Your Worst Job Ever

What was your worst job ever? This URL here explores the topic at some length.

Everybody has had one. I've had a bunch of them. It's hard for me to choose a "favorite", as it were. When you major in trombone-playing, the corporate recruiters won't exactly beat a path to your door.

I spent a woeful semester as a part-time trombone instructor at Penn State, but that's not the bad job I was thinking of. I was making so little money from that endeavor that I had to moonlight as a grill cook at a 24-hour diner. I got the night shift, lucky me. This happened in Fall of 1979, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Making grilled stickies at the famous Penn State Diner and trading barbs with the drunks at 2 AM, when the bars closed. Ah yes, I remember it well. I enlisted in the Air Force band program in November, 1979, so it was of short duration. But it made an impression. One of the things I learned was how important status is, when you're trying to make time with the ladies. Or even thinking forlornly of it. I learned, simultaneously, that minimum-wage grill cooks didn't have any status. It was so bad, I thought being a slick-sleeved airman in Air Force basic training was a step up.

The job I'd had several years earlier, though, was arguably worse. My father was a cost accountant and office manager at a textile mill in Newport News, which manufactured twine, carpet yarn, and cable filler. My mom worked in the mill, a hard, hot, noisy, thankless job. I got to experience that, as my dad got me a job the summer after high school graduation making cable filler. Wow. Now, that was a hard job, and my mom deserved the Medal of Honor for doing it for ten years.

In my profession (database programming and administration), I've had some pretty bad assignments, but it's amazing the things you'll put up with when the money is good. My former employer, TRW (now a part of Northrop-Grumman), was a "project" company, and you could wind up on a bad project for an indefinite amount of time. I will say this for TRW: the work was always interesting. Sometimes, the project managers were a little too interesting, but there were good people and good times there. Another former employer, AMS (now a part of CACI), had some wonderful people but some unfortunate projects too -- that's where I learned what the term "death march" meant (with regard to the programming field). The reference is to Bataan, and is probably somewhat irreverent, but it is descriptive.

I spent a year working for an HMO when I first moved back to Virginia. I was the only DBA in an IT shop of about fifty folks, and it was like cleaning the Augean Stables every day, except that I'm no Hercules. When Friday came around, I would always say, "Thank goodness it's Friday -- only two more days left in my work week!" I lasted a year -- essentially, working non-stop around the clock, day in, day out. Ye Olde Sweat Shoppe.

In my senior year of college, I lived in Wichita, Kansas, and worked pretty hard trying to finish my bachelor's degree. But I was broke, so I had to find some way to make a little extra money. There was a dirty little sandwich shop -- submarine sandwiches, or subs, were called "grinders" in Wichita, "hoagies" in Pennsylvania, and Lord knows what else -- between my room and the music building. They needed help, but were unwilling to pay minimum wage -- so I did it for less. Big time illegal, but mainly they were the ones who would be in trouble if caught. They had a teenage workforce in the kitchen, and I have to say, the work was okay, but I have (thankfully) never had to work with such odious people ever again in my entire life. I was fired one day, inexplicably; they didn't give me a reason. But I found out later that I had been accused of stealing money. Another one of those memories that seems like yesterday. I never had a chance to protest my innocence, but somebody there robbed the till and blamed me.

That same thing happened one other time, about two years later when I was going to grad school in Pittsburgh. I delivered medicine for a drug store, to older folks who lived in the general area -- but I had no car, so it meant a lot of walking. Again, I was being paid less than minimum wage under the table. Well, one day, I was stuck behind the cash register (one of those old mechanical ones) and had no idea how to use it. I think I must have accidentally rung up a huge amount of money, because I was let go the next day, but not until after being eyed suspiciously and treated in a hostile manner. On neither occasion was I actually confronted or accused of anything.

If someone is convinced that you're guilty, without evidence, your arguments to the contrary wouldn't help anyway. It's the most powerless I've ever felt, at least from job-related incidents. The trick is always to remember that there is no pain or humiliation felt in this life that Jesus did not feel to an even greater degree -- and if He's not entitled to decent treatment, neither are we.

Well, that's all part of being in the work force, isn't it? Jesus is our salvation, but financial independence has a Siren call that is hard to ignore. But it's good to have work if only because nothing is more destructive to one's soul than too much money and free time. It sounds fun, though, sometimes, but I'm Reformed, so I am forced to conclude that the Lord has me right where he wants me.

Münchausen Democrats

There's a chilling scene in M. Night Schyamalan's movie "The Sixth Sense" in which the ghost of a dead girl appears to young Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment), who "sees dead people", asking him to give her father a video tape. As it turns out, the tape, which was made by the sick girl shortly before her death, inadvertently caught her own mother dead to rights in the act of poisoning her. When the woman's husband (the girl's father) tearfully and incredulously confronts her, the look of guilt in the mother's eyes was absolutely cold and remorseless (and very well-acted by Candy Aston-Dennis). Chilling, as I said.

In a similar scene today, the House of Representatives just passed the so-called "Cap and Trade" bill. Investor's Business Daily, one of my favorite take-no-prisoners arch-conservative rags, is positively apoplectic about this bill. Here are some of the more polite selections:

"The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump."

"It is the largest tax increase in American history — a tax on all Americans — even the 95% that President Obama pledged would never see a tax increase."

"Other countries can just sit back and watch us destroy ourselves. Where will you be when the lights go out?"

So, the question deserves to be asked, "Why now?" The U.S. economy is reeling from the sub-prime debacle, Congress just passed the biggest spending bill of all time with the most obscene deficit ever recorded, the unemployment growth rate is off the charts (and far higher than what Obama promised when he was selling his obscene deficit), and on top of all that he's pushing socialized medicine (while pretending it won't cost us anything). So, now, Congress decides it's a great time to send energy costs into a rapid upward spiral. Now?!

What is going on here?

Rand Simberg has an answer: the Democrats are afflicted with a weird form of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy.

Here's what Wikipedia says about Münchausen syndrome by proxy:

"[A parent] ensures that his or her child will experience some medical affliction, therefore compelling the child to suffer treatment for a significant portion of their youth in hospitals. Furthermore, a disease may actually be initiated in the child by the parent or guardian."

The sickness, in other words, belongs to the parent, not to the child. Now, simply substitute "politician" for "parent", and "the economy" for "his or her child," and you have a description of what has been going on in Washington since January.

Simberg brings the analogy home by tacking the syndrome's symptoms next to the analogous symptoms in our political situation:

But what should we think when we see the same phenomenon on a much grander scale — when instead of a mother fabulizing symptoms or poisoning her child, an entire political class in power spouts nonsense about the state of a great nation’s economy and the causes for it, and then treats it with long-failed nostrums almost guaranteed to make the situation worse by any rational economic analysis? What to think when the stock market rises when the president is out of the country? (”the patient improves in the absence of the parent...”)

The administration predicted last winter that, in the absence of their “stimulus” medicine, unemployment would rise to nine percent sometime next year, and that with it, it would peak at eight and start to drop this summer. Well, the contents of the bottle from the traveling Obama/Reid/Pelosi medicine show turned out to be arsenic, because unemployment is already at 9.4% and it’s not even summer yet. The patient is showing a “poor tolerance of the treatment.”

As Rahm Emmanuel said, Obama and the Democrats are trying not to waste a good crisis. They're using the opportunity to ruin the economy, in the hopes, strange as it sounds, of solidifying their hold on power. It's the recipe Franklin D. Roosevelt used, and it worked fantastically well for him. The question will not be, which policies facilitated our economic decline? The question will be, simply, which party gets the blame? With the entire news media in the tank for BO, do you think they'll have any trouble portraying Bush as the bad guy in all this? It's the Democrats' m.o., as Hoover was demonized for generations. In a bad economy, people depend more on the government, not less -- all the better for the party of Big Government. If that kid is allowed to go out and play, Mommy Dearest won't be able to show how needed she really is. So when the private sector starts standing up, wobbly but game, saying he feels much better, expect the government to kick his feet out from under it and explain how delusional he is, and how this only proves how sick he really is -- "Now, go back to bed and take your medicine!"

I used to think our Democratic leaders were mistaken and misguided, but well-intentioned. I no longer believe that. I think they know what they're trying to accomplish. The question is, will we let them?

Shoddiness and Schadenfreude

Who else is following the downward trajectory of the fallen governor's incinerated career? Now, that's what they call a real orbit-uary. Don't cry for him, Argentina. Leave that to his campaign manager.

Let's stipulate that sex makes men stupid. E.g., if someone had asked Gary Hart, "Would you rather be president of the United States, or have a gorgeous young blonde babe dangling on your knee?" Hart would have of course said he'd rather be president, but in fact we know in hindsight that he would prefer to fondle the blonde. Not that Donna Rice wasn't cute. But how cute would she have to be to have been worth the cost?

It's never worth it, but that's men for you. Women have sex in order to accomplish things. Men accomplish things in order to have sex. And ne'er the twain shall meet.

If you're a double-standard-obsessed conservative like me, you ask the question reflexively, "Why is it that Democrats, from Bill Clinton to Gerry Studds to Barney Frank can survive, or even prosper, while committing flagrant acts of indecorum (to say the least) -- but a Republican senator like Bob Packwood can pinch one too many feminine buttocks and find himself on the outside looking in faster than he can say, 'Hey, baby, what's your sign?'"

It's simple, really. Here's the dynamic: conservatives care about such immorality; liberals don't. That's why such peccadilloes mark the end of a Republican's career, but mean little or nothing to a Democrat's.

Conservatives are old-fashioned. They believe that a man can have all the right opinions on all the issues of the day, and still be a dirt bag -- or behave like one on any given day. Conservatives believe that leaders are role models, and that someone who can't control his baser instincts is not a suitable role model. We may all be hypocrites at some level -- as is anyone who has a standard of morality higher than he is able to achieve -- but there's no reason to accept a leader who is blatant about it. Bad character is like an iceberg; you're not seeing the half of it. Most of us probably wish Gov. Sanford had stayed in Argentina for good.

Liberals, on the other hand, are "New Age", postmodern, and so above all that talk of ancient commandments and provincial moral codes. If someone has all the right opinions -- that is, if he is a liberal -- then he is a good person, by definition. His other moral failings, whatever they are, are explained away as quirks or, at worst, regrettable lapses, but not definitive evidence of bad character. In fact, they may even display his human side, proving he is actually one of us. They will apologize for him -- "Yes, I wish he hadn't done that, but he lied about it to keep from hurting his wife and daughter, and you have to consider all he's done for the [fill in the blank] poor/homeless/women/minorities/world peace/environment/civil rights/sick/downtrodden etc."

(Mind you, these are philosophical attitudes, not practical ones. I have no doubt, liberal or not, that Hillary may have wanted to use the pinking shears on Mr. Bill's wayfaring luggage. You know, the ol' Lorena Bobbitt treatment, or as Johann Sebastian Bach wrote, "Wachet auf!" -- which John Bobbitt would recognize as "Sleepers, Awake!")

So then, why do liberals in the media make such a big deal of Republican sexual scandals, when liberals themselves don't care about such stuff? (Indeed, they think being Republican in the first place is the real scandal.)

Simple: they know conservatives do care. So it's Schadenfreude at its most deliciously insincere.

Greater Love

I was not prepared to believe that "Gran Torino" is Clint Eastwood's greatest movie. It may in fact be the best movie I've ever seen.

Spoiler alert: Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired Ford employee who lives alone in the house where he and his (now deceased) wife had raised their two sons (who are now middle-aged and have families of their own). Walt is haunted by his memories of the Korean War, stymied by the indifference of his sons, and lonely since the death of his wife. He spends his time working on his beloved 1972 Ford Gran Torino (which he helped assemble at the Ford plant), drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and swapping politically-incorrect and verbally colorful ethnic jokes with his blue-collar buddies.

Much to Walt's chagrin, his once dignified, middle-class neighborhood has been taken over by Hmong immigrants and turned into a lawless ghetto. As Sue (charmingly played by Ahney Her), the lovely and spirited Hmong girl next door explains, the Hmong have adjusted well to life in America -- Hmong girls go to college and Hmong boys go to prison. After Walt rescues Sue's brother, Thao (sensitively portrayed by Bee Vang), from an assault by a local Hmong teenage gang, the elders of the Hmong community see Walt as a hero; they extend their irresistible friendship, and shower him with unwanted gifts and attention. Walt reluctantly responds to their overtures and forms a bond with Sue and especially with Thao, whom he takes under his wing. It becomes Walt's unacknowledged project to save Thao from a life of gang crime, and he does this by teaching him the things he knows -- the manly virtues, such as, how to talk to other men, how to work with tools, how to become emotionally self-sufficient, and how to respond to the attentions of a pretty girl.

Eastwood is an amazing director and, yes, an effective and solid actor. Like a great prizefighter, he jabs you with his left while he sneaks in a devastating overhand right. The last thing I imagined this film was going to be was a Bible study. But when the final showdown between Walt and the Hmong gang arrives, I couldn't help but be reminded of this famous passage:

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

As a bonus, Eastwood wrote the song that closes the movie -- appropriately named, "Gran Torino". (Eastwood is a huge jazz music fan and plays piano quite well.) It's a beautiful and haunting song, and was itself worth the price of the movie; I predict it will become a classic. Like the film. Like Clint Eastwood himself.

All the Hope and Change We Can Stand, and More!

The data are pouring in on the efficacy of solving an enormous debt problem by borrowing $2 trillion more. Yep, the results are what you thought they'd be. It takes a team of Keynesian economists and a roomful of Ivy League Ph.D.s to believe it could have been otherwise.

Check out the numbers at Gateway Pundit.

What we have here is the highest two-month rise in unemployment (7.6% to 9.4%) since we started tracking the statistic in 1948. The red line with dots represents actual data. If unemployment were a common stock, your broker would be telling you, "Buy! Buy! Buy!"







Meanwhile, as the economy burns, Obama fiddles with socialized medicine and green legislation.

This was all too much for one prominent critic of the Obama economic "stimulus", who protested on May 15:

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China. We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

So who is this bold critic of the Obama debt? Newt Gingrich? Rush Limbaugh? Fox News? Beelzebub? But then, I repeat myself. Why, it was BO himself, the One, the fellow who sends a tingle up Chris Matthews' leg, the God-like savior who has Newsweek reporter Evan Thomas genuflecting. Lest you think Obama was surrendering finally to reality, you're not that lucky -- he didn't mean it, he just tossed that out as a spurious argument in favor of a socialized medicine. It takes a special mindset to look at socialized industry and see increased productivity.

Let's have a show of hands: who remembers the way the media excoriated Bush for the size of his deficits? Now, another show of hands: which mainstream media outlets have pointed out that Obama's first year deficit is bigger than all eight of Bush's deficits combined? If ever this country needed a news media to do its job and report all the news, that time is now -- and all these guys can bring themselves to do is lick Obama's shoes. Anyway, here are the deficit projections, and again, hat tip to Gateway Pundit.

















And here's what the mainstream news media thinks about all this:

...snore...
...yawn...
...sound of crickets chirping...
...ceiling fan oscillating...
...cat yawning and stretching...

We might be fortunate enough to vote the sordid lot out of office in a couple of years. I say fortunate, because in politics it's not who does the wrong, but who gets the blame, that counts. If Obama is able to pin the tail on Bush, and the media seems more than compliant enough to assist, then we'll go on spraying gasoline on the fire and wondering what Bush must have done to cause the flames to sprout so high. It happened with FDR in the Great Depression, no reason it can't happen again.

But even if we do vote them out, what will remain?

The current administration is nothing if not thorough. Destroy the currency? Check. Indebt our country to a powerful dictatorship? Check. Ruin the bond market and, while we're at it, the rule of law by stealing money from bond holders? Check. Prop up failed industry after failed industry with your tax dollars and mine? Check. Politicize the census so the districts can be redrawn in a manner more favorable to one political party? Check. Put everyone on the government teat so they'll be afraid of the consequences of not continuing the socialization of the economy? Check. Offend our erstwhile allies and sweet-talk the people who want us dead? Check. Brag to a dangerous world that America's days as a force of stability in the world are winding to a close? Check.

I'm not saying Obama hates our country and wants to bring about its destruction. I'm only asking, how much differently would he be doing things if that is what he wants?

The Nature of Religious Authority

One thing about liberals: since their ideology demands that all existing institutions must come tumbling down, you never know where they're going to hit you. Or when. Or with what. Twenty, even fifteen years ago, if anyone had suggested that societal tolerance of homosexuality would lead to its glorification, which would lead to a demand that we change the definition of marriage to allow man to marry man, or woman to marry woman, he would have been laughed at and his suggestion ridiculed.

That was then, this is now.

One of my personal sins, by the way, is a love of controversy. It's fine to score points for God. But if you keep hammering at them over and over, scolding those who disagree with your position, it is appropriate to ask who you are really trying to glorify, yourself or God? The Bible warns against getting into harangues and debates, because someone who does not believe the Bible is not going to be convinced by argument. The Holy Spirit has to do that bit of heavy lifting. The best thing we can probably do for someone who does not see the truth is to pray for him. And a prayer that we get right with the scriptures, rather than expecting the scriptures to get right with us, is as appropriate for the Bible-believer as it is for the Bible-critic.

But does that mean we should never defend the Bible as the authority? We probably should not gird for battle as often as we think necessary. But in times like these, where up is down, white is black, and freedom is slavery, it's hard to believe we should always keep silent.

I got into some arguments recently at the following URL:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/can-michael-steele-really-reframe-gay-marriage-as-an-economic-issue/comment-page-2/#comment-271153

The devil didn't make me do it: I'm perfectly capable of getting into mischief all on my own. Pajamas Media is one of my favorite web sites for news and opinion from a libertarian-conservative perspective -- heavy on the libertarianism. Lots of libertarians dislike Christians as much or more than they dislike liberals -- a fact that winds up getting a lot of liberals elected. Quite a few posts in the comments are mine. Some of them, I think, are correct and well-reasoned. Not very many of them were written, however, in the spirit of strictly serving God's purposes. Some of my own crept in, somehow.

Objections to my arguments appear to have come in two basic forms:

1. "Your religious views shouldn't determine policy."
2. "Your religious views are wrong-headed even from a religious standpoint."

Regarding the first objection, it's safe to say that the liberal gambit has worked: somehow, bringing one's religious convictions to the voting booth has been discredited -- it's only a matter of time until it's outlawed. But even the non-religious bring morality into the public sphere. In politics, all voters bring their own values to the issues at hand and vote their conscience -- but if your conscience has arrived at certain positions because of your religion, somehow they are less valid than if someone simply made up his values all on his own. It doesn't make much logical sense, but there it is. I have to waste time explaining that, e.g., when someone calls me a "bigot" for opposing gay marriage, that he too is invoking a particular set of moral values as authoritative -- and if he can be a moralist, why can't I? By what set of standards do we define "bigot", and what kind of authority do those standards carry? At least my cards are showing: the Bible is my authority, and even when I get it wrong, it's still my job to get it right; at least the Bible represents something much bigger than me. But who, exactly, wrote the standards stating that opposition to gay marriage is bigotry? God? Or just some blowhard, like me, who's spouting off on a blog? The Bible has been around for thousands of years; blowhard opinions, including my own, tend to be more ephemeral, like Styrofoam peanuts in a hurricane.

Regarding the second objection, there's probably a more plausible ring to it: it is not hard to believe that I have misunderstood or misinterpreted any given Biblical passage. I can't even get my wife's shopping list right. To say that the Bible portrays an objective truth is one thing; to say that one's interpretation of the Bible explains the objective truth perfectly is something else -- namely, a tremendous leap.

In math, a different assumption at the outset of solving a problem can make a world of difference in the final outcome, and a single mistake made early on in one's calculations can lead to a wildly untruthful answer in the computational endgame. Authority is to religion what assumptions are to math: the basis for everything that follows. In the Protestant fundamentalist world, for example, perhaps the two most well-known schools of thought are Arminianism and Calvinism (there are others). Both schools assume that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant. Calvinism starts from that assumption and builds from it an apparently deterministic universe; whereas, the "Evangelical" takes the same assumption and paints a universe in which human choices are the decisive determining factor in attaining salvation. What this means is that, when someone calls both an Evangelical and a Calvinist "fundamentalist" in the same breath, he may not imagine how different their theologies really are.

But at least Calvin and Arminius start from the same assumption: the Bible is the authority. Other churches have other authorities. The Roman Catholic church's central authority is the church hierarchy: the Pope, primarily. They claim a role, as well, for tradition and the Bible -- but since the church hierarchy decides how to interpret tradition and the Bible, it's still the church hierarchy that rules. The Mormon church, depending on who you talk to, is not even a Christian church at all, as it rejects many of the central tenets of Christianity; however, their authority structure is parallel to the Catholic Church: the church hierarchy is authoritative.

In many of the liberal Protestant churches, however, it's hard to find any authority at all. Browsing the United Church of Christ's web site, for example, it's hard to figure out what they regard as authoritative. If someone knew nothing about Jesus, and were to browse their web site, he could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that Jesus was a 21st-century left-wing activist. Buried, however, in the morass of gay & lesbian awareness tabs and assorted ethnic and immigrations issues, is a forlorn little paper entitled, "What does it mean to take the Bible seriously?" -- as if they're already starting off on the defensive. By all means, follow the link and judge for yourself, but I can't really find a definition of an actual religious authority for the church -- something objective, something bigger than we are. At least the Roman Catholics believe the Pope's ex cathedra pronouncements are inspired by God; the UCC's utterances seem inspired by Barack Obama.

They do seem to be aware that there's a problem, however, and apparently some of their braver members are actually willing to defend the Bible, kind of. Here's a sample discussion talking about a UCC event that took place, the 2000 Dunkirk Colloquy in Dunkirk, New York:

"The Bible both unites and divides us as a church."

The Bible unites, in the sense that it provides an excuse to have a church in the first place, and in particular to pass the collection plate; it divides, however, when someone insists that it means something objective. The Bible, in other words, sounds less like an authority, and more like crazy Great-Aunt Ethel who wanders out of her room sometimes and starts yelling incoherent accusations at the mailman -- that is, something we prefer to keep under wraps and out of sight.

"Our spiritual ancestors have never agreed, even in the first generations of the Christian community, about the right way to read and apply Scripture."

At some point, even the most analytical among us have to make a decision. This sounds more like throwing in the towel.

"Today, views in the UCC (like all other mainline denominations) range from conservative to liberal."

If true, I can only imagine how embattled the conservatives must feel.

"Scripture often quoted by all sides in the ethical conflicts that divide us as well as many other churches."

I don't find a complete sentence in there; if you do, congratulations, here's your law degree. But I gather that the church considers unity to be the highest good, even if it means tolerating widely disparate or even contradictory interpretations of scripture. Who does a UCC member ask when he wants to figure out which interpretations are correct?

"The Bible is God's gift to the church, to be read for our instruction and comfort, but we often use it as a hammer to strike down the arguments of our opponents, or even to exclude each other from the Body of Christ."

That crazy God of ours, giving us a gift that causes us so much trouble -- what was He thinking? If the Bible makes you feel good, use it? That sounds more like a couple of hippies reading "The Joy of Sex" than consulting a religious authority to find some answers. If truth is objective, every once in a while, it's going to hurt. When that happens, does that mean it's time to put the Bible away and break out this month's copy of The Nation magazine?

Let's assume for the sake of argument that a UCC member has read the Bible and decided, since sacrificing babies to Baal was good enough for a king of Judea, then it's good enough for us; he then asks the elders to print up some nice brochures on how burning one's baby to praise a pagan god is a matter of one's own conscience. What should the elders do? If they don't use the Bible to strike his arguments like a hammer, or if they don't excommunicate him, then by what authority do they discipline him? Do they discipline him? We don't want to exclude him from the Body of Christ, after all, do we?

Are there any beliefs that would justify tossing a member out on his keister?

"Right interpretation of Scripture necessarily includes right living, that is, we cannot hear God's word in the Bible if our minds and hearts are closed to each other. These were some of the issues that were explored at Dunkirk."

It sounds like the issues explored were some of the same ones explored by the British at another Dunkirk. I suppose we should be grateful that they consider there is a "right interpretation". But who or what died and made open minds and hearts the sine qua non of Christianity? If A = A, and A = B, and B = C, then A = C, regardless of whether I'm living right or not; my mind and heart are both pretty well closed to the possibility that A is not equal to C. Either the Bible is saying something important, or it isn't. If it is, shouldn't we try to figure out what it's saying? And if it means one thing, does that not preclude its opposite? If it is objective, isn't it likely that it's going to say things we don't happen to like? When that happens, who's wrong? The Bible? If so, we have spoken: our authority is not greater than us; our authority is us.

In the Bible, that's not usually recognized as a good sign.

And if a nominally Christian church doesn't think the Bible is authoritative, I would ask, why bother with calling yourselves Christians? Whose word do we take that Jesus was a figure worthy of being worshiped? If He was merely a great teacher and no more, why worship Him, when studying Him would be more appropriate? If we can't trust the Bible's word, what grounds are there for believing Him to be the Incarnate God? That's a pretty tall story about some dude who wandered around, turned water into wine, fed five thousand people with a couple handfuls of food, healed the blind and sick, raised the dead, and himself rose from death. I wouldn't believe it if I heard it from just anyone.

The great tragedy of our age is that the Church has failed to give proper theological training. I'm not saying we need millions of John Calvins or John Wesleys walking around, only that we need to know what we believe, and why. If our religious authority does not tell us anything transcendent, anything that is objectively true, why must we pay it any heed? We have so little respect for our authority that we treat its truths as optional at best, and bothersome at worst. We cherry-pick the Bible for the parts we like, and explain away or ignore the parts we don't like, because we have become our own little personal religious and moral authorities. We risk becoming fools when we profess ourselves to be wise. In that regard, my impulses are as treacherous as those of my pro-gay-marriage antagonists.

We are all sinners, and have all fallen far short of God's glory. He is gracious and willing to forgive sin, but does that mean we are absolved from the responsibility to recognize and fight the sin in us? As a Calvinist, I believe we can't even do that on our own, but need His help at every step of the way. And as a Christian, I believe the Bible when it tells me my heart is the most deceitful of all organs. We work out our salvation in fear and trembling, but the good news is we have an authority who promises deliverance from sin and forgiveness when we repent.

All the Cars I've Ever Loved

Well, not quite. I couldn't afford the time to talk about all the cars I've ever loved. But it is quite easy to talk about all the cars I've ever owned, most of which I've never loved. (They certainly haven't loved me back, in any event -- they're like trombones, in that regard.) So why the title of this post? I just couldn't pass up the cheap reference to Willie Nelson and Julio Inglesias' unprepossessing little tune.

I learned to drive later in life than most (our family only had one car, and between my parents and older brother, the competition was too fierce), and I couldn't afford a car in college. So I was 25 by the time I bought my first car -- actually, I went in halves with my then-girlfriend. The year was 1979, and we used it to get our stuff back home after graduating from college in Pittsburgh (well, she graduated, I didn't -- this was grad school, and the end of my academic ambitions). It was a 1968 Plymouth Belvedere station wagon that looked as if it had been through World War II, and lost. I think it was white. It cost us $125 -- yes, even at that price, we had overpaid for it. It sported more holes than an artillery range, and it was disconcerting to see the road go by right under your feet. Every time we wanted to go someplace, we had to fill it up with oil and check the gas, rather than vice versa. This beast blanketed the air with blue smoke after a cold start, but improved as it warmed up. Against all odds, it actually ran very well -- it had Chrysler's intrepid 318 c.i. V8 engine, and got close to twenty miles per gallon. The hard part was keeping it street-legal, especially in inspection-happy Pennsylvania. Alas, after four months of hard driving (10,000 miles). the police caught up with me and forced me to junk it. Here's a picture of a much nicer one that I found on the web:










Enormous, wasn't it?

I enlisted in the Air Force late in 1979 and joined the band program at Travis Air Force Base, California. I would have been better off to save my money, but Travis was located in the middle of the Suisun Swamp, and it could get pretty boring out there with the snakes and fruit flies. (The Plymouth -- and the girlfriend -- were gone for good by this time.) So in late 1980, after many weekends of chow hall and base theater night life, I bought my second car: a 1966 Ford Galaxie four-door sedan. I think it was white, too. I paid $250 for it, and it already had 130,000 miles on it. This is the only car I ever owned that I still miss -- it was simply bulletproof. I haven't had many bargains this good in my fifty-five years. I put 100,000 miles on it, and gave it to my brother, who put on another 100,000 before he wore it clean out. The car had zero amenities (other than lots of room and plenty of road-hugging weight), and the interior parts had a bad habit of falling off. But it always got me where I was going. I was taking a lot of night school courses in math and computer science, and had to drive a lot back and forth to Vallejo, California, where some of the classes were taught. It never let me down. Once, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra came to San Francisco, and I took my old trombone teacher Bob Hamrick for a ride down Telegraph Street. ("How do you feel about those $250 brakes?" he asked fretfully.) I was to have the Galaxie for several years. The one pictured below is much nicer than the one I had, but that's the model. The '65, '66, and '67 Galaxies were very similar; the '66 was the only one with rectangular taillights. Meanwhile, my buddies back in Pennsylvania were already convinced that Lee and junker cars go together like Greek philosophy and hemlock, and I've never since been able to convince them otherwise.
















In 1981, I was 28, and the question was finally answered: was there somewhere in this great country of ours a woman who could, and even more importantly, would put up with me? Luckily for me, the answer was yes. Debbie joined our band as a flute player, and we became an item within two months -- and finally married in April 1983. This also meant marrying into a Fiat, so you can see she was already undaunted by lost causes. She owned an olive-drab green 1974 Fiat 124 four-door sedan, pretty much the same car that the Russian Lada was based on -- and you know how famous the Russians were for making great cars, at least when they sported treads and machine guns. Fiat already had a horrible reputation for reliability -- their slogan could have been, "At least we're not French." However, Debbie had already put over 100,000 miles on the Giant Olive, driving back and forth from her home in Glendora, California to her college courses at Long Beach State -- so how bad could it be, I wondered? It was a strong runner, but it burned oil and had gremlins in the electrical system. Still, for its day, it was quite amazing. A cheap car with great seats, a double-overhead-cam 1.6 litre four-banger back in the day of pushrod engines, and four-wheel disk brakes at a time when almost no car on the market had them, and certainly not cheap econo-boxes. It was fun to drive, and exciting, too, especially when the headlights went out for no apparent reason in the dead of night. Here's a picture of the dandy little Eye-talian from the Web, almost identical to the one we had. Pretty, eh?

















While still in the Air Force, I transferred into the computer programming career field, and shipped out to Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska, with Debbie transferring to the band at Offutt. Four blissful years in California, without a serious winter, came to a dreary end -- I was soon to find out that Omaha winters are even harder than Pittsburgh winters. Ick. Too much cold for this Southern boy! The Fiat was showing signs of body cancer (they were famous for rusting in the showroom) and we finally banished it when, driving to work one morning with a colleague, Dave, it began spitting hot radiator fluid on his shirt, right through the dashboard. "Ouch! Ouch!" explained Dave. That night, Debbie and I bought a 1982 Volkswagen Jetta Diesel. Later on, a colleague of mine in Denver, Ron, would explain our selection in this manner: "Lee, it's like you wanted to be cool. You thought to yourself, VW is a cool European sedan: stylish, handles well... But at the last minute, you had to go and say, 'Slap a diesel in it!'" I wish I could say it was the worst car we ever owned. My mechanic dubbed it, "Hitler's Revenge," for its miserable reliability. But it got great mileage. Only problem was, we moved to Denver after separating from the Air Force, and we would get passed going up the sides of the mountains by sixteen-wheelers. It couldn't pull a hat off your head. If you tied a chain from the rear bumper to a light switch, your wheels would spin and the light would never come on. And getting passed by the sixth-grade girls on their roller skates was really ignominious. But it got about 50 mpg, and that came in handy on the numerous trips I took from Littleton (where we lived) to Boulder (where I played in the orchestra) and Longmont (where I took trombone lessons). The Jetta pictured below is identical, except ours was a four-door and did not have the fancy wheels...















The oil & gas shortages of the late 1970s ushered in an era of absolute blandness in auto design. The Jetta had all the style of a Tupperware container. Cars should dare to be beautiful and settle for ugly if that's the only alternative to nondescript. Same as me.

In Jan 1987, I started a job with a company called TRW in Fairfax, VA, and both the Ford (getting ancient by then) and Hitler's staff car made the journey with us. In D.C. traffic, you might as well use roller skates; you'd get where you're going faster. A bad case of arteriosclerosis of the highway. Especially after a snow storm, nothing is slower than Manassas in January. I'll leave off here, and pick up the narrative again soon.