Christmas 1965 and Christmas 2012

1965

I think this was Christmas 1965. The photo has been trimmed and the date clipped off. L to R that's my brother Tom, Mom, me, and Dad. Mom would have been pregnant with Linda. I think that's our house since Dad is dressed so casually. And I think that's my Grandma Cairns's handwriting on the back.

2012

These pictures are from yesterday, we just finished decorating our tree on our 3-season porch. Jing was baking cookies while Dee Dee and I listened to Comcast 433 Christmas music and did the trimming. This is the first year she can fully understand the stories behind the ornaments. The porch is cool but insulated well, so if we keep the slider open it warms with the rest of the house. Looks very pretty from outside as it's all windows.

 

		Cairns's Christmas Tree 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

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Started: 2012-11-29

There's a warmth and simplicity in the older Christmas songs.

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91.3 WCSG in Grand Rapids...

... is playing a nice mix of religious and secular traditional Christmas music and bypassing the teen crooners and hip hoppers and rock-n-rollers in Santa hats.

Unfortunately, I haven't figured out the programming pattern, so can't tell you when to listen, seems to be hit or miss.

I don't usually listen to WCSG. It's a Christian station and there's more saccharine Christian Contemporary music than I care for, but the personalities are fresh and easy on the ears (especially John and Amanda in the mornings). You know you're listening to genuine people broadcasting with a purpose, but every segue isn't a bible verse or tsk-tsk.

I like that.

(Most Christians aren't morose and myopic birthers grousing over a lost election, but you'd think so by listening to most Christian radio, which is why I don't.)

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There's a warmth and simplicity in the older Christmas songs. And it's not just because I grew up with them. Although I can never separate a song like "White Christmas" from my childhood, I can listen to it next to today's pop holiday music and, with some detachment, say that Bing Crosby warmed more hearths in more homes more times than the others put together.

One exception: anything by Josh Groban. His "I'll Be Home for Christmas" makes me cry every time I hear it.

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Did you know that the composer of "White Christmas," Irving Berlin, was Jewish? How cool is that? Happy Christmakwanzakah.

[2012-11-25]

 

2
Florida, 2004.

I found this picture while looking for one of me and Dad in North Carolina, just thought I'd share.

Left to right, that's my Uncle Ken, my dad, my mom, me, my sister-in-law Cindy and my brother Tom. Aunt Dorothy, Ken's wife, is taking the picture. I think this was taken at a restaurant near an old sugar plantation; the restaurant specialized in pancakes and a variety of syrups.

For the search engines: Ken Cairns, Charles Weston Cairns, Marilyn Cairns (née Grandy), Charles Scott Cairns, Cindy Cairns (née Matzak), Thomas Edward Cairns.

[2012-11-25]

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On the First Anniversary of Dad's Passing

1
Scraping Ice

We had our first frost recently over a weekend when my son Charlie was staying with me. I helped him scrape his windshield as our cars were heating up. I would soon go one way and he would go the other; me to work, him to school.

He sat inside while I scraped; with each pass of the scraper I revealed a little more of his face.

I remember as a child sitting in the car and watching my dad's face gradually appear as his quick arms removed swaths of ice. This was a frequent event, one you probably also experienced if you live in a northern climate.

My dad is gone now. He died one year ago today.

I suspect Charlie will one day be scraping the ice off his car and relive the same memory.

[2012-10-29]

 

2
Tarnished Tinsel

I was listening to Christmas music on Pandora recently and a smiling Johnny Mathis induced a sudden twinge of sadness for holiday cheer past. All the smiles and laughter then were certainly as real as ours today, but they have an element of pumpkin pie left in the fridge too long, or old tinsel oxidized with age.

(When I was a child, very old tinsel would tarnish; some was made with silver before the war years. The one piece of tinsel I remember being tarnished may have been from my parents' childhood.)

[2012-11-21]

 

3
Say something else in that ear.

"Once you see something, it's hard to unsee it. That's not just true of things like a dog getting hit by a car or a graceful woman stumbling; it's also true of insight, and why anger usually increases with further consideration, as does love and tolerance and hate and displeasure. "
--Clarence 0ddbody

[2012-11-24]

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Think on These Things

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When you think about good things, you're happier.

That's one of the reasons why Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, and other holidays are so powerful: for a few days or more we're intently focused on happy thoughts.[1]

It's the power of positive thinking.

And it's nothing new. Paul said so[2], as did Norman Vincent Peale and Anthony Robbins and Zig Ziglar and Wayne Dyer and a host of others.

Sometimes we just need reminding, even if we're not hearing anything new.

And it can be more than positive thinking, but if it's only that, it's still a good thing.

[2012-11-23]

 

2
Hung on a Tree

I just learned (by putting some pieces together while listening to Luke Timothy Johnson) why New Testament accounts often refer to Jesus as dying on a "tree."[3] That always confused me. He did die on a cross, there's no debate about that.

Deuteronomy supplies the missing piece[4]; the analogy illustrated how ignoble Jesus' death was and reinforced him as a messianic anti-type.

Using the image of the tree was a literary device intended to convey a spiritual truth, not a factual one, and first century Jews would have seen it immediately. We do this all the time when we say something like "That tastes like crap." Does it really? No, but it may be a true statement nonetheless.

I can't be the only one that hears these things and wonders "why." Maybe everyone else had it figured out and I'm just a straggler.

[2012-10-23]

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[1]
Someone is saying right now: "You've never had Christmas at MY house. Drunk Uncle Buddy and Aunt Sally, rugrats with runny noses, I'm stuck in the kitchen while others watch football..."

Perhaps, but the point is each year we try to create the perfect Christmas or birthday or anniversary, even if we know we won't succeed. And when we fail, we often still succeed just enough to try again the next year.

Year after year.

[2]
"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. " (Philippians 4:8, KJV)

[3]
Eg Acts 5:30 (and a number other places): "The God of our forefathers raised up Jesus, whom you seized and killed by hanging him on a tree." (NETfree)

[4]
"If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance." (Deut 21:22-23)

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Movies will one day be entirely CGI.

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Entirely.

CGI (computer generated) animation will one day be so good that most movies will be animated and we won't know the difference; computer generated music will follow; last will be voice talent. It all will be created from complex formulas based on the mathematical nature of real bodies, real music, and real speech.

But real people will be unnecessary, except to buy tickets.

I thought of this while watching Wreck It Ralph with Dee Dee and Charlie at the movies at Rivertown. Though Ralph wasn't meant to be realistic, it occurred to me that if you replaced all the voice talent with nobodies, I probably would have enjoyed it just as much, and one thought led to another, and to this blog.

One day maybe they'll generate books this way.

No, they won't do that.

Nobody will be reading books by then.

 

2
There are certain things you don't ridicule. Because it's impolite.

I was raised an evangelical Baptist but never would have thought of ridiculing a priest or nun, even though I had no direct example not to.

I didn't, however, truly understand the relationship between, priests, nuns, and the laity (and still don't). As a teen, I asked a friend and coworker at Loblaws (his name was Damien, strong Catholic family), if any of the nuns who taught his classes at Cathedral Prep in Erie were pretty.

You'd have thought I asked him when the last time was he killed someone.
I apologized. I wasn't intending to be funny or provocative, but I was being unintentionally offensive.

But I'm sure teenage boys know a pretty nun when they see one. Sister Bertrille was a pretty nun. So was Sound of Music's Sister Maria.

[2012-10-25]

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Pictures from Thanksgiving at the Cairns's House

I burned Grandma Cairns's candied yams. (That's my Grandma Cairns's recipe.)

Lesson: If you have to remove oven racks to fit your turkey, don't put candied yams on the bottom of the oven. Direct contact with the oven will create potato-flavored rock candy.

Yum.

I'm still scrubbing it.

		Thanksgiving 2012 with the Cairnses VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

L-R
The Cairnses: Charles (not pictured), Jinghong and Dee Dee (Mimi is still cooking)
The Goodes: Mark, Maria, and Matthew 

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Started: 2012-11-22, Thanksgiving Day

A twinkling frenetic mess.

I have some hearing loss in my left ear, which can sometimes be painful in very loud environments. I also find it difficult to follow conversations amid a crowd of people also having conversations, like in a church lobby, mall, sometimes even just a room with a few people and a TV set.

This can be frustrating, and so I may appear to become disengaged, when I'm instead consciously straining out some threads in favor of others, which most people do without thinking.

This is probably due to a few loud concerts I attended as a kid (Boston, Cheap Trick), and the headphones that were available then.

(The hearing loss is minor; it's not the ability to hear so much as to disentangle multiple patterns of sounds; it can lead to some frustration on my part, which is hard to conceal.)

[2012-11-11]

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I saw Santa Claus at Rivertown Mall in Grand Rapids on Nov 17; this was outside the cinema, in the food court. I didn't stop, just observed.

Between Santa's sessions they played very loud Christmas music (including the ever-soothing Trans Siberian Orchestra) accompanied by thousands of synchronized lights,. The sound system was so muffled and loud, and the mall so busy, it was all little more than a twinkling frenetic mess, everything every Christmas song and story and TV show despairs over every year.

We'll be going back to Centerpointe Mall again (formerly Eastbrook), where I've taken my children most years. Woodland Mall has been good too.

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I am sometimes seized with ennui so irresistible I cannot write another word.

[2012-11-18]

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What I'm Thankful for on Thanksgiving Day

I am thankful for...

What I have,
What I have been spared,
What I have been to others
and what they have been to me.

When you count all that up, there's not much left to be unthankful for.

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My little girl is so attached to me, she talks to my shoes when I'm at work. Each day when I return home, it's as if I've been gone a year. I know it won't last, but I have it today, and that is enough for today.

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I had a Sunday school teacher in my teens, Mr Parenti (the older one that owned Parenti's restaurant on upper Peach Street, IIRC) who asked this question: Why is there an Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? Answer: Because they are Satan's counterfeits to lure people away from the real thing.

He then asked, Why is there nothing similar for Thanksgiving? Answer: Because God's not in it.

Perhaps, and it's all a matter of interpretation anyway, but I think Black Friday is a good candidate.

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Started: 2012-11-19

The Origin of Blood Sacrifice

I've been listening to John Dr. John R. Hale's "Exploring The Roots Of Religion" and been reminded of a question I've asked myself for years, ever since I was a child: What is the origin of blood sacrifice?

"You've got to be kidding," you're saying.

No, I'm not. It's always bothered me, ever since I was a kid. What possesses someone to think that by killing another living creature they are making God happy?

(I was probably drawn there by the account of Abraham and Isaac, which must have had a visceral impact on the ancients, but can only be understood as a barbaric metaphor to modern readers.)

I've asked myself that question and others over the years and never encountered good answers:

• How did the practice of circumcision arise? (I presume it was a hygiene issue )
• How did ancient peoples come to realize that the sun would always rise or set a certain way throughout the year and that you could schedule other things around it?
• How did our moral/ethical sense evolve, if it did?
• How much must A look like B before their similarities obviate their differences?
• Wouldn't it be more astonishing if Christian distinctives didn't have parallels in other ancient religions?

 

But back to the sacrifice issue, I think I do have a plausible answer, though no one will ever know if it's the right one (or among a set of right ones).

Let's say you are at place in history where humans are becoming spiritually aware. You cook meat, bury your dead, paint on cave walls, carve talismans, etc.

The idea: Might it not occur to you, if you believed an unseen guest was present, that, after cooking a meal for you and your clan, you wondered if you should offer it a little food?

At some time in unrecorded past, humans made a connection between food and gods, and after that between types of food and how it was offered and how the gods responded.

The steps to elaborate ritual are small and trivial after that. Add layers of fortune and misfortune over what and when and how you served your unseen guest, and it's not unreasonable to see even human sacrifice develop.

(Our brains order random stimuli and try to extract information. It's why the moon has a face. It's why, out of the millions of sounds a gazelle might hear in tall grass, it can tell which ones might be made by a lion. And it's why humans can become addicted to gambling. The same capacity that says "that sound might be dangerous" says "that sound might reward me," and if the pattern is reinforced sufficiently, we trust it.)

Back to one of my points above, however, "How much must A look like B before their similarities obviate their differences?"

They could be indistinguishable and be distinct. A placebo is not a narcotic no matter how much each acts like the other.

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Started: 2012-11-19

Don't Kick Against the Pricks

I found out recently what "kick against the pricks" means (as in, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" Acts 26:14).

I was raised on the King James Version of the bible, and Sunday school teachers must have avoided this verse for fear of sending their tweens into fits of uncontrollable laughter.

The "prick" in this case is what you'd call a cattle prod, and Paul is the ox pulling a cart. God is saying something like "Hey, Paul, you're the ox, I'm the farmer, there's not a whole lot to debate here."

It's a good metaphor if we're being compelled to do a good thing.

I'm reminded of the story in the Old Testament where, after a successful but long and dangerous journey moving the Ark of the Covenant, one of the patriarchs sacrifices the oxen that had carried the ark, and I thought, wow, that's a fine how-do-you-do. And how about the poor schlemiel that tried to keep it from tipping over?

(You can tell it made an impression on me; here it is maybe 40 years later and the memory is still fresh.)

 

Him Who Pisseth Against the Wall

Here's another linguistic curiosity I discovered as a boy during my own devotions:

Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, 1 Kings 21:21 (KJV)

Now, I did actually bring this up in Sunday school, but I was a lot older - 15 or 16 - and my Sunday school teacher was Mr Rodney Blystone, also my high school science teacher at Bethel Christian School, and I was trying to catch him off guard. He said "piss" wasn't in the bible, I said it was and proved it, and he took it home to consider it further. Like all good teachers, he brought an answer back with him the next week, though I don't remember what it was.

I looked again at this recently, and his answer was probably something like this...

Here are a few different translations:

Lo, I am bringing in unto thee evil, and have taken away thy posterity, and cut off to Ahab those sitting on the wall, and restrained, and left, in Israel (Young's Literal)

Behold, I will bring evil on you, and will utterly sweep you away and will cut off from Ahab everyone who urinates against a wall, and him who is shut up and him who is left at large in Israel. (WEB)

The LORD says, 'Look, I am ready to bring disaster on you. I will destroy you and cut off every last male belonging to Ahab in Israel, including even the weak and incapacitated. (NETfree)

Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will utterly sweep thee away and will cut off from Ahab every man-child, and him that is shut up and him that is left at large in Israel (ASV)

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a literary allusion connecting piss, circumcision and castration, given the contextual proximity of "cutting off" and "urinating" and the angry tone. The Apostle Paul did something similar when confronting Jewish converts who wished to continue circumcision.

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Started: 2012-11-18

"There's only one me, and I'm stuck with him." --Kurt Vonnegut

1
I'm getting to the age...

... where I encounter many younger people that "don't respect the old ways," and I feel like an aging Native American chief watching my language and traditions slowly evaporate.

I'm not that old, and quite skilled in my profession, but the sheer numbers of younger folks that don't know what I know makes that knowledge suspect and often irrelevant.

Renewal has great value in all human activities (fresh young voices and new ideas), but something is also lost.

And there is a difference between aging into irrelevancy and aging into marginalization.

And none of this is new. It's as old as Moses' toes.

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This commercial was frequently parodied when I was a child:

Keep America Beautiful - Crying Indian Earth Day Commercial 1971

[2012-11-14]

 

2
I think some folks may regard my posts as occasionally clinical.

That's partly intentional, because...

a) This is more or less my autobiography.

b) It let's me tell some things that otherwise would be too emotional to get through.

c) It allows for quick, unexpected turns that introduce absurdity in ways that you can't show by just saying "the world is broke and I can't fix it."

[2012-11-14]

 

3
Say something else in that ear.

"I'll listen to anyone with a cogent argument about anything, but I may not change my mind."

--Clarence 0ddbody

 

[2012-11-14]

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Caricatures and Costumes

1
Search Google images for "hippie", what do you get?

Caricatures and costumes. How far we've come from a generation that gave a damn.

 

2
Pay No Attention to the Man behind the Curtain

Nearly all media messages you hear and see are controlled by the wealthy and/or privileged (which may or may not be the same). We easily forget the barrage after an election cycle, but it's equally true (and more subtle) of TV commercials, sitcoms, dramas, news - everything down to the the music shuffling in your iPod.

It's been filtered before it reached you, and you need to apply the same filter to see what's really being said.

There's nothing necessarily right or wrong about this; it's just an important first principle for decoding the world.

[2012-10-31]

 

3
Former anythings are the most rabid evangelists.

They are also sometimes unpleasant to be around, because they feel compelled to make projects out of others.

There's nothing wrong with crusading against your former addiction, whatever it was, but it often says more about you than it does the addiction.

Former smokers and former religious evangelicals are examples that immediately come to mind.[1]

Their anger is a reflection of their anxiety over a former opinion/behavior/practice, not so much a genuine conviction that they need to convince you.

[2012-10-28]

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[1]
Full disclosure: I am both, and have my opinions, which you'll hear if you push the right buttons, but there aren't many. Oh, and if I could smoke without killing myself or others, I'd do it. I enjoyed it very much.

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The Soundtrack of (some of) Our Lives

I watched Spock go blind, I saw McCoy lanced by a knight, and I sat helpless while Cpt Kirk's sister-in-law died screaming in sick bay.

The music of early television was expensive and cinematic; listening to it in isolation reveals a lot of formula and repetition, but also a lot of subtlety and delicate beauty.

There is something about music absorbed at a certain age that embeds it so inextricably deep, it can not be heard again without also experiencing the images and emotions initially attached to it.

Music from Star Trek TOS (the original series) is that way for me. (And for the record, I know nothing about music except what I like and don't like, and don't expect anyone else to share my tastes.)

I've wanted the soundtracks to TOS for a long time, and am delighted to find some of them on Youtube, along with a haunting USS Enterprise gently floating through space, not like a derelict, but as though the crew is still there, carrying on as normal between missions.

The soundtracks cover a number of episodes, including the ones I referred to above. I've embedded the playlists here.

1
Star Trek TOS Soundtracks I by opus289

 

2
Star Trek TOS Soundtracks II by opus289

3
Star Trek TOS Soundtracks III by opus289

 

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