I think (hope) we have the next Sidney Crosby on our hands. This is J on his first skating lesson (four weeks ago). B provides good comedy on this one, his first line is "J's not doing it Dad!" Funny.


However, here is J at his fourth skating lesson (last night), unbelievable progress :

Three Years Gone By

Yes, we love where we are now. AND Yes, we sure miss this place.

A (not so) funny event

Ok, I'm back after a bit of a delay for a quick post. One somewhat memorable event of the weekend: we passed a pet store en route to another store and the boys wanted to go to the petstore. We went back to the petstore, and there were four or so people out front who were holding dogs on leashes. The dogs appeared to be of the pit bull variety, and the dogs were wearing coats that said "adopt me" on them. The funny thing is that the dogs were not nice. The people holding them encouraged the boys not to touch them, and one of the dogs lunged at B on our way out. I think this helped affirm my predisposition to never adopt a dog that is foaming at the mouth-- even if he wears a cool little "adopt me" coat.

All right, the stock market is a bit wacky now and I have to convince *myself* and our clients, who are nervously calling, that I know what I'm talking about....

Food For Urban Thought

Something to put in your pipe and toke on a bit:

1. "The country is the place where there are more plants than people, and the city is the place where there are more people than plants, and since God loves people far more than He loves plants, He loves the city more than He loves the country."
--Bill Crispin

2. "Dad, I don't want to live in the country. It doesn't have all the cool parts..." --My son J, while holding my hand and walking down 18th Street on January 13, 2008.

A Late New Year's Posting

I just spilled coffee all over my desk. I saved the computer, but sacrificed a few documents I had printed. All in all, it was a worthy trade-off.

Here's a quick post with a few pics from new year's day. We have a big parade where men wear dresses and drink lots of cheap beer. Without further ado, here are a couple of pics of our kids and neighborhood.


1. This is a picture of one of the string bands, who are actually very good. Check out the people hanging out of the windows with their bottles in their hand:



2. This is J and B in front of some of the props for the parade. As you can see, J is hungover from a rowdy New Year's Eve and B is looking upon him with no compassion. An additional note, the prison-like building in the background is our local elementary school:

My Kids = Hosed

We occasionally fire up the music loud, and do a little dancing around the living room after dinner. The boys get nuts, and A even sometimes joins us. I subscribe to rhapsody.com (on a side note, DO THE SAME, it's excellent to have any and every song at your listening pleasure) and I draw upon my "recently listened to" queue to pull a few songs for dancing. Well, I was playing DJ last night for our post-dinner craziness, and I noticed the following lyrics in a few of the songs I chose:

"Now he's having a smoke, and she's taking a drag, now they're going to bed, and my stomach is sick...."

so i changed it to another song which involved "living on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine...."

so i once again chose another song that had "we laughed all the way to hell, saying yes this is fine promotion...."



All that to say, while I hope they embrace good music as they grow, I want to guide them away from all that the lyrics suggest.....May God have mercy on us all, everyone.

Lastly, we finished up with some David Crowder's (you know, to get a Jesus song in there...) "Here Is Our King" -- which in my opinion is perhaps the finest of "the passion movement" songs.

EXTRA CREDIT: can you identify the three songs from the lyrics given above?

A Christmas Roundup

And some updates from a very fine Christmas season.

1. I used to drink the occassional adult beverage from this (that's a "Curious George" jelly jar if you can't tell):






Now, thanks to a nice gift from my Father-in-law, I can now use this:











2. Another enjoyable treat was a brief visit with a buddy from back in our SH years. We enjoyed an hour or so recalling our past few years since leaving the big country.

3. It's been three years since our abrupt departure from SH. It seems to be more and more of a blur each year. However, A and I are so grateful for the place we are now, and (in some ways) even for the dark hours and days in the process of getting here.

4. There were a few more fun events/discoveries throughout the week, and I'll be checking in with them soon. Lastly, maybe a New Year's Resolution should be to figure out how to put up a post with something other than a list and a few pics. Someday I'll figure that out, but not today.

two more things

I want to add to my "things I like" list, just two things:

1. I really, really enjoy the bud light commercials where it shows the guy who just says "dude" in a bunch of different settings. It seems there are two of them now, and both are excellent. The one below is actually expanded from the one on TV. It gets more and more rich each time you watch:


Bud Light Dude - Watch more free videos




2. A friend of mine just put me onto Andrew Peterson's music - www.andrew-peterson.com. He's folky and a colorful song writer. He can be a little "over the top" in his artsy-ness. All around very good. How about these for some strong lyrics to begin a Christmas song:
"It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town"

That song also includes these fantastic lyrics:
"Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night

So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon"

That is good, good stuff.

Current Likes/Dislikes

Lists seem to be popular in media these days. So I'm in:

Elements of Life I Am Currently Enjoying:

1. B's insistence on calling the great fish in all the Jonah story books "a dolphin." I don't know why, but this is funny to me every time.

2. J had to give his preschool class a "tip" yesterday, his tip: "Don't stand up on top of the car."

3. Found a pretzel place near our house that cranks out fresh hot pretzels starting at 6am. Unbelievable.

4. Donna Reed in "It's a Wonderful Life"

5. Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life"

6. "Southbound Train" by Jon Foreman

7. I knew it:


8. The 76ers are really bad, but they have some young players who might turn into real NBA players.

9. My living room lit with Christmas lights.

10. Getting to listen to Sunday Morning Over Easy streaming over the internet on Sunday mornings from the finest radio station, 92.9WBOS in Boston.

11. Seeing some old China friends.

12. The knockoff NPR skit on SNL with Alec Baldwin. As with B and "the dolphin", Pete Schwedy and his balls are funny every time.



Elements of Life I'm Not Enjoying So Much:

1. No college football for a few weeks, except for the D-IAA and D-II championships, which I watched like they were the superbowl.

2. "Southbound Train" by Jon Foreman

3.

4. The fact that I haven't read a book for a couple of months.

5. Not getting to see more old China friends.


And there you have it. I'm sure more lists of likes and dislikes will surface in the days to come.

I feel the need, the need for extremes

Why must we move to the edges? In politics, entertainment, sports, and religion the tendency to label something/someone "all good" or "all bad" is obvious. The ability to discern something as both good AND bad (to use simple terms) is not often observed. I read an article a while back about how one of the original "hater" blogs - gawker - built an empire on labeling the world of NYC in extreme terms. It happens as well in the Christian community: emerging church is ALL bad, calvinists are ALL crazy, proclamation evangelism is COMPLETELY modern, and the list goes on.

I've seen it in the response to "The Golden Compass." The movie is ALL bad (if you're a religious type) or it is ALL good and harmless (if you are secular and want to rebut the religious nuts).

So what I am saying is that everyone should just calm down and become like me and see the world as I see it. Then everything will be ok and peace and justice will be restored....if I were king...

Look Kids, A Deer!

In the family tradition of the Griswolds, we got us a Christmas tree last night. Here are two equally true versions of the experience, one traditional and the other modern/urban.

TRADITIONAL: There was a light snow flurry in the air as we rolled off to the Christmas tree lot. We stopped to pick up some egg nog, and listened to the radio station that plays only Christmas music during December. The boys played with the pine branches that were laying around and we also purchased some small evergreen bushes to plant in our window boxes.

MODERN/URBAN: There was a light snow flurry in the air as we rolled off to the Christmas tree lot. We stopped at the light next to the railroad tracks, where the homeless guy keeps all his stuff. He looked cold. We sang "The Hannukah Song" by Adam Sandler, which was playing on the radio station that plays only Christmas music during the month of December. We searched for a nice tree under the pink glow cast by the neon lights of the neighboring strip club.

Merry Christmas season everyone. When I go home today, I'll be greeted by the great seasonal smell of the nice 8 foot tree in my living room. Until then, drink you gin and tonic-ahs and smoke your marijuani-cah:

College Football Musings

I have watched, and enjoyed, a LOT of college football of late. It was a wacky season, which was for the most part very enjoyable. Here are a few thoughts (this is therapy for the reality that I'll be without college football for the next nine months, save for the bowl games):

1. The powerhouses of the '90s are now lousy, e.g. Nebraska, FSU, Miami. It's nice to see them suck, but it's almost no longer enjoyable because they've been so bad for so long (this does not hold true for point number 3 below).

2. The underachievers of the '90s are now very good. LSU, Florida, USC, and Ohio State always had tons of talent and didn't win when it mattered. Weird.

3. Does anyone know which team Notre Dame is going to lose to in a bowl this year? Oh yeah, they only won three games. It is ALWAYS a treat to watch this arrogant program with an arrogant coach lose. Fortunately, because of their arrogant television contract, I got to watch them lose quite often this year.





3. Penn State plays A&M this year in the Alamo Bowl. We whipped them 24-0 several years ago, and I hope beat them again.

It's Friday

There was an informative article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, focusing on the monks in Belgium who support their monastery through sales of a highly sought after beer. I recommend indulging in the both the article and a cold brew:


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119628388037006909.html?mod=hps_us_mostpop_viewed

Cultural Observations

Below is a nice little article from theatlantic.com:




"The" way vs "a" way (Japan v China dept)
27 Nov 2007 02:40 am

This is not a scientific comparison, but when i saw one scene I remembered another.

This is the recent scene: yesterday afternoon, Naha airport, Okinawa, Japan. Line crew gassing up a Cirrus SR22:



Details to notice below: crew identically dressed in company uniform; complete safety gear -- hardhats, reflective chest straps with procedural checklist clipped on, puffy protective cuff to shield the plane's wing from damage. It's hard to see in the picture, but even the boots are part of the uniform: black, with red laces, and company logos on the back. Impossible to see in the picture: the coordinated shout and semi-bow toward the plane when the fueling was done.



Now, the scene I remembered and mentioned last year: Refueling the same kind of plane in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, China.



With usual caveats against sweeping generalization, what this made me think was: Japan is all about the way of doing things. Practice, ritual, perfectionism, as much fanatical attention to the process as to the result. China is all about finding a way to do things. Improvisation, little interest in rules, putting up with whatever is necessary to attain the result.

(Yeah yeah yeah, there are exceptions: perfectionist operations in China, loosey-goosey ones in Japan. Still.)

At the moment, I am feeling positive toward both approaches. The emphasis on the right way of doing things is re-surprising on each encounter with Japan. And the determination to do things in China, no matter what, commands respect, despite the obvious complications and problems it creates.

But when it comes to refueling the plane....

What Rallies Christians?

My question is: What issues bring a concerted response from Christians here in the U.S.?

Based on two emails I've received the past week, it appears that movies with an anti-God message (The Golden Compass) and large retailers who offer health benefits to the spouses of homosexual employees (Target) are two areas that Christians will get worked up about. This bums me out. Obviously, I don't mean to indict all believers of Jesus here in the U.S.--that would be overboard. But why do Christians get all whipped into a frenzy (and fire out forwarded emails) about a movie and a corporate decision about homosexuality? I'm developing my rant about "The Golden Compass" - that's for another time.

For now, my rant focuses on this: There are a TON of issues out there that demand Biblical wisdom, why would Christians "circle the wagons" around a movie and retailer? Why don't we fire out an email/article/blog/book/whatever demanding that true followers of Jesus do something about this:

"DETROIT - In another blow to the Motor City's tarnished image, Detroit pushed past St. Louis to become the nation's most dangerous city, according to a private research group's controversial analysis, released Sunday, of annual FBI crime statistics....Last year's crime leader, St. Louis, fell to No. 2. Another Michigan city, Flint, ranked third, followed by Oakland Calif.; Camden, N.J.; Birmingham, Ala.; North Charleston, S.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Richmond, Calif.; and Cleveland.

The study ranked Mission Viejo, Calif., as the safest U.S. city, followed by Clarkstown, N.Y.; Brick Township, N.J.; Amherst, N.Y.; and Sugar Land, Texas."


While I have no basis for this, I am quite confident there is a greater percentage of Christians(as a percentage of population) in places like Mission Viejo, CA and Sugar Land, TX than there is in Detroit, Camden NJ, or Memphis. Let's get a Christian presence IN the city that rivals the presence of Christians that live OUTSIDE the city. My guess is the city-adverse Christian culture isn't just here in the U.S, it may be a global problem...sigh...

OK, enough on that rant, but it will most likely show up again. On a lighter note, if you can get your hands on the Barenaked Ladies/Sarah McLachlan version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," do yourself a favor and take it in.