In the News 5

While I have not touched an actual newspaper in some time, I do skim through the news headlines online each day. There is always something that catches my attention, whether it involves human conflict, a human interest piece, the sports wrap, or just the usual absurdities. In this series, I carve out a space for my opinions, reminiscences, or comments.

Classic Kid's Books - There was a recent story on CNN the other day about 15 classic children's books. Flipping through the titles, including The Giving Tree, The Story of Ferdinand, Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Poky Little Puppy, and The Snowy Day, took me down a road of reminiscing about my own childhood and about those many nights of reading stories to my daughter. For once reading the news gave me some good feelings.

Derek Jeter - Oftentimes the elite of a given sport are not afforded much respect if they do not play for your team, and they are especially villainized if they play for one of your team's key rivals. However, after watching countless games in which Derek Jeter played (I am a Red Sox fan), it was clear that not only was he a great player, but a great ambassador for his sport. He played the game with passion, with dedication, and with respect. Derek played all 20 years of his distinguished baseball career for the New York Yankees. His last game was Sep. 28, 2014.

Chisanbop

I first heard the term "chisanbop" through a TV commercial back in the late 70s. It was advertised at around the same time as those spots selling Slim Whitman LPs. That dude's singing made me laugh, although I am certain that wasn't the reaction that Mr. Whitman was hoping for (♫ Una paloma blanca whoa whoa ... ♫). Anyway, chisanbop (pronounced like "cheese and bop") is a system developed by some Korean guy for quickly performing mathematical computations for operations whose answer is between 0 and 99. I remember the commerical showing these really young kids being given a string of numbers, flopping their hands around in a blur, and coming up with the answer that was likely written in a large font size on the teleprompter. It was amazing. What is even more amazing is that I can use chisanbop and demonstrate it like a pro.

So, why am I bring up chisanbop and what does it have to do with the price of tea in China? Well the tie-in with today's blog kind of popped into my head after I had spent some time listening to my pastor pray. I have heard him praying to the congregation during Sunday service and in off-the-cuff moments. His prayers always seem to have a depth and breadth to them that somehow makes his petitions seem more genuine and pious than mine. He knows how to drop in just the right verse or use just the right words to make you think that God must be more in tune with his wavelength. Of course, I realize that God hears my prayers just as much as those of my pastor. But sometimes when I listen to him pray, I think, "Wow that is pretty amazing. I sure wish that I knew how to do that.", which is the reaction that many folks have when they see someone using chisanbop. However, once you have it explained to you, it seems pretty elementary after all.

Living on the Ragged Edge

One of my favorite expository teachers of the Bible is Charles Swindoll. I have read dozens and dozens of his books and I have found them to be both clear and an accurate reflection of the Bible. Very rarely have I found myself at odds with something that he has written. His writing style is quite timeless as his approach is not to try to be hip or trendy. He does not fill his books with allusions that go out of date after a few years.

My most recent read from Swindoll was entitled Living on the Ragged Edge and was first published back in 1985. This book was focused on the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes written by Solomon. Solomon was the tenth son of King David, and the fourth son of the marriage union of King David with Bathsheba. Solomon was the third king of the united kingdom of Israel, following Saul and his father David. Solomon is recorded in history not only as a king, but as a major prophet of Christianity, of Judaism, and of the Muslim religion. In his younger days he was an ardent believer and had a close relationship with God. He is responsible for construction of the temple in Jerusalem in which God's presence dwelt among the Jews. God granted him wisdom and wealth, the likes have never been seen since. His period of rule is generally believed to be from 970 to 931 BC. In his later years, he drifted and became disillusioned and his faith was drowned out and perverted by idol worship and adopting the traditions of the pagans who interlaced his life.

Ecclesiastes represents a journal of sorts chronicling Solomon's disillusion of living a life without purpose, or at least without a purpose that led to contentment. A life of sexual gratification, a life of immense wealth, a life of human relationships, a life of gluttony with food and drink ... none of these without a relationship with God, Solomon concludes, will ever lead to fulfillment, contentment, and satisfaction. There are parts of Ecclesiastes that some in the church view as sacriligeous. Swindoll's approach is to work his way through the journal, providing both interpretation and application to our lives.

The first paragraph of today's blog was written with a "but" lingering. Very rarely have I found myself at odds with something that he has written, but in several sections of this book I found myself fully at odds with Swindoll. Some of his interpretations of the text I fully disagreed with and some of his analysis came across as more than a bit naive and ill-considered. I found myself growing frustrated with him. On top of this, this book was poorly edited. Dozens and dozens of spelling, grammar, and syntax errors, along with far too much repetition and aimless discussion. I would therefore not put this book at the top of my list of Swindoll efforts.

Observations 70

My occasional blog series "Observations" was created to be an outlet to share a variety of topics that pop into my field of view as a result of a condition that many bloggers are afflicted with known as "blogger's eyes". In this state we view the world on the constant look-out for topics on which to write about. Today's blog came about from random odds 'n ends of things that I have noticed over the past few weeks.

• "God created the world out of nothing, and so long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us." Martin Luther
  
• I absolutely hate it when I find that I have forgotten my wallet after I have driven all the way to the store.
  
• "He had always been generous in his praise. It was all he had to give." George R.R. Martin
  
• Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks in the NBA referred to himself as "The most underrated superstar." Such a humble soul.
  
• I was part of a graduate student's thesis defense recently where the student and the advisor went at each other. As I was trying to calm things down in the aftermath I said aloud, "What's this world coming to when I am the voice of reason?"
  

Big Red Tequila

My daughter had really enjoyed a couple of "young adult" book series by author Rick Riordan, including Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Kane Chronicles. Two years ago for Christmas I bought her the seven books in Riordan's Tres Navarre series. When the stack sat on her bookshelf untouched for quite a long time, I asked her about it. She told me that she started reading the first book in the series, but she just wasn't that into western novels. As I hated to think that these books would go unread, I added them to my list. Just a few pages into the first book, Big Red Tequila, it became clear why my daughter had stopped reading these books. They were definitely not "young adult" novels. They are full on grown-up stories, with grown-up themes, action, and dialogue. However, this first book was a winner. A thoroughly enjoyable story, with a level of humor from the protagonist that reminded me of several books that I have read from Dean Koontz.

The story involves Jackson "Tres" Navarre, who grew up in a small town on the outskirts of San Antonio. Tres' father had been the local sheriff, but when he was murdered right in front of young Tres, he took the first opportunity he could to distance himself from the haunting scenes and memories. The murder case went unsolved and eventually became a distant memory. Tres had left his girlfriend Lillian behind in his exodus, and this parting had always eaten at him. After 10 years of living in California, Lillian asked Tres to come back to Texas to give them another shot. Feeling that he needed to face up to what he left behind, Tres and his cat Robert Johnson return. Yet it doesn't take long before Tres meets up with folks who subtly try to intimidate him. As he pushed back, the heat on him turned up. When Lillian disappears, Tres is quickly up to his neck in colorful characters and suspects, all of which also seem to have some connection back to his father.

While none of the characters is fully fleshed out, Riordan provides enough so that you begin to fill in the missing backstories on your own. Slick politicians, eccentric widows, affected artists, loyal bumpkins, and desperate hoodlums. All populating a small town setting that is painted with such clarity you can hear the jukebox from the cantina. A very enjoyable read. I move now to the second book in the series, The Widower's Two-Step.

Bookworm

I am what is known as a bookworm. In the evening or at my lunchtime break, I like to pull out whatever book I have and read for a bit. Note that I said that I like to pull out a book. It seems that more and more these days, the notion of a book is synonomous with terms like 8-track, cassette, and VHS. Things that today's youth would recognize only as some sort of object that our ancestors used to poke at with a pointy stick before fun and convenience were invented. Primitive things from the before time. Today's nerdy technological types might even say with some degree of dripping distaste that a tablet computer is a book, while they drool on their pocket protectors and bell-bottom slacks rambling on about gigabytes and go-anywhere convenience. However, I would argue that the dronings of a group of pimply faced, lactose-intolerant, D&D playing cretins accounts for nothing in my world. Let me tell you what a book is by using the old-timey definition of the word.

Book - a handwritten or printed work of fiction or nonfiction, usually on sheets of paper fastened or bound together within covers.

You might even find it somewhat ironic that I looked up the definition of the word "book" in an actual book known as a dictionary. Note also that in the definition of the word, it explicitly says that a book is only a book if it is "fastened or bound together within covers". Thus a printed out stack of paper from a laser printer is not a book, it is a recycling project. Without a proper binding, something doesn't feel write to me ... errr ... feel right to me.

I think that part of the reason that I have never gotten into using an e-reader of any sort is that I stare at computers all day at work. The idea of relaxing with a computer during my down time does not make sense to me. In some ways it seems like a continuation of work. I am not sure why, but it gives me some degree of pleasure to see my bookmark moving forward through a book as I read. Plus I also think that there is some visceral tactile experience in the holding of a book that gives me pleasure. Then when I am done, I can slam the book shut in gleeful triumph, something that cannot be reproduced in an equivalent manner just by pressing a power button.

Contagion

I read a novel several months ago (Hidden Empire by Orson Scott Card) about a contagion that was spreading quickly across the African continent, bounding without check from village to village. One became two, two became ten, ten became a hundred, a hundred became a world-wide panic. What was initially a problem of the primitives living in their third world hovels, became a different monster altogether when its first cases starting appearing in the populous, modern cities. The virus was initially passed from a diseased simian to a village boy when it sneezed in his face. The boy then infected his immediate family and from there the virus took wing as visiting relatives from outside villages made their way back home. The novel is several years old, but it clearly was written based on the first published cases of ebola. Over the past year, the more recent outbreak in Africa has mirrored the events in the novel in very eerie fashion.

In the story, the U.S. president developed world-wide support for a complete blockage of the entire African continent. His rhetoric was that the only way to protect the rest of the (civilized) world was to isolate the disease until it had completed its scourging course. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out. In today's news, infected people are leaving Africa and transporting the disease all around the world. It is actually a model of a maximally efficient procedure for widespread distribution of a disease. Take a modern airliner filled with 400 people who will travel from airport to airport, coming in contact with hundreds of other people along the way to their final destinations, who will in turn come into contact with hundreds of other people, and so on and so on ...

There was a recent news story of a nurse coming back from Africa who was put into quarantine. She was eventually released early to go back to her home and her usual routine. She was raising a clamor that her rights were being violated through forced isolation. Nevermind the fact that she was a nurse at ground zero, had an elevated temperature, and could be a carrier of a deadly seed. I spoke recently with a colleague of mine who I respect as a reasonably moral and considerate person. He told me that if he knew that he were infected he would still feel no issues whatsoever with getting on a plane and flying home to see his family. I think that this is an attitude that many people have, and they, in fact, feel that it is their right. I am left incredulous at how selfish we have become as a people. The majority of the time we think about ourselves and our own needs and desires.