random thoughts on what's important to us

This is something that has been bothering me for the last couple of days. As I look around at the different news sites (I told you before I don't read the newspaper due to blood pressure issues), I happened to notice what they were carrying as the 'headlines' or major stories. Some of them deal with the important issues of the day (economy, war, etc.) but there are also quite a few stories that I would best categorize as 'news of the weird': bizarre things happening to people, unusual stores opening, and other things that, as a reader make me say 'interesting' but on further reflection I can't say that it improved my life at all.

Maybe I spend too much time looking into the past. It seems to me that far too often, the debate about the issues of today and what should be of importance to us is kicked to the side to make room for items that whose sole purpose is to shock and amaze. I would be curious to see how people one to two hundred years ago would do in debating some of today's 'intellectuals', all other things being equal. To me, if nothing else, they would certainly outlast most everybody. You read and hear about speeches and debates going on for hours on end, and writings that were very lengthy. What do we have today? I'm sure a lot of us get antsy if something goes longer than an hour (I'm thinking of church services and ceremonies, not our beloved sporting events). We'd quit the field before they would even be warmed up.

Now, that's not to say there wasn't the interest back then in the things I described above,it just seems these items didn't have the prominence and importance that they enjoy today. We need things to be exciting, entertaining, strange, bizarre, and in some cases even gross in order to hold our attention. When we look to the Bible about things we are to be interested in, we find in particular throughout the Psalms and Proverbs that wisdom is highly treasured, along with fear and knowledge of the Lord. When we see stories about people with extra digits, or some other strange, gross, or other story, are we adding to our wisdom? I would dare say we're not adding to our fear or knowledge of the Lord (you have to acknowledge He exists for those to exist).

Far too often we fill our minds, eyes, ears, etc. with those things which dull the mind and senses, as opposed to searching out the deeper truths about our lives and faith. As a society, if we can't find the answer immediately, or prove our theory or point of view in 30 minutes or less (the time it takes to get a pizza delivered), we lose interest and walk away. If we want to learn the meaning of something, or find out more about a certain person, place, or thing we go immediately to the Internet to 'Google' it or find a site. We have far too often given in to the immediate desires of our bodies instead of doing the hard work to determine the truth.

Are we splitting hairs?

I ask the question, because I'm hearing different people talking about our current administration being 'Marxist, Socialist, Fascist (funny how that one keeps coming around when it's not your party in power), etc. Everyone seems to be worried that we are moving forward into one of these systems, and that it will be 'the end of the world as we know it (and I do feel fine right now, thank you for asking).

To me, all of this worrying and trying to show everyone else where the country is going is missing a larger point. I would liken it to worrying about what kind of bear is about to eat you, when you should be trying to avoid being eaten. Each of the systems mentioned, and others that have come up as well, have one big thing in common. They all are totalitarian systems. They all have consolidated power with a small group. They all represent a significant departure from the government we currently (and I believe nominally) have in place.

I've looked around to what different people are saying about different issues, plans, and people. I believe we could be at a merging of a number of factors that could leave us as a nation ripe for a takeover leading to a totalitarian style of government. The economy, social issues, and the general 'dumbing down' of society has put us in a situation where the right person can come in and remake government totally. At this point, I'm not going to point any fingers. As I told my children this evening 'a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step', so I don't know where we might be on this road: It could be the beginning, middle, or end. I had my predicting chip removed. The only thing I can say is that we need to pay attention to the wild animals attempting to eat us and deal with them. We can study them from a distance, later (I prefer watching on TV 'Mutual of Omaha' style).

(photo courtesy www.moviecitynews.com)

The window is fixed!

We finally got the window fixed on the car which was broken into last weekend. Sometimes I wonder about that car, though. I’ve had both tires and window worked on, and neither has been ‘standard’. With the tires, they’re aftermarket, with special lug nuts, and the wrench adapter broke! I’ve got a new one for that though. Now with the window, the tint was not ‘normal’ (most are blue, this was ‘bronze’ – who ever heard of such?). Anyway, life is somewhat back to normal.

Informed dissent

What do you do when you realize people are making arguments and decisions on things and have absolutely no idea what they are talking about? In our attention-deficit society, it is amazing that we know anything about the really serious issues that affect our lives. Whether it’s national, state, or local, I’m finding it more difficult to know what the issues are. I know what matters to me personally, and what is important for my family, and I can make decisions on different topics if it impacts those particular items accordingly. But: what are the major issues affecting my county or local municipality? I’m not 100% sure I know. I do know what I’m being told are the major issues nationally, but then again I have to keep in mind there are agendas in play.

Looking through the different media websites and blogs (I don’t trust TV news or newspapers –I’ll just raise my blood pressure), what qualifies as major issues differ depending on what their ‘slant’ is: terrorism, economy, creeping socialism, censorship, and social engineering are just some of the ‘axes’ people have to grind as I sift through. Personally, one big thing I care about is where this country is going in the long term. Looking at what is happening in the next year or two is important in how it affects the direction of the country 5 – 50 years down the road, at least that’s my perspective.

Too often it seems people are too concerned about fixing the here and now to really think through the impacts later on. If you look back in history, when speeches were made about the major issues facing the country, the discussion dealt with both the immediate and the long term effects. If you listen to any political speeches in the last 10 years or so, it’s all how to ‘fix’ the immediate problems with no discussion of long term concerns except in the vaguest and blurriest of terms. Listening to the pundits (both news and blog), they can give you wonderfully detailed accounts of how we got to the current situation (with the necessary partisan bent to fit the agenda). Unfortunately, they can do this because it’s all in the past and hindsight is 20/20. The information is there but no one seems to want to use it. No one seems to want to use this information to determine a better way forward, and no one seems to want to put the effort forward now to look at possible solutions to see those long term effects. It’s almost as if, as a country and people, we are unable to do higher level analysis.

One of the books I have on my shelf, and have tried to read (never quite got through it though and I really need to) is The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle. Another book falling in this category is Logic by Isaac Watts. These books show how far we can stretch the mind if we are willing to put in the effort. Rhetoric allows you to argue your position effectively, and logic allows you to do the deeper thinking necessary to puzzle out issues put before you. They’re books, however, so I don’t know that society at large is willing or able to put in the work necessary to use these tools as they are meant.

Robbed! I've been robbed!

I went out this afternoon to do some yard work prior to the weather turning sour again (it’s sprinkling out as I write this), and as I grab a tree branch to saw up, I look at my car and see the passenger window broken. I tell my children to get their mother as I survey the car, trying to see what (if anything) was taken. The irony of it all? They took a three ring binder (denim covered) that had sermon notes and other theological study material collected from over the years (the binder was 11 years old). The best we can deduce is whoever broke in thought they got a laptop.

The authorities were called and a report was filed (over the phone – I don’t know what bothers me more: the efficiency of it or the feeling this incident didn’t warrant someone actually coming out). Now I have to figure out how to fix the window, but the whole feeling of it still remains. The whole time I have Sir Peter Ustinov’s voice from Disney’s Robin Hood (I’m a sucker for cartoons and animated movies) saying ‘robbed! I’ve been robbed.’ I’ll have to see if I can find a youtube of it to add for the proper effect.

(image from newlegendmike.blogspot.com)

Yup, I’m a caveman!

My oldest has been bugging me for a long time to get her own email address. She’s a teenager now, so I finally figured out it was too late to stop her growing up and I agreed. I still dawdled though, I guess I just wasn’t ready for one of my children to truly mature. Not that I’m not glad for everything she does every day and find joy in the maturity she shows, but still: It’s my daughter! Anyway, last night her mom finally helped her set an email up. I’ve found myself struggling with this new element in her life. I’ve finally had to admit she’s growing up and it’s tough. So, since I’ve been the ‘bad guy’ (dawdling, etc.)even to her grandparents (she told them in an email that I wouldn’t help) I joked that ‘I’ll just get a club and call myself Ook’. So, guess what everybody? I’m a backwards caveman!

Why I’m opposed to the stimulus

It’s not for the reason you might think. I mean there are many surface reasons for opposing the legislation recently signed into law. Just listing a few off the top of my head, there is the way the legislation was pushed through, how quickly it was moved through (I’m a fairly good reader and I can’t imagine getting through the 1300+ page document in that short of a time), and how partisan it ended up being in the end (don’t tell me about the three republicans voting for it in the senate, most people in the republican party don’t count them anyway). All of these things smack of what passes as normal politics these days. It’s not so much that it’s something new, it’s just that those in our capital are more brazen about it than they have in the past.

If you’ve noticed, I didn’t mention anything about the amount of money itself or how it’s being spent. I’m far beyond having any hope of the professional politicians spending the money they’ve been entrusted with wisely. I believe what we are seeing is the apex, zenith, whatever phrase you want to use of the quote (I believe it’s been attributed to both Benjamin Franklin and Alexis de Toqueville) “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

I’m primarily opposed to the basic idea of this law because of the mindset it produces. We have basically turned ourselves into a ‘no consequences’ society. You can mess up in your financial choices, you can basically fulfill all your fleshly desires, and we’re not supposed to have anything bad happen to us. I may not be very old, and I may not have seen ‘everything’ (although there are some days I say to myself ‘I can die a happy man, I’ve seen everything’) but the one thing I’ve learned from walking this planet is: there are always consequences. There’s no way around it. But, apparently we are certainly going to try. At least for those who have acted foolishly (at least with their money).

What I’m really getting at is: this particular bill has shown to me that we as a country and we as a people have fallen very far from the ideals this country was based on. As far as I can tell, the government this country started with is not the one we have now, and I’m not referring to amendments either. What I am referring to is the mindset of the people. We have more wealth and more resources available to us as a society than in any other time period, yet we are poor. The reason for this is: people in general are beholden to the state for their needs and wants as opposed to taking care of these things as individuals or as family units. More people today seem to be almost more than willing to give over things Americans fought wars about around a century ago. Why do we have people so willing to give everything, including those things our forefathers held so dear, over to the government? I think this quote from Teddy Roosevelt says it best: “The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”

Is it too late for our country? I’m not smart enough to say for sure, and I don’t have any better ideas than anyone else. But what I have seen so far, and seeing where we’ve come from in getting where we are today does not make me feel better.

Five dangerous things about homeschooling – with explanations

1. There are no such things as days off. The best explanation is: No matter what we are doing, when we try to ‘take a day off’ of school, we end up doing something that is educational. An illustration is: when we go on vacation, we often end up discussing topics that are educational. This has happened so often with us that I can’t come up with a single example.

2. Chinese restaurants become botany lessons. We were having dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant, when one of my daughters held up a bean sprout and began to describe the different parts. There have also been times when I have been told on more than one occasion that I’m eating ovaries (snow pea pods for example). It can definitely affect your appetite if you don’t know what’s going on.

3. Household products can quickly turn into items for homeschooling projects. We were working on a ‘fossil’ experiment, complete with plaster of paris, when I started thinking about a possible ‘handprint’ project and was thinking about what else I could do with the plaster. Everything ends up fair game.

4. Every room eventually turns into a ‘school’ room. Kitchen works for science experiments; dining room can be used for ‘seat work’; living room, bedrooms, even bathrooms for the messy stuff (or if you need a big mirror for something).

5. Stuffed animals end up being used in examples of animal husbandry or to demonstrate the political process. My youngest showed me the first when I came to check on their progress in getting ready for bed and she had a stuffed sheep on their stepstool and a plastic knife in her hand. ‘what are you doing?’ ‘I’m slaughtering the sheep for my food’. Also, one other time when I walked down for a bedtime check, and all the stuffed animals were out and split into two groups. The explanation? They were having a ‘debate’ on political matters. On another occasion, after finding the animals out, two facing a group, I had to ask again what the purpose was. This time the two were having a debate after which the group would vote one into office. Don’t remember which office it was, but it was interesting.

Now honestly, these aren’t really ‘dangers’ but with these examples and more, we have discovered that homeschooling does become a way of life. Hopefully other homeschooling families can come up with examples of their own, but if you have the mindset of ‘training your children’ instead of just simply going through the three ‘r’s so they can get a good job, you will find that the joy of helping your children grow in every area of your life.

Biased media? It’s nothing new

Why do I make that statement? Well, it’s one of the significant points I took away from Edward J. Larson’s book ‘A Magnificent Catastrophe’. This is the same author who wrote about the 1925 Scopes ‘Monkey’ trial, but that’s another topic for another time. Bottom line on the author: if he has a bias, it’s well hidden as he provides background information and walks you through the time period. No matter what your political stripe is, you will definitely gain something from the book as a whole.

Now, for the topic at hand. In Larson’s book, part of the background he provides of the John Adams administration (1797-1801) is in talking about the Alien and Sedition acts. Through his descriptions, you can see how different Americans were worried about what was happening to their fledgling country, and the road it seemed to be going down. He also provides a significant amount of details on the newspapers of the time. What is interesting about these newspapers is that the owners and writers, even the readers, identified themselves with certain political parties. You had Federalist newspapers, and Democratic-Republican newspapers. Since John Adams was a Federalist, the Alien and Sedition Act powers were used on (if I remember correctly) two ‘Republican’ newspapers, which turned into one of the big issues in the 1800 election (of course the ‘election’ wasn’t an election as we know it today but it was the electoral college in its’ original form) helping Thomas Jefferson eventually win (after a long dispute in the Federalist run House of Representatives deciding between two Democrat-Republican candidates – irony at its’ finest). The point I took away was, newspapers in that time were used to promote certain political agendas. If we are seeing anything in media behavior today, I would say it is a return to those long ago days when you chose where you got your information based on which party you supported. Is it any different today, particularly on the internet with the proliferation of blog sites providing information (of course with a certain political bent), and today’s media is going along with it.

Now, do I really care about the bias in the media? Not really. As long as individuals are aware of the bias when they are looking at the different sites, then they can make an informed choice about the information they get. However, too often people presume there is no bias and the information is presented in a neutral manner. I’ve seen too many instances when bias is shown to believe that, so I know better than to think the media has no agenda. I just wish more people (many more) would realize this as well, but maybe I ask too much from the YouTube generation with its’ extremely short attention span and looking at the surface of things rather than digging into the deeper facts. The other thing that irks me about the media situation is when the biased media itself tries to pass itself as unbiased. I don’t really care if they are biased, just be upfront about it and let me make the decision about whether I will continue to come to you for information, is that really too much to ask?

pizza night recipe

It's pizza night here, our family tradition, so I thought I'd post my homemade crust and sauce recipe (such as it is), and let you know how it turns out.

crust:
6 C flour (freshly ground whole wheat
1/3 C vital wheat gluten
2 C hot water
2 1/2 t. yeast
2 t sugar
2 t salt
1/2 C extra light olive oil

dissolve yeast in water. Then mix in salt and sugar. Add oil. Mix in half (3 C) of flour and vital wheat gluten. Once mixed, add rest of flour. Then knead. Let rest for 20 minutes.

sauce:
1 6 oz can tomato paste
fill can 1 1/2 times with water
(salt, sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, basil, pepper, and fennel - this is what I put in and I can't approximate since I do it by look and dump, but the basics is what I listed minus fennel).

mix tomato paste and water together until desired consistency (sometimes more, sometimes less). Add other ingredients and sample.

Now: roll out crust onto pizza stones (this recipe makes three). Pre-bake at 400 for 7 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes, then top with sauce, cheese, and other toppings of your choice. Put back in oven for 10 minutes or until done (cheese is brown and bubbly, pepperoni is extra crispy, whatever you use as a guide).

Let cool for 3-5 minutes. Then slice and serve.

I'll post my no yeast version some other time.

Let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Crust turned out alright, somewhat soft, yet crispy (depending on thickness). The kids thought it tasted great, and they ate more than usual (it may have been the different toppings we used this week). So, it's a success!

Why the title?

The best answer I can give is: my creative side tends to be obnoxious. It's like a different person who comes up, taps me on the shoulder, and says 'can I come out?' It's a lot easier to let it out when you're in your own house, surrounded by family. However, I think it will be good to let that side come out, say some silly things, then blame it on obnoxious fingers that don't obey the brain. Yeah, that's it.....

What can you expect to find here? Primarily musings about the world we live in, and my perspective on it (if the view isn't blocked by that big silly creature....wait, that's just my obnoxious side getting first crack at it. He's usually right, it's just not always the view you let the rest of the world see). It'll run the gamut: politics, religion (the two things you never discuss in social settings), weather, family, and whatever else catches my fancy.

Anyway, don't know how often this will be updated, as life does often interfere with otherwise good intentions (you do know where roads made with those lead, don't you?). So, enjoy!