Pam and I got our picture taken with Santa during Anchor’s December 19 “Soup with Santa” after-church potluck.
Jordi in the Snow
Jordi perched on our stone blocks, avoiding the snow.
Yes, it's dark, and I'm outside in the snow taking pictures.
Sure, the temperature is in the teens and below (that would be the aughts), but Jordi still wants to go outside. Since he doesn’t like getting his paws wet, I shovel little paths so he can walk around. Once he gets to the stone blocks rimming out home, he can walk clear around to the front of the house.
However, Jordi’s getting soft in his old (11?) age. He lasts about 5 minutes, and then wants to come back in. Though last night, when I took these pictures (yes, I was out there in the frigidness snapping photos of my kid), he lasted a good 10 minutes. He finally made it around to the front, where we let him in.
Molly, on the other hands, wants nothing to do with the cold outdoors. She’s an indoor cat and proud of it.
Life in the Dennie household.
Microsoft: the Picture of Frustration
You gotta love Microsoft, whose brand identity is, “We’re more frustrating than anyone else.”
I thought I had mastered forms on Word 2008. But on Word 2011, I couldn’t even find the forms controls. The built-in help was no help. Looked everywhere in vain.
Finally, someone on a bulletin board explained that you must enable the “Developer” tab. You do that by clicking on the gear symbol in the ribbon (of COURSE!), clicking on “Ribbon Preferences,” and then checking a box labeled “Developer” (of COURSE!). Now there’s a tab called “Developer,” and it has forms controls.
That was TOTALLY intuitive, don’t ya think?
A Loving Father Who Sees No God
The Washington Post ran an article about Ryan Diviney, 21, a college student who has been in a coma for a year after a terrible beating. His father, Ken, has stayed by his side almost constantly, taking care of him–brushing his teeth, administering 50 medications, feeding him through a tube, bathing him, cleaning him, talking to him, exercising his limbs. He gets no response from his son, yet continues his sacrificial care for his son.
When his children were younger, Ken Diviney spent ten years as a stay-at-home dad. Now he has given up his job to care for his son.
You hear about his love for and commitment to his son, and you think, “He must be a Christian.”
Then I came to this paragraph:
[Ken] no longer attends church. He no longer believes in prayer or the notion that God has a larger plan. He has lost his faith.
“What kind of God would allow this to happen?” the father asks. “What kind of God wouldn’t correct it?”
What do you say to that? Ryan was an athlete, a 4.0 student, an all-around good kid. And then this senseless violence.
The article makes clear that the Divineys are surrounded by Christian people who help out all they can. Yet amidst that, Ken has lost his faith.
It just struck me as very sad. The whole thing. Very sad.
On the other hand, there are people in Darfur and other places who have seen their whole family killed, yet cling even more tenaciously to their faith. What makes the difference? And how would I respond?
The March – Slow or Fast? – of Time
I don’t know whether time is going fast or slow.
It seems like 9/11 was yesterday, still fresh in my mind. I vividly remember going home from work early and gluing myself to the TV for the rest of the day. That was just a couple years ago, right? Maybe it’s still fresh because the wars we started after 9/11 are ongoing.
But then I read that the iPod and Wikipedia were born in 2001, and it seems like they’ve been around forever. Yet George Bush became president that year, and that doesn’t seem so long ago. So what’s the deal?
Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001, and the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films came out. Those don’t seem so long ago. But Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman split that year, the Ravens won the Super Bowl, and Andrea Yates drowned her children. Those events seem so, so long ago.
Mac OSX wasn’t released until March 2001. I can hardly remember using its comparatively clunky predecessor, OS9. Surely I must have been in my 20s back then, right? But no, I’ve been using OSX, through six versions, for less than 10 years.
And then:
- Facebook started in 2004.
- Youtube started in 2005.
They aren’t any older than that? Are you kidding?
Books: “Sacrifice,” “Down in the Zero,” “Safehouse”
“Sacrifice” (1995) is the sixth book in Andrew Vachss’s urban survival series based around the guy named Burke. These books have a definite feel to them, and all deal in some way with child abuse. Burke takes a zero-tolerance attitude toward hurting kids. Child molesters are “freaks,” and he deals with them. Vachss, in real life, is an attorney who works exclusively with cases pertaining to children and youth.
The titles of the first five books reflect the major female character–Flood, Strega, Blue Belle, Hard Candy, Blossom. Here, “sacrifice” refers to a young boy around whom the plot revolves. This boy has been severely abused, tortured and sexually assaulted as part of a pedophile ring. To cope with it, he split into multiple personalities. Most of the time he is Luke. But there are also Toby, Baby Susie, and a very scary kid who calls himself “Satan’s Child.” In that personality, Luke has killed.
Burke, with the help of his rogue’s gallery of friends–Max, the Mole, the Prophet, newcomer Clarence, and Mama–tries to track down the people responsible for abusing Luke and others.
Andrew Vachss
If Vachss stuck to the plot, the book would be about two-thirds as long. But he meanders around, dealing with various things that come up. This does not detract from the book, not in Vachss’s skilled hands. It just provides more atmospherics, drawing you deeper into this New York City underworld.
Then I moved on to the next book in the series, “Down in the Zero” (1995) This book was set in a tony Connecticut neighborhood where a number of teens have been committing suicide. One teen suspects murder, and fears that he’ll be next, so he comes to Burke for help.
So Burke goes to that town and tries to unravel what’s happening. It’s perhaps my least favorite Burke book, with way too much sexual content and not much plot. Plus, as with “Blossom,” the story takes Burke away from New York City, and away from his urban crew. It makes the book much less interesting.
Next, I read “Safehouse” (1998), thinking it was the next book in the series, when in fact there are two books between “Safehouse” and “Down in the Zero.” Anyway, “Safehouse” is very good. The theme is stalking. Burke gets involved with Crystal Beth, who helps run a safehouse for abused women, many of whom are being stalked in some way. Vachss creates very interesting female characters, and Crystal Beth is in that tradition, somewhat reminiscent of Lizbeth Salander in Steig Larsson’s great books. Through her, Burke becomes enmeshed with a shadowy CIA-type named Pryce in a sting on a neo-Nazi ring intent on carrying out a terrorist plot. Since this was written prior to 9/11, but after the Oklahoma City bombing and the original World Trade Center bombing, it’s extra interesting.
Toward the latter part of the book, Crystal Beth takes Burke around to a number of women in the safehouse, and they tell their stories of being stalked in some way, and usually physically abused in terrible ways. These are engrossing stories in themselves. I’m guessing that they were adapted from actual cases Andrew Vachss or his wife worked with, or knew about, in their real-world work as victims advocates.
Again, there is plenty of sexual content, though not as graphic as what you’ll find in a Stuart Woods novel. But it’s all part of this urban world Vachss has constructed, a world I find fascinating. And his focus on victims–particularly children, but also women–gives it not only a redeeming quality, but a strong educational element.
A Muslim Who Favors Profiling Muslims
Asra Q. Nomani (right), a Muslim woman, presents a strong case in “Airport Security: Let’s Profile Muslims,” an article on The Daily Beast.
As an American Muslim, I’ve come to recognize, sadly, that there is one common denominator defining those who’ve got their eyes trained on U.S. targets: MANY of them are Muslim….
We have to talk about the taboo topic of profiling because terrorism experts are increasingly recognizing that religious ideology makes terrorist organizations and terrorists more likely to commit heinous crimes against civilians….
I realize that in recent years, profiling has become a dirty word, synonymous with prejudice, racism, and bigotry. But while I believe our risk assessment should not end with religion, race and ethnicity, I believe that it should include these important elements, as part of a “triage” strategy….
Profiling doesn’t have to be about discrimination, persecution, or harassment….
In [a] debate, I said, “Profile me. Profile my family,” because, in my eyes, we in the Muslim community have failed to police ourselves….
To me, profiling isn’t about identity politics but about threat assessment….
Data in reports released over the past several months…reveal that over the past decade not only are many defendants in terrorism cases Muslim, but they trace their national or ethnic identity back to specific countries. According to the Rand study “Would-Be Warriors,” the national origins or ethnicities most defendants came from was Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Jordan and Egypt, with a handful from the Muslim areas of the Balkans….
I know this is an issue of great distress to many people. But I believe that we cannot bury our heads in the sand anymore. We have to choose pragmatism over political correctness, and allow U.S. airports and airlines to do religious and racial profiling.
A Society Not Designed to Bring Happiness
Salon, an online magazine, has an advice column. I don’t read advice columns, since they are answered from a secular perspective and therefore miss the boat when it comes to problems with spiritual solutions. But the heading for this one read, “I have everything. My life is empty.” I just HAD to see how the columnist answered that one.
The person seeking advice wrote:
I have it all. Life has been good. Though by no means rich, I have money in the bank, a solid marriage and prospects for a comfortable future.
But I am happier when I have less.
The advice columnist wowed me with her wisdom. She really did. Particularly the first paragraph. I added some emphasis.
It is not hard to figure out why the life you have chosen does not make you happy. It was not designed to make you happy. It was designed to maximize your purchases….
Maximizing your purchases will not make you happy. The lifestyle of consumption is not designed to make you happy. It’s designed to make the people who sell you things happy. It’s designed to suck the maximum number of dollars out of you for the maximum number of years, maintaining you as a dependable, lifetime revenue source on the nearly infinite ledger of American capitalism….
In considering how to change your life, remember that you have enemies. Your enemies don’t want you to change. They want to keep you as a dependable revenue source….Your enemies prefer you to be constantly unhappy, constantly in search of things to buy. It is better for your enemies…if you know little of your true capacity for free action, for a relaxed, carefree life devoid of worry. It is better for them if you believe there is no alternative.”
There is much, much more, as the columnist talked about her own journey amidst American materialism. But I found these opening paragraphs to be very perceptive.
Our whole society is designed around materialism. We want to possess tings. We’re told that saving money is good, and yet our economy will collapse if people don’t spend. Buying stuff is partly what it means to be an American. It’s practically patriotic.
As a Christian, I know that I’m not made for this world. I’ve been “fearfully and wonderfully made” for something eternal–to love God and enjoy him forever, as the catechism says, and to make a difference in people’s lives while inhabiting earth. I’m not designed to be a consumer. Not designed to fit neatly into a man-made political category. Not even designed to be United Brethren, or Nazarene, or some other religious brand. I’m made for something not of this world.
The world’s systems won’t bring me happiness. I’ve got to remember that.
Book: The Dawn Patrol
Don Winslow is becoming one of my favorite authors. “The Winter of Frankie Machine” is the best book I’ve read in 2010. “The Life and Death of Bobby Z” was pretty good. And now I’ve finished “The Dawn Patrol.” All are Vintage/Black Lizard imprints.
“The Dawn Patrol” (1978) centers around Boone Daniels, a well-known surfer in San Diego who works, when he feels like is, as a private investigator. He’s a former cop with an aversion to authority.
An insurance company hires him to investigate a possible insurance scam. The book meanders around with a laid back, southern California vibe. There is no hurry to anything. A woman is murdered, a child prostitution ring is unearthed, various criminals set their sites on Boone, and there’s lots of drama involving Boone, his old flame Summer, and Petra, the beautiful insurance company rep who tags along as he does his investigative thing.
The title “dawn patrol” consists of five surfers–four men (including Boone) and one woman (Summer, the best surfer of all). A distant tsunami is sending some big waves to San Diego, and none of them want to miss out. Boone fears that his PI gig will get in the way.
“The Dawn Patrol” is not nearly as good as “Frankie Machine,” but it was enjoyable. Maybe a bit too slow-moving for my tastes, but I do admire Winslow’s word-smithing capabilities.
Michael Vick and Tiger Woods, Second Chances
Michael Vick is back. Although I find his dog-fighting activities despicable, as a Christian I do believe in redemption and life-change. In this case, the redemption and life-change may be totally secular in nature, devoid of a religious component (though when he came out of prison is said a lot of Christian stuff). But regardless, I’m happy to see him thriving.
And you must admit: the guy is electric to watch. And he seems to be a much better quarterback than before.
Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is still trying to come back. He gave an extended interview on Mike&Mike this morning on ESPN radio, most of which I listened to while driving to work. He’s humble and forthright. I hope his lifestyle truly lives up to his words. And I hope, along with TV executives everywhere, that he rises once again to be the dominant force in gold that he was until a year ago.
