The other day, on the way to work, I found myself behind a schoolbus which stopped at EVERY SINGLE ROAD to pick up kids–junior high and high school, by the looks. Took me forever to get out my own addition.

We’re talking entrances to culdesacs just 25 yards apart. What societal forces prevent two able-bodied kids from walking 25 yards to join the two kids from another street, so that the bus can make a single stop?

And then it hit me: It’s all a conspiracy from the oil/auto industry!

Think about it. All of those extra stops means more gas usage–more money in the pockets of Big Oil, and more money going to support terrorist sympathizers in the Middle East, Venezuela and, most insidiously, in Canada.

And then there’s the extra wear-and-tear on buses from the continuous stop-and-go. That means buses wear out more quickly–and thus, more frequent orders to Big Auto for new buses.

Wake up, America!

I have some chicken strips marinading at home in lemon-pepper sauce. My well-thought-out plan is to grill them tonight…outside, in -20 degree temperatures. Sometimes, I wonder how I ever graduated from 5th grade.

Me, shivering, with the target I used for shooting 12 gauge shotgun slugs at 50 yards. Those are really big holes. Three out of five on the target–I’m happy with that.

Pam and I went out to Roush Shooting Range yesterday afternoon after church (Sunday, Jan. 20) with Paul and Sarah Neher, friends from church. It was bitterly cold. When Pam and I arrived, nobody else was there, and the office door was locked. I tracked down the rangemaster in a separate building, where he was working on something (I think target stands).

“Is the range open today?” I asked.

“If you’re crazy enough to shoot,” he replied.

We were crazy enough. “You’re really hardcore,” he told us.

Pam and I practiced with our handguns for a while, and then Paul and Sarah arrived. Paul brought two shotguns–12 gauge, and 20 gauge. We went out to the trap-shooting area, where Paul introduced us to trap shooting. Neither of us had ever fired a shotgun before. And we had certainly never tried to shoot a plastic plate flying through the air.

So Paul taught us how to load and prepare his 12 gauge, how to stand, how to step on a foot pedal to launch the trap. And we got started.

I promptly wasted several traps (if that’s what they are called) by failing to remove my foot from the pedal. One would fly out, I would fire, and then another one would suddenly launch unexpectedly. I would fire again…but nothing would happen, because I hadn’t ejected the previous shell. Another time I launched a trap without having ejected the shell, treating the gun like a a semi-auto.

But I got the hang of it. We would each take three shots, then hand the gun off to the next person. About 15 shots apiece. I think I hit one out of three every round except once, and one time I got two out of three.

After that, we moved to the regular range, where Paul let me shoot his 12 gauge with slugs. (By then, a couple other crazy person had come to brave the cold). Ummm, there’s just a little bit of a kick to a shotgun slug, I discovered. I took five shots at 50 yards, using the gun’s built-in sites (no scope). I managed to put three on the target, which both surprised and pleased me. And they made some mighty big holes.

Pam decided she didn’t care to try shooting slugs. Probably for the best.

Anyway, it was great fun. Thank you, Paul Neher, for the new experience.

During our October vacation in Washington DC, Pam and I visited all of the memorials on the National Mall. The World War 2 memorial was new since our last visit in the 1990s, and it was quite impressive. Also new was the Martin Luther King memorial, which was dedicated in October 2011, just a year before.

I’m a great admirer of Martin Luther King. I’m an not an admirer of the MLK memorial.

The idea of a memorial to King was authorized in 1996, a groundbreaking was held in 2006, and building for the final project began in 2009.

The setting itself is beautiful, spanning four acres overlooking the Tidal Basin. As a bird flies, it’s between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. All of the other major monuments to people recognize presidents–Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt. The Martin Luther King Memorial is the only one recognizing a non-president. And I would consider it deserving. King was truly a transformative figure.

You enter the memorial through a stone “mountain.” The ends of the mountain are on either side of the gateway. The middle slice is located further in, and this slice bears a sculpture of King emerging from the stone. The granite slab says, “Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope,” which is a line from the “I Have a Dream” speech. So you pass through the Mountain of Despair to reach the Stone of Hope. The sculpture of King, staring across the Tidal Basin, is 30 feet high; the statues of Jefferson and Lincoln are just 19 feet tall (though Lincoln is sitting).

Behind the Stone of Hope is a 450-foot wall containing 14 excerpts from some of King’s sermons and speeches. I read them all. They are good quotes, chosen to stress four primary messages of King: justice, democracy, hope, and love. That’s what I read later, anyway. As I read them that night, with darkness fast approaching, I saw two themes: justice, and the poor.

What struck me was that racial themes were totally missing. They chose not to include what is my favorite King quote, and perhaps his most famous: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

I suppose they wanted to focus on more timeless, universal themes (justice, democracy, hope love), which will continue to be issues long after racism is, uh…eliminated? I didn’t like it. King’s crusade was focused on issues of race and discrimination. I considered it a serious error to omit mention of these issues at a monument dedicated to his memory.

So that was one disappointment.

Another disappointment was reading that the King family received $800,000 in a licensing deal for permission to use King’s words and image in fundraising materials for the memorial. That’s scandalous.

And then there’s the sculpture itself.

First of all, it didn’t look like any photo I’ve seen of King.

Second, it looks like a white person (since they used white granite).

Third, the sculptor was Lei Yixin, an artist from China who had previously sculpted Mao Zedong. As it turns out, the Chinese government contributed $25 million to the $120 million project. So this major monument on the National Mall, recognizing an American, was Made in China. They even used Chinese white granite, which was probably mined by Chinese workers in unsafe conditions. Scandalous again.

So I was severely disappointed. The silly mountain metaphor. The use of Chinese materials and a Chinese sculptor. The out-of-proportion size of King’s figure. The lack of resemblance to King himself. The demeanor they gave him–serious, authoritative, and way too reminiscent of statues we’ve seen of dictators in other countries. What were they thinking?

I read that they considered using “water” as a metaphor, based on King’s words from the “Dream” speech “let justice run down like waters.” I like that idea. The concept called for using fountains, with sheets of water flowing over quotations in a meditative setting. But they went with the monstrous Stone of Hope.

Maybe I was being picky. Maybe most people come away from the monument inspired. I just found it severely lacking.