Mark Pettigrew's Blog

Kelsey Grammer in Boss

2011-10-22T14:59:00.001-05:00

I just watched the preview of Kelsey Grammer's new Starz show, "Boss" Wow! It definitely looks to me as if it's going to be a winner.

Grammer's success has far surpassed mine in most respects. He is considerably different from me in other respects, too. Yet his life has occasionally had some interesting parallels to my own.

For one thing, there's the connection with the cities of Boston, Chicago and Seattle. Kelsey's first show, Cheers, was set in a fictitious Boston bar (for which there was a real life corrolary, which they actually named after the show). I lived in Boston for seven years during the 80s. (Earlier, right after graduating from high school, I worked at the Teen Challenge in Brocton, MA, and I visited Boston several times during that period, even attending a church which met near Harvard at one point). They were still filming that show when I was living in Boston, as I recall.

Another big city with which I have more than a passing familiarity is Chicago, where I lived in a 22 story YMCA SRO (single room occupancy) apartment named Lawson House, from 1992 until just last year. I even remember seeing Mayor Daley when he visited our building briefly not long after I'd moved there.

If you've read about "Boss", it's Grammer's first non-comedy TV show, and Grammer plays the role of the Mayor of Chicago, who they have given the name of Tom Kane. (Citizen Kane, perhaps?)

It wasn't Kelsey Grammer's first connection with Chicago. John Mahoney, the guy who played Frasier Crane's father, lived in Oak Park (a western suburb of Chicago), and I bumped into him one day while I was checking out some of the shops out in that suburb. It wasn't an interaction he would remember, but it was memorable to me nevertheless.
Then late last year, I moved from Chicago to Bellingham, WA. It's not quite Seattle (where the show "Frasier" was based), but pretty close to Seattle. About 80 miles or so to the north.

During his years in comedy, Kelsey reminded me of myself, physically, in terms of the bald head, and (for quite a bit of time) in terms of the beard, too. (But his beard was pretty short, compared with mine.) There were differences, including the fact that he was a bit more trim and fit than I was, but the similarities were noticeable enough that someone I once met commented on those similarities.

The Frasier Crane character was known for being slightly pompous, but it was also clear that he was a pretty intelligent and educated person. Also, he played the piano. In both of those respects, he and I were and are quite similar. (Hopefully, I wouldn't be described by most folks as pompous! Then again, perceptions are hard to control. Some people think that anyone capable of speaking in a manner which is grammatically correct are pompous by definition.)

I often watched and enjoyed "Frasier" when it was on the air, but I think that the thing I liked the least about the Frasier Crane character was his cavalier attitude towards casual sex. It seemed as if the script writers always had him falling into one woman's bed or another. Yet, his failures in terms of relationships did have a kind of endearing quality, to which I could kind of relate.

It's pretty hard to watch the preview of the new show "Boss" without being reminded of the city I came to know, if not necessarily to love.

While living in Chicago, I couldn't help but be impressed by the manner in which they eventually improved the areas now known as Navy Pier and Millenium Park respectively. (Actually, Navy Pier has been known by that name for a very long time, but when I first moved there, it wasn't very impressive to me. While it was eventually transformed into a bit of a "tourist trap", that was better than what it had once been.) It's a better city than it once was, and for all of his flaws, I think that the second mayor Daley can take some of the credit for that. But phrases such as "the mean streets of Chicago" were not far off the mark, especially when one considered the city's history, and when one considered the horrendous violence associated with "the projects". I remember reading newspaper stories about drive-by shootings and those who used "human shields" in an attempt to evade the flying bullets. "There Are No Children Here" is a book which will be especially helpful to people who want to better understand the downsides of living in Chicago.

I might dislike the current mayor, Rahm Emanuel, in many respects, not the least of which is my aversion to his reputation for frequent profanity, which I regard as unprofessional, in addition to being un-Christian. But life in Chicago has a way of stressing people out, to the point that the occasional profanity is easy to understand (and in all honesty, I was hardly perfect in that regard myself, especially when I was being harassed by one of the street people who frequently hung out at the McDonalds restaurant at the northeast corner of Chicago Avenue and State Street). (Here's a link to an interesting story about an incident which occurred there this year at that particular McDonalds. I ate there so often, over the years, that I could have papered the walls with the receipts from those transactions.)

The word "gravitas" was used in the recent USA Today story about Kelsey Grammer and his new show "Boss". Judging by the 19 years I spent in Chicago, anyone playing "da mayor" will need ample gravitas. I think that Kelsey Grammer is up to the job. And it also appears that a lot of the scenes will actually be shot in the city. (In one scene, Grammer is shown going up the escalator at the Palmer House Hilton. I am well familiar with that lobby. I even watched their progress when they restored the art on the ceiling there.) For someone who has lived in that city, in a place located on Chicago Avenue, that should be especially interesting.

UPDATE: They have actually posted a video consisting of the first episode of "Boss". To put it mildly, this is not a show which should be seen by people who can't handle violence or profanity. Or subtly staged sex scenes, for that matter. Yet, it seems to me that the word "gratuitous" would not really apply to either the violence or profanity. It might be a sad statement to say that the show reflects the real world accurately, but I think that in may respects, it does. And in fact, I think that it serves a valuable purpose for people to get a better idea of the issues our political leaders face, both personal and public.

Watching this show as a Christian, I find that these are my thoughts: We need to pray for our leaders, because despite their obvious flaws, they are just men and women, many of whom are just doing the best they can under the circumstances..

For those people who would object that religion has no place in politics, I would respond that God certainly has no place in politics, which is perhaps the most corrupt human institution. God is holy, and we are most definitely not holy. Our politicians are corrupt, and many of our religious leaders are equally corrupt, too.

Yet, the Creator looked upon the tainted world of men and women, and he found it in his heart to show his love and mercy to us anyway. Let us make evey effort to live as if we know and appreciate that fact.

Thoughts About Exotic Pets

2011-10-21T18:42:00.001-05:00

The newspapers and TV news shows (and undoubtedly the blogs) are abuzz with talk about the latest incident in Zanesville, OH, involving the suicide of a man who owned exotic pets, and his release of his pets. USA Today has covered the story, and that same paper has used the story as an opportunity to publicize the ongoing debate between those who think that people should be free to own such pets, and those who disagree.

In what seems to be one of the biggest ironies concerning that debate, the paper says that an organization called Born Free USA has long endorsed stronger laws against the ownership of such pets.

Has everyone at that organization developed amnesia? Have they even seen the movie Born Free, or read the book?

I remember the movie Born Free. As a 10 year old kid, it made a big impression on me back in the sixties, to the point that I fantasized about the possibility of owning my own lion cubs, or maybe even multiple lions, just as Joy Adamson had once done. That lovely theme song, which was later re-recorded by Andy Williams, only served to increase the appeal. Land Rover sales took off, I suspect, after the release of the movie. (Here in the USA, there were almost no Land Rovers at that time, since Land Rovers were less well known than Jeeps, and later on, Humvees.) Of course, I wasn't content to merely watch the movie. I eventually also read the book on which the movie was based. The fact that the movie was based on the true story of a white woman from the "civilized" island of the United Kingdom only served to increase my conviction that it might be feasible for me to own such creatures as my own pets.

Part of the appeal, I admit, came from the undeniable cuteness of those lion cubs! If they'd been as ugly as African warthogs or hyenas, or even hippos, who knows?

Right after seeing the movie (and discovering a liking for the jujubes candies they sold in the lobby), I crawled around my grandmother's St. Louis house, making baby lion sounds and occasionally rubbing my head against my mother's lower legs, and pretending to be a lion cub and undoubtedly annoying my mother and grandmother (though they might have also thought it was cute).

I never became an owner of exotic pets, but I think it likely that numerous others eventually did after seeing that movie and reading the book. I wonder how much of the current fashion for owning exotic pets could be traced to the popularity of that movie. Quite a bit, I suspect.

Therefore, it seems strange to me that the aforementioned organization would name itself after a movie which helped to plant the idea of exotic animal ownership in many folks' minds in the first place. (They certainly didn't get the idea from watching another movie, named "The Night of The Grizzly", starring Clint Walker.)

Those who actually read the book Born Free know that Joy Adamson found those lion cubs in the wild (which is very unlikely to happen anywhere in the United States). Later, she decided that the lions should be set free. Or rather, that decision was forced on her, by villagers who understandably weren't fond of Elsa after Elsa caused an elephant stampede!

To be sure, there can sometimes be a downside when one chooses to own "exotic animals" as pets. But the same thing can be said with regard to ostensibly "domesticated" pets.

When hearing from those who now oppose the practice of adopting "exotic" animals, we often hear phrases such as "wild animals are not pets". Really? You could have fooled me. Dogs, after all, started out as wild animals, just as cats did (a little bit later than dogs). The process of domestication did not happen overnight, or so the scientists and anthropologists tell us. If humans back in those days had taken the attitude that "wild animals are not pets", we would have no ostensibly "safe" and "domesticated" pet dogs or cats now. Someone had to be the first one to take a wild dog into his or her own home or cave, so that numerous generations of that dog's offspring could eventually become domesticated.

Anyone who's ever been disturbed by cats' prediliction for decimating the bird population knows that they still exhibit traits which might be describe accurately as "wild". The main reason most people aren't bothered by that prediliction is that cats do not normally see us as prey, due to the obvious size difference. (If you've ever seen the movie "The Incredible Shrinking Man", you may have gotten an idea of the extent to which that size difference changes the balance of power in the average pet-owning household.)

In fact, it's arguable that that process was and still is less than complete, considering that fatalities caused by dog attacks are hardly an unknown phenomenon. In fact, I knew a Chicago woman whose young (and very cute) niece was killed that way. DogsBite.org is a web site which focuses on such attacks.

33 U.S. fatal dog attacks occurred in 2010. Despite being regulated in Military Housing areas and over 650 U.S. cities, pit bulls led these attacks accounting for 67% (22). Pit bulls make up approximately 5% of the total U.S. dog population.2
In 2010, the combination of pit bulls (22) and rottweilers (4) accounted for 79% of all fatal attacks. In the 6-year period from 2005 to 2010, this same combination accounted for 71% (129) of the total recorded deaths (181).

Oh, but that's much different. At least they were "domestic" pit bulls and rottweilers! That knowledge must have been quite comforting to the relatives of the deceased, don't you think? (Needless to say, I jest.)

Some defenders of those dog breeds would point out that they aren't all bad or dangerous, and that may be true on a dog by dog basis; but the fact remains that they were bred specifically to be fighters. There's a reason why they are so popular in inner city neighborhoods which, not coincidentally in my opinion, also "happen" to be dominated by gangbangers (who are almost certainly more dangerous than any of their dogs, if not necessarily any smarter than their dogs).

I'd like to know: How many human fatalities can be accurately attributed in the US to ownership of "exotic" animals? More to the point, how does that number compare to the number of deaths caused by so-called "domestic animals" such as the aforementioned dog breeds.

Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America, if you want to get an idea of how likely it is that a human being would die after being mauled by a bear of any kind. Not very likely, apparently, and while a very small number of the specific attacks were in fact connected with people who owned "exotic pets" (specifically, bears), the vast majority were not. Most bear attacks took place in, or near, the wilderness.

It can also be helpful to acquaint one's self with the specifics of each bear attack. For instance, one guy named Ken Cates, was attacked in Alaska by a bear in 1999. The article says, "Troopers found Cates' rifle, spent shell casings, and blood nearby which suggested that Cates may have shot the bear." Gosh, do you suppose that the bear might have attacked after being shot? Maybe it was just trying to defend itself? Of course, it could have been the other way around, and Cates might have shot the bear while trying to defend himself. The fact of the matter is that there just isn't enough in the way of actual facts to draw any conclusions from that particular story (or at least not enough in the Wikipedia article, at any rate).

However, based on objective numbers alone, it would seem that the so-called "domestic" animals are actual far more likely to kill people (based on an objective statistical analysis) than the so-called "wild" animals. So of what relevance is the degree of "wildness" or "domestication"?

And, oh, by the way, a macaw or a salamander could be accurately described as "wild". Using the term "wild animals" in a manner which neglects to mention that some wild animals aren't necessarily dangerous predators demonstrates a tendency to cherry pick one's facts in an effort to distort the issue. (Maybe some salamanders have gummed people to death, perhaps? Somehow I doubt it!)

I guess that that is what really bothers me about this debate. Debates should be settled, it seems to me, by referring to the known facts, not by appealing to paranoid primordial fears. Legislation ought to similarly be based on rationality and defensible principles.

I have no particular vested interest in the issue. I've never owned exotic pets, unless one counts the salamander I once found near our house, or unless one counts the little snake I found out in the woods during a scouting campout. (I kept that snake in an aquarium, where I fed it with mice I got at the pet store. He refused to eat, probably because he was so depressed by his captivity. When I saw that he was in jeopardy of dying from starvation, I took him down to the nearest pond, where I threw him into the pond and watched him happily swim away.)

It does seem to me that ownership of exotic animals, and particularly those which may grow up to be very powerful animals, often has a lot less to do with "love" (despite the protestations of the owners) than it has to do with the psychological needs of the owners. "Oooh, look at me; I'm so cool that I can even control a powerful predator."

On one level, I understand that motive. Frankly, when I was a little kid, I felt pretty powerless, and in hindsight, that was one of the reasons for the appeal of the idea to me. But watching that snake starve to death made me realize that I regretted my selfish motives for wanting to keep the snake.

While I do think that it's bogus to automatically assume that "domestic" animals are all safe, and equally bogus to assume that exotic animals are all dangerous, I will concede that it is generally much smarter to focus on animals proven over long periods of time to work well as pets for people who aren't prepared to deal with the special challenges which exotic pets are more likely to pose.

I once read a book about a guy who owned and raised a canine which was part wolf. Boy, can you imagine his cleaning bills, if that canine had been an "indoor pet"? Can you imagine trying to house train a wolf? Maybe if one started very early; otherwise, no.

I do think that the distinction between "wild" and "domestic" is a pretty irrational distinction to have to make, once one has examined the actual facts. The number of "domestic" dogs which have killed people would seem to suggest that we should reexamine our assumptions about the benefits of domestication.

Therefore, if someone REALLY likes owning "exotic" pets, then I say, go for it, provided that you believe yourself to be capable of being a responsible pet owner, and provided that you believe that you are in fact such an owner. Just know what you're getting into, and be prepared to deal with it.

And for crying out loud, if you do decide to commit suicide, do NOT let full-grown predatorial animals loose on the general population, unless your intention is to start a panic and generally doom your "pets" to premature deaths. If your"liberated" pets are lucky, they might be shot by guys armed with guns loaded with tranquilizer darts, but don't count on it.

Sorry, I'm From Missouri

2011-09-09T19:24:00.002-05:00

This morning I awoke to the sounds of Barack Obama's voice blasting from the speakers in my friend Everett's laptop computer. Barack was trying to sell America on his wonderful vision of a world in which everyone was able to find a good and meaningful job, thanks to his wise and benevolent guidance. No more acrimonious bickering. No more hateful rhetoric.

Speaking of which, I sincerely hope that B.O. lives up to the implied promises of that speech, because if he can get the pompous ass Ed Schultz to tone down the hateful politically biased diatribes on his MSNBC TV show, then Barack will truly be a miracle worker.

I admit it. I am a dreamer. I think that it would be wonderful if Barack could accomplish the things implied or promised in this morning's speech. I have no loyalty to the Tea Party. I don't long for Barack's failure. I have been out of work for quite some time, and I think that it would be great if the government opened a temporary office here in town where they would start handing out meaningful, high quality (and preferably full-time) jobs like candy bars.

But I've been on this world even longer than Barack has, and when people start behaving in a manner which suggests that there isn't much substance behind what they are offering, I've learned that it's probably because there isn't much substance behind what they are offering.

Essentially, Barack's reason why our congressional representatives and our senators ought to approve of his American Jobs Bill seems to be ... uh .uh....uh...

Will somebody please help me, here? I listened to the speech, honest, I did, even though he was even more longwinded than I usually am, if that's possible. I know what Obsma claimed his plan would accomplish. I just can't think of any substantive reason why I ought to believe him. Anybody can claim anything anybody wants to claim. But credibility is not won that easily.

Essentially, if you boil Obama's argumentation down to its essence,it seems to me that he's arguing that it will work because "everyone"(meaning an assorted collection of people representing all of the competing political "experts") likes the various components of his plan to some extent. I have to say that I think that's a pretty lame argument.

If indeed the plan behind the American Jobs Act is basically just a rehash of the best ideas Barack has heard from various people, I can't help but wonder how that makes it Barack's plan. That reminds me of the old saying about how a camel is nothing but a horse designed by a committee.

I will give Barack credit for being a reasonably good listener, which is more than a lot of people (in both parties) can say. But listening well is only part of what will be needed. What's needed, it seems to me, is careful analysis, based on research and personal experience, not on preconceptions formed primarily by the need to tow the party line. Barack Obama seems to be less dependent on the Democratic party line than a lot of people, but he's still a party man.

I am not saying that I know for sure that Barack's plan won't work. But I am from Missouri, and you know what they say about us. Missouri is known as the Show Me State. When someone starts saying, "Just buy it, just buy it, stop asking so many damn questions" (or, in Barack's case, "Pass this bill, pass this bill", as if the demand that we ought to do so constitutes a good reason why we ought to do so), then my B.S. detector goes into high gear. Barack's "likeability factor" is unquestioned. But it seems to me that he relies on his personal charisma far too often. It's almost as if he thinks that he has some magic ability, not unlike Obi Wan Kanobi's ability to hypnotize people into believing whatever he wanted them to believe, for no better reason than the fact that he keeps telling us over and over that his plan will accomplish what it's supposed to accomplish . Repeating something over and over again does not constitute proof that it makes any sense.

Maybe Barack can get his allies at MSNBC to accuse his detractors of being "mouth breathers" or engaging in "crazy talk", and maybe that kind of name calling and mud slinging is persuasive to some people. But I am not such a person. I'm from the "show me state," and I want to see evidence and proof.

Frankly, I'm not sure what would constitute proof to me. I just know that whatever it is, I haven't seen it so far. And whatever it is, there's more to it than not-so-subtle innuendoes to the effect that people who do not instantly capitulate to Barack's plan are by definition indifferent to reason.

I'm not saying that I disliked every aspect of the president's speech. I support his plan to extend unemployment insurance, since I will benefit from that extension. I'm not sure that the exension will make that much of a difference in terms of opening up new jobs. At most, I suspect that the extenson will enable people to postpone the inevitable. But sometimes, buying people some badly needed time is good thing to do. And maybe we need to buy time for Barack OBama. Maybe doing so will buy him the time he needs to figure out to really solve America's problems during his second administration. Because God knows that he hasn't solved those problems yet. (And, in all fairness, neither has the Tea Party.)

Viva Vevo!

2011-09-03T15:09:00.002-05:00

I just discovered a web site called Vevo.com. It's specifically for music videos, mostly from the major labels.

The first video I saw there was by Weird Al Yankovic. Unsurprisingly (for people like me who remember his musical parodies of hit songs by people like Michael Jackson), it was very funny. (I won't quote the exact title, lest I should offend those of you who object to minor profanities which refer to fecal matter, but suffice it to say that it's about Al's objection to people who waste his time by forwarding items to him in which he has no interest, and in which he couldn't logically be expected to have an interest.)

The second Vevo video I watched was "Earth Run", an instrumental jazz fusion tune by Lee Ritenour and Abe Laboriel (a talented Christian bass player who has played bass with my friend Andy Pratt, and also with Koinonia, a Christian band which specialized in similar music) and Paulinho Costa.

One can find music videos on YouTube, but the quality tends to be all over the map. I get the impression that the Vevo videos are of a higher quality, but I just discovered the site, so time will tell.

At the moment, I'm watching a Vevo video of Diana Krall, singing "Just The Way You Are". I try not to indulge in the sin of lust, but if any female musician could tempt me to do so, she is one of the few who could. I still remember with great pleasure the time they invited her to perform on the second floor at the new Borders bookstore in Chicago at the Water Tower location. I stood just a few feet away from the grand piano they had brought just for the occasion. Wow, what a woman! Beautiful, and an excellent piano player to boot.

Oh, wow, now I'm watching Diana's video for "The Look of Love". OK, please don't assign me to perdition or worse for admitting that this video really stimulates my imagination, and causes me to envy Elvis Costello.

Hopefully, she's a Christian, so that the two of us can jam on dual pianos in the next life. Such a jam session certainly won't ever happen in this life, in all likelihood.

If she's not a Christian, I guess I'll just have to settle for a jam session amongst the saints with other talented Christian keyboard players, such as Kerry Livgren and and Michael Omartian and Rick Wakeman. Yeah, they're all believers!

A New and Dubious Career Opportunity

2011-08-31T21:15:00.001-05:00

The other day, while walking in the Barkley Village shopping center in Bellingham, I spotted an a-frame sidewalk sign, advertising a new business. I not only was made aware of a new business, but indeed, of a new business category. Call them "professional enablers for substance abusers".

The name of the business was Sober Rovers, also known as "Designated Drivers for Hire". Their business card (which I saw today for the first time) says, "Too drive to drunk? We'll get you and your car home."

Prior to this occasion, I had known about the designated driver concept, of course. After all, I'd just moved to Bellingham from Chicago, where Halloween and St. Patrick's days seem to exist mostly for the purpose of giving adults an excuse to get drunk (even though there's no historical evidence, as far as I know, to support the idea that St. Patrick was himself a drunk).

I only recently realized that playing nursemaid to drunks (or "inebriates", as one recent news story described them) had actually become big business. I guess it had to happen, sooner or later, especially in this economy. Ya' gotta' love that entrepreneurial spirit!

Back when I was in high school, I remember being asked a question which puzzled me: "Do you party?"

Well, of course I partied. "What a stupid question," I thought. "Doesn't every kid love cake and ice cream?" I partied every year, on my birthday. and on every other kid's birthday to which I got invited. I also partied on various holidays, such as Christmas and Halloween (back when Halloween existed mostly for little kids who wanted to dress up in silly costumes and beg for candy).

It wasn't long, of course, before I figured out that in many teenagers' minds, the seemingly innocuous term "party" was synonymous with other phrases, such as "get inebriated (or high) and make an ass of one's self". Or another phrase which (quite appropriately, in my opinion) ends with the suffix "-faced" and begins with a word which means "fecal matter". (Gosh, doesn't that just sound enormously fun? Maybe to you it does. Personally, I'd rather keep my face feces-free.)

Can't be bothered to exercise a bit of self-control? No problem, dude (or girl friend)! Call Sober Rovers, and they'll act like adults, when you want to pretend that you're half of your actual age, but without the benefit of wisdom or parental guidance or supervision or a social conscience.

Some folks would undoubtedly think that this is a new and socially beneficial business trend. After all, there have always been certain individuals who had difficulty imagining how folks could enjoy themselves without getting plastered. If such folks are going to get drunk, regardless of what anyone says, then I suppose that some might argue that companies like Sober Rovers can minimize the extent to which they jeopardize the lives and health of other people.

Sorry, I'm not buying it, because I don't buy the fatalistic idea that people are going to get drunk regardless of what anyone says. What people say can make a huge difference in what decisions are made by their peers. Some folks will still make bad decisions, of course, but giving in to determinism only serves to make things much worse. People do have free will (until their addictions get so bad that they can barely even think for themselves about the most rudimentarly aspects of living). We do no one any favors by denying that such is the case.

The decision to get drunk is itself a form of socially tolerated (if not approved) acquiescence to the ludicrous idea that drunks can't help getting drunk, and that the best we can therefore do for them (and for those they might harm) is to furnish them with a kind of safety net. Hence, we have those who want to disingenuously describe alcholism as a "disease," as if one catches drunkenness the way another person might catch a cold, from viruses floating through the air, or the way a camper catches poison oak. (In a similarly fatalistic way, there are those who talk about a host of other problems, including homosexuality, adultery, urban crime, abortion and more).

If that were really true, then folks would be incapable of planning ahead by making arrangements to hire the folks from Sober Rovers for the evening. By definition, for anyone to hire anyone from that business or any comparable business is to plan ahead to get drunk, or to stand by and watch as someone gets drunk, without doing anything to stop it.

Was public drunkenness a problem only when folks started driving automobiles? No. Drunkenness has been dangerous as long as people have been getting drunk. If you have read the Bible, for instance, you know that Lot had incest with his daughters, after they got him drunk. For similar reasons, women have been raped, and men have been murdered, and little children have been mercilessly beat by the parents entrusted with their protection and care. One doesn't need a car to do any of those things. Therefore, hiring a designated driver will not prevent any of those non-automotive things from happening. So how exactly such a service makes it "safe" to get drunk is anyone's guess. Certainly not safe for the guy's kids, after he arrives home from his night of self-centered "fun".

The weird thing is that even though folks who set out to get drunk can actually plan consciously to do so, and can tell you while getting drunk that they are aware that they are getting drunk, it's also true that sober folks tend to be better at exercising impulse control, compared with drunks. That helps to explain why people under the influence have done appalling things they probably wouldn't have done if they'd stayed sober. We're told that boozes reduce people's inhibitions. To my way of thinking, that is not a good thing. Inhibitions are vastly underrated.

Of course, if one doesn't think that any of those things are undesirable, then one is unlikely to see drunkenness as a problem. But I beg to differ.The men who have been attacked and the women who have been raped and the children who have been abused all have good and logical reasons to beg to differ.

It would appear that God and I see eye to eye on that issue. Perhaps that's why the Bible tells us "Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.".... Ephesians 5:18. I also find it interesting that the author of that scripture saw being filled with the Holy Spirit as a superior substitute for intoxication. Or more to the point, perhaps he saw intoxication as a cheap substitute for what God wanted to do for all people who would ask for his blessings and seek to obey him.

Based on the aforementioned scripture, I can easily imagine God saying, "You can be filled with the Holy Spirit; or you can get high or drunk What you cannot do is to have the real Holy Spirit, and have your fake chemical "(un)holy spirit(s)" at the same time. Make your choice."

It is sad, but true, that some people of faith also manage, nevertheless, to get around Ephesians 5:18. It kind of makes me want to ask them: "What part of Be NOT drunk with wine do you not understand?" One doesn't have to be a teetotaler to understand that principle, it seems to me.

Nevertheless, this trend towards professional enablers probably isn't going away anytime soon, for the simple reason that there are plenty of stupid people in the world (and the equally simple reason that there are folks who care more about exploiting people's weaknesses in order to make money off them than in actually helping those people). Just doing a Google search on the phrase "professional designated driver" just now yielded 2,450,00 results for me, including:

I have a final question: Why would anyone expect or trust someone whose judgment has already been impaired to make the right decision about whether or not he or she needed to call a professional enablement service, as I like to call them?

About the only justification I could ever think of for such a service, would be if it was paid for by a restaurant or private host which chose to serve alcohol in moderation, and which knew that certain customers would nevertheless overindulge in spite of their best efforts to discourage people from doing so. Since a sober person's life can be endangered by a drunk driver just as easily as a drunk's life can be endangered by a drunk driver, I suppose that I have to grudgingly admit that in limited circumstances, such businesses may have an important role to play.

Still, I'd much prefer that we as a society would grow up, and stop accepting the idea that that's the best we can do. If we can put the right kind of social pressure on smokers to stop smoking, and if we could thereby make a serious dent in the smoking problem, why wouldn't the same thing work when it comes to inebriation? You say that it wouldn't work. How do you know? Has it ever really been tried? More to the point, have you ever tried it?

I'm not talking about using the blunt weapon of legal prohibition. I'm talking about restoring America (by virtue of our own good examples) to a renewed sense of personal responsibility for our communities, and to the well-being of the members of those communities.

In other words, let's start promoting the idea that sobriety is cool! Let's start doing the Christ-like thing by seeking to become true friends to people with substance abuse problems, thereby refuting (with our lives and examples) the false idea that a booze-free life is a fun-free life. Self-righteousness never liberated anyone from an addiction, but the love of God has often done so, and it can do it again. So let us become conduits of that love. Not a romanticized and unrealistic type of love, but a love based on speaking the truth.

As tennis player Andre Agassis said to "Inside Tennis" magazine not long ago, "God wants us to grow up, and love is how we do it."

If we want other people to start living their lives in a responsible manner, we must begin to do so ourselves.

Some Thoughts About Church Benevolence

2011-08-18T14:27:00.014-05:00

The subject of church benevolence funding is one which, it seems, is not discussed very often in churches, judging by the churches I've attended over the years.

That isn't to say that I haven't attended churches which have set such funds aside, but the subject tends to be kept under wraps for the most part. It's so much more glamorous to raise funds for missionary trips to exotic foreign countries or for dramatically catastrophic needs which have been well publicized by the media, than it is to raise funds for the folks who are living right around the corner and barely managing to survive from day to day.

The first kind of charity admittedly makes for much better "PR" (public relations). But it seems to me that our first priority ought to be to meet the needs of people in our own local communities, if we are able to do so. I am not suggesting that the other category of giving ought to be neglected; I'm only suggesting that the needs of people in the local community should not be neglected, either.

It's in the best interests of every local church to do whatever can be done to help Christians in the local community to prosper. After all, the extent to which such people are able to support the church with their tithes and offerings is shaped in large part by the question of whether or not they are themselves prosperous. One would think that this would be common sense, but if it's so "common", why do so many church leaders neglect to act as if they believe that it's true?

I did a web search just now, regarding the definition of a church benevolent fund. I found a section at Ask.com, where "What is a church benevolent fund?" was the question.

One person answered, "Every week poor people visit churches in hopes that they will give them some money to help with their living expenses. It could be food or an electric bill or medicine. It is a way for the church to help out those in need."

Another person answered, "A benevolence fund is a sum of money (that can be added to) that is used for people in need. If the members of the church see someone in the community with a need for something food, clothes, whatever, money from the fund can be used. If there is an emergency situation within the church or the community, like a fire or other disaster, the church benevolence fund can be used to give aid. A 'poor box" or 'alms' is a little bit different. That money is collected specifically for the poor. Most churches in most communities have benevolence funds."

A third answered, "It's probably where the pastors get their nice cars from. There's not much accountability to the congregations, so the pulpit monkeys can pretty much do as they please. They lie about the scriptures, so what's a little fib to the flock? If the funds were going to the needy, we wouldn't HAVE needy people. It's such a sham, and it's why we have government assistance. If the churches were doing what they are supposed to be doing, there would be no need for our taxes to feed the needy. SAD, BUT TRUE." (Tellingly, I thought, this person identified himself or herself as NXile, as in the phrase "in exile". I know the feeling.)

The first two answers represent the types of things pastors would most likely say in answer to the question. When benevolence funds work as they ought to work, those first two answers are sometimes accurate.

The problem is that there's a lot more truth to the third response than a lot of people would like to admit. NXile's statement that "there's not much accountability to the congregation" is spot on, in my opinion.

Over the years, I've found myself in positions where I was desperate for help with basic and necessary expenses. Sometimes, when I've approached church leaders for help, I've gotten the help I requested. More often than that, I have not. (As for the question of whether or not I will receive church help with my current need, I think that's still an unresolved question, and it's still a question for which a speedy positive response is needed.)

I still remember the time (more than 20 years ago) when I approached the pastors of Rolling Hills Baptist Church in my hometown of Springfield, MO because I was in desperate need of funds with which to pay for dental work (specifically, a root canal) in order to alleviate pain which was jeopardizing my ability to make a living at my new telemarketing job. (I hated and still hate telemarketing, but one does what one needs to do to survive.)

I was told that a particular person on the pastoral staff was the person with whom I needed to meet. So I set an appointment to meet with that pastor, only to discover that he had no intention of offering any help to me. Instead, it seemed to me that he wanted to look for any excuse (consisting of a real or imaginary flaw in my personality or character) which would justify sending me away with NOTHING.

I was so angry about the fruitless mini-inquisition I'd just undergone in his office, when I drove away from that meeting, that I was unable to focus on my driving. As a result, I had a car accident on the way home, and since I was technically in the wrong, things just snowballed from bad to much worse. I eventually lost both my license and my car, which of course made it even harder for me to find work, after I'd lost the telemarketing job and moved to Chicago in search of emergency housing.

Thank the Lord, nobody died in the aforementioned car wreck, but if that had happened, I think that that particular pastor would have shared in the blame. I went to him needing meaningful help, but he preferred to play mind games instead.

One of the first things Christians did on the day of Pentecost after being filled with the Holy Spirit was to help to meet the material needs of other Christians. Acts 2:44-45 says, "All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need."

There's a good reason why some pastors continue to preach that there are both sins of commission and sins of omission. But other pastors don't seem to recognize that Christians have responsibilities to one another at all.

A few years ago, I approached the leaders of the downtown Chicago branch of Willow Creek Church. I requested financial help so that I would not be evicted from the YMCA room in which I was living at the time. In response, I was told that they had no program, either formal or informal, with which to help people in my situation.

Frankly, I was appalled. To my knowledge, Willow Creek was one of the largest megachurches in the nation. (The third largest, according to my most recent visit to the listing for that church at Wikipedia.org.) I'd visited their suburban church in South Barrington, Illinois, so I knew that their church had far more material resources than the vast majority of the inner city churches in Chicago, many of which were little more than little storefront operations. I would have understood it if churches with far fewer resources of their own had been limited with regard to what they could do, but Willow Creek has plenty of resources with which to help the poor, if they choose to do so, so I thought that that church's treatment of me was despicable and inexcusable.

I didn't leave Willow Chicago immediately. I persisted in asking for help, and hoping against hope that they would change their minds. But I eventually got tired of waiting for the leaders of that church to treat me the way that Jesus said people should treat "the least of these". My situation was dire, and I simply didn't have time to spare (i.e., time to waste) trying to find solutions where there were clearly no solutions to be found in that church.

Later, I read a news story about how their pastor Steve Wu had recently been forced to leave his position at the church, as a result of the discovery that he'd been involved in unspecified sexual sin. "Aha!" I thought. "Now I understand why he couldn't be bothered to find help for me. "He was too busy boinking the church secretary, or whoever he'd been sexually sinning with, to think about the needs of the poor."

(By the way, the incident was well publicized in the media, giving Christianity a black eye in the process. I googled the phrase "Steve Wu resigns" just now, and Google came up with a whopping 2,800,000 search results.)

It seems to me that it says something bad about the church that they're so focused on sexual sins, but uninterested in enforcing other types of equally important moral standards, such as those which pertain to pastoral responsibilities to the flock. Jesus told Peter to "feed my sheep" THREE TIMES. That says to me that he wasn't kidding around! And while I realize that he may partially have been referring to the need for "spiritual food" (in other words, good teaching), I also think that it's pretty lame to suggest that Jesus ONLY cares about spiritual matters. He demonstrated throughout his life that he cared about the material needs of people as well.

I'm not going to deny that there have been other occasions when I've received compassionate help from church leaders, even in one case giving me $1000 of badly needed and greatly appreciated help. But such instances have been few and far between, compared with the times I've been turned down.

Most people, let's face it, find it rather humiliating to have to ask for such help. I know that I do. I am a capable and qualified worker, and I'd much rather know that I've earned my money legitimately. But what am I supposed to do, if I find myself in a situation where it's a choice of either asking for help or sleeping on park benches?

The other day, I asked a young man who was preparing to serve as a pastor what the church could do in order to combat the problem which existed in the church with regard to the prevalence of divorce even among people claiming to be followers of Jesus. He correctly answered that we needed to teach the meaning of covenant.

The problem is that people who teach covenant tend to lack credibility when they do not practice the making and keeping of covenants. I'm thinking in part of those pastors who have broken their covenants with their own spouses, of course, but covenant is not a concept which should be limited to sexual relationships. As a community of people ostensibly bound together by love, Christians should make covenants with one another, and they should keep those covenants.

It's unlikely at this stage of my life that I will ever have the financial resources with which to finish the kind of education I'd need in order to get a job as a pastor.

Of course, Jesus didn't need a college degree in order to have a ministry on which all other ministries have ostensibly been based for more than 2,000 years. In light of that fact, I'm inclined to think that we rely on academic credentials far more than we ought to rely, when assessing a person's suitability for that particular position. But what do I know? Not much, according to a lot of "leaders" in the church.

So, OK, it's pretty much a given that I am unlikely to become a pastor. Also, I'm not necessarily convinced that that's the specific ministry to which God has called me. Nevertheless, I have ideas about how I would serve as a pastor, if time were to prove me wrong.

Here is a covenant which I as a pastor would make with everyone who entered the doors of my church, if I were ever to be put in such a position of authority, regardless of whether or not that person chose to enter into a formal membership arrangement with my church:

As a pastor, I, Mark Pettigrew, on behalf of this local body believers and the much larger body of believers known throughout the ages as the Church, do solemnly pledge to you the following:

I will treat my position of authority here at this church as the stewardship and moral responsibility which it is, bearing in mind the truth of the scripture which says, "To whom much is given, much is required."

I will treat you, to the best of my ability, in a manner which recognizes that my responsibility to "the least of these" entails an obligation to treat all people (and not just the people privileged to live inside some arbitrary inner circle of my favorite folks) as I would treat Jesus Christ himself.

I will base leadership decisions on defensible scriptural principles, not on prejudicial assumptions which cannot withstand logical or scriptural scrutiny. This will especially be true when it comes to decisions which affect the manner in which this church responds to extreme needs within the body of Christ.

I will treat all of the members of the local community, and particularly those who do their best to support this ministry with their tithes and offerings when they are able to do so, as if the meeting of their basic needs is my first priority. If there is a surplus after that goal has been achieved, I will allocate as many funds as possible to the meeting of the needs of people in other regions and other churches. But I will not expect people to believe me when I claim to be engaged in the meeting of the needs of the residents of distant lands, if I cannot show evidence that I even care about the needs of the people in my own local community.

I will not play self-serving mind games with people in an effort to excuse my indifference to people's needs.

If evidence is presented to me that I have intentionally or unintentionally sinned by omission, by allowing unmet needs to exist within the local community of believers, I will repent of that sin (openly and publicly, if necessary) by not only acknowledging my guilt, but by doing everything within my power to make things right.

Maybe it's naive of me, but this is the kind of church for which I long, and it's the kind of church for which I would gladly sacrifice my time, energy, resources and talents.

But some might say that it's pretty meaningless of me to talk about what kind of pastor I'd be if I were offered the chance to be a pastor, given the fact that that's pretty unlikely to happen.

Fair enough. I want to be a person of integrity, so when it comes to the subject of compassion for people with unmet material needs, I am determined to do the best that I can do in order to raise funds with which my church and others can help the needy people in their midst.

The concept behind my project, The Artistic Rescue Project, is to raise funds for folks in crisis, to be administered by reputable organizations such as World Vision, Convoy of Hope, and the United Way.

But smaller needs also exist within the church, so local churches have a necessary role to play, too, in terms of meeting those modest needs. I don't ask that they do all the work themselves. I just ask that they help me to publicize my efforts to raise funds on their behalf, so that they can do what God wants them to do. It's a win/win scenario, in my opinion. The folks who would come to church in the hopes that their needs would be met would walk away satisfied and content, not disappointed or maybe even angry. The churches' reputations would improve, and the result would be church growth, which most pastors would tell you they desire. And yes, I would hopefully be able to raise enough funds that my immediate needs would be met as well. (Is that too much to ask?)

For more information, please visit www.ArtisticRescue.com. Also, feel free to e-mail me at mwp1212@gmail.com. This invitation applies to the leaders and members of my current church, of course, but also to other churches throughout the city of Bellingham, WA and to any other churches which want to stop being part of the problem and becoming part of the solution when it comes to the problem of poverty.

Postscript: Dare to criticize churches or their pastors for the way in which they operate their ministries, and sooner or later, one is sure to be criticized for failing to exhibit the proper submission to authority. But the last time I checked, Jesus was the ultimate authority, to whom church leaders ought to be subservient.

Jesus could have thrown his weight around, but he did not do so. Instead we are told this: "For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give my life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45).

The surest way for a pastor to disqualify himself as an authority, in my opinion, is for him (or her) to define a pastor's prerogative in such a way that it entails ignoring the needs of hurting people.

Is Arrogance a Progressive Value?

2011-08-16T09:32:00.001-05:00

In November 2010, I moved from Chicago to Bellingham, WA, where I moved into the house of a fellow Christian who was also a Facebook friend, and who had chosen (admirably) to respond compassionately to the fact that I'd just been evicted from my room at the Lawson House YMCA in Chicago.

Unfortunately, until I actually moved in with my friend, I was unaware of certain things about my friend. They were things which, if known by me, might have given me second and even third thoughts about moving in, if it had not been for the fact that I really had no choice, in my desperate circumstances.

This is not to say that I was ungrateful for the help. But living here was (and to some extent has been) a challenge, nevertheless.

One of the first thing I learned at the time was that my friend was a passionate "progressive" (whereas I, as a Republican, was by implication a "regressive", even though I was sufficiently savvy with regard to modern technology that I was able to be able to get my friend out of some jams by helping him with his computer).

I had come to Bellingham because my friend ostensibly thought that my goals were worthy of attention, with regard to a project I called the Christian Arts Initiative. One might have thought, therefore, that he was a particularly artistic person. But I suppose that some folks define the arts differently than others, because my friend didn't really seem to show a very pronounced interest in the arts. So far as I could observe, he almost never read novels or watched movies or even listened to much music (other than the classic rock tunes he sometimes listened to on the radio in his car).

Instead, my friend's entertainment appeared to consist primarily of two things:

Spending long hours in conversation threads on Facebook (which, of course, was how I met him in the first place).
Watching MSNBC on his satellite TV, often for hours on end. (To some, this is apparently entertaining. Then again, some folks like watching a nice car wreck, I've been told.)

I knew very little about MSNBC, but I would soon learn that it was a media haven for liberals (excuse me, "progressives").

The more I watched the network, the more I came to realize how much MSNBC resembled Rolling Stone magazine (a magazine which has long delighted in putting the spotlight on the most appalling role models one could possibly choose, such as Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears and Iggy Pop and countless others over the years). Like Rolling Stone, MSNBC is, as some might say, a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the Democratic party (in terms of its content, not necessarily in terms of who actually owns the network).

For instance, there was Keith Olbermann, whose most distinguishing characteristic seemed to be that he would end each show by throwing papers at his viewers in what appeared to be his attempt to demonstrate that his mentality had never progressed much beyond the mentality which he'd had when he was in kindergarten. (He now appears to have another show elsewhere, after having been fired by MSNBC, possibly after throwing one too many televised tantrums.)

A similarly childish attitude was observed in Rachel Maddow (whose apparently never met a lesbian she didn't like) and Ed Schultz (whose catch-all word "crazytalk" appeared to describe any talk with which he didn't completely agree, which made me wonder if he'd ever said a humble word in his life).

There were other, somewhat more moderate hosts, but they all started to blur together for me after a while. I came to expect a pretty steady diet of incredibly biased commentary in the guise of "news". They would sometimes feature guests, some of whom were even conservatives, but it soon became apparent that the conservative guests had been cherry picked and invited to the MSNBC shows precisely because they made for such easy targets.

Ed Schultz's show was called "The Ed Show". One night, Ed's guest was the pseudo-commedian known as Bill Maher. On that episode, Maher referred to a conservative female politician as a "mouth breather", a phrase which in some circles has apparently come to mean "as stupid as dirt".

Now, I have to admit, I've been known to breathe through my mouth occasionally myself. For instance, I've had colds in which the primary feature of those episodes of illness was that my nasal passages would become congested, and I would find that I could only get enough oxygen, while lying in bed, was to breathe through my mouth. I sometimes breathed through my mouth for somewhat similar reasons, back in the days when I ran track in junior high, and when I was running as hard as I could run, around the track. And of course, when I took a course in SCUBA diving back in college, I found that it was pretty necessary to breathe through my mouth while swimming twenty or thirty feet underwater. Pretty much every SCUBA regulator I've ever seen or used is designed to go into one's mouth, not into one's nose.(Ditto for snorkels.)

God, in his wisdom, gave people two different orifices through which to breathe: A nose, and a mouth. Undoubtedly, breathing only through one's nose, and reserving one's mouth for speaking and eating, is ideal. But there are times when breathing through one's nose just isn't very practical or feasible. It's a lot better to breathe through one's mouth than to stop breathing altogether, or so it seems to me.

It therefore seems to me that a person who uses the phrase "mouth breather" as a synonym for "stupid" is, by definition, stupid. The fact that MSNBC thinks that Maher is qualified to talk about politics says a lot about that network's definition of the word "competent". And it definitely says a lot about Mr. Schultz.

Back when Gabby Gifford was shot, Ed Schultz had the audacity to imply that political conservatives were to blame for the shooting, and then to call for more "civility". As if continuously slandering all political conservatives in various ways was a good example of civility. (Practice what you preach, Ed.)

Thanks to the examples of various people on the staff at MSNBC, I've come to realize that being a progressive means not being constrained by the rules of what most people regard as logic or genuine civility. Being a progressive, apparently, means using slanderous innuendo, when the stockpile of weapons in one's intellectual arsenal is particularly low.

The political condescension isn't limited just to MSNBC, either.

Eric Alterman, for example, had an article (The Nation, June 20, 2011, page 10) entitled "The Problem of Republican Idiots". In that article, he wrote that "it is hardly an exaggeration to insist that (an) astonishing combination of willful ignorance and stubborn stupidity can be found virtually everywhere Republican politics are discussed."

Eric, in case you're reading this, let me just say this: I am a Republican, because the Republican party has, in my judgment, taken the right side on one of the most important issues of our time, which pertains to the question of whether or not we will affirm the important principle that all human beings are of equal value, by opposing the legalized murder of millions of unborn children. Undermining the idea that all human beings are of equal value by supporting the so-called "right" of women to kill their own unborn progeny is, in my opinion, the quintessential act of hypocrisy, for Democrats who claim to believe in equal rights.

My IQ has been tested at 140, so I hardly think that by any objective criterion, I could accurately be described as "stupid".

In any event, there's a difference between intelligence (which we cannot for the most part control) and wisdom (which we can all attain, if we will humble ourselves and ask God for it).

All of us, whether we are geniuses or idiots or somewhere in-between, will be held accountable on the day of judgment for how we have lived our lives. According to the Bible, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Laugh at me and mock me, if you will, for my "stupid" and childlike faith in divine justice. Call me a "loser" if you like. But it's a bit premature to declare winners and losers, it seems to me, when the game is not yet over.

Here's a clue for the clueless, regardless of where you may stand on the political spectrum: YOU will not be the one making that judgment call (about who is and is not a loser) when each person's life is at its end. So try showing a little bit of humility in the meantime.

Isn't Howling What Animals Do?

2011-08-13T19:22:00.001-05:00

As a child, I was taught in school that poetry was an art form, with an emphasis on the word form. Rhyme and meter were probably the most obvious aspects of poetic form, but I gradually became familiar with other aspects of poetic form as well.

Not that there wasn't also a substantial amount of thought-provoking content in the poems of people such as Robert Frost. In fact, the poems with which I initially became acquainted were actually about something; and rather than trying to cover up a lack of content by writing in such an obscure and formless manner that one spent most of one's time trying to decipher the meaning, the form actually seemed to enhance the meaning of nearly every poem.

It was a lot easier to respect poets back then. They actually seemed to exhibit a certain measure of self-discipline in the ways that they wrote.

Such poetry didn't usually leave readers feeling befuddled and confused. It might take a little bit of work in order to understand every last reference in some poems (especially when reading poems which had been written centuries ago), but an imperfect understanding could usually be achieved, unless the poem was one where the entire point was to engage in verbal gymnastics which would delight readers with the sound of the words alone, without reference to any content.

I am thinking, for instance, of the writings of Lewis Carroll, whose poem "Jabberwocky" was considered to be an example of the genre known as "literary nonsense". I'm not sure who came up with that label, but you have to hand it to them for their honesty.

However, compared to the writers of some of the garbage now being marketed as poetry, Lewis Carroll demonstrated that he was a master of clarity. At least Mr. Carroll was somewhat funny, which is more than many modern poets can claim.

Is it any wonder that poetry sells so poorly these days? People don't like wasting their time trying to decipher the intentions of writers who don't seem to have any idea what they are trying to say.

The way I look at it, the whole point of expressing things with words is communication, not obfuscation! If a writer cannot be bothered learning how to communicate with clarity, then why should I be bothered trying to read that writer's mind in order to compensate for that writer's laziness and communicative deficiencies? Life is too short for that kind of time-killing nonsense.

Traditional poetry nearly always required mastery of whatever form might be required for a particular kind of poem. Epic poems were dramatically different from haiku, and both were dramatically different from psalms, but all three forms were definable. They all possessed certain characteristics which could be both studied and mastered.

Traditional poems might can be somewhat constrictive, compared with prose, in the sense that poets who hope to create poems with a definable style are not (or traditionally have not been) free to use all of the words in the dictionary in any way they see fit. But that, it seems to me, is part of the secret to the delight which well-written poems can bring.

If everyone could competently create good poetry, everyone would do it.

By creating an "anything goes" climate in which no one has a basis for declaring a poem to be objectively good or objectively bad, the pioneers of modern poetry effectively created a situation in which any pretentious person with nothing much of value to say can therefore claim to be a poet and an "artiste".

There is order in the universe, as seen from the viewpoint of a Christian such as myself. That sense of order can be seen in many traditional poems, regardless of whether or not the subject of those specific poems is specifically Christian or religious. Notice, however, that I describe such poems as traditional. As time has gone by, we have entered an era in which rules of any kind whatsoever have come to be seen as anathema.

As a side comment, I might note that anathema once referred to rejection by eccliastical authorities within the Catholic church, and to some extent, it still does. But popes and Bishops hold less sway these days, so that the word anathema is also defined broadly as "something or someone that one vehemently dislikes". (Merriam-Webster)

So, for example, if a person is excommunicated from the Catholic church for practicing homosexuality, then that person is "anathema" according to the older definition of the word. But if members of the "gay community" vehemently dislike Catholic leaders for the reason that gays embrace an utterly different set of values, then those religious leaders are likewise "anathema" according to the newer, secondary definition of the word.

When one thinks about it, that's kind of amusing. Gays like to criticize their critics for being "judgmental," but it turns out that they are just as "guilty" of judging others. The only difference, as far as I can see, is that they are subservient to a different (contradictory) set of moral principles.

When freedom is seen as a necessary means to a desirable end, then it is worthy of being defended. But freedom for its own sake can, ironically, become a form of slavery.

It might seem odd to some readers that I'm talking about relativistic morality, when the original subject of this blog post was modern changes of attitudes regarding poetic styles. But bear with me, because I think there is a relationship.

Carl Sandburg, from Chicago, was one of the poets to begin to challenge the rules of poetry. Free verse seemingly operated in accordance with a rejection of the use of rules and formulas, regardless of what the nature of those rules and formulas might be. Robert Frost once wrote that free verse was comparable to playing tennis without a net. (And how long would you want to spend, watching that kind of a tennis game? Without the net, how could either player legitimately declare victory?)

Some people might argue that a lover of jazz, such as myself, ought of all people to appreciate the value of spontanaeity. But this displays a sad misunderstanding of jazz. It's true that jazz involves a level of improvisation which is seldom observed in modern performances of classical music, which is mostly about the interpretation of written transcriptions in an attempt to replicate the original experience of listening to those pieces of music for the very first time. But even classical music has changed over the last several centuries. Improvisation was a component of the original performances of classical music (as seen in the movie "Amadeus"). I suspect that if we had high quality recordings of those pieces as performed by people such as Mozart, as is the case with even the earliest examples of jazz, the differences between jazz music and classical music would be far less obvious. There would be more improvisation of classical music, because modern performers wouldn't be burdened with the preservationist functions which now dominate the manner in which classical music is usually performed.

Jazz is just as beholden to form as any piece of classical music. In fact, it's precisely because the jazz format is so well known that jazz usually sounds so coherent (even when jazz musicians are "jamming" with musicians they've never even met before), in spite of the improvisation. (There are exceptions, such as the "free jazz" of Sun Ra, but that is not by any means the only type of jazz; and in fact, it's doubtful that the majority of people who consider themselves to be lovers of jazz prefer that type, preferring instead the numerous other varieties, including Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Hard Bop, Fusion and "smooth jazz".)

It's been written that "free verse" is not utterly lacking in form, but rather, that the poet is "free" to make up his own rules as he or she goes along. But of course, a "rule" which is non-binding isn't really a rule at all. If a "rule" is known and understood only by one person (the person who has just finished making it up), then it really isn't a rule at all, is it?

It doesn't take much of a stretch, in my opinion, to see a connection between that rather noticeable aspect of free verse and the moral relativism which dominated modern thought during the twentieth century.

The connection between the two had not yet become glaringly apparent in the poems of Sandburg, but by the time when Allan Ginsberg read his profanity-filled so-called poem "Howl", it had become glaringly apparent that poets were no longer content to thumb their noses at the stylistic rules of traditional poetry. They took things to their logical conclusion, and decided, as well, to thumb their noses at the rules of traditional morality, and to foolishly spit in the face of God.

Inasmuch as one of the stylistic elements of traditional poetry is alliteration (from which I occasionally derive a certain amount of amusement), I found myself composing a little alliterative poem (earlier today) which poetically describes how I might have talked about Ginsberg if I'd tried to do so while he was still alive:

Please pray
for the puerile poet
with the pathetic propensity
for pointless profanity.

Some might use the preceding poem as evidence of my "judgmentalism". I would wear such a criticism as a badge of honor. In this modern era, in which art is whatever anyone chooses to call art, and in which anyone who shows any backbone with regard to matters of morality is ostracized by the self-appointed arbiters of all that is "cool" and "hip", I long for a time when the word "standards" did not just refer to tunes which all jazz musicians were expected to know by heart.

It also referred to moral standards, without which the world would be ruled by chaos.

Artists, whether they be poets or novelists or musicians, ought to care less about whether or not they will be embraced by the self-appointed taste makers (who, in many cases, are pathetically out of touch with the values of ordinary people in the real world) than about whether or not they will eventually be embraced by God, who is the source of the artistic impulse which is so frequently abused.

Compassion and Condescension

2011-08-02T19:50:00.001-05:00

Some words have multiple meanings, some of which are positive, and others which are not so much so.

One such word is the word "condescension". Usually, in American culture, it has a very negative meaning. People who act haughty and arrogant and who rub their alleged superiority in other people's faces are said to be "condescending".

Perhaps that comes from our cultural background and our assumptions to the effect that no one is better than any other person. Anyone who thinks that he or she is better than any other person is thought, by default, to be seriously mistaken, if not downright delusional.

When I was young, I recall hearing one or two kids say, "You think you're better than me," with the unspoken conclusion "... and that's obviously not correct." But it seems to me that that begs the question: Is it invariably true that no one is better than any other person?

Certainly, it is true from the perspective of a Christian such as myself that no one is more loved than God than any other person. God loves all people equally, because God is the essence of love itself. God, says the Bible, is "no respecter of persons". All people are equally valued by God, and our history in America seems to demonstrate that in spite of our obvious failures to perfectly embody our ideals, we have repeatedly returned to that theme, which was the very backbone of the Civil Rights movement.

Still, I'm not quite sure that saying that all people are equally valuable is quite the same thing as saying that all people are literally equal. Are all people literally equal in terms of intelligence? Are all people literally equal in terms of strength or physical health? Are all literally equal in terms of wealth? Are all people literally equal in terms of wisdom or insight? Are all people equal in terms of moral character? It seems to me that the answers to those questions and other similar ones are obvious.

In fact, it is precisely because of the fact that people are not equal to one another in every respect that we need to be reminded that God loves and values all human beings equally, in spite of their observable differences. What establishes a basis for equal treatment under the law is not the literal equality of all human beings, but rather, it's the fact that we are all equally valued by God, who shows no favoritism with regard to how he treats individuals. The same mercy available to one is available to all. Conversely, all will be equally subject to God's justice. No one gets any special favors on account of class or race or any of the other criteria which have so often tainted the judgment of human authorities.

If indeed it were true that no one was better than anyone else, there would be no incentive to aspire to greatness. After all, greatness often requires special effort, and even a certain amount of self-sacrifice. If all people are literally equal, why bother?

Saying that God loves everyone equally is not tantamount to saying that there are not differences between people, nor is it the same as saying that there will be no rewards or penalties attached to those differences. Saying that God's judgement is and will be impartial is not the same thing as saying that there will be no judgment at all.

We often think of condescension as a negative thing, and it often is. But there is a kind of condescension which we should all covet. Here's one definition of condescension, which I found at Dictionary.com:

"To put aside one's dignity or superiority voluntarily and assume equality with one regarded as inferior: He condescended to their intellectual level in order to be understood."

In the preceding definition, the word "assume" (in the phrase "assume equality") is not being used to indicate a person who believes something falsely, without any real factual basis for that belief. Rather, it's being used to indicate someone who takes something upon himself, as if he or she were putting on a cloak.

In that definition, we see a kind of positive condescension which is for the benefit of others. A person who lives life in this manner demonstrates through his or her actions that moral superiority is impossible without genuine compassion and humility. To be genuine, compassion must be communicated in a manner which causes the recipient of help to genuinely believe that he or she is completely and unconditionally loved.

Jesus had every right to act "condescending" (in the negative sense) towards every human being he met while he was here on earth. Yet, he put that right aside voluntarily, out of compassion for the human race. He humbly washed the feet of the disciples, not because he had to do so, but because of his colossal love for us. There was nothing snide or haughty about the manner in which he did so.

"This," said Jesus with his actions, "is what it means to be a true leader." We Christians should demand nothing less of our leaders.

Too often, people unfortunately choose to work in the service professions for ulterior motives which reveal the extent to which they have failed to get that message. Having been in a position where I was forced by unfortunate circumstances to plead for help, I have felt the brunt of the negative condescension which seems to motivate some people with whom I have had to deal. For example, some folks seem to find it difficult to wrap their minds around the idea that in spite of my current need for emergency help, I am nevertheless a highly intelligent, highly talented and highly principled person who has a lot to offer to the world and to the church. Consequently, I have been treated as if I am in some second-class category, to be tolerated and maybe even grudgingly helped when doing so does not take too much effort, but not taken seriously.

The presumptuousness behind that kind of treatment has suggested to me that such people are sadly oblivious to their own vulnerabilities. They seem to think that just because they have been materially blessed more than I, they are therefore more virtuous than I, even though they may know little or nothing about the specific circumstances behind my current condition. It is only on account of the grace of God that their material circumstances are temporarily better than mine, so I don't envy such people, because I know that God will humble them in due time, if it proves to be necessary to do so. But of course, if they would choose to humble themselves voluntarily, that would not be necessary.

In the book of Job, Job's so-called friends made the mistake of assuming that God must be punishing Job for his iniquity. The real story, as readers of that book know, was that Job was a righteous man, who had been set aside by God precisely because God was confident that Job would pass the test, thereby putting Satan to shame.

Such truths about people are often hidden for a season, but people need to remember that a day of judgment is coming, and on that day, all will be revealed. When all is revealed, it will result in punishment for those who deserve punishment and who have failed to avail themselves of God's mercy. But the positive side is that it will also be a day of vindication, when people's presumptuous and erroneous judgments will be rebuked. The haughty will be laid low, and the people who have been abused will be rewarded for their longsuffering.

I believe these things to be so, not just with respect to those who have treated me disrespectfully, but indeed, with regard to those who have wrongfully treated any other people in such a manner. I believe these things, because I have read the Sermon on the Mount, and I have observed that Jesus lived his entire life as if he really believed that sermon to be true.

We need leaders who will condescend in the positive way that Christ condescended: By putting aside their own superiority, whether real or imaginary, and choosing to love and serve mankind as Christ loved and served mankind.

Whether or not one is truly superior to another human being is, in a sense, utterly beside the point. If Jesus Christ could voluntarily humble himself, in spite of his utter perfection, what makes anyone else think that he or she is entitled to do otherwise?

Health Suggestions for McDonald's

2011-07-27T20:32:00.000-05:00

I'm reading about a new, healthy menu at McDonald's. But so far, I still haven't seen much about any hot green vegetables. You know, like broccoli, spinach, carrots, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts. Lettuce is not the world's only green vegetable, and adding a little bit of green pepper doesn't help very much.

Dr. Praeger's (www.praegers.com) has shown an ability to make very tasty and quick snacks made from such ingredients. I particularly like their spinach pancakes, and I'm guessing that their spinach "bites" are pretty good, too. Plus, they're easy finger food, so they're just begging to be sold by a fast food company such as McDonald's.

Also, how about some onion rings, and sweet potato fries, too. Sweet potato fries are very tasty, and I had never even tasted them until moving to the Pacific northwest! (Imagine an optional topping of marshmallow creme on them. After all, isn't that how lots of people eat sweet potatoes or yams on Thanksgiving?)

And while you're at it, McDonalds, lay off the excessive salt on your fries. At the McDonald's on Chicago Avenue in Chicago, one could specify normal fries, or one could get them with no salt whatsoever. Is a "happy medium" too much to ask for when it comes to salt on fries? The aforementioned restaurant could kill slugs with those oversalted fries of theirs. Or more accurately, they could kill old folks (like me) suffering from high blood pressure.

By the way, some folks may think that it's strange to list carrots or cauliflower as "green vegetables", but my mother told me that there were basically two categories of vegetables, "green" and "starchy". I'm not sure whether or not that was correct, but it certainly made sense to me. (Potatoes and rice were both considered "starchy", as was corn, or so she said.)

I have nothing against french fries, in moderation, but a constant diet of the same is more than just unhealthy, it's also just plain BORING!

Regarding the seasoning on their green veggies, I recommend Mrs. Dash, not salt. Much tastier.

McDonald's is improving, incrementally, but the pace of the improvements really needs to speed up.

My Recent Stroke

2011-07-09T18:01:00.001-05:00

© Mark Pettigrew

When I was young, in the fall of 1970, my grandfather (who we'd nicknamed Grandman) had a stroke, following a heart attack he'd had earlier that summer. The stroke was what eventually killed him, while he lay in a bed at a nursing home in my home town. He was 65 years old at that time.

The last thing I remember Grandman saying to me after having that stroke was "german chocolate cake". What part of his brain triggered that thought, I don't know, but it comforts me to think that he was probably having a pleasant memory of a dessert he'd once enjoyed eating.

It was my first experience with the death of anyone I loved, and I remember that I couldn't contain my tears when I attended his funeral. In some respects, they were selfish tears. I couldn't imagine life without Grandman. I sensed that life, in many respects, would soon change for me in many ways. I was right about that.

Most of those changes weren't good. Two years later, my parents got divorced, and I suspect that the stress from the loss of my grandfather was one of the factors which led to that divorce, although I can't prove it. Of course, the fact that my father decided to start committing adultery didn't exactly help, either. It's a good thing Grandman never lived to see the betrayal of his daughter and his grandchildren.

I never thought I'd experience a stroke myself, and certainly not at this age of 54 years, but several weeks ago, I woke up with what seemed like a really, really painful leg cramp. I tried to let the cramp work itself out, the way I had done on previous occasions when I had similar (but less severe) leg cramps. It didn't seem to be working this time. I tried to stand up and walk to the bathroom to relieve myself, and I almost collapsed. My right leg, in particular, seemed to have lost a lot of its strength. I managed to make it to the bathroom, but just barely. My balance had been severely affected, and I was lurching around like a drunken man. I'd never gotten drunk in my life.

That day, Everett Barton, with whom I'd been staying in his home in Bellingham, had planned to go with me to a local meeting of the Band of Business Brothers, being held at Cascadia Pizza. I still wanted to attend that meeting, because I hoped (in vain) to receive some encouragement and help in relation to the Artistic Rescue Project (related to my desire to sell digital fine art prints for the purpose of raising funds both for myself and for the victims of the recent devastating tornado in Joplin, MO). So I managed somehow to get dressed, and we went to that meeting together. But Everett could tell just by watching me attempt to walk that I was in a bad way. When I got to that meeting, which was being held on the second floor of the restaurant, I appealed to that group for their prayers. I also told them that I suspected that my difficulty in walking had something to do with high blood pressure. One person made a comment which was somewhat dismissive of my analysis, saying essentially that I shouldn't pretend to be a doctor. That was somewhat unfair to me, I felt, because I had never claimed to be a doctor, or a medical expert of any kind. But what I did know was that my blood pressure had very recently been tested, and I'd been told that it was dangerously high.

After the meeting ended early in the afternoon, I just barely managed to walk downstairs and out to the car, by holding onto the banister. But the problem clearly wasn't going away, so I asked Everett to take me to Peace Health St. Joseph hospital, which was very close nearby. It took a while for me to check into the hospital, and of course, they had to run a variety of tests. Just as I'd suspected might happen, the emergency room doctor told me that my blood pressure was "through the roof". Then he told me that they thought I had very likely suffered from a couple of small strokes.

I spent the rest of that weekend in the hospital, from Friday night until Sunday night, while they ran several tests, the most unpleasant of which was my first ever MRI. Two MRIs, actually, the first one of which lasted a half hour, and the second one of which lasted about 45 minutes. I felt like "the man in the iron mask" (for those of you who have seen that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio). They'd asked if I suffered from claustrophobia, and I'd told them that I didn't; but then again, I'd never had an MRI before, and I had no idea what to expect. To spend such a long period of time in a contraption like that, while all kinds of banging noises are being constantly made near one's head, while one's head is encased in what does indeed feel a bit like an iron mask, was a very unpleasant experience. The second time they ran the test was easier, though, even though it took longer, because they gave me a Valium pill beforehand, and it enabled me to relax without experiencing the anxiety I'd felt the first time around. I've heard of people getting addicted to Valium, and I would never want to experience such an addiction, but I have to say, I wouldn't have wanted to go through that second MRI without it.

The tests they ran on my brain in the hospital apparently confirmed that I'd had a couple of small strokes. Later on, when visiting www.strokeassociation.org, I learned that the major symptoms I'd personally experienced were listed as significant signifiers of a stroke. I was fortunate that Everett had advised me to seek hospitalization when he did.

In the hospital, they gave me some medications, to try to get my blood pressure under control. The medicine seemed to be helping somewhat, but even when I left the hospital, it was clear that it would probably continue to be a problem for some time to come. I've tried to remember to take my medications every day since then.

I was still feeling weak and very unsteady on my feet on the Sunday when I was released from the hospital, and I was also a bit embarrased on account of having urinated all over my hospital gown earlier (on Saturday night) when I was attempting to use the restroom. (The fact that the tie on the back of the gown wasn't working didn't help matters any, since the gown kept falling down in front of me while I tried to use the toilet.) But I was able to walk around a bit in the hospital halls, while holding onto a cane and also while holding the physical therapist for some support and balance. They characterized my gait using the word "hyperextension", and I felt as if my legs were made out of lead, but at least I did manage to walk a short distance.

A stroke can affect cognitive abilities and speech, among other things, but after I'd had those various things tested repeatedly, it seemed that I'd been relatively fortunate. I was able to speak clearly (with just a little bit of slurring of my words), and to clearly identify various objects, and to follow various verbal commands. (For instance, "Touch the tip of your nose, then touch the tip of my finger.")

Even after getting out of the hospital, I continued for quite some time to struggle with my balance and with strength issues pertaining to my right leg. When I got a cane at the nearby Lion's Club (after struggling for about a week with a more unwieldy support which had kindly been given to me by a man from the Band of Brothers men's group), that cane was a blessing.

As recently as Sunday, however, I still experienced problems. Specifically, I'd gone forward to ask for prayer, and when I tried to use the cane to stand up again, my balance temporarily failed me, and it was only on account of a nearby brother who caught me in time that I didn't fall flat on my face.

Nevertheless, with the help of the cane, I managed to walk over to the Haggen grocery store today and to do some computing here, just as I was doing before having the stroke.

I think that the worst aspect of my stroke, however, has been that it's made me abundantly conscious of my vulnerability, and aware of how short life can be (especially for someone whose parents and grandparents were not especially well known for their longevity). Thankfully, long before my stroke, I'd already accepted Christ as my lord and savior, so I wasn't worried that I wouldn't go to heaven if I died. But what did concern me, and still does, was the thought that I'd die before I had a chance to really achieve my full potential. And that still concerns me, because I've already wasted a lot of time in my life, not because I wanted to do so, but because I had difficulty procuring the material help I needed in order to make the most of my talents.

I still struggle with anger, to be candid, with regard to certain obtuse Christian leaders who seem to be oblivious or indifferent to my need for their help along those lines. That isn't universally true, of course. I've received support and help from other people in positions of Christian leadership. But a lot of people seem to be less interested in getting done things which badly need to be done than in making lame excuses for their unwillingness to do so. Fault finding and nitpicking seem to be the order of the day. Defending myself against unwarranted accusations has exhausted me, and I'm also inclined to suspect that the stress from repeatly being forced to do so played a role in my recent stroke.

Regarding my relationship with God, I know that I can't earn my salvation. But it isn't a matter of trying through my own accomplishments to prove that I'm worthy of salvation. It's a matter of wanting to achieve the satisfaction of a life well-lived, which I define in large part as a life in which I've achieved what I am capable of achieving, not only for my own benefit, but also (potentially) for the benefit of many other people. I've had the pleasure of a few small achievements in my life, but I still feel as if I've also lost out a lot in that regard. Time is running out for me in some respects, and frankly, contemplation of that possibility makes me sad (and more than a little bit depressed) on a pretty frequent basis.

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I find myself wishing that I had not done so. I even find myself thinking that surviving my stroke has been a mixed blessing. If life is going to just be constant reiteration of past failures, I wonder, then what's the point? The salvation I most need, and which I have not yet experienced, is not salvation from hell, but salvation (or rescue, if you will) from a lifetime of mediocrity. Maybe there are people who don't quite understand that, but I hope that some people do understand it, or at the very least, that they will try to do so. Maybe I'm naive, but I continue to believe that even at this stage in my life, I still have a lot of untapped potential.

I therefore need a real breakthrough in my life. I hope that that breakthrough comes soon. Even though I don't feel much confidence in the idea that the leaders of my current church will do much to enable me to experience such a breakthrough, I hope and pray nevertheless that they will do so.

Neglect Is A Type of Abuse

2011-07-04T16:06:00.001-05:00

© Mark Pettigrew

When people talk about "child abuse," they're usually thinking about outward and deliberate acts of aggression towards children. One particularly egregious example of child abuse could be found in the book "A Boy Called It" by Dave Pelzer. Among other things, Dave's mother fed dog feces to him and made him eat them.

But just as abusive, in its own way, is the fact that she regularly starved him. Feeding one's child is not optional for a parent. Neglecting one's responsibility towards others can be a form of abuse.

After he had been rescued from the abusive and neglectful "care" of his natural mother, Dave was put into various foster homes. The women who headed those households were not related to Dave by blood, but they were just as responsible for his welfare, because they had accepted that responsibility. If they had similarly chosen at a later time to neglect the responsibility to feed Dave, they would have been just as guilty as his natural parents had been earlier.

Sometimes, one has a responsibility towards another person simply on account of circumstances which have placed that person in one's path. In Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, the man who had been beaten by robbers and left at the side of the road to die was the responsibility of every passerby who was aware of his predicament. He might not have been a child, but his extreme need made him every person's responsibility nevertheless.

What made the "good Samaritan" different from the other passersby was not that he was any more responsible than they, but that he alone recognized and acted on the responsibility which God had sovereignly given to him. He's considered to be the "hero" of the story, not because he was so heroic, but because the others acted so selfishly and despicably. Compared to them, he was indeed a hero.

Today I read an Associated Press news story about a 36-year-old woman who drowned, in public swimming pool in Fall River Massachussetts, because two lifeguards neglected their responsibilities to respond appropriately when a 9-year-old boy informed them that the woman appeared to be drowning. Saving Marie Joseph was their job, but they neglected their job responsibilities, and the result was that the woman unnecessarily died. Appalling as that fact might be, what makes things even worse is that it took them several days to find her corpse in the "murky" water. Keep in mind that this was a public swimming pool, not the ocean. Why was the water in a public swimming pool "murky" in the first place? And why didn't they search the waters thoroughly as soon as they were made aware (by that 9-year-old boy) that someone might have been drowning?

Unsurprisingly, the young boy who told the lifeguards about the woman's jeopardy has been traumatized. He keeps crying, says his mother, and he thinks he could have saved the woman. There were two victims of those shamefully lazy lifeguards that day. It will probably be a very, very long time before that young boy will trust lifeguards again. My heart goes out to him. What a horrible way to learn just how cruel this life can be.

As this recent news story ought to make clear, people have a right to expect an appropriate and timely response when they make people who are in a position to help aware that they need help or that other members of the human community need help.

This is particularly true when they are reporting those needs to members of the clergy, who in other circumstances often claim to speak on behalf of God. There are noteworthy exceptions, fortunately, but such people seem to have a pretty bad track record, from what I have seen, when it comes to their recognition of the fact that their jobs come with responsibilities, not just to their own families, but also to all of those in the community who come to them for help.

Far too often, their focus, when people come to them for help, seems to be on finding excuses for neglecting the needs of needy people. Instead of being assured that one's needs will be met in time, regardless of what is necessary in order to make that happen, one is likely to be told that one didn't ask for help in "the right way". One's desperate (and possibly demanding) tone of voice, one's allegedly bad timing, one's "unsubmissive attitude" or any number of other alleged faults are likely to be cited as reasons why one cannot receive the help one needs. Why such so-called leaders think they have a right to demand submission from others, when they have not earned that right by serving people in need, is a mystery to me. True authority comes from a lifetime of humble service, not from one's job title.

People shouldn't have to be perfect in every respect to be able to expect that they'll receive the help they need, when they need it. There is no acceptable excuse for unmet needs in the "Body of Christ". Not in one of the most prosperous nations in the world, at any rate.

The mother of the boy who cried out in vain for help says that the lifeguards who ignored her son need to be fired. I think she's being charitable. I think that they need to be fired and then imprisoned. A woman died on account of their incompetence, for crying out loud.

In all fairness to them, though, it would seem that the failure is not theirs alone. The fact that the woman's corpse wasn't even seen when the pool was initially inspected by pool inspectors, on account of the fact that the water was so murky, suggests that the incompetence was widespread. Long before those lifeguards neglected their job responsibilities, there were people who neglected their seemingly insignificant but nevertheless real responsibilities to keep the pool clean. The time to clean the pool is not when there's a corpse lying at the bottom of the pool.

Why did the customers just accept the murkiness of the waters, instead of complaining until the pool was cleaned? Had they been so intimidated into silence, by people who'd ignored their prior complaints, that they didn't think that there was any point in complaining? Or were those customers' standards so low that they thought that the murkiness of the water was normal and acceptable?

Problems of that nature are rarely the faults of just one or two individuals. They tend to be system-wide issues. To extend the metaphor to the church once again, problems within churches tend to be widespread.

One can talk all one likes about how a church should be a true "community," but talk, as they say, is cheap. Both church leaders and ordinary members of local church communities need to regularly and conscientiously reach out to members of their churches, and even to casual visitors, so that they are aware of the struggles their alleged friends are going through, and so that those issues are addressed.

Neglectful Christian leaders are a disgrace, just as surely as they would be if they'd committed sexual abuse, or if they'd absconded with the money in the church's bank account.

The real problem is that we have allowed our leaders to operate with impunity, for far too long, in a subservient climate where such leaders are not held accountable for how they treat people.

In our churches, we need to start expecting, yes, even demanding "clean waters", instead of settling for less than what we really need. Contrary to what was recently suggested to me by a young man who was about to be hired as a new pastor at my church, there is nothing wrong with having high expections of our leaders.

As Jesus said in the book of Luke, "To whom much is given, much will be required."

Password Problems with Blogger and Google

2011-07-01T14:12:00.000-05:00

I've been using Blogger.com as my blogging service for a very, very long time. But Blogger.com used to actually be owned by the folks who created this service. No more.

Google recently acquired Blogger, which would be fine with me (and maybe even nice in some respects), except for the fact that I've had all kinds of problems with this account, subsequent to the Google takeover. It doesn't help any that it's next to impossible to get technical support from a real human being in relation to Google.

When I try to log into the account associated with the original blog and other Blogger blogs I created back in the days before the Google acquisition of Blogger, I frequently find that it won't recognize the password which, to my knowledge and best recollection, is still associated with that Blogger acount. So it forces me to reset the password to something new. Thank goodness it still sends the password reset link to the original Hotmail account under which the original blog was created (and under which I had created a number of additional blogs, prior to the Google acquisition of Blogger). But I've had to do this on a number of occasions. After a while, it's hard to keep track of what the latest password change has been (partly because this is not by any means the only password I have to remember), and I'm forced to change the password once again. What a pain in the behind!

Here's the bottom line: I believe that I know what my current password is, for this particular set of blogs, but who knows? I could revisit the site tomorrow, and try to log in, only to discover that I'm once again locked out of my own blogs. I can't count on being able to sign in again in order to edit an old post or create a new blog under this particular account. Hopefully, that won't happen, but if you visit this particular blog and find that I haven't entered a new blog post in quite some time here, don't be particularly surprised.

I'm just glad that the old posts still seem to be here and that they haven't been deleted. But in order to create a new blog post which has new and updated information (such as my current address, as of 7/1/2011, in Bellingham, WA), you may need to visit a more current blog of mine, created under a more current account (or, if necessary, under a new account created with another blogging service altogether).

Just for the record, in case that happens, my current address as of 7/1/2011 is:

Mark Pettigrew
2826 Undine
Bellingham, WA 98226

Not Exactly The Master of My Domain

2011-06-09T23:37:00.000-05:00

Back when the sitcom known as Seinfeld was still on the air, Jerry Seinfeld used to joke that he was the master of his domain. That was easy for him to say. He was taking in millions of dollars at the time.
Me? I'm not even the master of my domain names. Years ago, I registered MarkPettigrew.com. But then I let my payments to GoDaddy.com lapse, so I lost that domain name. Now I find, when I try to re-register it, that it's already "taken" (although there are other variations in terms of domain name extensions).

The same thing happens when I try to register ArtisticChristians.com (in which I invested a fair amount of time, when creating an earlier website at that address). In addition, I lost the full site which existed at that address, when I fell behind on the hosting fees. I'd backed up all of the files for the ArtisticChristians.com site, but even if I were to start up another hosting account with GoDaddy, I'd have to do some substantial editing of the site just to update it so that all of the links to internal pages went to the correct new pages which reflected the domain name change. To say nothing of having to update the various blogs of mine which linked and still link to pages at the original domain name.

This is just one of the hassles associated with the period of unemployment and related poverty I've experienced during the past several years. It isn't as devastating as (say) losing one's entire home in a tornado in Joplin, but it's pretty frustrating, nevertheless. The more heavily one gets involved with various web-based endeavors, the more of a hassle it can be to keep track of all of the necessary payments (even when most of one's web content is on free services, as my Blogger.com blogs still are) and password changes, and to regularly renew all of one's subscriptions.

Apparently, the world is full of "domain name vultures" who have some way of finding out which domain names have recently become available again, just so that they can swoop in and buy them up and then try to re-sell them to the people who owned them in the first place. I assume that that's what's going on. I can remotely conceive of people wanting MarkPettigrew.com (since there are a few other people of that name in the world) and ArtisticChristians.com (since I'm hardly the only artistic Christian), but I think that the "vulture" theory is far more plausible in my case.

Thankfully, I hadn't put a lot of money into promoting those names via printed materials, TV advertising and the like. But even after my financial situation is back where it ought to be, there's going to be a lot of work involved in recovering, to the best of my abilities, what I never should have lost in the first place. And I may end up settling for domain names which aren't as good as the ones I had earlier.

This is just one of the reasons why I need to find a way to get a regular source of income sufficient to enable me to protect my domain names and the various sites associated with those names.

Maybe some company ought to come up with some kind of "domain name insurance" and "hosting insurance" to cover those times when one is on the verge of losing those things because of one's financial situation. (Hmmm, I wonder if one could protect one's domain name via trademarks, by simply including the extension in the trademark, so that if someone tries to take it, one can sue that someone for trademark infringement.)

I will try to be much more careful in the future, because I can't afford to pay money just to get back assets which were originally mine..

MSNBC, The Democrats and the Pepsi Challenge

2011-04-16T23:49:00.001-05:00

Over the months since I first moved to my current location in Bellingham, WA, I've spent many cumulative hours of watching "The Ed Show" and other similarly predictable shows on MSNBC Normally, this isn't the type of thing I'd willingly watch on TV. The fact that I've done so despite my preferences is attributable to the fact that I'm currently the house guest of a "progressive" who loves that network, despite the fact that what the network offers a steady diet of Mostly Snarky and Needlessly Biased Commentary, not anything which could even remotely be described as objective, intelligent journalism.

It occurred to me one evening that watching Ed Schulz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Schulz) was very similar to watching an old TV ad for Pepsi (except, of course, that the old Pepsi ads had a whole lot less shouting in them, and a whole lot more good taste).

Many years ago, Pepsi had a TV ad campaign it called the "Pepsi Challenge". They would set up a table in a supermarket, along with a bottle of Pepsi, a bottle of Coca-Cola, a couple of glasses of cola, and a camera operator and a person with a microphone, in order to find out how well each brand did in comparison with the other brand during each "taste test".

It's been pointed out many times that one reason Pepsi consistently did better than Coke was that it was generally a bit sweeter than Coke (which is precisely why Coke decided to create the "new Coke", until the marketplace told them that in fact, they should have stuck with doing their thing their way, because what those Pepsi ads didn't reveal was that there was a substantial number of people who actually preferred the taste of Coke, not the slightly sweeter taste of Pepsi. (My own mother told me that she preferred the taste of Coke. Personally, even though I could detect a difference, I found it to be a pretty subtle difference. If I'd had any preference at all, I'd have said that I preferred RC Cola, but even there, I thought that it was a pretty trivial difference, about which I was anything but passionate. What I mostly hated was the cloying aftertaste of the "diet" versions of those various colas.. Why didn't Pepsi's"taste tests" address that issue? Because, hey, there was money to be made, even though many scientists later persuasively argued that diet drinks were utterly ineffective at combatting obesity.)

The folks in charge of Coca Cola wouldn't have wasted their time trying to win the taste test wars if they had dared to question the premise on which those Pepsi ads were based.

First of all, the premise was that the test was a fair test. On the surface, the Pepsi ads were designed to make their "test" seem fair and unbiased, and they might have been fair if Pepsi had been committed to the goal of presenting the results of all of their tests in a fair and unbalanced manner, whether the results of the tests had favored Pepsi or not. But Pepsi was in complete control of what happened to the developed film they'd created during those tests. If it had turned out that the tests favored Coke, Pepsi didn't have any particular legal obligation to publicly release ads which featured the test results which were unfavorable to Pepsi .If those "tests" had favored the Coke over Pepsi, logic would tell you that Pepsi would have quietly buried the results by choosing to put those rolls of developed film in the nearest "circular file", also known as a trash can. The success of those ads when they were running regularly relied almost totally on the willingness of extremely gullible TV viewers to assume that since the tests were conducted with "real people" in a real world environment, the tests portrayed in those ads were therefore "scientific" and unbiased. But there are all kinds of ways to lie covertly without doing so in ways which can be proved to be false and deceitful, especially when one is dealing with film (or video) which can be edited in ways which distort the truth.

There are also ways to produce the results one wants to get and therefore misrepresent the truth, simply by polling people whose probable preferences are already well known. For instance, if Pepsi had already run various marketing tests in certain areas of the country (and I'd bet that they had done so), they would have known which areas were most likely to give them the results they wanted. Therefore, such ads would have been deceptive, even if those folks were speaking from the bottom of their hearts with regard to their own personal preferences.

Even without any subsequent chicanery in the editing room, Pepsi could have distorted the truth simply by conducting their "tests" in environments or neighborhoods where Coke was at a known statistical disadvantage, and where Pepsi's marketers could therefore predict with a fair amount of reliability that they would prevail during those taste tests.

All of this reminds me of how Ed Schultz handles controversial issues on his show. He does have guests on his show, it's true, but the vast majority of them have clearly been cherry picked precisely because of their sycophantic predilictions, meaning that they are boot lickers who will say just about anything in exchange for having their egos stroked by Schultz. In other words, just as Pepsi's methodology was a type of propaganda, and therefore untrustworthy, the same could be said for Ed Schultz's methodology. In both cases, it's a "filtered reality": when we are in need of the "unadulterated truth", we get someone else's idea of the truth instead.

Schultz clearly knows that, and he milks it for all it's worth. On rare occasions, he will invite his political opponents onto the show, but even then, it's usually pretty clear that he asked them to appear on the show precisely because he was confident that it would be easy to openly ridicule them, with little or no fear that they would be well-informed adversaries who would promptly and expertly put him in his place. It amazes me that people play into his hands as often as they do, but then again, it never ceases to amaze me when I consider the number of people who have gladly endured the humiliation of appearing to millions of TV viewers on shows hosted by people such as Maury Povich and "Judge Judy" (who I suspect got her law degree and her arrogant and abrasive personality out of a cereal box) and Jerry Springer (the king of sleaze). Schultz deals with more issues of national importance, but when I think about how he's treated some of his conservative guests, with extreme disrespect, I think he's pretty much in the same camp.

Schultz is not particularly averse to trying to shout loudly enough to drown out his guests if he dislikes what they have to say. In my books, that makes him a bully, not a competent journalist. However, to give credit where credit is due, at least Schultz doesn't end each show by throwing a handful of loose papers at the audience, as Keith Olbermann did before management at MSNBC showed Keith the door! Wow, talk about juvenile behavior which would embarrass most 5-year olds.! I guess that's what liberals do when they run out of cliches with which to avoid actually addressing the issues.

If worse comes to worst, and if Ed's guests prove to be less predictable than Ed clearly thought they would be, he can always completely ignore them when they dare to dispute him, as one of his guests did the other day when she was unwilling to say what he clearly expected and wanted her to say. A more intelligent man would realize that he'd just been revealed for the manipulator he is, and such a man might have even been humble enough to apologize for his presumptuousness, but not our Ed. No sir! He went on to make a total ass of himself without skipping a beat.

What now passes for TV journalism would have struck the journalists of the sixties and seventies as laughable, or possibly as cause for a day of national mourning. It's just another example of how things in this country are going downhill. Maybe it makes me seem like a cranky old man for me to say such a thing, but I'm only two years younger than Ed, and he's more than a little bit cranky himself, especially for someone who acknowledged just the other day that he was in the top 2% of the country's richest people!

I'm financially destitute, and people like Schultz have (by dominating the media) deprived me and others like me of a real voice. Unlike Mr. Schultz, I have good reason to be a little bit cranky, when I consider the deceptive ways in which I've been regularly "dissed" by people like Schultz, even though such people have only rarely bothered to ask me my opinions. What, exactly, is his excuse?

By the way, since Ed supposedly has great empathy for impoverished people such as myself, why does he feel that he needs to be coerced by the government into doing the right thing to help poor people like me? He seems to think that we should be impressed by his willingness to be taxed at a very high rate, but I ask: What's to stop him from sharing his wealth with the poor voluntarily? Hey, if he wants to demonstrate his sincerity with regard to his alleged concern for the poor by sharing some of that wealth with me, so that I can be assured of not having to sleep under the nearest overpass if I should lose my housing during the next year, I'm an easy person to find. (My e-mail address is mwp1212[AT]gmail.com.) He merely needs to send me an e-mail message to the effect that he wants to share his wealth with me.

Nah, that would be too easy, and it would deprive liberals of the feeling of power which is their actual objective whenever they argue that the only proper way to address the needs of the poor is to rely on government action.

Speaking as one such American, I don't much care how folks choose to help me when I'm down and out, as I am to some extent even now. I just care that it gets done (which is precisely why I recently created an online community I call the Need Meeters' Network). Or one of the reasons, at any rate, since I do genuinely believe that that network has the potential to help a lot of people, not just me.

When one is able to totally control the conditions in which one faces down the opposition, then it's easy to take them down (or more accurately, to put them down). So easy, and in fact tempting, that Ed has a regular feature called "The Take Down". (Gosh, why do you suppose that so many conservatives have a negative opinion of the media? Could it be that so many so-called journalists have become little more than shills for the Democratic party, which is less interested in solving problems than in winning the next election?)

Not long ago, MSNBC argued that America needed a return to "civility" in the political arena, not so subtly implying that the blame for the decline in such civility belonged solely to Republicans. Well, I acknowledge that some Republicans need to be taught better manners. Their point was not lost on me. Yet it was going way overboard when they implied that all or most Republicans were somehow responsible for the horrible shooting down in New Mexico. (Even a cursory examination of the facts revealed that the shooter was motivated by his mental illness, not by any strong commitment to any political party.) How, exactly, does taking cheap shots help America to return to civility? When it comes to cheap shots, it seems to me that both parties are equally guilty.

MSNBC regularly employs acrimonious, self aggrandizing idiots like Ed, who are less interested in fairness or deep thinking than in promoting the Democratic "brand" with such ridiculously overheated rhetoric that one would think that every Republican on the face of the earth was a clone of the Devil. MSNBC would have a lot more credibility if that network's employees practiced what they preached.

A very rich clone, I might add, since the rhetoric which regularly spews from Ed Schultz seems to rely upon stereotypes to the effect that financially impoverished Republicans such as myself simply do not exist. (I assure Mr. Schultz that I am very real, even though he clearly wishes that such was not the case.) Like most of his cronies, Schultz almost never seems to acknowledge that a substantial number of Republicans such as myself consist of people who vote Republican for reasons having a lot less to do with economic considerations than with the fact that Republicans have historically opposed legal abortion, because they understand that the legitimacy of any government relies on whether or not that government consistently treats all human beings as if all people are indeed created equal. Treating people in some age groups as if they have a right to government protection from those who would wish to kill them, while treating others (specifically the unborn) as if they have no such right, is irrational, and utterly inconsistent with the values which we claim makes America so great.

Not only that, but a failure to consistently defend the value of human life in all of its manifestations is a failure which ultimately undermines all human rights. It does little good for someone to defend my right to free speech, my right to freedom of religion and other important but comparatively minor rights, unless that person also defends my right to be protected from others who would seek to kill me. If one is free to murder others and thereby deprive them of the right to live, then he can (by killing them) simultaneously deprive them of the ability to exercise any other rights they may have. Because it is such a fundamental right, the right to life is arguably the most important right of all. Those who deprive others of the right to life for reasons as flimsy as those which have been cited by defenders of legal abortion may not realize it, but they are engaged in an enterprise which ultimately jeopardizes every other right they might conceivably enjoy in the future.

The instinct for self-preservation has always been manifest by intense desire to protect one's progeny, even amongst lower life forms such as grizzly bears. (Many bear attacks against humans are attributable to their desire to protect their cubs.) There is something extremely unnatural about people who act in a manner which is the opposite of what one would expect from people who care about self-preservation.

If this were solely a matter of their own survival as individuals, then one might argue that they had a right to jeopardize their own survival or the perpetuation of the human species. But the issue has been misrepresented, by people who speciously argue that a woman has the right to control her own body. Such an argument is specious, indeed ludicrous, when one considers that the bodies people usually seek to kill at the local abortion clinic are not theirs. A child is a stewardship, not a mere possession to do with what one will. (Talk about an extreme manifestation of the capitalistic impulse! Ayn Rand would be proud.)

Once a woman becomes pregnant, the question is not whether or not she will become a parent. Biologically, she already is a parent, so she already is a parent (as is the man who inseminated her); the only question is whether or not the two parents will maturely accept the fact that parenthood comes with certain responsibilities.

Ed and his cronies at MSNBC regularly refer to "the people" during their evening diatribes. Which people are they talking about, exactly? Funny, I don't recall going to them and asking them to speak for me. Last time I checked, I was a person. But of course, you have to keep in mind when such people use such phrases as "the people" that they don't feel any guilt when they treat millions of unborn children as if such unborn children are not real people whose lives are worthy of consideration. So basically, "people" is a term they feel free to redefine in whatever manner they deem politically expedient for the party. And if they think that it's expedient to promote stereotypes which ignore the diversity (one of their favorite words) of the Republican party, then who are the American people to think for themselves? If Ed Schultz insists on seeing me as one of those "rich Republicans", then who am I to point out that I've suffered as much from this poor economy as anyone else? Who am I to suggest that people so self-centered that they make all of their political decisions solely or primarily on the basis of how it affects their own pocketbooks are people unworthy of leadership positions, regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats? Who am I to suggest that we will all face God on the judgment day, or to suggest that it is unwise to neglect that consideration when making life choices which may very well influence God's judgment of each of us on that day?

Maybe, when it comes to civility (not to mention humility), people such as Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and others at MSNBC need to practice what they preach. But I'm not seeing it yet on MSNBC, and I doubt that I will anytime soon.

Projects Of Mine

2011-04-15T21:09:00.001-05:00

I'm publishing this blog post for the purpose of sharing information about several projects in which I've been particularly involved, especially since moving from Chicago to Bellingham, WA in November 2010. The following is a summary of those projects:

THE CHRISTIAN ARTS INITIATIVE

The Christian Arts Initiative is an ambitious multifaceted project pertaining to my desire to help to start a "righteous Renaissance" by empowering and encouraging artistic Christians such as myself to more effectively use our various artistic talents and skills for the purpose of bringing glory to Jesus Christ, thereby making this world better, and more beautiful, than it was before we came here.

Admittedly, that's a pretty vague "mission statement", but if you'll contact me with an e-mail message, I'll gladly answer any questions you might have, and I'll also send you some relevant links which will enable you to better understand my vision, in terms of some specifics.

My e-mail address is currently mwp1212[AT]gmail.com.

I especially recommend that you visit the Artistic Christians' Network, which I created slightly less than two years ago. The ACN is an online social network which currently has roughly 30 members. Its name is pretty self-explanatory, to some extent, but you'll learn more if you visit the site for yourself. The web address for the ACN is: http://artisticchristians.ning.com. I invite you to visit that web site, check out the numerous blog posts I've written, and otherwise investigate the web site in order to get a better idea of what it has become, and what I hope that it will become once people have begun to use the site more fully.

Keep in mind, when you visit the Ning.com site, that any references to www.ArtisticChristians.com are references to a web site which is currently out of commission due to financial difficulties which caused me to fall behind on the web hosting fees for that site. But I hope to get a new version of that site back online again, once I've addressed various issues I'll need to address in order to bring that site back again.

In addition to developing the Artistic Christians' Network, site, I hope to start local fellowship meetings and planning meetings in the Bellingham, WA area, in relation to the local chapter of a group to be known as the ACE Fellowship of Artistic Christians. (ACE is an acronym, in this case, which stands for Artistic Christian Endeavors.) With the help of the members of the ACE Fellowship, I believe that it's feasible to achieve great things in the Pacific Northwest! If you like that idea, please e-mail me in order to discuss the idea of having such a meeting soon.

THE NEED MEETERS' NETWORK

More recently I created a second online social network which, like the Artistic Christians' Network, is focused on a specific objective. In this case, the objective is to create a Christ-centered network specifically for the purpose of empowering people who have a wide variety of urgent and not-so-urgent needs, such as the need for employment, the need for adequate and affordable housing, the need for medical and dental care, the need for friendship, and much more. The idea behind the Need Meeters' Network (NMN) is that many of those needs can be much more effectively met if needy people can become part of a "caring community" in which they are encouraged to openly share their various needs more clearly with one another. People can't usually meet the needs of others if they don't know what they are! That's just logical.

The Need Meeters' Network (NMN) only has two members so far, including myself, because I only created it a few weeks ago, and I'm still tweeking its design and developing the concept, not to mention the fact that I'm dealing with other issues in my life which are in some cases quite urgent. Based on feedback I've gotten from others when I've discussed the project with them, however, I think that the project has huge untapped potential, especially when one considers that I also hope to use the NMN to similarly empower various nonprofits, social service agencies and churches which are regularly involved in helping to meet the needs of others in various ways. The interactive nature of the Need Meeters' Network will enable various "need meeters" to develop active partnerships and alliances with people and organizations whose agendas and missions overlap to some extent. I'm committed to the goal of maximizing the usefulness of the NMN to such organizations, especially if they in turn will help to publicize the Need Meeters' Network.

Now, I'll openly confess (because I see it as no cause for shame) that I myself have a vested interest in the success of the Need Meeters' Network. Specifically, I have often found myself in situations where I needed a more effective way to communicate my own needs with people who might be both willing and able to meet those needs, or at least to help to meet those needs. One such need (which I'll discuss more in future blog posts, unless the issue is fully resolved before it becomes necessary to do so) is my own need for emergency housing, if my current housing situation should become even more unstable than it already is.

[As I said once in this blog post already, my e-mail address is currently mwp1212[AT]gmail.com.]

Time limitations often prevent churches and other traditional institutions from offering adequate opportunities for people to share their needs with others. Fortunately, web sites such as the NMN are usually accessible 24/7. So there's really no reason for failing to use such communication options, other than not caring about the needs of others. I'd like to think that most people (especially Christians such as myself) do care about people in this world who are hurting in various ways. So I invite you to visit and join the NMN (for free), in order to help make this world a better place, while simultaneously making it more likely that your own needs will be met in the future.

MY CURRENT JOB SEARCH

Ever since moving to Bellingham from Chicago, I have known that I needed to procure employment so that I could be relatively independent, instead of relying upon the help of Everett Barton, who generously invited me to stay with him when I lost my room at the Lawson House YMCA in Chicago on account of having fallen behind on my rent. I've spent some amount of time in pursuit of that goal. But probably not as much time as I ought to have spent, since I was preoccupied to a great extent with the other projects listed and described in this blog post.

Part of the reason, I must admit, was that I found it very discouraging to have to try to find a job in this economic climate and this job market, especially when I considered the impediments I faced when seeking employment, particularly in terms of my age (of 54 years), and when I considered how long it had been since I'd even had a part-time job, to say nothing of how long it had been since I'd worked full-time.

While it would be accurate to say that this has been a "crisis of confidence" to some extent, I want to emphasize that the crisis pertains to my ability to persuade someone to hire me for the type of job I need, and for which I'm qualified. There is no crisis insofar as my ability to actually do such a job, if I can procure such a job. I'm a skilled worker, with a strong work ethic, and I merely need a chance to prove that that is the case. Ever since I first entered the job market in 1972, I've worked in a number of restaurants, retail establishments and offices, and I've also worked in other positions, such as the time I worked as a news announcer at KSOZ, a 20,000 watt FM station at College of the Ozarks (or School of the Ozarks, as it was known at the time in late 1977). Also as a telemarketer, a telephone surveyor and more.

Any assistance I could get with regard to my current search for a suitable job would be greatly appreciated, because my ability to achieve the other goals discussed in this blog post is contingent first and foremost on my survival! If you believe in the value of those other goals, then please help me to achieve them by assisting me in finding employment in the meantime. I'll be happy to furnish you with my resume if you'll e-mail me at mwp1212[at]gmail.com and ask for the resume. If you have any questions related to my job search, I'll try to answer those questions as well.

MY OWN ART, MUSIC, POETRY AND PHOTOGRAPHY

For years, I have been forced by my circumstances to rely for my financial support on the income from a variety of jobs in a variety of work environments, from restaurants to retail businesses to various offices. I would never claim that I was "too good" to do so, but even when this country was not afflicted by its current economic woes, it was more than a bit frustrating for me to have to support myself in this manner, because it always felt like something of a compromise, when I gave serious consideration to what I believed to be God's vocational calling on my life.

This fact would not and will not detract from the quality of my work, if I find myself employed in a "normal" job again, nor will it cause me to seek to end such a job as soon as possible. Once hired, I generally do my best to keep that job as long as possible. In this economy, it would be foolish for me to do otherwise. Besides, I don't plan to rely solely on an outside job in terms of the totality of my income. Rather, I hope and plan to spend a lot of my "free time" when I'm not clocked in by focusing on the goal of raising additional funds, by means of entrepreneurial efforts involving the online sales of various high quality products of my own creation, such as greeting cards, fine art prints, books of my poetry, CDs of my music (once I have adequate time and equipment with which to create those music recordings) and more.

That has been my goal for many years, but it's only been recently that it was feasible. I now have the ability (and at least some of the equipment) with which to implement a plan to sell art-related products online. Every online sale of such products will take me closer to achieving my other financial goals, in a manner which will be consistent with my overall agenda, and which in fact will help me to achieve those other vocational objectives. So please visit this blog page (and other, newer posts at http://markpettigrew.blogspot.com), and check out the links I plan to periodically add to this blog post, in order to learn about my progress in terms of setting up an online storefront and/or selling various products in other easy-to-implement ways (some of which may involve income-earning opportunities for individuals, churches, etc. who are willing to help me to market my products)

If you're visiting this blog post as a result of being directed to the post by materials connected with another artistic expression of mine (such as a piece of my visual art), please consider putchasing a copy of that work of art so that I can spend more of my time developing the Christian Arts Initiative and the Need Meeters' Network, and less time trying merely to survive. Thanks!

Hell and Popular Music

2011-04-11T13:32:00.001-05:00

Over the years, I've heard a number of popular songs which have referred to hell. Often, they've made it sound as if hell is a marvelous place to be. For instance:

"You know you got to go through hell, before you get to heaven"
... from "Big Ol' Jet Airliner" by Steve Miller

"If you wanna' get to heaven, you've got to raise a little hell"
... Ozark Mountain Daredevils

And who can forget the songs "Hells Bells" and "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC? ("YEAH! Party on, dudes," said the embarrassingly drunken frat boy.)

In my opinion, there is no better way to demonstrate one's ignorance (or, dare I say it, utter stupidity) than to write songs that make hell sound as if it's a vacation paradise (or as if it is a stepping stone on the way to heaven).

I believe that hell is very real, and it's not a place where any sane person would ever want to be. Jesus died an excruciatingly painful death on the cross precisely so that we could avoid hell, if we would only make the simple choice to follow and obey him.

The fact that we live in a culture which treats hell as if it's a big joke says something really sad about that culture. People who have bought into the lies promoted by such songs can look forward to a very unpleasant wake-up call when they die.

That's one extremely compelling reason why we need to invest in turning our culture around, by helping to finance the creation of Christ-centered works of art and music.

Wise Words from Dale Pollard

2011-04-11T11:23:00.000-05:00

In the past several months, I've been involved with a Christian men's group, here in Bellingham, WA, known as Prodigal. Some of the Prodigal men meet weekly, on Thursday nights, at Hillcrest Chapel, where I attend church.

I just got an e-mail from Dale Pollard, who leads the Prodigal group. The e-mail ended with the following statement, which I found to be quite astute:

Mostly we think of people with great authority as higher up, far away, hard to reach. But spiritual authority comes from compassion and emerges from deep inner solidarity with those who are "subject" to authority. The one who is fully like us, who deeply understands our joys and pains or hopes and desires, and who is willing and able to walk with us, that is the one to whom we gladly give authority and whose "subjects" we are willing to be. It is the compassionate authority that empowers, encourages, calls forth hidden gifts, and enables great things to happen. True spiritual authorities are located in the point of an upside-down triangle, supporting and holding into the light everyone they offer their leadership to. Peace, Dale

It can be difficult, in many churches, to find leaders who exhibit this kind of a Christ-like mentality. Peace to you, too, Dale.

Should I Say Goodbye to Facebook?

2011-03-31T12:17:00.000-05:00

For the past week or so, getting into Facebook has been an incredible pain in the neck, thanks to what I just learned is known as the "Koobface" virus. In articles I've read online about the virus, it talks about messages one should not open. Well, I can't recall having received such messages, much less clicked on links in those messages. But it appears that the problem may even affect people who haven't been lured into the scheme, since the ability to reset one's password isn't currently working at Facebook.

Facebook had better fix this problem pronto, because even though I've benefited from participation in Facebook to some extent, there was a time when I had never heard of Facebook, and I got along just fine without it. If necessary, I can do so again.

Abortion, Environmentalism, Morality and Public Policy

2011-02-09T17:44:00.003-06:00

This week's issue of Cascadia Weekly, a free newspaper distributed in grocery stores and other outlets in the Bellingham WA area, has an article about a forthcoming visit and book reading, by author Kathleen Dean Moore, of her book Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.

I only just now heard about the book, so I wouldn't presume to be qualified to make any kind of definitive judgment of the merits (or lack thereof) of the book. But the article contained the following thought-provoking quote from Ms. Moore: "Clearly, information is not enough. A piece is largely missing from the public discourse about climate change; namely an affirmation of our moral responsibilities in the world that the scientists describe. No amount of factual information will tell us what we ought to do. For that, we need moral convictions."

I'm all for the idea that people need moral convictions, but I find presumptuous the implied idea that all people with strong moral convictions about global warming will by definition agree with one another about what we should do about it. That idea seems to stem from the debatable idea that disputes about factual aspects of the issue have already been resolved, and that we can now dismiss any arguments to the contrary as "crazy talk" (to use a phrase which seems to be especially popular amongst the progressives at MSNBC, whenever they'd rather engage in subtle ad hominem attacks than in actual refutations of beliefs with which they disagree). I've seen enough evidence, in the form of books seen at major bookstores, to suggest that such is not the case.

Could it be that arguments on behalf of the idea that something needs to be done have failed because people have found the premises on which such arguments are based to be unconvincing? Could it be that it's unreasonable to expect people to be so bowled over by the academic credentials of the people making such arguments that they will willingly ignore the contrary evidence in the form of their own senses and intuitions, as well as the evidence presented to them every day by their local meteorologists? Could it be that a year in which record snowfall paralyzed large areas of the continental United States does not constitute the sort of physical evidence one would expect when seeking confirmation that the global warming alarmists know what they are talking about?

When it comes to the subject of global warming (and more importantly, its causes), the trendiness of the issue seems to have created an atmosphere in which people are often persuaded to join the cause just so that they won't be branded as "out of touch" with their peers. What that has to do with the actual truth about the issue is anyone's guess. Truth is what truth is, and one's desire to be perceived as "hip" ought to be subordinate to one's responsibility to believe things which, first and foremost, are objectively true.

Not all scientists have acquiesced to the dogma currently being promoted by the majority of the scientific community; and lest we automatically reject the opinions of the the dissident minority members of that community solely because they are in the minority, we ought to humbly remember that scientific dissidents have sometimes been vindicated by subsequent discoveries. The so-called experts once believed and taught that the world was flat, and they ridiculed people, such as Christopher Columbus, who dared to think for themselves instead of being intimidated into agreeing with the majority solely for the sake of doing so.

The majority is not always right. So if you want to persuade me that something is true, even though it seems to fly in the face of the kind of evidence which ordinary people can experience with their own senses, you're going to need to show me evidence which is a lot more persuasive than what I've seen so far from the global warming "true believers", especially if I'm being asked to make major changes in lifestyle on the basis of a belief in the truth of a particular premise.

I bring this up, not because I possess enough scientific expertise to be able to know with certainty that one side or the other is factually wrong, but because it seems to suggest to me that there are those who fear genuine debate over those factual issues, and who therefore prefer instead to engage in name calling as a means of effectively silencing dissident voices. Specious argumentation of that nature seems to have become a fact of life when it comes to the subject of global warming, and that in itself helps to explain, in part, why I am suspicious of the motives and agendas of those who claim that the dispute over the facts has been resolved.

Second, even if it's true that we are suffering from unnatural climate changes which can be blamed almost entirely on man-made carbon emissions from transportation and manufacturing (and not on other factors such as bovine flatulence), it's noteworthy that some liberals understand that the facts alone are not enough to automatically cause people to agree with them insofar as their analysis of what we ought to do is concerned. So they invoke "morality" as a means of spurring people to take action in accordance with their agenda. That's not particularly rare. Many of the issues nearest and dearest to the hearts of political liberals are basically matters of morality, although it is in some cases a type of vague squishy brand of New Age morality rarely to be found in the Christian tradition or scriptures.

Why is it OK or even admirable for liberals to impose their morality on others when it comes to issues pertaining to global warming, but evil for conservatives to impose their morality on others when it comes to the subject of abortion? As I see it, this kind of hypocrisy is the very essence of irrationality.

If political liberals and progressives can't even grasp the simple principle that people should practice what they preach, then why should I trust that they are any more rational when it comes to their ability to intelligently debate the merits of arguments which hinge on sophisticated analyses of scientific charts and graphs?

None of this is to say that I oppose efforts to limit carbon emissions or to otherwise take our responsibilities seriously when it comes to stewardship of the earth's natural resources. In fact, I am greatly pleased to learn that Christians (such as Peter Illyn and the members of his group Restoring Eden) are doing their best to remind Christians of their moral responsibilities to take care of God's creation. I don't think that one has to believe in man-made global warming in order to believe that we should do everything to reduce pollution or to reduce American dependence on foreign oil. Both of those needs existed prior to the relatively recent time in history when the phrase "global warming" became part of America's lexicon.

It is not for the sake of protecting the vested interests of the oil companies that I express my reservations about the global warming movement. Rather, it is on account of my aversion to ideological propaganda and intimidation, regardless of whether it comes from the political right or the political left.

My advice: If you genuinely believe that global warming is an objectively real problem, and that users of internal combustion engines are largely to blame for that problem, then by all means, say so (and back that up by actually living as if you actually believe what you claim to believe). But try to show a little civility and courtesy towards people who have reached different conclusions.

2/12/11 Update

2011-02-07T18:52:00.002-06:00

I'm currently sitting in the dining area at the Haggen grocery store (in the Barkley Village shopping center in Bellingham, WA), accessing the Web with the new Toshiba L655 laptop PC I bought late last week at the Office Max in the Sunset Center shopping center. (It was on sale, enabling me to save $100, compared with what I'd have paid the previous week.)

It's likely to take me a little while to get used to the quirks of this machine (such as the upgrade to Windows 7, and the fact that the Synaptics touch pad has a bunch of features which I regard as somewhat superfluous and not entirely predictable). My new Toshiba doesn't yet have any major software applications other than the basic edition of Microsoft Office (not the version which includes Access database software). But it's still much better than being limited to one hour of computing time per day at the Bellingham library. That's only half as much time as I was getting from the Chicago library (or even less if one considers that the Bellingham library is closed on Sundays, unlike the Chicago library). 14 hours per week at the Chicago library was insufficient for the work I needed to do each week on the computer, and being limited to 6 hours per week at the Bellingham library later on was even worse. It scarcely gave me enough time to check, read and respond to my most crucial e-mail message, much less do all of the work required to adequately deal with my needs in terms of job applications and so forth were concerned. Now, having finally gotten my own PC again, things are looking up again for me to some extent, though I haven't yet been hired.

Unfortunately, I also caught a cold late last week, so I've been coughing and sneezing a lot for about two days. But I've asked God to heal me, preferably sooner rather than later, so I'm confident that he has already answered that prayer, even though I haven't yet experienced the manifestation of that healing. Meanwhile, I'm keeping the napkins handy, to wipe my runny nose.

The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse

2010-11-26T15:33:00.003-06:00

Want to read a very good book about the subject of spiritual abuse (and more importantly, how to avoid it)? I highly recommend the following: The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse

The book does an excellent job of addressing various problems which can occur within Christian churches.

A Moving Experience

2010-11-24T14:09:00.000-06:00

After 19 years of living in Chicago, I recently made a significant change in my life, by moving to Bellingham, Washington, which is just about as close to Canada as one could get without actually living there.

I don't know how long this change in location will last, since my living situation here is currently very unstable. But I didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. My residence at the Lawson House YMCA ended involuntarily as a result of finding myself in a situation where I'd fallen behind on rent, and where I'd found myself in eviction court.

I'd raised a significant amount of money towards the goal of paying back all the money I owed, by appealing for help from my Facebook friends. In fact, I thought that what I'd raised ought to be more than enough to satisfy the management at Lawson House. But what I didn't take into account was that Lawson House would tack on a huge charge for their legal fees. They wanted me to agree to an additional payment plan (not counting the $2,000 I was prepared and willing to pay to them) which they themselves agreed was untenable in light of the amount of money I was currently receiving on a monthly basis.

Consequently, I followed up on an invitation, by another one of my Facebook frinds, to visit him in Bellingham, Washington, in order to share my vision for the Christian Arts Initiative with Christians from his church and from the Bellingham region.

Since the $2,000 I'd raised online had not been adequate to keep Lawson House from proceeding with the eviction anyway, I decided to use that money instead to make the move to Bellingham, operating on the premise that the aforementioned Facebook friend from Bellingham would offer me hospitality long enough to enable me to procure employment and my own apartment in Washington.

I left Chicago last Wednesday morning, so I've been here for a week so far. It was a fairly enjoyable trip, considering that I was on various buses for slightly more than two solid days, without any sleep other than the sleep I got on those buses.

Staying here has certainly been more pleasant than it would have been if I'd been forced to resort to life in a homeless shelter in Chicago. Nevertheless, whenever a person procures emergency housing by appealing to another person for such help, it's a bit of a touchy situation. It's different from just coming as a visitor, because there's no certainty with regard to how long it's going to be before one is in a position to move into one's own place. There's a level of fear that the host will require that one leave before one has adequate resources with which to do so. And even if that doesn't happen, there are sometimes rough spots in such relationships, caused by different expectations pertaining to how guests and their hosts ought to behave.

I've already experienced such situations here, but God seems to be helping me and my host to get along with one another in a manner which, if not perfect, is at least sustainable for a relatively short period of time. Even so, I strongly desire to get my own place as soon as that's financially feasible for me, so I plan to do everything I can do to procure employment in the area and to begin saving money which will be sufficient for the purpose of paying the first month's rent plus a security deposit for a reasonably decent apartment which has adequate proximity to public transportation. Bellingham's public transportation is not by any means as extensive as Chicago's. It's more like the public transportation in Sioux City, Iowa, where I lived during the late seventies. But I've seen hints to the effect that I might be able to procure a basic, relatively affordable used car more easily than I might have thought, once I procure steady employment.

It's been extremely cold here in the last several days, particularly on Monday, when the weather could have been aptly characterized as brutal, and certainly as atypical for this area of the country, which is normally warmer than areas which are further east. But I will have a friend with whom to celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, and for that, I am indeed thankful.

A Strange Color Combination

2010-10-24T14:51:00.000-05:00

Years ago, when I read about Blackfoot Indians (or the members of the Blackfoot Nation, for those who are more current and politically correct), I wondered what the basis of the name might be. It seemed to suggest the existence of people whose feet were black even though the rest of their bodies were not black.

I thought, "Surely that can't be right." I had never seen such people with my own eyes.

Regarding the name of the Blackfoot "Indians", Wikipedia says, "The name is said to have come from the color of the peoples’ leather shoes, or moccasins. They had typically dyed or painted the bottoms of their moccasins black, but one story claimed that the Siksika walked through ashes of prairie fires, which in turn colored the bottoms of their moccasins black."

O.K. That makes sense. But here's what's weird. A few years back, I met a resident of the building in which I lived, and in which I still live, although the other resident has subsequently moved to another building. (I still see him occasionally when riding the bus.)

If you saw him fully dressed, you'd think nothing of it. He looks like any other white man, unless you see his feet, which I did on a couple of occasions, because he lived on my floor, and I sometimes saw him, in the shared men's room, with his shoes off. They were as black as the feet of any black man I've ever met! I kid you not. And I don't mean that they looked as if they'd been artificially turned black (e.g., with tattoos). They looked completely natural.

Now, of course, I've always known that there are numerous people of mixed race. But I always thought that it only manifested itself physically by creating people whose skin color is a single color which is a middle tone (usually about the color of coffee with cream), neither "white" nor "black". A lot of people who identify themselves as "black" would actually fit that description because they have white ancestors or parents. If not for the historic "one drop rule", it would be deemed ludicrous to call them black. For instance, I've seen white people, with a good tan, who are about the same color as Halle Berry. But she still calls herself a "black" woman.

At any rate, this was something altogether different. It was as if they'd surgically performed a foot transplant. Either that, or the guy had used the same kinds of chemical treatments and/or dyes that were used by John Howard Griffin, the author of "Black Like Me".

The second idea seems more plausible than the first one, but even if it was possible to do such a thing in a manner which only affected certain parts of one's body, it's hard to imagine why anyone would deliberately do so to his or her own body, especially if other people almost never saw the body parts in question. So I have to assume that his feet were just naturally black.

Did I ever ask him what the explanation might be? Are you kidding? Talk about an awkward question to ask! So I was left to ponder the mystery.

Has anyone else out there seen or heard of such a thing? Is there a name for the phenomenon?

Facebook Just Crashed

2010-09-23T14:14:00.000-05:00

It appears that Facebook is currently experiencing some very serious problems which prevent account holders from even being able to access most of the features of their accounts. Bummer!

God Has No Grandchildren

2010-09-11T15:55:00.001-05:00

One of the trickiest aspects of evangelism is explaining to unbelievers who have been harmed by people they've met in various churches that they shouldn't assume that church folks are necessarily genuine followers of Christ. That's not to say that true Christians don't ever sin against other people, but that isn't always the explanation for such things.

A lot of folks consider themselves to be Christians just because they "grew up in the church".

In some cases, no one ever even bothered to present the salvation message to them, because they grew up believing that anyone who's been baptized as an infant is automatically a Christian (which is just one of the reasons I oppose the practice of infant baptism, although I know that the folks who do that usually mean well).

We even have pastors and other spiritual "leaders" who have never repented of their sins or accepted Christ as lord and savior! Maybe they went to Bible school or seminary just to please their parents. Practically every church-related school can tell stories about certain students who were known for partying and for blatantly disobeying God when their parents weren't around.

That's one reason I am disinclined to treat pastors as if they are somehow infallible on account of their job titles. When a pastor or someone else from a particular church blatantly claims that church leaders are beyond criticism (as I've seen at multiple churches here in the Chicago area), I take that as my cue to continue my search for a church led by a truly godly person.

Some would call me a "church hopper" on account of that fact, but I'd rather be a church hopper than a mindless syncophant who has abdicated my biblical responsibility to test the spirits.

A position of church authority is a stewardship, not a blank check for a pastor to do whatever the pastor wishes to do. The Bible says (Luke 12:42-48) that people who abuse positions of church authority will be cut in half and assigned a place with the unbelievers!

People who fail to speak out against abusive pastors are enablers, as surely as they would be if they failed to speak out against other types of sin. They will be held accountable for their silence on Judgment Day. So frankly, I don't care if someone chooses to slander me on account of the person's inability to recognize a prophetic voice. What God thinks about me on that day is the only thing which ultimately matters.

Do Not Disturb Sign

2010-09-10T16:29:00.000-05:00

I'm posting this article (on a very temporary basis) as an easy means of enabling me to easily send a file to a local copy shop (by means of a link) so that I can print it in color on card stock (since the printers I currently at the Harold Washington Library don't enable one to print in color or on special types of papers or card stock), without knowing whether or not sending such files as e-mail attachments is an option.

Here's the link.

The Boy in The Barrel

2010-08-26T20:02:00.001-05:00

There are those who identify themselves as "pro-choice" because they freely acknowledge that there is a lack of complete consensus about when human life begins. Since such a consensus is lacking, they seem to believe that it's purely a matter of personal choice, and that one choice is as good as another.

I freely acknowledge that such a consensus is lacking if one is talking about the nebulous concept of "personhood" (although it is an utterly disingenuous and falsifiable claim if one is talking about biological life of the type which is genetically different from the parents of the fetus), but I disagree with the premise that since there is no perfect consensus, there therefore is no fundamental principle which would enable us to resolve the dilemma of what should and shouldn't be allowed.

Simply put, I believe that when there is a doubt about whether or not one is involved in the deliberate destruction of an innocent human being, one owes life the benefit of the doubt.

I tell a story I like to call "The Boy in the Barrel". One day, a man on his day off was out in his rural back yard, shooting at empty barrels just to kill time. (This was back in the days before video games and other diversions!) After an hour or so, his wife called him in for lunch.

He decided to resume his shooting after lunch, but just as he was raising his high powered rifle in order to take another shot, a man from next door ran into his yard and loudly shouted for him to stop. Puzzled, the man with the gun asked why he should do so. His neighbor said, "I know that you think that what you're doing is just innocent fun. But what you don't know is that while you were eating lunch, a neighbor boy wandered into your yard and decided for some inexplicable reason to climb into that barrel you're aiming at. If you shoot now, you will most likely seriously injure or kill that boy."

The man with the gun was conflicted. He'd seen no boy in his yard, and he remembered a time long ago when his neighbor had even lied to him. Nevertheless, it was a chance he dared not take. If there was even the slightest chance that he might be killing an innocent human being in the process of resuming his barrel shooting, he would regret that decision for the rest of his days. So he lowered his gun, walked over to the barrel and looked inside. Sure enough, there was the boy, just as his neighbor had claimed. He breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that he'd listened to his neighbor.

My point? Due to the gravity attached to the act of taking a human life, the burden of proof belongs to those who would argue that a particular action will most definitely NOT take an innocent human life. It does not belong to those who would disagree. If pro-choicers can't even agree about where to draw the line about when human life or "personhood" first begins, whereas most pro-lifers believe that the moment of conception is where one should draw the line, then the logical place to draw the line (for all people with consciences) is the moment of conception.

The above line of argumentation, by the way, does not rely on religious doctrine in any way, shape or form for its legitimacy.

Financial Update as of 8/23/2010

2010-08-23T20:21:00.000-05:00

As you know if you read my blog post from last Friday, I didn't get the unemployment insurance check (via direct deposit) which should have been deposited in my bank account on that day. So this morning, I checked with the bank, hoping that it would have been deposited over the weekend or this morning. No such luck. I was beginning to feel really desperate, inasmuch as I had a total of $7, consisting of $1 and change in my pockets, plus $6 in my bank account.

The 7 day CTA bus pass I'd bought last week hadn't yet expired (although it did later in the day), so I went out to the IDES office at 3500 W. Grand once again, to see if I could figure out what was going on, and to try to expedite the deposit. But when I got there, all they could tell me was that their records showed that the money had been deposited, just as they'd told me on Friday. They couldn't do a "trace" on the payment until Wednesday, when I'd have to go back to their office in order to initiate that process. Even if their trace did show that the payment had failed to go through, they still would have to issue a new payment, and it seemed likely to me that I wouldn't get that payment until Thursday or Friday at the earliest.

Needless to say, the return bus trip was not pleasant, because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I was supposed to buy food (and pay for the round trip I'd need to make there on the bus on Wednesday) with just $7 to my name. (Plus, if I'd withdrawn everything from the bank, they'd have considered that I was closing the account, which I very much needed in order to receive future IDES payments!)

I decided to visit the bank once again and see if by some remote chance the $118 I was expecting had been deposited in the last several hours subsequent to my first visit to the bank. As it turned out, IDES had indeed made a deposit, but they'd deposited $108, not the $118 I'd been told would be my weekly benefit.

At least I have a bit of money with which to pay for food for a little while. But it would seem that the phrase "a day late and a dollar short" should be updated, in my case, to "four days late and ten dollars short". It's bad enough that they're expecting me to live on $118 a week (or to live on that amount for two weeks, since I won't get another IDES payment until September 3, assuming that things go more smoothly the second time around). On top of that, I will now have to revisit the IDES office in order to show them the bank statement which documents the fact that their payment was $10 short.

Being poor really stinks.

Financial Update as of 8/21/2010

2010-08-21T16:27:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I shared some very specific details pertaining to my urgent need for financial help. I then placed a link to that blog post on my Facebook page.

Two people responded to that post. One person offered practical help, in the amount of $200 sent by wire to my bank account. (What a blessing!) The second person offered implied promises of help, but as far as I can tell, she did nothing of any consequence. She did say that she'd pray for me, but given the fact that her lengthy e-mails to me seemed to suggest that her real agenda was to find fault with me and with my manner of communications, I feel that it's reasonable to question whether or not she even did that. And while I certainly need prayers, prayers alone will not pay my bills.

Oh, well. When one is as transparent as I was in that blog post, that's to be expected, I suppose. But when one is as desperate for help as I've been lately, it's annoying to have to respond to such people, hoping that one is not wasting one's time in doing so.

Not long after posting my previous blog article, I bumped into a guy in my building who had worked on the census team with me. He said that I should visit the IDES office again and present them with evidence (in the form of pay stubs I'd received) of my having received income from the census. So I did that last week.

It turns out that when I applied for those benefits the first time, they hadn't yet received financial information from the census bureau, despite the fact that I'd applied for benefits fairly late in the game. That's why they'd initially made a determination that I wasn't entitled to any benefits.

This wasn't just an issue with the census bureau, by the way. IDES had received such information pertaining to my previous job with Screenz Computing Center, but only for the first quarter, not for the second quarter. And it had been at least four months since I'd quit that job. That should have been more than enough time, it seems to me, but apparently not.

The guy I spoke with last week checked his computer, and it turned out that they'd subsequently received new information from both jobs, and that I was now eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. So he updated their information regarding my application, and told me to go online in order to set up a direct deposit arrangement, and to call in for certification for benefits on Wednesday, all of which I did. He told me I should have my first payment on Friday. That turned out to be incorrect, probably because some banks are faster than others in terms of posting their payments. Consequently, I've really been scraping by this weekend, with only a few dollars left! But I have reason (based on my second visit to that office on Friday) to believe that there will be money in my account when I check on Monday. I pray that I'm right about that.

That's the good news. The bad news is that they awarded only $118 a week to me in the way of benefits. That's considerably less than they awarded to me last time when I applied for unemployment insurance benefits. If that were my only income source, it would be enough to pay my current monthly rent, but only barely. I'd most assuredly be reliant on DHS (the Illinois Department of Human Services) for food stamps. And that wouldn't help me at all with other necessary expenses, such as clothing, phone bills for my cell phone, and transportation related to my job search. More troubling is the fact that it wouldn't even come close to helping me to get caught up on the rent I already owe to Lawson House YMCA.

Also, the payment I'm currently expecting is only for one week, not two, thanks to the fact that IDES has a "waiting week" when one first starts getting benefits. Payments only come once every two weeks, so it's really going to be touch and go for a while, I suspect.

I do have one small additional source of income, but it still isn't enough to meet all of my living expenses while simultaneously enabling me to get caught up fairly quickly in terms of the back rent I owe. (And unless I'm mistaken, the payments pertaining to that additional source of income are currently late, which means that I'm going to have to nag that person, once again, to get caught up on her payments to me.) So the bottom line is that I still need financial help, or (if worse comes to worst) someone willing to offer temporary housing to me in the event that I am unable to satisfy Lawson House YMCA and in the event that they should evict me.

I've been in worse spots before in terms of back rent, and God has provided for me in the form of help which might be regarded as semi-miraculous, so I am trying to remind myself that such things can happen, and not to lose courage. But such things still do not come easily to me, so I could use both your support and your practical help, whatever that help might be.

A PLEA FOR HELP

2010-08-09T19:33:00.001-05:00

Over the years, I've experienced several crises in terms of my finances, and this is one of those times. In some respects, this is the worst one yet. I currently have no income (since the census bureau stopped handing assignments to my group of NRFU enumerators), I owe rent for both July and August (approximately $900 total), I have a negative bank balance of almost $200, and to top it off, I just received notice from IDES (Illinois Department of Employment Security) that my application for unemployment insurance benefits has resulted in a "benefit" of exactly zero dollars. Plus, the bank is currently charging me an overdraft fee of about $32 per item. (They have a feature which allows one "credit" for overdrafts of up to $250, but I've pretty much used up that option at this point.) I do still have a few dollars in my wallet, but that may not even last until the end of this week. I also have a few canned foods, but again, those will be gone before you know it.

I therefore solicit your prayers, and (if feasible) any material help you might care to offer. I'm pretty close to the end of my rope. and my depression over the situation is almost palpable. I've been a Christian since 1969, but things like this still put a huge amount of stress on me. I do not want to have to move into a homeless shelter, or to have to throw my numerous books, personal writings, etc. into a dumpster because I have no place other than my room at the Lawson House YMCA in which to store them.

Mark W. Pettigrew
Lawson House YMCA
30 W. Chicago Avenue, Room 1212
Chicago, IL 60654
312-420-2609
mwp1212@gmail.com

The above is the information which appears on my checks, except for the zip code. (It hadn't yet been changed by USPS from 60610 to 60654 when those checks were printed.)

For anyone wishing to wire money directly to my bank account:

My Bank Account Information:
North Community Bank
3639 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60613
Account Number: 11-13-007262-0222
Routing Number: 071001533

It might seem imprudent for me to post this personal financial information online, but I've been helped this way once before (by a fellow Christian from Australia!), and I checked first with my bank manager to see if the information could be abused by someone wanting to rip me off by taking money out of my account. I was told that I'd have to authorize any such withdrawals in writing. Directly wiring money would negate the need for a check or money order to clear.

I know some of you are also hurting for money, but every little bit helps. If you can't help materially, I would nevertheless appreciate your prayers.

For those of you who don't know me very well, I think you'll get a better feel for whether or not I am trustworthy by reading my many blog posts here at http://markpettigrew.blogspot.com. I can also furnish references, and I'll try to honestly answer any questions you might have to the best of my ability.

The Importance of Album Cover Design

2010-07-03T14:49:00.000-05:00

Recently, I learned by reading a fellow believer's blog post, that Roby Duke, a talented Christian musician from the West Coast, passed away several years ago. I left a comment there, but I'm not 100% sure that it actually went through because of some funky aspects of how Blogger responded when I attempted to post the message. So I figured that I'd store it here just as backup in case it didn't go through; and I also figured that I might as well post it here, too, since it pertained to my belief in the importance of good graphic design for packaging of Christian books, CDs, etc. Here's the comment I left there:

You write, "I got the opportunity to design his album covers including 'Blue Eyed Soul', 'Down to Business' and the CD re-release of his 1st album 'Not the Same'. It was an honor and a blast to be part of that. If ever there is a greatest Hits album, sign me up!"

Back in the 80s, I worked in the record department at the Harvard Cooperative Society (a/k/a The Coop), in Cambridge, MA. Back before Tower Records came to town (across the river, in Boston), the Coop was the biggest record store in New England. I was probably the only CCM fan in the Coop's record department at the time, and I was always trying to get them to carry more CCM and to place it in the same bins as the secular music, so that unbelievers would be exposed to it.

I remember getting Roby's first album there. I wish I had fond memories of the album, but the copy we got must have been the version he first released prior to your redesign, because I thought that the cover looked pretty unprofessional, to be quite candid. It might have been OK if it had been released in the sixties, back when it was still commonplace to treat the back of the cover as an afterthought, but I had become accustomed to high quality album covers by Christian acts such as Love Song, Mustard Seed Faith, the Pat Terry Group, the Sweet Comfort Band, Andrae Crouch and Resurrection Band, just to name a few of the best Christian album covers (and musicians) from the early days of the Jesus Movement. Perhaps it isn't fair to judge an album by its cover, but keep in mind that CCM was getting little or no airplay in those days, so I often bought an album or took a pass based largely on the quality of the cover art (or, on occasions, on whether or not I had had an opportunity to audition the record at the Logos bookstore in Kenmore Square). There was no Internet where one could check out albums prior to buying them. I figured that if an album cover looked amateurish, then the music was probably amateurish, too. My "system" of deciding what to buy wasn't perfect, but it seemed to work for me more often than not.

I do remember thinking from his album cover photo that Roby and I could almost be twin brothers. The resemblance was uncanny, in terms of the beard and hair, the glasses, and so forth. But that wasn't quite enough to make me give his music a chance.

To this day, I haven't really had a chance to hear much of Roby's music (which I seldom saw in the Christian bookstores I visited), but based on what I've subsequently heard about him, I have reason to believe that I've missed out on a lot. Hopefully, when my financial situation is better, I'll be able to pick up some of his older recordings at Amazon.

Born Again? Or Burned Again? Try Both.

2010-07-02T16:16:00.001-05:00

When I first became a Christian in 1969, and for quite a few years thereafter, I was so gung ho about my faith and about church-related activities that my father (who had earlier preached from two separate pulpits for a total of six years) accused me of fanaticism. Of course, part of that was motivated by the fact that he had begun to abandon his own faith in Christ, as demonstrated by the fact that he committed several sins which no pastor should ever commit, including adultery and alcohol abuse. Still, it says something about my attitude towards church at that time, I think.

Unfortunately, even though I remain committed to Christ (as seen by various attempts of mine to serve God with my diverse talents), a series of extremely unpleasant incidents in various churches has had the effect over the years of making me ambivalent when it comes to the Christian church. I know that my transparency and honesty about such matters has the potential to make it harder for me to find support for the ministry to which I believe that I've been called, but I've already had my fill of hypocrisy, and as I see it, pretending to be something one is not is a form of hypocrisy. I don't claim to be perfect, but I do try not to be a hypocrite; and when I perceive what appears to be hypocrisy on the part of Christian leaders with whom I am in communication, I am rarely inclined to bite my tongue, although I do try to temper my judgment with mercy.

One fellow Christian, after getting to know me, told me that he thought that I was something of a prophet, inasmuch as the Old Testament prophets were known for speaking truth to power even when it proved to be costly for them to do so. I'm wary of the tendency of people who think of themselves as prophets to become puffed up with pride, so I'm a bit hesitant to take on such a lofty title. But God can speak prophetically even through an ass, as Balaam learned, so perhaps it isn't a stretch to say that God has sometimes used my outspokenness in prophetic ways.

Don't envy prophets, folks. Not in the short term, anyway. As Jesus pointed out, a prophet is without honor in his own country. And the same thing is often true about how prophets are treated in their own home churches. I speak from personal experience in that regard. It helps to explain why I currently have no home church, despite the fact that I know that I could accomplish a lot more if I had the support of such a church. I don't like the role of a loner, but neither do I like playing unproductive mind games with people. I don't seek conflict with other people, but sometimes, such conflict seems to be magnetically attracted to me.

At a church I regularly attended recently here in Chicago, while speaking with one of the church deacons, I took it upon myself to share my longstanding idea for a parachurch ministry which would enable ordinary Christians to more effectively fulfill their biblical responsibilities to bear one another's burdens, by making it easier for people in need to communicate their needs directly with one another, not only from within their own local church bodies, but even in a manner (using web-based resources) which would transcend denominations, geographic locations, etc.

Naively, I figured that since he as a deacon had been assigned the task of helping hurting people, he'd be happy to get all the help he could get in that department. How wrong I was! He made it clear that he thought that I was trying to usurp the pastor's prerogatives by doing something which he saw as the exclusive domain of the pastor and the pastoral staff. What was intended as a helpful suggestion, he saw as a threat. He didn't seem to care that my plans would have helped people who demonstrably were not being helped by the ministries which already existed at that church. (I knew, because some crying needs of my own were not being met.) He made it clear that he would rather that those needs continue to go unmet rather than forfeit any of his power as a gatekeeper for that church, and that I therefore could not expect any help from him or the pastor.

I left the church shortly thereafter, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. True leaders after God's own heart care more about meeting needs, whatever it takes to do so, than about protocol or getting their egos stroked. While it certainly is valid for church leaders to root out heresy, treating all new ideas as if they're inherently heretical until proven innocent of heresy is a recipe for stagnation and the eventual death of a ministry. If what I saw at that church is an example of what I ought to expect from people who are called to certain offices of leadership, then it seems to me that such people need to seriously reexamine their so-called callings from God. A Christian leader who is truly anointed by God would never actively discourage another Christian from doing everything possible to show the love of God to people in need.

It Takes All Kinds

2010-04-24T22:24:00.002-05:00

Earlier tonight, at the Internet cafe where I currently work, I had a strange encounter with a customer who seemed to have issues with the manner in which I was dealing with his account with our company. Or at least, that was my perception. So when he turned to the guy who'd come into the cafe and whispered something which seemed to be directly related to me, I figured that he had whispered that he thought I was incompetent. I said so, and he said nothing at the time to refute the idea.

It turns out that I was wrong. Hilariously wrong.

He called the store just now to say that I'd misconstrued his intentions. He said that he'd actually whispered to his friend because he'd noticed the fact that I had a particularly hairy chest (presumably because he saw a very small amount of hair peeking out of the top of my T-shirt). He had called to tell me that he was turned on by men with hairy chests! He therefore wanted to know if I'd just like to "hang out" sometime. And when he used the phrase "hang out," I suspect that he meant the phrase literally.

I declined his invitation, but I didn't want to cause problems for my employer or to blow the incident out of proportion, so I was polite about the manner in which I did so.

Is that how gay guys proposition men in whom they have an interest? I have no idea. I'm most definitely not gay, which he would know if he'd ever read this blog. In fact, this is the first time anyone has ever expressed that type of interest in me directly, although I do recall one other instance in which a guy told me that he thought I was attractive, in that lispy way that gay men often use in order to make their intentions fairly clear without actually coming out and saying what's on their minds. On that first occasion, and on this one as well, I think that I handled the situation gracefully, in a manner which made it clear that I didn't swing that way, without acting as if I felt threatened. To act that way would be to confirm the false stereotype about people who oppose homosexuality, which is the idea that we do so because we feel that our masculinity is somehow threatened by the perverse inclinations of others. That would be every bit as irrational as it is to think (as many gays and gay apologists do) that people are incapable of controlling their sexual thoughts and actions. One irrationality doesn't justify another.

I thought that it was particularly funny that tonight's caller was turned on by my hairy chest. (Imagine what he'd think if he saw my very hirsute back, arms, etc.) Why funny? Because there seems to be a sizable part of the population, both male and female, which thinks that anyone with a hairy chest, back, etc. must be a brute with the intelligence and social skills of a large ape.

My, how things have changed in that regard! When I was an adolescent and young teenager, in the early and mid seventies, getting a hairy chest was seen as a positive thing. It meant that one was becoming a real man and leaving childhood behind. During the disco era, it was even fashionable for men with hairy chests to ostenstatiously display those chests, which were often adorned with gold chains and pendants. (Burt Reynolds was particularly well known for that look!)

That was much more logical than the current fashion, it seems to me. But now there are people who look down on men who don't look like prepubescent children. People even sell an electric groomer, with an extremely long handle, precisely so that men whose genetics have not "blessed" them with hairlessness can conform to other people's ridiculous expectations.

It's nice that there is someone out there who recognizes how ridiculous those expectations are. Now if I could just find an intelligent, reasonably attractive single WOMAN who has similar insight, and who wouldn't hold it against me that I'm also bald, with bad teeth attributable to years of lack of money with which to pay for adequate regular dental care. But frankly, at age 53 (soon to be 54), I'm not holding my breath. I've come to accept the fact that it's highly improbable that I'll ever have any sexual partner, regardless of gender; and while I admit that that thought has sometimes caused me to experience a certain amount of frustration and depression (inasmuch as I am by no means asexual), I've also come to accept that my value as a human being is independent of whether or not I conform to other people's expectations in terms of what constitutes so-called normalcy. After all, there are now a lot of people who seem to think that it's "normal" for men to have sex with as many women (or men, or people of both genders) as possible, without any regard for the possible consequences. Personally, though, I'd rather be deprived than depraved.

Even though I'm not gay, I suppose that my relative indifference to other people's opinions about me gives me something in common with people who are gay. The significant difference is that I actually care about what God thinks about the choices I make in this life. While I admittedly do so imperfectly, I therefore make an effort to think and behave accordingly.

A Momentary Money Crisis

2010-04-20T23:23:00.000-05:00

Just now, I went to the grocery store to buy some food. I tried to pay for it on my debit card, only to be told that there were insufficient funds for the purchase. I ended up leaving the two bags of groceries there and walking ASAP to the ATM to find out just what my actual balance was.

Why wouldn't I know? Well, even though the ATM is right around the corner from where I live, I often find that when I need cash, I just go to Walgreens and buy something I needed anyway (such as cereal bars for breakfast), and get $20 or $40 cash back. I'd been doing that for the past couple of weeks or so, and I therefore hadn't checked the actual balance (which Walgreens doesn't give to you on your receipt, unlike the ATM).

The last time I checked my balance via the ATM, it was to make sure that after I paid my rent, I'd still have a couple of hundred dollars in the account for food, transportation to work, etc. I thought that what I'd left over would last me until my next paycheck. And it would have, if I'd deposited the check when I got it! Or to be more accurate, if my employer had done so. The trouble is that until fairly recently, Screenz Computing Center, where I work, had been paying me via direct deposit, just as I'd requested when I'd first been hired. But then the last time I got paid, they didn't pay me like that for some reason. I thought, mistakenly, that it was just a temporary glitch, and that they'd go back to paying me via direct deposit for the next pay period. I was wrong. Apparently, they'd switched to a new payroll company, and I'm just not getting paid via direct deposit anymore, period.

I wish they'd told me that, or that my manager had mentioned that my paycheck had arrived when it did, because my paycheck for April 8 has been sitting here at work for the past two weeks, when all along I naively assumed that it had already been deposited into my account, and that I had $440 more in the account than I actually had there. I'd have realized that it hadn't been if I'd used the ATM and checked the actual balance each time, but because of the way I was getting my money from occasional trips to Walgreens, it never caught my attention.

I now have a copy of the check, for $440.35, and I'm expecting another similar check in just 3 days, on Friday (assuming that it arrives on time). But here's what stinks. I not only didn't have enough money to cover all the transactions I'd done for the past couple of weeks, but I into the negative figures in a serious way. My bank "generously" covers the actual cost of overdrafts when they're attributable to payments made to places like Walgreens. But naturally, they charge an overdraft fee when that's done. So when I finally did get around to checking the balance via their ATM (thanks to the incident at the Potash grocery store, which made me aware that there was a problem), I discovered that I was about $250 in the hole!!! I won't know until I check tomorrow, but I'm guessing that a substantial amount of that amount can be attributed to overdraft charges. Those are charges I'd never have had to pay in the first place if a.) My employer had continued to pay me via direct deposit, as agreed, and b.) My bank had taken the time to make me aware (via e-mail, phone call or whatever) of the fact that I was currently in the process of ringing up overdraft charges because I erroneously thought that there was money in the account to cover those purchases.

I don't mind taking responsibility for financial errors attributable to my negligence, but the way I see it, this was not my fault, and the bank should therefore reimburse me for those overdraft charges, or else my employer should do so because of the fact that the mistake was attributable to the failure to continue to pay me via direct deposit as he had done in the past. We'll see. I know that I am definitely going to go to the bank first thing tomorrow when they open up, and plead with them to refund any overdraft charges attributable to the aforementioned snafu. Meanwhile, it will probably be at least a couple of days before the check which I just picked up tonight clears after depositing it in the bank, and meanwhile, I'm going to need some money, since I'm down to six dollar in my wallet. So I guess that I'm going to have to do the Walgreens thing once more in order to get another $40 to last me until then. Of course, that will mean yet another overdraft fee.

Life really stinks sometimes, especially when one is just barely scraping by financially as it is. When I paid my rent last time, I was still $200 or so behind on the rent after making that payment. What I'd paid was just enough to keep me out of court temporarily. This latest incident just increases the pressure on me and the difficulty of getting caught up on my rent.

Abortion and the New Math

2010-04-17T19:15:00.001-05:00

One of the sad effects of the 1973 legalization of abortion in America has been the introduction of a new level of tolerance for incoherent, self-contradictory rhetoric.

A great example can be found in recent news headlines from Chicago, where I've lived for the past 18 years. I'm referring to the story about James Larry, who is accused of murdering four family members by shooting them all at point blank range (ostensibly because his wife wouldn't convert to Islam).

Or was it six family members? It depends, I suppose, on how one defines family, and on whether or not one learned how to count when one was in kindergarten.

Here's a link to a relevant story written by Don Babwin and published online by the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/15/man-in-custody-after-ramp_n_538810.html

Pay particularly close attention to the second paragraph, which reads as follows:

James Larry, 32, of Madison, Wis., was charged with four counts of first-degree murder, four counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of intentional homicide of an unborn child. Officials said both his wife and teenage niece were pregnant.

I find the preceding paragraph interesting in light of the headline of the article: "Man In Custody after Rampage: Killed a Woman and Three Children".

How many children was that, again, Mr. Babwin? Three? I think not. Read your own article again, doofus. There were six people killed altogether: One adult (the killer's wife, Tawanda Thompson), plus three children who'd already been born (named Keyshai Fields, Keleasha Larry and Jahod or Jihad Larry), plus two unborn children still residing in their mothers' wombs.

They wouldn't call them unborn children if they weren't children at all, now would they? Nor would they charge James Larry with "intentional homicide of an unborn child" if, as abortion advocates claim, the entities in question were merely lifeless "products of conception" or lumps of "fetal tissue". Why file such charges, as the Chicago police or detectives apparently did, if you don't think that the charges will stick?

This level of cognitive dissonance and Orwellian doublespeak exhibited by the aforementioned story would be hilarious if not for the fact that it's so common, even (or perhaps especially) among ostensibly serious journalists, and if not for its tragic effects on our collective reasoning abilities with regard to the fundamental principles of justice. There's something bizarre about admitting that there were six homicides altogether (all of which resulted in the filing of legal charges) and then turning around and saying that only four people were actually killed. I wish I could attribute the discrepancy to bad proofreading, but I think that something more fundamentally disturbing is going on here. In an effort to please everyone involved in the inherently divisive abortion debate, journalists end up sounding like idiots who can't even count to ten.

And why is it that James Larry gets charged with homicide if he kills an unborn child he has fathered, but if his wife had decided to kill that same unborn child by visiting a local abortion clinic, she'd have been celebrated as a "liberated" woman who was merely exercising her constitutional rights? If that isn't gender discrimination, then exactly what is?

Isn't it a bit ironic that such gender discrimination is regularly practiced and encouraged by the very people who tell us that gender discrimination is evil, or at the very least socially unacceptable? If they cannot live lives which demonstrate integrity, why should we regard them as people who have any credibility?

Kate Harding and Constance McMillen

2010-03-17T16:04:00.002-05:00

Recent media attention was focused on a girl named Constance McMillen. Here's a link to the relevant story:
http://www.shewired.com/Article.cfm?Section=1&ID=24635
I was made aware of the issue when I read a related commentary by Kate Harding, in the March 13 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times.
In response, I sent the following Letter to the Editor at the Sun-Times:

Regarding Kate Harding's 3/13/2010 commentary ("School cancels prom to keep out lesbians"), please allow me to remind Kate of some relevant facts. First, Itawamba Agricultural High School is a private school, operated by a Christian church which has the right to operate that school in accordance with its own doctrinal precepts, whether she agrees with those doctrines or not. It's called religious freedom. Even though liberals such as Kate would just love to obliterate that particular constitutional right so that they could impose their own ideas on everyone, that right still exists nevertheless.

High schools have no constitutional obligation to allow students (whether gay or straight) to have proms at all. (A lot of conservative Protestant schools oppose dancing, so they've never had proms for anyone.) Having such an event a privilege, not a right, and while I don't doubt that the kids at that school were disappointed that they could not attend a prom, they'll survive that disappointment, just like Constance McMillen's parents will undoubtedly survive the disappointment of learning that Constance couldn't accept the fact that she'd been born a girl. Constance was almost certainly well aware of the outrageous nature of her desire to pretend to be a man while attending the prom, thereby effectively giving the finger to the church which provided the economic and administrative support whch enabled her to receive an education at that school. If her parents forced her to attend such a school in spite of her wishes to attend a school which would condone her lesbianism, then Constance's issue is with her parents, not with her school.

Gays and lesbians love to spout off about "tolerance," but their unwillingness to tolerate people who disagree with their beliefs pertaining to sexual behavior shows that their use of such seemingly benign rhetoric is deceptive. They're hypocrites and bullies, and they'll get no sympathy from me.

Sleepless in Chicago

2010-03-07T08:23:00.212-06:00

Imagine working a 12 hour double shift at a retail job after not getting a wink of sleep the night before.

That's the position in which I currently find myself. I went to bed at midnight, which should have been early enough for me to get about 6 hours worth of sleep or so, under normal circumstances.

Unfortunately, I live in the Lawson House YMCA, on a floor where two of my closest neighbors just happen to be psychotic, unemployed individuals whose idea of fun is to talk loudly to themselves in-between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. Since they're unemployed, they apparently think that everyone else on the floor is always as free to sleep until noon as they are.

I've been unemployed on a number of occasions during the past decade, but unlike the aforementioned individuals, I know that the entire world doesn't revolve around me, and I know that those particular hours are primarily designated for sleeping, or at the very least, for showing respect for one's neighbors by being reasonably quiet so that others can sleep.

One of those neighbors, in Room 1213, is known as "Poochie" (which ought to tell you something about him right there, since it seems to me that no self-respecting adult male would want to go by such an infantile nickname, though I've never said that to him). His real name is Alan.

The contents of Poochie's late night rants are at least somewhat benign. He claims to be a Christian, so he frequently likes to preach longwinded sermons to no one in particular when he's talking to himself. Sometimes he actually has valid things to say during those rants, but he could be reciting the Bible word for word and I would still find it to be obnoxious and inconsiderate behavior at that time of the day, unless he could find a nice soundproofed room where he wouldn't disturb anyone's sleep.

Poochie also has a propensity for occasional bouts of maniacal laughter, which get louder and louder as it gets later and later. Sometimes the laughter appears to be in response to funny things he's watching on TV, but often, it appears that he just laughs because he enjoys the experience of laughing, not because he's responding to anything particularly funny at all. When I've complained to him (and occasionally when I've reported the excess noise to the building's security guards), he's disingenuously responded by arguing that laughter is the best medicine, and by falsely implying that my complaints therefore mean that I begrudge him the right to take his "medicine". Of course, he's missing the point entirely. The issue isn't whether he's laughing, talking loudly, belching, singing or making loud grunting noises associated with the martial arts. He's done all of those things for hours on end, on occasions when I was trying to sleep, and I found them all equally annoying for roughly the same reason. There's a time and place for everything. A comedy club, for instance, is a good and appropriate place for bust-a-gut uncontrolled laughter, as is a theater where the movie being shown is a comedy. A funeral, on the other hand, is not an appropriate place for such laughter, nor is a public library, nor is a residential facility where other people are trying to sleep. (NOTE: They'd throw him out of the Harold Washington Library in a heartbeat if he tried that sort of thing there.) The idea that the appropriateness of his laughter is determined by the context in which it occurs seems to elude his understanding. Or at least he pretends that that's the case. He seems to be quite unfamiliar with (or indifferent to) concepts such as "courtesy" and "self-control".

A substantial part of the problem is that the walls at the Lawson House YMCA are fairly thin, so they don't keep sounds out very well at all. On top of that, the placement of Poochie's bed in relation to mine on the other side of the wall means that his head is literally just a few inches away from mine, separated only by that thin wall, when we're both lying in bed. I'd relocate my bed in my own room in order to increase that distance, but it would not be an optimal arrangement of the furniture there in other respects, and I doubt that it would make a huge difference, inasmuch as I can still hear Poochie ranting to himself at the other end of the hall when I'm walking to and from the dorm-style bathroom late at night.

I've been dealing with the aforementioned behavior for quite some time. It's gotten worse as time has gone by, and I've periodically tried reporting it to the security guards in the building. Usually they dutifully respond to my complaints in some manner, but I sometimes get the impression that they're just going through the motions; and in any event, it seldom makes much of a difference. Sometimes when they visit Poochie's room, he pretends that he's going to lower the noise, but he then continues to ignore that request the minute they've gone back downstairs. Sometimes he makes various excuses, including attempts to change the focus to me in order to make it look as if he's justified in violating my right to a good night's sleep. (Such excuses include blatantly false statements, such as the claim he once made to the effect that I'd called him the "n word".) And sometimes he makes truly bizarre and utterly irrelevant statements. This morning, for instance, he responded to my complaint by telling the security guard that he was turning off his room light, as if there was some kind of relationship, known only to him, between the fact that his light was on and the fact that he'd been making a racket. Apparently, the devil didn't make him disturb the peace; his ceiling light made him disturb the peace! (Naughty, naughty ceiling light!) It seems clear to me from the fact that he's often made such statements that something in his head isn't "wired" quite right.

He also claimed this morning that I'd been banging on his walls. I hadn't, although I'd done so in the past in response to the incessant noise emanating from his room on those occasions. But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that someone else had banged on his walls this morning, because those noises he makes can probably be heard in the apartments above and below him, too.

Until fairly recently, the guy living across the hall in Room 1209 was a tiny little Mexican American named Joe. Joe virtually never bathed, from what I could tell from his appearance and from the fact that I never saw him down in the shower room even though he had no bathroom of his own. (He also had a dent in his forehead in the shape of a small inverted bowl. One resident told me he thought that Joe had been shot in the head once. It might help to explain his behavior.) He sometimes played his music too loudly at inappropriate times, and he sometimes uttered strange shouts (including occasional profanities) and groans late at night. Even so, I'd take Joe any day over the new guy who recently took over that room after Joe left. The new guy is named Darnell. He's almost the same as Poochie in many respects, except that he isn't a Christian, and his rants are often filled with profanities (particularly the "f word" and the similar but longer word which refers to a person who commits maternal incest), along with angry, hateful words referring to killing and other forms of violence. Frequently he makes statements which display outright racism and paranoia on his part. One day when returning to my room from the men's room, I heard him proclaiming to no one in particular that he was certain that white people would love to invade his room and kill him. This worried me a bit, because paranoid people can react violently to imagined threats.

Of course, if some white folks (and folks of other races as well) want to kill Darnell, he might want to consider the possibility that there's a link between that fact (in the unlikely event that it's a fact) and his own obnoxious behavior! Not all forms of antipathy are related to race.

A subsequent and relatively recent incident was even more memorable, since it seemed to confirm that Darnell had a latent capacity for unjustified violence. Again, I was returning to my room from the men's room. As I started to unlike my own door, I heard him loudly open his door. I turned to find that Darnell was standing just inches away from me, glaring at me as if he wanted to kill me, and as if he was going to force his way into my room (since I was already inside that room). I said, "Excuse me, do you have some kind of issue?" His expletive-filled response made it very plain that he did, although it didn't seem to have anything to do with anything I'd said or done to him. In fact, prior to that incident, I'd scarcely even talked to him at all.

Later, he apologized to me after calming down, telling me that he'd just had a very, very bad day, which he'd taken out on a lot of people, among whom I was one. But even the apology demonstrated a lack of social awareness, inasmuch as he chose to do so out in the hallway, in loud tones which awoke another resident there, very early in the morning.

Actually, the first time he tried to apologize, he didn't even tell me why he wanted to speak with me, nor did he even identify himself when he knocked on my door. I did recognize his voice, however. I thought I was in for more threats from him, so I didn't open the door for him when he knocked. He then told me that he wanted to apologize. I told him that I accepted the apology, but I still didn't open the door, because he'd waked me up, and I wanted to go back to sleep, not to get embroiled in a long and needless discussion out in the hallway. The second time he apologized, I stayed to talk with him for a few minutes (since I was already out in the hall anyway), but I cut things short when another resident complained that our voices had prevented him from sleeping. Darnell just kept right on talking to himself, of course, even after I'd shut my own door and gone back to bed.

A somewhat similar pattern repeated itself this morning, except that he was considerably less threatening this time around. It may have had something to do with the fact that I'd made an effort, in the interim, to cultivate a relationship with him (during a discussion in the residents' lounge one day) in spite of his previous rudeness and hostility.

What made this morning especially noteworthy was the fact that another resident called security to report the noise Darnell was making in the hallway. The guard spoke with him about it, but as soon as the guard had gone backstairs, Darnell started up again. Eventually, he shut up (at about 5:15 a.m.), whereupon Poochie then began his own tirade! I felt as if I was being attacked by a "tag team" of sorts, as if they were united in a conspiracy to deprive me of my sleep! I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories, so I say that partly in jest, but only partly. Eventually, I reported the issue with Poochie to the security guard downstairs (forcing me to get dressed for that purpose, because the charge on my cell phone had run down). But doing so was ineffective, and it was getting so close to the time I normally would have gotten up that I just decided to try to make it through the work day today without any sleep at all. And that's where things stand at this moment.

I try to treat folks in accordance with the Golden Rule, especially when it's clear to me that they're suffering from issues such as retardation or mental illness (both of which seem to be factors in this situation). Nevertheless, there are limits to my willingness and ability to tolerate antisocial behavior which threatens my very livelihood by putting me into situations where I'm forced to go to work without adequate rest. So I plan to send a link to this article today to Yvonne Banks, the Lawson House YMCA staff person who is responsible for dealing with situations such as this.

Hopefully, that will work, but if it doesn't, I will do what it takes in order to insure that my right to a good sleep is respected, even if it means calling the police and charging the offender (or offenders) with the crime of disturbing the peace, since calling security doesn't seem to do much good.

One thing's for sure: I can't keep going through this kind of thing. I can't afford to lose this job on account of jokers like Poochie and Darnell.

A Suggestion for Dan Coudreaut

2010-02-22T20:28:00.001-06:00

I recently saw an article, in Newsweek, about Dan Coudreaut, whose job title at the McDonalds Corporation is Director of Culinary Innovation. There's also an article about him in Chicago Redeye (2/22/2010, pages 6 and 7). He's been called the most influential chef in America, inasmuch as he helps McDonald's to develop new menu items which meet that company's standards. I suppose it depends on how one defines the word "influential". If it's a matter of serving more people than almost every other restaurant or restaurant chain in the world, then the word definitely fits. But that can be a good or bad thing. When it comes to McDonald's and its effect on the health of Americans, the record is decidedly mixed.

Here's a suggestion for Dan: I think that it would be nice if McDonald's would offer a green vegetable other than iceberg lettuce.
I'm not a parent myself, but I know that a lot of health-conscious parents would be grateful for such an addition. Fast food restaurants such as KFC and Popeyes seem to be capable of offering green beans and other hot green vegetables, and other places (such as Subway) offer cold green vegetables other than lettuce, such as green peppers and fresh spinach, so why can't McDonald's do so, too?

Here's a product which would fit in well, I think, with the overall menu at McDonald's:
Dr. Praeger's Spinach Pancakes are sold frozen in many grocery stores, so the McDonald's Corporation wouldn't even need to produce the products themselves; they'd just need to sign a contract with Dr. Praeger's to produce the products for them. Since they're ordinarily sold frozen anyway, those spinach pancakes wouldn't pose the freshness issues which detract from the feasibility of selling products made with fresh ingredients which might spoil quickly. Such spinach pancakes taste quite good, in my opinion, especially when heated in a microwave oven with a nice slice of cheese melted on top. Certainly they're much more palatable than spinach from a can. I've never eaten spinach pancakes inside burgers, but I have eaten them between slices of bread or toast, and they were very tasty when eaten that way, so I'm guessing that they'd taste good with burgers, too. About the only drawback is that the cooking time is important; if they're overcooked, they tend to get softer over time, until it's hard to lift them from a pan without causing them to fall apart (if one chooses to cook them in a skillet instead of a microwave oven). But that's easily solved by using a timer; and I actually think they taste better when "nuked" with a microwave oven.

Another option would be for McDonald's to sell Dr. Praeger's Spinach Bites. I've never actually tried these (having never seen them in the grocery store), but judging by the photo on the web site, it looks to me as if these might actually be even more conducive to fast food sales than the pancakes. I can even imagine eating them with hot cheese sauce into which they could be dipped, if served with forks.

Spanokopita (spinach pie) would also be a great menu addition at McDonald's. I actually prefer spinach pie to spinach pancakes, when they're done right (e.g., with large, generous portions and nice flaky phyllo dough). I didn't discover spanakopita until I was an adult, but I think that I would have loved eating it as a kid, if I'd known about it.

Any one of the above options would be appealing to kids, I think, even though it can be hard to get kids to eat green vegetables. And the above options would make great alternatives to unceasing servings of salty french fries with almost every McDonald's value meal. People trying to reduce their sodium intake would also appreciate such menu offerings, I think. And McDonald's could probably procure the licensing needed in order to use the image of "Popeye the Sailor Man" on its advertising for the new products. They could even offer Popeye toys with those meals, to add in the appeal to the kids (although I admit that most of today's kids have never heard of Popeye the Sailor Man).

Blogger Pages

2010-02-19T17:21:00.001-06:00

Blogger.com has long offered an easy way to create websites, without the need for any knowledge of HTML or other web design layout languages or web design programs, simply by design one's own blog and filling it with content. But it used to be that Blogger blogs were very different from regular websites. Specifically, Blogger blog sites really only had one page: The home page. One could move forward or back in order to read different blog posts, but one couldn't easily set up "static" web pages which were always easily accessible, in order to furnish visitors with basic information without requiring that they search the entire site in order to find that information.

There were workarounds, of course. One could create links in the sidebars in order to take visitors to specific blog posts dealing with particular issues. But that was sometimes less than satisfactory, partially because of the placement of such links on the page. Links had to be placed very high up on the page in order for folks to notice or find them, and even then, they tended to have a lower profile than the links on the types of navigation bars typically found on standard websites.

However, I just discovered a new feature which now enables people to add up to 10 standard web pages to their Blogger.com blog sites. I wish they'd added this new feature a long time ago. It will make this blog site a lot more useful, both to me and to my visitors. I haven't fully developed the site with the new feature, but I plan to do so in the near future.

I also plan to do so in relation to some of the other sites I've created with the help of Blogger.com.

Truth In Advertising

2010-02-19T09:05:00.003-06:00

Andersonville Wine & Spirits, located just across the street from the Internet cafe for which I currently work, has signs in the window advertising the various brands of booze the store carries. Judging from one of those signs, one of those drinks appears to have the charming name of Delirium Tremens. The sign features a picture of a pink elephant on a blue background. Presumably that's a reference to the fact that Delirium Tremens is the technical name of the hallucinations suffered by alcoholics.

Since they've decided to be honest, perhaps they'll come out with a full line of alcoholic drinks named after additional symptoms of alcohol abuse, such as hangovers, ruined marriages, children abused by their drunken parents, people killed by drunken drivers, women raped by their drunken dates, and folks whose idea of a good time involves incoherent speech, disgusting personal hygiene, and frequent vomiting.

Thinking and Speaking

2010-02-17T19:23:00.004-06:00

Recently I was exposed to some posters, on the subway trains and buses here in Chicago, and while the subject of those posters was ostensibly common courtesy and tolerance, it was clear to me that the real agenda was altogether different.

In response, I sent the following letter to the folks who had placed those posters:

I've seen your advertising posters, and I've visited your website.

While you're on the subject of thinking before one speaks, you might want to give some serious thought to the pejorative and frequently inaccurate nature of the "homophobic" label which is often mindlessly applied to any and all opponents of homosexuality and/or the liberal gay agenda. There are many reasons for opposition to such things, and some of those things (such as sincere beliefs about the nature of biblical revelation regarding homosexuality) have nothing whatsoever to do with fear.

You might also want to give more thought to the idea that a phobia is not just any fear. It is, more specifically, an irrational fear, according to most dictionary definitions. Some fears are both rational and justifiable (and are therefore not phobias), on account of the fact that they motivate us to take preemptive measures to protect ourselves against known dangers. We put smoke detectors in our homes because the threat of fires is a real, documented threat. While it is true that any legitimate fear can become a phobia if it's exaggerated beyond reason, a specific fear itself may nevertheless be rational and justifiable.

There are many who believe that the damage which can be caused to a person's body by physical threats such as fire in one's home is trivial in comparison with the eternal damage which can be caused to a person's soul by spineless acquiescence to politically correct trends in relation to practices which are regarded by many of the faithful as sin. Fear of eternal judgment is incontestably a type of fear. Is it therefore an irrational phobia as well? Only if you disagree with the premise that there is a God, and a coming judgment to which we will all be subjected. The manner in which people define terms such as "rationality" depends a great deal on their foundational premises which, more often than not, are based on large or small leaps of faith. This is no less true with regard to your beliefs than it is with regard to the beliefs of conservative Christians, such as myself, who disagree with you. And it should be pointed out that many (not all of whom are Christians) regard the fear of God as a virtue, not a vice.

The frequent use of the term "homophobia" as a political tool is therefore a disingenuous form of anti-Christian bigotry. The use of that term undermines the credibility of organizations which claim that "tolerance" is a universal virtue, even though many of those people wouldn't know tolerance if it bit them on their collective behinds. Protests of people holding alternative views (at places such as Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral, to name just one of many recent examples) illustrate that most gay activists are unwilling to practice true tolerance. What they desire and seek is total capitulation obtained by means of political intimidation, harassment, incessant propagandizing and obnoxious, antisocial behavior.

They will not get the capitulation they seek in my lifetime.

Some Thoughts About Suicide, Salvation and Compassion

2010-01-30T15:01:00.066-06:00

Recently, I read a brief post at a Facebook page for one of my Facebook friends. The original post had stated that one of that person's Facebook friends was experiencing depression and "suicidal tendencies" in response to the recent death of a friend. Prayers for that person were solicited.

A guy named Pat Taylor responded as follows:

To Claire: Suicide solves nothing.. it is not an end to pain. It is not a solution, but a lie. Hang in there... please...get through this. Your friend is in good hands; the hands of a merciful and loving God. I know it's His will that you stay around for a while because people love you and you're important to them. I know the gut wrenching pain that seems to only be healed by unconsciousness. I've been there, really.... Please, the Lord desires you to stay on earth, and for good reason. If at all possible, don't doubt our Father, but call on Him.... reason with Him... He knows what's going on, and He loves you and He loves your friend who's passed on.

I was frankly curious about how Pat or anyone else could authoritatively say that suicide solved nothing. To know that for certain, one would have to have successfully committed suicide one's self, or one would have to have conversed with someone else who fit that description. I don't know anyone who's still alive who can state with any certainty that he or she knows on the basis of personal experience what happens to a person after he or she successfully commits suicide. One might say that people who try to commit suicide and who fail to do so still continue to have the same problems they had before, but that is hardly surprising, and it is utterly unrelated to the question of whether or not successful suicide achieves its objective. Since one is utterly presumptuous to claim to know the answer to that question on the basis of personal experience, the only other basis I can think of would be direct revelation. As a Christian, I believe that the only authoritative source of revelation is God's word. Therefore, the following was my earlier response to Pat's comment:

Pat, your statement to the effect that suicide isn't an end to pain is a commonly heard sentiment, but it seems to be a theological statement to the effect that suicide automatically dooms people to hell regardless of whether or not they are Christians, since we know from the Bible that there will be no pain or sorrow in heaven.

I know of only one scripture (repeated in three different gospels) which refers to an unforgivable sin, and it has nothing to do with suicide. It's in Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:29 and Luke 12:10, and it refers to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (which, in context, amounted to attributing the work of God to Satan). Some others argue that the "blasphemy of the Holy Spirit" is just another way of saying "rejecting Christ as Savior", although I'm not sure that the context supports that interpretation. In any event, it seems to me that it's a real stretch to equate "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" with suicide, since suicide isn't even mentioned in those passages of scripture.

Arguing that suicide dooms people to hell also seems to me to contradict the known character attributes of God. God is compassionate towards hurting people. The vast majority of suicide victims are hurting people who might never have considered suicide in the first place if Christians who claimed to care for hurting people actually demonstrated that concern in practical ways, which would vary in their specifics on a case by case basis.

It's quite true to say that many Christian leaders have opposed suicide, and some have even claimed that it was an unforgivable sin; but Christian leaders have disagreed with one another about a good many things, so my own standard is what God's word actually says, not what fallible Christian leaders say about what God's word says. Show me chapter and verse that says that suicide victims all go to hell regardless of whether or not they had accepted Christ as savior, and I'll revise my opinion. As far as I know, no such scripture exists.

No one with any intelligence or compassion would argue that we ought not to be deeply concerned when people express suicidal thoughts. But telling fellow Christians that they'll go to hell if they kill themselves constitutes taking it upon ourselves to make definitive statements about a matter about which the Bible is silent. Furthermore, it's an abication of our moral responsibilities (described in the Bible as "the law of Christ) to bear one another's burdens. It's not a fulfillment of those responsibilities. It also implies that suicide is even worse than murder, since we know that murder is a forgivable (albeit serious) sin. Personally, I find that hard to swallow.

Want to help your friend? Then don't threaten or even imply hellfire. Doing so will just make things worse than it is already.

Do be a shoulder to cry on, and offer any practical support which may be needed. In other words, obey the Golden Rule by treating the person the way you'd want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot.

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Pat Taylor responded poorly to my criticism. In his first response to me, he denied that what he'd written implied in any way that people who committed suicide would go to hell even if they'd been Christians in this life. Later, after I'd responded to that denial, he responded by saying that I had "issues". Well, yeah, I've admitted as much (as I did in an earlier blog post).

One of my "issues" is that I am very annoyed when people make statements which imply things which they aren't willing (or able) to acknowledge.If one says that suicide doesn't solve problems or make pain go away, then it seems to me that one is implying that people who commit suicide won't go to heaven, since we know from the scriptures that heaven will be a perfect place where pain and problems no longer exist. Therefore, it seems to me that one is implying that those people will go to hell. Is that such a difficult concept to grasp? It seems like a "no brainer" to me.

I resent having to take the time to try to explain such simple concepts to obtuse individuals who aren't honest enough with themselves to admit that they have made extremely uncompassionate and judgmental statements which have no solid scriptural basis, and which serve no useful purpose. In my opinion, Pat Taylor's initial statement most certainly wouldn't deter one single person from committing suicide if that person was truly suicidal. In fact, I suspect that it might provoke such a person to carry through with such plans, inasmuch as it is just one more example of the fact that we live in a world full of people who lack empathy for hurting people, and who don't understand why the idea of escaping from this world of sin and pain to a far better world where such things ostensibly don't exist might appeal to people who feel desperate.

Do I have issues? Yes, I do. Show me a hurting person, and I will show you a person with issues, especially if the hurt could have been avoided. But show me a person who lacks empathy for hurting or depressed people, and I will show you a person with even bigger issues, even if he or she isn't willing or able to admit it. In my opinion, my issues with regard to this particular subject pale in comparison with Pat's.

One other comment. In one of his replies to me, Pat asserted that suicide was tantamount to murder. This seems to me to be a truly ludicrous thing to say. Just as my own possessions are mine to use as I see fit even though another person's possessions are not mine to use as I see fit, it seems to me that the same could be said with regard to my life. Just as a person is regarded as a thief when he takes another person's possessions without permission, whereas he has no need to ask permission to take and use his own possessions, the same principle would apply to a person's right to take his or her own life if that seems to be preferable to continuing to live in a world where hope seems to have evaporated. To be a prisoner in one's own skin is a truly intolerable situation.

We often praise people (in certain circumstances) when they take the lives of other human beings (e.g., when such killings occur in the context of wars or in the context of capital punishment), but we condemn people if they take their own lives because they are miserable and there seems to be no relief in sight. Many people seem to be unable to imagine that there could ever be extenuating circumstances which might justify suicide, even though they have no difficulty imagining that there might be extenuating circumstances which would justify murder in the name of justice or self-defense, or even (in the case of abortion) in the name of "choice". That seems perverse to me. Surely taking the lives of other human beings, even in the most extreme extenuating circumstances, ought to be regarded as much worse than taking one's own life, since personal autonomy is normally regarded as every person's right!

As for the idea that it deters people from committing suicide for other people to imply that they will go to hell if they do so, I would simply observe that roughly 2,000 people commit suicide throughout the world every day, according to one fairly credible online source. That's roughly 200,000 people every 100 days (or about the same number of people as the total number of recent fatalities in Haiti). If deterrence is the objective of people who make such statements, that strategy plainly isn't working.

Of course, efficacy isn't the sole measure of legitimacy, and we ought to speak the truth as we see it, whether it accomplishes anything in the way of deterrence or not. But when we do so, we should be sure that we have a solid basis for believing that what we say is in fact true. When it comes to matters regarding eternity, that solid basis has to be rooted in God's word (and not just what other people say about what God's word means), since God alone knows such things with any amount of certainty. So again, I repeat: Show me definitive and persuasive biblical proof that such a fate awaits all people who commit suicide, even if they've accepted Christ's forgiveness for their sins, and I will revise my opinion on the subject.

The Deceptive Nature of At Will Employment

2010-01-10T20:08:00.005-06:00

In most job application forms used in the United States today, there is a legal clause stating that the job consists of "at will employment" which can be terminated "with or without cause" at any time, by either the employer or the employee. Sounds fair, right? After all, if the employee is free to quit at any time without cause, then why shouldn't the employer be equally free to terminate the arrangement?

Here's the trouble: Regardless of whether or not an employer had just cause for termination of the employee, it's generally assumed in the course of most job interviews (and even prior to those interviews, when potential employers are looking over job application forms to determine who to interview and who to ignore) that the employer had just cause for terminating the employee.

If the employee terminated the arrangement, on the other hand, the employee is once again assumed in most cases to be the one at fault. It's presumed, especially if the employee was only at that job for a very short time, that the employee quit the job because he was flaky and unable to commit to anything, when in fact the employer may have been a complete jerk whose abusive treatment of the employee drove the employee to quit even though the employee badly needed the job.

In short, job interviewers represent the employer, so they naturally see all employers as the "good guys", whether specific employers are in fact good guys or not.

This is true, to some extent, even if the applicant has only lost or quit one or two jobs in his entire life. But negative accumptions tend to snowball for employees who have had a string of bad luck.

In short, the "at will" employment arrangement greatly favors the employer, since it basically gives the employer permission to treat the employee in a manner which completely disregards the Golden Rule. Regardless of whether or not their reasons for termination of their employees are just or reasonable, they seldom suffer loss as a result of such decisions. At worst, they may be required by the state to pay a portion of the terminated employees' unemployment insurance; but even then, they are unlikely to suffer any serious negative business repercussions, whereas employees who have been unjustly fired can spend many years trying to simply recover from such incidents and get their careers back on track.

Now, it's true that employers can be sued for "wrongful termination," but such lawsuits are rare; and usually, they're limited to very specific types of situations, such as overt discrimination on the basis of race or age or gender. It's hard for the injured party --- namely, the fired employee --- to prove that the loss of his or her job is attributable to flaws or errors in judgment on the part of the ex-employer.

If an employer makes an "at will" clause a part of the job application form or the written job offer, it's not as if the employee-to-be has any say in the matter. Any job applicant who insisted that that clause be stricken from the agreement would basically be forfeiting even the slightest chance of being hired for the position. So even though it may appear that agreeing to that clause is a strictly voluntary matter, that's an illusion. Job applicants basically take their chances, cross their fingers and pray that their new bosses aren't inconsiderate jerks. Sometimes, they get lucky. Often, they do not.

Having experienced the downsides of mutual "employment at will" arrangements firsthand, I would change the laws to prohibit such compulsory agreements between employers and employees. All employers who fired specific employees would be required to justify their actions legally, not just in relation to unemployment insurance compensation claims, but also in a manner which would enable wrongfully discharged employees to apply for future jobs without having such incidents held against them. And perhaps there would be some method of publicly shaming employers who abused their authority by firing employees at the drop of a hat for reasons which had nothing to do with job performance.

Another solution might be to require that all job interviews be conducted by independent parties who would be more objective, rather than being conducted by people who by natural inclination tend to automatically make positive assumptions about applicants' former employers.

This might also help to reduce the need to go through the common song and dance wherein applicants are inhibited from being really honest about their former employers, during the course of interviews, on account of their awareness that such honesty will generally be held against them, regardless of whether or not what they say is true.

Free Fundraising Thermometers

2009-12-29T15:44:00.010-06:00

If you've read other blog posts of mine, here or at the Artistic Christians' Network, you know that the Christian Arts Initiative is the name of a project of mine, designed to empower artistic Christians to make the most of their talents in a variety of ways, some of which will require substantial fundraising efforts in order to be transformed from great ideas into realities.

Online fundraisers often require high quality "thermometer style" graphics in order to help give their supporters some idea of how things are progressing vis-a-vis fundraising. So I did a Google search just now, and found a site which offered an online generator for code which could be adjusted in order to show one's current donations in comparison with one's monetary goals. Here it is. The numbers shown here are somewhat arbitrary, but in the future, I plan to plug in some more carefully conceived numbers, along with explanations (or summaries) of what the money would be used for and why it would be needed.

Fundraising Ideas

Fundraising Thermometer Generator

My Favorite Type of Art

2009-12-18T18:45:00.006-06:00

Ever since I was in high school, I've always admired a type of hyperrealistic art which was often seen on album cover designs in the late seventies, and which often involved the use of an airbrush (although that wasn't always the case).

One illustrator who is particularly good at that style of art is Jerry LoFaro. Another similarly talented artist is Frank Ordaz. The two artists aren't identical in style. Jerry's images are sometimes less realistic in terms of subject matter. Frank's images are influenced by his Christianity, and by his previous employment with Industrial Light and Magic (where he worked on films such as ET).

Both artists are extremely talented. To be candid, I admire their artistic styles and skills a lot more than some self-proclaimed "fine artists". If I had to choose a style of art I'd love to be able to create myself, I suppose that this style would come closest to my own aspirations.

Interestingly, LoFaro now creates his art mostly with Photoshop (and possibly other digital software programs). The same could also be said for the vast majority of illustrators currently specializing in fantasy and science fiction imagery. It shows how far digital art has come in the past few years.

Mimic HDR with Topaz Adjust

2009-12-17T14:45:00.001-06:00

HDR is an awesome technique which produces photos which capture a much wider dynamic range than standard photos, and which can in many cases look more like very expertly done paintings than photos. It does this by combining multiple photos which are taken sequentially with different exposure settings. (This is known as autobracketing.) So one photo might be exposed for the highlights and another for the shadows, and the HDR software would then combine the best of the two photos (or more than two) to create an image which looks better than either of them alone.

The main problem is that HDR really only works well when there aren't subjects which are moving substantially in-between the different shots. Some HDR software can help to "erase" such subjects to some extent, but HDR is still more of a technique for still life and landscape images than for action photos.

Fortunately, I've found a software program which seems to do a superb job of mimicking the look of HDR photos, without the need for multiple exposures. It's called Topaz Adjust. Needless to say, it's a real boon for action photographers, but also useful for older photos for which there are no bracketed exposures. Or for modern photographers who possess cameras which lack autobracketing capabilities. Here are some very impressive links regarding the program:

http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust/

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=567653

Topaz also makes some other cool programs, such as Simplify. Furthermore, their website has an aweseome online gallery showing just what the software can do in the hands of photographers and artists who know what they're doing. Check it out!

So Much for Choice

2009-12-08T15:51:00.010-06:00

Whenever one talks about the subject of abortion with someone who opposes the legal prohibition of that practice, one is likely to hear the "choice" buzzword. After all, it sounds so much better to say that one is in favor of "choice" than to say that one is in favor of allowing women to chop up their unborn children in utero, or to destroy them by scalding them in a saline solution, or to destroy their unborn progeny in other ways. The word "choice" is sometimes repeated obsessively, almost as if it's a magic mantra which is capable of answering any and all moral objections to the practice.
The trouble is that such people are incredibly inconsistent when it comes to their alleged allegiance to free choice. Apparently, women who want to kill their unborn children are the only ones who are entitled to have a voice in the abortion decision. Fathers of the unborn children slated for destruction? Not so much. Grandparents of those same unborn children? Again, not so much. The siblings of the unborn child? Again, not so much. People who might have benefited from the contributions of those children to society? Again, not so much. Apparently, working under the idea that "possession is nine tenths of the law" (which, if truly valid, would mean that kidnappers had more of a right to the kids they'd kidnapped than their natural parents, and thieves had more of a right to the products they'd stolen than the original owners of those products), our chief justices decided in their dubious substitute for genuine wisdom that the mere fact that the unborn child currently resides in the mother's womb is proof that her rights trump and virtually eliminate the rights of all others who might be affected by her decision. Not the least of whom is the unborn child himself or herself, who is given no choice whatsoever in the matter. Only the abortionist (also known as the "hired killer" to those of us who refuse to couch things in euphemisms) is granted rights comparable to those of feticidal pregnant mothers.

We're told that we must respect the woman's right to exercise her conscience as she sees fit. But when it comes to the question of the consciences of the voters who are being asked to fund the abortions of potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of unborn children, it would seem that they have no such rights. If they believe that being forced to fund abortions is tantamount to being forced to fund the murders of innocent human beings, that's just tough luck, according to the Democrats who seek to force the American people to accept a national health care plan which makes no exemptions for abortions. They seek to present the issue as one in which petty ideologues s are uncompassionately oblivious to the health care needs of their fellow Americans. But abortion is not "health care" at all. It cures no diseases or injuries, unless one idiotically considers pregnancy to be a disease (in which case one has to wonder why so many people go to fertility specialists in an effort to contract the disease). Abortion's sole purpose is to inflict lethal injuries on human beings who have never deliberately harmed anyone. Calling that "health care" because legal abortions happen to be performed by licensed physicians is like calling it health care when licensed physician dispense addictive drugs which are used solely for recreational purposes, not for reasons which can be justified by necessity.

The problem with using the word "choice" as if it's an automatic rebuttal to any and all objections to legal abortion is that it assumes that restrictions on people's choices are always evil. Based on such a premise, one might reasonably expect that "pro-choice" Democrats would be anarchists. But it's a demonstrable fact that they are not. Nor should they be. There are plenty of "choices" which should be opposed by the legal system, such as the choice to murder or enslave another human being or to steal that person's rightfully acquired possessions.

The extremely biased manner in which "pro-choice" people favor pregnant women's rights over the rights of just about everyone else involved and affected by the abortion decision (some of whom also happen to be women or females) demonstrates that their alleged allegiance to equal rights for all American citizens is a deadly illusion, promoted for propagandistic purposes, and not as a matter of principle.

Hope Versus Optimism

2009-12-06T19:59:00.010-06:00

On his Facebook page, the highly talented and perceptive Christian author Jim Belcher wrote the following on 12/5/2009:

"Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair." Richard John Neuhaus (via Scotty Smith).

Here's the comment I left in response to that post from Jim:

Too many modern churches are what I like to describe as "happy face churches," in which folks think the best solution to serious problems is to pretend they don't exist, and to hope that doing so causes them to go away. ("Positive confession" churches are especially prone to this kind of thing.) To me, that sounds more like Neuhaus' definition of optimism than his definition of hope.

The Bible commands Christians to bear one another's burdens. But I can attest from painful personal experiences that it's next to impossible to find anyone in a "happy face church" who will even allow one to tell him or her what one's burdens are in the first place. Pastors are sometimes the worst offenders, because they want to project an image of success, and the honesty of some believers can threaten that image.

How people are supposed to bear burdens when they're unaware of the nature of those burdens is anyone's guess. Meaningful problem resolution and healing is almost possible in such a superficial, uncaring environment.

Far fewer Christians would yield to despair if we had far more hopeful Christians (who therefore offered genuine help to hurting believers) and far fewer optimistic, heads-in-the-sand Christians.

A related and time-relevant note: I've heard that more people commit or attempt suicide during the Christmas season than during any other time of the year. Maybe what exacerbates their despair is their increased awareness of the huge discrepancy between what the church is and what it should be.

NOTE: Jim Belcher is also pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (http://www.redeemerpres.com/) in Newport Beach, California.

A Long Way Gone

2009-11-30T20:26:00.001-06:00

Here's a link to information about a particularly fascinating book which has captured my attention lately.

Ghosts? Oooh, scary. (Not.)

2009-11-24T14:48:00.002-06:00

Do you believe in ghosts? If so, you might be wary of visiting cemeteries. Personally, I'm not, because I've just never seen any evidence to support such silly claims.

I just came across a web page which stated the following, with regard to a cemetery in my home town:

The Springfield National Cemetery is also host to more than a few lingering spirits as well, according to some people. Late-night visitors to the cemetery have reported seeing gravestones that appeared to glow in the dark. Yet others have reported finding strange anomalies in photographs they took while inside the cemetery grounds. On occasion, some photographs even show what appears to be an apparition or form of some long-dead solider standing amongst the tombstones.

As it so happens, I grew up about a block away from that cemetery when I was a kid living at 2137 S. Delaware. Even then, I seem to recall walking through the cemetery on at least one or two occasions. Later, after my parents' divorce in 1972, my mother moved to 1520 E. Seminole, where she still lives today. I remember that when I was still in high school, my mother, my grandmother, my brother and I would sometimes walked through the National cemetery (where my father was buried when he died in 1999) as a shortcut on the way to the Battlefield Mall. It seemed safer than walking along the side of Glenstone Avenue, which didn't really have a decent sidewalk for that purpose.

I wasn't particularly spooked by the grave stones. To me, there wasn't much difference between that walk and a walk through one of the local parks. As often as we made that trip, I think that one of us would have noticed something if there had been glowing gravestones or apparitions of dead soldiers!

But hey, whatever it takes to bring more shoppers to the Battlefield Mall, I always say. Whatever's good for the economy of the region is likely to be good for the residents.

Forgive? Maybe. Forget? Never!

2009-11-18T19:33:00.005-06:00

When one attempts to talk about past incidents which have negatively affected one's life, one is sometimes likely to be told that one should "get over it" and "move on with one's life" and "forgive and forget." Such glib and uncompassionate advice, which I've heard from Christian pulpits from time to time, treats regrettable past events as if there is never any logically or morally defensible reason to want or need to discuss such incidents with others.

That is simply false. As the southern novelist William Faulkner once wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past"

Traumatic events sometimes cause deep wounds and scars which can take a lot of time to heal. Yes, there are instances in which God miraculously heals painful memories instantly, but it's both insulting and presumptuous to assume that such exceptional incidents are or ought to be the norm. Counselors who don't give wounded people adequate time in which to heal from such events ought to be regarded as professionally incompetent.

Furthermore, even when complete healing has been achieved, it doesn't follow from that fact that remembering past events serves no other valid purposes. Prevention of similar events in the future, for instance, is a particularly valid purpose.

What did Faulkner mean when he said that the past wasn't even past? I believe that he meant that present realities are inextricably connected to past events, and it's naive to think that one can adequately address existing problems without a willingness to honestly examine and discuss the events which caused or led to those problems in the first place. Ignorance may be bliss, but only in the short term. In the long term, ignorance can lead to enormous problems. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," said the philosopher George Santayana. If one is unable or unwilling to learn from past mistakes, how can progress ever be achieved? It is immature and idiotic to equate spiritual maturity with self-imposed amnesia.

It's important to discuss and remember horrific tragedies such as the Holocaust. That's why we have a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Many people would like to just forget or deny that the Holocaust ever took place. But we need to be periodically and graphically reminded, so that such things will never happen again. We also need to be reminded of our great capacity for evil, so that we will better understand our moral depravity and our desperate need for God.

Writing about the Holocaust, Ellie Wiesenthal wrote, "For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."

The same could be said about other large-scale tragedies, such as the terrorist attacks in 2001; and also to individual tragedies, such as the extreme child abuse to which author Dave Pelzer and many other children have been subjected.

If we took literally the advice of those who say that we should instantly forget the sins and crimes of the past, it would be impossible to seek justice in our nation's courts. Vicious predators would forever prey on innocent victims, and we would be partly to blame for subsequent crimes which they committed, on account of our moral cowardice. Remembering is essential if we want to be a society of laws, not anarchy.

I find it ironic that some Christians say that one ought not to ever "live in the past," inasmuch as the entirety of the Christian experience is based on a willingness to regularly remember and reflect upon incidents which took place more than two millenia ago. Jesus specifically told us, regarding the eucharist, to "take these in rememberance of me". Rememberance can be both good and necessary.

Yes, it's true that it can be unhealthy to continually wallow in sorrow, without making an effort to balance things out by thinking about positive things. But it's equally unhealthy to live in denial and to live a life which is devoid of authenticity and honesty. Pastors and other spiritual leaders who insist that the members of their congregation live in denial are guilty of abdicating their fundamental moral responsibilities towards the people in their care.

This is not a trivial matter. If our pastors insist on promoting simplistic ideas about forgiveness which make it impossible to adequately address problems or to hold people accountable for wrongdoing, then they are unworthy of our continual allegiance, no matter how many other good things we may be able to say about them.

Poverty and Dignity

2009-11-17T16:05:00.003-06:00

The November 16, 2009 issue of Newsweek features an article entitled "Seeing Dignity in Poverty: Dorothea Lange's Politics of Respect". It's a thought-provoking article pertaining to the idea that poverty-stricken people need more than just material help; they also need to be treated with respect, in a manner which instills them with hope for the future, and which doesn't presumptuously and self-righteously assume that the poverty which afflicts them is necessarily their own fault.

Some Christian charities and churches seem to understand the aforementioned concept. Others, sadly, do not.

NOTE: The aforementioned article argues that Lange demonstrates the dignity of her subjects by showing their stoicism. I agree that Lange's photos portrayed her subjects (such as the famous "Migrant Mother") with dignity. But I think that it's wrong, and potentially harmful, to think that overt demonstrations of understandable anguish, sadness or anger in response to adversity are undignified. After all, the scriptures teach that Christ's strength is made perfect in our weaknesses. There is nothing shameful about genuine tears or other intense negative emotions. Even Jesus wept and expressed anger from time to time. As Christians, we ought, above all, to be authentic and honest. There is nothing dignified about being treated in a dehumanizing manner, as if one's feelings are of no importance.

Doctrines Have Consequences

2009-11-16T18:16:00.006-06:00

During the early days of the Jesus Movement, there was an attempt to get away from a vision in which people defined their Christian experiences primarily on the basis of dry intellectual doctrines which were considered to be devoid of life and vitality. Consequently, doctrines were often disparaged as unimportant. This was a symptom of the slow shift from modernism and its excessive emphasis on rationality to postmodernism and its excessive emphasis on mystical experiences. It was in some sense related to things going on in the larger culture, particularly in terms of the increased proliferation of hallucinogenic drugs. Jimi Hendrix's question, "Are you experienced?" seemed to emphasize subjective experiences, and was related to a simultaneous increase in the number of philosophers who questioned the existence of objective truth. Truth with a capital T was replaced by phrases such as "your truth" and "my truth". Multiculturalism and moral relativism can also be said to be related to the emphasis on subjective experiences over objective facts.

This made it very difficult to debate with unbelievers when comparing the relative merits of Christianity with the merits (or lack thereof) of other belief systems. Critical analysis of various belief systems was seen as passé, and being "tolerant" of various belief systems was equated with refusal to engage in such analysis.

Churches which emphasized personal subjective experiences, such as Pentecostal churches, were therefore more attuned to the new mentality than older, more established denominations, which I think helps to explain their rapid growth during that period and during subsequent decades. Jesus People sometimes adapted their evangelistic appeals to that mentality, using phrases such as "get high on Jesus" and "turn on to Jesus" in an attempt to connect with the youth subculture in a relevant way.

To be sure, there was more than an ounce of truth to criticisms of churches which appeared to have been sapped of their vitality by an excessive reliance on tradition and intellectualism. Some churches had clearly chosen to ignore large sections of the Bible which supported the idea that the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit were still available to modern believers. Many good things happened, in terms of church renewal, during the Jesus movement. But when the pendulum swung towards subjectivism, it sometimes swung too far.

Personal experience and doctrines are to authentic Christianity what yeast and flour are to the art of making leavened bread. Neither element is sufficient, but both elements are necessary.

Ironically, the idea that doctrine is unimportant is itself a doctrine. The manner in which we define our beliefs, in the form of written or unwritten doctrines, is vitally important, because it shapes our actions for better or worse.

Take, for example, the prosperity doctrine which has recently become popular in many Pentecostal churches, and also in some other large evangelical churches.

There's an interesting article in the December 2009 issue of the Atlantic magazine. (Here's a link to that article.) That cover story asks the provocative question "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?" But really, when you read the actual article, the author isn't claiming that Christianity itself caused the crash. Rather, Hannah Rosin argues that a particular subset of Christianity, consisting of people who subscribe to the "prosperity doctrine," was responsible in large part, because they had eschewed the historic Christian emphasis on thrift and fiscal responsibility in favor of a new doctrine which equates faith with undisciplined lifestyles which some others might rightfully regard as foolish.

As a committed Christian, my initial inclination when I saw the cover of that issue of the Atlantic was to think that it was just another example of how the secular media frequently seeks to find fault with the church in order to disparage Christianity itself. But after I'd read the article, I had to admit that the author had made some good points. (I was also pleased to see a separate article, in that issue, pertaining to Dave Ramsey and his attempts to call Christians to practice fiscal self-discipline.)

The article by Hannah Rosin didn't address every possible reason for objecting to the "prosperity doctrine". My own reasons for doing so include the ones listed in her article, but they also include the observation that such a doctrine diminishes an appreciation of the sovereignty of God, by treating God as if he's a cosmic vending machine who is obliged to deliver prosperity to anyone who follows a few simple principles. In that sense, the doctrine is insulting to God. (Admittedly, the insult is probably unintentional, but it's real nevertheless.)

That doctrine is also insulting to people who struggle with poverty, inasmuch as it implies that such struggles are invariably the result of lack of obedience to God. Since poverty is ostensibly always the fault of those who suffer from want, the doctrine becomes a convenient excuse for failing to offer meaningful and compassionate help to such people. Words such as "community" may be used with great frequency in such churches, but when you look beyond the attractive rhetoric, their pastors and other leaders rarely consider that they have any responsibilities to engage in traditional acts of charity in order to help people to overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles which hinder them from experiencing true prosperity. Rather, such pastors seem to believe that their responsibility begins and ends with teaching the principle of sowing and reaping, in self-serving ways which conveniently happen to expand the size of their offerings from week to week. If unbelievers see this as a form of exploitation, we should hardly be surprised, because it is.

None of this is to deny that we reap what we sow to some extent, but things are often more complicated than that. The story of Job teaches us that people are unbalanced in their views when they adopt simplistic explanations for situations which can conceivably have multiple causes. Job's "friends" blamed Job for his troubles, assuming presumptuously that God was punishing him for some sin. But those who have read the entire story know that that wasn't the case at all. If anything, Job was tried precisely because God was proud of Job's faith in God, and sought to demonstrate the depth of that faith to Satan, who had suggested that Job would serve God only as long as Job continued to prosper. In the end, God's faith in Job was rewarded.

The "prosperity teachers" say that God wants us to prosper, citing scriptures in support of that view. I don't disagree with them on that point; but the question is, how is that prosperity supposed to come about? The Bible teaches that when one member of the Body of Christ hurts, all members hurt. It logically follows that when one member prospers, all members prosper. In other words, we all have a vested interest in relieving the suffering of fellow Christians, and in doing everything possible to help one another to succeed and prosper.

Rather than blaming the victims whenever we're presented with evidence that some of our fellow believers are suffering, we ought to see that as God's voice calling us to take action to help those believers whenever we have the means with which to do so. Whereas individual Christians often lack the means, the church collectively has the means more often than not, provided that they're more interested in helping people in need than in empire building.

One might describe this view as the "new prosperity doctrine" since it replaces the "old" doctrine which has caused so many problems in the church in recent years; but really, theirs is the newer of the two doctrines, since it has a shakier foundation insofar as scriptural support is concerned. The traditional biblical view promoted an understanding of the crucial role which believers individually and corporately play in meeting one another's needs, not just with specious rhetoric and spurious self-help theories, but with real acts of charity which promote human dignity.

When our doctrines deviate from the truths presented in the scriptures, the church suffers insofar as credibility is concerned. The history of the church is one of refinement in terms of our understanding of what is and is not biblical. In past centuries, bad doctrines have been used to rationalize the existence of monarchies (using the doctrine of the "divine right of kings") and slavery, just to name two examples of doctrines which we have now largely discarded as a result of deeper reflection on the requirements which can be found in God's word. We are fallible human beings, and we make mistakes, and we sometimes realize only in hindsight that our doctrines have had unintentional negative consequences. Maturity entails showing the humility to acknowledge one's mistakes and to do what is necessary in order to correct those mistakes. I pray that we will do so insofar as the prosperity doctrine is concerned.

For a downloadable printer-friendly version of this article, click the following link:

Maine Voters Get It Right

2009-11-05T14:40:00.002-06:00

For those of you who haven't heard the good news from Maine, here's a link:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/maine-gay-marriage-law-repealed/story?id=8992720

Virtually every time voters have had the opportunity to speak their minds about the issue of gay marriage, they've lost, even in some of the most liberal states in the union. It seems to me that that ought to mean something, but I'd be the last person to argue that political victory is invariably tantamount to legitimacy. If that were the case, Obama wouldn't be where he is today.

My Geocities Site is Gone!

2009-10-28T18:54:00.004-05:00

One drawback of using multiple companies for web hosting is that if one of those companies ceases to offer services, it can cause malfunctions on other sites which rely on files to be found on the site operated by the company which no longer offers services. That's the case with regard to graphic files of mine (and perhaps other files, too) which were hosted earlier by Yahoo! Geocities.

It isn't as if it caught me completely unaware; I'd known for some time that Yahoo! was closing down all of the free Geocities hosting accounts. But I'd hoped that they would at least continue to hold onto the files they already had, so that links I'd created in numerous places on this blog (and elsewhere) wouldn't become obsolete. Not so. Hence, if you're going through earlier blog posts on this blog site and you find missing images and other files, that's the likely explanation.

This blog post is an example of what I'm talking about. The text is still there, but the images previously displayed in the blog post are now gone! It's really annoying.

Fortunately, I do have those files elsewhere (on CD-R discs), since I've always made a habit of never uploading any files to a web hosting program without also backing up the files on CD-R discs or other media. Unfortunately, going through all my blog posts here and fixing things (by finding those files, then uploading them to a new host, and then changing the links so that they point to those new file locations) will be a very time-consuming proposition, and a potentially frustrating one, on account of the huge number of files I've burned onto various CD-R discs of mine. At present, my computer time is very limited, and it's much more important for me to address my economic situation by getting a job very soon; so fixing all of those links so that they work properly again is not one of my highest priorities.

Getting the Jump on Things

2009-10-23T18:33:00.008-05:00

Today, just after noon, a woman living in my building tried to jump out of a 10th floor window in order to kill herself. I learned about it because I was on my way back from the first floor residents' lounge to my room on the 12th floor. The head security guard told me in an agitated tone of voice that I couldn't use the elevator because they had a "situation" which required that they commandeer the elevators. So I took the stairs, wondering what kind of situation would prevent residents from being able to use the elevators.

As I reached the 10th floor, huffing and puffing a bit more than usual, a couple of staff members passed me on the stairway. I overheard one of them say that a woman had locked herself in her room, and she was hanging out of her window, presumably getting ready for the big leap. Shortly thereafter, I heard sirens, and when I looked out of my window (which faces west, towards Moody Bible Institute), I saw that fire trucks had gathered below the building on Dearborn, right in front of the main entrance for the headquarters of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, which is located on the lowest floors on the west side of our building.

Later this afternoon, I asked a fellow resident about the situation, and I was told that they were able to prevent the woman from jumping. But they haven't always been able to do so. Earlier this year, in February, a woman living in my building succeeded in jumping to her death. (Patsy was her name, as I recall.) Shortly thereafter, a fellow resident mentioned the incident to me one day in the elevator. He also mentioned other similar incidents which had occurred there in the past. He asked me, "What is it about this place? Is there a jinx on the place?" I didn't know what to say, but I was tempted to answer in the affirmative.

In fact, despite my awareness of the stigma attached to such admissions, I must confess that I've been tempted along those lines myself during several particularly stressful periods in my life. I wish I could say that my fellow Christians did all they could to help me in those situations, but that would be a lie. There were a few who did in fact help me, and I am grateful to those people, but there were far more people (including people who had more than enough resources to help me) who offered nothing but empty talk which did nothing to reduce the stress I was experiencing. In fact, some of the Christians in my life were directly responsible for some of the stress I was experiencing.

Some people think that suicidal "ideations" are a sign of mental illness. Depending on how one defines mental illness and on the individual situation, they may sometimes be right. But I can attest from personal experience to the fact that extreme poverty, such as the poverty which afflicts many of the folks living where I live, can lead to suicidal depression, even in otherwise normal people. At the very least, extreme poverty can greatly exacerbate depression which already exists on account of other factors.

It's a real cop-out for other folks to respond to such crises by just throwing pills at people (as if all depression was chemical in origin), or by subjecting depressed people to humiliating involuntary incarceration in mental health facilities, without addressing the real underlying problems. The same thing could be said for Christians who respond to pleas for help with brain-dead bromides designed to excuse them for their indifference to the needs of people who, with more loving practical help, might never be tempted by feelings of hopelessness to literally leap into the unknown.

There's a reason that most of the folks I've invited to be my Facebook friends are Christian musicians. I got saved in 1969, when I was 13, and those musicians played a vital role in solidifying my commitment to Christ, even to the point that I aspired to follow a similar path in terms of my own career. I remain committed to Christ to this day, despite the difficulties I've experienced over the years, but I sometimes feel a great deal of ambivalence when it comes to the church.

Our world is in serious crisis, as anyone who ever reads the newspaper ought to appreciate, but the church seems to be a part of the problem as often as it's a part of the solution. Compassion and integrity are rare, while arrogance and self-centered behavior are not.

I know that I'm not the only one to observe such things. Billy Graham's daughter Ruth Graham Lotz recently told a Newsweek magazine reporter that the "vicious" treatment she'd experienced in churches over the years had sometimes made her feel like a "believer in exile". Folks, that ought to be a wake up call! If one of the children of America's most influential evangelist has felt that way about the church, imagine how people with less power and influence have sometimes been made to feel.

Earlier this year, I told the pastor of the church I was attending at the time that I was offended by statements he'd made from the pulpit. Specifically, he'd used phrases such as "pity party" and "get over it" in reference to people who suffered from situational depression. He responded to my mild criticism by telling me, in an appalling display of arrogance, that if I didn't like the way he did things, I should start my own church. (And here I thought that the church belonged to Jesus Christ, not to any individual man.) What I didn't say at the time was that he was the last person I would ever trust if I needed to share my burdens with anyone.

If you've surmised that I am currently without a home church, you are correct. And frankly, I'm not eager to subject myself to further insults of that nature at any time in the near future.

It's easy to criticize folks for being "church hoppers," but folks, there's a good reason why people are leaving the church in droves, and it isn't necessarily that those folks are afraid of commitment to local bodies of believers. Here's a clue for the clueless: People want their commitments to be reciprocated. They don't want to waste their time and resources in one-sided commitments to people who clearly couldn't care less about them, in spite of rhetoric to the contrary. People are tired of endless empty talk about love. They want to see love in action! And so do I.

Not Attractive At All

2009-10-02T16:00:00.000-05:00

About half an hour ago, I was sitting at a large table, waiting for the start of my second one-hour daily computer session here at the Harold Washington library. (I usually schedule a break of a half hour in-between those two sessions, for reasons pertaining to the necessities of human biology, in relation to the periodic elimination of waste products.)

At a table next to mine, I spotted a group of about seven people, probably in their late teens and early twenties, dressed in a style which could best be described as "post apocalyptic punk". In the case of the two young "ladies" traveling with the group, perhaps I should describe their style of dress as "post apocalyptic skank".

I'm generally pretty tolerant when it comes to styles of clothing, hair, etc. After all, I started high school in 1970, a year after Woodstock, and even though my commitment to Christ precluded involvement in the drug culture or the so-called "free love" of the day, I did like the hippie styles, such as long hair, beards, "love beads", bell bottom jeans and tie dye shirts. (I never had a tie dye shirt back then. Now I have two, one of which has the word "Chicago" screen printed on the front.)

However, as "intolerant" as it might sound for me to say so, someone should inform one of the young women in the aforementioned group that even though moderate cleavage is arguably sexy when seen above a woman's waist, it's considerably less sexy when it involves a person's derriere. (Butt cleavage isn't attractive on men, either. I once witnessed that phenomenon frequently when living with an extremely obese roommate named Wes, who could not be bothered to buy or wear a belt or to pull his pants up when they started to droop.) This woman also had her midriff on full display, with her stomach protruding prominently, as if to defy folks to tell her to dress more tastefully.

Another one of the women in the group was likewise dressed in punk regalia, complete with fishnet stockings which looked as if she'd purposefully run them through an industrial strength paper shredder before she put them on.

Needless to say, heavy body piercings, tattoos, fluorescent hair and other similar adornments were liberally sprinkled among the various people in that little group.

Some people would say that when folks dress that way, they're doing so in order to make "a statement". I could hazard a guess regarding what they were trying to say, but the words might not be fit for publication. Suffice it to say that those words would consist of a verbal expression of the idea which is commonly expressed in some circles with an upraised middle finger. If I'd stared at them, I think that they'd have been inordinately pleased with the attention, since it seems to me that they dress that way purposefully in order to provoke and offend other people.

Nevertheless, Jesus loves them and he died on the cross for them. It's tempting to dismiss such people as being beyond any hope of redemption, but Christians cannot afford to do that. Regardless of cultural differences, we must reach out with love to those who are alienated from mainstream society, because that's what Christ would do.

The New Tolerance

2009-09-25T15:46:00.010-05:00

For centuries, America has been known as a nation which places a high value on freedom, at least in theory. We've implemented those ideals rather poorly during various eras in our history, as historians and ancestors of slaves can attest, but the ideal of freedom has nevertheless formed the cornerstone of our system of government.

The idea of tolerance is closely connected with our emphasis on freedom. There have been obvious exceptions, but we've generally tried to live peacably with people with differing beliefs. I think that's admirable.

Unfortunately, the meaning of words sometimes mutates over time. Just as the word "gay" now has a radically different meaning from what it once meant to most people, the word "tolerance" has also come to mean something very different from what it once meant. There was a time when one could be regarded as tolerant without feeling pressured to abstain from saying controversial things. Vigorous debate was not forbidden, nor was criticism of others, provided that it didn't cross the line into obvious slander or libel. The phrase "political correctness" had not yet become a synonym for oppression of people who dared to think for themselves.

Obviously, that era has passed into the mists of history. These days, many liberals are likely to accuse one of being "intolerant" for no better reason than the fact that one openly admits that one believes in the existence of objective truth. In many circles, "tolerance" has become a synonym or code word for spineless moral relativism.

This makes things particularly difficult for theologically conservative Christians, since Christianity has always been a religion which has relied heavily on the idea that propositional truth can be understood and communicated with others. During the modern era, Christians have been accused of intolerance for no better reason than the fact that they have dared to articulate orthodox doctrinal beliefs, such as the idea that Jesus Christ offered the only way to salvation from sin.

I don't object to the type of tolerance which enables people with differing religious beliefs to live side by side without harming or killing one another. But I do object to the modern definition of tolerance, which is itself a form of oppression and intolerance.

That's one reason I so enjoyed reading a book entitled "The New Absolutes" by William D. Watkins. In that book, Watkins argues very persuasively that most people who claim to be moral relativists are guilty of misrepresenting their views. In fact, such people believe very much in an array of absolutes, many of which blatantly contradict the traditional Judeo-Christian absolutes on which Western civilization was founded. Moreover, such people seek to impose such values on others, through intimidation and propagandistic sleight-of-hand.

In his last and best chapter, entitled "A Plea for Intolerance", Watkins writes the following:

History teaches that cultural change for the common good is never wrought by the tolerant. Those who have been intolerant of racial injustice have brought about racial change. Those who have rejected religious hypocrisy have instituted religious revivals and reforms. Those valued all human life have even sacrificed their own lives for the good of others. Those who have stood against hatred and violence have brought about reconciliations and peace settlements. Those who have fought against ignorance have advanced education and the pursuit of knowledge. Advocates of the new tolerance could not have brought about social changes on these issues. A live-and-let-live stance is simply not conducive to social progress.

In other words, "intolerance" (in the sense in which it is now being used) is a code word for standing by and doing nothing while matters which badly need to be addressed go unaddressed. The "new tolerance" is a vote in favor of the status quo, no matter how appallingly bad that status quo might be in some respects.

There are things which are so evil that they ought not to be tolerated. Choosing to tolerate such things anyway is morally tantamount to condoning and perpetuating those evil things. There are times when we need to draw a line in the sand (as the American colonists did when they signed the Declaration of Independence) and say, "This far, and no further!"

Of course, there is a type of tolerance which ought to be encouraged and practiced. We all need to learn the difference between things which we can and should tolerate and things which we cannot and should not tolerate. In other words, we need to exercise mature self control and prudent discernment, instead of constantly "making mountains out of molehills".

Blanket condemnation of all types of intolerance precludes such discernment. It muzzles people who would speak out against wrongdoing and in favor of truth. Such a simplistic ideology glorifies tolerance as an end in itself, rather than acknowledging that tolerance is sometimes a virtue and sometimes a vice, depending on what is being tolerated and why.

Blog2Print

2009-09-25T15:37:00.003-05:00

According to this article, Blogger is now in partnership with a company which enables one to turn one's blog articles into printed books.

As a one-of-a-kind "vanity" product or gift item, and as an alternative to writing one's journal articles out by hand or copying and pasting individual articles into one or more separate word processed documents, Blog2Print looks like a pretty cool option. However, as a means of publishing one's blog articles professionally (complete with the editing flexibility which one would need in order to do things such as turning links into footnotes or endnotes), it probably wouldn't work nearly as well.

Blog2Print apparently requires that one specify the blog articles to be printed by "date range", whereas it would make more sense, when converting one's articles into professional-quality books, to choose and then edit articles item-by-item, since some blog articles are fairly ephemeral, or unrelated to the topic of one's chosen book project.

Crackers and Prayer

2009-08-31T20:16:00.002-05:00

I just came across this article, and I thought that it was noteworthy. It affirms once again that when people are in difficult situations, prayer can often make a big difference in their lives.

Sexual Predators and Home Schooling

2009-08-18T18:09:00.006-05:00

Recently, I was at the Barnes and Noble bookstore over at DePaul Universty, browsing through the magazines. I picked up a copy of The Economist, which had an interesting cover story entitled "America's Unjust Sex Laws". There's a truncated version of the story online, but you really should read the entire article (which is probably only available in print) in order to understand the basis for the claims being made in the article.

At the risk of seeming as if I'm defending sexual predators (which is definitely NOT the case!), I must say that I thought the aforementioned article made some good points. Among other things, the article discussed laws which prevent sex abusers who've been released from prison from living within close proximity to public schools or school bus stops. Here was the author's conclusion on that subject: "Restricting where sex offenders can live is supposed to keep them away from potential victims, but it is doubtful that this works. A determined predator can always catch a bus."
That makes sense. I admit that I'm no expert, but it seems highly likely to me that reasonably intelligent sexual predators would deliberately target kids living or being schooled in areas which are distant from their own homes, in order to minimize the likelihood of apprehension by law enforcement officers. That being the case, it seems to me that laws which limit the areas in which such prior offenders can live are a bit pointless. But when it comes to the emotioal issue of sexual predation, it seems to me that a lot of folks put their brains on hold.

In the same issue of The Economist (page 26), there's an article on home schooling. (The online version of that article doesn't seem to have been abridged, although I haven't compared the two side by side.) I think it's particularly appropriate that the two articles appear in the same issue of that magazine. There's an obvious point which has apparently been overlooked by the people who have passed laws restricting where sexual predators can live: Namely, that such laws are unlikely to protect children who are being home schooled, unless those laws are written so broadly that they prevent sexual predators from living in all residential neighborhoods!

In other words, if your children attend public schools, then they are more likely to be "protected" by such laws than they are to be protected from similar laws if you choose to home school those children.

This should particularly concern Christians, it seems to me, since the article on home schooling correctly observes that most home schoolers these days are conservative Christians who want to be able to teach their children in a manner which is consistent with their beliefs, and who want to protect their children from gangs and other bad influences.

If arguments in favor of the aforementioned laws are credible — in other words, if such laws do in fact help to protect children from sexual predators — then home schooled kids are being treated as second-class citizens who are less deserving of such protection than public school students.

Admittedly, it could be argued that home schooled children are inherently safer than kids attending public schools, in spite of the fact that the aforementioned laws probably don't cover them, for the simple reason that their parents are far more likely to be able to keep a watchful eye on them than school teachers would be. (Among other things, there are far fewer kids to watch over. Plus, the parents have a vested interest in the safety of their own kids, one which is not shared to the same degree of intensity by public or private school teachers.) But the point is that laws which offer more protection to certain children than to others are inherently inequitable.

If the author of the article in The Economist is correct, such laws should be opposed because they are ineffective and therefore pointless. On the other hand, if that author is wrong and such laws do in fact offer a substantial measure of protection, then those laws should also be opposed, because home schooled children are exempt from the protections offered by such laws, unless the extremity of the situation justifies inequitable distribution of protection on the grounds that imperfect protection is better than no protection at all.

Those who have written such laws seem to have forgotten that vulnerable children can be found in all kinds of places, such as shopping malls, zoos and parks. Such places would not be covered by such laws in most instances. At best, even if sexual predators didn't know how to drive or take the bus, such laws could only be said to offer a measure of protection. Parents which relied on such laws to keep their kids safe would just be fooling themselves. An illusion of safety is more dangerous than a realistic assessment which causes parents to always stay on their guard.

Another point: Restricting where former sexual predators can live has the effect of creating "zones" in which all sexual predators congregate together, making it increasingly likely that their aberrant lifestyles will be reinforced, not discouraged. For a similar reason, well-intentioned housing projects for the poor proved to be disastrous here in Chicago and elsewhere. It wasn't that there was anything about the architecture which created criminal tendencies. But putting together large numbers of out-of-work people created opportunities for mischief which otherwise would not have existed.

If we truly believe that sexual predators cannot be rehabilitated, then it seems to me that lifelong incarceration without the possibility of parole is the only solution which equally protects all children from predation regardless of where those children live or go to school. In that case, we should be especially careful that the people who are sentenced in such a manner truly represent a substantial threat, because lifelong imprisonment with no chance of parole would truly be unjust treatment for some of the offenses (such as "statutory rape" which involved consensual sex between people who weren't the "right" age) described in the article in The Economist.

On the other hand, if we have concluded that some sexual predators who have served their time ought to be released, then we ought not to punish them even after they have been released, in a manner which substantially increases the likelihood that they will become repeat offenders because they have become social pariahs.

Food for Thought Regarding Submission

2009-08-13T11:51:00.007-05:00

Sooner or later, if a Christian dares to criticize an authority figure or another person within the Body of Christ, one is likely to be accused of "divisiveness" even though it's most often the case that such criticism merely calls necessary attention to disunity which already exists, rather than creating the disunity in the first place. In my experience, criticisms of that nature are often disingenuously used in order to prevent or shut down honest, mature, biblically centered conversations about problems which badly need to be addressed.

I acknowledge that there are cases in which it's legitimate to criticize people for being needlessly divisive or needlessly critical. Note, however, that the act of criticizing someone simply for being critical, regardless of whether or not that person's criticisms are valid, is an inherently self-contradictory act. If indeed it's invariably wrong to criticize others, then it is hypocritical to criticize people for being critical, inasmuch as one is doing the very thing which one claims is wrong.

Criticism for its own sake or criticism which is motivated by malice or jealousy is indeed destructive and worthy of condemnation, but not all forms of criticism fall into that category.

Without the freedom to criticize, Christians are unable to fulfill their biblical responsibilities to "test the spirits". There are some who think that such responsibilities are the exclusive domain and prerogative of people who hold privileged (and usually paid) positions of authority within the church. I am aware of no scriptural evidence to support such a claim.

I find it ironic that many of the people who make such claims are the same people who praise church reformers such as Martin Luther. There is something strange about Protestants who argue that Christian pastors and leaders within their own churches are somehow exempt from criticism. The word "protestants" is derived from the word "protest". Without the willingness of men such as Luther to protest the unbiblical teachings and practices of existing church leaders, there would be no Protestant churches today.

It's interesting to me to notice the relationship, in I John 4:1, between a failure to test the spirits and an inability to prevent false prophets from going out into the world.

What is the mark of a false prophet? In the Old Testament, false prophets were typically "ear ticklers" and "man pleasers". In the modern vernacular, they were "yes men". False prophets told leaders who had gone astray what those leaders wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear. False prophets were afraid of being accused of "rocking the boat" and "being divisive," so they chose to lie in the name of God rather than speaking the plain and honest truth. True prophets spoke the truth. They were not jerks, but they were not afraid of stepping on a few people's toes if necessary, nor did they allow themselves to be intimidated by bogus appeals to authority into staying silent.

What was their earthly reward for speaking the truth? In Luke 13:34, Jesus said that many of the prophets were stoned to death in Jerusalem. ("O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!")

Biblically, stoning was supposed to be reserved for false prophets. But it's clear from the aforementioned passage that the ones being stoned in Jerusalem by the religious leaders of the day were the true prophets, not the false ones. It caused Jesus to openly grieve. True followers of Christ should likewise grieve when we see examples of the oppressive misuse of authority.

Does this mean that Christians ought not to submit to authority? No, of course not. But we ought to have a better understanding of the biblical meaning of submission.

Unfortunately, when some people use the term "submission," it calls to mind images of hierarchical and inherently unequal relationships. But a clear reading of the scriptures (in which Paul told married people to submit "to one another") ought to refute the idea that that's what the Bible means when it talks about godly submission.

The unbiblical manner in which Christians have sometimes defined the term "submission" has led to abusive situations, or to the perpetuation of such situations. It has led to situations in which the key component in those relationships has been power, not love.

In the Bible, the word "submit" is used in a manner which has nothing to do with dominance of other people or disregard for their feelings or needs. The Bible emphasizes mutual submission (in which each person genuinely cares about the well being of the other person), as opposed to the lopsided type of submission which gives one person a disproportionate amount of authority over another person.

The mutuality of biblical submission ought to be applicable to all human relationships, whether one is talking about the relationships between pastors and laity, employers and employees, teachers and students, or even parents and children. People who exercise power without regard for the feelings and needs of others are not acting with God's authority. Such people are bullies, pure and simple, and they ought to be treated as such.

In Luke 12:42-48, The Bible says, "To whom much is given, much will be required." As an example of what is meant by that statement, the passage gives the example (beginning in verse 42) of a servant or steward to whom a household has been entrusted. But the steward abuses his authority, "and begins to beat the male and female servants" (NKJV). How does the master of the house respond? "(T)he master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers." Folks, this is serious stuff! According to the preceding passage of scripture, abusive leaders will be harshly punished by God, even to the point that they will be treated as if they had been unbelievers. How will unbelievers be treated? According to the scriptures, they will be damned to hell. I'm not making that up, it's in the word of God.

Authority is not a blank check to treat people however we feel like treating them. Authority is a stewardship from God, and people in positions of authority will be held accountable for how they treat other people. Leaders are not exempt from the Golden Rule.

Even Jesus, who was certainly entitled to throw his weight around if he'd chosen to do so, demonstrated that he saw leadership as a position of service to others, not as an authorization for riding roughshod over the feelings and needs of others.

Whether one is talking about the home, church or the workplace, we need more humble leaders who understand that they are called to serve. Arrogance is not a trivial offense which we can afford to overlook when assessing the qualifications, or lack thereof, of pastors and other leaders.

One final relevant comment: I recently attended a church which, in most respects, seemed to be a great church. However, two of the three pastors had made a couple of comments from the pulpit, and I was bothered by those comments, because they suggested that the pastors had very little empathy for people who were suffering (as I had recently suffered) from depression in relation to negative circumstances. So I went to the lead pastor and attempted to address these issues, hoping that he'd alleviate my concerns by assuring me that if I was depressed for some reason, I could talk to him without fear of condemnation. Instead, he cut me off almost as soon as I'd begun to express my negative feelings about what he'd said from the pulpit. "If you don't like the way we do things here," he said, "then leave here and start your own church."

Maybe it's just me, but that statement didn't seem to exhibit the type of humility which ought to be exhibited by Christian leaders. So I wrote a letter of complaint to the district superintendent of the denomination of which that church was a part. The letter was completely ignored. My followup e-mail, in which I asked why there had been no response to my letter, was also ignored.

Apparently, both the pastor and the superintendent felt threatened by anything resembling criticism, so they considered that they were exempt from criticism, and that they had no obligations to respond to such criticism with anything resembling humility.

Starting my own church, contrary to the pastor's insinuations, was not an option for me. (I was, and am, barely paying the rent on my own tiny room at the YMCA.) But leaving that church, as he'd suggested that I should do, was an option. So I did. And so should you, if you find yourself in a similarly abusive relationship. Yes, you should pray for reconciliation, and you should be willing to forgive if there's an indication of genuine repentance on the part of the person who has abused your trust. But you have no biblical obligation to be anyone's doormat. Not even a spouse's or a pastor's.

Options for Hand Engraving

2009-08-05T19:53:00.002-05:00

I've always loved the look of line art created with wood engraving techniques, associated with artists such as Albrecht Durer, Thomas Bewick and others. I also like the look of linocut printing, even though it typically doesn't have as much fine detail.

Here are some cool powered handheld tools which could be used for the purpose of carving end grain wood blocks, linoleum blocks, etc. for relief printing:

EK Success Inscriblio: This appears to be the least expensive option. Battery powered, and more portable, but on the flip side, I suspect that it's considerably less sophisticated than the other two units shown here in terms of various bits and suitability for fine detail. Still, it might be useful for certain applications.
Turbo Carver II: More expensive than the Inscriblio, but less expensive (I believe) than the 400 XS.
SCM 400 XS

The Legacy of Roe v Wade Continues

2009-08-01T14:04:00.004-05:00

Even for a person with a strong stomach, it's hard to read the recent Associated Press story about Otty Sanchez without losing one's lunch. Apparently, Sanchez murdered her 3 1/2 week old infant, Scott Wesley Buchholtz-Sanchez, whereupon she then decapitated the baby, tore his face off, chewed off three of his toes and ate his brain. She says that the devil told her to do it. Well, duh! Good people know how to say no to the devil. Evil people such as Otty Sanchez do not. Using lame excuses such as "postpartum depression" in order to shield the perpetrators of such heinous acts from justice is morally unacceptable.

I don't recall reading stories like this in the news when I was growing up. I'm not saying that things were all peaches and cream back in the sixties and early seventies. But anyone who's been paying attention knows that the rates of infanticide, child abuse and schoolyard slayings have all skyrocketed in the years subsequent to the tragic landmark decision known as Roe v Wade. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why. Such incidents have been the result of the societal diminution of respect for the innate value of human life. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out why our values have changed in that regard. When defenseless unborn children are regularly legally murdered in the name of "choice" in abortion clinics throughout America, it sends a strong message to people such as Otty Sanchez.

It's time for us to own up to the huge mistake which was made in 1973. It's time to end legal abortion and take a stand for the principle that all human life, from conception until the time of natural death, is equally valuable and worthy of legal protection.

Bob Dylan and Morality

2009-07-14T19:54:00.003-05:00

Every once in a while, I like to pick up an issue of Rolling Stone magazine and browse through the contents, in spite of the ungodly, politically biased perspective which generally characterizes the publication. (Underneath the title, the cover should say, "A wholly owned subsidiary of the most liberal wing of the Democratic party.")

The cover story in the 5/14/2009 issue featured Bob Dylan. Since Mr. Dylan went through a Christian "phase" in his life (during which he produced some excellent Christian songs), I was interested to see what his current thoughts on the subject of life might be. I found this quote, from page 76, to be particularly interesting and worthy of comment ...

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

CraigsList Scams for Job Seekers

2009-07-13T18:52:00.001-05:00

Here's a link to a lengthy article I recently wrote, regarding one of the frustrating aspects of looking for work during these difficult times.

Heaven and Michael Jackson

2009-07-09T18:11:00.007-05:00

The other day, I was sitting in the residents' lounge in the building where I live, and the TV there was tuned in to the memorial service for singer Michael Jackson. Naturally, they brought in a Christian minister to lend legitimacy to the proceedings. I don't remember whether it was the minister or someone else, but someone said, "Michael, we know that you're in heaven now," or something to that effect.

When it comes to the question of who will and who won't go to heaven, I freely acknowledge that only God knows for sure. However, in cases where there's good reason to wonder whether the person will be there or not, I'm inclined to think that it's best to refrain from making definitive statements about that person's eternal destiny after the person has died. It's just as "judgmental" to declare that one is certain that the person is in heaven as it is to declare that one is certain that the person is in hell, is it not?

Scripturally, there is only one basis for salvation. Repentance from one's sins, accompanied by confession of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, is a nonnegotiable prerequisite for entrance into heaven. Is there any evidence that Michael Jackson ever did those things? Is there any evidence that he had any real faith whatsoever in Jesus Christ? Where is that evidence?

Michael Jackson had time to sing love songs to rats ("Ben") and to sing songs about zombies ("Thriller"), but he had no time left over in which to use his enormously visible public platform for the purpose of sharing the Christian gospel with others. Is it possible, in spite of that fact, that he loved the Lord anyway? Yes, but it seems very unlikely to me. At the very least, evangelism seems to have been very, very low on his list of priorities. The only time I can recall indirectly hearing anything at all about Jesus, from the lips of Michael Jackson, was when it was reported that he'd referred to wine as "Jesus juice" during one of his many "adventures" involving questionable relationships with very young boys with whom he was not biologically related. Admittedly, he was never convicted of sexual molestation in a court of law. However, if he had not been guilty, I doubt that he would have settled out of court with his accusers, as he did. I know that if anyone ever accused me publicly of such a shameful thing, I wouldn't rest until my name was cleared.

When questioned on national TV about the accusations of sexual molestation, Michael said that the most loving thing a person could do for another person was to share one's bed with that person. Jesus, by way of contrast, said that the most loving thing a person could do for one's friends was to die for one's friends. It seems to me that Michael's definition of love could have used some serious revision.

So again, I ask, what's the basis for the belief that Michael is in heaven? Is such a declaration based on a solid foundation of knowledge about Michael Jackson, or is it based on wishful thinking, motivated either by the naive and unscriptural belief that everyone will go to heaven after death, or on the ridiculous idea that anyone as undeniably talented and popular as Michael Jackson must surely be in heaven? Or maybe the person who made that statement didn't really believe it to be true, but said it anyway in order to comfort Michael's surviving friends and relatives.

God's values are not invariably aligned with the values of the pop culture in America. I believe that some of the people who are considered to be icons of our culture will be seen as nobodies in the kingdom of God. Conversely, I believe that some people who are popularly considered to be "nobodies" who will reap huge rewards in heaven, because they sought first the kingdom of God instead of focusing primarily on gratifying their own (sometimes perverted) lusts and exalting their own egos.

Again, none of this is to diminish Michael Jackson's talents, which were immense. Nor is it to deny that he occasionally did good things for other people. (I haven't forgotten "We Are The World.") But neither of those things is a sufficient basis for salvation. If Michael is in heaven (and I sincerely hope for his sake that he is), it isn't because of his talents or his good works. It's because he asked Jesus to come into his life and be his savior. In terms of one's eternal destiny, that's the only thing that really matters.

Between Contumacity and Obsequiousness

2009-07-06T18:49:00.002-05:00

Every once in a while, I like to briefly flip through a dictionary in an attempt to enlarge my vocabulary by discovering new and useful words.

The other day, I happened to spot the little-used word "contumacious". Dictionary.com defines the word (in its adjective form) as "stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient". (Or "insubordinate," in the lingo of American employers.) At the opposite extreme, a person might be described as "obsequious".

I'm inclined to think that a person's attitude toward authority ought to be somewhere in-between those two extremes. Unfortunately, some people incorrectly think that contumacity and obsequiousness are one's only two options when dealing with authority figures. Therefore, one who is not in the habit of kissing the behinds of people who are demonstrably fallible is likely to be accused, occasionally, of contumacity. That's a shame. Such accusations often say more about the accusers than they say about the accused.

Gray versus Grey

2009-07-06T18:29:00.003-05:00

I sometimes find myself using certain words, in written communications, where I know that the British spell those words differently than Americans, but I can't always remember which spelling is supposed to be the "American" spelling.

That isn't an issue with all words, of course. For example, I've always known that "colour" is the British spelling whereas "color" is the American spelling. (Leave it to the British to add or use an extra vowel which serves no apparent purpose!) But other words, such as the word "gray," aren't as immediately obvious to me. Consequently, I've sometimes found myself vacillating between the two spellings, depending on my mood.

Here's a link to a useful Wikipedia article regarding such spelling variants. According to that article, "gray" is the American spelling and "grey" is the British spelling. I'd kind of thought that that was the case, but I couldn't recall for sure until I checked it out just now.

I'm recording this information here mostly for my own reference, but it may also be useful to people other than myself.

Obama Acronyms

2009-06-25T18:27:00.008-05:00

I visited a web page a while back, in which people proposed various acronyms based on Barack Obama's surname. Here are a few of my own suggestions:

Obviously Believes Abortion Merits Approval

Obtusely Believes Abortion's Most Appealing

Overtly Bulldozes America's Moral Authority

That last acronym is based on the following definition (found in the American Heritage Dictionary) for the word "bulldozing": "To do away with; demolish". It is very closely related to the first two acronyms.
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Obama and Socialism

2009-06-23T18:36:00.002-05:00

Here's a link to a rather thought provoking blog post I discovered a moment ago while randomly browsing through the blogs at Blogster.com. How valid is it? I don't know. But in light of Barack Obama's association with people such as Bill Ayers, I personally find it to be plausible.

Temper, Temper

2009-06-21T14:38:00.008-05:00

"I never liked anyone who didn't have a temper. If you don't have any temper, you don't have any passion." — Michael Bloomberg (2002)

I found the preceding quote in an article on the web, and I liked it a lot, and not just because of my own personality. I think the quotation is quite apt, particularly in an age when a relentlessly sanguine personality is falsely seen by many as a sign of virtue. I believe that people have a moral responsibility to be angered by injustice and evil, because people who are apathetic about such things tend to tolerate them. When we tolerate evil, we help to perpetuate evil.

Jesus was angered by the economic injustices perpetrated in the Temple by people who ostensibly represented God — even to the point that Jesus scourged the moneychangers with a small whip and overturned their tables! What? Did you think they crucified Jesus because he got along well with everyone? Think again! It's no accident that the crucifixion took place a mere week after the incident in the Temple.

Admittedly, some people have a tendency to lose their tempers over trivialities. There's such a thing as making mountains out of molehills. Some people also have a tendency to get angry for rather self-centered reasons. (Some of Michael Bloomberg's detractors would undoubtedly accuse him of having done so, and for all I know, they may be right.) But there's also such a thing as making molehills out of mountains. When we trivialize everything, refusing to take a firm and passionate stand against things which are wrong, our complicity makes us perpetrators of those things. I believe that we'll answer to God for our apathy, if we are guilty of such apathy, on the day of judgment.

Ethics and Capitalism

2009-06-18T18:50:00.004-05:00

The following quote is from the cover story for the most recent issue of Newsweek (6/22/2009). The article is entitled "The Capitalist Manifesto." It was written by Fareed Zakaria.

No system — capitalism, socialism, whatever — can work without a sense of ethics at its core. No matter what reforms we put in place, without common sense, judgment and an ethical standard, they will prove inadequate. We will never know where the next bubble will form, what the next innovations will look like and where excesses will build up. But we can ask that people steer themselves and their institutions with a greater reliance on a moral compass.

Amen to that!

Social Bookmarking Sites

2009-06-14T15:41:00.011-05:00

Ever since I started browsing the Web regularly, I've been a big fan of the ability to create bookmarks (known as Favorites in Internet Explorer), so that one doesn't have to remember web addresses (especially really long and complicated ones) and so that one can keep track of all of the best web sites and pages which one has visited.

The only problem is that one's collection of bookmarks tends to be limited to one's own computer, which means that it isn't normally available when using other people's computers or public computers. That can be a big problem if one's computer crashes, forcing one to use public computers such as the ones at the library until one can afford to repair or replace the computer. (That's particularly relevant to me in my current situation!)

One can transfer collections of bookmarks from computer to computer, but if one is borrowing someone else's computer, that person may not appreciate having his or her own bookmarks overwritten. (Of course, one can back up those bookmarks first by exporting them before importing one's one collection, but that's a hassle.) And public computers are often set up so that importing and exporting bookmarks (or even creating bookmarks) may not be an option.

A better idea is to store one's bookmarks online so that they can be accessed regardless of which computer one is using at the time. Social bookmarking web-based services such as Delicious.com (previously Del.icio.us) are beneficial as a means of enabling one to do just that. Some social bookmarking sites enable one to import entire folders of bookmarks at once, which is particularly handy for people who, like me, have created extensive collections of Internet Explorer Favorites in numerous folders and subfolders.

A second benefit is that such social bookmarking web services enable one to share one's collections of bookmarks with others, by making them "public" when saving them. This is one good way to increase the likelihood that people will visit one's own web pages and sites, and it's also a good way to easily help out others who have websites, blogs, etc. which are worthy of promotion. One may also be able to share one's bookmarks with other members by sending e-mail messages to them.

I just signed up with Delicious.com, so I now have a web page which stores my own links. Right now, I only have a few links there, but I intend to significantly expand that list in the near future.

(NOTE: Delicious.com also has a feature which enables one to periodically export all of the links one has stored there, as a safety precaution in case there's some data loss on their end. The export process produces an HTML file, the same as exporting with browsers such as Internet Explorer.)

Here's a partial list of some other social bookmarking services. (Or click this link for an even more extensive list.)

Notice that I now have a link, in the sidebar of this blog, which enables one to easily bookmark any page on this site at Delicious.com. If you like reading my blog or a particular blog post, please take the time to click that link, or the link at the end of this blog post, if you already have a Delicious.com account. That way, you can help me to increase the web traffic for this site. That would be greatly appreciated!

Bookmark this on Delicious

Pentax K7

2009-06-14T14:49:00.005-05:00

Pentax has a new digital SLR, known as the K7. The resolution is the same as the already excellent K20D, and it seems to have retained all of the cool features offered with the K20D (such as the weather-resistant design and the built-in interval timer), but they've added some very desirable new features, such as a movie mode and an optional vertical grip (very handy for portraits).

The interval timer would be very handy for self-portraits, upon which one could base paintings or drawings or digital art if one wished to do so; and it could do things a standard self timer couldn't do. (For example, I'd like to take a series of photos of myself while I'm playing an entire piece on the piano. A standard self timer would only take one shot, and then I'd have to get up from the piano bench and set up the camera to take another photo. That would pretty much negate the possibility of getting an authentic photo of a real performance.) The number of intervals (between 1 and 99 shots) and the length of time between shots (up to 24 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds) is more limited than the options offered by some computer software programs (such as software which comes with just about all Canon DSLR cameras) or by third party solutions such as the PClix LT or the much bulkier Mumford Time Machine), but having such features built into the camera would make it possible to take intervalometer photos in situations where one might be hindered from doing so with other solutions. (For instance, since the K7 is weather resistant, one could take intervalometer photos out in the rain. That would be much harder with other options.)

There's also a very desirable in-camera feature which merges three photos together in order to produce HDR JPEG files. For home editing, it would probably be better to create RAW files and then use a more sophisticated program to create one's HDR files, but the ability to make HDR JPEG files on the road without access to a computer would be very handy for making quick prints of exceptionally high quality at local stores equipped with photo kiosks, right after taking the photos. And since the K7 has a mode which shoots RAW and JPEG files togeter, there's no reason why one can't make such quickie HDR photos and also create better HDR versions later at home, even if the in-camera JPEG files can only be created from other JPEG files. But I'm guessing that one can create such files from RAW files as well, for higher quality.

For more information about the K7, visit this link.

Information About Another Namesake

2009-06-13T16:04:00.005-05:00

Here's a link to information I discovered when I searched on my name (at Delicious.com) for links pertaining to my name, Mark Pettigrew. And here's a link with his contact information at Queens College CUNY, where he apparently works as an Assistant Professor in Arabic. (We Pettigrews are such an intellectual bunch!)

Quote of the Day for 6-9-09

2009-06-09T19:28:00.004-05:00

"It's impossible to spend too much money on your employees. Whatever you spend on your employees comes back many fold." Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com, according to June 4, 2009 interview on ABC News.

It's a shame that some employers have a completely different mentality, which might be paraphrased as follows, "Squeeze your employees for everything they have, and offer them as little compensation as possible. If you can avoid paying benefits (by hiring two part-timers instead of hiring one full-timer, for instance), then do it. Give raises as seldom as possible. Pay CEOs far more than they deserve, and pay your employees far less than they deserve. Never mind that your stinginess and unfairness ultimately costs you, inasmuch as it leads to substantially increased employee turnover, which means that you have to invest needless time and resources in finding and training new employees. Never mind that low employee morale results in low productivity and minimal loyalty to your company. Think short-term, not long-term. Act as if the Golden Rule doesn't apply to you."

Bob Parsons has sometimes been criticized for the racy ads with which he promotes GoDaddy.com. Maybe those criticisms have a grain of truth to them. Nevertheless, I choose to use that company's services for the purpose of hosting ArtisticChristians.com. Mostly, my reason is that the company simply provides some very good services for reasonable amounts of money. But it doesn't hurt, in terms of my loyalty to that company, when I see signs which suggest that GoDaddy.com is probably a very good company to work for. I'm guessing that a lot of other ordinary people feel the same way. That creates customer good will, and customer good will ultimately leads to an increase in sales, as people such as Bob Parsons have discovered.

Treating employees with respect and consideration for their needs isn't just a matter of good ethics. It's also good business.

Tent Cities and the Homeless

2009-05-23T14:03:00.013-05:00

I just saw a story, in the June 1 issue of Newsweek which just hit the stands, about the increase in the number of "tent cities" where homeless people live as an alternative to living in shelters. The article stated that something like an additional 1 million homeless people are anticipated in the near future.

Here's a link to another story on that topic.

If you look into America's distant past, you'll see that there was a time in our nation's history when people often lived in tents or lean-tos which weren't much better than tents. They weren't called bums then. They were called "pioneers". They helped to build this country so that people might one day aspire to live in much nicer homes. And it wasn't just during the 1800s that such people existed. During the great Depression, Chicago's parks were filled with people who slept outdoors because they'd lost their homes. (I learned that last fact while glancing through a recently published book containing excerpts from a jazz-era magazine which was modeled after the New Yorker, called the Chicagoan.)

It's a shame that we now live in a world in which the option of living in a tent or something comparable is frequently available only to people who are willing to break the law because they really have no other viable options. Why should it be illegal to do what was once done by people such as Lewis and Clark, Kit Carson and others?
Some folks probably object to tent cities because they're "eyesores". But they should count themselves lucky if they live in the United States. I've been reading a novel which includes descriptions of life in a slum in Bombay (Mumbai) India, where some 25,000 people were ostensibly living, at one time, in crude makeshift shacks crowded together on an inner city plot of land with no running water and no toilet facilities. (The novel is set a decade or two in the past, so I'm not sure whether or not things have improved in that city in that respect since that time.) Compared to such a place, I suspect that most of America's tent cities are like heaven on earth. In any event, tearing down such tent cities without furnishing people with alternative places to live is inhumane. It's also begging for trouble, because desperate people tend to do desperate things.

Why is it that people who choose to live in a tent for a week or two are said to be "on vacation," but people who exceed the arbitrary time deadline by living in such shelters for much longer periods of time are maligned, as if they possess intrinsic character defects? Why is it O.K. for people in the military to live in tents while visiting foreign countries on tours of duty, but not O.K. for ordinary American civilians to live in similar dwellings? That makes no sense. Nor does it make sense that there are acres upon acres of land with more than adequate room for people to set up such shelters. Far too many self-centered property owners are more preoccupied with exercising their "prerogatives" than with doing what is morally right.

No one with any brains would claim that living in a tent is ideal. But it certainly beats some of the alternatives for people who can no longer keep up with their rent payments or mortgage payments, often for reasons which are beyond their ability to control.

If people dislike the idea of folks living in tents and tent cities so badly, here's a clue: How about contributing some money (and maybe even some vacant land) so that such people can aspire to live in more suitable dwellings?

It isn't as if it's extremely expensive to build homes which would be far superior to tents. In fact, there have been numerous innovative solutions to problems pertaining to shelter in recent years, including homes (both small and large) constructed from shipping containers, as well as much smaller units (such as the ones shown on this web page) which would still be far superior to sleeping on park benches in the pouring rain (and also much better, in the minds of many people, than having to sleep in the types of homeless shelters which can often be found in large cities).

There are also technologies (such as Grancrete) which make it possible to build small permanent dwellings in a tiny fraction of the time (and at a tiny fraction of the expense) of building conventional frame homes. (Be sure to click this link and watch the free video at the top of the page.)

One doesn't necessarily need to go high-tech, either. For instance, I get the impression that it's very easy to build a simple shelter using "cordwood construction" which can be easily taught to almost any able-bodied person. ("Cordwood" is another word for firewood. Cordwood construction is a form of masonry. The building materials, needless to say, are quite inexpensive, compared with the cost of whole logs.) There's even a school (the Earthwood Building School) which teaches people how to build such shelters. (Also visit Daycreek.com for more information.)

Even one of those little inexpensive storage sheds which can be purchased at places such as Home Depot would certainly be better than sleeping in tents. It's difficult to imagine that there are people who are so cheap and uncompassionate that they can't be bothered to provide such housing alternatives to the types of people now living in tent cities, especially when one considers the numerous people who, even during this recession, still live in homes which far exceed their own needs.

I've also seen a number of very nice yurts in magazines such as Mother Earth News. Modern yurts can make for surprisingly comfortable homes, from what I've seen. Search the web for more information from companies such as Pacific Yurts, Yurts by Rainier, Colorado Yurt Company and others.

It also seems to me that Habitat for Humanity ought to be doing more to address the needs of the types of people who are now living in tent cities. I think that that organization is a noble endeavor, but I get the feeling that their criteria for eligibility exclude some of the people who urgently need help with housing the most.

As a Christian, I think that the church could be doing a much better job of addressing the needs of people who are homeless. For one thing, they shouldn't presumptuously assume that all people fitting that description are in need of rehabilitation. Sometimes that's true, but sometimes it isn't. All it takes to become homeless is to be in a situation where one doesn't have the money to pay the rent. It doesn't necessarily follow that such a person has a problem with drugs or alcohol, or that the person is mentally ill.

If you read the Bible, you'll discover that Jesus lived a nomadic lifestyle during the entirety of his ministry. He had no home of his own. Where did Jesus and his followers sleep? Sometimes, I think that he and the disciples were the guests of people living in the towns they visited. On other occasions, I believe that they all slept under the stars. They may have stayed with their parents occasionally; we really have no way of knowing for sure. But they certainly didn't live in palaces, or even in their own middle class homes. It's ironic that many people who claim to worship Jesus look down on the homeless, as if the mere fact that such people currently lack domiciles means that they are losers.

Have I ever been homeless? It depends on how one defines the term. I once had to sleep outside on the ground overnight because I accidentally locked myself out of the church in which I was sleeping that night. (That wasn't a pleasant experience! Even in the spring, it can get mighty cold outside at night.)

I also went through an extended period of a number of months (in late 1991 and early 1992) in which I only had a roof over my head as a result of the benevolence of other Christians, simply because I didn't have adequate money with which to rent an apartment and pay the security deposit. And back in the late seventies, I once stayed overnight at a homeless shelter, while hitchhiking through Kansas City on my way home to Springfield, MO, because I'd miscalculated how long it would take for me to get home, and I really didn't have money for a motel room that night. I've never been homeless in the sense of having to spend weeks or months at a time sleeping outside or in homeless shelters, but the aforementioned experiences were still pretty frightening (although the Kansas City experience wasn't all that bad). Those experiences were as close as I ever want to come to being homeless. But I find myself thinking about such matters from time to time, because I'm still in a tenuous financial situation, and I have been in such a situation for quite some time, due to a prolonged period of unemployment.

In a different era, the prospect of sleeping outside (at least during warmer weather) might not have been such a bad thing. These days, such a lifestyle tends to be a part of a downward spiral from which it can be very difficult to recover.