I really enjoyed reading in the New York Times about one high school football team from a rich neighborhood helping raise money to save the football team of a nearby school in a poor neighborhood. This is what I love about sports. While I love the athleticism and the excitement of watching great plays on the field – no matter what kind of field we are talking about – the thing that I really love about sports is good sportsmanship.
Month: September 2006
I wrote yesterday that I had taken my garden in early in the season. Little did I know that we would get hail today which would tear apart many of the plants that I had not already pulled.
While running errands this afternoon I was listening to the radio and I heard about a movement that started in Italy in 1999 that really seems to embody the lifestyle I would like to create for myself. The movement is called Cittaslow and their philosophy is basically described as slowing down and not becoming caught up in the fast pace of our modern life.
It was very interesting to learn about this movement. They currently have 100 partner cities in 10 countries. I don’t know that they have any partner cities in the United States, but the US probably has at least as great a need for some “slower” towns as any other country. I wonder how the principles of the philosophy embodied by Cittaslow could be implemented by an individual or family. They are geared towards municipalities, but there must be an application on a smaller scale.
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Gardening Problem
I face a little problem with my garden. Having extra time today, I finally got around to starting to clean out my garden. I know it’s a bit early in the season right now, but the bugs have been getting to some of my plants and I need to make some changes in preparation for next year so I’m starting early.
I started by harvesting the carrots that had not been looking promising early in the season. Now the carrots have taken off so that in many places there is virtually no dirt between the carrots. They are big and beautiful and too numerous to eat all of them soon. I pulled out the broccoli plants since I already have more broccoli than I can eat. I pulled up the potatoes. I have been wondering about them all year since I could see that the plants grew, but I could only guess at how well the potatoes were coming on. I don’t remember having much success with potatoes in our family garden when I was growing up so I was not sure what our chances would be. We got lots of potatoes – even if you don’t count the ones that got sliced by the shovel as I dug up the dirt after removing the plants to find any potatoes I had missed. We also removed all our squash plants but there was little fruit left to harvest there because we had already taken most of it in. The squash plants had been the hardest hit by our bug problem.
So what’s my gardening problem? I can’t possibly eat everything I picked today unless I learn how to store things over the winter. I know it can be done because people have lived for centuries without refrigeration or global produce shipping. The problem is I am not exactly sure how to do it since we live in an age where most people live week to week between trips to the grocery store rather than working all summer to live over the winter on the produce you saved from your harvest.
You may ask why it matters since I can always go buy food at the store. The answer is that I have a goal to one day learn how to live entirely off my garden. I hope it never becomes necessary, but I would like to have that skill so that I can better understand and appreciate our modern lifestyle. Storing the produce of my garden over the winter is one step towards that goal.
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What is “Me”?
As posted here, I lost my job yesterday. Naturally the people around me ask how I feel after that. I understand the question. This is one of those things that can be taken very hard. Thankfully I am completely at peace with this, although I was in shock when I first heard the news.
As people have asked how I am, I have answered that I have never been among those people who identify themselves with their job. Consequently, losing my job does not leave me feeling like I have lost a part of my identity. After saying that a few times I have found myself wondering – is there anything with which I do identify myself?
As far as I can tell so far, there is only one thing that could be taken away from me, even temporarily without my consent with which I identify myself. That is Laura. Besides that I identify myself with my desires, my goals, my potential as a child of God, and my role as a husband and father. None of those things can be stripped from me involuntarily, and some cannot be taken even if I were willing to give them up.
I hope that is a good thing.
I found it ironic to look at the title of my last post. Today marks the one year anniversary of when I started my job – or rather, my former job. Out of the blue today I was informed that I have been laid off because the company is not getting the contracts that they had been hoping to get. This should not have been surprising considering that 25% of the employees were working on overhead projects while waiting for some of the expected contracts to come through. I should have forseen this possibility, but I didn’t.
Now that I am no longer employed there I guess I have free reign to rant about what a lousy company it was etc. Too bad there’s so little to complain about. It was a good company that delivered exactly what they promised to me as an employee. They treated me well and generally took care of me while I worked there.
The only complaint I have is not with the company, but with the current nature of our economy. I am not talking about the unemployment rate or the GNP or anything like that. I am talking about how different things are now from when I was growing up. As a child I was introduced to a world where employees tended to stay with one company for years and companies tended to give their full-time employees benefits such as a contract stating that their job could not be terminated without some warning (unless they violated company policies or something). Employees, in turn, were required to give notice in order to quit their jobs. Today we live in a world where people rarely stay in one job for more than a couple of years – either by choice or because of downsizing. Employment contracts or more often “at will” so that nobody needs to give any notice before the employment is over. Such was the case today. I was told “Today is your last day. We have to let some people go and you are among them. Sorry. Good luck.”
It was not that terse. They were as nice as they could be, considering that there is no nice way to say “sorry, you’re out of a job.” It’s just sad that we live in a day where stability is the exception and not the rule.
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Anniversary
I should have been able to predict long ago what today would be like. I knew before I started reading the news today that there would be stories of memorial services where they would rehash the events of five years ago. What I failed to expect was how easily my own memories of that day would surface or the need I would feel to capture those memories.
I remember walking into work that morning and wondering why everyone was openly staring at a television set (I came in from behind the set so I didn’t see what was on). As soon as I got to my office and saw the headlines I was no longer surprised. I remember how nervous everyone was. I got jittery when the phone line went dead while talking to my wife that morning.
Nobody with a memory of that day would be surprised at the emotion tied to those events, but I still can’t figure out what is personally different between four years and five years. Socially I understand it. Five years is our second major chronological milestone, after 1 year and before 10, 25, 50 , and 100 years. It is an opportunity to look back and view events from an expanded perspective over the one we had in the heat of the moment. Personally I had expected that each anniversary would be a chance to reflect and that with each passing year the emotions would be a little less intense than they were the year before. Somehow I find that is not the case.
Last year, on September 11th, I was flying across the country on a plane. It was no big deal. I noted the significance of the date and remembered, somewhat mechanically, what had happened. I did not feel the closeness of memory that I have felt today. I find it interesting that five years distance has brought the memories closer to me than four years distance had done.
I am going to reserach and write about everything I can find that has been written or spoken under inspiration regarding Zion. This includes Zion as found in Eden, Enoch, Salem, Kirtland, Nauvoo, Salt Lake, and the New Jerusalem. I may even include anything about Heaven and Old Jerusalem rebuilt relevant to what I find on the first list.
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From the Pope
The Pope has been visiting Germany and has had a few very interesting things to say. Here are a few little clips from an article about his visit where he says things with which I wholeheartedly agree.
He also stressed the role of faith in fighting AIDS “by realistically facing its deeper causes,” indirectly confirming the Church view that pre-marital abstinence and fidelity in marriage are the way to combat sexually transmitted diseases.
It has always amazed me to hear people who think that sexual promiscuity is not the largest single factor in the spread of any STD and that eliminating promiscuity would not have a greater effect than all other aid money combined in combating these epidemic problems. I guess the truth is that they probably admit that eliminating promiscuity would have that kind of effect, but they want to solve the problem without making any social changes.
“Social issues and the Gospel are inseparable,” said the Pope. “When we bring people only knowledge, ability, technical competence and tools, we bring them too little,” he said, hammering away at his central concern that secularisation and materialism have replaced faith in Western thinking.
That is similar to the realizations that have led me to put less stock in the intrinsic value of new technology.
At the morning mass Benedict said that Western societies had become “hard of hearing” about God, saying: “There are too many other frequencies in our ears. What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited for our age.”
That sounds like he just identified the central and subtle problem in Western societies. If you were to ask a Muslim they would probably cite the same problem.
“People in Africa and Asia admire our scientific and technical prowess, but at the same time they are frightened by a form of rationality which totally excludes God from man’s vision, as if this were the highest form of reason,” he said.
They sensed a “contempt for God” in Western societies and “a cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom and hold up utility as the supreme moral criterion for the future of scientific research,” he said.
Doubtless we should spiritually be much more like these developing nations in the way we view faith and technology. Utility is the very reason cited in support for stem-cell research. I do not intend to take a position on such research, but rather to suggest that we must base our decisions on more solid arguments than “I can find a way to make this useful.”
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More Good News
Here is some more good news within the GOP. Dick Cheney’s word is no longer gospel. He seems to be going the way of Karl Rove. I only wish that this article could have been true three years ago.