Palestinian Child Abuse

To borrow a phrase from Charles Johnson, here's yet another lovely example of the systematic abuse of Palestinian children by their own parents.



That's a little kid. And an automatic weapon. On the shoulders of a guy, presumably his daddy.

Train 'em up right, Dad. You betcha.

People, this is WAR. These vermin do not want to negotiate with you. They want you to be DEAD. They are producing little terrorist larvae who will pupate and become the next wave of bus bombers, subway bombers and shoe bombers, all with their homicidal sights set on the infidels.

SoulFire concert tomorrow evening

Anyone interested? SoulFire is going to be playing tomorrow night at Gray's Lake, just southwest of downtown Des Moines, north of the airport on Fleur. It's a youth event called Adoration, and we're playing several sets between 7:30 and 9:30 PM. Even though it's a youth event, you're certainly welcome to show up if you're NOT technically a "youth"... there will be lots and lots of people of ALL ages there.

And then there are days...

I was pulled out of my collab Algebra class in order to last-minute sub in the Behavior-Disorder classroom for one block. The BD teacher and I are very close friends and I love her to pieces; both of her daughters were home sick today.

They don't pay her enough to do that job.

The highlight of the class period? Besides the time I physically wrestled one of them to his seat and took the teacher's notes out of his hands, that is. No, the highlight of the class period was this:

Shut the fuck up, bitch. You look more like an Oompa-Loompa than Mrs. K does.

Actually, I like most of her boys, even though they're BD kids, and I get along with them pretty well (even though it doesn't sound like it; they just communicate, um, differently). Today, however, being in their class for one block just wore me clean out. My last class of the day didn't get much from me today, because by that time my brain was pure Jell-O.

In the midst of it, I think I was actually successful making a connection with the worst one of the bunch. They were impressed by my tattoo, and this one read it out loud. "LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART. You're a Christian?" he said.

"Yes."

"What church do you go to?" he asked, his voice changing noticeably. I told him, and he said, "Do you know where Sunshine Open Bible Church is?"

"Yes, I do. Isn't it by the freeway over by Hubbell?"

"Yeah, that's it. That's where I go."

And he was a different boy for the rest of the class. This young man probably belongs in a lockup institution; he is a true basket-case in every sense of the phrase. But I now have one teeny connection with him, and maybe it'll make a difference the next time I have to sub in that classroom.

Classroom laughter

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I'm a special-ed teacher and that I have several "collaboration" classrooms this year, in which I am installed as a "helper" of sorts in a regular-ed classroom.

One of these collabs is in a beginning algebra class, with a math teacher/coach chick who's a total gas to work with. She and I get along really well and try to find humor in untenable circumstances.

In this class is one particular SPED boy who's a real piece of work. He's obviously got some serious paranoid delusion disorder going on, and it's a recipe for disaster to put him into a regular ed classroom and expect the regular-ed kids NOT to make fun of him and pick on him. He's got serious psychiatric problems and has great difficulty relating and even being in the vicinity of other kids.

Yesterday, this kid (I'll call him J for short) was pretty wound up. We've already moved him to a separate table by himself just because he can't seem to cope with sitting next to anyone, but he's even having trouble in that situation. He was complaining about everyone around him stealing his belongings (a totally typical behavior for him), and finally stated loudly, "Everybody has to make fun of everything I say!!"

It was too easy. "Which means that you should probably stop talking, J," I said calmly.

"Oh," he said, and fell silent... but continued to leer at a row of girls nearby. One of them I could see had begun to scrutinize J's face very closely. After a long, pleasant silence lasting about thirty seconds, she (in complete seriousness) piped up, "You need yo eyebrows did."

The other teacher and I collapsed in helpless laughter.

Meet Erica

This is Erica. Erica is a tenth-grader at North High School and attends the same church that I do.

As of today, Erica has lived with us for the past two weeks.

Erica's adult sister and shack-up punk loser boyfriend and their babies moved back home with Mom, and boyfriend decided to try getting friendly with little sister. Erica, a Christian and a good student, wanted none of it. Mom, in serious need of a spine, couldn't bring herself to kick the bums out.

We've worked it out with Mom to let Erica stay with us until sister and punk are able to move out. It's actually a pretty easy fit since she goes to the school where I teach AND goes to the church I attend.

Erica's on the swim team at the high school, is in the JROTC, and is in advanced classes. She works hard and is cheerful and funny. My kids love her and have already accepted the situation as completely normal. She shares Martha's bedroom; Martha doesn't often use her own bed anyway, so she's got a comfy air mattress. The two of them get along beautifully.

I don't know how long this will last, nor can I answer long-term questions like what happens over holidays, etc... we'll just take this one day at a time and see what God does with it.

It's my favorite book, too!

Which book of the Bible are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

---

Thanks to SarahK for this cool quiz. The description fits me EXACTLY. And Ephesians is probably my favorite book of the Bible, at least it has been for the past five or ten years.

WOW

Today was an incredible day.

Absolutely incredible.

I have never played for that many people before in my whole life. There were easily three thousand people in that place, and not only did I get to play (even solo stuff), but I played the entire set without a single scrap of sheet music.

[happy dancing]

God is so good! He has done incredible things for me, even though I never deserved them. Not only do I get to serve Him, but I get to have FUN serving Him. Doing the "stage" stuff doesn't begin and end with the "stage" part, though. It starts weeks before, with practicing and planning, then it means spending hours and hours on the day before... setting up, carrying the instruments and mics and equipment, hooking it all up, plugging it in, testing the sound levels... then getting up waaaay early on the day of the event, making sure all the loose ends are tied up, going over the order of events one more time... then the actual EVENT... then when it's all over, staying behind to pack everything back up, unplug all the cords and wrap them up, sort them out, put the instruments back into their cases and tote them out to the trucks, take them back to the original location and set them BACK up there so they'll be ready for the next time... but you know what? I like doing all that stuff too. I've learned a lot in the past year about how to do setup and where everything goes, etc., so that I can be more useful and not just a "stage diva" type who can't be bothered to actually work.

The event today was called Grace Fellowship. It was actually a combined worship service for six different congregations around the central Iowa area, held at the Polk County Convention Center in downtown Des Moines. Five of those churches were started by one church, Grace Church. That church used to be known as Des Moines Baptist Church, but in 1992 moved to its new building on the east side and changed its name to simply Grace Church. In 1995, several families attending Grace Church left to begin a new church in Norwalk -- FCC. Not too long after that, another group left to start a church in West Des Moines -- called Grace West. Another group started a church in Ankeny, another on the southeast side of Des Moines, and another in the town of Woodward nearby. One of the very coolest things about all these churches is that they weren't begun because of a fight among the members of Grace... they weren't the result of discord and a church split. No, they were people who, although they loved their church (Grace), had a vision for a like-minded church in their own community. Now all these churches cooperate and support one another. They're also not "clone" churches; none of the new ones really resemble Grace in anything except the driving urge to share Jesus with everyone they come in contact with. Each church has its own character and flavor, and all together this morning they combined to make one humongous and enthusiastic crowd of folks.

Before the huge worship service at 10 AM, there was a big youth service downstairs at 9 AM and SoulFire led worship there. The room was standing-room-only; totally packed-out with teenagers and totally rockin' -- although I have to say here that FCC's youth made up the large bulk of those in attendance AND that FCC's youth were the most engaged, involved, active ones there as well. I'm hoping that by combining, we can start the "fire" in all these other groups too. Anyway, as soon as we'd finished our last song, I dashed out the door and up the back stairs to get ready for the big service.

They had cameras doing live shots all throughout the service and displaying them on big screens at the front and middle of the room. Jeff did an absolutely fantastic job leading... he was born to do that, and it's just COOL to be able to work alongside him and help him. That's actually when I'm happiest -- when I'm working with an honest-hearted leader like Jeff or Tim, helping them accomplish what they're doing, getting inside their head so I can intuitively "know" what they need without having to be asked. I don't relish the leadership position myself, although I will fill it if I have to.

---

Things don't slow down for me now, even though this big event is behind me. There's still regular band practice for Sunday morning, and then SoulFire has several gigs coming up in the next two weeks or so, so we've got practices for that. I'm also in the midst of planning seven weeks of worship services for this fall. And this week I'm producing another silly video. The last one I did actually accomplished its purpose -- we know of a couple of folks specifically who stated that they made the decision to join a small group because of the video. Yay! This time, I'm focusing on getting people to decide to HOST a small group in their home.

Unusual phenomenon

I have seen some interesting sky-light phenomena since moving further north. The most interesting, besides the aurora borealis of course, has been the "sun-dogs" that you see when it's extremely cold out, say 25-below or more, and the sun is shining. The ice crystals in the air somehow refract to make you see three suns instead of just one -- the one in the middle is the real one, and then there are two off to either side about fifteen to twenty compass-degrees. Very, very cool; if it happens this winter, I'll try to catch it on camera for you.

The other night, however, it was just an average temp... not too hot, not too cold, nor had it been raining at all... but I saw a spot in the sky, a zig-zag piece of light almost like a teeny segment of a rainbow, to the left of the sun about twenty degrees. I snapped a couple of pictures:



Notice the actual sun is behind a cloud, the brighter area on the right side of the photograph. Then on the left side, about a third of the way in from the side, there's a bright spot that has a bit of a spectrum effect on it. Don't know if you can see it, but the actual thing was pretty weird-looking if a person cared to notice. Pretty soon it dissipated:



I'm going to try to hunt down the name of this phenomenon. When I find out, I'll post it. I'm pretty sure no-one cares about it as much as I do, but I find it interesting and I want to know.

Artists come in many shapes and sizes

This summer I have been admiring the work of a very small and yet very gifted artist who lives in one upper corner of my porch. She does amazingly beautiful web work, and I like to reward her from time to time by tossing a moth into her creation so she can have a nice meal. Tonight I decided to try to capture her with the camera. I couldn't really photograph the gossamer silk of her web, but I did get one of her wrapping her dinner.



As best as I can determine, she's a Neoscona crucifera, or a Hentz' Orbweaver.

I am actually horribly afraid of spiders, to the point of an unreasonable phobic sort of reaction to them, but I have always felt somewhat differently about the orb-weaver spiders like this velvety brown lady and her flashier cousins the garden-spiders and orchard spiders. I still would probably wet myself if one actually touched me, but their web work is an amazing thing to behold and I can appreciate good art wherever I come across it.

The spiders which give me nightmares are these:



This is a funnel weaver, or a grass spider... an Agelenopsis, to be precise. They weave these sheet-like non-sticky webs with a funnel where they hide, and when something walks across the outside sheet, they race out and attack it with heart-stopping speed. Spiders like these that move super-fast are the kind I am most horrified by. They like to live all over our porch, too. I like to get a broom and make their webs disappear, but I'm usually even afraid to use a broom on their webs because the idea that one of the spiders might get onto the broom handle and crawl up it ... oh, garsh, that just gives me the cold shivers. AAAHH! Oh good grief, Bijou, why do you have to walk by my foot just at the wrong moment? Holy cow, I think I need a change of clothes.

I don't have the same visceral fear of snakes... I do have a healthy respect for the venomous kind, but I'm not in the least bit afraid to pick up a garter snake or a ball python. In fact, I think they're awesome.

Do YOU have any phobias?

Congratulations

I'm very happy to say that last night, my lil' sister Beth accepted a proposal of marriage from Mr. Brian Roark.

[wild cheers and applause]



God has blessed both of them individually, and now as a team I know He's got big stuff in store for them. I asked her what the date was, and she said sometime next May. Yay! That will mean I get to make a trip to Texas at one of the nicest times of year there. I can't wait.

---

A couple of years ago, I ran off one of her potential suitors... what are big sisters for, anyhow?... but they had been together for a couple of years already and I just sensed that he loved himself way more than he loved her. So I called him up and just said, "Do you love my sister?"

He spluttered and got defensive, as if I had no right to ask the question.

Wrong answer. If you can't unequivocally, wholeheartedly say that you love her, then you don't need to be stringing her along anymore, because she is a PRIZE and you darn well better be worshipping the ground she walks on if you intend to make this permanent. I can ask any question I darn well please... you aren't obligated to answer, of course, but your refusal to answer is certainly an answer in itself.

---

Forgetting what is behind, however, as the Apostle Paul so eloquently put it, we move on to what is ahead. Brian does love my sister, I can tell without asking. I'm glad he's joining the family and I look forward to what God's got planned for them and for all of us!

September... never a dull month

Nice, long SoulFire practice tonight. It felt good, but it's been almost two weeks since we were able to practice together, so it also felt a little rusty. It's funny how that is with us. We've all really been under the gun from our "regular lives" so to speak, too, so we're all a bit distracted in other ways. But it was a useful practice and we worked out some kinks.

Tomorrow the kids are out of school for a teacher workday. Which means my kids have to be farmed out to friends, 'cuz Mom & Dad both gotta work. Which means I have the lovely opportunity to sit through yet a few more highly entertaining and engrossing meetings. [retching sound]

This weekend is a MAJOR event for church -- haven't there been an awful lot of MAJOR events lately? I'm looking forward to a little string of ordinary Sundays, to be honest. But this one will be cool. All the churches that were started by the original Grace Church on the east side of Des Moines are getting together for one big worship service... and I GET TO BE ON STAGE!! There will be well over a thousand people there, possibly a lot more than that.

You never would've gotten me to believe a year ago that I'd be doing what I'm doing right now. One year ago this month marks some major pain, major joy, major anxiety and depression for me. My mom had her heart transplant last September 3rd; the couple of days leading up to that were some of the most wrenching and stressful of my life to that point as I watched my young little mother (only in her mid-50s) fighting for her life and then coming BACK to life after the priceless gift someone gave her by dying.

Right after I returned home from the stratospheric high of that experience, I experienced an agonizing and altogether sudden parting-of-ways with people I loved with every fiber of my being... not to mention the fact that I had just returned to the work force after a ten-year hiatus, and I was faced with the incredible stress of learning state education regulations for Iowa, learning the names and needs of a sea of special-ed students, learning to navigate between friends and foes among the staff... on top of all that, I was being gradually made aware of horrible things that had happened to people I knew, horrible things that had been DONE by people I knew... it was like the biggest flood of STUFF I have ever endured all at once. I was drowning in it and was not even able to speak of it. I'm still not able to speak of most of it, and honestly don't care to. I am THROUGH with the whole lot of it. T-H-R-O-U-G-H. Never going back.

I was adrift. I knew I needed for my kids to be in a stable church with people I trusted to teach the truth, but wasn't sure where that would be. I visited a small church on the north side of the city for a few Sundays and for a few evening small-group sessions, but something never really clicked. I didn't attend with the desire to lead worship or even really participate in leading worship; they already had a great set of musicians, so I didn't feel like I was being "recruited" as I might've somewhere else. I settled in, thinking my worship-leading days were over, and that was okay with me. In fact, if I never did it again, it was okay with me. Whatever God wanted for me, that was what I wanted, even if it meant giving up something I loved doing.

And then I visited FCC, and the arms of that place and its people wrapped themselves around me, enveloping me in a huge sense of "home" and I knew that it would be okay again. No, not okay. MORE than okay. I had endured "okay" for so long that it was almost startling to come upon something so much more.

Anyway, looks like September is going to be a hard month for me again this year, but this year I have an undergirding of support replacing the threads I was hanging by last year. Which is a good thing. The month isn't over yet, nor are the crises. I'll fill you in as things develop... just be in prayer for Rick's health and for my emotional state, for the kids' health and for their school, etc. As Rosanne Rosanna-Danna used to say, "It's always somethin'. It's never nothin'."

Tru dat.

Sneaky thieves

Looks like banks have been quietly cashing in on Katrina via higher gas prices. It ain't all the oil companies' fault...

Talk about weaselly.

Nope

Okay, for some reason Blogger just doesn't want to post for me tonight. I'm going to try this again. With my luck, sometime during the middle of the night, there will suddenly be six versions of this post showing up on my blog and I'll have to go in and delete all but one of them.

Anyway, here's the deal. I did not get a "B" in my class.

I do have other options, which I'll enumerate here at a later date, but for now, please don't mention this subject to me. I don't want to talk about it. I'll deal with it myself, and I'll let you know what comes of it after I do.

That is all.

Which classic leading-lady are you?

I hate small planes anyway, so I'm good with this one.

Carole Lombard
You scored 21% grit, 14% wit, 52% flair, and 30% class!



You're a little bit of a fruitcake, but you always act out in style. You have a good sense of humor, are game for almost anything, but you like to have nice things about you and are attracted to the high life. You're stylish and modern, but you've got a few rough edges that keep you from attaining true sophistication. Your leading men include William Powell, Fredric March, and Clark Gable. Watch out for small planes.

Link: The Classic Dames Test.

Find out what kind of classic leading man you'd make by taking the Classic Leading Man Test.

Interstitial Cystitis

I want to direct your attention now to a cause which is near and dear to me -- finding a cure for interstitial cystitis, or IC. I have a dear, dear friend who has suffered with IC for many years and it's a vicious, secret kind of suffering.

My friend BlogDog at Pugs Of War is also crusading for a cure; he's the one who inspired me to post about it.

What is IC?

Interstitial cystitis (IC) is a chronic inflammatory condition of the bladder. Its cause is unknown. "Common" cystitis, also known as a urinary tract infection, is caused by bacteria and is usually successfully treated with antibiotics. Unlike common cystitis, IC is believed not to be caused by bacteria and does not respond to conventional antibiotic therapy. It is important to note that IC is not a psychosomatic disorder nor is it caused by stress.

IC can affect people of any age, race or sex. It is, however, most commonly found in women. Recent epidemiological data suggest that there may be greater than 700,000 cases of IC in the US.

Hopefully now that there's an increased interest in IC among researchers, more successful treatment regimens can be found to eliminate IC or at least control it.

Avian flu

I took the time to read an article to my Resource students yesterday about the avian flu outbreak in Asia. I like to do discussions about current events with them, and they respond well to these discussions. Occasionally one of them will even say something that brings a smile to my face, and usually that one student is Dominique. He entertained me last year with his quips and offhand statements, and he's still at it.

His comment after I read the chilling article about the deadly possibilities of the avian flu, should that virus ever mutate into a form which can be transmitted human-to-human?

"I'm gonna smack me a duck if I see 'im."

Limited access

Okay, the one thing that could coax me into blogging, and that's something from the Associate Press wire that's so outrageous, I can't be silent.

I get an e-mail notice when news or articles about certain topics hit the wire. Often I'm too busy to deal with them, as I am now, but this one's title just set me off and I had to read the full text of the article to see if I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Yep. I was.

Abortion opponents hope to limit access for California girls

SAN FRANCISCO - Abortion opponents in California have tried for over two decades to make it harder for girls to terminate pregnancies without their parents' knowledge. In the special election called by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, they may finally get their chance.

Among the most hotly contested of the eight initiatives on the November ballot is a constitutional amendment that would require doctors to give parents or guardians written notice 48 hours before performing an abortion on a minor.

Adults would not have to consent to the procedure, but sponsors hope the notification requirement would reduce California's teen abortion rate - the nation's fourth-highest - by getting parents in on the decision.

Excuse me?

Am I reading this correctly?

California minor girls are currently allowed to have an abortion without their parents' knowledge or consent? And they're trying to push through a bill requiring abortion docs to inform parents... not even getting their consent, just letting them know... huh?

I wonder what the laws in California are about body piercings and tattoos?

For that matter, what about the death penalty? I'll bet they don't dole THAT out to minors, do they? So minors ARE capable of making a decision to undergo a major medical procedure which murders another human being, but they can't be held fully responsible in the decision to murder another human being who's already been born.

Anyway, the Planned Parenthood crowd is up-in-arms about it, as one might expect.

If the measure passes, California would become the 16th state with a parental notification law (another 19 require parental consent.) But given its size, "blue" state sensibilities and status among the dwindling number of states where girls have unfettered access to abortion, national abortion rights advocates are concerned, especially as President Bush fills two vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I hope it's not a bellwether and I hope it doesn't pass," said Dr. Wendy Chavkin, chairwoman of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, which is dispatching doctors to debates and public meetings as part of the No on 73 campaign.

Though opponents are optimistic that the amendment will fail, Californians have expressed conservative leanings at the ballot box before, and the notion of parental notification resonates with many voters who favor legalized abortion, but don't think it's out of line for the state to help a 13-year-old's parents learn that she's pregnant.

HELLO!!! I would want to know if someone had been sexually assaulting my CHILD!! Are these PP-types not mandatory reporters? Doesn't this qualify? I don't get it.

This is about parents' rights," said Cindy Moles, who directs the anti-abortion group Concerned Women of America's activities in San Diego, Imperial and Riverside counties. "In California you can't let your daughter get her ears pierced without parental permission, and yet she can get a not-insignificant surgical procedure with someone else making the decisions."

Yep, just what I thought. Makes a whole lot of sense, doesn't it? The suck-em-into-the-sink advocates have really got our sense of right and wrong turned completely inside-out.

Equally disturbing to Maggie Crosby, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, is a clause in the amendment defining abortion as a procedure that "causes the death of the unborn child." Inserting that label into the state Constitution, rather than a medical term such as fetus or embryo, "can have far-reaching consequences on everything from stem cell research to fertility treatments and it's totally unnecessary to the definition of abortion," Crosby said.

No, no, no... don't tell people THE TRUTH, for heaven's sake. You BET it would have far-reaching consequences. The truth tends to do that.

The last line of the article is a typical punch-the-straw-man tack:

"People realize you can't amend the Constitution to force teens to talk to their parents," said Kathy Kneer, executive director of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.

Re-define the issue, Kathy. This is all about parents being out-of-touch with their teenagers. Strain that gnat and ignore those camels.

This is not about rebellious teenagers. "Those darn kids, they just gotta rebel, nothing you can do about it." Nope, this is waaaaaaaay more than rebellion. This is about the life of your daughter who's being sexually violated (willing or no, she's not old enough to legally consent to such activities, so it's assault), and it's about the life of a baby who did not choose to be created and who doesn't merit the death penalty simply for being.

Crunch week

This is the final week of my statistics class, so I'm signing off for a few days until I can catch up and get everything turned in.

Here's the main thing that's depressing me so badly right now: I have to get at least a B in this class in order to remain in the master's program. If I don't get at least a B, then I have to sit out for a year before I can resume classes.

I'm fairly certain I won't be able to pull a B in this class. So I'm feeling as though I'm making an effort for nothing. Don't let anyone suggest to you that getting a degree online from the University of Phoenix is much easier. It isn't.

I don't know what I'm going to do after this. I haven't checked to see; it's possible that the state licensure place won't hassle me since I've gotten at least some classwork out of the way. Once this class really is done and I know for sure what's happening, I'll tote my paperwork down to the licensure office and see where the chips fall.

In the meantime, I'm going to be MIA for a few days.

Home today

I'm taking a day off work today, not for myself, but because Rick is having some medical testing done under sedation and will need me to take care of him. He's a very low-maintenance guy and doesn't really want to be fussed-over when he's ill, so I'm expecting to be able to get a few things accomplished.

First on the agenda is going back to bed after the kids get on the bus.

While I'm sitting at the clinic, I'm going to be reading my statistics book. Cat-free this time, of course. I actually love kitty-cats and I would probably have a couple even now IF I didn't have people close to me who are highly allergic to them. My dad can't stand cats, so I never really had one as a kid. When I was really really little, like 2 or 3, we did have an ill-tempered Siamese cat, aptly named Jezebel. I don't really remember her, however; I only know of her because of a couple of pictures and from the notorious stories of my pre-teen aunt Patti tossing the cat at my dad (her brother-in-law) so it would scratch him.

No wonder Jezebel was ill-tempered, eh? I would be, too.

My favorite kitty was one we had back in the mid-90s. I had discovered her as a kitten, near a church in Blossom, Texas, where I was teaching Vacation Bible School. She was trapped by her long fur in a blackberry bramble and was mewing pitifully. I untangled her carefully and took her to the vet, where it was discovered that she had a big grub-like skin parasite. He removed it carefully and held it up. It looked exactly like a miniature version of a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine creature called Dax. So that's what I named her -- Dax. She was a tuxedo long-haired beauty with a sweet, vivacious personality. She spent time indoors and outdoors, and one day she disappeared. I know she must've been swiped, because she was not one to leave for long periods of time. She was an unusual cat, too, in that even though she was a longhaired cat, she wasn't much of a shedder. I wish we could still have her; she'd be about twelve now and a grand old ladycat.

Gotta round the kids up; time to start the day.

Don't tell me you didn't see this one coming

Hat tip: Lair Simon

I knew, I knew, I KNEW that the moment they began issuing debit cards to hurricane victims that we'd see this sort of thing happening.

[steam coming from ears]

Your tax dollars at work, folks.

Bijou the Reject

My friend Kevin has been photoshopping again, the evil dastardly fellow that he is. He isn't impressed with my little dog and doesn't pass up an opportunity to remind me of it:



At least Bijou doesn't care. In fact, if he showed up on the doorstep, she'd probably greet him ecstatically. That's how she greets pretty much anybody. Okay, so she's not much of a guard dog, but I think I'd rather she be sweet than protective.

Besides, I'm guard-dog enough for this house. Rick once told me, not too long after we married, that if anyone ever broke into the house while we were home, he was siccing his wife on them. Rrowr!

Never try to study in someone's house when they have friendly cats

I went to some friends' house the other day to try to get some quiet studying done, since their house is much quieter than mine.

I forgot about the cats.



Underneath that cat in the foreground is my textbook. They all three came into the dining room and lounged on the table in front of me.



Bear: "Don't even try to use that pen, woman. It's mine now."



Bear: "And don't YOU think about it either, Sami."



Mac: "The book is MINE. I am a substantial cat and when I sit around the house, I really sit around the house, if you know what I mean. Study, schmuddy. Admire me. Skritch me."



Who could possibly resist this regal gentleman cat? But I really needed to finish reading that chapter, so I hefted him carefully off my book. Sami, however, is not so easily convinced.



Skritching and studying... who could ask for more?

Sunday

Most of the time, if I don't post at least something each day, Joe gets worried about me and calls me up. "Just checking on you, since you haven't blogged," she'll say. I love that.

This morning I arrived at church at 6:30 AM... I did have alarm-clock problems, but Rick caught me in time and noodged me awake again. What would I do without him? Anyway, he said that my alarm DID ring, and that I turned it off. I have no recollection of that. It woke him up, however.

I tried to save my Windows MovieMaker movie to a DV-R, but for some reason my laptop isn't recognizing my CD-drive even though it's supposed to also be a DVD-burner as well as a CD one. I may take it in to CompUSA this week to see if it's just a setting I need to fix or if there's actually a problem. Anyway, we had to use an e-mailed version of my little silent movie, and the quality was totally totally crappy. I was really bummed. I plan on making a few more movies like that, but if they're going to look that bad... I do have the option of making the movie over at Tim's on his G5, which I may do next time.

At any rate, the version that played was just barely viewable on the big screen, but it still got laughs. That was one of the goals. The other goal was to get people to join a small group. I'll find out eventually if it worked. You can watch it here: Small Group Video.

The church is having a set of revival services for the next few days, but I doubt I'll be going. Not that I don't need "reviving" or anything; there's always room for improvement. But I heard him this morning and, while he seems to be a very nice guy, he doesn't keep my attention very well. Probably because he wasn't saying anything particularly striking or compelling, at least to me. I'm sure there were people to whom it was wonderful stuff, and that's fine. But unless a speaker is really dynamic or unless I happen to know the person and have a lot of respect for them, it's a waste of time for me to sit and listen because I won't. I'll draw pictures, I'll daydream, I'll fall asleep, what-have-you. My time is better spent here at home.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when I begin mentoring one of the girls from our youth group. She's an outstanding person and I'm very humbled that she chose me. I want to live up to that level of trust.

Busy Saturday

I started off the morning today with a jolt.

"It's 8:30, Kris!" Rick nudged me awake. I was supposed to be at church for practice at 9 AM.

"OH, CRAP!" I hissed, leaping out of bed. I stayed up late last night working on that video editing project for church, and I guess my internal wake-up-at-6 clock had shut itself off. I threw on some clothes, ran a pick through my mangled hair, and left.

This morning, we had an orientation meeting at Grace Church, over on the east side. In a couple of weeks, all the churches in the area which were originally planted by Grace (including my own) are holding a giant worship service together at the convention center downtown. All of us who are participating in it had to get together and figure out what we're doing. The worship band (led by Jeff) practiced until 11:30 using Grace Church's sound system.

Can I just interject something here? I was rather underwhelmed by the sound system there at Grace. Their new sanctuary-area (completed just a few years ago, maybe two or three) was not at all set up with decent sound. It's an enormous room, roughly semi-circular, set up with pews (yuk -- I do NOT like pews, they're way too traditional and they're too permanent, meaning they can't all be taken up and the room used for other purposes). A church as big as Grace should've invested way more in their sound system, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a musician. As a worship planner and someone who's spend lots of time studying the issue, I find that a really really excellent sound system makes a major difference in the experience of even the least-musical person in the room. It ought to be THE main expenditure when a church is putting together their worship area, period. Stained-glass windows, carved oak trim... phooey. Useless crap. And this from an artistic person who loves beautiful things. Anyway, you can have the most talented musicians in the city volunteering in your church's worship band, and they'll still sound like a garage band if the sound equipment (and technicians) ain't good.

Anyway, the sound system at Grace is just NOT set up to handle a band. Period. From what I could tell, it's cobbled together with substandard, recycled junk. That equipment ought to be the stuff they use when they set up something outdoors or in the gymnasium. The stuff in their beautiful new worship area ought to be good.

Yes, I'm opinionated. And usually right.

Whatever else its flaws may be, FCC invested in an absolutely top-notch sound system, and it shows. I'm spoiled now, and that's a fact. I'm not content with crappy sound anymore. Yes, I'll make do when I need to -- and I won't complain if there's nothing anyone can do about it, such as if we're traveling in Brazil or something.

Which brings me to the afternoon, and SoulFire practice. The way I see it, we're never going to move ahead and actually take this thing somewhere until we have our own equipment -- speakers, amps, monitors, mics, instruments (for me, anyway), etc. It's going to cost an arm and a leg, but it's what I'm praying for -- if it's God's plan to take SoulFire someplace further, that is. It all belongs to God anyway, and if He wants us to use it to serve Him, He can certainly drop it into our laps.

SoulFire practice went exceptionally well. Tim asked us what we wanted to practice, and I immediately spoke up. "Great and Glorious King," I said.

Chagrined, Tim looked at me. "You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?"

You see, I've noticed that Tim seems very reluctant to do the originals that he wrote. I think it's because he feels a little like it's self-serving or something. I look at it just the opposite, however. The songs he wrote, are really OUR songs. They're SoulFire's songs... sort-of our signatures as a band. They're what sets us down the path of being more than just a cover band. Tim may have written them, but they're mine now, and Mark's, and AJ's, and Amy's. And even Mike's and Steve's. They're ours. And if I have to keep encouraging and pestering Tim to embrace his talent and own it unashamedly, then I will.

Anyway, I insisted that I wanted to play G&GK, so we did. We actually haven't played it in quite a while, and were a little rusty, but once we stretched ourselves back into it, it sounded beautiful. Whenever I listen to the SoulFireLive CD, I remember that it was probably the second or third time I ever played G&GK, and now that it's been a few months since that first concert, I can hear so many places that I'd like to have done differently. I'm so much better at it than I was then. But oh well!

After we'd practiced that, Tim opened the floor again for suggestions (he's a reluctant leader, that's certain) and I piped up again. "I want to do 'Surrender'," I said. He looked at me again with that look. This time, Mark backed me up, as did Steve. So we did it, and then Tim had a suggestion for a slight change in the way we did the song. We added in the change and it sounds fabulous! I can't wait to do it again, and to eventually do it in concert somewhere.

I also spent some time this afternoon reading my statistics textbook. Yeah, that was a big thrill, let me tell you. Standard deviations, z-scores and histograms -- oh my!

Old people with death wishes

Yeah, David, I know I'm just a pup. But nobody's as old as YOU are. I did think about titling the post, "Fat Chick With A Death Wish" but changed my mind. Anyhoo...







The Purple Fish Family are here for supper, and Blue Fish brought along the longboard he just built. I didn't even wipe out, can you believe it? Next time, Red Fish and I are going street-lugeing. Don't let anyone tell you that thirty-somethings don't know how to have fun.

UPDATE: And thanks to Blue Fish for helping me figure out what in the world I was doing with a video camera. I have now successfully produced my first video, a three-minute "silent" movie with ragtime music in the background. I hope they like it.

Fifth grade, fall 1977

That was the year I was deeply, madly in love with Andy Gibb. Shaun Cassidy was SOOO fourth grade, and my classmates who proudly toted his album to "Record Day" in music class, where we were allowed to play one of our own records, were totally like babies for still liking Shaun Cassidy. Andy Gibb was way cuter and more mature.

That was also the year that it was the in thing to have a Goody comb sticking up out of your back pocket, with which you were able to carefully "feather" your bangs at any given moment.

I had the comb. I had the album. I didn't really have the feathered-hair thing down pat for a couple more years.

BeatCanvas meets GradualDazzle!!

Brett from BeatCanvas came over to our place tonight to talk art and web site development. I felt a little in awe; he's so knowledgeable about site developing, whereas I don't know the first thing about it. He also brought along his very, very cool watercolor art tote-box thingy, and I'm definitely envious of that! He's such a gifted guy and I'm privileged to get to know him better.

And yes, Brett, I'll go make a repro of SandPonies for you. I'm glad that you like it so much.

Saturation level?

I've heard of the phrase "point of diminishing returns" and my feeble understanding of it is that, at some point, the benefits of a particular activity eventually cease to outweigh the cost of performing the activity.

Of course, the problem with ME is that I work best under pressure. I wish that weren't the case, but it's true -- I require external motivation to complete most anything I undertake. Left with too much free time and I begin to vegetate... like a liquid which takes the form of its container, I do actually require a container with rigid walls to hold my shape rather than being able to hold my shape independently.

I'm putting together a video for church on Sunday and I don't have the first notion of how to edit video, or even operate a digital videocam. I think I was able to capture some video tonight, but I haven't yet figured out how to transfer it onto my laptop so I can work with it.

Thank goodness for Blue Fish; I know that HE knows what he's doing, and he and the entire Purple Fish Guts family will be coming over on Friday evening... hopefully we can put something together or at least figure out where to begin.

I'm really looking forward to Thursday night as well. We're having a very special guest over, and I'm excited! More about that tomorrow, though.

For Jeff at Trainorphans.com

I don't know why, but I thought of you when I took this picture.



I thought maybe you'd enjoy the unusual thing I found growing among the chives in my herb garden!

Good Eats

No, not Alton Brown's show on the Food Network. "Good Eats" around this house seems to consist of pizza from Casey's convenience store.





Hey, it's cheap and the kids are happy. What more could a mom want?

That gigantic bag of "Fruity Dino-Bites" beside Martha? That's what most of her DNA is now made up of, I'm guessing.

Pokeberries

They're getting ripe. I've always thought they were such a nice shade of quinacridone violet. I won't be using them in any jams or jellies, however, since I understand them to be quite poisonous.



I do, however, love harvesting the young, tender leaves and boiling them up for a mess o' greens. They're very strong-tasting, much stronger and wilder than collards or spinach. My granddad says that when he was a little kid growing up in rural southern Oklahoma during the Depression, they used to slice up the stems of the poke plant and fry it like okra. I haven't ever tried that, but I heart fried okra and that's a scarce item up this far north, so I may resort to fried pokestem at some point.

I'm sure my neighbors all think I'm like Granny Clampett when I tote my basket out into the backyard and start picking weeds for supper. Hey, they don't know what they're missing, these freaky people who think cornbread should have SUGAR in it. Puh-leeze.

Humor, anyone?

I recommend downloading the weekly podcast from IMAO. Very, very snarky.

No, you don't have to own an iPod to listen... the word "podcasting" is just one of those things like "Kleenex" where the brand name becomes the generic name for the product. No, if your computer has speakers (or a headphone jack), you too can listen to the IMAO podcast!

I can't wait to meet some of these people at the wedding of FrankJ and SarahK in December.

Tribes

Bill Whittle doesn't post often, but when he does post one of his essays, it's significant enough that you should stop whatever you're doing and go read it.

Tribes is the name of the essay he posted today.

Another reason why I love my church

They're not afraid to shut the doors on holidays and tell people to spend time with their families. We did have church this morning, but we only had one service instead of two, and no Sunday night meetings were held. A significant group of church members had even gone camping together for the weekend and were holding their own mini-services at the lake.

I'm ecstatic at the prospect of sleeping past 7 AM tomorrow morning, myself. I love sleeping. Maybe even a little bit more than I love chocolate.

I was invited to drive a golf cart and play caddy to several of the bandmembers tomorrow, as they made plans to hit the links. As If. You people want to go play eighteen, more power to you. But unless your golf course is equipped with wi-fi, I ain't interested. I have work to do. Nothing against golf or golfers; it's a decent enough game as far as games go. But I have some knuckle-down research to wade through concerning year-round schooling and whether it results in learning improvement.

Like I care about that, either, to tell you the truth. Caddying would actually be a lot more fun, since it would mean spending time with some of my favorite peeps. But driving a golf cart isn't going to get me my master's degree, unfortunately. [sigh]

A mom's gotta brag about her talented kids, doesn't she?

My friend Kevin's been Photoshopping again... this time, he's revealed the treasure-trove of artistic genius that IS my family:



Heh.

Now playing...

Dave Brubeck, Time Signatures: A Career Retrospective.

Are you detecting a piano jazz bent lately? I'm telling you that I have never heard a more beautiful rendition of "Georgia On My Mind" than the one on this CD set. Don't even get me started on "My Favorite Things"... and his classic "Take Five" is unparalleled. I find his style compelling.

I wasn't exposed to jazz as an art form when I was young. My formative music was 60s, 70s and 80s rock as well as high classical music and opera (a weird juxtaposition, but it's the way it was). As an adult musician I've come to realize the gaping hole left by this oversight in my musical education, and I'm eagerly filling it with the amazing work of the great jazz masters, little by little. I want to understand it, and the only way I will do that is to soak it up while I'm studying or blogging or surfing, late at night when my mind is at its most alert.

Couldn't have said it better...

The Intellectual Activist has put words to exactly what I had been thinking all day today:

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

I was talking to mom earlier today and mentioned that pickup trucks loaded with people wielding automatic weapons is a common sight in Haiti... and that it shocked me that it had been happening in our own country. But it occurs to me that many Haitians and lifelong welfare recipients in the US have something in common -- the expectation that that everything they get comes from someone else.

I know that saying this isn't going to go over well with my more left-leaning friends, and I don't say it to sound harsh and insensitive. On the contrary, I feel terribly responsible as a collective nation that we have fostered this helpless mentality in so many people by continuing to enslave them to a squalid meager existence provided free of charge.

What I would imagine seeing in, say, my own city of Des Moines in such a natural disaster is that people help one another, provide for one another without hesitation, behave decently, etc... and it saddens me that we're seeing such a different picture in New Orleans. Actually, Des Moines did endure a terrible flood back in 1993, and people took care of one another as best as they could.

I've done a lot of reading about adoption issues in the past eleven years since I became an adoptive parent. One thing I've read about orphaned children, particularly some of the ones from badly-run orphanages in Eastern European countries, is that the "orphanage mentality" comes out in them. They have no opportunity to learn and grown, only to receive -- day after day after day -- and that this environment fosters hoarding, competing, and microcosmic mafiosos among the residents of these facilities.

Is the city of New Orleans just one gigantic orphanage? You know, orphanages were almost always run by charitable groups, even churches... well-meaning groups whose efforts assuaged their guilt AND kept the "riff-raff" from interacting with them at the same time. Not too unlike the liberal left... whose charitable acts always seem to filter through a governmental funnel.

We could say that, instead of orphanages, we should set up a "foster care" system, where people who receive long-term state assistance would be paired up with a guardian family of sorts. But even foster care is a poor substitute for what should've happened, and that's an intact original family that functioned properly and cared for its young responsibly.

We haven't done that. We've just handed out bowls of watery soup to them and warehoused them in bleak concrete housing projects. Is it any wonder they're behaving like animals now? It's how they've been conditioned to respond.

It doesn't mean we don't help in times like this. But it does mean we have a lot of cleaning-up to do afterwards... much more than just cleaning up the physical damage, we must strive to re-establish the cultural foundations of hard work, responsibility and decency. We've failed a couple of generations and I hope it's not too late to rectify this colossal mistake.

Lost in translation...

In one of my Resource classes today, we were discussing the possibility of taking the class to a nearby elementary school to read to some first-graders.

"This is a small enough class, we'd fit into my van," I noted, surveying the group.

"Shotgun!" Tiffany declared.

Sinxay (pronounced SEEN-say) laughed and told us that the first time he heard that (he's from Laos), his cousin had said it when they were all about to get into a vehicle together. Alarmed, he told his cousin, "I'm not riding with you if you're carrying a shotgun."

Now playing...

Thelonious Monk, The Complete Blue Note Recordings.

Yes, I'm here

Haven't been able to post, however. I have felt like total pigpoop every single afternoon. First week of school just seems to suck the life out of me. I'm behind in my college class and feeling totally panicky about it. I'm fighting some bug, struggling with demons old and new, trying to keep from throwing up (I haven't gotten down a meal in a while), and trying to keep from missing obligations.

And yet I watch the news and realize afresh just what a selfish little pig I really am. It sometimes amazes me that life goes on around us when such devastation occurs. Could we just stop time for a few weeks/months and tend to our wounds?

It doesn't happen that way, though. I still have to pass this class. I still have to grade papers. I still have to make supper for the kids. I still have to learn new music. All the while knowing that there are some who can't.

Somebody tell Leon Everett that it really does take a lot of water to wash away New Orleans... anybody remember that country song, "Hurricane"? I do. I can't get it out of my head when I watch the news.