travelin’

I’m ‘out to lunch’.
I’ll be traveling for the holidays - from the frigid and snowy Chicago, to the frigid and snowy East Coast, and onward to the even more frigid and snowy land of the trolls. Merry Christmas!

upcoming... Bill Nye the Science Guy goes green, DIY, and more thoughts on Chicago.

(If you get bored, the picture is actually a maze.)

this is how I roll

Our God must be crazy. As I reflect on the birth-narratives of Jesus I can’t help but wonder what God was thinking. Seriously though –what? God, a holy infinite being, willingly becomes a finite human – something God created Himself. I’m not sure there are any great analogies for this, much like there are no great analogies for explaining the trinity, but I’ll try anyway. A humanly example for me of God becoming finite is the thought of the richest person in the world choosing to give up all of his or her money and living impoverished in a third world country and then somehow out of that making everyone in the world rich. (I know this is not the best example. Especially since money does not bring happiness, but I think from a human standpoint it proves well.)

I’m not sure after sending a bunch of prophets to tell the people of Israel that they need to get things right, that my next idea would be to send a baby boy into the world. But, this is how God rolls. How risky is a human baby? Well, it needs more nurturing than any other animal on the earth before it is able to act on its own.

Jesus’ birth is no normal story either. Actually, it seems like one of those stories you tell where everything that happens in the story goes wrong. The fluffy nativity scenes and our grandiose pictures of Christmas really diminish the craziness of all that was going on. Let’s see: a baby out of wedlock (which was far more promiscuous than it is in today’s society –even to the point of stoning to death), a long journey to another town: Bethlehem (because of a census), they travel to Bethlehem unmarried and expecting, a baby born in the barn out back, a bunch of scandalous shepherds bringing great news to the masses, murder of children, an escape to another country, and after the death of Herod finally return to their home town. Before Jesus can really act on his own, his life is full of scandal, danger, and excitement.

Jesus’ birth narratives really capture the essence of God and the hope that is. During this advent season I wait for the one called Emmanuel.

website review: walkscore.com

Apparently, where I live it is a very walkable place. I came across the site http://www.walkscore.com/ on the New York Times website. Walkscore.com’s motto is for you to find “a walkable place to live,” or at least see how walkable where you live is. The website is interesting and draws awareness to car-dependency, but the website may not be as good as it seems at first glance.

The niche group for this site has to be people on the move (who like to walk or want to use their car less) looking for a great place to live. Because really, I’m not going to look at this site, find a great place to move, and move there. And the site really isn’t for showing people how walkable the area around their home is. Really?! For example: my parents. They live in the middle of nowhere. They aren’t going to go to this site, put in their address, and then say, “Oh, we never knew our house was so car dependent.” And they also aren’t thinking, “Hey, I saw that home for sale downtown (you know, the house that is closer to all the shops) let’s go to walkscore.com and see if it is more walkable than our house.” Of course they are not going to do that – it just is. So, it is clearly for people trying to move to a new place.

One slight, huge, problem with the website; the information it gives – sucks. For example: me. Where does it tell me to do my grocery shopping? Well of course the local 7-Eleven. Where else do you go, right? Eventually it does list an actual grocery store. Too bad as a local resident I know not to shop at that particular grocery store. It doesn’t list or have an option to list the grocery store I would shop at or prefer to shop at. This is key for someone that doesn’t know the area. My place may seem walkable with all the local 7-elevens around, but in reality is not. So, if someone does spot this mistake they still can’t fix it, because they can’t search where they would shop or prefer to shop.

Let’s keeping going with this example: movie theatres. For this, the closest listing is actually not a movie theatre, but a modeling agency and probably not one that the kids should be going to. This also goes with clothing and music – well unless I want to shop at the local Italian of Fashion for all my clothing needs.

So, what does the website do well? So, the website didn’t find me any good grocery stores or restaurants. It does show where the local schools, parks, libraries, and coffee shops are. In reality I am not in a walkable distance to a good grocery store, but I should have the option to find one and then have the ability to recalculate my walkability.

In all, the website is fun to look at although it does need some improvements in terms of the listings, and the ability to change the walkability factor. The website also can be good to find local places that you may have not known existed that might be right next door, literally.

give cinderella a chance

It’s almost that time of year again – college football bowl season. This year Florida will play Oklahoma for the national championship. The game has caused some controversy. The controversy is because during the regular season Texas beat Oklahoma, Texas Tech then beat Texas, and Oklahoma beat Texas Tech. Oklahoma finished number two in the polls while Texas who beat Oklahoma finished number three. We can thank the BCS standings for this. Texas will never know if they are good enough to be the national champion.

As usual though, ESPN and the like are talking like crazy for a football tournament. Ironically, the lower football divisions all have tournaments for the championship in their division. In high school, football teams play in tournaments to see which team is the state champion. And of course the NFL plays a tournament. So, why do the top college students have to play in bowl games that are based on conference bias, television ratings, and money revenue? College basketball holds a tournament to see which team is the basketball nation champion. It is also the most popular tournament of all sports. It brings about great matchups among great teams. It also allows for Cinderella teams to have a chance to compete. After the tournament there are always great games, along with knowing who truly is the best in the end. There is no argument after the game.

Again like last year I have created my own college football tournament. There are two tournaments. The two tournaments cover 64 teams, the same amount of teams as the bowls. The first tournament would crown the national champion, the second would crown a minor national champion, much like the NIT does in college basketball. The great thing about the tournament is that is creates great matchups including a possible Oklahoma verse Texas matchup. Even if the bowl games had better matchup, which is also listed below, they don’t compare to the possible games from the tournament. In all, the tournament creates better games for the athletes and fans a like.

i love you, no i hate you, no i...

Do you have any love/hate relationships? One of those truly mind-blowing “I hate you, but I also love you” type things. Until recently I didn’t. I always thought I knew what people were talking about. In the end after reflection though I could always say, “Oh, I don’t really hate that” or “You know what? I just don’t like them.” Well, I can finally say I have found a relationship with so much push and tug, love and hate that I can call it an official one of love/hate.

Of course it is not just one person. It’s 2.8 million (9.5 metro area) people. It’s the city (and metro area) of Chicago. There are so many things that I love about the city and so many things that I hate that I struggle with how I feel about the place. It’s a place I long for, yet long to get away. A place I have hope for, yet sometimes seem hopeless towards. A place where good truly reigns, yet destruction and evil lurk. A place of great diversity, yet a place that is segregated. It is a place that can make me very happy and also very mad. It is my relationship with Chicago.

40 great things about winter and the holiday season (in pictures).

Snow. Skiing. Being air born. Tree farms. The perfect tree. Christmas carols. Surprises. Sledding. Receiving a package in the mail. Parades. Christmas in the city. Christmas lights. Things that can really be done with snow and a giant stadium. Consumerism. Christmas movies. Snowball fights. Laughing at the misfortunate. Going AWOL when it is you. Second best sled to the… Toboggan. What is the Christmas season. Sleigh rides. Defying gravity. Gravity defying you. The way things look in the snow. Snowshoeing. Snowy peaks. Sweet ice carvings. Santa Claus and crying kids. Ice skating. Being the sheep in the churches Christmas play. Gold stars and little angles. Family. Advent. Christmas decorations. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve service. Christmas day. The reason for the season.

november round-up

Holy freak Batman where did November go? I don’t know Robin, but it sure isn’t November any more. I’m not sure where November went either, but boy did it go fast. And now we are already one week into December.

So, what happened in November? Well – an African American was voted president – of the United States – for the first time – ever! And on election night, I was there – to witness it all. Besides that though it has been a pretty low key month with time spent with family and friends. Also, even though it didn’t “technically” happen in November it happened over Thanksgiving weekend – I had the worst road trip back from Michigan to Chicago. Although it is a funny story now that it is over, it matches up with me flipping out once while driving across the five mile Mackinaw Bridge in a snow storm.

Interesting enough: I got to go to my favorite restaurant twice this month, Tre Kronor, and in some genealogy research I found an additional three-hundred years of family lineage.

pollution is bad - here's proof

Hi!

So, last week I posted this photo from the new Google archive of pictures from Life magazine. It’s a great photo for many reasons. I’m not quite sure why there are a bunch of cars in the water, and the picture gives no explanation other than to indicate where the photo was taken. Is the river a graveyard for gutted cars? Here is a similar photo of the cars in the water. Although the photo says it was also taken in May of ‘68 it was certainly not. When you compare the foliage of the trees they are clearly taken at two different seasons of the year. There are no leaves on the branches compared to the first photo where there is full foliage. It sure would be interesting to know what river the cars are in and to do a comparison of the area today.

The car graveyard surely isn’t the only pollution that was documented in Life 1968. Here is a dumping ground into a lake.

Some pollution stays the same. In the photo you can see the build-up of oil, algae, and random beer cans and worm containers (for fishing). In many of the recreational lakes in Michigan you can still find the same build up of trash.

I wonder what is in the water that is pouring out of that pipe? And what is up with the tires and other random trash?

When cars took over the world, trains were just abandoned, literally. I’m sure these trains are no longer here. Michigan has been converting rails into trails for years.

One take at this picture and you know it isn’t natural.

Its proof that the cartoon movie Wall-e could actually happen.

And that’s not snow flowing down the river.

This is a really neat photo. Until you notice all the pollution pouring into the canal.

Here a few others: This cover of Life is a little scary, but when you compare it with this photo it is even scarier. Please, please don’t eat the fish? Ralph – that’s what the river is doing.

and then there's....

There’s Thanksgiving and then there’s Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving seems to be one of those holidays were we and by we I mean everyone just don’t know where it comes from. Traditionally of course the first Thanksgiving was in 1621 in Plymouth, MA, with a few pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe (who in years to come would not be so thankful for the pilgrims). This seems to be the most celebrated version today. We can see it in arts and crafts in elementary schools, in parades, and television.

There are of course other first Thanksgivings. British colonists gave ‘thanksgiving’ in 1619 in Virginia. There are even apparent records that say that the first ‘thanksgiving’ celebration was done in 1565 in St. Augustine, FL.

At the website history.com it states that, “Although this feast [between the pilgrims and Wampanoag] is considered by many to be the very first Thanksgiving celebration, it was actually in keeping with a long tradition of celebrating the harvest and giving thanks for a successful bounty of crops.” It seems that Europeans and Native Americans alike have been having ‘thanksgiving’ for hundreds and probably thousands of years around the harvest of crops.

The Pilgrims didn’t have Thanksgiving each year, and not until Abraham Lincoln in 1863 was Thanksgiving declared a holiday. The holiday was set on an ideal that the pilgrims had a bountiful harvest in 1621. Without the good harvest (and the Wampanoag, of course) the Pilgrims probably would not have survived another winter.

To me the harvest between the pilgrims and Wampanoag showed great hope that Europeans and Native tribes would get along in the years to come. Instead, it would be a temporary alliance at the outset of a troubled and broken relationship between the two people groups.

Thankful source: History.com

Further reading:
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

i'm thankful for...

"I'm thankful that this can't happen anymore."

The photo was taken in 1968 in Michigan. More on this next week.

Life Magazine and Google recently hooked up. You can now view archived photos from Life at Google.com.

Photo by: Alfred Eisenstaedt

the shack: an un-review

No, I’m not going to review The Shack by William Young. I will let you read it for yourself with unblemished eyes if you haven’t already read it. I think the book is worth reading whether you have heard positive or negative feelings about it. I’ve recently read the book. I thought Young did a great job. I have a lot of praises for the book and also a few criticisms. I went through a few reviews on Amazon to get a general consensus and I thought one reader put it quite well: “A parable, not a text on systematic theology.” The Shack is fiction – a story. I think it draws out a lot of ideas, thoughts, and feelings on how many Christians and non-Christians alike see God. Like a story it is not a theological guide to God. I would leave something like that to the Bible or books written by theologians. But, with that said - the book is out-of-the-box.

And with being out-of-the-box it causes controversy. Just under 19% of the reviews on Amazon gave the book a one or two star. Reading through some of those reviews you could see the book-burning mobiles coming out of the garage with ashes from Harry Potter in the back and books being written in response to the theological fallacies of the book.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Left Behind series. Almost 20% of the reviews for this novel gave the book a one or two star score. Several of these reviews describe the book as one that condones hate, and it is evidently a book for ‘fundamentalists’.

Both of these books are used as ‘evangelism’ tools for non-Christians. But the stories and ideas that these books convey are almost polar opposites. Where does this leave us as Christians? Where does this leave Christians in the mind of non-Christians? Being in America’s candy box of Christianity, it is apparent that there are thousands of ideas of what Christians believe about God. Many of those divides are as simple as back in the day one part of a congregation wanted red carpet and the other wanted green. So, maybe the argument wasn’t over carpet, but the divides were just as important. Is there another dividing shift among Christians? Are we living out a modern day protestant reformation of these different theologies? Could we see visual split of churches over this? Have we already? Obviously I have many more questions than answers.

Is it okay to be gray over this issue, and that there are these disagreements? Or, are these disagreements over serious fundamental truths and that there needs to be a black and white “yes” or “no” agreement?

I ask these questions from the context of which I live in. Currently in my job I see conflicting views in Christian mission, more specifically the work being done in Sudan. What is moving forward is a peace and reconciliation ministry in Sudan. It is a ministry that seeks to heal, reconcile, and redeem a war torn country. The other side is critical of the peace and reconciliation ministry and wants purely and solely church planting done to evangelize.

The story of the Sudanese is not fictional. It is a story of violence and genocide. In this story though, God is working in the lives of Sudanese: in healing, in reconciliation, and in forgiveness. There are stories like this all over the world. These stories are of the love, grace, and mercy of the God that created it all.

october round-up

Let’s see. It’s almost Thanksgiving so that means it’s time for October round-up.

Well, not too much happened in October. It got colder so I was outside less. Small group started up at church. We’re in a small group that meets up bi-weekly. The group so far has been about six to eight people. It’s been encouraging to be in community with others and to have casual conversation about God. The food has also been good.

On the eighteenth I early voted in Chicago. It was great because it literally took me fifteen minutes including travel time. It helps that I went over as soon as it opened up and that the polling place is my local public library which is literally a stone’s throw away from my apartment.

Also, on the eighteenth a bunch of went to seek the folk artist, David Wilcox at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I had never been to the Old Town School of Folk Music so it was excellent to see the inside and to hear about all the great stuff that goes on there. Definitely check it out. And if you are into folk music or music at all I would definitely check out David Wilcox. His music is fantastic and he puts on a really entertaining concert.

One of the best parts of the month was to visit my brother who lives in Texas for a long weekend. I hadn’t seen him all year and won’t get to see him over the holiday months so it was really great to be able to visit him and his wife. We visited the Dallas Arboretum, and ate at some wonderful local restaurants including an authentic BBQ place for lunch. We saw an opry at the local theater. It reminded me of a country music American idol. The singers were very good. On Sunday we went to a Dallas Cowboys game. It was a great weekend, but too short of a visit.

Great places I ate during the month:
Rockwell Neighborhood Grill – This place is excellent. It’s off the main street, and they are known for their burgers. Which were awesome! The restaurant had a cozy ambience for a bar, but it was kid friendly. It was also one of the first smoke free places in Chicago.

Dallas Arboretum

Dallas Cowboys Game

My brother and I cooking marshmallows

redressing pc

So, I’ve been a little busy lately. That, and not knowing how to go about writing this next piece has kept me from writing for the past week or so.

The issue at hand is simply the phrase “politically correct”, and more specifically in relation to the different tribes of the First Nations in North America. I’m not exactly sure when the term “politically correct” was derived or more importantly when it became popular to use and/or “enforce”. I know that at one point in my life people began to say, “That’s not politically correct (or PC). You need to say [fill in the offensive word here].” It was a realization in the world that in the past 500 years since Columbus decided to “discover” America that what has happened since then may have not been all that good. Well, that time has seemed to pass. I’m also not sure when this started, but in the last five to ten years people have begun to say just the opposite; now it is wrong to say something PC. People now think that we should just say what we are thinking or that people are getting to oversensitive or overworked over small issues. I think for the majority of people this is a good thing. I am here to say this - that it is not.

Why? Let’s first look at what the phrase “politically correct” or P.C. means. It’s a language to correct other language. Dictionary.com states “politically correct” as,

“Showing an effort to make broad social and political changes to redress injustices caused by prejudice. It often involves changing or avoiding language that might offend anyone, especially with respect to gender, race, or ethnic background.”

The PC era was meant to do two things. First, to correct or avoid language that might offend someone. Well, we are no longer doing this because people have gotten tired of walking on eggshells with everything they say. The second part is to make social and political changes to injustice and prejudice. Do the first part and second part have any correlation? I’m not going to get into that.

However, I want to address why these two issues are so important, in the context of Native American tribes. The first part relating to PC language is simple: why we should continue to be PC. Simply put, we don’t call Germans French or visa versa and we wouldn’t call an Australian a Russian. So, why should we call a Navajo an Indian? They’re not from India. Why do we do this? There are a couple reasons I can think of. The first is we just might not know. The easy thing to do is to clump different ethnicities together like Asians or Latinos or to just name someone by the wrong ethnicity. The second reason and more at the heart of the issue is the historical context of the language and what it means.

Let’s talk about the historical context of Native Americans. By now most people know why people call Native Americans “Indians”. Because at one time people thought that they were people from India. Five hundred years later we know that Native Americans are not from India, but for some reason we still like to use that language. This is a really good example of how something such a long time ago is still affecting us today. This bring us to my point that if something as simple as continuing to use the wrong language is still common today, then something as difficult as racism and prejudice are even more difficult and influential in our lives today.

Just because people are tired of hearing “PC” doesn’t mean that we need to continue to redress the injustices that were done in history and continue today. I’ll give one great example and let you ponder from there.

Universities and high schools with Native American mascots for the past twenty years or so have been - by suggestion and sometimes by law - asked to change their Native American mascot to something non-Native American. For example, Eastern Michigan University changed their mascot from the Hurons to the Eagles in 1988. Schools continue to do this today. The University of Illinois, the Fighting Illini, began last year to stop using their mascot. Although, they will keep the nickname, Fighting Illini, they have stopped using an Illini as a mascot at football and basketball games. It seems that most people get upset over these changes and say that it isn’t offensive and that it is tradition.

But, when we begin to see where Native Americans were first begun to be used as mascots and such, we see a different story. Beginning around 1880 through about 1920 the United States began to erect statues of Native Americans around the country. Even some of the statue ideas were to be bigger than the Statue of Liberty. The statues were not to honor Native Americans or to remember them as a people. They were affected as a symbol of the nation’s past victories.1 They were a memory of a conquered people and a people that were deemed ‘backwards’ and unable to be civilized.

This history has continued on. And its memorial developed onto Universities, high schools, pro sports teams, and so on. Continued use is to keep the original intent alive. Being politically correct was an intentional effort to change and redress the injustices of this. We cannot stop being PC, but must continue to fight the injustices that still prevail today.

1: Hoxie, Frederick, Final Promise (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1984), p. 103.

just for wrecks

Enough politics, right? I agree. The rest of the media I don’t think feels the same, but here I will be taking a break from it for a while.

And where to go next? Well, to promote another blog of course. I don’t do it often, with the exception of the two blogs of note on the right column of my blog. But in reality I couldn’t resist. I’ve been consistently reading this blog for about a couple months now. I don’t read it because it’s informative, or even that it’s related to my field of work or interests. I read it because it is flat out funny.

The blog I’m promoting and saying check it out - even if you only read it once - is Cake Wrecks. It’s also a blogger site and it is totally devoted to cakes (and the occasional cupcake) from stores and bakeries that have gone completely, and utterly wrong. The blogger each day posts a couple photos and writes about them satirically. The mistakes can be as simple as using quotation “marks” in the wrong spot, misspelling words on the cake, or just making a cake that is indescribably awful looking. And then of course there are posts like November 5ths that are just well…see for yourself.

So, take a couple minutes out of your day to see the latest cake monstrosity.

Here are a few examples of the cakes on the site:

three words

A little inspiration to go vote...

go vote

I tried finding a good list of reasons to vote. I couldn’t find a good complete list without coming across at least lame stereotypical reasons like “It’s your right to vote” or “Let your voice be heard.” Frankly, if you want your voice heard there are much better ways of going about that. So, I’ve tried to make up my own list. And no promises that I don’t have my own lame stereotypical reasons to vote. Here’s a few reasons to go vote:

1. Democracy works when its citizens participate.
I.e. Democracy – noun: government by the people.

2. The issues involved probably affect you directly.
I.e. education, war, health care, etc.

3. Voting affects your neighbor.
I.e. immigration laws, capital punishment, equal rights laws, welfare, etc.

4. It does affect the outcome. Every vote counts.
I.e. Richard Nixon, not John F. Kennedy, would have become President of the U.S. in 1960 if one person from each voting place had voted differently. Or, Bush only won by 537 votes in Florida in 2000.

5. There are many reason not to vote - don’t let those discourage you from still voting.

6. It’s not just about the president. There are other important positions and issues to vote on in each election.

midwest love: presidents of the midwest

Let’s take a look at the Midwest. There have been eleven presidents that were either born or have had a political career in the Midwest. And it wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President, that there was a Midwest presence.

Here is a brief synapses of the eleven that have become president.

Abraham Lincoln, originally from Kentucky, was born in 1809. Lincoln’s family moved from Kentucky to Indiana, and eventually to Illinois in 1830. Lincoln served four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives. Lincoln was elected president in 1860.

In 1868 Ulysses S. Grant was elected President. Grant was born in 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio. Grant’s family lived in Galena, IL before Grant went off to serve in the Civil War.

Rutherford B. Hayes was born in Delaware, OH, in 1822. Hayes was elected president in 1876 following Grant in office. Hayes practiced law in Cincinnati, served in the Civil War. After the war, Hayes was nominated as Governor of Ohio and served from 1868-72 and 1876-77 before becoming president.

James Garfield was born in 1831 in Moreland Hills, OH and was elected president in 1880 after Hayes. Garfield was assassinated six months into office. Garfield is the only president to serve as a clergy (which only lasted the course of two years) and would eventually be elected as an Ohio state senator before serving in the Civil War.

In 1833 in North Bend, Ohio, Benjamin Harrison was born. Harrison would move to Indianapolis to become a state politician. Harrison would also serve in the Civil War. Before Harrison’s presidency he served in the Indiana State Supreme Court, and served in the Senate from 1880 until he was elected president in 1888.

William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States, elected in 1896. McKinley, born in 1843 in Niles, Ohio, served as governor of Ohio from 1892 to 1896. McKinley was also a captain in the civil war.

William Taft was born in 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio. An interesting fact about Taft was that he was a Unitarian all his life. Taft’s political career includes being appointed the Governor-General of the Philippines, Secretary of War. In 1908 Taft was elected president after serving under Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.

Warren G. Harding, the last president to be born from Ohio, was born in the city of Blooming Grove. Harding was part of the Ohio State Senate and US Senate before being elected as president in 1920.

Herbert Hoover was born in 1874 in West Branch, Iowa. Hoover served as a mining engineer and consultant for almost twenty years. Hoover was Secretary of Commerce for Roosevelt and Harding. Hoover was elected president in 1928.

Gerald Ford served as president from 1974 to 1977 after Nixon had resigned. Ford, originally from Omaha, Nebraska was born in 1913. Ford in his childhood would move to Oak Park, IL, and eventually to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ford went to college at the University of Michigan and played football there. Ford served in WW II. He would go on to be in the House of Representatives in Michigan. Ford also worked on the Warren Commission. Ford became vice president under the election of Nixon in 1972.

The last president from the Midwest is Ronald Reagan. Born in 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, he would soon become famous by his radio and film career. From 1967 - 1975 Reagan was governor of California. Reagan served two terms as president, first elected in 1980 and again in 1984.

leviticus, politics, and the year of jubilee

Redistributive change. It’s the latest charge from McCain against Barack Obama. It’s a claim that in this capitalist country when Obama referred to such ‘redistribution’ about the civil rights era that it was therefore taken out of context and he is called a socialist, Marxist, and a communist. It’s not a new tactic for the McCain campaign, since they have done their best to slander Obama since he became the presidential candidate for the Democrats, but it does bring an interesting subject to hand - redistribution.

Redistribution is a hard thing to think about as a white person in the U.S. Mainly, it is hard because white people today didn’t put people into slavery or almost obliterate an entire race, the tribes and people of the First Nations. It’s a thing of the past. Yet, there are still marks of slavery and genocide of tribes today. And those marks are continued because of systemic racism. Even if we were not a part of it, whites today continue to benefit from it.

Besides it being hard to think about, it is just plain hard to comprehend undertaking such a task. What kind of redistribution would it be? Would it be income redistribution or property redistribution, or both? Who would get it? And, how would you figure out who would get it? How much land or money would each individual or family get? If land is redistributed wouldn’t that then be taking land away from some people and money away from others? It just doesn’t seem a like a possibility in today’s world. No wonder these options have never really been explored in seriousness. No vast amount of people would give up their money or give back land that once belonged to someone else.

In all this though, let’s consider the year of jubilee. It’s out of Leviticus in the Bible. It was a radical idea in Biblical times and it is a radical idea today. Some of the key aspects of the jubilee year were that slaves were to be set free, everyone is to return to their own property (i.e. people who had been driven by poverty to sell it), and a Sabbath for the soil. It’s a call to love our neighbor, the earth, and God. It gives hope to the poor, freedom to the enslaved, and rest for the earth.

Whatever either candidate meant or said or did, God is calling us to a higher call to love the earth, love our neighbor, and love God.

an alternative: sustaining

The economy has seemed to hit the bottom around the world and seemingly keeps plummeting. It seems to be the biggest issue on everyone’s mind and that is clear as the election is right around the corner. The economy is always the biggest determiner in electing a president though. So, what about the rest of it? Specifically, I am thinking about alternative energies. About a year to six months ago when gas prices were much higher than they are today people all of a sudden wanted to find an alternative or better ways to use energy; whether that was in cars, businesses, or even towns. With that came the awareness of eating organic, not using plastic bags, etcetera. Once again though, these ideas have been thrown to the wayside as a mere fad. The greater good has been taken over once again by the greater me. I’m not saying do not look out for yourself. But on the other hand we are really talking about serious issues of sustainability.

The issue of energy independence keeps coming up. The U.S. uses a lot of oil. I mean a lot of oil. This issue is beyond drilling off-shore and in Alaska. It isn’t just about finding alternatives. Although in some cases it is. The alternatives can be as simple as creating automobiles that use less gasoline, more mpg, or practical cars that don’t even use gasoline. Unless the U.S. completely changes its mode of transportation we will always be in some way dependent on cars in some form or another. What else? How about wind and solar power. Yes, they are expensive for one individual or family, but when money is pooled together say in taxes it can be used for towns, states, and the country for wind and solar.

The only problem is that the market isn’t ready for it. With the economy down, the last thing on people’s mind is finding alternatives, when just fixing the crisis is at the forefront. But we cannot forget about sustainability in the midst of crisis. Living in a community that is more sustainable in fact in the long run will be stronger and more prepared for crisis after crisis.

division and race in politics, understanding joe the plumber

I read an interesting article today in the NY Times. The article talked about the real Joe Plumber that was brought up by John McCain in the third presidential debate. McCain voiced that Joe, the unlicensed, back-taxing, plumber would be hurt by Obama’s tax plan because his business would make over $250,000 a year. When I first heard McCain say this, my first thoughts, jokingly, were “I’m in the wrong business.” Jokingly, because although I am sure there may be a few plumbers that manage to make that amount of money in a year, the average in Ohio, like Joe, is much lower, $47,930. Joe is going to have to triple his business that he can’t have legally because he doesn’t have a plumber’s license to do that.

But, this isn’t about Joe, directly. It’s about the tactics and divisions. The article is written by Paul Krugman, a Democrat. So, you might think this is biased. Except that Paul is also the Nobel Prize winner in Economic Science for 2008. So, I also think he knows what he is talking about. Krugman goes on to state how McCain is using the same divide and conquer tactics that Richard Nixon used to win votes. Nixon and company thought, as Krugman says, that by exploiting the divisions over the Vietnam War, cultural divisions, and most of all racial divisions he could win the election. Nixon explained to the regular, working white guy, “hey these changes suck and I can help”. Nixon, instead of having the regular working white guy get mad at him too, decided to create division and have the regular white guy get mad at the divisions of the political left, people of different cultures, and people of different races.

Of course Nixon didn’t create this idea. I am sure it has been going on for thousands of years. It has been going on in America for hundreds of years. In 1676, Bacon’s rebellion was poor white and blacks rebelling against the elite of the Virginia colony. The ruling elite in Virginia instead of spreading the wealth, creating jobs (you get the picture), decided to pin the poor whites against the poor blacks. This did two things. It stopped the rebellions against the rich and it caused the poor whites to be divided against the poor blacks. Some experts say this actually created racism in North America. I would certainly not go that far. There is too much history that says otherwise. But it certainly did create racial problems along with laws that were enacted soon after the rebellion.

Krugmans point in his article was clear: the GOP is not the working class, but the party of plutocrats. The elite GOP and the white working class America are together, but only because of the division and politics that have been created. Joe may not like Obama, but the candidate that Joes likes certainly doesn’t like him.

it's just good buiness...wrong!

So, I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End this weekend. It’s a good movie. Not as good as the first two, but good. I would recommend it. It is definitely no Jurassic Park 3. Wow, was that a bad movie! If you’ve seen it you know what I mean. If you haven’t, don’t waste your time. In any case, towards the end of the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Jack Sparrow, an eccentric pirate, and Cutler Beckett, who is head of the East India Trading Co, meet up to strike a deal. In the movie Jack fulfills his part of the bargain. Beckett does not. As you find out that Beckett is not going to keep up his part of the bargain he prophetically says, “It’s just good business.”

It really is good business. Beckett got everything without having to give anything in return. What a deal. Beckett’s greed has created a surplus of wealth and power for him and none for others, especially pirates. In the end though, the pirates set a trap for Beckett. His ship is surrounded and as Beckett’s men wait for Beckett to give them a command he is in shock by his blunder. It is really a great scene as two ships fire canons into Beckett’s ship. The ship is destroyed. As the ship is being torn apart from canon fire Beckett’s last words are, “It’s just good business.” In the end Beckett lost his own life, his crew’s lives, and the empire of the EIT Company.

The prophetic line and greed of Beckett reminded me of the greed of companies, banks, and governments. Greedy executives are running their companies into the same mess as Beckett did in the movie. Just look at AIG or WaMu. Even after AIG was ‘bailed out’ they still mustered up the courage to host a party that cost $440,000. And we wonder how we got to this crisis in the first place. And what about the $700 billion dollars? I’m not going to go into whether the $700 billion was the right thing to do. Mostly because I don’t know if it was the right thing to do or not. Just think about these amounts of money towards AIDS, wells for water, education, the environment, energy, etc. It’s just good business, right?

rock the vote: with knowledge

The last debate for the presidential election is on tonight. It’s been a long road for both candidates. At one point McCain’s campaign was broke, only to sore through the Republican primaries and win. Obama, he’s been fighting stereotypes and tough competition. McCain seems to be fighting to win the election now, after what seemed to be a 50-50 battle for a while with Obama. If McCain wants to win the election he is going to have to come out fighting tonight. His supporters have been calling on him to be tougher with Obama. Other critics suggest quite the opposite, that McCain’s attacks have actually been hurting him in the polls. Obama has been fighting critics on his own.

When Obama first began to run for president and for most of his run I thought he would have a tough time winning the election because of his ethnicity. He’s black in America - and racism however invisible it is, is still there and very powerful. I think it has played a pivotal role, but may not have hurt him as much as I thought originally. However, I think his race has hurt him in another more prevalent way and that is very visible in the news and elsewhere. It is the fact that Obama is being associated as being a terrorist. No exaggerations here. To think that people could actually think that a person running for president could actually be a terrorist is absurd. That not only insults Obama, but Secret Service Agents, the Senate, the FBI, CSI, for somehow letting a terrorist though. But it happens, even at McCain rallies.

Living in Illinois and Chicago I am surrounded by Obama supporters. I don’t get to hear a lot from supporters of McCain. Four years ago, I was also in a heavily supported Kerry city, but was also surrounded by Bush supporters to the point where I was a minority voter. I was often asked why I was voting for him. I would give five to ten reasons why, depending on how well they were listening. People usually don’t except people to be knowledgeable about those things. I would usually voice some concern about Bush as the Plame case was in the midst. I asked after I was done why they were voting for Bush. Most of the time I got three answers. Either the subject was then changed after listing to me, that Bush is ‘pro-life’, or Kerry was a flip-flopper. I don’t think any of those reasons are good enough to vote for someone. I was disappointed at the quality of knowledge people had about their candidate. On the verge of this next election I hope you not only know who you are voting for, but also the reasons why.

Additional resources:
Barack Obama
John McCain

PBS Election Guide
NY Times Election Guide

One Vote 08
Select Smart
Open Secrets

happy fall

I still can’t believe that it is October. It’s starting to get a little colder and the leaves every little bit are changing color. The temperature was in the mid sixties over the weekend. In October this allows for a wide variety of dress. Most people are in jeans and a light jacket. But, if you keep looking there are those people who are so excited for the sub-freezing days of December, January, and February that they are wearing scarves, winter hats made for the South Pole, and ski jackets. It’s as if people are saying with what they are wearing, “I’m tired of the hot summer and I am so excited for winter, yay!”

It’s not too unusual to see a scarf in October in the mid sixties. I don’t think people really need a scarf to stay warm in that temperature, but it is done anyway. (And if they do need a scarf they might want to think about moving to warmer weather real soon.) But, people really like the feeling of ‘bundling up’. So, people wear them. The ironic part of all this is that in April and May when it is in the mid sixties people won’t have jackets and scarves on, but shorts and bathing suits sunning themselves on the grass or at the beach. With all of this change: happy fall.

september round-up: camping all around

Woah! September is over already. Did anyone else have a fast September? I did go camping two of the weekends in September, the other two – in Chicago. All the weekends were kind of busy.

The first weekend of camping was actually a visit to Ann Arbor and Saline, Michigan. Possibly one of my last visits there as I have no more family there. Saturday we went to a Michigan football game which I chronicled in a blog. After the game we drove around Saline - my home town - and then went out to eat at Gabriel’s Cheese Steak Hoagies in Ypsilanti. Best hoagie I have ever had. We went camping that night. It rained all night, of course. However, the next day ended up being sunny and warm. Sunday was mostly spent driving around southeast Michigan doing basically genealogy research.

The last weekend in September was up near Rockford, IL, at Rock Cut State Park. The park is huge. Plus, you can swim, boat, fish, hike, bike, ride horses, or basically anything you want. The State Park is obviously one of the most used and well known parks in the state. They have plenty of electric sights for campers, but they leave the best spots for the tenters by the lake. Almost all the tent sights were being used over the weekend. This is impressive for late September. We all hiked on Saturday, as well as geocached. There were also plenty of people kayaking, which of course made me jealous. On Saturday we also played Kubb! It’s Swedish and fun. On Sunday we all went apple picking and had donuts and cider. It was wicked awesome. It’s definitely the one thing I have to do every fall.

It was a great month!

Camping at Rock Cut State Park

Curran's Orchard, Rockford, IL

midwest love: isle royale

Michigan has one National Park. I have not been to it – yet. Who’s to blame me? I basically grew up on the other side of Michigan, basically the farthest point away from the park. Plus, my parents never took me to those type of things. In addition, the Midwest just does not have a lot of National Parks. It’s probably because of the stereotype that the Midwest is boring and flat. However, that is just a stereotype.

If I was to name one interesting fact about the National Park in Michigan, which is the island, Isle Royale, it would be the National Park’s study on wolves and moose. The study has been going on for the past fifty years. It’s strange to think how the wolves and moose came to be on the island, as neither were originally natives. About 1900 the first moose was recorded as being on the island. Most researches presume the moose swam the fifteen miles from Canada to the island. Wolves did not arrive for another forty to fifty years later. The wolves, a little smarter, traveled across frozen ice.

The study works because the wolves and moose are so closely linked on the island. The moose have no other predator, and the wolves have an endless supply of great food sources such as elk, deer, bear, or mountain lion. The study seems to have produced a lot of data about the two animals and how they interact on the island.

The island is also unique because it doesn’t allow wheels on the island - auto or bicycle. This is an example of how the park service is trying to keep the park natural and uninterrupted from human damage. This can also be seen in their camping and hiking policies.
Although the island does see its fair share of people, it probably does not see the same crowdedness as Yosemite or Yellowstone because of the location of the park, the proximity to people, its popularity, and its accessibility. This in itself should be a good reason to visit.

For more info:
http://www.isleroyalewolf.org/
http://www.wolfmoose.mtu.edu/
http://www.nps.gov/isro

sustainability, bottled water, and a house bill

The Great Lakes basin made the New York Times today. The House is in the process of looking over a bill that would ban diverting water from the great lakes basin to outside regions. The bill which has already been passed by the senate and Bush administration looks good with its candy shell. On the inside though, as the NY Times article points out, there are a few loop holes. The biggest one being that bottled water can be pumped out of the basin and shipped outside of the region.

I’ve never liked the idea of bottled water anyway. Too much plastic. Too much money. Not enough sustainability. And here is where the issue lies: sustainability. As the Times article goes on, it quotes Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, opposing the bill because of the bottled water loop hole. Later, on one of the drafters of the bill, its quoted as saying that the bottled water is not an issue because more bottled water will actually be shipped into the basin area than shipped out. Why? Why can’t the Great Lakes bottled water stay in the basin region if it needs so much bottled water and ship the other water else where? Where?

The second big complaint according to the Times article is that people outside the basin, but live in a state where the basin resides such as Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York (Michigan is the only state completely within the Great Lakes basin) now wonder why they can’t have the water that clearly belongs to them. Remember the blog a few weeks ago on the Great Lakes basin? The issue is brought up again. How can I see the Great Lakes, but not be able to take water from it? Hence the boundaries of the basin and how it effects each ecology. Where will they get their water now - how about the outside shipped bottled water they brought into the basin?

Obviously the bill is not foolproof, as shown with the bottled water. I think at least it is a good sign of defining the basin in political circumstances that could be beneficial to future bills for the Great Lakes and the basin. Hopefully it will create awareness of our environment as they come to understand what the bill is about and who it affects. Although not perfect, the idea of the bill, I feel, is a step forward to the sustainability of the basin and the lakes.

NY Times article