our Hungarian tour guide
was a short, solid-looking and serious woman of about fifty who knows her
architecture. She explained that
whenever any army wants to invade another country, they always practice on
Hungary first. Let’s see if I remember
them all -- in succession, they have been invaded by the Celts, the Romans, the Huns, the
Goths, the Magyars, the Mongols, the Turks, the Germans, the Germans again, and
the Soviets. Hungary has been enjoying a
rare period of independence since the Iron Curtain rusted away like a Chevy
Vega’s motor mounts. However, each conquering
culture left behind a little something to remember them by. The Soviet Union’s contribution consisted of
these immense, square, concrete apartment complexes -- Hell’s dormitories. They looked like they were designed by the
same team that gave us grain elevators and sewage treatment plants, after first
running their plans through the DMV for final approval. The tour guide felt obligated to apologize
for them. “We know they are hideously
ugly, but they’re useful as slums.” I’m
paraphrasing. The national language in
Hungary is not Hungarian, but Magyar (she pronounced it “maiee-YARR”). “We haff many nationalities livink here togedder
in Booda Pesssht,” the tour guide said.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I asked,
“Are there any Russians still living here?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">She glared
at me . “No!!!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Next stop
was Bratislava, Slovakia. Slovakia
achieved something almost unheard of: peaceful secession. They broke from their parent country on a
handshake, without a shot being fired, probably the only civil war in history
that really was civil -- and with the demise of Czechoslovakia, spelling bees
the world over lost one of their best tie-breakers. Slovakia looks like Allentown – hilly, rocky,
and quaint. The biggest difference is
that Bratislava has a big white castle, whereas Allentown has a White
Castle. Bratislava claims to be the
honey capital of the world, but are in fact the world’s biggest car
manufacturing town. However, all the
cars are named Peugeot, Kia, and Volkswagen (VW acquired Skoda in the early
1990s). The beer was good, cheap too,
but they have a nasty habit of leaving all the lights on in their saloons. It’s like drinking a beer in a school
cafeteria. If you want to make a secret
rendezvous, you’d better use the public library. Then on to Vienna, Austria. Here is where sarcasm fails me -- Vienna is a
stunningly beautiful city, even on a cold, wet day. Stunning beauty comes with a price, as
always: Debbie and I stopped at a coffee
shop and paid the equivalent of $20 for two cups of coffee with cream and a
strudel for Debbie. However, this was
Austria, not 7-Eleven, so no Coffee Mate for the Viennese -- they just scooped huge
dollops of genuine 100% cow cream straight out of a big tub. Now that’s what I’m talking about! We also stopped in Salzburg, where the tour
guide explained that not only was Mozart born there, but also Christian
Doppler, and just then a European police siren traveled away from us, DARR-DEEE-DAarrr-deeee-darrrrrrrr-deeeeeee,
and lowering in pitch. So this is where
Doppler invented that effect. That huge
castle, nestled way, way up in a nearby mountain, looked very realistic, but there
was no sky-writing witch to spell out “Surrender Dorothy!” Did I want to walk up to the castle? asked
Debbie. No thanks. Last stop was Passau, Germany, where ABC --
another beautiful church -- hosted the world’s fourth largest pipe organ. Then, twelve more hours of bashed knees and
Scotch-tippling on the KLM flying sardine can and we were home. We highly recommend taking a Viking river
cruise, if our trip was representative.
The food was great, the bar was inexpensive (unlike the trip itself),
and the service was friendly and professional.
I might have eventually gotten bored being waited on hand and foot by
young, smiling and beautiful East European women, but I’d have to give it a few
more centuries to know for sure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Within a
couple of days of our return, I went into the hospital for right shoulder
surgery. On our trip, I’d discovered my
left shoulder, the one that was <b>not</b>
to be operated on, was actually the one that hurt the most. Too bad -- surgeons don’t like it when you
call an audible at the line of scrimmage.
The right shoulder actually feels pretty good now, after almost a year
of healing and therapy. Not anxious to
have that process repeated on my left shoulder, I asked the surgeon, what are
my alternatives? He gave me a cortisone
shot. It made me want to kiss the hem of
his coat. I’m used to old cars needing
repairs, but now I’m the one who’s going in and out of the shop, and the
warranty has run out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Debbie’s
dad, Bill Wallace, passed away last year, and we hosted his memorial service
here in Virginia Beach; the Wallace clan gathered here to honor Bill’s life. Debbie and I met up with her older brother
Bill Jr. at the Pensacola Naval Air Station last June, where Bill’s ashes were interred
-- a Blue Angel pilot gave us a fly-over.
Then we drove down to Pine Island, FL, to visit our friends Kurt and
Patty Rauscher. Kurt and Patty took us
out fishing on their boat, and we saw a manatee. They’re huge.
But none of the “Visit Florida!” ads I’ve ever seen showed any photos of
manatees doing what huge vegetation-munching animals do for about 24/7 --
they’re not called “sea cows” for nothing. And that’s no manatee. Hope is not the only the thing that floats. We saw Kurt’s dad, Merle, who was like a
second father to me, growing up – as it turned out, it was to be our last visit
with him. His last words to me,
delivered with a grin, were, “Give ‘em hell, Tiger!” I always have. We attended a memorial service both for him
and his wife Irene in Altoona, PA a couple of months ago.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">As I write
this, we’re coming into peak music season.
I have four performances of “The Nutcracker” with the Ballet Virginia
International (one down, three to go). I
love Tchaikovsky, and Tchaikovsky loves bass trombone. Then there’s the Handel Messiah, and that
about wraps things up. Debbie has
conducted her final school orchestra concert for the season, and is busy
preparing our church music schedule.
Sitting here listening to Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, and
acknowledging the Lord’s many blessings.
We wish you a merry Christmas and great things to come in the new year
ahead.</span></div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-35897794886975288722017-01-02T13:12:00.007-05:002017-01-02T13:18:08.690-05:00Merry Christmas 2015!<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Merry Christmas 2015!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Another
unseasonably-warm December. Unlike Pearl
Harbor 1941, there’s not a nip in the air here.
Temps in the sixties and seventies.
If we ever leave Virginia, here’s hoping it’ll be further south, and may
all our Christmases be adobe tan. I’ve
never had to shovel sunlight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I’ve decided
that, if I my employer doesn’t sell me off to a band of Gypsies for a stick of
chewing gum before July, 2021, that’s when I’d like to retire. That day is bound to arrive on schedule, of
course -- it’s on the calendar, after all -- but it’s a matter of speculation
whether I’ll be here to enjoy it, or to enjoy it while I’m here. Still, it’s fun to fantasize about it. What will we do when we retire? I’ve wondered about maybe… I dunno… a third
career? Writing books or articles? Find more trombone sections to annoy? That’s the ‘what’, but how about the ‘where’? One could do worse than right here in Virginia
Beach, but the traffic is wearisome. Fortunately,
there are plenty of bucolic little towns right here in eastern Virginia. Oklahoma, of all places, is immortalized in
song -- "Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain” -- so why not
Tidewater Virginia? “Where the swamp
comes seeping through the drain”? “Where
the skeeters tap your jugular vein?” The
tune is catchy, but the lyrics need work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">So this year
Debbie and I have taken little weekend drives through our great commonwealth,
trying to get a flavor of the place, should we decide to stay somewhat
local. Generally, you can get a lot of
bang for your real-estate buck once you leave Virginia Beach. Smithfield is quaint -- founded in 1648, it’s
one of our oldest towns, built around a small creek known as the Pagan River (makes
you think there’s got to be a Heathen Mountain or a Lake Infidel somewhere
nearby). My family lived there until I
was three; I even remember attending the old Methodist church -- or perhaps more
accurately, getting stashed in the nursery. I even remember the time I escaped
and went crawling through the congregation looking for my parents. (“When the big hand hits twelve, we’re
making a break for it, boys!”) Cross the
York River and you’re in Gloucester County -- that's where the British soldiers
settled who were defeated by George Washington.
They still speak a kind of oddball English dialect known by the locals here
as “Guinea” -- as someone of Tangier Island heritage, I can relate. Then there’s Mathews County, which is where
you go once you have completely renounced civilization. We joke about backwater towns being “out in
the Styx”, but Mathews County is so Stygian, all the hound dogs chained to the old
Chevys up on blocks in the front yards have three heads. But all things considered, we’d prefer a town
where doing laundry doesn’t require taking it to the river and beating it with
a stick. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Retiring
elsewhere is still an option. We visited
our friends Kurt and Patty Rauscher this past spring; they gave up the scenic
blizzards and alluring tornados of Indiana to brave the warm weather and
octogenarian bumper-car traffic of Florida’s Gulf coast -- the locals refer to
white-haired drivers as ‘Q-tips’. I like
Florida. Lizards on your porch. $2 soft crabs. Bars with refrigerated ice strips for resting
your beer on. Floridians love their
booze -- the barmaid described the local Total Wine shop as “Disneyland for
alcoholics”. Kurt and Patty live on
Pine Island, a barrier island adjacent to the Cape Coral, and have a bald
eagle’s nest in one of their palm trees.
There’s an old-school charm to the Gulf coast that’s missing from Florida’s
Atlantic side. You half-expect to see
Ernest Hemingway pecking on an old manual typewriter, surrounded by cats and
empty whiskey bottles. Debbie and I
attended the memorial service for Kurt’s mom, Irene, who was like a second mom
to me when I was in high school. Kurt’s
dad, Merle. still looks great at 91 -- he’s a retired Air Force colonel and was
a big influence on my choice of the Air Force as the place to serve.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We also
visited our friends Sam and Aileen Collins, who live in a little community
outside of Tyler, Texas named Hide-a-Way -- and that’s just what it is. In Hide-a-Way, you can buy an elegant brick
rancher, on a golf course, in a gated community, for about $225 grand. I’d expected East Texas to look flat and dry,
with cactuses and dry gulches -- like in the cowboy movies. But in fact, East Texas looks a lot like Virginia,
most of which is slightly hilly and lush with vegetation. Sam and Aileen were wonderful hosts. On July 4<sup>th</sup>, they took us to an
Independence Day celebration at an enormous mega-church in Tyler. I’ve seen big churches before, but this
church -- named, I'm not kidding, Green Acres Baptist Church -- took it to a
whole new level. Perched on the third
balcony, the air was thin and the pulpit but a distant apparition obscured just
a bit by the cirrus clouds drifting below us in the second balcony. The choir was about five times the size of
our church’s entire congregation. As the
patriotic music played, dozens of American cultural icons paraded before us --
Snow White and her dwarfish coterie, Superman and Captain America, circus
clowns, baton twirlers… I joked to
Debbie, “Where’s the Uncle Sam guy on stilts?”
She just pointed and said, “There!”
And there he was. Not quite all
American icons were on display -- no fat, bearded guys on Harleys,
fedora-wearing gangsters, or Playboy centerfolds -- but this was a church, not a
reality series. Debbie and I learned we
love gospel music after hearing a male gospel quartet singing in really tight
harmonies. East Texas seems like the
America of fifty years ago, still very faith-oriented and Christ-friendly. As far as we’re concerned, Green Acres is the
place to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I enjoyed my
strength-training regimen this year -- the best part was finally being able to
open ketchup bottles without Debbie’s help.
Unfortunately, last June, I started experiencing shoulder pain. At first, I thought it was tendonitis and tried
fixing it by visiting a physical “terrorist”.
But that bombed. Finally, one MRI
and a head-shaking orthopedic surgeon later, I received sad tidings of great Oy!
-- a shoulder operation is scheduled for January 6. That’s what I get for trying to build my
muscles -- you can’t tear a muscle you don’t have. That’s my theory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">This year has
been a more somber than most; we’ve lost a cherished loved one. Debbie’s father, William Baxter Wallace,
spent this past year in a nursing home.
He broke his hip in Jan 2014, and never really recovered --
"failure to thrive” is what the doctors wrote. He had a number of good days -- flirting
with the nurses and actually doing some filing work for them on occasion. But it soon became apparent he wasn’t getting
better and probably wasn’t going to. The
sad day happened on Oct 21. Bill was a
good man, very perceptive, kind-hearted and helpful. Things I’ll always remember about Bill? The first time we met, at an Air Force band
concert while Debbie and I were on tour in California, I thought he looked like
Burl Ives. Whenever he visited, he did all
the carpentry work we needed done, recognizing how hopeless I am with
tools. Bill was a guide at the Pensacola
Naval Aviation Museum -- a Navy pilot at the tail end of World War II, Bill
knew everything there was to know about naval flight. He had an engineer’s mind and a gentle
heart. And now he is with the Lord. We miss him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Debbie just
turned “sweet sixty” and the Grinch gave her a European vacation. We’re heading off shortly to take a Danube
River cruise around Hungary and Austria -- it will be my first trip to Europe
(Debbie’s been to Switzerland). May the
Lord bless you this Christmas season!</span></div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-14239810106852522792014-12-26T19:30:00.001-05:002014-12-26T19:32:59.061-05:00Merry Christmas 2014!<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Merry Christmas 2014 from the
Dises!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We’re being
advised by every weather prognosticator in eastern Virginia that this is going
to be a cooo-ooold winter! And it may
well become one. But not yet. Our unseasonable warmth is making certain
folks blame it on global warming. On the
other hand, if it was colder than normal, they would be blaming that on global
warming, too. And you thought all roads
lead to Rome, didn’t you? Wrong! They all lead to a seat at the reviewing
stand in the Al Gore Eco-Scold Parade.
Be sure you give a big ol’ salute to Big Al when you march past. Meanwhile, I’ve been investing in Baffin
Island waterfront. Going with the floe,
so to speak. I’ve almost talked L.L.
Bean into carrying linen suits and Panama hats for those scorching Maine
winters. By the time we’re done, the polar
bears will be so confused, they’ll be bi-polar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Speaking of
ice, Debbie and I, along with twenty bazillion Dise cousins and friends, took a
Holland-America cruise to Alaska this past August. (Their slogan: “Visit Alaska – before it’s baked!”) Our friends Kevin and Ann Schmalz from New
York joined us in Seattle, along with cousins Jim and Debbie Dise, Kelly and
Jean Dise, Ed and Sally Dise, plus a cast of thousands of family friends. Before boarding the ship, we took the “Tour of
Seattle, Hell” on an uncharacteristically sunny and warm Seattle day. The tour guide led us for many, interminable
hours through the neighborhoods of Seattle, stopping to marvel at every blade
of blessed grass that was fortunate enough to call Seattle its home. Debbie (my Debbie) complained that her blood
sugar was low since it was 1:30 PM and we hadn’t had lunch, and the sympathetic
tour guide responded by driving us through yet more neighborhoods for yet
another hour -- this time, we marveled at the lawn ornaments. We did finally board the ship in time; thank heaven,
but no thanks to Seattle’s most self-absorbed tour guide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The cruise
itself, I’m happy to say, was a wild success.
Our ship wasn’t one of the really gi-normous ones that pull dwarf stars in
their wakes -- this one was only the size of a typical Virginia county, so we
were able to head all the way up into the fjords and watch the big glaciers do pretty
much nothing. Think of glaciers as the
ice machine of the gods. They’re mostly
blue, by the way, but well-peppered with soot.
You don’t see the soot in all those touristy travel brochures, do
you? I think it gets airbrushed away. And any soot you see with flippers? Those are seals, only slightly more frisky
than the soot. Then we arrived at
Juneau, Alaska -- not at all named for Juno, the Roman goddess of politics, but
for some old gold prospector named Mr. Juneau, who kept buying drinks for
everyone in town until they agreed to name the town after him. Political pandering has since gotten more
sophisticated. In the world of
adjectives, Juneau is nestled in somewhere between quaint and beautiful -- too many
state buildings to be quaint, too many run-down homes to be beautiful. To know what makes Juneau special, you have
to look at its setting: mountains and coastline. The town starts at sea level and is pretty
much built straight up into the nearby mountains -- after climbing the streets
to the other end of town, we had to rappel back to the ship. Best $15 ever spent -- we took a tour bus to
the Alaska Brewery, where we received a lecture-tour of the facilities… and
free samples. It’s a nice story -- back
in the Seventies, a young married couple visited Juneau, fell in love with the
place, and wanted to move there. But…
what to do for a living? She was a CPA,
he was a chemical engineer whose hobby was beer-making. They went door to door, trying to talk the
locals into investing in their start-up brewery; today, the unhappiest people
in town are the ones who turned them down.
Did I mention the free samples? Yowzah! Whoa,
did the island just shift? On our way
back to town, as we passed a small island about two hundred yards offshore, the
shuttle driver explained it had the world’s highest concentration of grizzly
bears. Can you imagine having to carry
an elephant gun just to take out the trash?
Also, Mel Gibson once owned a home there. The grizzlies had to carry elephant guns,
too. After Juneau, we also stopped at
Sitka and Ketchikan on the way back to Seattle, but, by that time, I’d decided
that life in the ship’s bar was more fun than climbing the streets, and the
wildlife was slightly more active.
Cousin Jim had a system worked out to where we could max out our bar
tabs during happy hour and carry a glass of cheap wine into dinner. It takes a Dise to figure the important
things out. Cara Wallo, a member of our
entourage, was one of the finalists in our ship’s version of “Dancing With the
Stars!” I contributed at karaoke time by
doing my very best Jim Morrison impression.
Plus, I got to spend lots of quality time with my wonderful wife. Don’t you love her madly? I do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Unfortunately,
after thirty years of programming at a desk, my physique has come to resemble
an oyster’s. There are sports teams
named after the big cats, bears, and other species of nature’s strong and swift
predators, but I defy you to find an NFL team named after a mollusk. Not getting any younger, and here at age
sixty able to see old age from my backyard, I decided to sign up for strength
training. There’s a gym in Norfolk named
“Brute Strength” and I went there to see Stella. In the waiting area, I looked around and
realized, I’m the weakest person in this gym, and that includes the pretty
little twenty-something ladies. There
was a young boy sitting in the reception area, maybe seven years old. I thought I might be able to take him. Stella greeted me. She’s a very nice lady, and about as helpful
as anyone can possibly be. She’s also
only the ninth woman in history to bench-press 350 pounds. That there is what we call ‘street
creds’. Stella trained me for about a
month, and if I could afford it, I’d still be hiring her for every
workout. But I’m more or less on my own
now. And something happened that I never
expected: I kinda like this. After about
a month, I started noticing these little tiny bumps starting to spring up in
various places, where there had never been so much as a ripple or a ridge. They’re not big enough yet to call muscles --
I call them “muscle sprouts.” But recently
I’ve had to take some time off, because, somehow, I hurt my lower back, and have
been unable to work through it. Now, my
theory has always been, you have to have a muscle to pull a muscle. That theory seems to hold -- I never had to
worry about back pain until I had something resembling a muscle, and I never
realized how debilitating it can be.
I’ll just have to find some way to work through all this, because at the
moment, I seem to be hooked on lifting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Speaking of
dead-lifts, about a year and a half ago, Debbie and I invested in a zombie
movie, “The Other Side”, written and produced by Pittsburgh’s Niespodzianski
Brothers -- John and Chris. I knew John
when he was in the Air Force, and simply could not imagine him doing a bad job
of anything he’d set his mind to do. The
biggest risk a movie investor takes is that the movie will never actually get
made. I just knew that wasn’t going to
happen -- and it didn’t. Cousin Jim Dise
and I drove to Pittsburgh last spring, with my pastor, Wally Sherbon, to see a
sneak preview, and again to see the theatrical premier in November, with my
friend and colleague Martin Barritt.
Still don’t know whether there’s a financial happy ending, but so far we’ve
gotten some excellent reviews, and the production team has announced we are
very close to a distribution deal.
Fingers crossed! If you happen to
see the movie, watch for my name in the “Executive Producer” credits -- what I
actually produced was a signature on a check, but it’s the thought that counts. And meanwhile, if some folks who look dead come
shambling toward you, don’t assume they’re just asking directions. They might want to pick your brain about
something.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Debbie’s
dad, Bill Wallace, at age 86, broke his hip this past January, and both he and
Debbie’s mom, Audrey, lost their ability to live on their own. Debbie intrepidly drove them both up here
this past March, and they took up residence with us here in our house. Audrey is still with us here, but Bill’s
health has met with a few setbacks, and he’s in a local nursing home now. Breaking your hip when you get older is sort
of a harbinger for other things, mostly not good. We have no idea how things go from here, but
we visit Bill a lot and he seems to be rolling with the punches pretty
well. We just celebrated Bill’s 87<sup>th</sup>
birthday with beer and pizza. Bill
flirts outrageously with the nurses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">And that’s
the year that was. Debbie is still
teaching 5<sup>th</sup> grade beginning orchestra, I’m still programming and
playing trombone, and we both are grateful for the Lord’s many blessings. This Christmas season; remember the One who
came into this world to make life and death both worth celebrating, -- the New
Life that is to come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Love from,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Lee &
Debbie <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Bill &
Audrey, too! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-34434868516353461732013-12-17T19:41:00.003-05:002013-12-18T17:38:34.296-05:00Merry Christmas 2013!<div style="text-align: justify;">
Took the afternoon off work to write this… Debbie is in her best, most urgent “Have you written the Christmas letter yet?” mode -- so, with my schedule papered with musical performances later in the week, this is the ‘Do or die’ time, right now. Sitting here with a nice martini buzz (something else I can’t do at work) -- brain cells roasting on an open fire. The hi-fi is playing something by a group called “The Cars. Debbie will be out most of the day, conducting her fifth-grade strings concerts and, as usual, doing something productive. Me? I’m much more easily distracted, but the circumstances will never get better than this. Now! Let the stream of consciousness commence...<br />
<br />
We’ve taken a whole bunch of trips this year. As much as I loved living in Omaha -- and I did -- there was usually an enormous time commitment involved whenever traveling to anyplace but Omaha. Not so in Virginia! Take a trip through Virginia if you want to see beautiful coasts/mountains/cities/wineries; take a trip through Nebraska if you want to see corn/sorghum/bison/grain elevators. Last May, Debbie and I traveled to Asheville, NC, to meet up with our good friends, Tom and Mary Salem. Tom is a former boss from my Omaha years -- yet strangely enough, we still like each other. We beat the odds. It is said that Asheville is the “San Francisco of the East” -- not an unfair comparison. Both Asheville and San Francisco are blessed with great natural beauty, and both seem to be very artistic in something of a counter-cultural way -- the difference is that in Asheville, you half-expect to see leftover Sixties hippies trading bong-hits with Daniel Boone. The ladies visited the Biltmore Estate, home of the Vanderbilts, who made their fortune in railroading -- exactly whom, I can’t say. Tom and I decided to go slumming instead and embarked on a brew-pub tour of beautiful downtown Asheville -- which bills itself as the brew-pub capital of the world. That’s pretty big talk, and we wanted to see if Asheville walked the walk. It did. All I really remember, though, is that there was lots of tasty dark bubbly stuff. And pretty waitresses. But after a sufficient amount of dark bubbly stuff -- must have been something chemical -- the pretty waitresses all started looking like Picasso had passed through Asheville on his plastic-surgery tour. My, what pretty eyes you have! Would you mind turning your head around so I can see your other two? On our way home, Debbie started having abdominal pains, and, from our cell phone, we arranged a rendezvous at a local hospital. Turns out, she had a kidney stone. Fortunately, it was small enough to pass on through with no further ado, and a few days later, it did. Like Bob Dylan said, everybody must get stoned -- Debbie, in her way; me, in mine.<br />
<br />
As usual, I was signed up this past summer with the Tidewater Winds, a John Philip Sousa-style concert band that works pretty much every evening in July. However, this year, I hit a wall. My workplace switches over to ten-hour days in late June, so for the past several years, that has meant working ten hours, dashing home, scarfing a quick dinner, donning the tux , and heading out again for a two-hour gig. This past July, I decided I just can’t do this anymore. The Winds played a Christmas concert last week -- one of the most fun, ever -- and then I resigned from the group. They’ll do fine without me, and I just hope I’ll do fine without them.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In August, Debbie
and I visited our friends Kurt and Patty Rauscher in Batesville, IN, not far
from Cincinnati. En route, we s<span class="usercontent">at patiently on a runway in Norfolk waiting to depart for
Cincinnati, via Philadelphia, in what I hope was the jet with the least
effective air conditioning this side of Morocco. When your sweat glands give up and turn into
liver spots, you know you’re in for it.
By the time we arrived in Philly, we were cheese steaks. Had a related thought that's just dying for
its own "Far Side" cartoon: a
plane is being boarded by buzzards and hyenas (along with some real people).
The buzzards and hyenas are carrying dead animals and a stench is overwhelming
the humans, while the stewardess pleasantly announces, "Please check your
carrion luggage."</span> Kurt
is my friend of longest standing -- we've been close friends since I was in
eighth grade. That was… uh… twenty years
ago?? Heh. Try, uh, 45 years. Kurt is a retired Delta Airlines pilot, and
is enjoying his retirement very much -- "The hours are great,” Kurt says, “but
the pay sucks.” It was great to see Kurt’s
parents, Merle and Irene, again -- when I was in high school, they always made
me feel welcome, like one of the family.
Merle and Kurt even tried to teach me how to play golf, an endeavor
inspired more of pity than practicality -- I can’t even master walking while
chewing gum. Then, to make matters worse,
I lost about seventy pounds during my sophomore year – once I could actually
see the golf ball, I didn’t know what to do with it. We all went to a wonderful restaurant outside
of Batesville where they make their own wine, and my reaction was, hey, they
sell food too!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
We took two trips to Pittsburgh this year -- the town where I went to grad school, where my academic career died an agonizing death before it was born, and where I learned to love the NFL -- hard to say for which I should be most grateful. As aging baby-boomers, we’re always on the lookout for yet another investment that can go sour, and this year we decided to invest in a movie. An old Air Force buddy, John Niespodzianski (not just another pretty name, I assure you), is the CEO of an upstart production company, Orchard Place Productions. They’re making a zombie movie named “The Other Side, so we decided, what the heck, and threw in some capital -- our portfolio has been like “The Walking Dead” for some time now, just thought we should make it official. In August, we enjoyed a long weekend at the William Penn Hotel in the beautiful downtown, and met John and his wife Cindy at a kick-butt beer joint named “The Sharp Edge.” Later on, we introduced Debbie to the inexplicable allure of Pittsburgh cuisine, which is to cuisine as a laboratory culture is to culture. We enjoyed a Primanti Bros. sandwich, which consists tomatoes, slaw, some species of meat (it’s not important which), and a fistful of French fries – all mashed down between two slabs of Italian bread. Then we went back to the hotel, had dessert and coffee, and listened to a fabulous jazz trio on the lovely art deco mezzanine. The next day, we met up again with John and Cindy at an old farmhouse west of Washington, PA (pronounced “Warsh-ington”), where the zombies were being filmed. You might be surprised how much effort goes into making a movie. There were actors and cameramen and directors and assistant directors and make-up specialists and… rain. Lots of rain. Debbie and I walked around like we owned the place -- and, in a very temporal sense, I guess we did, sort of. For a day, maybe. The cast and crew were very warm and welcoming. Cindy was… I don’t know the technical term, but she was the person in charge of finding discontinuities in the film -- like, hey, those brains were seeping out of your left temple yesterday, but today they’re hanging out of the right one, what gives? John is the producer, and I can’t imagine a better one -- he solved problems and brought food and kept smiling, sort of a one-man morale machine. On our way back to Virginia, Debbie and I met up with Jim Siehl, father of my college buddy Dan Siehl, and had dinner at the Jean Bonnet Tavern in Bedford, PA. Not only did George Washington sleep there, he left the recipe for his favorite porter. Mmmmmm. We decided to eschew the drama of I-95 and the D.C. Beltway, and traveled home via Winchester, VA (birthplace of Patsy Cline). It took a bit longer to take that route, but we were rewarded by a gorgeous drive through the Shenandoah Valley.</span></span> <br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
On our next trip to Pittsburgh, in early November, we got together with our upstate New York friends, Kevin and Ann Schmalz. There was a Pitt game and a Steeler game in town that weekend, so any thoughts of bargain-basement lodging prices were dispelled very quickly -- we wound up at a Hampton Inn about four miles north of downtown. That doesn’t sound like much of a distance, but when you consider that Pittsburgh is one of the hardest cities in the country to navigate, it’s worse than you think. Pittsburgh is a city in three dimensions. When you see a crossroads on a map, you think, okay, I get it -- but then you arrive and you’re on a bridge between two mountains and the “crossroad” is actually a small access road about a thousand feet below you -- welcome to Pittsburgh, where there is simply no substitute for knowing where you’re going. Even Tom-Tom was confused and started sounding like Robot from “Lost in Space” –- “When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!” Kevin and I attended a Pittsburgh Symphony concert that was, without a doubt, the best I’ve ever heard. The least-uttered sentence in the English language is, “Wow, look at that trombone player’s Rolls-Royce!” Runner-up on that same list is: “Wow, what a musical bassoon player!” Yet that’s what Kevin and I were both saying as we left Heinz Hall. The Symphony performed Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” -- it was everything you’d expect from a princess with a thousand tales. At some point since I left Pittsburgh, the Symphony had graduated from “good” to “world-class”. Next morning, we all had breakfast at DeLuca’s in the Strip District -- if you watch Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher”, a scene was shot right there in that restaurant. According to the waitress, they had to shut down for a week during the filming, for a scene that lasted all of forty seconds. We ordered the “Scientology Scramble” -- a double order of ham, served out of your gourd.<br />
<br />
On April 2 this year, Debbie and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. We threw a shindig at our house, many of our wonderful friends and family attending. Debbie is still amazing. She teaches strings (music) at three different elementary schools and runs the music program at our church; she is the glue that keeps our household together. This past week has been a busy one for her, as she has been giving concerts -- conducting fifth-graders and herding them as well. I’m back with the Virginia Beach “Not Ready for Primetime” Symphony, and we’re performing Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” ballet this week while the ballerinas pass the deux. The deux stops here. Our lives are truly blessed. We hope yours are, too. May the Lord of all Creation bless you this Christmas season and bring you all the happiness that comes with knowing Him and accepting His gifts.</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-2633480217664823012013-12-14T09:08:00.001-05:002013-12-15T00:23:27.548-05:00RINO Blasty<div class="social-comment-body">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Speaker of the House John Boehner blasted conservative groups who criticized the latest budget deal. Or, as Congressman Paul Ryan characterized the situation, Boehner "got his Irish up."</div>
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YnuaeF4X5iY" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Begorrah! </div>
<div class="social-comment-body">
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But let's review. Why is John Boehner the Speaker of the House today? Might have something to do with the conservatives and the Tea Partiers getting out the vote in 2010. Without those conservatives and Tea Partiers, the Republican Party would be the minority party in the House and Mr. Boehner would be just another Republican congresscritter, one of many whom the media make a policy to ignore. The only reason people pay any attention to what he says is because he was propelled into his modest rendezvous with destiny by the very people he just slammed and ridiculed.<br />
<br />
<br />
So it probably wasn't, you know, smart to piss off the folks who voted for his party and send them money. But it did look like Boehner was enjoying himself, didn't it? Like maybe he has been bottling up those emotions for a while.<br />
<br />
And why shouldn't he enjoy himself? Sincerity can be refreshing, and Republicans are never more sincere than when they are attacking their own base.<br />
<br />
Ever see a Democrat do that? Bite the hand that feeds Democrats, that is? No. They know better. But on the other hand, Democrats don't face the structural problems suffered by Republicans.<br />
<br />
What do I mean by 'structural problems'? I mean cognitive dissonance is actually built right into the Republican Party. It should drive Republicans crazy. Judging by Mr. Boehner's remarks, it already has.<br />
<br />
The dissonance exists because the Republican Party is: <br />
<ul>
<li>a political party whose interests are served by the things that always serve politicians, namely, power and spending.</li>
<li>supported by people who are philosophically opposed to sending more money and power to the government.</li>
</ul>
This is what is known as an untenable position. <br />
<br />
Democrats don't have this problem. Their politicians shamelessly grub for more money and power like pigs in slop, and the more they can slurp down, the better their base likes it. The Democratic Party is the political party for whom more power and spending is not just the practical goal, but the philosophical goal as well.<br />
<br />
Republicans are like pigs who represent the anti-slop contingent. "This slop must stop!" they tell their supporters. "Elect me and we'll make the sty safe for clean pigs!" Only that's not what they do. They snarf down the slop, same as the Democrats, and enjoy it just as much. But that gives them some 'splainin to do when their supporters want to know, when are you going to get busy cleaning this place up? Why are you acting just like these Democratic pigs? Well, you see, this is a political process, and sometimes you have to compromise and make concessions, we're for realistic change, and... and... It's times like this that probably do drive the Republican pigs mad.<br />
<br />
So the head Republican oinker just got tired of the pretense, for only a moment. Shut up! Dammit! I love slop! I love it, do you hear? I love it! Go pound sand! Let me wallow in peace!<br />
<br />
Michael Kinsley has a phrase for what Boehner did: he committed a Washington gaffe. That's an accidental telling of the truth.</div>
<div class="social-comment-body">
Republicans spend most of their time only pretending to agree with
their base. And every once in a while, they grow too weary of the
pretense to control themselves. Mr. Boehner did the other day. He’s
not the first. Think back at the times when GOP power-holders chewed
out the conservative rank and file. E.g., Bush over Harriet Miers and
immigration, McCain over a range of issues, the first Bush when he broke
his promise and raised taxes.</div>
Lord Acton is the patron saint of politics. "Power corrupts." And filth has an advantage. You can ruin a gallon of ice cream with one tablespoon of pig poop, but you can't make a pig sty taste good by adding a scoop of ice cream. Advantage: oinkers.</div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-72977228855155334852013-11-19T17:06:00.001-05:002013-11-20T17:34:17.905-05:00Apology Excepted<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent">Our
politicians are always reminding us that an apology has a fairly strict
form. They remind us by not following it.</span></span></span></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent">Most modern apologies take
the form, "We're sorry if you were offended..."<br /> <br /> Firstly, any
apology that contains the word "if" is not an apology. If someone is
truly sorry, it isn't contingent on anything.<br /> <br /> Secondly, any
apology that personalizes the offended party is not an apology. "Sorry
if you're offended" casts the offended party at least as a part of the
problem. Is the problem that I was offensive, or that you were so
thin-skinned? That's left unclear, and a good apology leaves nothing
unclear.<br /> <br /> However, such apologies can *sound* very close to a
real apology, which is probably why politicians employ these bogus mea
culpas.<br /> <br /> Our Education secretary, a Mr. Arne Duncan, takes a
more sophisticated route to the non-apology. He has been getting some
pushback from critics of his "Common Core" initiative. Rather than
answering them substantively, he said, according to the Washington Post,
that he was fascinated by the fact that some opposition to the
standards was coming from “white suburban moms” who fear that “their
child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.” (No word as to
what Common Core has to say about the use of <i>argumentum ad hominem</i>.)
This frames their criticism as something unsubtantive without itself
offering anything of substance, and in passing relies on a stereotype
and a racial slur.<br /> <br /> All this is fine and dandy, but
unfortunately, some of the thin-skinned, white suburban moms took offense. An
emergency like this calls for an excellent non-apology, and Arne's went
something like this:</span></span></span></span></span></h5>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent">"I used some clumsy phrasing that I regret —
particularly because it distracted from an important conversation about
how to better prepare all of America’s students for success... I want to
encourage a difficult conversation and challenge the underlying
assumption that when we talk about the need to improve our nation’s
schools, we are talking only about poor minority students in inner
cities. This is simply not true. Research demonstrates that as a
country, every demographic group has room for improvement."</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent"></span></span></span></span></span><br /></blockquote>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent"> <br /> As
non-apologies go, this one is a masterpiece. Firstly, Arne expresses no
contrition, but only "regret". "I feel remorse for my statements" is
what the aggrieved party wants to hear -- whereas "I regret my statements" is
more neutral.</span></span></span></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent">E.g., I may regret my sins, and I may regret leaving my
sunglasses at the restaurant. But I don't have remorse for forgetting
my sunglasses.<br /> <br /> Then he admits to some "clumsy phrasing" when
the real problem is that his phrasing was perfectly clear: a bunch of
spoiled white suburban soccer moms who think they're kids are geniuses have the
temerity to question the Secretary of Education... sniff. A pox on them and their insufferable spawn. I'm paraphrasing.<br /> <br /> Then,
Arne poses as someone who is sincere and means well, but has just been so misunderstood. He says he wanted simply to "encourage a difficult conversation"... but then goes on to
impute a lack of comprehension to his critics. Of
course, difficult conversations don't get any easier when you lead off
with a couple of insults. And it begs the question to insist that it's
his critics who misunderstand the education process, and not him.<br /> <br />
Ah well. We probably shouldn't criticize him at all. He is our public
servant, you know. It's not our place to question our servants...</span></span></span></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mfwN0X8YnWo" width="420"></iframe> </span></span></span></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent">Update 11/20/2013: I don't like Martin Bashir very much, and I certainly don't like his politics, but here he gives the world a lesson in how to deliver an apology (for an unspeakable thing he said about Sarah Palin)...</span></span></span></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ctWl6FCbxo0" width="560"></iframe></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3,"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent"> </span></span></span></span></span></h5>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-9700490524774311542013-11-12T11:02:00.003-05:002013-11-12T13:33:33.375-05:00Sounds Easy to Me<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm an old warhorse database programmer/administrator, been programming since 1984, been a DBA since 1997. I've worked in defense applications, in intelligence applications, in the insurance business, and for school districts. If I haven't quite seen it all yet, I've sure seen a lot.<br /><br />One of the things I've seen is that there are basically two types of people:<br /><br />1. There are people who, if they don't know about something, assume that the something in question is not necessarily easily knowable. A programmer might assume, for example, that if he's worked on military software, that software for school systems might be at least as hard to master, even though that may sound counterintuitive to a non-professional.<br /><br />2. There are people who assume, if they don't know about something, that it must be easy to learn. Does that sound strange? Yeah, to me too. But that is what a lot of people are like. People who would assume that school software is easier than military software. People who would assume that software is easy because they work on computers too, and all you have to do is point and click. People who assume that something can be done within the dictated deadline because that's what's on the calendar. People who, to pull out an old retread, believe that if a woman can have a baby in nine months, then nine women can pull it off in a month.<br /><br />I've met plenty of people like that. If you try to explain the complications, they take it that you're making excuses. HR and benefits departments have at times seemed to be fully staffed by such folks. A benefits lady where I once worked gave us a briefing on our retirement benefit and tried to gloss over an obvious gouging the employees received from the company, as if nobody in the room would notice. This was a room containing mostly mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and computer-science wonks, many of whom had masters' degrees and Ph.D's. But if one assumes that math and physics are no harder than payroll, you get someone who thinks she can sneak an intellectual knuckleball through the strike zone even though she's probably the dumbest person in the stadium. It didn't end well for her presentation.<br /><br />If I were the guessing sort, I would guess that the entire ObamaCare software project is being overseen by our type 2 individuals. It would just never occur to them that delivering a brand-new application to be used by millions to sign up for health care would be all that complicated. They could tell it would be done by Jan 1, 2014 just by checking their calendars. Yep, there it is, Jan 1, 2014.<br /><br />Lucky us.</span></div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-83598323540018364732013-11-11T09:30:00.002-05:002013-11-15T07:41:39.233-05:00Outsourcing Slavery?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Where does being a "wage slave" stop and being a slave begin? </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/166250-an-iphone-tester-caught-in-apples-supply-chain">http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/166250-an-iphone-tester-caught-in-apples-supply-chain</a></div>
<br />
Maybe the United States doesn't just outsource jobs. Maybe we also outsource slavery. Is that an exaggeration? If so, it's a slight one, and the Bloomberg writer agrees: "Apple, along with others, calls that bonded labor, a form of modern-day indentured servitude, one step removed from slavery." However you put it, it's not something the U.S. Dept. of Labor or the National Labor Relations Board would accept.<br />
<br />
There's something for everyone in today's world economy. They get our money, and we acquire their indifference to workers' conditions. When the Fourteenth Amendment gets outsourced, so do OSHA regulations. We depend on China to ensure that their workers are treated fairly and safely. The suicide nets set up outside the workers' dorms, to keep the workers from jumping to their deaths, may or may not apply.<br />
<br />
That's not all. We also outsource EPA regulations -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China" target="_blank">"Pollution in China"</a> gets in own page in Wikipedia. The U.S. is all for "saving the planet" when "the planet" is defined as our own backyard. The EPA lacks jurisdiction in China, but of course we don't have to trade with them. Maybe the theory is that we can ruin half of the Earth's environment so long as it's the half we don't live in.<br />
<br />
And don't forget other obligations businesses incur when operating in the U.S. ObamaCare's heavy and incompetent hand is already poised to turn the U.S. into "part-time nation", as more businesses are and will be cutting back their workers' hours to 29 per week, to avoid getting completely sucked into helping liberals sleep better at night. Ruining the U.S. labor market may not have been the intention of the ObamaCare legislation, but the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences" target="_blank">"law of unintended consequences"</a> is always a lurking presence when policy decisions are made -- and, like Glenn Close's psychopathic character in "Fatal Attraction", <a href="http://fatheadfollies.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/fatal-attraction-glenn-close.jpg" target="_blank">it is not gonna be ignored</a>.<br />
<br />
Businesses outsource not just to avoid paying higher wages, but also to avoid the other costs of producing something here in the U.S., and that includes taxes and the aforementioned regulations (including EPA and OSHA). Maybe there's a happy medium somewhere that would enable businesses to turn a profit even when operating in the U.S., while also dealing with the government's ethical and environmental concerns.<br />
<br />
If so, we'll never find that happy medium if we need government bureaucrats to find it. Government bureaucrats are not judicious conservators of our nation's way of life. They are attack dogs. Chasing an issue beyond the bounds of any positive return is no deterrent to getting to sink teeth into a businessman's neck. Doing so may ruin someone else's job opportunities, but the bureaucrat gets paid whether or not his actions help or hurt the economy, and life is always good in Washington.</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-12919487033863343212013-10-26T12:28:00.001-04:002013-10-26T12:28:17.501-04:00The Church of Liberalism vs. the Infidels<div style="text-align: justify;">
ObamaCare is floundering and Margaret Carlson is one unhappy liberal, which happens to be my favorite kind.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Carlson:
"The website failure gives credence to those who warn that government
can’t be trusted to get big things right, and that the market, not
bureaucrats, should fix health care. It’s not just the crazies who doubt
government now. According to the Pew Research Center, the competence of
officialdom is on shaky ground, with only 19 percent of Americans
saying they trust in government 'just about always' or 'most of the
time.'"</blockquote>
<br />
"Crazies". I guess she means people
like me -- people who don't always trust the government to do the right
thing, whether through ignorance, incompetence or malice; people who
believe, to quote another "crazy":<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."</blockquote>
<br />
The "crazy" who said that, by the way, went by the name of George Washington, who just happens to be the fellow after whom liberalism's Mecca was named.<br />
<br />
For
that's what we're dealing with here: a religion. There is no god but
liberalism, and Obama is its prophet. We are imbued in liberalism's
moral precepts in the schools, battered incessantly with its
presumptions in the popular media, and continually and coldly assessed
by the keepers of its flame for any signs of heresy, unbelief, or
rebellion. Suspend a student from school <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/21/student-reportedly-arrested-suspended-after-argument-over-nra-shirt/">for wearing an NRA T-shirt</a>, or <a href="http://www.kmov.com/news/local/McCluer-student-faces-expulsion-for-defending-himself-in-off-campus-fight-221260021.html">for physically defending himself in a fight</a>.
Ostracize Chic-Fil-A and the Boy Scouts when they defend the traditional
family. Smear Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain with rumors of sexual
misconduct when they take the national stage espousing a heretical
viewpoint, while ignoring Bill Clinton's and John Edwards' own sexual
issues for as long as possible because they're true believers. When
liberals speak of "crazies", what they really mean is infidels. <br />
<br />
That makes liberalism, in Marxian terms, the opiate of the high and mighty classes. It is the religion of choice for the clueless cognoscenti, such as Ms. Carlson. "Heaven" is the Great
Society, our goal, our eschaton -- a social paradise, perfectly just,
perfectly managed, and based on our shared faith in man's reason, knowledge, and
inherent gosh-darn goodness. Wicked resistance yet exists, but can be wholly blamed on the deprived childhoods and lack of (federally-funded) education of the benighted classes (that's us, by the way -- murderers, pimps, thieves, conservatives, and other species of "bitter
clingers"). Society's institutions have failed to create a citizenry worthy of their vision. To create
the Great Society requires tearing down our outmoded institutions and
replacing them with newer, shinier ones.
Not justice, but social justice. Not prison, but rehabilitation and
re-education. Not the family, but the village. Not the church, but the
progressive university. Not the Constitution that James Madison helped
write, but the "living Constitution" that the Supreme Court gets to re-write -- it's life, Jim, but not as we know it.<br />
<br />
The
opposing viewpoint, espoused by "crazies" like George Washington and me,
is that man is imperfect in knowledge and character -- a fallen creature
whose motives are suspect even on those rare occasions when his competence is not; whose
laziness and greed require an incentive structure like the free market to
get him to lift so much as a finger for his fellow man; and whose
depravity requires institutions like the family and the church just to get
him to behave himself. You'll want to be very careful when dealing with such a creature. You'll
want to empower him to improve his own lot in life, while
still protecting everyone else's. Unfortunately, this also empowers
him to ruin his own life. And while it's dangerous to trust the governed, it's catastrophic to trust their governors: you'll want to
disperse political power and bind it with a constitution. Unfortunately, this also disempowers the government from doing all the
things some think it should. <br />
<br />
What you don't want is to collect too much political and economic power together under the hood of one mighty and
unstoppable vehicle, and then hand over the keys to anyone who is not Jesus Christ. Contrary to <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2009/06/05/newsweek-s-evan-thomas-obama-sort-god">what the breathless and gushing Evan Thomas thinks</a>, Barack Obama is not Jesus. To judge by his recent spate of incompetencies, he's not even Pontius Pilate.<br />
<br />
We had plenty of warning. The
Bible advises us, put not your faith in man. Discretion tells us, don't
fix what ain't broke. Experience should have told most of us that slick
hucksters, whether they wear the
loud houndstooth and leering grin of the used-car saleman, or the
blue serge and ingratiating smile of the professional politician, are to be taken with a grain of salt.<br />
<br />
But many of us bought it anyway. And now we have to suffer the consequences. Alleluia, amen.</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-54260193330594287732013-10-13T21:38:00.001-04:002013-10-17T09:38:31.834-04:00Heads I Win...<div style="text-align: justify;">
Joseph Atwill is a Bible scholar who is also an agnostic. Hey, it had to happen sometime.
Atwill believes Jesus was made up by the Romans. Or maybe he's just hoping Jesus was made up by the Romans. Really, I can't tell which.
But Atwill said at least one other thing I think is highly questionable...
<br />
<blockquote>
“Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history...” </blockquote>
Let's leave aside his lack of perspective regarding history. Let's just go right for the quick, here: Atwill is wrong. Atwill is not just wrong based on my world view; he's wrong even according to his own.<br />
<br />
Let me explain how...<br />
<br />
Atwill is making a moral argument against Christianity. He's not the first. The main proposition is that the world would be better off without Christianity.
So Atwill is implying here that there exists some standard by which he judges the "Good", and by which Christianity falls short.<br />
<br />
So it's fair to ask, what is his standard, and what is its nature? And no fair leaning on Christian ideals here -- he has to justify his moral argument based on his own assumptions, not mine.<br />
<br />
Since Atwill doesn't believe in God, I presume he's a materialist, in which case he rejects the notion of any absolute standard for the Good.
So then, without an absolute standard, what is left?<br />
<br />
Opinion. That's all, folks. Atwill's may be an erudite opinion. It may be lucid and compelling. But it is just an opinion. In Atwill's opinion, and in the opinion of other atheists, Christianity falls short on the moral code-o-meter.<br />
<br />
Can opinions themselves hold moral authority?<br />
<br />
If so, then what makes Atwill's opinion better than the opinion of believers? Is it well-expressed? Well, there also happen to be articulate Christians. So that would probably not make the decisive difference.<br />
<br />
Is Atwill himself some sort of moral authority to whom we should pay heed? My guess is, he's no better or worse than the vast number of us, including Christians. He's a mere human like us. Unless he assumes the authority of a prophet or an apostle -- and that isn't possible in his world view -- it's safe to assume he's personally no more authoritative than the rest of us.<br />
<br />
What would it require to judge Atwill's opinion better than a Christian's? There would need to be some higher standard by which to judge both, wouldn't there?
What would that higher standard be?<br />
<br />
Reason? That seems to be a popular retort. But if Reason is the arbiter, then St. Thomas Aquinas' opinion might be more important than Atwill's, if we can show Aquinas' powers of
reasoning are superior. Aquinas, after all, is considered one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. But, personally, I doubt that Reason holds all that much moral authority. Not to go full Godwin, but the Nazis were far better at reasoning than most other folks on this planet. They even took copious notes as they tortured Jews, so they would gain medical insights. E.g., they would throw a Jew naked into a snow bank, turn on the stop watch, and figure out how long they could keep him there before they couldn't resuscitate him. The head Nazis were hung at Nuremberg but they left us their data. It's perfectly good data. Lives have been saved using it.
So what's wrong with collecting such data? Reason says the Jews were going to die anyway, might as well learn something we didn't already know, right?<br />
<br />
Only it's repulsive as Hell, that's all, and Reason happens to be oblivious to that fact. Let's just stipulate it's ghoulish to decide one person's life is worth the torturing and killing of another person to whose life we impart no respect. Reason is no help at all to us here because it can serve evil as well as good. That's why, whenever Reason is used to justify something evil, we call it 'rationalizing'. So scratch that.<br />
<br />
So then, what is that higher standard, if not Reason? The majority? Are we all majoritarians now? Well, the majority in 1700 A.D. thought slavery was okay. A majority of American Indians thought human sacrifice was okay. We have a constitution with a bill of rights precisely because the Founding Fathers were perfectly aware that majorities can be oppressive and they believed even minorities deserve rights. So scratch that too.<br />
<br />
Maybe Atwill's opinion is better because, in his own view, he believes his opinions are somehow special. Problem is, he shares that conceit with practically everyone else on the planet, so that doesn't tell us anything either.<br />
<br />
Is it starting to appear that Atwill's opinion isn't based on any higher standard at all?<br />
<br />
In fact, the idea of a higher standard itself is a silly notion in materialist philosophy. Don't believe in what you can't observe or measure -- that's their creed, after all. Since we can't prove a higher standard exists, then materialists say it doesn't exist.<br />
<br />
We conclude that Atwill's opinion is no better than anyone else's, based on Atwill's own assumptions about there being no God.<br />
<br />
So, if his opinion is no better than anyone else's, then what is the point of him arguing it? By his own assumptions about God, trying to convince us of his opinion's worth is pointless.<br />
<br />
Whereas, in my opinion, there is something higher than my opinion -- namely, God's will. I do right, or I do wrong, based on His opinion. Provided God exists, that makes me right for embracing His will as the ultimate moral authority; whereas, provided He doesn't exist, it's pointless for Atwill to argue. So I win by both world views.<br />
<br />
I even win by postmodernist standards. Postmodernists shrug and say, "What is truth? What is good?" and conclude that if something gives your life meaning, embrace it even at the expense of rationality. I can say I'm right, and they can't say I'm wrong. I win again.</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-29600656168737235292013-07-08T17:43:00.002-04:002013-07-08T17:43:27.053-04:00Putting the Anal in Analyst<div style="text-align: justify;">
ABC News appears to be unhappy at the prospects that George Zimmerman may "walk free"...
<br />
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/george-zimmerman-convicted-murder-manslaughter/story?id=19598422#.UdnkHz7DVoY">http://abcnews.go.com/US/george-zimmerman-convicted-murder-manslaughter/story?id=19598422#.UdnkHz7DVoY</a><br />
<br />
I certainly don't know all the facts and I wasn't there when it happened. But I know tendentious news coverage when I see it.<br />
<br />
Here's Dan Abrams, ABC News' "legal analyst" (their words, not mine):
"So what happened? How can an armed man who shot and killed an unarmed teen after being told by the police that he didn't need to keep following him, likely be found not guilty of those crimes?"<br />
<br />
The implication here is that unless Martin had been armed, it would have been unreasonable for Zimmerman to believe his own life was in danger.<br />
<br />
Gee, Dan, ever been beaten up in the dark by a stranger? Somebody doesn't need to be packing heat to beat you up, you know. Nor does someone need to be armed with a gun to be able to kill you.<br />
<br />
I can see it now. The grieving survivors at George Zimmerman's funeral, and those who loved him console themselves, saying "Well, at least George wasn't killed by a gun."<br />
<br />
Abrams: "I certainly sympathize with the anger and frustration of the Martin family and doubt that a jury will accept the entirety of George Zimmerman's account as credible."<br />
<br />
There's a little bit of question-begging going on right here. Does anybody else's supposed anger and frustration count? How frustrated would you be, Dan Abrams, if you were falsely accused of murder?<br />
<br />
Abrams is fulfilling the role of propagandist, not analyst. One of the comments left at the ABC News site said it all...<br />
<br />
"This is an outrage. It's clear that GZ broke his own nose, beat his own head against the sidewalk, while TM screamed in horror, and then
when GZ was done self mutilating, pulled TM on top of him and shot him in the chest. How did everyone miss that?"</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-8538514952352148062013-06-29T10:11:00.000-04:002013-06-29T21:57:18.137-04:00Greater Tragedies Than This<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here's a link to an article about the death of cursive writing in America...
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57591586/is-cursive-writing-dead/">http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57591586/is-cursive-writing-dead/</a><br />
<br />
It caught my attention because cursive writing reminds me of my grandfather.
My biological maternal grandfather, that is -- a man who was born sometime around 1890, and about whom little was known but the name he claimed was his -- Joseph Doyle. I never met him; he died several years before I was born. I grew up knowing my step-grandfather, Jack Haskins -- who, for all intents and purposes, was my "real" grandfather, a patriot who served his country in the Pacific fighting against the Japanese, and who later turned me on to history and science-fiction.<br />
<br />
Mom always suspected Joe Doyle wound up here in Virginia because he was "on the lam", guilty of a crime in another state that motivated him to change his name and hit the road. He had claimed to have been born in Baton Rouge, LA, but Mom never could locate his birth certificate. He simply appeared one day in Hopewell, VA, where my grandmother Sarah lived as a young, working-class woman. They met. They married. They had my mom. They divorced. All in the space of four years. Joe Doyle was alcoholic and abusive, but Sarah was not your stereotypical "victim." She wasn't afraid to get into a fistfight with him, and finally she just tossed him out on his keister.<br />
<br />
For a while, Joe Doyle lingered in the Hopewell area, where he organized the labor force of one of the largest chemical companies in Hopewell. The corporation, which had maintained employment throughout the Great Depression, threatened to shut down if the workers voted for a union. The union was voted in, and the corporation fulfilled its threat. Among his other contributions, Joe Doyle once beat my great-grandfather nearly to death.<br />
<br />
Having caused enough trouble in Hopewell, Joe Doyle then moved on to Washington, D.C. where he became a barber and married a Russian woman named Anna. He and Sarah split custody of my mom, so Mom lived in Hopewell and Washington in alternating school years. Joe Doyle would get back at Sarah by abusing my mom. He did things to her that would earn him a lengthy prison sentence today -- but in those days, teachers would see the bruises on her face and the striped-red-raw flesh of her beaten arms and legs (he would use a razor strop, a tool of the barber's trade), and not say a word to anyone. Finally, at the age of twelve, she begged Sarah not to send her back to the Doyle house. Mom never saw him again after that. He died of cirrhosis when she was in nurse's training in the late Forties. She heard from someone that, when the priest approached him on his deathbed, Joe Doyle snarled, "I'll die as I've lived." I trust that he did.<br />
<br />
All that, to say, this... Whenever I read articles about cursive writing, Joe Doyle comes to my mind. He was a literate man, and possessed an IQ measured at 160. He wrote poetry, and was blessed with the best penmanship I've ever seen. That was all that was left of him -- that, and one grainy photograph from about 1926, standing alongside Sarah. His handwriting was stunningly beautiful. I don't know how good his poetry is, but visually, each written word is a work of art.<br />
<br />
How far the apple has fallen from the grand-tree! I never had the dexterity or patience to learn how to write legibly, let alone beautifully. My second-grade teacher, Miss Smith, announced one day to the whole class that I'd never amount to anything because of my poor penmanship. My cursive writing skills eventually deteriorated to the point where I gave up on them altogether in high school, writing all of my assignments in standard print. Sometime during my college years, even my printing became illegible. Fortunately, the Lord in His mercy invented keyboards, and I was no longer doomed to a life of written incoherence.<br />
<br />
There are those who will rage at the dying of the cursive write. For me, it's like watching the book close on Joe Doyle, one last time. The world has known greater tragedies.</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-38095280874805961842013-06-28T16:51:00.001-04:002013-06-28T17:59:53.200-04:00The Works<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="userContent">"I have seen the future and it works." That's
the famous wide-eyed observation of the Soviet Union by journalist
Lincoln Steffens, who like most journalists never saw a left-wing
totalitarian scheme that he didn't like.<br /> <br /> Where the Soviets <span class="text_exposed_show">commandeered
an entire economy, however, Western progressives have had to piecemeal
it, taking over a sector at a time. That's where the term (maybe it's
obsolete today) "creeping socialism" came from. It's been wildly
successful because in government there's no shortage of creeps.<br /> <br />
Well, we can see the future too. And depending on the goal, it can
even be said to work. If the goal is to kill off the people entrusted
to its care, the socialized British medical system is a morbid success
story rivaling Stalin's Ukrainian genocide, in indifference if not in
scope.</span></span><br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287332/Nearly-1-200-people-starved-death-NHS-hospitals-nurses-busy-feed-patients.html" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287332/Nearly-1-200-people-starved-death-NHS-hospitals-nurses-busy-feed-patients.html</a></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /> Cure patients of their ills? Conquer disease? Mend the
wounded? Apparently, the British medical system can't even keep their
patients fed and hydrated.<br /> <br /> The good news for liberals,
progressives, and socialists is that, with today's technology, they will
be able to determine beforehand who deserves quality health care and
who doesn't. Why, no sense wasting government benefits on their bitter
and outspoken critics. Need a new kidney? They'll fix you right up.
But first they might want to call the NSA. Wouldn't want to waste a kidney, so to speak, on a
conservative troglodyte. Good thing Obamacare will be administered by
the IRS. They have experience in meting out fair, impartial, objective, and
unbiased punishment on those who stand in the way of progress.<br /> <br /> Socialized medicine, coming to an America near you.<br /> </span></span></div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-56982266660678500522013-06-24T22:53:00.000-04:002013-06-24T22:53:04.071-04:00Absolutely Relative<div style="text-align: justify;">
I saw this quote, from an article by Rick Moran at PJMedia...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Morality based on “outcomes”? Isn’t that a classic definition of moral
relativism? Obviously, Raw Story believes that this is some kind of
triumph for the left, that it’s good to judge moral actions based on how
things turn out. Abortion may be an evil but if it results in a woman
living a better life, then it is a positive good" </blockquote>
<a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/06/23/conservatives-show-insensitivity-to-consequences-on-moral-issues-says-study/">http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/06/23/conservatives-show-insensitivity-to-consequences-on-moral-issues-says-study/</a><br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It
seems to me that this skirts the issue. Liberals and conservatives, as
well as moral absolutists and relativists, all have some stake in
outcomes. We need some standard by which to measure the success
or failure of the outcome. It is the standard itself that stands as either
absolute or relative.<br /><br />Is it okay to tell a lie? That sounds like
an easy one; in fact, it is not. Scenario: you know for a fact,
having just discovered it yourself, that the family across the street is
hiding Jews in the attic from the Gestapo. Later in the week, you are
approached by a Nazi official. He asks you, do you know anyone who is
harboring Jews?<br /><br />Obviously, the correct moral answer is, no sir. Congratulations, you have justified telling a moral lie.<br /><br />So how can a moral absolutist, like myself, believe that telling a lie can be a good thing? <br /><br />As
Gen. Curtis Lemay used to say, there's a reason for the rules: the
reasons are important; the rules are not. The rule against
telling lies is less important than the reason behind them.<br /><br />And
that reason is: building and maintaining loving relationships -- the
essence of moral law. It does no good to talk about morality without
talking about relationships. That's the reason moral law exists. The
rules themselves, or at least many of them, can change. However, the
standard by which we judge the rules is absolute, as are some of the
rules: e.g., love the Lord with all your heart; love your neighbor as
yourself. Even when the rules do change, there's still nothing arbitrary going on . Only in service to the absolute love that ought to accompany
all of our acts can the rules be viewed as relative. That is
our standard: absolute love.<br /><br />The standard can only be absolute
if it is eternal. The existence of the Holy Trinity is the only
theology that really supports this -- One God, but in Three Persons, the
same yesterday, today and forever. They have had to get along with
each other forever; from personal experience, they know everything about
maintaining loving relationships.<br /><br />If our Lord were a monadic God --
one God, one Person -- then, presumably, eons would have passed before
He created another soul. During that intervening time, there would have
been no relationships, but only a universe of one. Relationships would
not be permanent. Moral law would have to wait to be born.<br /><br />Conservatives
believe in an absolute standard because they believe (or tend to,
anyway) in the absolute and permanent love of our Creator. Liberals,
who tend not to believe very strongly in the Christian narrative,
believe in a situational standard. And why not? The liberals' world is
a situational world. Evolution put man here one day long ago and some
day long from now a supernova will take him away, if our own evil doesn't do us in first. This
means moral law is not absolute; it arrived some time after man became
self-aware and will vanish when he does. And since everything else is
situational, so too is morality.
</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-34332173252295387182013-06-01T08:47:00.000-04:002013-06-01T08:48:00.588-04:00Things Biology Just Can't Explain<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:0"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:0.:3">It
seems to me that any moral code based on materialism is missing an
'ought'. It could possibly explain why animals, including humans, behave
a certain way. It could possibly explain why behav</span></span><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:0">ing a certain way better equips the species for survival.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:1" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:2" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:3">What
materialism can't explain, at least to my philosophically and
biologically untrained mind, is why any such behavior is
good, or bad, from a moral perspective. All it can do is to show the
norm, and that individual creature A behaves different from that norm;
it can't explain whether the behavior is right or wrong.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:4" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:5" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:6">Materialism
might postulate that an aberrant behavior hurts the species' chances of
survival (though such an argument might more easily be made in
hindsight). But it can't tell us why extinction is bad.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:7" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:8" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:9">It
can't even tell us why death is bad, since when one thing dies, many
other living things get to nourish themselves on the carcass. As the
outlaw Josie Wales said, worms gotta eat too, same as people. Modern
biology, as materialism's water carrier in the natural sciences, should
be pleased either way with the outcome.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:10" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:11" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:12">Humans
detachedly observe in other species behaviors that they would condemn
as immoral in other humans. When lions kill each other in territorial
disputes, the behavior isn't called evil, it's just what lions do. When
chimps eat a female from another clan, it may seem repulsive, but
again, they're just doing what chimps do -- I've yet to hear a biologist
refer to this behavior as "evil". In fact, letting her live might
raise the biologist's eyebrow, were that actually the aberrant behavior.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:13" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:14" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:15">So it seems to me that, if we're discussing any morality derived from biology, we need simply to understand:</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:16" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:17" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:18">1. When humans act in certain ways, they're just doing what humans do.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:19" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:20" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:21">2. Since they're just doing what humans do, there's no right or wrong, it just is.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:22" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:23" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:24">3. If a behavior renders us extinct, that's okay, worms and buzzards have to eat too.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:25" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:26" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:27">4. Nonetheless, there are behaviors that we like and don't like.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:28" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:29" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:30">What this leaves us with is preferences -- morality minus authority. E.g.,
if gay men like being with other men, that's natural. But that's a
two-edged sword: if straight men don't like gay men's behavior, that's
natural too. </span><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:33">It
all boils down to what we like and what we don't like.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:33">But to get
others to take our likes and dislikes seriously, we have to dress them
up in more dignified clothing. Thus, if I'm trying to convince someone to
like what I like, I'm going introduce a new concept: morality. I don't
like what you're doing: that's immoral. Do as I say do: that's moral. Calling it 'morality' helps me get what I like. Why are appeals to morality so persuasive? Beats me. But they are, and I can use them to my advantage, perhaps.</span><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:34" /><br id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:35" /><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:36">If
morality is biological, I'm afraid this is the world we live in: morality is but
an illusion, alive so long as humans are here to uphold it, dead and
gone when the last human is.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0"><span id=".reactRoot[383].:1:1:1:comment10200793819703885_5943877.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3.:0.:36">Paul said that faith is belief in things unseen. When atheists speak in moral terms, they are either exhibiting the last vestiges of faith, or exploiting them.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-32960871309038378942013-03-04T19:53:00.001-05:002013-03-05T07:59:29.110-05:00Van Cliburn, R.I.P.<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Cliburn">Van Cliburn</a>, the great piano virtuoso, is dead at 78. </div>
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I was a music major back in the early Seventies and was privileged to attend a performance given by Van Cliburn at my college. He was then in his late thirties.<br />
<br />
As a music major on an instrument other than piano, the threat of failing my piano jury and not getting my degree loomed over me throughout my stay at Penn State. So I took piano lessons from one of the grad assistants -- one of the less distinguished ones, unfortunately, but that made us even, as I was certainly one of her less distinguished students. I do remember that she bad-mouthed Van Cliburn via "piannissimo praise", the preferred defamatory gambit of music students. Nobody could speak ill of Cliburn's talent, but the word on the studio floor was that he was "selling out" -- booking too many concerts, which kept him from putting in the preparation necessary to churn out great performances.<br />
<br />
Well, sorry, but who can blame him? As Jerry Reed sang, when you're hot, you're hot, and Cliburn was hotter than Elvis. But my piano teacher, amidst the cattiness, let loose an interesting comment: allegedly, Cliburn would often be so "unprepared" as to memorize piano scores he had never actually played on the airplane en route to his gig. The nerve.<br />
<br />
The remark had exactly the opposite effect on me that was intended. I could not grasp the level of genius it would take to be able to memorize a piano score that one had never played, or the level of showmanship it would take to perform it. My respect for Cliburn went up, not down.<br />
<br />
And yes, even several rows back, one could see what enormous hands Cliburn had -- he was said to have been able hit an octave and a fifth with one hand. You don't have to have huge hands to be a great pianist (e.g., Alicia de Larrocha), but it has to help. The Air Force band to which I belonged once accompanied <a href="http://www.naxos.com/person/Leon_Bates/47.htm">Leon Bates</a> (back when he and I were both young) performing Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"; Mr. Bates is a smiling, handsome fellow who looked like he would have been as much in his element running a football through a tough defensive line as tickling the ivories in black tie. His style made marvelous use of his mesomorphic build: large, muscular, commanding. Yes, big hands have to be helpful at some level.</div>
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Van Cliburn not only beat the pants off the Soviet pianists when he won the Tchaikovsky Competition, he earned their love and respect. At the height of the Cold War, that was no mean accomplishment. Cliburn made the world a better place, and the world is worse off for his passing.</div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4682466260563496931.post-78215326554167521852013-02-27T06:54:00.002-05:002013-02-27T11:21:42.079-05:00Ulysses S. Obama<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I've decided finally that Obama is a much better politician than most people give him credit for.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">His style reminds me a lot of General Ulysses S. Grant.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">His opponent, General Robert E. Lee, thought his job was to defend Ric<span style="font-size: small;">hmond. </span></span>Ge<span style="font-size: small;">neral </span>Grant was <span style="font-size: small;">not </span>trying to ta<span style="font-size: small;">ke Richmon<span style="font-size: small;">d; he was trying to </span></span>destroy Lee.<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ronald Reagan famously said something to the effect, you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit. That's pretty high-minded and shows Reagan had a lot of class. Unfortunately, politics doesn't always reward the class act. There has, until Obama, always been an implicit understanding that your adversaries in the political process belong there just as much as you do, and at the end of the day some sort of compromise must be worked out -- hopefully, to your advantage. Ronald Reagan was something of a Robert E. Lee. He had actual poli<span style="font-size: small;">cy goals </span>and worked with <span style="font-size: small;">anyone, Democrats or Republicans, </span>to accompl<span style="font-size: small;">ish them<span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Contrast that with Obama<span style="font-size: small;">, who </span>wouldn't breathe air if it meant acknowledging the GOP was right about something, anything.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This quote from Gov. Haley of South Carolina is instructive: </span></span></div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<span style="font-size: small;">"I could not be more frustrated than I am right now,” Haley told reporters after the meeting. She said that when she asked Obama if he would consider a last-minute plan to shave about 2 percent from the annual federal budget without increasing taxes, the answer was “no.”“My kids could go and find $83 billion out of a $4 trillion budget,” Haley said. “This is not rocket science.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Haley believes she's still operating under the Reagan paradigm. She's upset because she thinks the president's job is to do what's best for the country and doesn't understand his intransigence.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">She's trying to defend Richmond.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Obama is not trying to take Richmond; he's trying to destroy the GOP.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think he's doing a fine job of it.</span></span></div>
Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12974887002402743628noreply@blogger.com0