after the shutdown

From NYTimes:

However you slice and dice the history, the strategery, and the underlying issues, the decision to live with a government shutdown for an extended period of time — inflicting modest-but-real harm on the economy, needlessly disrupting the lives and paychecks of many thousands of hardworking people, and further tarnishing the Republican Party’s already not-exactly-shiny image — in pursuit of obviously, obviouslyunattainable goals was not a normal political blunder by a normally-functioning political party. It was an irresponsible, dysfunctional and deeply pointless act, carried out by a party that on the evidence of the last few weeks shouldn’t be trusted with the management of a banana stand, let alone the House of Representatives….

So for undeluded conservatives of all persuasions, lessons must be learned. If the party’s populists want to shape and redefine and ultimately remake the party, they can’t pull this kind of stunt again. If the party’s leadership wants to actually lead, whether within the G.O.P. or in the country at large, they can’tlet this kind of stunt be pulled again. That’s the only way in which this pointless-seeming exercise could turn out to have some sort of point: If it’s long remembered, by its proponents and their enablers alike, as the utter folly that it was.

-Ross Douthat

13.35. Game notes (7)

Since my last game notes we've played quite a few games.  I couldn't begin to recap them all.  Most recently we finished second in a tournament in Petoskey last weekend by going 3-2.  We had some crazy high scoring games including a 2 1/2 hour extra inning slug fest on Saturday night that we ended up losing 19-16.

I ended up winning some award for "best infielder" in the tournament by going 10/21 with a homerun and 3 doubles.  They gave me a cup and took our pictures.  Notice the Little Traverse Bay in he background, where my homerun splashed.

13.34. Game notes (6)

We won a league game 12-1 in a five inning mercy killing on Thursday night.  We finally knocked the ball around the yard a bit.  Nothing too exceptional here except our 9 run second inning which sort of put the game away.  We're using a very soft ball for league games this year, which helps the pitchers.  In 8 games we have just one homerun.  I wouldn't be surprised if we don't hit any more the rest of the season--the balls are that mushy.  But for the sake of competitive games and saving pitchers from wicked line drives, I fully support the ball choice. 1/3

 In tournament play we use much harder balls.  Last night we won our first game of the Plangger Invitational 4-0.  We got an excellent pitching performance and played nearly perfect defense.  They loaded the bases with no outs in the third, but we managed to get out of it unscathed. 1/3

We play today at "3:00"--the " " meaning  it will likely be sometime after 3 due to long games earlier in the day or even a little rain.

13.33. Toast: a poem

It occurred to me this morning at breakfast

that I always bite my toast

buttered side up.

This, I realized, deprives my tongue

from truly tasting the butter.

So I turned my toast over

and was delighted to learn that

breakfast was tastier this way.

13.32. Game notes (5)

Split a double header last night.  Lost 8-2 in our first game.  Scored 2 in the first and then gave up 6 in the bottom of the first.  Only got 3 hits all game.  In the second game we were down 2-0 going into the bottom of the seventh.  We managed 3 bunt singles, a hit by pitch, and a two run single to win 3-2.  We discovered a weakness.

13.31. Game notes (4)

We won 7-6 in nine innings on Thursday, our first league victory at last (1-3).  I played second base for a while, which is nice.  You have to be so much less "perfect" there than at shortstop.  I switched to shortstop 10 years ago or so, and I won't be all that sad when I no longer play there.  I'm a center fielder, really, who is capable of playing middle infield.

2/5.

13.30 Game Notes (3)

 Not much to say about this one.
We gave up 7 runs in the first inning of both games in our double header and never got going after that.  Pitching fail to start, offensive fail after that.  L 11-1, L 8-0.
At least it was a nice night.

13.27. Madness

Irony = let's simulate a school shooter so we can prepare for something that will very likely never happen.  But today, let's go ahead and have school even though we got a foot of snow overnight.

13.29. Game Notes (2)

We lost our first league game 3-4 to Trinity Green.  We played fairly well defensively, and they probably helped us out with a few botched plays in the field.  But most importantly, the temperature was reasonable and I felt comfortable playing.  Note to self: no more 40 degree games for me.  2/4 3B.

13.28. Game notes (1)

Smalltown Fastpitch * Early Bird Tournament (May 11-12)* Coldwater, MI

With temparatures consistently in the 40s all weekend and a frigid wind much of the time, our first tournament came off without my getting frostbite or seriously injured.  So I count that a victory.

Game 1:  Smalltown 4  Hastings Blues 5
After taking the lead in the top of the seventh, we walked the leadoff man in the bottom of the inning and the next batter crushed a high, inside pitch over the 290+ foot fence in left.  (1/4 3B)

Game 2: Smalltown 10 Westerville Capitals 4
Back on a real fastpitch field, we managed to hit a couple homeruns and beat a good, young Canadian pitcher.  (2/4 BB)

Game 3: Smalltown 20 Wabash 9
The wind picked up after a brief rain storm and the temperature managed to drop, but somehow we ground out this slugfest anyhow launching six homers in six innings.  I got plunked twice and walked twice and scored four times.  (0-1)

Game 4:  Smalltown 4 Thunder 11
After scoring four first inning runs, we couldn't manage another as the Thunder homered five times to beat us by the mercy rule in five innings.  One of the coldest mornings I've ever played softball.  (1/3)

I scored 8 runs on the weekend, walked 3 times, was hit twice, had a triple, and went a modest 4/12 (.333).  With my 43 year old creaking knees and worn out achilles', I'm not dissatisfied with the weekend.  But I know why there aren't any everyday players in the major leagues my age.  It's not that they can't hit anymore, it's that the first month and half of the season is played in nearly winter weather, and there comes a point when you just can't stay loose enough to move.  Next game is Thursday in Benton Harbor.  I expect it to be warmer.

Season Record:  2-2

13.26. The Great American Poem

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion – put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

13.25. Book #10, 2013

"You also are Psyche..."

13.24. Book #9, 2013

PERFECTION

 

"I am haunted by waters."

 

13.23. Sabbath

"The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath.  It is not an interlude but the climax of living."

Abraham Joshua Heschel, "The Sabbath"

13/22. "Why Work?" part ii

"Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade--not outside it.  The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not their meet [meant] they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meet for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.  The official Church wastes time and energy, and, moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work--by which she means ecclesiastical work.  The only Christian work is good work well done.  Let the church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery, or sewage-farming."
 

Dorothy Sayers, "Why Work?"

13.21. "Why Work?"

"The greatest insult which a commercial age has offered to the worker has been to rob him of all interest in the end-product of the work and to force him to dedicate his life to making badly things which were not worth making."
 

-Dorothy Sayers, "Why Work"

13.20. Idea

Chapel for academic credit.  Attend chapel for two days of the week.  Meet for small group discussion with a faculty mentor on the third day.  Research paper and weekly reflection papers or online forum discussion posts required.  3 credits.

(Note: faculty mentor would get 1 hour of load credit).

13.19. First draft

I hope we all do understand that all this crap I write is unproofed first draft crap, written fast and furious when I have a few moments from all the other crap I gotta do.  We do understand that.  Don't we?

13.18. Book #8 2013

Several years ago I discovered the most helpful little book on academic writing I'd ever seen.  It's called They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing.  I loved the book for the ways it simplified--through the use of basic templates--how academic writing at its best, works.

My freshmen could read it and apply the concepts right away in their essays. The results were almost immediate as they began practicing the art of "starting with what 'they say'" as a way of setting up what "I say"--that is, framing your own argument as a response to what others have said or might say.

I adopted the book solely because I thought it would help my students write better essays.  And it has.

What I didn't realize at the time was that something deeper was perhaps subtly being communicated to my students through the book--something I'm guessing I responded to unconsciously when I first read it.  What the book actually encourages is the practice of virtues of humility and charity.  I listen to (or read) what others are saying; I summarize as clearly as I can what they say, playing the empathetic "believing game,"; and only then do I respond.

I think the authors of the book mean to encourage liberal minded civil discourse, and I'm certainly with them.  We need that.  But what I've come to recognize is this: civil discourse isn't enough for me and for my Christian students.  Ours is a higher calling.  We must read and write lovingly.

Alan Jacobs' book A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love is a wonderfully dense, insightful book that I take is, in part, a call to charitable academic discourse.  It's subtly that, and it's also more than that.  Jacobs' suggests that if the great commandment includes loving neighbor as self, then as readers (or listeners) we may well have a responsibility to treat the books we read and their authors as neighbors.  "Love your neighbor as yourself," right?  And who is my neighbor?

Perhaps it's that book (or poem, or blog, or chapel address) or that author (or speaker) I'm inclined to think doesn't really have that much to offer me.

What might reading and interpretation look like when governed by the law of neighbor love?  And what might my less than charitable or dismissive responses to some of the texts or authors I've read (or speakers I've heard) suggest to me about how far I have to go as a disciple of Christ who desires to be perfected in love?

Jacobs' book is well worth the effort it takes to read, and it is one I will come back to again over the years.

13.18. Book #7 2013

That is, if you count the two volumes as only one book.  Of course this is again a re-re-re-read (at least).

13.17. Book #6 2013

Some of my students have a hard time with the playfulness of post-modernist literature--especially with its tendency toward deconstruction.  We read this  immediately after reading Homer, and some of them have a hard time having the rug pulled out from under their notions about Odysseus and Penelope.  But Atwood is only doing what "Homer" did a long time ago.  She does a little "story-making" with mythic characters.

I try to tell them that this kind of intertextual gamesmanship is pretty much how all literature works.  There's only one real "author."  The rest of us sub-creators simply take what has been given us, rearrange, rewrite, and retell.

There's only one story.  Infinite variations, though.

Some of them think this is primarily Penelope's story.  But Atwood allows the chorus of maids to subvert and maybe trump Penelope's narrative at every step along the way.  In the end, theirs is the final word--at least in this novel.

13.16. First Sunday in Lent

"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." (Ps. 34:18)

13.15. I am a quitter

I quit facebook a couple months back, and I like some of my "friends" a lot better now that I don't have to read their moronic status updates. 

I bet some of them like me better, now, too.

13.14. How, then, should we teach an ethics course?

Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy.

(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.4)

13.13. Book #5 2013

A re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read.

And it gets better every time.

13.12. Poem of the day

Psalm for the January Thaw

By Luci Shaw

Blessed be God for thaw, for the clear drops
that fall, one by one, like clocks ticking, from
the icicles along the eaves. For shift and shrinkage,
including the soggy gray mess on the deck
like an abandoned mattress that has
lost its inner spring. For the gurgle
of gutters, for snow melting underfoot when I
step off the porch. For slush. For the glisten
on the sidewalk that only wets the foot sole
and doesn’t send me slithering. Everything
is alert to this melting, the slow flow of it,
the declaration of intent, the liquidation.

Glory be to God for changes. For bulbs
breaking the darkness with their green beaks.
For moles and moths and velvet green moss
waiting to fill the driveway cracks. For the way
the sun pierces the window minutes earlier each day.
For earthquakes and tectonic plates—earth’s bump
and grind—and new mountains pushing up
like teeth in a one-year-old. For melodrama—
lightning on the sky stage, and the burst of applause
that follows. Praise him for day and night, and light
switches by the door. For seasons, for cycles
and bicycles, for whales and waterspouts,
for watersheds and waterfalls and waking
and the letter W, for the waxing and waning
of weather so that we never get complacent. For all
the world, and for the way it twirls on its axis
like an exotic dancer. For the north pole and the
south pole and the equator and everything between.

 

 

13.11. Book #4, 2013

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves. (re-read)

One of my favorite passages from the book.

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.  The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. 

I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness.  It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason "I knew thee that thou wert a hard man."  Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness.  If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he as not.  We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour.  If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.
 

 

 

 

13.10. Solitary crossfit

5 Rounds

15 pullups
20 situps
25 pushups
30 squats

12:10

13.9. Book #3 2013

A re-read of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows.

It's a story about the love for a place, about hospitality, about friendship, with a great chapter wherein Mole and Rat have a mystical experience I find lovely.  The chapter is called "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn."


Here's an amazing Van Morrison song based on that chapter.

13.8. Book #2, 2013

Walter Dean Myers's Monster is a movie script interrupted occasionally by diary entries--both written in a notebook during the the trial of his protagonist/narrator, a sixteen year old named Steven Harmon.  Steven is accused of serving as the lookout for a robbery of drugstore that ended in the murder of the drugstore owner.  Myers leaves Steven's guilt and involvement ambiguous to the end.  The novel's moral seems to lie in the potential consequences of a single choice.  The problem is, we never get to know just exactly what choice Steven did or didn't make and whether he was just an unfortunate victim of circumstances or what.

I'm a sucker for YA fiction.  I'm a double sucker for stories about inner city youths.  The Harlem setting is perhaps the best thing about this, and Steven as a wannabe film-maker is a good idea, but the novel written as film script just doesn't work for me.  Steven's character comes through in this style fairly well, especially, though because he occasionally interrupts his script to write a diary entry.  But the other characters quickly become indistinguishable from one another.  It might make a better movie; somebody should make it.

On the upside, I think Walter Dean Myers is a novelist worth reading, and I will read more of his books.  Because I'm also a sucker for stories about basketball players, and he has a couple of those, too.

13.7. Simply Speaking

"I recently observed a man from whom I believe God wanted to rid the strength of the self nature.  It is my perception that although what he says is true and comes from the inward work of the spirit upon his heart, his intellect is so powerful that it overpowers the gentle work of grace without his even knowing it.  Therefore, some of the truth of what he says is lost.  People are won more by the annointing that flows from a heart full of grace--by the weapon of love--than by powerful argument. 

Aren't the truths that you speak analyzed too much by the intellect and further polished by the imagination?  Their effect seems to be lost because they lack simplicity and directness.  Like a song, they sound wonderful; but they do not substantially reach and touch the heart.  There is no annointing. 

Aren't you always looking for something clever or novel to say?  Aren't you really showing off the power of your intellect rather than standing back and letting the simple truth speak for itself? Consider what I have said, and the light will reveal much to you.  Am I speaking to simply? I only want to speak the truth and the truth alone."

 

-Jeanne Guyon, Intimacy with Christ 



 

 

 

13.6. I'm Different

And I don't care who knows it...

13.5. 43

Most of the time, I do not feel 43.  34 maybe.  17 sometimes.  12, too.  But far less often 43.

People who are younger than I am, often by a fair number of years, I still think of as my elders.  Nearly all professional athletes, for instance.  Why is that?

Today is my birthday, which may make it a day for sober reflection, as if every day isn't already such a day.  One day closer death, one day closer to my last basketball game, one day closer to retirement, one day closer to the bike crash I surely will one day have--because I don't intend any time soon to quit biking, and if you bike long enough, you will fall off sometime--and so on.

In my 43rd year I'd like to eat more vegetables, especially those grown in my own garden.  I'd like write more worthwhile blog posts, or at least funnier ones.  I'd like to revisit Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play an afternoon game.  I'd like spend more summer evenings strumming my uke by the campfire.  I'd like to join a Sunday School class again (why, five years ago, did we move from a church that gave up on adult Sunday School to one that had given up on adult Sunday School?).  I'd like like to dunk a basketball one more time--but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

 I'm looking forward to it.

13.4. Book #1 2013

Dog-Heart by Diana McCaulay

As an experiment (and who knows if this will last), I'm going to post a picture and brief reflection on each book I read (cover to cover, that is) this year.

Dog Heart is the first book I finished reading in 2013, and it's a good one.  You can read some reviews here.

I knew a lot of Dexter's when I lived in Kingston; they came to the basketball court we'd helped them build--after school, Saturdays. McCaulay has so many details just right. The relentless heat, the smells, the all night noise, the crowded buses, the impossible conditions within Kingston's all age schools. And though I am not a middle class Jamaican single mother like the other main character (Sahara) in the novel, and though I knew much less about people like her, she strikes me as believable and more like me than I might care to admit. She sees a hungry boy and she wants to do more than give him a few coins this time.  But her going beyond the few coins unintentionally sets the stage for an unhealthy one way dependency that becomes difficult to move beyond.

What I most like about the story is that it doesn't offer any easy answers, because there really aren't any. Kingston's ghettos are--what little I experienced of them, especially the one I knew best--are places in desperate need of worldview transformation as preparation for receptivity to the gospel.  And yet there are more Christian churches in those ghettos per square mile than almost anywhere on earth.

I look back on my time in Kingston and I wonder what difference it made to the Dexter's I knew.  I do not know.  I also wonder what difference that time has made for me.  I am still trying to figure that out.

p.s. We were missionaries in Jamaica from 1997-1999 with RENEWED ministries, a ministry committed to multiplication discipleship through sports ministry.

13.3. Rejected blog post topics

1.  Review of the X-Files episode I watched yesterday, one from Season 3 about what I think Charles Williams would call "Co-inherence" and that would make Lief Enger proud.

2.  Our vet bill yesterday for Morgan, which (incorrectly) included a $159 bag of food.

3.  A story of how my brand new basketball shoes that I love got a tear in them the first day I wore them.

4.  How cool I am for starting a "5 year diary".

5.  Sydney's new remote control SUV.

6.  Jeanie's amazing ham and cheese quiche that I had for breakfast.

7.  The superiority of the Humanities major to all other majors in humanities sub-disciplines.

8.  My new novel.

9.  How badly I need a haircut.

10.  My visit to the dentist yesterday, where I had a conversation about almonds with my dentist.  (We like!!)

11.  How very randomly but usually several times a year I get heartbroken and homesick for Jamaica, even though I loathe almost everything about city living.

12.  The conversation I had with Sydney the other day about what language we will speak in heaven.  (She also wondered if I thought grandpa Kip would take care of Morgan in heaven until we joined them.  We're preparing ourselves for the inevitable--Morgan will likely not live all that much longer.  Not that he's sick; he's just old. Incidentally, I do.)

13.  A rant about a book I have not read by a person I know almost nothing about and the people who waste their time with this trash.  

14.  A post in which I argue that online college courses are for the kind of people who would prefer sexting or phone sex to the real thing.  

15.  Why I wish I could find a Missionary Church that made communion a more central part of weekly worship.  Among other things...

16.  Why I have more hope for the Tigers than the Cubs in 2013.

17.  How I have never been a Lakers fan until this year, and of course, this year has been a near disaster so far for the Lakers.  Nevertheless, I have hope.

But I don't really have the mental energy to develop any of these fully here today.  Nor do I suspect I will have the energy to develop most of them fully any time soon.  Nevertheless, you can vote for any you'd like to read.  Can't make any promises.  

Instead, I leave you with this: 

My crossfit WOD for today (after 6 games of basketball).

AMRAP in 15 minutes

15 wall ball (20#)

15 dips

15 pushups

20 situps

13.2 Half

June 8, Lord willing, J. and I will run in our first half-marathon together.

I probably won't put one of those 13.1 stickers on my car, even though I'd kind of like to.

And since I'm sure you're incredibly interested, our training model will be loosely based on the principles of Crossfit Endurance, because we are old and running too much is pretty terrible for the joints of old people like us.  The best part--and probably the only reason we're doing this race--is because it's in Ludington.  It's called The Lakestride, and part of the course includes one of my favorite hiking trails through the Ludington State Park.

So we'll be cross-training our way to some semblance of endurance fitness.  Today's workout for me will be:

Basketball (1 hr. +)

+

AMRAP in 20 minutes of:

40 Balance Lunge (20 each leg)

40 one leg squats (20 each leg)

20 wide grip pullups

40 squats

20 reverse grip pullups

13.1. New Year

Maker of heaven and earth, space and time, entering this new year I put my hope in you, trusting that you will provide whatever I need for body and soul and turn to my good whatever adversity you send me.  Thank you that you are able to do this because you are almighty God, and that you desire to do this because you are a faithful Father. Amen. (Heidelberg Catechism 26)