Twists and Turns

DOB's knee is slowly improving, but it's obvious something has to change or he will just keep reinjuring it. Part of that something is his job, which as it stood involved long hours and a lot of time walking around, hunting down clients. (As he said, he could do great if he was just a senior representative and people would come to him.) So, almost exactly one year after deciding to take this job, and having spent down most of our savings trying to make it possible, we were casting about for something else. Some prayers are answered a lot faster than you expect. On Monday, DOB walked in to talk to another representative--the one with whom, a few weeks ago, he was interviewing assistants for in hopes of taking on one jointly. He starts work Monday, doing the desk part of the job while the other rep goes out and talks to people. He says it makes him feel sort of like Dick Cheney.

Brain Implants

When I saw DOB reading an article on brain implants, I immediately thought, "Is there a list where we can submit names of candidates for implants?" Alas, though, it seems that even when the technology is fully functional it will only help people send signals from their brain, not create brains where none existed.

Have been vegetating a lot this week, researching prices on baby stuff and reading a lot of articles on feminism, day care, and other modern plagues. And yet again it reminds me of Chesterton:

I remember my mother, the day that we met,
A thing I shall never entirely forget;
And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am,
I should know her again if we met in a tram
But mother is happy in turning a crank
That increases the balance at somebody's bank;
And I feel satisfaction that mother is free
From the sinister task of attending to me.

They have brightened our room, that is spacious and cool,
With diagrams used in the Idiot School,
And Books for the Blind that will teach us to see;
But mother is happy, for mother is free.
For mother is dancing up forty-eight floors,
For love of the Leeds International Stores,
And the fame of that faith might perhaps have grown cold,
With the care of a baby of seven weeks old.

For mother is happy in greasing a wheel
For somebody else, who is cornering Steel;
And though our one meeting was not very long,
She took the occasion to sing me this song:
'O, hush thee, my baby, the time will soon come
When thy sleep will be broken with hooting and hum;
There are handles want turning and turning all day
And knobs to be pressed in the usual way;

O hush thee, my baby, take rest while I croon,
For Progress comes early, and Freedom too soon.'

As can be seen in the margin, DOB has started his own blog, The Ducal Herald. There are couples, after all, who get separate bathrooms. We don't mind sharing the bathroom, but we apparently need separate writing spaces. It's more like having two cars--sometimes we just have to head different places at the same time. But DOB is keeping his editorial status over here, and if he ever gets it to work I'll be able to post on his. So we'll still be able to comment back and forth.

On The Line

Our phone line has been getting increasingly fuzzy over the last couple of weeks. I finally got to calling the phone company today. Over the fuzz, I talked with a lady who told me that if the problem was internal, I would either have to pay a $90/hour fee for inside service, fix it myself, or add inside service to my account for $3.95. But if I wanted the inside service I had to do it immediately, before she transferred me to the service department. I chose the last option, and was transferred to the service department where another lady explained that to test whether the problem was internal or external I would have to locate a gray box on my house, unscrew a screw, plug a phone in outside, and make a phone call to test it.

This sort of household fiddling is not my cup of tea and it has been pouring rain all day, but DOB is still on crutches and we were both very tired of the fuzz, which was making conversation nigh impossible. So I put on my raincoat (which fortunately is still buttonable) and boots, found a screwdriver, and ventured forth. Sure enough, right outside the garage door were a number of gray boxes with wires, and one of them had a special section just for customers to unscrew. To be sure it was a Phillips screw and the lady on the phone had said to take a flat-head driver, but it worked just fine to unscrew it, so I did not worry about it. Inside, howerver, there was no phone jack.

I was perplexed, so I summoned DOB, who donned crutches and slippers and hopped out to look. He informed me that this was the wrong box, and I must extend my search to the other end of the house. So he went back to work while I rescrewed that box and searched farther afield. Sure enough, at the other end of the house was yet another gray box (I had no idea houses had so many), this one not only with a friendly customer access option, but with a flat screw and a label that said "Phone Line." So I was pretty sure I was on the right track. I unscrewed it, and sure enough inside was a phone jack.

I turned to go inside and get the phone to plug in, when I suddenly felt myself lurching forward with my feet entangled. I looked down and saw a wire waving in the breeze, with a tag at the end that said, "If this wire is loose, call Verizon." Feeling a sense of dread, I went inside and discovered the phone line was, indeed, dead. I told DOB what had happened, and he put on his shoe and his jackets and hat and crutched out to look. He determined that the situation was serious, but suggested I test the phone in the box before calling Verizon just to make a full report.

So I came in, got the phone, plugged it in outside and stood in the pouring rain making a phone call. Sure enough, it worked fine. So I returned to report this to DOB and was about to call Verizon from the cell phone to report it when it occurred to me that I could make the call from the outside phone line. Faced with the option of standing in an ice cold downpour, my feet in a puddle, holding a large kitchen phone and a screwdriver while listening to hold music, or racking up cell phone minutes, I made the obvious choice.

I should have taken gloves, though. They answered surprisingly quickly, considering, and the fellow on the other end was very apologetic. "You're actually standing in the rain? O my g**, O my g**, Is the rain actually hitting you? Oh my g**, I'm so sorry." I was ready to dispense with the apologies and get on with fixing the phone. He informed me that the inside service was not showing up on my account, and that anyway the $3.95 was only if you waited 30 days for it to activate; immediate activation meant a $39.95 charge for the first month. I was standing in the rain and my feet were getting wet and our phones were dead. I said to go ahead and please send someone out ASAP. He promised someone by 3:25 tomorrow.

I returned inside, where DOB had verified that we still had internet access even though the phones were still dead. Mystifying. There seemed nothing to do but wait, so I dealt with a few remaining outdoor tasks, put on dry socks and tea, and sat down to collaborate on the spreadsheet he was working on. Shortly thereafter, the doorbell rang and outside stood the Verizon guy, coming by to check on how involved the problem was. He went out back to look, then came in a few moments later. We tried the phone lines: dial tone, no fuzz. The repairman reported that the phones were probably dead because I had jerked the connection out when I opened the thingamajooker in the box outside; as to the fuzz, well, maybe it had been loose. Anyway, it should be no charge so not to worry. Asked about the loose wire, he said it was just a grounding wire and he would go make sure it was secured. And off he went.

So now it looks like I paid $39.95 for nothing. I wonder if they'll let me take it off now. Bleh.

The holiday meal is over and all has gone well. Everyone seemed to get enough to eat and have an enjoyable time. No dishes were broken (although I don't have them back in the cupboard yet, so the field is not entirely secured). We sat the four youngest boys in the kitchen, as the dining room only seats eight at maximum capacity. Midway through the meal, we were surprised to see them all simultaneously leap up and run out the back door (as we discovered later, to change their shirts in the van). Not knowing why but not lacking quick reflexes, we got up and locked all the doors. Then DOB's uncle and I took the kitchen table and rotated it 90 degrees.

Tomorrow we host our first holiday meal here. I am running around ironing napkins and picking flowers. We have borrowed a brother to assist me in setting up. And I have come to a vital conclusion: We need more girls in this family. Raymond is doing a fine job, but somehow he just isn't sufficiently impressed over the way I used prickle balls from the backyard to raise the height of the flowers in the vase. Nor can I get any profound comments from anyone around here over whether these napkins look all right with those placemats. Although it was frequently exhausting, I miss the convergence of female creativity that erupted around holidays when I was growing up.

"It's no shame to be poor. Of course, it's no great honor, either."

Tevya, Fiddler on the Roof

Political Stuffs

Cato Institute is cool. World Magazine is cool. A joint article is even cooler, like this excellent article by Doug Bandow on a Biblical understanding of the role of civil government.

Ohio has risen to third in state and local tax burden, according to this year's report by the Tax Foundation. It's lower down on federal tax burden, probably because we're taxed too much to make enough money to owe federal taxes--I know our federal tax refund will be more than ample to cover state and local taxes.

And on a very tangential note, our accountant has a beautiful reception area. Deep red walls with white trim, light wood floor, traditional but simple furniture. Very bright and open and warm and inviting. Cozy but not stuffy. It's almost enough to make you feel good about tax time.

Almost.

Men, Women and Babies
Yesterday's Dear Abby contained a letter to the following effect:

"When I date a man, I wine and dine him with gifts and candlelight dinners, but they never seem to be appreciated. Not only that, none of them ever do anything for me. I am always being stood up, heartbroken, used or taken advantage of."

I have a hard time believing people can be this dense, but I have seen evidence that they are. This woman has no doubt grown up believing men and women are essentially the same, No doubt she was raised to believe that as a woman she can just go out and get whatever she wanted, and her mother never mentioned that catching a man requires a certain amount of aloofness. So she just goes out and chases a man the way she'd like to be chased--and then is bewildered when it doesn't work.

But despite all kinds of attempts at cultural re-education, it turns out that Grandma was right all along. Men are pushovers, if you know how to handle them--but they can't be treated like women.

Unfortunately, our whole culture tends to make women by default responsible to take the initiative in the direction of a relationship, so no wonder they get confused as to who should do what. The modern relationship pattern seems to be for things to just drift along, the man getting as much as he can while committing as little as he can, until the woman insists upon having "The Talk" about what exactly is going on. Under the older pattern, men were generally expected to indicate their intentions at clearly-defined points. If they failed to do so, the woman usually had a father or brothers around to demand an explanation.

On other fronts, the knee is improving slowly, with much icing. I took the Rhogam shot yesterday, and while we were waiting for the post-shot checkup, we toured the Mother-Baby Center of the new hospital. Everything is brand spanking new, with private rooms with cushy chairs for everyone but me, nice big private bathrooms, and waiting cradles. Putting someone in one of those cradles is still beyond imagination.

The Citadel Under Siege

Still not sure what is up with the knee, but it could be just a bad sprain; the kneecap appears to have put itself back in, at least. It still is a blasted nuisance. It's not the great tragedies and catastrophes that are draining in life; when the world stops, you can stop to deal with it and feel the proper object of sympathy. It's the little things that you have to go right on living through that wear you out. On which sympathy comes in the form of "I can top that story."

This is also the week I have to get my Rhogam shot (in case of incompatibility with Baby's blood type), which involves two trips to the hospital lab, on top of my now bi-weekly checkup. So we are spending an unconscionable amount of time at medical offices.

But then, the sky and the grass and the daffodils are brilliant colors this morning; last night's spaghetti turned out particularly well; the thank-you notes are mailed at last; there is more space on the office floor; and I'm finally going to get up and give the house a long-overdue vaccuumming. It's also the little things, not the huge celebrations, that make life livable.

On our way to the chiropractor this morning, to get DOB's busted knee checked out. In honor of the occasion, a Chesterton quote:

"The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel."

Preparing for Psychological Turmoil

As it turns out, being a new parent is a lot like having obsessive-compulsive disorder. I think people get over it, though. Or maybe all of the children in the world are correct, and their parents are nuts.

Home Education
This week when I called home I could hear my 4-year-old nephew in the background waking up from his nap. Sidetracked from hunting for his mom, he first sat down and colored a picture of Abraham and Sarah, receiving occasional clarifications on the story from my older sister. Then he asked something of my younger sister, which launched a lesson on telling time, complete with ripping the clock off the wall and spinning the hands around. The hour hand concept was easily mastered; when he got to the minute hand, however, counting by fives proved too difficult. This launched a consultation between the three of us on how to set up a number line so he could practice skip-counting until it was easy. Then he took a turn talking to me and told me about the clocks, along with the dirt pile in the garden and the monsters on Sarah's computer game.

Nobody wrote a lesson plan or plotted months in advance that today was the day to tell time. Nobody bought a fancy curriculum or handy little classroom gizmos. Nobody handed him a worksheet and said, "Finish this or get in trouble." Nobody forced him to take a test. A little boy wanted to know something, so he asked someone who knew, and they taught him. That's how education is supposed to work.

That's how I remember it working, growing up. I remember my oldest brother teaching me addition in the car. A friend of my sister's showing my four-year-old fingers how to follow the notes of "First March." Sitting on my dad's lap at six and trying to fathom the mysteries of algebra at the same time as my 13-year-old brother. Mom using long-lost leftovers as a lesson in microbiology. My grandfather deciding his two middle grandchildren needed lessons in surveying, shed painting, and tractor driving (lessons at which my younger brother outstripped me as far as I did him at spelling).

And it wasn't long before I was returning the favor: editing my mom's letters so they would be less polemic and more persuasive; lecturing at the dinner table on the evils of government intervention; training my youngest brother in reading and math. Teacher and student, training and practice, were not fixed categories, but based on the realities of the moment.

Education doesn't take fancy curriculum or years of training or a set class of "teachers" who have all the answers. It takes people living and working together, sharing their excitement about the things they know and curiosity about the things they don't. We've got scrap paper, pens, a Bible, two dictionaries, a library card, and we think the world is a fascinating place. We're all set, Baby, just as soon as you are ready.

An Evolved Understanding

Even the slightest hint of questioning the orthodoxy of evolution, as everyone knows, calls down fire and brimstone for violation of the First Amendment. Even if you don't mention the "c" word or the "g" word.

But what if you want to use religion to endorse evolution? Ah, that's a different matter entirely. The National Center for Science Education, a private organization dedicated to promoting teaching evolution (is that all there is to science?), has used a government grant to develop a website to help public school teachers teach evolution. Among the resources are links back to quotes from religious organizations on how believing evolution is just fine. They even use the "c" and "g" words!

So what's the real state of the First Amendment? The establishment clause is already defunct. We have an established religion: it's called scientific materialism, the worship of blind material processes. Anything that furthers this religion is allowed; anything that detracts from it is prohibited.

Barefoot and Pregnant

I have recently discovered why being barefoot and pregnant go together. It's not about male oppression--I think it's about increased circulation. Whatever it is, my feet are hot. It's early April and I have already abandoned boots for sandals, and even played baseball barefoot in the mud last weekend. This is a strange development, as I was formerly inclined to cold feet, taking after my mother who, according to my father's theory, used to soak hers in ice water before crawling into bed. Now I'd rather hang mine over the edge of the bed to catch the night breezes. And as for wearing shoes at home--why bother?

Time to go back to the kitchen. ;-)

Interning
Evergreen Freedom Foundation is planning a more organized summer intern program this year. It sounds like fun. I have to pinch myself to realize that I was an intern there almost a decade ago and, alas, have grown up since then. There were no classes in my day, but whenever no one could think of something for me to do I would read my way through all the back issues of The Freeman and further cement my radically libertarian 16-year-old philosophy.

Oh well, they may have classes but they won't get to live with Lynn, browse her library, eat her meals, and listen to Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates at night.

Next best thing to being an intern would be teaching the interns, but I'm too far away for that, either. One of the greatest joys of life is the joy of indoctrination. However, by that time this summer I should be starting in on a much longer and more intense indoctrination of my own personal student. What's six weeks compared to a lifetime?

The thank you cards are all written!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Well, except for two DOB has agreed to undertake this weekend.) Now if I could just find my five missing addresses, one of which is for someone whom we did not invite and who does not appear in the church database. Once these are signed and mailed I can face the world with a clear conscience again.

Political Stuff

Kerry has alleged that high gas prices are the fault of Bush catering to oil interests. C'mon folks, I know you think Bush is dumb, but even he's not dumb enough to manipulate higher prices in an election year. Kerry's solution, meanwhile, is to stop stockpiling oil. Yeah, if we stop saving money, we'll have more to spend!

And at last a study shows that public funding of baseball stadiums isn't necessary for them to be profitable. Not that this makes a difference into whether they should be publicly funded--if they weren't profitable, it would indicate too little interest to justify building them. But free market baseball fans should be happy to learn this will not be necessary.

Interestingly, the opposing viewpoint only argued that teams would make less in profits if they had to pay for the stadium themselves than if the public did--and thus teams in private stadiums would get less back than teams in public stadiums. Obviously. But government isn't supposed to be in the business of removing risk and maximizing profits for private businesses.

A Tragic Day

Ireland has banned smoking in pubs.

Now, understand, I don't drink. I don't smoke. Since the baby, I'm fairly sensitive even to second-hand smoke. I've only been in a pub twice in my life (once in one frequented by Lewis and Tolkien, once in one frequented by Chesterton), and then all I had was lunch. But there has always been a small corner of my soul happy in the image of men in tweed caps smoking and drinking and singing folk songs and plotting political revolutions. I fear if one takes out one piece of the arch, the whole arch may fall. If you smoke with your drink, then you will take your drinks home with you, and then where will the folk songs and revolutions go?

If only Chesterton were here to celebrate the camaraderie of the public which is the purpose of a public house. Let the Irish have their pubs as the Baptists have their potlucks, though neither are very good for our health, because people must and should gather together. Smoking is not improved by driving it out of human fellowship any more than drinking is, as Chesterton did have occasion to write about:

God made the wicked Grocer
For a mystery and a sign,
That men might shun the awful shops
And go to inns to dine;
Where the bacon's on the rafter
And the wine is in the wood,
And God that made good laughter
Has seen that they are good.

. . . .

The wicked Grocer groces
In spirits and in wine
Not frankly and in fellowship
As men in inns do dine;
But packed with soap and sardines
And carried off by grooms,
For to be snatched by Duchesses
And drunk in dressing rooms.

More on Easter Eggs

Posting about Easter eggs has given me cause to ponder the appropriateness of various traditions. I have encountered various Christian arguments or prejudices against such traditions as decorating Easter eggs, hanging up holly and evergreens for Christmas, etc., because they are associated with this or that pagan holiday.

I have no reason to doubt the historicity of their claims. But I do doubt that they follow. After all, pagan does not necessarily mean demonic. A lot of things pagans did simply because they were the natural, human thing to do. It's natural to hang up holly and evergreens inside in the winter, because there's nothing else outside to decorate with. (I don't see anyone banning flower arrangements, but no doubt flowers are associated with evil pagan rites, too.) It's natural to use eggs in a spring holiday, because anybody with chickens has a lot of eggs in the spring. And why not decorate them, when they have that cool blank canvas of a shell just waiting to be decorated?

I can see this being in the meat-offered-to-idols category, where if someone was lured back into some pagan observance by their Christian friends doing something similar it would be a problem, but I really can't see anyone in modern America being drawn back into worshipping the fertility goddess by dyeing eggs. The association just isn't there any more. (They're much more likely to be drawn into it by researching healthy living, relaxation and natural childbirth, but that doesn't mean those things are wrong, either--just that we always have to watch our step.)

This of course is utterly separate and distinct from the question of whether one's traditions associated with a particular religious holiday reinforce pondering the true significance of the holiday, merely add to the festivity and anticipation, or become a distracting encumbrance. That's a judgment call that can only be answered by the people participating.

Easter Eggs

DOB and a fellow rep were meeting with one of their clients last week, an older fellow whose financial concerns (and stories) have taken up a good bit of their time over the last several months.

As they settled down to the newest round of paperwork, Mr. Client said, "Now you guys have been a great help to me with your brains over the past several months. Today I'll need your help with your hands. We've agreed to provide 32 dozen dyed Easter eggs for church, and we've only been able to get 12 dozen done. So after you're finished with this stuff, I'll need you to come out back and dye the rest."

DOB and fellow rep glanced at each other, trying to figure out how to say no without antagonizing the client. Finally Mr. Client cracked up and said he was only joking. Still, I wouldn't put it past him.

Brain Freeze

I had a scheduled phone call today in which I was supposed to give a final answer on whether I was interested in buying a nutritional product, and I wanted to give the ingredient list one more look before saying, "No." (Sounds good in theory, but contains stuff DOB isn't supposed to have.) But I couldn't remember the name of the product.

Now, understand, I've spent several hours on the phone with people praising this product over the past months. I had literature on it, somewhere. I had looked it up on the web before, but longer ago than my history folder. Rack my brain as I could, I could not remember it.

And then, quite suddenly, I remembered that my brothers had casually mentioned once that they had spoofed the product in a camp skit. And I knew what it was.

Born Expensive
Last night we attended our first birthing class. For non-parents among our readers, birthing classes are places where people go and discuss things not normally discussed in polite conversation, which based on my experience with little kids, is excellent preparation for parenthood.

Since it's a forty-minute drive away (the hospital has classes right down the street, but we wanted the Bradley method), and gets out rather late, the teacher has kindly offered to let us come early and watch the video that everyone else will watch at the end of class. Not only does this get us home sooner, but if it gets really gross we can close our eyes without appearing uncooperative. I'm not sure if that will help during birth or not.

The classes were held at a chiropractic office, and one of the chiropractor's wife was there with their four-month-old baby, which she brought out and exhibited for us so we would know what we were working on. We were all duly impressed.

We forgot to put money in the account, so we haven't paid for the class yet. When Rousseau said man was born free, he didn't know what he was talking about.

It was a no-parking zone. I almost hit him when I came through a few minutes later. I'm not sure idiot properly classifies him.

How to Look Like an Idiot and Make Everyone Hate You

Yesterday I was heading to my prenatal visit, driving merrily down the road, when I got into the right turn lane. Only after I had come to a complete stop did I realize that the car in front of me had no occupant and that I was, in fact, parked. At that moment traffic in the lane next to me suddenly filled up with large, evil semis. And unfortunately I was pulled up too far to just swing back out into traffic. So I had to back up, which always confuses me because I forget which gear I am in, while more or less patient people offered me the chance to get back into traffic and then gave up on me.

It should be a no-parking zone. Maybe it is, in which case, I hope they got a ticket.

Can't loiter too long today--sister-in-law is coming over to help clean out the nursery.

Consumer Protection

Anti-trust laws for some reason make it impossible for us to have our DSL line provided by the phone company, even though it runs over the phone lines. So when we have problems with our DSL line, it is unclear (to us and to them) who should solve the problem. I'm not sure what this is meant to protect consumers from, maybe from having spare time on the weekends.

BECAUSE, last Saturday the DSL line was down. So DOB got on the phone with one company, who told him to call the other company. He called the other company and was just being referred back to the first company when the DSL spontaneously started working again. We went on our merry way for awhile and it stopped again. He called them again and they started researching it. Several more phone calls back and forth, several blinks on and off, and a three-hour-late lunch, and they finally scheduled a technician to come visit us Monday morning.

Then it started working again and worked fine the rest of the weekend. So Monday morning I called them and said not to bother. This entailed multiple people from both companies calling us later in the day to confirm that everything was, indeed, fine.

Today it blinked out again. Grrrrrrr.

More Random Comments

Hardly anyone blogs on the weekends. For east coasters, Monday morning is a bleak blog-checking time.

No matter how complimentary the relevant adjective, never use the adverb "enormously" in describing your pregnant wife.

I've been reading a site called "Ladies Against Feminism." Mostly good stuff, aside from an occasional pro-antebellum South statement that raises my hackles. (It's got stuff from a variety of sources, though, so I don't know that that represents the opinions of the editors.) The article on feminism in communist countries was particularly interesting--why did countries opposed to every other (true) right make such a fuss about providing "women's rights?" For real entertainment, read the (expurgated) "Scorching Commentary." "Bible thumping fishwives?" As Dave Barry would say, that would make a great name for a rock band . . .

Last night there was a forum on Creation at our church, with presentations by various men in the church, including a fine one by DOB's dad. One question that was raised still has me pondering--a woman asked how a spirit could create all the material world. I guess we tend to think of "spirit" as a weak shadow of "reality," no matter how hard we try, and the tangible as the most real. But then someone referred to DNA, and I realized that it is always the intangible that makes the tangible. What, for instance, is transforming biscuits and eggs into baby as I type? It is that mysterious code of DNA that somehow has ordered a single cell to divide and diversify according to a written plan. The flesh profiteth nothing. It is the Spirit--the Word--that giveth life.

Justice Scalia is, of course, brilliant even when forced to argue in his own defense. His opinion is a masterful example of explaining one's actions without being defensive--indeed, he graciously attacks back. If Supreme Court justices can no longer have a nodding acquaintance with members of the administration, we will indeed have a hard time operating a Supreme Court.

My weird aunt will be particularly interested to know you can now view Shakespeare's will online. But the legibility is not particularly high. It puts me in mind of Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad:

"Ah--Ferguson--what--what did you say was the name of the party who wrote this?"

"Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!"

Another deliberate examination.

"Ah--did he write it himself, or--or how?"

"He write it himself!--Christopher Colombo! he's own handwriting, write by himself!"

Then the doctor laid the document down and said:

"Why I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could write better than that."

"But zis is ze great Christo---"

"I don't care who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw. No you mustn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out!--and if you haven't, drive on!"

Yesterday was St. Patrick's day, and I didn't fix corned beef and cabbage. I didn't make green cake or even green jello. And I didn't watch The Quiet Man, which is what my family always watched on St. Patrick's day once we outgrew Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

We watched Father's Little Dividend instead, mostly because we have it and we are trying to watch all the DVD's we want to before the DVD player gets turned into the office assistant's computer and goes in to the office. We are now very grateful for non-meddling parents and marital harmony.

Another movie we watched this past week was called Son of Monte Cristo. We weren't expecting that much from it, just a corny black-and-white action movie. It turned out to be great: compelling villain, almost believable hero, good political plot, well-drawn minor characters, and suspense that built until the last minute of the movie. Three thumbs up! (Baby liked it, too.)

First segment of thank you cards written, putting us at 108 out of about 190. Don't get too impatient, though, they still have to be signed, licked, stamped, and mailed.

And the longest extension I can find from an etiquette site is 3 months. Rats. However, they do say better late than never. And I am not yet as late as the latest wedding thank-you I have ever received. I just have this nagging suspicion that half the people from my half of the list are going to open their cards and say, "Do we know these people?"

Today starts the third trimester of being pregnant. Which raises new questions and challenges, like "How do I tie my shoes?" Good thing I can put my boots away in a few more weeks.

Clarification

I did not ask her to shovel the driveway (or the car). I was preparing to leave for an appointment and looked out the window and there she was. Having never dealt with snow shovels before, she didn't realize that a shovel-full of the white stuff can be as heavy as a couple gallons of water (this measurement taken from the basic ingredients of snow). Better done by a grown man than an expectant mother.

Wait... I'm a grown man?! Ack...

Random observations:

An actual snowfall is not as bad as snow threatening. But I still wish it would melt.

I need lessons in snow shovelling. Some things I learned: Bend at the knees. Don't use a shovel on the car. It's heavier than it feels

The secret to hot cereal is not overcooking it. The secret to not overcooking it is remembering that it is in there while simultaneously ironing DOB's clothes. The secret to remembering it is to have a brain, which I never locate until mid-morning.

I'm pleased to report that even though I am now happily married, I still despise it as much as ever when people gush about their love life. So my disgust wasn't motivated by envy, anyway, but true Nordic dislike of public gushiness. (Then again, maybe now I envy those who still have time and energy to gush. Ha, just wait until you have kids!)

Speaking of having kids, I'm speculating on whether people really, really wanting kids is as bad for the kids as not being wanted. Imagine being a poor newborn baby, suddenly faced with fulfilling someone's huge expectations for you to fulfill their emotional needs or redo their life for them. You wouldn't know what hit you. And you couldn't possibly measure up, resulting in constant frustration on both ends. The best reason to have kids is as the accidental byproduct of being happily married. (Under which circumstances, as DOB points out, the chances are pretty good.)

So I wonder what the psychological effect is of a society in which it is standard procedure to wait to have children until you are desperate. It really can't be good for a child to have their parents buying them lesson cd's to improve their mind prenatally. Relax, Baby, we're happy to have you along for the ride, but we don't need you to fix the car or anything.

Anchors Aweigh

Last night we attended a political event at a place billed as the "Yacht Club Clubhouse." The title seemed a tad redundant, but I was curious to see what yacht clubs looked like in the midwest.

After all, though I had never been into boating myself, I had certainly attended events at yacht clubs and knew what they were like: large, bare buildings with a basic kitchen and bathroom and a big empty room where presumably the members meet and fight over the cost of repairing the marina. Outside would be a long marina and a whole lot of boats.

As we drove up, I noted the building was rather small. Also it seemed to be on a bit of a hill. Inside, it was quite the most elegantly furnished "yacht club" I had ever seen, with nautically-themed decor and cream-colored leather sofas. However, hard as I peered through the gathering darkness outside I could see no sign of actual boats. Or, for that matter, water, except for a small pond and a half-empty swimming pool.

Maybe they run remote-controlled yacht races in the swimming pool.

Marital Strength Test

Yes, DOB and QOC have survived the ultimate test to the strength of their marriage. It's not balancing the checkbook or even remodelling.

The ultimate test is whether you can jointly sort through boxes of old stuff and decide what to throw away and what to keep.

This is because the balance of nature is so arranged that a person who treasures the ball maze game Mrs. Feeblemeister gave them for reciting Psalm 1 in Sunday School in 1985 invariably marries someone who would throw away the crown jewels if they took too long to dust. And few issues so resonate with the deepest core values of a person as what they think is worth keeping around.

Not that I can't appreciate the value of having a saver around. For instance, DOB still has five boxes of toys left from childhood, many of which our own children will be allowed to enjoy. (One box has been designated Daddy's Toys and cannot be touched without careful supervision.) I have half-a-dozen stuffed animals, everything else having passed into the communal stock at my family's house, where it was destroyed by succeeding generations of siblings, guests, and grandchildren.

Still, it is a challenge to learn the proper reverence with which one should approach the heirlooms of childhood. I knew my approach was still wrong when I found myself asking if the mud on the truck tires was heirloom mud or I could wash it off . . .

Regardless, we got twelve boxes sorted and moved up to the attic. Now comes the really hard part: sorting old files and schoolwork. But I have a crib offer, so something's got to go in there.

Doctor's Orders

The case of the woman charged with murder for refusing a C-section first freaked me out; then it didn't sound so bad; then I thought about it more and decided it was still freaky.

Certainly her decision sounds unwise and even cruel. I would agree that she was wrong. But what makes it murder? She didn't do anything except allow nature to take its course. Arguably, she had a duty to act since the babies were dependent on her, but at worst, that should be involuntary manslaughter.

What worries me is how this could be applied. What if I was recommended to take a C-section as the best option for my baby, but we decided the benefits didn't outweigh the risks to me and the baby? (C-sections by no means guarantee a better outcome than vaginal birth, except in a few rare circumstances.) What if I refuse some other form of medical intervention and then something goes wrong?

The stories all contain a quote that they could find no motive other than cosmetic for the mother to act as she did. But motive is irrelevant to a murder charge; it just helps justify it in public. What if the prosecutor considered my concerns insubstantial? For example, if the C-section was not clearly necessary, I could well be influenced by the reality that getting insurance coverage for vaginal birth after cesarean is very difficult, and the desire to avoid complications in future pregnancies and deliveries. Is that insufficient reason to buck the doctor?

Or we have decided to have only a minimal number of tests, avoiding ultrasound and the like. What if it later turns out that the baby has a problem that could have been averted/proactively treated had we had more tests? Could we be liable for that?

I don't think we want a world where parents have a legal duty to follow doctor's orders. Doctors aren't any more infallible than parents. And the old saying bears repeating: Hard cases make bad law.

Brilliant Wives and the Men Who Disagree With Them

Re-taking the test in mind of my views 5 years ago, when I was young and unexperienced, scored me a 44. Hmm. QOC has certainly enhanced my ability to defend "statist" views in libertarian company. Note that the yes/no question reads "Is all government inherently evil?" Of course it isn't. Civil government was ordained by God to defend us against evil. Crooked politicians are evil.

Sidenote: why are bloggers so stupid? Last night I saw one of the recently-made blogs on blogger.com, the title of which was an eloquent "moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo". Time was, one had to have something intelligent to say and be able to express it in detail and with logic in order to be heard. Then radio gave a national ear to anyone who sounded good. Then TV gave a national eye to anyone who looked good. Then the internet gave a voice to everyone on the planet. What's worse, good-looking morons or bad-looking morons?

At least QOC, who could do well on TV or radio, could still do well in the old newspaper realm, too.

Statists and the Women Who Love Them

Actually, according to the scoring table, "Your libertarian credentials are obvious. Doubtlessly you will become more extreme as time goes on."

Especially married to me. ;-)

Come on now, "Government is eeeevvvvviillllll."

Lunch Break
I got a 32. We need to talk. ; )

Ideological Purity and Clean Dishes

In the interest of maintaining order at the in-law's house while the parents-in-law are out of town for the weekend, we have taken next-to-youngest brother-in-law in for a few days. (They're all good kids, but four unsupervised boys between 11 and 17 are a dangerous combination no matter what their behavior.) He is doing all my housework for me so I can write thank you notes. I can't wait to have teenagers.

I also took a test of the purity of one's libertarian leanings, which is the best libertarian test I've seen so far. I came out with 75 points, which makes me a medium-core libertarian. I will get DOB to take it and see how he scores--he probably scores a bit lower, but higher than he would have a few years ago, while my score has probably come down. You see how we are corrupting each other. I even paused before answering the question "Is government inherently evil?" as "Yes." (I did mark it as a necessary evil.) I need to go read Justice Without the State and reinvigorate myself. Everyone repeat after me: "Government is eeeevvviiiillll."

New Posting
Wherein I, the affectionately-named "DOB," try to post something on this blog. I don't really have anything profound to say, it just seemed like a cool thing to try for once. The things currently pressing on my mind, as a result of this evening's leisure reading, would require too much explanation: particularly the Wall Street Journal article defending Novak in the matter of the CIA agent expose. Or the fact that the new Porsche GT3 can beat out a Ferrari that's twice the price. One day, hopefully, I'll have money for a Porsche like that... heh, and then I'll spend it on something worthwhile, like down-payment on a farm.

Okay, that's a lot of nothing. I'll go back to reading the more interesting posts on this blog ~

Andree Seu offers a good point: the push for bigamy is perfectly logical next since the needs of a bisexual aren't met by being married to one person of either gender. The only thing to stand in its way would be the reality that gay marriage alone will probably be enough to reduce marriage to irrelevance.

On a lighter note, another Chesterton quote I had to post:

"The woman has a fixed and very well founded idea that if she does not insist on good manners nobody else will. Babies are not always strong on the point of dignity, and grown-up men are quite unpresentable."

Yup. This means you, DOB. ;-)

Tales Out of School

Options for Eating
Yesterday's copy of the local paper (the kind that reports on the table decor at the ladies' club luncheon) contained a story on the district's school breakfast program. They are quite pleased with the response, finding that not only are many students participating at free or reduced cost, but many are paying full price--in other words, their parents certainly could afford to feed them breakfast, they just don't want to bother. Full price is a dollar, which seems cheap compared to breakfast at a restaurant, but would be pretty extravagant for breakfast at home.

And such healthy food as they are getting, carefully designed to meet state nutrition standards: an enriched doughnut, cold cereal such as Trix, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on graham crackers.

My mom wouldn't have let me eat that much sugar for dessert, let alone breakfast.

Options for Thinking
Secularists are gasping with horror at the new lesson plan being offered by the Ohio School Board. Not that it mentions God or creation or anything. It's not even mandated. But teachers would have the option of including a lesson that would allow for critical thinking about evolution.

Can this be constitutional? Surely the Constitution mandates that evolution be taught as unquestionable fact. Considering that Charles Darwin wasn't born when the Constitution was written, I kind of doubt it.

The insidious things students will be taught through this lesson:
* Understanding the nature of theories
* Applying the scientific method
* Distinguishing between microevolution (change within species) and macroevolution (change between species)
* Arguing whether different evidence supports macroevolution or not.

Now, what is so scary about this? Is the theory of evolution so weak that it can't handle a classroom of 16-year-olds thinking critically about it?

The secularists will compare teaching--or even hinting--about intelligent design to giving students the option of considering the flat earth theory. But come to think of it, debating the curvature of the earth, examining the evidence for and against it and allowing students to argue both sides, would be an excellent intellectual exercise. And I'm pretty sure students would come to the conclusion that the earth was, in fact, round.

So what are they so afraid of here?

Churchill
I just finished the first book of Churchill's history of World War II, which culminates with his rise to Prime Minister as Holland and Belgium are invaded by Germany. You have to love his well-deserved self-confidence, with only a hint of irritation at the stupidity of the rest of the world for not confiding in him more:

"Thus, by the afternoon, I became aware that I might well be called upon to take the lead. The prospect neither excited nor alarmed me. I thought it would be by far the best plan."

"Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May, at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs. . . . I cannot conceal from the reader of this truthful account that as I went to bed at about 3 a.m. I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. . . . My warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me. I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams."

There is the voice of a craftsman who knows his job well and is glad for the chance to do it. It just happens that his job is saving civilization.

Dying Brain Cells
While surfing around this morning I found the blog of a former fellow-student at journalism courses in summer '02. A year and a half ago I at least thought I could hold my own in intellectual debate with him, and now he writes about profound philosophical issues while I write about thank-you notes.

I had heard motherhood killed brain cells--I didn't realize it started so soon. You lose your body, you lose your mind, you lose your ability to make plans more than five minutes out. I used to think it odd that such a serious undertaking as bringing another human being into the world was not predicated by a solemn and unpleasant activity that would prove one's commitment to the task. On second thought, if it was, I'm not sure the world population would ever have reached the replacement rate.

Enough depressing thoughts. The problem is not a loss of brainpower, but a necessary diffusion of it. If I cannot be the student of philosophy I was two years ago, it is because I must also keep a house operating, cook healthy food for three very hungry people, run an office, train for a major athletic event, prepare to introduce a new person to the world, and still have the energy to make it all look like fun. It is more important, after all, to live great ideas than just to think them.

Time for another Chesterton quote:
"If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colourless and of small import to the soul, then, as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whitley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness."

There, I feel better now. Back to the dishes.

Gasp

I was so proud of myself for finally sitting down and writing thank you notes--and only six months out, too! But I got stumped on how to write a thank you note for the sixth set of non-matching bath towels ("We'll think of you every time we use them" didn't seem quite appropriate) and started surfing wedding etiquette sites. I found one that says that wedding thank you's should be written two weeks after returning from the honeymoon.

Ha! Our gifts hadn't even arrived two weeks later. Maybe we can get an extension for having a one-day honeymoon? And another one for moving cross-country into an apartment without room for us to even see all our stuff? And another one for being pregnant? And for moving again? Please?

Tacoma Resident Begins Issuing Inter-Appliance Marriage Licenses

Tacoma resident Marcia Pritchards announced Monday that she was issuing a marriage license to her cat and her toaster, who plan to be married this Saturday.

Pritchards said she was inspired by the example of mayors around the nation issuing licenses to same-sex couples. "Then my cat and my toaster came to me, and I realized--they have a truly loving and caring relationship. How can we deny them this basic right?"

Although some have questioned her legal authority to grant such licenses, Pritchards remains adamant. "I think the laws are open to interpretation. What I go with is the Constitution, which guarantees equality. We can't deny my cat the right to marry the one he loves."

Pritchards said she would issue licenses to any other couple who requested them. "I think something's developing between my neighbor's lawnmower and the oak tree on the corner," she commented. "If they came to me I'd be delighted to marry them."

Legal Challenges

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels would like to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but it turns out he lacks legal authority.

Well, come on, that hasn't stopped anyone else.

(Technical explanation: Cities don't issue marriage licenses in Washington.)

It's snowing. Bad. It's March. No. More. Snow.

Which Founding Father Are You?

Both DOB and I got this result, although DOB also tried answering as his "less refined" self and came up as Alexander Hamilton. Although I don't concur with the lack of creativity, the Washington answers about handling conflict fit me to a T, especially the one that said, "I never lose my temper where people will see; it's crude. Besides, well-bred people don't lose their tempers with those stupider than themselves." I'm not patient, I'm just arrogant.

Ramble on SSM

One of the best arguments against same-sex marriage from a secular standpoint is the harm it will do to children by dissasociating marriage from parenthood. Usually those arguing for SSM argue back that "gays make good parents, too" and that not all heterosexual couples want to/have children. Both of which are missing the point: a society in which marriage is only about the feelings of two people for each other is a society in which marriage is meaningless. And that is a society that is bad for children. In a recent Weekly Standard article, Stanley Kurtz demonstrates is not merely a theoretical one: This is in fact what has happened in Scandinavia, where gay marriage has been lawful for a decade.

In Scandinavia, half or nearly half of children are born out of wedlock. A decade ago the thing to do was get married when the second child came along; now it's not even worth bothering about then. And non-marital families are as proportionally unstable there as they are everywhere else in the world. Certainly this trend was already occurring, but gay marriage has been openly used to reinforce the idea that children do not particularly need both the man and woman who made them as a permanent part of their lives.

Obviously gay marriage does not even arise as an issue until social mores have already slid to a certain point. In America, we're still one step behind where most Scandinavian countries were a decade ago--it's still considered proper to marry before having children, although of course you will live together first. (DOB and I did not realize how common this assumption was in the wider culture until he started introducing me as his fiancee and people would make comments indicating this. He finally resorted to casually mentioning my residence in another state, although I'm sure this didn't change their assumptions much. Little did they know we weren't even allowed to sleep under the same roof during visits, no matter how many inquisitive siblings that roof also sheltered.)

However, Norway was at a similar level of social mores when gay marriage was imposed by the politicians--and it thereafter rapidly overtook the other Scandinavian countries in decline of the family, as well as decline of religious influence.

Apparently, then, attempting to stop the imposition of gay marriage now is a worthwhile endeavor, at least preventing the decline of morals from accelerating. But it will only be a temporary measure unless we can also rebuild the status of marriage. Obviously this cannot be done by laws alone, or even primarily through laws, since most of it has happened independent of law.

But how do we do it? Somehow goodness isn't as contagious as badness. Sure, being married is right and benefits us and our child(ren), as did waiting to act married until we actually were. But when a friend announces he is now engaged to his live-in girlfriend, do we respond? Bragging about one's morality seems as vulgar as bragging about immorality. And if one never says anything, how does one's marriage differ from anyone else's lifestyle choices?

It is vital to upholding the proper place of marriage for people to see and know about good marriages. Living well is the greatest force for changing the world. But how do you make it apparent to people that one's marital success is not due to a fortuitous coincidence of personalities, or of an extraordinary genetic endowment of martyrdom, but because one has tapped into the power of a universal principle?

Whatever it takes to be an example of good marriage, I'm sure it takes more than a successful six months. Unfortunately, those who should be examples are not. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an article on seniors living together. If Mom and Dad are divorced and Grandma lives with her boyfriend, where do you learn? At the end, a grandmother offered her prepared answer for when her nine-year-old grandson asked why she wasn't married: "Grandmom and Grandpop love each other and love you. We're all committed to each other. We don't need that in writing to be a family."

But any nine-year-old can see through that. If you meant it, you'd be willing to cross your heart and hope to die. We all know how the promise is made--and if you won't make it, all your other words don't mean a thing.

The Cake Is Made

And it is very good. Since I only had one layer and it looked rather flat, I decided to cut it in thirds and make a three-layer cake. This worked quite well, except that it looks like I quietly ate two-thirds of a triple-decker cake this afternoon. Really, I didn't. Even pregnant I couldn't do that.

Essential Recipes

I had plans this week to make spice cake with penuche icing. We're not big sweets eaters, but I like to fix a dessert for the weekend.

I found a recipe for spice cake, but then discovered none of my cookbooks had the right penuche icing recipe. (For those who don't peruse the cookbooks of a bygone era, penuche icing is a kind of creamy brown-sugar icing.) There were similar recipes, but they were not the recipe.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had to have the right recipe. That my day would not be complete without licking the leftover penuche icing in the pan. So I called my younger sister and had her find the page in the right recipe book (no doubt marred permanently by my adolescent cooking endeavors) and give it to me. Now all is well, except that I have to wait until the cake is all baked and cooled to make the frosting.

My sister also announced that she thinks the cat is expecting again. Do pregnant cats get cravings? "I've just got to have a little mole. No, a shrew will not do."

And so the breakdown of law spreads.

I don't want same-sex marriage to be the battle of our times. I don't like this issue. It's gooky. I'm not satisfied with the secular arguments that can be made, and I don't want to make the religious ones.

But I don't think it's a side issue I can ignore, either. We don't always get to choose where the battles of our times will be.

Even if right now I'm not doing much besides trying to take over the world by numbers . . .

The Morning Newslinks

DOB: Great, now they're going to pass an anti-spam law.

QOC: That's stupid. If they wait a year or two the private sector will take care of it.

DOB: How?

QOC: I was reading about it. A bunch of the big email providers are working on stuff like requiring verification of email addresses so spammers can't get around blocks by spoofing addresses.

DOB: Well, if the private sector was about to solve it, no wonder the government had to act fast.

The Passion

After much careful deliberation, DOB and I overcame our natural skinflintedness (compounded by trying to simultaneously pay for a new business, new house, and new baby) and general inbred prejudices against movie theaters and determined to go see The Passion. It probably helped us in this decision that we are rather out of mainstream evangelical culture and nobody tried to talk us into going. So we could satisfy our contrarian tendencies and go to it to defy the critics and naysayers.

I was a little nervous because I'd never seen an R-rated movie before and I kept reading reviews by all these movie reviewers saying they found it overly gory--so if people who watch this stuff all the time were grossed out about it, how would I handle it? But the conclusion I have come to is that the people who complain about the violence are those who don't get why. Yes, you sit there and wonder, "Why don't they stop doing this to him?" but if you are expecting to be reminded of the magnitude of Christ's suffering, you get what you are looking for. It is too much violence to be entertaining (unless you are a Roman soldier) but not too much to be devotional.

Some reviewers have complained that Pilate was portrayed too sympathetically, in contrast with the portrayal of the Sanhedrin. But Pilate's portrayal was one of the most powerful and convicting parts of the film. You feel convinced that you have met Pilate somewhere, at a conference or something. And gradually it dawns on you--Pilate is us. Pilate is a modern American. Most of us don't think of ourselves as the sole representatives of the One True God, nor are we debauched hereditary monarchs or trained sadistic brutes. We would have little identification with the Sanhedrin or Herod or the foot soldiers however they were portrayed. But Pilate is a businessman. A businessman with a crummy assignment in middle management and a pointy-wreathed boss breathing down his neck. In person, he wouldn't hurt a fly. But when faced with the choice between saving his skin and condemning a man whom he knows to be innocent and suspects to be divine, he chooses the expedient option. He feels bad about it, but what can he do? Who really knows the truth, anyway?

And as you watch him, you know that you could do the same.

We have a playpen in our living room. Somebody at church gave it to us and I'm leaving it out partly because I mean to take it out and wash it down the next dry day and partly because I'm trying to adjust to the mental shock. It seems like it should belong to a visitor who will take it away. Or that it should be in someone else's house. The thought of us with a real, live, squirmy baby is still beyond comprehension.

Bar Exams I'm Glad I Didn't Take

Despite the accompanying agony, I am glad to have taken two bar exams. It was a challenge, an opportunity to prove myself, a validation of my strength and fortitude--sort of like childbirth, only with longer gestation.

But there are a few I'm glad I missed out on. Like the February 2001 Washington Bar Exam, which I had applied for, but my application was delayed while the Board of Governors considered whether I was qualified to take it. That was the year of the 6.8 earthquake in the middle of the exam. And I understand the earthquake was even more exciting in Seattle than it was in Olympia, where I was trying to stay awake at my desk that day and needed a little excitement.

Then there's this year's California Bar Exam at Pasadena (where I took it back in 2000). Apparently the room where they laptop users were taking the test flooded Thursday morning, preventing them from starting the last essay session until 11:30 a.m.; this meant they had to cancel the afternoon performance test. What this will do to their scores no one knows yet. Poor souls. I had many scary hypotheticals as to what could happen to prevent the bar exam from going on, but somehow floods in Southern CA did not occur to me.

Aaaaarrrgggghhhh!

Finally we have the radio hooked up--finally I can listen to the 11 o'clock classic radio hour while doing my classic household tasks.

And today it's a two hour special. Why? BECAUSE IT'S FUNDRAISING WEEK, OF COURSE!!!!

I hate fundraising drives. I hate public radio. Yes, I'm an unrepentant freeloader. Get some commercials, people! At least they are occasionally witty and entertaining, not a half-hour guilt trip.

Shocking Error

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. When I was serving DOB his dinner he looked in horror at one of my purchases. "You brought Heinz ketchup?" he said, "Don't you know that's like giving a donation to John Kerry?"

Alas, I don't usually think about politics in the seasonings aisle. (Difficult though that is to believe.)

But this makes me ponder how unpleasant it must be to be a tycoon. It doesn't matter what one's name was before, or how intrinsically dignified it is, ever afterwards it is associated with ketchup or tires or chocolate bars or whatever it was you got filthy rich selling. Of course, if one's name was something like "Burpee" in the first place, one might as well get rich selling cucumber seeds as not.

Speaking of people who have a lot of kids (but not too many), congratulations are in order to our good friends the Hastings, who welcomed home their ninth this week. And the older children cleaned the house and prepared a festive dinner of (since it was a girl) pink things.

I'm jealous--I wish I had eight people to clean the house and fix dinner while I go have a baby. But one must start without such advantages.

We have radio working!! Now I can listen to the classical station all day--except of course, over noon, when the old time radio dramas come on. Hurrah! (We never got it working at the old place, so this is a first-time-ever occurrence.)

I no longer begrudge my brother-in-law his poached eggs and toast, even though I'm wondering if I'll be able to make the eggs last until Friday.

Going crazy

Reader's Digest this month had an article on the Andrea Yates case; shed some interesting light on the "homeschool mom who goes crazy from being stuck at home with too many kids" cast that it seemed to have when it was playing in the media. Mrs. Yates had apparently suffered from bipolar disorder since she had been a teenager; it had worsened after her fourth child and she had become suicidal. (Plus the family seemed to have a certain lack of common sense--say deciding after having three children that it would be better to live in a trailer than in a house.)

So no, normal people do not just go off and kill their kids, even if they have a lot of them and stay with them all the time.

Weird dream pertaining to maternity clothes:

Last week, before going shopping, I dreamed about going shopping for maternity clothes. In my dream I found a very good sale on some attractive denim jackets. This was an excellent deal. It was such a good deal that DOB got excited and started calling all his law school buddies to ask them if we wanted them to pick up jackets for them. Somehow I was unable to explain to him that they probably were not in the market for maternity-sized jackets.

No doubt this reveals some deep psychological attempt to come to terms with my new identity or something.

And I didn't even remember to buy a jacket when I went shopping!

I'm posting online tests; how cheesy. But I was highly amused by the "Which Rule of Federal Procedure are you?" question. (I'm Rule 11, requiring proper investigation of claims before filing; DOB is the easy-going Rule 8(a), whose rule can be summed up, as in the poem I composed while studying these:

"In most states, or in federal court,
A statement that is plain and short
Of claim to ease the plaintiff's grief
Must show that he can get relief."

And then there is the one my weird aunt posted on Multiple Intelligences.

The Seven Intelligence Areas

Linguistic: 9
Logical-Mathematical: 9
Spatial: 3
Bodily-Kinesthetic: 6
Musical: 6
Interpersonal: 6
Intrapersonal: 3

A Short Definition of your Highest Score

Linguistic - the ability to use language to describe events, to build trust and rapport, to develop logical arguments and use rhetoric, or to be expressive and metaphoric. Possible vocations that use linguistic intelligence include journalism, administrator, contractor, salesperson, clergy, counselors, lawyers, professor, philosopher, playwright, poet, advertising copywriter and novelist.

Logical-Mathematical - the ability to use numbers to compute and describe, to use mathematical concepts to make conjectures, to apply mathematics in personal daily life, to apply mathematics to data and construct arguments, to be sensitive to the patterns, symmetry, logic, and aesthetics of mathematics, and to solve problems in design and modeling. Possible vocations that use the logical-mathematics intelligence include accountant, bookkeeper, statistician, tradesperson, homemaker, computer programmer, scientist, composer, engineer, inventor, or designer.

Observations:

1. I'm still not as smart, over all, as my weird aunt. However, I slightly outscore her on logic, which is probably what helps me survive when we debate.

2. The low spatial reasoning score can be testified to by anyone who has watched me park, which was a favorite form of office amusement at my former place of employment. Now it just causes DOB to despair as I can't seem to find the curb without running over it.

3. So homemaker is a prime career choice for us logical/mathematical people. I feel my self-worth growing already. Now I'll go use my logical and mathematical skills to figure out how to make one week's worth of groceries last two extra days and what portions of a wardrobe can be reconfigured to use on someone with ten inches more padding around the waist.

All right, time to post random thoughts that have been lurking about. Maybe I should resolve to post one thing during breakfast every weekday. (Saturday breakfast is for leisurely conversation; Sunday breakfast is for getting food down ASAP without dumping it on church clothes.)

Clothing
Finally went shopping for maternity clothes on Friday. Not as painful as I thought--found several things that might look kind of good even when I do look like I did with that "three-month pillow" on. Ugh. And did not spend too much.

I was exhibiting my purchases to DOB and he admired a denim jumper I had selected. "Wow, you even found some second-hand stuff," he said in the tone of one commending a frugal wife. Alas, I had to explain that people deliberately try to make new denim look old in these decadent times. I did get it on clearance, though.

Acting
Why should it even be an issue, when people are selecting their "favorites" with actors whether they attractive or not? It seems rather like selecting one's auto mechanic or doctor for that reason. Shouldn't the issue be whether they can act? Sure it may be nicer to look at a pretty actor than an ugly one, but it's nicer to look at a good-looking auto mechanic, too. (For the record, the only mechanics I've ever dealt with have been family members or old.) That's one advantage of the stage--it requires acting to a much greater degree than film, so you get to watch people selected based on their ability to act.

Random Cool Chesterton Quote
And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,
And rare in our pockets the mark of mint,
When we were angry and poor and happy,
And proud of seeing our name in print.

So I was trying to rest a few days ago and reading the small-town newspaper from cover to cover because it was handy. There was an insert with an article interviewing various minor celebrities and asking them what their favorite romantic book was. One woman said "Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems." Fine selection, and better than the drivel everyone else had selected, except then she went on to say, "I don't know whether she ever met the guy or what, but they're just so romantic blah blah blah."

OK, I realize some people slept through that part of English Lit and don't know that Elizabeth Barrett wrote those poems to Robert Browning and they eloped and lived happily ever after. But really, I would think someone with a modicum of interest in the writing might, say, read the flyleaf and find out the back story. Do people have no curiosity anymore? What good is the information age if people have no interest in the information?

Or maybe it's the overload of information itself that destroys all curiosity. I certainly feel more curious about life when I'm cut off from the internet than after an hour of surfing. So time to go develop my curiosity. Maybe with a nice nap.

We have moved. The computers are working again. The house is nice.

More entertaining comments once we've gotten rid of more visible boxes and I've caught up on sleep.

According to a prominent financial planner, it is useless to tell people to plan carefully for their children. The reason? They hate their children. However, tell them to plan for the grandchildren, and the toughest customer becomes a soft sell. After all, grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies--they have a common enemy.

As a soon-to-be parent, I don't find this encouraging.

All right, I admit, I have a problem. I scored about 11 out of a possible 14, which probably means I should check myself in somewhere immediately. DOB scored only 8, which still indicates a serious problem. And no doubt we will become parents of FFS sufferers, and perpetuate the problem to another generation. Tragic.

Useful Statistic

According to Reader's Digest, 78% of households with an overweight family member experience stress.

This raises two questions:

1. What is wrong with the other 22%?

2. Would someone fat please move in with us to lower our chances of experiencing stress? I don't know any all-thin households that never experience it.

Favorite smart remarks to responses to pregnancy announcement:

"Are you going to find out what it is?"

"No, we plan to change the diapers blindfolded and allow it to define its own gender."

"Was it planned?"

"Yeah, I had 'get pregnant' down in my daytimer right next to my dinner menus for the next nine months."

"Don't you know what causes that?"

"Oh yes, we know, but we're kind of wondering about you."
(Actually we haven't reached the stage where people ask this yet, but I heard that one from a usually demure mother of soon-to-be 9 who likes to use it on the purposefully childless.)

With Democratic presidential candidates working to top each other on who can propose the highest minimum raise and the biggest soak-the-rich tax increase, how long will it be before the two meet in the middle and minimum-wage workers qualify as rich?

It’s cookie baking weekend. And I am not there.

I could begin by reiterating that the Cookie Bake, in its current form, is not my fault. But that would contradict my general policy of accepting blame when possible, since I am less troubled by guilt than the other females in my family. If it makes them feel better to blame me, I will let them and go on my merry way.

So here is their story: Once upon a time, when Karen was a little girl, her mother wanted to trick her (that is, the mother’s) sister, who was not particularly fond of children, into babysitting. So she asked Karen’s aunt, whose skills at baking were well known, to come and bake cookies with the children. Then she and Karen’s dad sneaked out and went Christmas shopping.

And the next year Karen brightly asked, “When are we having our traditional cookie bake?” Thus it was canonized.

Well, yes, maybe so. I have a fatal habit of getting a single simple and romantic ideal, like feeding a stray cat, and only discovering later that I have opened a restaurant for cats and all other mammals of moderate size. Because in my family ideas never live alone. Other ideas flock after them, spawned by their interaction in the network of our all-too-fertile brains. It’s synergy at its most dangerous.

Somehow that simple afternoon that produced, say, 24 dozen cookies, grew to The Annual Cookies To The Death Marathon Weekend.

It grew gradually, of course. One year we tried one new variety, and it became somebody’s favorite. The next year somebody else saw a cool idea and tried something else. And again it stuck. Naturally if you have a semi-immediate family of fifteen to twenty people, you have fifteen to twenty favorites. And then there are the cookies whose position is so sacred that nobody even bothers to claim them as favorites. Like krumkaka, a traditional Norwegian cookie, which actually gets its own special day separate from The Cookie Bake.

Malinda and Becky both like to Organize Things. So they begin plotting weeks, nay months in advance, as to what we will have this year. Some time ago they began aspiring for a single cookie variety in every potential flavor. Not that flavor alone is sufficient. It also must be artistically decorated, with a reasonable variety of shapes.

To save time during the weekend itself, dough and even some of the cookies are made in advance. Does this simplify the work and get everyone in bed sooner? Of course not—it frees up time for more, and more elaborate, varieties. (I should note here that we have almost never done those flat sugar cookies decorated with frosting. Too simple and too much like what normal people do.)

No doubt they have a new division of labor this year. When I was still there, Malinda organized the program of the day, printed recipes and did the more complex icing. Becky did the most labor-intensive shaping and baking, while I concentrated on the mass produced varieties. Sarah specialized in no-bake or no mix kinds. We switched off mixing dough according to whose specialty in other realms was currently up.

Cookie Bake has its own attendant traditions besides aching backs and feet, of course. There is the curious assortment of eccentric Christmas music Malinda puts on the CD player. (A Goth Noel, anyone?) There are the hasty but very welcome snacks of meat and vegetables provided as a respite from endless gobs of sugar. There are the towering plates of cookies, wrapped in cellophane, to bedazzle the favored friends and relations. And there is the end result, which is a Christmas dinner which is only an excuse to provide enough protein to balance the sugar high.

And sometimes, Christmas cookies lingering until Valentine’s Day. But we try to dump them before that. After all, we’ve got a great idea for a new Valentine’s dessert . . . .

Now, thoughts on SSM, all the better for having been honed by a lively debate a few weeks back.

I don't think civil government can do much to help marriage along, any more than I believe it can do much to help the free market along. I do believe it can do a great deal to hurt it. It's already done this by no-fault divorce, which has lowered the standard for dissolving a marriage to below that of dissolving an ordinary contract. It can do it again by defining marriage as any group of people who happen to love each other and feel like signing a paper on it. We would undoubtedly be better off if government got out of the marriage business altogether than for it to take this next step.

But I don't think that would be workable. Somehow the state has to have a way to figure out who is responsible for these children that keep popping up inconveniently. It has to have a way to allocate inheritances, charge someone with children's debts, hold someone responsible for their support. This has nothing to do with the state interfering with the business of the family, it's just part of the state doing its job to protect individual rights. I can think of three ways for the state to handle the problem:

a. Charge only the person who's handy and obviously to blame: the mother. This is simple and avoids prying into details, but it seems distinctly unjust. It took two to tango, after all. Surely there should be some way to hold the other party involved responsible for the direct consequences of his actions.

b. Leave it all to individual contract and agreement and just have people come and try to prove them in court. This would be the pure libertarian approach, I believe. It sounds nice, but I don't think it would work. If we need a public registry to make sure people don't cheat and lie about land transactions, how much more is it needed to limit people's ability to cheat and lie about something we all know they cheat and lie about all the time? What's a court to do if a woman comes seeking child support against a man she was married to in one church, and the man brings up evidence that she was married to someone else in another church three months earlier? Who is responsible? (It reminds me of a scene in a hilarious old movie where a guy is honestly trying to prove he did not father a girl's child, but then so is the girl--who isn't actually the mother--and somebody else and they wind up with three guys claiming paternity, much to the incredulity of the interested party.) Paternity tests just aren't definite enough to settle these things.

c. As in the case of land, create a written registry whereby a woman can go and get advance certification that a man will be held responsible as her children's father. Then there's something definite the courts can look to for proof of responsibility. (As a corollary, make it fairly difficult to get those benefits outside the registry, or people won't use it. Again, we do the same thing with land.)

Now, it’s clear that if you look at marriage in this light, there is absolutely no logical reason for extending it to same-sex couples. They have no grounds for concern that babies might incidentally result from their union. If they want to go out and hunt babies up, they can make their own legal arrangements before anything happens. And if we do extend marriage to same-sex couples, we effectively divorce it from any connection with children and property succession. It becomes something the state does to provide people with validation for their personal relationships. Not only is this none of the state’s business, it will actively work against marriage as an institution that protects children’s rights because the personal validation of adults is definitely not necessarily in the best interests of children.

This marriage registry is obviously a long, long ways from the high and holy state of matrimony. That it is indeed up to the church to reinvigorate and restore. (Once it gets the egg off its own face over divorce.) It's going to provide the vast array of social benefits of marriage only in a strong society with character to support it--just as the free market can't exist in a society that doesn't have initiative and honesty. But I think there is a place for the state to keep track of who's who, so that it can charge the right people when something goes wrong.

And I don't think this involves civil government deciding what is good for children, particularly, just dealing with the realities of life in the most logical fashion. As it turns out, marriage is good for children, but that's not why it's important to the state--it is important to the state to order the disorder that children create. (In the end, too, the state is going to have to interfere between parents and children in some degree--when their life is threatened, or liberty is unreasonably trammeled. And the state is going to have to set up rules on what becomes of orphans. There will always be a gray line where the state has to decide what is good for children, which parents must watch vigorously.)

In summary, I don't think you can get the state out of the marriage business entirely without messing up its ability to properly enforce rights and responsibilities. I don't expect the state to make marriage better, but I would like it to stop making things worse by disconnecting it from its one obvious civil purpose. And I also think it's high time the church started preaching by example instead of just by political action.

Every once in a while I need to post just to make sure I still remember my username and password.

Yep.

Right now I'm eating and napping for two, and that takes up pretty much all the time there is in the day. But I'm still busy thinking brilliant thoughts when I can. Read Whittaker Chambers last week and am now reading a third person's account of the Hiss case. Fascinating stuff, although I don't think I have the head for details needed for espionage.

OK, brief note on the drama we went to: Click here if you want to read its own promotion.

Basically it provided a version of the gospel that was too thin, and therefore ultimately inadequate. “You might die at any time, so accept Jesus or you’ll go to hell.” It portrayed this particular message effectively in an emotional sense, and I suppose might be effective in getting conversions of a sort among people who enjoy being emotionally moved. Personally I resent it (even when I think the emotion justified), so in that sense perhaps I’m not a competent judge of its effect on such people, but even among them I doubt how long they would stay true to such a “conversion.”

But intellectually the drama left me almost ready to ask the classic anti-God question: “How can a loving God do this to people?” The impression was of ordinary Joes, doing their thing, suddenly discovering that because of an oversight they are condemned to eternal torment. There was little impression that these people deserved what they got. Which, if God is just, must be the case—and if we truly knew our own hearts, we’d know we deserved it ourselves. The real problem was that the law was left out. Punishment without judgment can only be capricious cruelty. There was some attribution of various “sins” that had kept people from accepting Christ (alcohol and partying, mainly), but none that truly reflected God’s law.

Hell was also depicted in a manner that is contrary to the Bible, but commonly presented in cartoons—a sort of concentration camp run by Satan.

What I would like to see now is a drama that really showed the ultimate issues, in a way that made heaven and hell the natural outgrowths of human choices, not the arbitrary imposition of a divine dictator. I can think of two forms. One would be an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, in which souls must choose between clinging to whatever “good” or evil thing is to them more important than accepting the rule of God, or surrendering it and being able to enter into the ultimate reality of heaven. But the landscape of Lewis’ heaven might be too much to stage—it might work as a radio type drama. Although it is not explicit in the Bible, I tend to agree with Lewis’ interpretation that ultimately those souls who go to hell go there because they want to—because in hell they can continue in some sense running their own lives rather than reaching the ultimate joy through submission.

The other would be a courtroom drama in which the accuser of the brethren would be pleading as to why certain souls deserved eternal damnation. (I don’t think Satan runs hell, but he apparently keeps tabs on who deserves to go there.) People could serve as their own counsel, pledging their absence of various overt crimes, or various good deeds. Then the prosecutor could—perhaps via video footage (my siblings and I for some reason believed when small that our entire lives would be replayed verbatim at the gates of heaven—not true as far as I know, but useful for a play)—break apart their pretensions. Show the smoldering hatred that was kept back from murder only by an even more damning pride. Uncover the self-righteousness that poisoned their best deeds. Expose the lust, the covetousness, the bitterness, that poisons the souls of ordinary nice guys (and gals). Except for some defendants, who would have willingly accepted the court appointment of an Advocate, and who would find that all their tapes had been erased.

Thus far, two churches visited.

Church A: Unfamiliar denomination, further into town, know some of the people through music. Nice service, classically-trained musicians, beautiful old church building. Nebulous doctrine and correspondingly nebulous sermon.

Church B: Semi-familiar denomination, 1 minute drive, didn’t know a soul. Pole barn style of building, service the sort of blend between “traditional” and “contemporary” that occurs when a pastor is trying to change things to the latest trendy church-growth methods without disturbing the old guard too much. Reasonably definite doctrine; sermon was OK but was all part of a prepackaged deal that the church is going through, so don’t know what it’s like when the pastor preaches his own.

We went back for an evening drama (on which more later if I get really inspired). The pastor’s wife seemed surprised to see us and came over to talk, explaining why they did things the way they did things. Some points that came up either in our discussion with her and with each other later on and as I’m writing stuff down right now:

1. Tradition for the sake of tradition is bad, but change for the sake of change is worse. And worse yet is change in style of worship for the sake of attracting a certain segment of the population. Traditions undoubtedly had some sort of reason for them when they started—it might be good to find it out before discarding it. And a church should never be making changes so it can increase its numbers, or even concerned about them except as a symptom.. Worshipping God and serving people are the appropriate focuses of a church. Any other focus is going to happen to the detriment of the proper focus. (I doubt that this church would claim this was its focus, but it was mentioned numerous times in the sermon and in private conversation.)

2. There is a big gap between what is inherently evil and what is appropriate and conducive to corporate worship. Big band music is cool, but no matter what lyrics you put to “Boogie Woogie,” it would not be suitable for public worship. Sure, I think one can boogie to the glory of God, but there are lots of activities I can do to the glory of God that I wouldn’t dream of doing in the weekly gathering of believers. So merely saying that “God likes all kinds of music” (repeated several times at the church) is a long way from proving that a particular style of music is going to focus the gathering’s attention directly on God and his attributes.

3. Both the traditionalists and the contemporists (for lack of better terms) tend to come back to a similar basis: how this or that music and style makes them feel. Which is irrelevant. Worship is not feeling good about God. It is ascribing worth and value to God. And frankly, I don’t see how much worth and value one ascribes to God with the “Jesus is my boyfriend” sort of songs. (A fair amount of hymns don’t talk much about God’s worth and value, either.) Nor does repeating the same phrase over and over a gazillion times seem an appropriate method of worship (warnings about “vain repetitions” come to mind here—it’s hard to keep your brain in gear when you just keep repeating the same thing.)

4. Categories are not really that helpful. For example, “moving your body is bad” versus “moving your body is good”: if someone finds raising their hands in the air or clapping expresses their worship to God, fine. Hip-dancing with your saxophone during the invitation is a different matter entirely. A good general rule might be that actions drawing attention to one’s self are inappropriate in worship. People should be looking at God, not at you. Another unhelpful category is “hymns” versus “choruses” or “contemporary” or what have you. What makes one something versus the other? The question should be Biblical accuracy, divine focus, and excellence in style. (I cannot believe God is glorified by bad grammar in people who should know better.) ;

Having been rebuked by our sole reader for a long delay in posting, we attempt to resume.

Being young is seriously overrated. I am starting to suffer from severe generational envy, looking at people whose children are grown, whose careers are established, whose personal items are no longer stored in boxes in the living room, and who actually have some sort of clue what they are doing every day.. The only compensating factors for being young seem to be health, energy, and good looks, and I have never had much of the first two, and whatever I have of the third (DOB: I think she has plenty) doesn’t get the house cleaned up.

Actually, we have at last realized the benefit of having friends in one’s own age bracket, because spending all one’s time with older people makes one feel hopelessly falling apart. We came away much encouraged from a visit Monday night with another young couple. We are not the only ones whose first home was mostly decorated with unpacked boxes! Now if we could only find a church and actually get some friends who did not live an hour away. On the church hunting issue, more later.