Vacation Bizarreness

Ok, I'm back from vacation. We went to northern Alabama to visit old family stomping grounds and friends.

I visited my Onkel Ernst and Tante Irmgard, pseudo-uncle/aunt to my mother (and, hence, us). He was a rocket scientist in Huntsville, along w/my grandfather, but 10 years younger than my grandfather. He and my grandfather became best friends. He's now 92 or so .

I had a wonderful time talking to him about his experiences on the eastern front during WWII. He was trained as an astrophysicist and actually did some research into how many neutrons are generated when a U-238 atom splits, but Hitler decided making him a schutzer was a better investment of Germany's resources at the time. So, off he went, and nearly died in a Russian artillery bombardment. He was in the basement of a house that collapsed. He was pinned by timbers and debris, but a second incoming shell freed him. His 30 comrades weren't so lucky. (He did lose some toes to frostbite. Walking across the Ukraine in 40-below temperatures can do that.)

When he got back to Germany after that, he was notified to report to Peenemunde. Wernher von Braun, the chief of Germany's rocket program at the time, needed highly technical people to help him. He'd gotten clearance to scour the rolls of soldiers' names, and he'd sent down a classmate of Onkel Ernst's to do the job. Coincidence and personal connection ("hey, I know that guy!") may have kept him from being sent back to the front.

We talked about the replica of the "apex predictor" he was building in his garage, for an upcoming 50th anniversary celebration of our first satellite launch. He built the original apex predictor in that same garage 50 years ago for the insertion of the Explorer satellite into orbit in Jan. of 1958, a few months after Sputnik went up. Basically, he had to predict the apex of the trajectory of a missle in order to fire the booster pack on the satellite to give it the right horizontal velocity to keep it in orbit while the rest of the missle fell back into the ocean. The device itself is extremely simple, basically just a very accurate, calibrated timer-activated switch. The complexity comes from the conversions of input data from three independent (and therefore disagreeing) sources into a seconds-from-liftoff figure. This was all in the days before electronics, so he was doing his calculations with a slide rule. (Not "live", but he set up pre-programmed conversion tables, essentially.)

He was successful, though, because the satellite stayed in orbit for twelve and a half years.

So, that's family connection #1, a gen-yoo-wine Rocket Scientist.

Then, we went to Guntersville to see the house my great aunt lived in all her life (she never married) and to visit her grave. My sister was especially close to her; she's named after her. The house was built by my great- or great-great-grandfather around the turn of the century (I think it was built earlier, around 1875 or even 1855, but others in my family say 1895). It was a big frikkin' house, two stories, 12-inch timbers, a maze of hallways and staircases and downright spooky. My sister and I used to explore it whenever we visited and scare ourselves silly in some of the rooms (which did have an eerie vibe). After my great aunt died (in the late 1980s), the house was sold by my second cousin, once removed. In doing so, he had more than one offer and chose to sell it to the party who he thought would be the better custodian of it, even though they offered less money. Yay, second cousin, once removed! The folks who bought and restored it, we had assumed, were totally unrelated, but it turn out that the wife is related (she thinks our grandmothers were cousins). This house was then sold by these folks to a local bank that wanted the lot it was on (pretty much downtown) and which promised to build a new headquarters inside the house (a remodelling). It turned out the house couldn't be used (too many interior walls would have had to be removed), so the bank offered to sell the house back to the owners for $1, but they would have to move it. They took that on, because they didn't feel the house should be demolished. That was a tremendous project because of all the various administrative headaches. The biggest problem was getting the telephone company to agree to move the phone wires strung between telephone poles along the street. The plan was to roll the house across the street to the Tennessee River (dammed, to make Lake Guntersville), float it around the point (under a bridge) and bring it back on land on the other side of the point. If you've ever driven through a medium-small Southern town, you know how many wires are in the air. My understanding is that the cost of moving it was about equal to their selling price, so, apart from the hassle, the move was free.

For those that are interested, see maps.google.com. The house was moved from the corner of Blount Ave. and Brown St., down Brown St. to the river, floated around the point and brought back on land to sit almost at the corner of Lusk St. (how appropriate) and Sunset Drive (next to the Episcopal Church :) ). By the way, while you're looking at the map, you might be interested to know that great aunt Ibby and a whole passel (what is that, a corruption of "parcel"?) of my ancestors and their relatives are buried in the cemetery at the corner of O'Brig and Debow. (I'm guessing "O'Brig" is apostrophe'd, based on the funky spacing on the street sign I saw. Maybe it's "O. Brig.")

We got to visit the house and spent an hour or two chatting in the front parlor with my heretofore unknown relative. She's pretty damn cool, a former high school English teacher, cancer survivor with short, brilliant white hair, wearer of slightly unconventional jewelry, gracious in the best tradition of the Deep South and runs the town history museum. And, no, the contradictions and implications inherent in being rich, white and connected in the Deep South in a smallish town are not lost on me. Did I mention she's on a first-name basis with my father's second cousin who's somewhat of a mover and shaker in this town? Close enough to him to be able to twist his arm to lead some sort of historical tour of Guntersville.

That move was a tremendous hassle, and I, personally, am glad they undertook it.

So, that's family connection #2, a rich, gracious cousin who bought the family manse and took care of it, basically out of the blue.

After that, we pressed on to Gadsden, to see the town where my dad grew up, and to visit his mother and father, buried in the cemetery there. At both cemeteries, we took pictures of headstones, the digital equivalent of rubbings, I guess. (Some of the headstones in Guntersville were so worn and eroded that rubbings might have been the better approach.) After we visited Pop and Nana's grave, we toured around town looking at the places my father grew up. I would have (should have, really) videotaped the whole thing, but it would probably be excruciatingly boring to just about everybody else, so I just tried to pay attention as he pointed out houses left and right. Then, we drove up the mountain overlooking town to see the house he had spent the latter half of his adolescence, the fabled "House on the Mountain" that had figured in so many conversations but which I had never seen. The house is on a ridge overlooking the town, built around 1925 by my grandfather, not big, but you know the real estate dictum: location, location, location. (And, of course, "not big" is a relative term -- it ain't a bungalow.) It's on a huge lot, set back from the road by a long driveway and a thick forest, adjacent to (but out of sight of) similarly upscale houses. So, we pull up this long, asphalted driveway that looks like a street, past the one house at the end of the "street", into the big apron in front of a big old garage, turn around, behaving like the stereotypical lost family, and, as we're slowly cruising by the house again, an older gentleman comes out with that sort of suspicious "can I help you lost folks who shouldn't be on my property?" sort of thing going on. My father introduces himself and the guys says "I'll be damned. I was a freshman in medical school while you were a resident," and introduces himself. (He grew up in Anniston, a local city.) And suddenly, they're two medical colleagues exchanging reminiscences about med school and the local VA hospital and whats-his-face with that ballistic cardiogram device he was trying to get people to adopt and so on and so forth. Then, on top of that, it turns out this guy was a bomber crewman (pilot?) in WWII, over Germany, while my dad was an infantryman in the same theater. (My dad actually spent seven months in the south of France as a "fugitive from the law of averages", as he puts it. He eventually had a German "potato masher" grenade bounced off his knee while he was hunkering down in a foxhole and was lucky enough to escape with only the tiniest fleck of steel in his knee. However, as you might guess, any piece of steel in your knee is enough to hospitalize you.) So, now they have something else to reminisce over.

So, we (and that includes the current residents) got the full tour of the house and all the mischief two little boys (my father and uncle) can get into. We saw where my dad's cat Bosco was buried in my grandmother's turkey roaster. (Bosco had an unfortunate encounter with a dog, and the boys gave him a full funeral, with honors. The best available casket was the turkey roaster, which was appropriated without consultation with the lady of the house. When she later found out about it, they offered to exhume it, but she declined the offer, and it remains in the yard to this day.)

We got to sit in the front parlor of this house, too, and chat a spell. The man of the house was all sweaty, since we had interrupted him at lawn-mowing. He was about 80. The lady of the house came home in the middle of all this, also all sweaty, from a line dance class. They were both hale and hearty, in full possession of their mental faculties, enthusiastic about life, and outgoing. Another example of Southern hospitality, sort of. She was from Iowa, complete with corn-fed, big-jointed Iowan accent, so I guess on her part it was Midwestern hospitality, which is pretty much just as good. We would have chatted longer, I think, but my dad was impatient to get on the road.

So, there's family connection #3, a med-school colleague, again, completely out of the blue.

So, my takeaway from all this is this: it's really interesting how small the circles are when one lives in the top layers of the social pyramid.

I can't really claim any of this, I guess, since I'm just a software developer and a web hack, at that (I compete with copy-and-paste offshore developers for my employment), but I suppose with the proper amount of hustle earlier in life, I might have been able to. I suppose I could say I'm not living up to my heritage, that I'm the unproductive scion of greater generations, the proof that blue blood alone does not determine destiny. Still, there is a certain sense of familial pride.

Disciple 3 Closing

So, we had our last Disciple (3) meeting Saturday. It was a big deal, kind of a review and commissioning. One of the things we did was a little... performance, I guess, is the right word. We had a script we stood up and read from (unrehearsed), so it was kind of a way of reinforcing our theme of the year, reviewing the message we had been contemplating.

I'm going to take the liberty of typing it all in here, now. :)

We stood in a circle, at the different points of the compass, facing inward.

"One" is a prophet, or a prophetic figure. It's a 5-person performance. This one should probably have stood in the middle, but we didn't, in our case.

When the script says "(Turn away)," we each turned and faced away from the center (away from each other).


ONE: Awake, my people, pay attention.
The Holy One has a point of contention:
At the marketplace they measure with false weights.
They sell the needy for a pair of shoes.
They indulge their appetites,
ignoring the hungry at the door,
deaf to the cry of the poor.
They have ears but do not hear.

ALL: Everything's fine. Peace. Peace.

ONE: The houses are splendid, the monuments secure.
They revel in their success, saying,
"By our own hands we built this!"
"The Temple will never be destroyed!"
They have hearts to discern but do not perceive.

ALL: Everything's fine. Peace. Peace.

ONE: They silence the prophets whose voices trouble the peace.
They cling to the law that gives them security
or to the special knowledge that makes them elite.
They have eyes but do not see.

ALL: Everything's fine. Peace. Peace.

ONE: They bow at the altars of their gods.
They indulge in ecstasies without responsibilities
and sensation without sensibility.
They have veiled their faces from faithfulness.

ALL: Everything's fine. Peace, peace.

NORTH: We are rich!

EAST: We are strong!

SOUTH: We are right!

WEST: We're having fun!

NORTH: But isn't it strange
how you just can't trust anyone anymore?
No one's word is good. Everyone is out for themselves. (Turns away.)

EAST: Why are the cities crumbling?
And why are there so many poor? (Turns away.)

SOUTH: What about all the violence? And fragmented families? (Turns away.)

WEST: Life is empty, meaningless.
Nothing we do really satisfies.
It takes bigger thrills to excite us, more drama to entertain us.
We're not even sure who we are anymore. (Turns away.)

ALL: Everything is not fine.
We are cut off from one another.
We are distant from ourselves.
We are alienated from earth.
We are exiled from God.

NORTH: Our sin is greed.

EAST: Our sin is pride.

SOUTH: Our sin is arrogance.

WEST: Our sin is dissipation.

ALL: It is idolatry -- worshiping the creature, not the Creator.

NORTH: We have killed Truth and sacrificed Integrity.

EAST: We have crucified Compassion and written off Patience.

SOUTH: We have ravaged Respect and restricted Vision.

WEST: We have buried Faithfulness and trivialized Love.

ALL: We have sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
There is no peace. No life, no hope.
No holiness, no wholeness. Only dead and scattered bones.

(Silence)

ONE: Come from the four winds, O Breath.
Breathe upon these that they may live.

ALL: Rise upon us, O Gracious One,
with healing in your wings.

ONE: Turn to me, and I will welcome you home
-- as a mother the child of her womb --
I will not forget you!
-- as a father the long-lost young --
I will not reject you!
-- as a spouse the beloved one --
I will not forsake you! Turn to me. (All turn back to the center.)
And you will live!
And my children shall come home
from the north and from the south,
from the east and from the west,
bringing gifts and treasures with them.
The Holy One was buried but is risen!
Was dead but is alive!

ALL (to North): Come to the banquet!
We have need of you.
May your ears hear the cries of creation,
your minds plan justice,
dispense generous mercy.
May you hear the truth and live with integrity.

ONE: Your chief administrator shall be called Righteousness.

ALL (to East): Come to the banquet!
We have need of you.
May your hearts discern the call to action,
attentive to the needs of all,
your hands work with tender strength
and build with patient perseverance.
And may you walk with humble hearts before God.

ONE: Your strong walls shall be called Salvation.

ALL (to South): Come to the banquet!
We have need of you.
May your speech guide with graciousness
and imaginations inspire to hopefulness.
May your eyes see the Vision and make it plain.

ONE: Your overseer shall be called Peace.

ALL (to West): Come to the banquet!
We have need of you.
May your unveiled face shine with human kindness and divine care,
and the fullness of your attentive presence
grace us with the hospitality of humor and dignity
and deep meaning.
May your unveiled face shine with faithful love.

ONE: Your gates shall be called Praise.

ALL: And people will come from east and west,
north and south, and eat with all the saints
at the heavenly banquet.

ONE: The dividing wall of hostility is broken down.
You who were far off are brought near.

ALL: We are all one in Christ Jesus
who unites us as one household of faith and freedom--
one body, one blood, one family.

ONE: Go into the world, then, beloved of God,
remembering who you are.

NORTH: with ears to hear,

EAST: hearts to discern,

SOUTH: eyes to see,

WEST: unveiled faces.

ONE: And may your words and deeds,
being and doing, loving and serving,
be a witness to the presence of the resurrected Christ,
the unbounded grace of God,
and the renewing power of the Holy Spirit.

ALL: Amen.

Progressive Churches.org

Progressive Churches.org

W00t!

When Help Is Not On The Way

... Bokilo can almost see home from the edge of the squalid camp where he has lived for three years. Swollen-bellied children run past him. There's cholera in the water, and malaria in the huts. Two miles away, his fields lie untilled, and that's how they'll stay. 'Of course I can't go back,' he says, warning of the armed bands roaming freely outside town. 'They will kill you. ... They take your boys. They take your girls.'

Constant fear of marauders who murder, rape, pillage, and enslave. Legions sweeping into camps. Sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Think you know what this is about?

Guess again.

I feel tricked by the emphasis on another, more well-known hot spot.

Drinking Liberally

Drinking Liberally

Short of going back home and drinking filtered tap water or breaking out that bottle of home-brewed rutabega wine that Abby down at the Co-Op gave you for Kwanzaa/Yule, how does a conscientious progressive lament the latest BushCo atrocity without putting even more money into the pockets of blood-sucking multinationals?

Funny. :)

Libertinism vs. Asceticism, Sacred vs. Profane

Went drinking w/a friend tonight, and the topic came up of whether ogling is ok or not.

1 Corinthians 10:23-33

And I'll quote it here, in order to add my own highlighting. Text in this style is crosswalk.com's highlighting. Text in this style is my own.

23 "All things are lawful," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. 24 Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other. 25 Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, 26 for "the earth and its fullness are the Lord's." 27 If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. 28 But if someone says to you, "This has been offered in sacrifice," then do not eat it, out of consideration for the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience 29 I mean the other's conscience, not your own. For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience? 30 If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks? 31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. 32 Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, 33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved.

Now, Paul had ample opportunity here not to deviate from a discussion of meat. But, instead, he chooses to put in some more-general phrasing.

He does say "'All things are lawful,' but not all things are beneficial. 'All things are lawful,' but not all things build up."

Ok, time and energy are short. I might develop this a bit more in future, but I just wanted to toss this out while it was on my mind.

Fun With Bible Interpretation

See:

• 1 Tim 2:9--15 -- women should be silent in church and learn in submission
• 1 Tim 3:1--13 -- bishops and deacons can't be remarried -- so much for my prospects of becoming a bishop or deacon.
• 1 Tim 1:10 -- use of the word "sodomite" (in my translation)

These are some of the more objectionable parts of Paul (especially that first item). It would be very tempting (and I think I may have fallen to this temptation) to discount this as "not authentic Paul", since indications are that the Pastoral Letters (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) were written by somebody after Paul.

However, it's kind of a weak attack to say some part of the Bible is less legitimate than some other part because of its authorship. We have to tackle the bible as a unified whole (for some definition of "unified whole"). If conservatives cite this in support of their position, we need to find some other way to counterargue.

(More later, work calls.)

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(2:45 pm) The point being, in spite of my hastily and poorly worded phrasing above, that we can't play parts of the bible against each other based on authorship or time of writing. Even if something wasn't written by Paul but claims to be (the technical term is pseudepigraphal, like "apocryphal", from pseudo- and epigraph), that doesn't matter, because it's all been accepted as part of canon by the early church fathers (who are as much (or almost as much) a part of the development of Christianity as Paul and Jesus were).

(is my compile done yet?)

- - - - - - - -

(4:50 pm) Um, well, maybe that statment about the early church fathers is a little overdone.


(2 May 2006, 9:20 am) See the comments on this entry for more stuff.