"If we both agreed on everything, one of us isn’t necessary" + What I’m reading (and hearing)

Those who make decisions based only on experience make poor decisions, just as do those who rely only on book smarts. You need both. It’s a sliding scale. Slide too much one way and you won’t solve problems at the other end of the slider.

 

That’s why concepts like “consensus” and “compromise” are so important: They keep the slider more or less in the middle, where most problems get solved.

 

As my Grandma Cairns (née Bauer) used to say, “If we both agreed on everything, one of us isn’t necessary.”

(Of course, we often pretend to compromise by making a meaningless concession, or convincing the other side they got what they wanted. There is a whole business subculture devoted to negotiating skills, which pretend to encompass some measure of fairness but in reality only advance one side’s interest. I’m not making any judgment on the ethics of that; it’s just an observation. Business is partly about migrating one company’s revenue stream to another.)

[2013-08-06]

c0

What I’m reading (or listening to):

Davis A Young, Good News for Science: Why Scientific Minds Need God

Bart Ehrman: Did Jesus Really Exist?

John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality

Karen Armstrong, Islam - A Short History

Mike Aquilina, A Year With The Church Fathers - Patristic Wisdom for Daily Living

c0

If we look to humans to stand in for God, we will always be disappointed.

Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson no more embodies Christianity than I do, or the Pope for that matter.

If we look to humans to stand in for God, we’ll always be disappointed. If we sometimes look to them to point the way, we’ll find the journey home a little straighter, if no less painful.

We tend to identify with those that already hold the same opinions we do, so the “You tell ‘em, Phil!” din we are hearing from the countrified bourgeoisie and gentrified country folk is little more than the echo already bouncing between our ears.

c0

FWIW, this is not so much a criticism of a little hero worship by Christians looking for role models (in a world providing increasingly fewer), but a concern, especially this time of year, that non-Christians are viewing suddenly high-profile religious figures as representative of all or most Christians.

Just as you can’t define one type of English teacher or bus driver or athlete, you can’t define one type of believer (in anything), though you can easily define characteristics they share, but that takes time and analysis.

And, well, that’s work.

Let’s just say aliens built the pyramids and be done with it.

[2013-12-26]

 

c0

Swell times in Willoughby (when earnest men wearing thin ties smoked cigarettes on the air)

We often see vignettes in dramas and dramedies in which a harried advertising exec (or politician or some such) realizes life is too complicated, and he longs for simpler times. Even in the early 60's the original Twilight Zone with Rod Serling did this concept a couple different ways (eg, “A Stop at Willoughby”), harking back to what would have been simpler times to that generation.

My simpler times were Serling’s own times, when earnest men wearing thin ties smoked cigarettes on the air and thoughtful words invited considered responses.[1]

Invariably this plotline portrays the central frazzled character as a power broker, wealthy, with lots to lose, and then abandoning it for the simple life, or a memory, or even a wishful invention.

But we are all playing out this plot, from garbage men to fitness instructors to corporate cubicle denizens like myself. We all reach a state where the return on the sweat we invest only pushes us further away from the simpler times we try to recapture.

[2013-01-03 - wow, nearly a year ago]

c0

[1]

Serling’s Willoughby is about 70 years older than the date that episode aired. That show aired about 54 years before I wrote this blog post.

Perhaps those numbers have some interesting qualities. Most of us didn’t really live that far back and have no first hand knowledge of what it was like. The era holds a nostalgia that’s been related to us by our parents and grandparents.

I remember many times my mom would see a canister or jar in a museum that she remembered from her grandma’s kitchen. I now am beginning to do the same thing, but it’s usually old TV commercials on Youtube, or vintage kitsch on eBay, or retro stores like Swell Times in Saugatuck > (a really swell store).

[2013-12-27]

c0

Pictures from Clarence’s Christmas, 2013

An assortment of pictures from Christmas 2013.

There are still some radio stations playing Christmas music, and I am listening to them. Many families celebrate Christmas through New Years to accommodate schedules; I know my family has done that a few times. It heartens me a bit to know that there are still folks gathering around a tree and celebrating when most of the world is sleeping Christmas off.

		c0 Christmas 2013 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

[2013-12-31]

c0

Al Poo

In high school (McDowell High School, Erie, PA) I once brought home a graded paper that wasn’t mine. I handed Mom a stack of returned homework, and as she thumbed through it she asked, “Who’s this?”

We looked, looked again, turned the paper left and right and upside down, and for the life of us couldn’t read the name. It looked for all the world like “Al Poo.”

It turned out to be Al Post (Alton Post) who was practicing his medical doctor’s signature.

One of my best friends throughout K-12, Rich Nickel, made an effort to achieve the most beautiful and illegible signature possible when we were in 6th grade. Mr Locke, our 6th grade science teacher, put a stop to that.

My signature is the only thing I write in cursive anymore. Funny, we now sign keypads at the checkout with scribbles that say little more than “someone was here.”

At one point I’m sure I asked my grammar school English teacher, “Why do I have to learn how to do this? I’ll never need it,” because we asked that about everything.

In this case, I was right.

[2013-12-16]

c0

It’s 00:14 01-01-2014. Happy New Year!

c0