Sunday, February 23, 2014

February 23, 2014 - Reflections on Romans 4-7

Tried to sleep tonight, no luck so far.  Too much going through my head.  I finally changed the oil in my car - a 2006 Jetta that I bought 15 months and 20K miles ago.  It wasn't as much of a headache as I had thought it would be, and the engine sounds better now.  First time I've noticed that after an oil change.  Hopefully it will stop dripping oil, too.

We got low on freezer jam, so Katrina bought some strawberries this week.  Tonight we assembled everyone to make jam.  We had Libby and Jake pulling stems off, Christian slicing the tops off, Aria removing bad parts and slicing the berries in half, Katrina crushing the berries, and me mixing batches.  What used to take us 4 hours of hard labor was over in less than an hour.  The kids were busy for 30 minutes, and Katrina and I finished the process.  Now we've got another gallon of strawberry jam for the freezer, 6 months until we need to do it again.  The latest version of pectin products removes lemon juice and corn syrup from the recipe, making the process much faster and simpler.

The kids spent much of yesterday and all this afternoon making a video.  Aria has a new iPad mini, and she's using iMovie to edit.  We watched it tonight and it was hilarious.  Jake and Libby did an astonishing job with their lines and acting, and Aria's directing and editing was fantastic.

After the movie, I read a bit of "Insurgent", my current popcorn book.  I have terrible discipline putting them down, and read longer than I had planned.  And then I'd drift off to sleep, and an idea from the book would come into my half-awake dreams, and I'd wake up.  The book is not a peaceful one.  So I gave up.

Time to blog for a few, and aside from the stuff above, my intended topic is to continue reflections on Romans.  So here we are, resuming from Chapter 4, verse 1:
Ch 4
1-5 We're not justified by works, but by faith.
6 David described the blessedness of man.  As a Roman Jew, this has profound meaning for me, and I get it.  As a modern Christian, I consider Psalms and Proverbs both books of artistic beauty.  I don't consider them sources of doctrine.
6-13 Abraham was not justified by the law, because the Jewish law didn't exist for him.  He was justified by faith, and not works.  Paul then makes the point that faith is the original law - Jewish law replaced it later.
14-15 no law = no transgression
16 Paul contrasts Jewish law with Christian faith
17-22 Abraham had faith to do God's will, and that counted to him as righteousness.  Paul goes to the "none doeth good" theme again, but he says later (7:25) that he himself does good sometimes.  Paul's writings are inconsistent if we take them literally; if he has literary license, they're workable.
23-25 We have Abraham's story so we can have faith in the god that raised Jesus from the dead.

Ch 5
1-2 being justified by faith, we have access to grace
3-5 The holy spirit can comfort us in tribulation
6-8 Christ died for sinners
9-11 people who are justified will be saved
12-21 A very lengthy section to say, simply, "Sin came into the world through Adam.  Sin no longer rules the world because of Christ."  He says it forwards and backwards and sideways a couple times, but it's always the same.

Ch 6
1-4 Baptism is a symbol of death and burial.  Once baptized, we walk in newness of life.
5 Because we are baptized together with Christ (we die together) thus we will also be resurrected together.  This beings us closer to being like him - we'll be resurrected like he was.
6-7 we bury our sins at baptism and sin doesn't follow us any more
8-11 Paul admonishes us to be dead to sin, but alive in Christ.
12-14 You are free from the law (law = death because none are perfect), and now you live under grace.  So be good.
15-18 We are servants of death or righteousness.  Once free of sin (baptized), we are servants of righteousness.
19-23 Paul admonishes us to yield our members to holiness and find everlasting life.

Ch 7
1-4 law is the first husband who is now dead.  Christ is the 2nd husband, but it's okay to be with Christ because the law is dead.  It doesn't make us unfaithful Jews.
5-6 the law has control until we are converted, then we're new
7 there's nothing wrong with the law.  It's a good teaching tool.
8-13 law = sin = death
14-24 sometimes I mess up when I know better.  This is Paul going through the torturous process of dealing with his own dual roles - a flawed human, and a representative of Jesus.
20 he claims here that if he does something bad that he doesn't want to do, it's sin that does it, not him.  I don't understand this claim at all.  We all make mistakes despite our best intentions.  To say that it's not me that does those things, but it's sin instead, simply dodges accountability.
25 I serve God with my mind, but my flesh serves sin.

The themes in these chapters revolve around the law and accountability.  I really enjoyed him going back to Abraham and pointing out that Abraham and Christians shared a belief system in some ways.  There is a lot of text about doing the right things.  It is also increasingly clear that "works" in Paul's parlance means obeying Jewish law.  They are synonyms so far in the text.  "Doing good" or being a "doer of the word" is a good things to Paul, and he uses different words for that vs obeying the law.  To this point in the epistle, Paul is very clear that faith gives us access to grace which saves us.  But he's also very clear that those who do good will like the judgment better than those who don't.  He hasn't brought those ideas together yet.  I feel for Paul at this point - he's trying to lay Christianity bare for Jews like him, and it's not as simple as he'd like it to be.

Now for another attempt at sleep.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

February 22, 2014 - Movie and Book Review: The Book Thief

I don't recall who recommended "The Book Thief" to us.  We (Katrina and I) started reading it out loud together maybe as long as 2 years ago.  It's been awhile.  From the very beginning, as Death (Death narrates the book) describes a sunset, you can tell the book is not a popcorn book.  We digested it in small chunks - 10 or 15 minutes here or there.  We stopped for a while, and started again, etc.  Right now we're 83% of the way through the book.  And then the movie came out.  We missed it in the theatres for the first run, but looking for a date, I crossed it at the second-run theatre by the mall.  So we went to see it today.

I will first say that some movies and books are entertainment, some are educational, some are enlightenment.  This movie is enlightenment. We don't watch R-rated movies, but I assume Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, and 12 Years a Slave are enlightening movies. On my list, I have The Blind Side, Australia, and now The Book Thief.  If you've missed them, find them.

Unlike most book/movie combos, you can consume either one first, and won't be disappointed.  I do highly recommend reading the book aloud.  It's meant to be read that way, to taste the words and feel the imagery dripping from the page, wet with meaning.  It's dense.

The story follows Liesel, a girl (11 yrs old when it starts) who is taken from her communist mother in Nazi Germany in 1938.  She is thrust into foster care and experiences the war from inside Germany - hiding a Jew in the basement, air raids, her foster father being sent off to war despite him being a WWI veteran.  It's an intense tale of loss, humanity, and barbarism.  The children's choir backing a montage of Krystallnacht hit me hard.  I cried at the end, and had to sit for a few minutes after it was over before I trusted myself to talk.

I suppose those are the important things to say.  I could talk about Zusak's literary style (more poem than prose), or character development (there's plenty, some predictable, some not), or the use of music throughout the movie, or the infrequent bouts of narration which are more common in the book than the movie.  But those are all secondary - I think the intent here is simply to illustrate the humanity of humans.  Our fallibility, heroism, foibles, silly joys and disappointments.  I learned from it, which is the highest praise I can ever offer a piece of fiction.

Friday, February 21, 2014

February 21, 2014 - New records

A couple new records lately - 3 miles, 10% grade <10min 10="" 3="" 5="" 5miles="" 6="" 7:09="" a="" added="" ago="" and="" as="" at="" average="" back.="" baqd="" big="" but="" couple="" despite="" did="" done.="" fast="" fastest="" fat="" feels="" from="" get="" grade.="" had="" healed="" i="" injury="" is="" it="" kid="" knee="" know="" last="" ll="" lso="" m="" mile.="" mile="" miles="" month.="" mostly="" much="" muscle="" my="" nbsp="" normal="" not="" now="" of="" ome="" over="" p="" pounds="" pretty="" pull-ups="" s="" some="" the="" think="" today="" tonight.="" too="" ut="" ve="" weeks="" weird="" well.="" with="" y="" yesterday.="" yet="">
I took a day off the treadmill today and did some strength workout instead.  I laid down on the gym mat and did a leg lift and challenged the boys to do one.  "That's so eeeasssyyy!" yelled Jacob. Then he laid down and tried to do one.  Christian laid next to me as I pumped out my set of 15.  He had 3.

So the fitness stuff continues to go well.  I can't wait for the snow to melt so I can get back on the AT as well.  I miss being in the woods.

It's been a week of catch-up at work.  Some weeks, I'm looking for new things to do.  This week, I was looking for things to close some items that have been out there for a while and accomplished some of them.

And that's about it - I've put a few more chapters of Romans in my notebook, and I expect to write about them tomorrow.  I've read some more of my latest non-fiction book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me".  It's ostensibly a book that intents to correct errors in high school American History textbooks.  But he spends far too much time complaining about the books instead of giving us good information about the stories.  Many of the things he talks about are also covered in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".  But some of them, particularly American Indian syncretism is now and fascinating.  More on that next week, probably.  It's not a quick read.  I have several other books waiting to be cracked right now.

Lastly, Libby bought Aria's Kindle.  So my 9 year-old spent 2 months of allowance to buy an ebook reader.  Last night, she went through her bedroom, gathered up all her change, and gave me $3.82 to buy the 4th book in a series she's reading.  She was really excited.  All I can do is smile.  Anothe reader in the family.  All we're waiting for now is for Jake to start reading for fun.  And then I can easily envision all 6 of us laying around different parts of the house reading on a Saturday.  Hilarious.  And so very much what I had hoped life would become as we all got older.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

February 18, 2014 - Reflections on Romans 1-3

I get the privilege every so often of teaching the gospel to people not of my faith with our local missionaries.  A few months ago, I met a couple of young men from a different church and we started discussing the gospel.  I learn probably more from them than they learn from us, and their view of the scriptures is very different from mine.  I say that because one of them is engaged in pastoral studies at a local college.

They had read the Book of Mormon, and asked that we study Romans as just the text itself, to take off our "Mormon glasses" and see it fresh.  So I did.  I read it as a member of the congregation in Rome, having maybe only one or two of the Gospels to rely on.  The text is very different that way.  Very refreshing.

As I started to read, I took notes.  So here they are, with some reflections.
Ch1
Hey all you saints in Rome!  Christ is the son of God, and I wish I could visit you.  Sorry it hasn't worked out yet.
vs 16: Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation very every one that believeth
vs 17: the just shall live by faith
vs 18-31: this long section says to me that people who are unrighteous become homosexuals, reprobates, etc.  It is ambiguously written in English, and I'm curious if there's a consensus on what it means.  I suspect there isn't.
vs 32: homosexuals worthy of death
In sum: everyone who believes can be saved.  And I'm very relieved that I belong to the church of Jesus Christ and not the church of Paul.

Ch2
vs1-2: any person who judges is a hypocrite, but God judges righteously.
vs 3-10: we will be judged by deeds, the righteous rewarded, evil punished.
vs 11: God is no respecter of persons
vs 12: those who sin without the law are not accountable to the law.  This is where I started to understand that Paul is writing to the Jews in the congregation.
vs 13: doers of the word are justified.
vs 14-15: those who obey the law without knowing it are rewarded
vs 17-28: a Jew who breaks his covenant is in worse shape than a Gentile who is righteous.
vs 29: circumcision of the heart.  True conversion is not a change to your body, but a change to your heart.

Ch3
vs 1-2: the Jews had prophets.  How awesome!
vs 4: when man and God conflict, trust God.
vs 5-10: Jews and Gentiles both sinful, references Psalms 14:1 and 53:1
vs 10-18: this is a bit of hyperbole.  Strict Biblical literalists don't let its authors engage in hyperbole, exaggeration, or sarcasm. Such a practice denies them of their humanity. I think they would be shocked and appalled to find their words taken so precisely. As a Christian in Rome of Jewish heritage, I understand the point Paul is trying to make here.  He makes it forcefully on purpose, and I get it.
vs 19: the law applies to those who have it (and by inference, not to those who don't)
vs 20-21: no justification by the law.  Because, indeed, who of us has lived perfectly according to the law?  Nobody. The law of justice says that we are all condemned.
vs 24-27: Jesus justifies those that believe in him.
vs 28: faith justifies without deeds.  This directly contradicts an earlier section about being judged by our deeds. What should I be worried about? Faith or deeds? 21st century Tom recognizes a piece of cognitive dissonance here.  Christians around the world would do well to deal with the cognitive dissonances in our belief systems.  Denying them only gives fuel to those who do not share our faith.  I'm a happy Christian, and I recognize there are happy Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists, and Agnostics.  Most of us (I'll exclude some Atheists) have cognitive dissonance in our belief systems.  Denying them to people who don't share your faith makes you look weaker, not stronger.
vs 29-30: there is only one God for both Jew and Gentile.
vs 31: Jewish law is not obliterated by the gospel, but strengthened by it.

So there are chapters 1-3 in a couple nutshells.  I really enjoy this method of study - not just reading the scripture, but reading it as its original intended audience.  It's fun.


Monday, February 17, 2014

February 17, 2014 - Snow camping

This weekend was the perfect opportunity to see how repared we are for NY winter weather.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Christian and I set up camp at the top of the hill.  Lights from the cars on the Taconic were visible there, but we're used to it.  I dressed as warmly as I could: thermals, jeans, and snow pants on the bottom.  T-shirt, long sleeve t-shirt, sweatshirt, and winter coat on top.  Add gloves, snowboarding boots, and a knit hat, and I was ready to head out for a night in a tent with ambient temps dropping to 9 deg F.

I tramped up the hill, each step a lot of effort in 3 ft of snow.  I was in snow over my knees a lot carrying the tent up there.  I set it down, and then proceeded to tramp an area of snow large enough for the tent to sit on.  It was dark, and my headlamp was dying, but I've done this a few times before, so the few falling snowflakes didn't bother me too much.  Christian joined me with his sleeping bag and helped me finish the tent, then he got inside while I went down to get my sleeping gear.  He had brought only 1 sleeping bag.  I made 2 trips to bring up 2 sleeping bags and 2 camping air mattresses.  I wasn't worried about the padding, but I knew I needed the insulation.
My camera couldn't get the moonshadows of trees
on the snow or moonlight on the roof of the house.
But it could get the full moon and a couple windows.

We kicked off our boots and put them at the foot of the tent.  Christian had been outside building a snow fort for the whole afternoon, and his jacket, boots, and socks were soaked through.  He took them off, and I kinda made him take either an air pad or a sleeping bag.  He chose to take a sleeping bag.  In the end, he had a sleeping bag under him, and he cozied up all the way inside my cheapy 0-degree bag.  I also gave him my coat because it was dry, but he ended up using it as a pillow, I think.  I also gave him dry socks (I had brought 2 extra pair), but he didn't put those on until morning.  I settled into my sleeping bag that my mom bought for me in 1987, I think.

There was a bump under me that a little thumping took care of, and I was reasonably comfortable and certainly warm enough.  It was 7pm.  Christian had gotten settled, and we talked for an hour or 2 about the priesthood.  He's soon going to be a deacon (in April), and I wanted him to understand what it was for, why it was important, and how he would be able to serve others once he was ordained.

Not quite an Everest base camp, but a significant
first for us nonetheless.
We both slept fitfully.  Me from the oddness of the cold and general "this is not my bed" discomfort.  Him from cold, I think.  I woke at 4:40, thinking that with the light outside it must be dawn.  Nope.  A cloudless night with a full moon gave us a nightlight all night long.  I laid for an hour, but wasn't able to go back to sleep.  At 5:30, I called our experiment a success.  As we made an inventory of our winter gear before we headed into the chilly morning, we discovered that the snow on my boots had not melted, Christian's jacket had frozen as well as his socks, and I couldn't find my gloves.  We resolved on a compromise plan: I would get dressed and carry him down the hill to the house since my stuff was warm and dry.

Christian's frozen solid jacket
Once I dropped him off at the garage door, I went back up the hill and loaded a sleeping bag with is frozen/wet gear, brought it back down, and set it up to dry.  His boots went by the oil heater in the pantry, his snow suit hung up in the pantry, his jacket into the dryer.  The socks were a lost cause.  I expect he'll sleep until 11-12, and he'll be happy to find his stuff in good shape and ready to use again.

So, what did I learn?
1) triple layer on top and bottom for clothing + double sleeping layer on bottom + old sleeping back = survivable night close to 0 degrees.
2) When it's that cold, my 3-season tent does not warm significantly with body heat
3) good snow boots are a must
4) snow discipline (keeping the snow out of the tent as much as possible) is key
5) that the entire idea of relieving myself outside in those temperatures is a tough one to overcome
6) if I pack light otherwise, I can then camp in very cold temps without too much worry as long as there is no rain.

Some pics from the last couple days.




This bridge crosses Wappingers Creek on rt 376 in Red Oaks Mill

Wappingers Creek is frozen over upstream fro mthis point, where it breaks out from under the ice.

A metal roof on the church can make for a dangerous ice shelf.
The ice shelf above the sidewalk had been removed.  This
one remained.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

February 16, 2014 - A Top 10 Snow Event

We got a foot of snow a little over a week ago.  Everything shut down for a day, then everything was back to normal.  On Thursday this week (3 days ago) we got another foot.  I hit the driveway with the snowblower 3 times that day.  When I went to bed, everything was clear.  I woke up to 6 more inches on Friday morning.  4 more hours of clearing snow, and we were clear again.  The landscape changes dramatically with 2 feet of snow on top of it.  There are no more leaves, no fallen branches.  Even the smaller shrubs are buried.

The dump we got is classified as a "Top 10 Snow Event" - one of the largest recorded snowfalls in the region.  Locals have told me this kind of thing hasn't happened in 30 years.

So here's a large bunch of photos - some try to capture the "Holy cow, there's a lot of snow!" wonder of it, some are "So that's how you deal with a lot of snow", and some are "That is really beautiful".

Woke up with no water pressure on Thursday morning, and
knew my snowblower repair wouldn't last.  So I spent 30 minutes
at Home Depot.  This is my car after 30 minutes.

Snow falling hard and fast Thursday, about noon.

This is I-84.  

Friday morning, I opened the garage door and took this
shot from ground level.  Close to a foot there.  Look in the
background, you can see a mound.  If you look at the mound, you
can see some twigs sticking up out of it.  Those are
from a 6' high shrub.  The same shrub shows up the 2nd
picture in today's post.

Hidden picture time, kids!  Can you spot the Yukon XL, the largest passenger vehicle ever mass-produced
for a non-commercial market?  Good!  Can you spot the sedan?  Great!  Now, can you spot the 11 year-old boy digging a tunnel?  

It's just lovely.  And the canyon is my snowblower's first pass.

Who tagged my house???!?!!!!??!?  Oh yeah.  Me.

Yeah.  'Nuff said.

Driveway is done as the sun comes out and temps warm to 34 degrees.  It was above freezing most of the day on Friday.

Pretty, pretty, pretty.  

Saturday, February 15, 2014

February 15, 2014 - Book Review: Divergent

After finishing Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Tipping Point, I felt I was owed a popcorn fiction break.  So I started a book that's been on the shelf at Sam's Club for almost forever.  It was on a cheap Kindle sale a few months ago, but it's been waiting.

The book is called Divergent, and the author is Veronica Roth.  It's post-apocalyptic YA fiction, but no vampires.  The world is similar to The Hunger Games and Uglies series, and like them, the protagonist is an exceptional 16 year-old girl.  There's a lot of that these days - girls as action heroes. Boys play major roles, but girls star.  It's a good counterpoint to Harry Potter, and I think that girls as protagonists engender stronger male co-stars than vice versa.  Hermione is a huge part of Harry's success, but she somehow takes  a back seat.  I get the impression that maybe Harry could have accomplished his mission without her.  In most of these girl-centered series, the girl can't accomplish the mission without a strong male.

Another interesting point about the genre is that the intended audience for these series is girls.  A generation ago, when I was a YA fiction reader, most protagonists were boys or men, and they existed generally in a female-less brotherhood (Terry Brooks, Ted Sturgeon, Arthur C Clarke, Ben Bova, Ken Follett, even Tom Clancy).  Sometimes a bunch of adventurers, sometimes scientists, but women and girls were only in the story as a distraction.  Books aimed at girls are more human, more complete.  Terrible generalization, I know, but true in my experience.

In my own experience, I got a little tired of the male-dominated stuff I was reading in 6th grade, and I devoured L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series.  I loved this books.  They were the first books I had ever read where the people were characters instead of caricatures.  Apologies to Asimov, Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, et al, but your characters were only archetypes.  I knew that I was not an archetype.  I was a mixed bag.

In full disclosure, I kinda did it to show how macho I was: "Look at me!  I'm not scared of a girl book!"  Glad I did.  It was a great time.  I tried Luisa May Alcott next, and slogged through Little Women.  Not as transcendent for me.  I suppose I'd feel the same about Jane Austin, but I haven't tried.  A little trepidation at play.

Sigh.  We still have a long way to go in the gender gap.

Back to the book - something very bad has happened to humanity in the not-so-distant future.  There is an enclave of people living in the environs of a ruined Chicago.  There is a large fence around the compound, and the people are broken up into 5 (or 6) factions.  Each faction takes a specific human trait to its extreme.  Honesty, selflessness, courage, seeking of knowledge, and friendship.  The last group are people who don't belong to a faction - they do menial labor.  If you want a good job, you have to have a faction.

When a young person turns 16, they choose a faction.  If they choose their family's faction, then they can go through an initiation period, and then they become adults and can live at home or elsewhere.  Unemployment seems to not be an issue for those with factions.  If the young person chooses a faction different from their family, they are essentially disowned by the family, and start a completely new life in their chosen faction.

But not everyone makes it through initiation.  This book is almost all about Tris' initiation into her new faction, the Dauntless (courageous).  There's a little larger-scale politics going on as well, and the last 10% or so takes the plot on a major turn.

I like the main characters in general.  They seem pretty human.  I am tired at this point of stories of "the chosen one".  I never have a doubt that Tris is some kind of chosen one, although the author goes through great pains to paint her as the unlikeliest of heroes.  The author also spends some time and capital to do what seems like foreshadowing, and then crushes it.  Tris' father at one point does something unexpected, and when she questions it, he says something like, "There are a lot of things you don't know about me."  He dies a few pages later.  WHAT?

The book has lots of action, a little romance, lots of interpersonal conflict (a butter knife in the eye of a character stands out, as does a sexual assault).  I suspect the following: that the factions are some kind of experiment.  There is a larger human population out there, but there is no media (computers with intranet, no TV or radios or internet) to tell us so.  The fence that surrounds Chicago exists to keep the faction people in, and not some nameless (and unidentified) enemy out.  Having no information about the outside world makes me unable to speculate further.  I suppose I'll learn more after I read the 2nd book.

That's it for today.  We had a huge dump of snow this week, but I didn't write about it.   Very proud of myself.   Now I must accomplish some things for tomorrow.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Feb 9, 2014 - Swagger

Not "SWAGGA!"  But, instead, a  book called "Swagger" by Lisa Bloom.

The author wrote the book in response to thug culture - the messages that boys get about not showing or sharing emotion, that reacting is better than thinking, that men should dominate, that money is life's ultimate object.

She did a lot of research. Some of it was reading other people's work, some was her own field interviews of young men. She talks a lot about the absence of fathers in kids' lives, the terrible statistics about single moms' kids.  She's a single mom herself, so she knows the gig.  The thesis is something you might expect: turn off the TV, engage with your kids, read with them, do sports or outdoors things with them, teach them how to respect others.  The end of the book is a plea for men especially to reach out to kids who don't have good male role models.

Some interesting things about this point in history: girls are overwhelmingly valedictorians, more girls graduate from college than boys, boys are increasingly more likely than girls to live in poverty and stay there, etc, etc, etc.  She paints a really grim picture.  It is something I was aware of, and I think my kids are rather insulated from it.  My kids are growing up in an affluent, educated, stable, 2-parent household.  We spend time together, and I count my kids as my friends. We don't watch TV, and our musical choices skew far away from violence and sexuality. I understand, at the same time, that many kids are not in the same situation that mine are in. I'm unsure what to do about it - I do some volunteering through church, and I wonder what else I can add into my priority list to help a boy who needs someone who cares.

In completely different news, we lost 2 trees yesterday. The dead ash that has worried us consistently since we moved in is finally gone, as well as a huge oak tree that leaned away from the house but was rotten to its core. I stood where it used to stand this morning, and it looks like there's a hole in the sky. I now have a bunch of wood splitting to do (the dead tree is dry and seasoned), and several hours of work with the chainsaw to cut up the large tree so it will season better.

Yeah, that's a guy in the top of the tree. He has a pole saw and a chainsaw clipped to his belt, a gris-gris he uses to rappel, spiked attachments for his boots, and chutzpah by the bushel. He's probably 60' in the air there, as he cut down the smaller-diameter branches. He brought the tree down to 30-40' and just the trunk before he cut it at the base to bring it down.

If you look closely at the last picture, you can see an open area in the trunk. It goes most of the way through the tree, and it close to 10' tall. It certainly needed to come down, so I'm very glad it's done. No more worries on that front.

The tree in the driveway had a very high potential to fall toward the power lines that come into the driveway. I dreaded a week without power. On a similar vein, I now have all the materials I need to properly hook our generator to the house AC box. The house has an older, lower-amperage generator hookup under the front porch (I discovered this by accident putting up the Christmas lights). Our generator has a newer plug style (L14), and can put out some serious amperage. I needed some 10-gauge wire, a proper house-side receptacle, and a proper generator cable. All are now in hand. An afternoon of work, and we'll be all set.   Worst case, I'll do it when we lose power - flip off the main breaker, get the job done, get power back. No worries. But if I'm wise I'll do it earlier.

Next books on my list: finish reading "The Book Thief" with Katrina. "Outliers" by Gladwell, "Managing Change" by John Cotter, "The 360 Degree Leader", and "Divergent" (fiction by Veronica Roth).

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Feb 8, 2014 - Random stuff with kids + pictures

We've been photo challenged lately on the blog.  Here's some goodies to remedy that.

Liberty joined Christian and me for a morning hike for the first time last weekend.  We ended up covering 2 miles of the AT and then turned around to head back.  The snow was perfect - deep enough to not be rocky, warm enough to pack, cold enough to fall apart on impact.  Also, thankfully, Christian is no better at throwing baseball-shaped objects than I was at 11.

Libby had a great time, too. It has been a few years since she went hiking, and keeping her on track was a little bit of a challenge. But she is so full of fun and spunk that it changed the outing to be much more energetic and fun than it is when just us two older boys go.

I'm a little behind on my goal to hike all of NJ NY and CT on the AT this year, but I'm making good progress considering that it's winter.  When it warms up, I expect to take a day off here and there and do 15 miles in a couple days.  Ideally, a 3-4 day trip with close to 50 miles would be great.  It would cover 25% of my total distance - I could do all of CT and head into NY with that length.  Might be a good plan.  Hm.

You can see from the trail that we've had snow lately. The snow you see on the ground in the hiking pictures melted the next day. It was about 50 degrees and sunny. Everything dripped all afternoon, and the leaves were bare on the ground. That was Sunday afternoon. Wednesday we got nearly 12" of fresh snow. I stayed home from work that day (most of it fell before dawn on Wednesday), and spent 3 hours shoveling and snow blowing. It's work, but I still find it rewarding, unique, and enjoyable. No running for me that day, I got my exercise thanks to the snow.

I encouraged the kids to play out side in the snow on Wednesday, but they didn't. I had a full workday on Thursday, but on Friday morning I got busy. My exercise for that day was packing a sledding run as the sun came up over our sledding hill. That, of course, requires testing. So I packing snow, slid down, repeat, repeat. Now it's a very nice sledding run; the best we've had in 2 winters here.

Today, we had a critical piece of exterior maintenance done. We had a dead Ash tree in our driveway turnaround.  We first noticed it after we were in contract, and we didn't want to make the process a day longer than it had to be, so it has stood there.  It was maybe 10 ft from our power line, and rotten at the base. Every time there was a storm, I'd wait to see if it would fall. Thankfully, it didn't. Until this morning, when an arborist we know from church came over, climbed it, and brought it down. It was about 60 ft high, and now it's mostly cut up and ready for splitting. It's already dry (the tree has been dead for years), so once it's split, we have firewood.

The guys also took down a huge oak tree that was about 10 ft from our sun porch and leaning away from the house, but severely rotten in part of its trunk. So that one is down as well. Look carefully at this picture, and you can see the guy in the top of the tree, cutting down limbs from 50 ft up.

They finished about noon, and I took Jake to a birthday party at 2. It was very low key for parents, lots of fun for the kids. We left there a few minutes early, so I could bring Jake home and take Aria to a youth activity. Now that she's 14, she gets to do co-ed activities with the other youth from the church. Today we pick up another young woman and went to the church in New Windsor, where the kids made 5-minute videos melding a popular movie (think Star Wars, Batman, Finding Nemo) with church teachings. At the end, we all gathered together and watch 6 5-minute video clips. All were pretty funning. Then we all went to Taco Bell and hung out together for an hour and a half. We got home at 11.  It's been a busy day. Tomorrow I have a busy morning planned, and may stay a little longer than normal at church because a young man in the other ward is giving his missionary farewell talk and I want to be there for him and his family.

Also, I finished "Swagger" today.  More on that tomorrow, I think.






Friday, February 7, 2014

Feb 7, 2014 - What I Should Have Learned in College

My current employer has a large and wide-ranging set of training offerings to teach managers how to deal with people more effectively. I was able to take a solid sample of these in the last 4 weeks, going through 4 of the major offerings.

One of the classes offers an assessment of what upsets you, how you tend to deal with conflict, and provides insight on how you can decrease your destructive responses and increase your constructive responses. One class was concerned completely with the balance between a manager's responsibility to manage others and to deliver on his own commitments. Another was on how to adjust your own coaching style based on the situation and individual. Another covered a wide range of topics, from word choice, to framing a request, to posture matching, to processing the concept that words do not represent ideas. They are how a person presents his thoughts and notions, based on his experiences and views of the world.

These classes are, in short, a primer on how to be effective in interhuman relationships. They are, incidentally, not required curriculum for either a BS in business or an MBA. They are more geared for the Organizational Development people, or the psychology people. And yet - these are the exact skills and competencies that every professional in the world who works in an office environment needs to master. So I now have the task of recreating these training offerings to deliver to my staff in smaller chunks over the next 6 months or so. It will be fun.  I'm excited about it.

Also, in the news today was an article stating that IBM was trying to sell or find a partner for its microelectronics business. This happens to be the part of IBM that is my customer. I don't see any major changes for us, even if they do find a buyer. The product we are making still needs to be made, and it still requires our equipment to do it. So there's a runway, but it's certainly a confluence of uncertainty: my company is going through a merger, and my customer is trying to sell itself to another entity. In the end, it'll work out. It always has worked out for us, and I have no reason to expect differently. We'll ride out one bump after another, and see where it leads us. I will say that, in general, I'm very pleased with what I've been able to accomplish at this place. I have a good network of good people, widely dispersed in the company, with whom I interact and create value for the organization. My team is excellent, and recognized for doing good work. So, given the vagaries of the industry I'm in, we're doing just fine.

I've taken a lot of pics recently, and haven't had a chance to blog with pics for a while. I should get some up tomorrow, mostly of hiking with the kids and snow stuff. Tomorrow we will also lose 2 trees: 1 dead one in the driveway, and a dying one close to the house, but leaning away from the house. They both need to come down, and I'm excited to have firewood for next winter. Not so excited to bond with my chainsaw and axe, but that's the price one must pay.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

February 6, 2014 - Uncle Tom's Cabin

For several years, I have intended to read some classics of world literature. War and Peace is on my Kindle, along with some lesser known Lewis Carroll, Les Miserables in the original, some Mark Twain. Ulysses. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  They are free or $0.99 on the Kindle.

Tonight I finished Uncle Tom's Cabin. I knew nothing about it when I started it, other than that its author was an abolitionist and that the phrase "uncle Tom" as a pejorative originated there. So let me elaborate a bit on it for those who may know nothing more about it than I did. Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of a preacher and a staunch abolitionist. She wrote the book as a plea to Northerners to understand how bad slavery actually was, to relieve them of their moral superiority. It was published just a few years before the Civil War started, and was the best selling book of its time. I had supposed that abolitionists were fully modern in their views on racial equality, but I was completely mistaken. Naive would be a kind way to describe it, I suppose. Stowe was, in modern terms, a terrible bigot and racist. Her thesis was that although people of African decent were certainly different than whites (and possibly inferior), they were still human at least, and should be treated as such.

The rest of this post, until the last paragraph, is all spoilers.  If you care about that, either stop reading now, or skip to the end.

The book concerns the fate of a slave named Tom, known affectionately by young Master George as Uncle Tom. Tom lives on the Shelby's farm with his wife and children, and takes good care of the owner's son, George. Tom is a pious man, devout in his faith, and he can read a little of the Bible, the only thing we ever see him read. He works hard for his master, and has nearly complete control of the farm. His master is kind, and takes good care of his slaves. They still would love freedom, but realize that what they've got was a good deal compared to people around them. Unfortunately, Mr Shelby is not good with finances, and decides to settle a debt by selling a 6 year old boy to a slave trader. The boy and his mother run away from the farm, and head to Canada. Their success is far from certain. Mr Shelby eventually decides to sell Tom as well, knowing that an experienced hand like Tom will fetch a good price. Mr Shelby promises Tom that when he has raised enough money, he will send to New Orleans and buy him back.

Tom is first sold to a gentleman in New Orleans, who has many slaves but dislikes slavery. His central quandary is: "But what else is a rich man to do?" His daughter loves Tom, and when she eventually gets sick and dies, she makes her dad promise to grant Tom his freedom. He agrees to do so, and draws up the legal papers that will make Tom a free man. Before they are signed by the notary, however, the master is killed. His wife is a hard woman, and disavows her husband's promise. Again, Tom is sold. This time, he is not so lucky.

He is sold to a Simon Legree, a disturbingly brutal man without any humanity. It is on Legree's plantation that Tom reaches a final degree of religious devotion. Legree beats him near death, and Tom has a vision of the Savior. After that day, he never cares how much he is beaten. Legree is ruthless. His philosophy with slaves is that it is cheaper to buy new ones than it is to take care of the ones he already has. He hates Tom because Tom is impervious to his will. Tom works hard, faithfully, under the whip of Legree and his minions, and won't say a bad thing about him. He feels sorry for Simon, and chastises the other slaves for saying unkind things about their master. Their torturer. Their owner. He is a rapist, a murderer, and any other foul thing you can think of to describe a human.

One night, a woman slave in the house wakes Tom up. She has laced Legree's drink with something, and has an axe in her hand.  She begs Tom to go with her to the house and kill Legree and set all of the slaves free. Tom refuses. His love for Jesus is so great that he refuses to take a single human life to save a hundred other human lives. She relents, and devises another plan to escape, along with the beautiful young woman Simon recently bought. The women make their escape, and Simon beats Tom, determined to break him once and for all. He vows that either Tom will break, or he will die. Tom does not break. The women get on a boat to Canada.

Young Master George has grown up, and while settling his recently deceased father's affairs, determines to set all of his slaves free.  He first has to make good on his promise to buy Tom back. He arrives at Legree's farm in time to see Tom as he dies. He buries Tom there, and returns to Kentucky, where he informs Tom's widow and children that Tom is dead.

Who, then, is an Uncle Tom? Someone who gives in to people in authority without a thought to their own welfare or that of anyone else. Someone who has the power to stand up and make things better for his friends but refuses to do so. Some would call him a traitor. I would call him a man with narrow vision or lacking good priorities. I desperately wanted him to kill Legree, and read his speech with a sinking feeling of dread, knowing that he would take what I saw as the coward's way out. He refused to act.

The book is a swirling study of life in the 1850s, dense with religion, politics, dialects. The author's prejudices give a certain color to the text. She is a biased observer in both positive and negative ways, and deciphering an objective truth out of what she presents is often a challenge as well.  I had not thought about the personal tragedies of slavery. Of course you get the general sense of wrongness when you think or read about it in a history class, but the complete depravity of it in practice had escaped me. I just hadn't thought it through to its logical conclusion. So I'm very glad I read it, and had that chapter of American life spelled out for me in all its horror.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Feb 5, 2014 - Reason #3 I Love New York

I was born and raised in Oregon.  I spent 33 of my first 38 years there, and I never thought I would love anywhere as much as I love Oregon.

At 19, I moved to Japan to serve as a missionary for my church.  I love Japan, and found that many of my personality traits fit well into the culture there.  And I love Japan.  It's not a place I could live forever, but I could certainly spend 5 years there.  Despite my personal affinity for the culture and people and food, my 6'3" frame and other non-Japanese physical features make me an anomaly there.  While it's sometimes nice to overhear someone talking about you in a positive way, the fact they they are talking about you out loud and assuming you can't speak their language makes you feel like an outsider.  Even an admired outsider feels out of place.

Just after Aria was born, we spent 2 and a half years in Silicon Valley.  I did find some friends who got me into bicycle riding, which was great, but made few deep connections and found the culture around me to be uninteresting.  So much of the social intercourse there is based on sports, wine, coffee, cigars, and golf, that I was simply unable to participate.  I don't drink alcohol or coffee at all, do not use tobacco products, never liked baseball, and found I was so bad at golf that I couldn't enjoy it.

In NY, I find I fit in really well.  I was once working on a project in Oregon, and the customer I was working with was disingenuous with me.  He took me for a ride and I didn't have a clue.  My boss told me, "You have a transparent communication style.  You mean what you say and say what you mean.  You assume others do the same, and that's often not the case."  I suppose I'm gullible in that way, always expecting the best out of others.

So, why do I love NY?  Because I can be transparent in communication, and other people also tend to say what they mean.  They don't hide feelings, give hints, or otherwise obfuscate their true intentions.  If you are honestly trying to convey something, I will catch it and understand it.  I have a gift for that.  On the other side, if you are trying to hide something from me, or hint at something, I will likely miss it.  I have little gift for that.

What I had found in my last decade in Oregon is that people are so intent on being 'polite' to one's face that they don't honestly address problems they see.  There are people here with whom I strongly disagree from time to time.  And I can say my opinions, and they say theirs, and we understand that we have different opinions.  We're not pretending to have the same opinions to preserve a facade of nicety.  This lets us deal with our differences, compensate for them, and overall be more successful.

I think this difference also allows people to focus differently.  I'll call it the West Coast Focus (WCF) vs the ECF.  The WCF is on personal relationship harmony.  It is intent on maintaining the fiction that "I am excellent, and so are you, and thus we agree."  But inside that fiction is the truth that the individual wants other people to see him or her as superior in some way.  The WCF is about your personal worth.  The ECF is diametrically opposite - it is project and team focused.  The logic behind it is, "Let's get this project complete.  When we've done a good job, we can celebrate together."  This is where I am.  I don't care how great you think you are, and when I question what you've done or what you plan to do, I am simply interested in helping to arrive at the best possible outcome for everyone.  I'm all about the business and the process, and that meshes much better here than in the West.

The previous paragraph is full of generalizations, and they of course reflect my own narrow professional career.  But that's how I see things.  I am much more comfortable here in a professional sense, and that's my reason for loving NY today.

And we got a foot of snow today.  And other stuff, too.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Feb 1, 2014 - Gourdough's

Fair warning: this is a food post.

While in Austin this week, I was strongly encouraged to visit Gourdough's Public House.  It's a relatively new place, and seems to be quite well-known.  The locals in the class knew about it.  The menu is simple and consistent: everything comes on a donut.

Yes, a donut.

They are named suggestively.  I will refrain from repeating them here.  I had read a couple reviews, and decided against the Plain Jane and the Club.  I told the waiter that I wasn't going to choose, and that anything except for those 2 would be fine.  He came back with a large donut (no glaze, nothing funky like that), topped with a piece of fried chicken (no bones) and a creamed corn gravy with a few jalapenos on top.

So it doesn't look delicious.  Sue me.  Let me tell you, it was excellent.  I kinda expected some fries or something, and I got a lemonade (which was nice, not Minute Maid).  The jalapenos were not too hot, the donut had just a little bit of crunch to it.  It was fantastic.  When I was done, I had plenty of time, and room for dessert for a change.  So I asked the waiter to choose between a Black Betty and the Funky Monkey for me.  The Funky Monkey was fried bananas, cream cheese frosting (think Cinnabon), and something else.


He brought me the Black Betty: locally produced honey butter, blackberry sauce, cream cheese frosting on a warm donut.  Oh my goodness.  The best dessert I've ever eaten. Few things can compare.  Some crunch from the donut, savory from the butter, tartness from the blackberry.  Shocking.  Stunning.  Amazing.

I'm told the burgers are excellent as well, and frankly the whole menu looked awesome.  Enough so that I might make an attempt at home.  Fried bread.  How can you go wrong?

Now, the really intriguing thing about this for me was that I didn't feel donut-overload.  I felt comfortably full.  I had skipped lunch that day, and then had done a 5-mile trail run before going to dinner, so I didn't feel guilty, either.  So I could have 2 large donuts for dinner (as long as they're not glazed) and come away with a really excellent experience.  The kids, I think, would have a blast with the concept.

And, oddly, this now brings to mind the curry donuts sold in Japanese bakeries.  And the other savory flavors I never really got into when I was there.  Hmm.  I guess they had something going, after all.