What Ripple Effect? and other thoughts

In this economy, I'm not seeing many ripples.  I am seeing a large number of tsunamis and dominoes, however.  They are even starting to reach their cold mixed-metaphorical hands into my workplace and into our personal financial decisions.  

In other thoughts, I'm very interested in Obama's first week at work.  He's been very busy, no?  So far, he's taking action to deliver on his campaign promises as well as govern with pragmatism.  That missile strike in Pakistan?  Not the act of a weeny liberal.  The plan for economic stimulus?  Not the plan of a bleeding-heart liberal.  Obama is governing from the center, with a vengeance.  He ran to the left of Hillary, which is still where he is.  Which shows that real political liberals don't get very far.  I've really liked his approach.  And I love the look of his cabinet and appointees.  Especially the picks for OLC and DOE.  These are both cases of completely apolitical political appointees.  Both candidates are very qualified in their field, and are accustomed to leading where people will follow.  The OLC choice in particular was like an addict setting limits for himself: she's a fierce critic of over-reaching executive power, and Obama can expect that if he does things he's not supposed to, she'll stop him.  

The office at home is coming together nicely.  We went to City Liquidators in Portland and found a pile of beautiful wood.  We're refinishing it and turning it into a huge T-shaped desk for the new office.  We have a bunch of extra, so we've been experimenting on a smaller piece to make sure it turns out like we want it before we do all 28 sq feet.  Cost for a similar setup that still isn't quite right: $1000.  Our cost: $300.  It's gonna be bee-you-ti-full!

The audition today was a blast.  Sometimes when you audition, you do a less-than-acceptable job, and you think, "I blew it".  Sometimes you audition and you think, "That wasn't my best run ever, but it was good enough.  If they don't pick me, it's not because I screwed up."  Today was one of the latter.  This performance was a big step up for us as a group (The Morning Stars) because of several factors.  The piece was more challenging harmonically and rythmically than we've done before, the audience was a lot more discerning, and we had to make a change on the fly because one of our members wasn't able to make it.  And despite all of that, it worked out.  Yeah!  I expect to hear soon whether we made it or not, and I'll post.

Adventures in Islam Part 3

The next 60 pages deal not with what Muhammad did, but with who he was.  Muhammad the man was a good man - kind to his wives, generous with the poor, and always interested in helping those who needed help.  After his first wife died, he became a polygamist, but there is little evidence that he had sexual relationships with anyone else besides his second wife (many years his junior, and married after Kadijah had passed away).  Muhammad was illiterate, and only marginally familiar with Christian and Jewish thought.  He was geographically distant from the centers of Christian thought, and much of today's Christian Orthodoxy was decided during his lifetime, or shortly before.  

As a prophet, Muhammad relied on revelation to guide him.  In several instances, he was rebuked by the angel after committing errors.  These rebukes are preserved in the Qu'ran.  Muhammad never claimed to be able to work miracles.  Those who look for miracles in his life point to the creation of the Qu'ran, the spread of Islam, and Islam's enduring popularity.

The Qu'ran is a collection of revelations Muhammad received from the angel Gabriel.  The chapters (suurahs) were kept as oral tradition until several years after the prophet's death.  About 30 years after Muhammad's death, inter-tribal warfare made the need for a definitive version of the Qu'ran very clear.  A few years later 4 official volums were made.  1 was kept in Mecca, and the others were sent to Islamic centers in the region.  All other copies were ordered burned.   

The Qu'ran is organized by length of the suurah.  There was no fixed chronology (the oral tradition did not preserve the date of the revelation).  Further, the suurahs often deal with more than one topic.  Thus, the Qu'ran had to be organized in some arbitrary fashion.  Length is just as good as any, so that's what it is.  Once I finish my text, I'll dive into the Qu'ran, and leave favorite quotes in this blog thread.  

Inaugural thoughts

Today, as on every inauguration, is Aria's birthday.  She is 9 today.  We talk about politics a lot in our home; a few days ago, Aria said that she felt really special because the inauguration was happening on her birthday.  Like it was made just for her.  

I am glad to see short-sightedness leave Washington.  We can disagree on Bush's record on terrorism.  There are plenty of anecotes about his administration's dismissal of the terrorist threat.  There have not been any more foreign terrorist attacks on US soil since Sep 11.  But we had Anthrax, we had the DC overpass sniper.  Americans have been targeted worldwide, Iraq has become a terrorist breeding ground.  In the longer term, Bush has stacked the playing field against US anti-terror efforts.

How can being so aggressive terrorism backfire?  Simply.  Terrorism grows when people have no hope.  By destroying the foundation of Maslow's hierarchy, people in Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing to lose.  So more of them turn to terror.  You can not defeat terrorism with violence.  Violence begets violence, and "We'lll all be blind and toothless" according to Tevye.  

So I am very excited to see a longer thinking President, who genuinely wants to understand the world around him.  This is a man who wants to hear opposing viewpoints, who is still battling his lawyers about having access to his personal email while President.   This is a President who cares about me.  We'll never meet, but he's been through much of what I've been through, and he knows and cares about people like me.

Obama has been a poor college student, he has been uncertain where his future would lie, he has had to pay back student loans.  He has lived in a small apartment while raising children.  This is not a First Family who enter the White House out of touch.  These are people who buy milk at the store (remember that Bush 41 moment?), who find bargains on the clothes rack, who drive normal cars.  

Welcome, Barack.  We pray for you and those who will work with you.  We're in a terrible mess.  May God help you.

Professional Personal Communication (or why Katrina is so awesome)

Like an awful lot of people, my work provides a cell phone for my use.  As long as personal use is not excessive, they don't mind me using it for personal business.  Thus it is that Katrina will call my cell when I'm away from my desk.  Or when the land line is busy.  

Sometimes I'm out on a lunchtime bike ride.  Sometimes I'm running an errand.  Oftentimes, I'm in a different part of the office or on a conference call.  So sometimes I can talk, and sometimes I can't.  I pick up whenever I can.  But when I'm busy and I pick up, I have a rushed manner.  Then Katrina wonders if I'm having a bad day and want to talk about it, and it takes longer to end the call so I can get back to what I was doing.  Frustrating for both of us.

To Katrina's credit, she brought it up last night after I got home from rehearsal.  Instead of this uncomfortable dance on the phone, she asked that I answer the phone and say something like, "Hi boss.  Can I call you back in a few?"  Easy as cake.  

This could have been (and with countless other people would have been) an involved, "You don't understand me!" thing with hurt feelings on both sides.  She could say that I don't think she's important, I could say that she doesn't understand what I'm doing at any given moment.  We'd both have a good argument.  And we could stick to our arguments and go to bed angry.  Instead, she's thought through a solution from both sides of the story, and asked for what she needs in a way that doesn't negatively impact what I have to do.  Easy.  Painless.  And wonderful.

This is how a partnership/marriage/friendship should work.  Lovely.  How lucky I am!

Miscommunication and redemption

It was late, close to bed time, and Aria had some homework due the next day.  She was tired and frustrated (it's her first book report) and wasn't making good progress.  I tried to help her by asking leading questions, but she just had an exasperated look on her face.  "I just don't get it!!"  At some point, I told her (maybe too strongly) that she needed to buckle down and just write down the answer to the question.  She asked a question, I replied.  She then replied to me in a way that was insulting to me.

I took offense and parroted the words back to her.  She said, "You don't understand!"  I parroted back her words again, and then the doorbell rang and I had to get it.  I told her we'd talk about it in a few minutes.  I left her crying at the table.  I felt justified.  I took care of the business at the door in about 10 minutes, and as I walked back into the house, I caught up with her in the play room.  I asked her what I didn't understand.  Turns out that I had answered in the affirmative, and she had thought I answered in the negative, which fueled her offensive response.

Turns out I was a big oaf.  I was reminded, again, that nobody means to be offensive.  If I take offense at something, I have to take the effort to confirm that the sentiment I understood was the sentiment conveyed.  In this case, it wasn't.  I apologized.  I told her I should not have gotten angry, and I labeled the incident a miscommunication.  We hugged, she forgave me, we moved on.

Moments like that are one of parenting's biggest perks.  It really makes me a better person all around. As a follow on, just yesterday or the day before I heard Aria remark in passing that she had had a miscommunication with someone.  What a kid.  

Also - I found out by accident (I do this sometimes just for fun) that Aria can do fractions now.  We were measuring to hang up a mirror in her bedroom, and I asked her what 18 - 4 1/2 was.  She gave me the right answer.  Then I asked her what half of 4 1/2 was.  Again, she was right.  Cool.

How do you feel when one of the happiest parts of your teen years comes back full force?

Imagine that you had a very close friend, someone you confided everything to, for almost 10 years.  The years in question?  9th grade - early adulthood.  You shared music, aspirations, pictures from vacation.  No matter how bad your other friendships got, or how frustrated you were with your parents, you thought that she would always understand.  Somehow, you lost track of each other.  You both moved, got married, there was no such thing as Facebook, and letters sent to her old address came back unopened: "Return to Sender".  

You looked around every once in a while as you built your net presence over the next 10 years: she was one of the people you looked for when building your friends in MySpace.  A few years later, it was LinkedIn.  A few years later, Facebook.  No luck.  You conclude that she's probably married with a different name, and doesn't want anything to do with you.  

Then one day, you get a Facebook message.  It's the face you know, but a different name.  And all those happy feelings and memories come back.  Turns out she is happy to find you, is happily married, and is still living in Lille, very close to the French/German border.  

Such was my elation this morning.  My pen pal found me!  There are few things that last 10 years that don't have some kind of bitter taste to them.  We fight with our friends, our family.  Work doesn't go so well.  We start a new hobby and get injured.  We get stuck in a life rut.  We hurt someone's feelings.  Our 10 year pen pal-ship doesn't have any bad memories for me.  After 10 years out of contact, it's wonderful to revive those happy thoughts. 

One of my best friends from those formative years is back.  Maybe this technology thing is cool after all.

Adventures in Islam, Part 2

I'm 3 chapters into my primer on Islam.  I've learned a lot of stuff, most of it is pieces of history, names and places that aren't particularly relevant in understanding Muslims today.  It will inform my study of the Koran, and gives a better background for asking interesting questions.  Do you have something that you don't want to ask questions about because you feel so ignorant that you're afraid you'll also look stupid?  Yep.  That's where I'm starting from.  Much like when coworkers or friends start to talk about wine (sorry, sommeliers), any talk about Islam would just leave me behind and not be very interesting.

So, to sum up 60 pages of reading: Muhammad was born in the late 500s on a band of land called the Hijaz.  It runs along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia today.  At the time, there were bands of Christians and Jews in the area, but the Arabs were polytheistic pagans.  Life was centered around the tribe, and the shaykh was not just the administrator of the law; he was the law.  There was no "law of the land" as we understand it today.  Quick example: if you killed someone from your own tribe, you'd be forced to pay damages or killed yourself.  If you killed someone from a neighboring tribe, your shaykh had complete power to prevent you from prosecution.  It may start a blood fued between the tribes, but that was at the shaykh's discretion.  

Muhammad married late (age 25) into a wealthy merchant family.  This family, the Quraysh, controlled the city of Mecca.  They had decreed that within a certain radius of the Kaaba that violence was forbidden.  This was the first zone of law that we would understand as such.  After 15 years of marriage, Muhammad was meditating in a cave and got a visit from the angel Gabriel.  Worried that he might be posessed by jinn, he consulted his brother in law who was familiar with Christan and Jewish scripture.  He assured Muhammad that this was from god, and that Muhammad had been called as a prophet.  Kadija, Muhammad's wife, was also an early believer.

The message that Muhammad started to preach was one of sacrifice and submission.  Islam means "to submit".  His first converts were the poor in the city of Mecca.  His rich relatives eventually forced him to leave the city.  He took his followers to Medina, where he became not only a prophet a civic leader, but also took on the role of military commander.  His arrival in Medina starts the Hijrah, the Islamic calendar.  Much like the birth of Christ starts the gregorian calendar, the Hijrah starts on September 24th in a certain year, which is year 1, day 1 of the Muslim era.  

Within 8 years, Muhammad had gone from a "crazy guy preaching in the streets of Mecca" to the Prophet of Arabia.  He had a huge army, and Arabia had submitted to Allah.  Muhammad died in the 11th year of the Hijrah, at his home in Medina.  By the year of his death, Islam had spread over the entire Arabian peninsula, with missionary forces preaching the Word to tribes scattered all around.  The Koran was finished, and despite some wrangling for the "I am the next prophet" title after Muhammad's death, Islam was an ongoing concern.

The Arabia that Muhammad left behind was much different from the one he inherited.  Arabia was now populated by monotheists.  Islam allowed for Jews and Christians to practice their religions in peace.  Muhammad's call was specifically to preach to those who had not received the revelation from God as Moses had for the Jews or Jesus had for the Christians.  Law was no longer dependent on a person's tribe so much.  Laws were part of Islam, and administered universally.  Care for the poor was ingrained as a virtue.  

Interestingly, Islam was carried forward by both military (conquering towns and forcing its residents to convert) and spiritual (sending teachers to preach) means.  I've got a ton to learn before I can say a whole lot more about it than that.  It is a tribute to Muhammad's skills as a man and personal character that he was able to accomplish such a huge cultural shift in his lifetime.  Now, on to more study and fun!

Christmas comes but 4 times a year...

This Christmas season has been really wonderful. I'm not in school, I've learned a lot about how to be a better guy this year, and the kids are older and enjoy it more. It's been an extended season for us - we put up the lights the week after Thanksgiving, got the trees later that week, and we had our last Christmas present-opening event just last night.

Our 4 Christmases were all different: the extended-family party for my mom's side at our house, our private family Christmas day, Christmas with my sister, brother, his wife, and parents at our house on the 29th, and then again with Katrina's family in Springfield last night.

People are nice and wonderful, the gifts were fun to give and to get, the kids all really had fun with it (not having an infant is wonderful!), and Katrina and I didn't have the tension we've always had around Crhistmas time. This is the first year (of many) that the Tom Grinch hasn't showed up.

A happy new year to you all - may 2009 be as wonderful a year as any we have seen!