Coming to America

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Visitors to this great land of ours really need to know how to handle themselves in certain everyday, quintessentially American situations. The problem, of course, is that they may not know the correct vocabulary to employ in such situations.

I don't know about you, but I have often fretted on behalf of, for instance, young Japanese women who haven't enough time for both toning up their bods and their English before coming here on vacation.

Thankfully, they no longer have to make that choice:

The Tadpole Polka

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OOM pah pah
PAH lee wog

OOM pah pah
PAH lee wog

OOM pah pah
PAH lee wog

OOM pah pah
PAH lee wog

OOM pah pah
PAH lee wog

OOM pah pah
PAH lee wog

OOM pah pah
PAH lee wog

A very little bit on doubt a svithe

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There are gobbles to say on the importance of doubt to a religious person; tonight, however, just a sampling.

I have long believed--and it is certainly a Mormon doctrine--that truth is out there, we are intended to look for it, and we can know it when we find it. This is the process of faith. If you'll allow me to define the terms, faith is two things:

1. Trusting that truth can be found.

2. Accepting truth when found.

This definition presumes that somethings are true and somethings are not. Thus it also presumes that as we have faith that we can find truth, we must also assume that we will find things which are not truth.

We call this assumption doubt. And it is important. Not just because it is faith's opposite, but because they travel the same road together--they are fellow guides to bring us to the truth.

“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.”
----- Kahlil Gibran

Of course, what this means is that the truth-seeker must be willing to be proved wrong. As time goes on and the fine-tuning of faith occurs, the changes required of one's belief may become smaller, but giving up those small falsities may be all the more difficult.

“Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.”
----- Paul Tillich

But that's the way it works. Doubt and faith are complements, not competitors.

“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.”
----- Paul Tillich

I don't think that all roads lead to Heaven, but I do believe that all earnest seekers find roads that lead to the road that leads to Heaven. I do think that the play of faith and doubt runs a different course for every soul. I do believe that we are obliged to support one another and trust one another's faith/doubt processes. I do think in appropriate relationships we are constrained to share our own discoveries. I do believe that without a Godlike omniscience, faith and doubt remain elements of every person's inner life. And I think it's healthy to recognize that a proceed recognizing that they work together for our benefit.

As Hugh B. Brown was wont to quote:

“No one deserves to believe unless he has served an apprenticeship of doubt.”
----- Will Durant

Let us all serve honorably.


last week's svithe

Chambers of Oz

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Last Christmas my brother Reb and I met at our parents' house with our respective families in tow. We all had a good time. That was the heartwarming, family-oriented portion of this post, folks. Get your buzz, then read on.

Reb had brought a mix cd of Kasey Chambers he had burned for his own (more-or-less constant) listening pleasure. But don't worry: one of Reb's greatest virtues is superpar taste in music and Ms Chambers is no exception.

Reb loves telling her life story, but that's not what I'm about tonight. The issue in question is how this Aussie chick is one of the best things going in modern country music. How can Oz out-America us in this artform we Americans see as purely American (whether we like it or not)?

This isn't like Italians playing crappy football americano--this is country music, darn it! And this chick from the Outback is better than anything on our American country radio stations, IMHO.

Not that American country is bankrupt--there are some promising trends--I'm just not that impressed with the radio. If you need hope, check out Miller Tells Her Tale (and, um, ignore the fact that the host is British). And, of course, as long as we have Emmylou Harris we will be spared. Abraham didn't have to stop at ten--if he had said, Peradventure Emmylou Harris shall be found there," I'm sure God would have replied, "I will not destroy it for Emmylou Harris’s sake."

Bad luck for Abraham that Emmylou Harris wasn't born yet.

Anyway, so it was Christmas time and I'm happy to finally be hearing this denizen of Oz that I've heard so much about and so Reb burns me a copy of his mix.

I was listening to it today and while sure, there's only one banjo song, it's terrific stuff. I really like it. In fact, you should go over to Pandora right now and start yourself a Kasey Chambers station.

Or, you know, get a moral degenerate to burn a cd for you.

Love you, Reb!

[more]

Sibs (update)

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I've updated some of my siblings identities and I'm adding ages as well, with me as the base:

Theric

Canary -2

Reb -4

Bojangles (formerly Braj) -7

Giggles -9

Schmetterling (formerly Wyote) -9

STOP LOOKING AT ME!

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I'M SERIOUS! YOU'RE CREEPING ME OUT!

The relationship between X and Y and 45

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No dot-to-dots, no sex, no thumbnail sketches.

No apocalyptic visions, no meanings, no summer nights.

No aquatic critters, no punctuation, no catalogues.

As far as I can tell, that leaves no relationship whatsoever.

Darn.

Thelebrity

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So I realized today that I would never be able to handle being famous. For heaven's sake, I'm just a school teacher and I'm already in constant dread of being recognized at Costco! I can't imagine having to smile and sign autographs every twenty feet!

How Berkeley can you be? (a svithe)

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I really like living in (or, rather, near) Berkeley. And I love attending the Berkeley Ward. Since we've been married, Lady Steed and I have moved quite a bit (mostly interProvo), yet we've managed to live in only four wards. I'm glad of this because I'm of a mind that one should really become part of a ward, make it family, and that's hard to do when you're swapping families all the time.

One interesting thing about Berkeley is it's sense of history. When our building was dedicated by President Heber J. Grant, a young girl was there who is still in the ward.

We have all sorts of jolly history (eg, J. Golden Kimball helped build our building at 50¢/hr), and all sorts of documentation thereof, which is awesome.

Mormons are a record-keeping, history-building people, but often that history is hidden away and never seen by the people, which sort of defeats the purpose, if you ask me.

Anyway, the ward had an 80th-anniversary celebration this weekend. It wasn't done up as big as previous decades, when former members from all over the country were invited to attend, and many came or at least sent photos. But it was still cool.

One highlight was a timeline that ran all along one wall. It contained info from the adding-on to our totally awesome organ to a recounting of the civil (but passionate) debate in Relief Society over Prop 22.

Sometimes I hear people complain about the pettiness of their fellow Saints (re: beards, colored shirts, makeup, hairspray, artsiness, blah blah blah); I've never seen it. And I don't even sense a tendency toward it here.

Christ opened his arms to everyone. I don't claim perfection for my ward by any means, but I feel welcomed, and I've heard others say they now feel that way for the first time.

So I think Jesus must be reasonably happy with us.

Me, I think I'm going to start being nicer too. After all: Everyone else is doing it.






last week's svithe

Thesis schmesis

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I got so worked up during yesterday's post that I forgot all about what I was allegedly upset about in the first place: that the Chronicle's coverage of this issue was biased beyond belief. How every word choice was slanted, the construction was slanted, the presentation of evidence was slanted; how every detail was constructed to make this look like a partisan issue when it is Very Possible to treat this without such undertones. Yes, it's a shame that the timing of this could have strong partisan consequences, but the concept itself is a sound one; one that, as long as we must have an Electoral College, all states would do well to follow.

Post #600, in which I rant about something rational for a change (if the Electoral College counts as “something rational”)

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I like to defend large media against either brand of political rancor, whether right or left (because let's face it: both sides are peopled with loonies who think the media's out to get them), but the front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle today was so deliriously Democrat-leaning that I can do nothing but cry foul.

Although I encourage you to go read the article, you might not. So let me tell you what's wrong with it, starting with the title and subtitle:

WINNER-TAKE-ALL? NOT NECESSARILY
Move to split state's electoral votes by congressional district could elect a GOP president

Now for those of you modern Americans without an opinion on the Electoral College (even after the last two elections), let me tell you what your opinion should be: The Electoral College is antiquated and we're ready to switch over to a more directly democratic (little d) method for picking a president.

For you farners, here's the deal: Each state votes for president. Whoever wins the popular vote in a state gets all it's Electoral College votes. California, for instance, has 55 Electoral College votes (out of 538 total, so it's a lot). California tends to vote for Democrats, but not overwhelmingly so. Which means that millions of votes basically get tossed out when the state's 55 electors fly to DC and turn in blue ballots. No one should like this. No democrat (little d) at least, that's for sure.

So some Republicans in Sacramento have come up with this brilliant idea to let the state's Congressional Districts pick their own Electors, one by one.

Skip this little-text explanation on why we have 55 votes if you don't need it:

So! Bicameral legislature! The Senate = two seats per state. The House = 435 seats split amongst the states by population. The Electoral College = The Senate + The House, divvied up by legislative seats. California has two Senators and 53 Reps, ergo we have 55 Electoral votes. Savvy?

Now, in this proposed plan, the winner of the state, instead of getting all 55 votes, would get 2. And each Congressional District (an area electing a single Representative) would get 1 vote each. And how they voted would determine which Elector they send to vote for president.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm from Kern County. A county that never votes Democratic (the opposite of Park City, Utah, you might say). So except for the few Demos scattered here and there, our vote for president hasn't counted since . . . Reagan, I think.

Me, I don't know what party I'll be voting for in 2008 yet. There are worthy candidates on both sides and we'll just have to see how things go. But our friends the Democrats have been screwed by the Electoral College recently, winning the popular vote nationally but losing anyway, so they've been moaning (and rightly so) about how the Electoral College sucks and is a big meanie.

And so this proposal, a step closer to onevote=onevote, should be welcomed by them. But no. It isn't. And why not? Because without California's 55 votes, they don't think they can win. And, as always, winning first, principals second. This is why I really don't much care for either of the Big Parties. Crap like this. Just check out these quotes from the article:

Howard Dean: "This is not reform. It's just another Republican attempt to rig an election. This is partisan, it's wrong and the Democratic Party will not stand for a repeat of 2000."

Uh huh. Now, I'll admit that short term, this is extremely likely to benefit the GOP, but as California goes, so goes the country. If this move proved trendsetting, the presidential election would be brought closer to the people--and isn't that what being a progressive is all about? And might this not have won you 2000, had it started happening twenty years ago?

Barbara Boxer: "We need to beat this and will do whatever is necessary. Sure, it's expensive, but this is our democracy, this is the presidency."

It's amazing to me that she thinks the-believing-people's donations to her party could be better spent running an anti-populist campaign than actually promoting her party's candidate. But whatever. She's just my Senator. What do I care if she makes $165,200 per annum to spout nonsense?

I just can't help thinking that the timing of this proposal really sucks. The Democrats (big D) will paint this in an evil light and defeat it at the polls and it will be tainted and thus never come up again--all because the Big Election takes place five months after the vote on the proposal--if it even gets on the ballot.

If this weren't so near an important election, if we could talk about this without talking about Party, if we were just a weeeee bit more mature, could anyone really honestly ethically be against this idea?

Correct answer: No.

But the drive to find correct answers is weak in partisan politics.

Can you prove me wrong?

115 letters in favor of recognizing a joint Ainu/Kabyle state

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Sure, they're kind of far apart geographically, but they both like dress-like traditional costumes and probably eat interesting food as well.

Not-so-Laborious

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We spent hours at the park playing/reading/eating. This was nice.

We did not get any painting done and the dishes are piled up. This will not be nice tomorrow.

Starting September with a Svithe

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When we first moved to Berkeley, I was thrilled nearly every week by the variety of thought and testimony on display. Whether the speaker used Japanese literature or economics to explain gospel principles, I was delighted to be around religious grad students. Lovely stuff.

Many weeks, I took notes to be turned into svithes, but we had no internet and had no internet and continued having no internet for some time, and most of those never made it online.

I recently found a quarter page of such notes and thought I might share it today. Who knows--the notes may even be a year old today.

"Holy God?" v. Humanism

His talk hit on Kierkergaard + Hamlet thrilling my shrivelled, intellectual soul. But his talk was on hope + in simple testimony and the sharing of testimony + personal experience (UofU) did the meeting become spiritual to me.

An accomplished organist and violinist the most [illegible] CCYS....

Did you get that? I think it's a pretty fine sentiment. And a good lesson to me. As a svither and just as a believing human being.

-end-





last week's svithe

Pow! Right in the kisser!

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Über S has been sad these many days

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And I can't say as I blame him that much--although why he waited for me to get sick and for school to start I can't say.

But I think it's time we write our senators and demand that Linus's proposal once more be brought to the table:

Don’t steal this svithe.

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I'm totally stealing this svithe.

Before Melyngoch left for her mission, she left an incredible post behind that not only quoted everyone from They Might Be Giants to Heloïse, but explained the Atonement to me in a bright and new way that may well prove to be life-changing.

Then (for all those of you who've been trying to decide if Harry Potter's mild-mannered secret identity is Jesus Christ), my brother Schmetterling figured the whole thing out. At least well enough for us nonmagical types.

And I would really like to expound but, well, Uber S is ascreaming and I ought to try harder to comfort him. Just holding him and treating him to the sounds of the keyboard does not seem to be cutting it. Bad Daddy.





last week's svithe

Sick SickTheric is sick.

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Sick Sick

Theric is sick


Sick sick

Theric is sick


Sick Sick

Theric is sick


Sick sick

Theric is sick


Sick Sick

Theric is sick


Sick sick

Theric is sick

DUMBLEDORE!

Eleventh Five Books of 2007

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I know these movies could have been better. But I'm sick, okay? Give me a break!


055) Ode To Kirihito by Osamu Tezuka, finished August 20

Tezuka is often called the Walt Disney of Japan, and the flap copy of this book promised to demolish that view in my mind. Now, I've never read Astro Boy, so that vision of Tezuka is not that strong in my mind, and four rapes, rampant corruption in the medical community, and and a number of disfiguring pituitary diseases later, I'm really not apt to ever think that. ¶ I don't know if the problem is soley translator Camellia Nieh's, but my main complaint with this book was its rather clunky dialogue. But this was not a constant problem, and if you're interested in the book, I wouldn't let it keep you away. ¶ I picked up this book because of the striking Chip Kidd cover and checked it out because I've been meaning to read something from the Japanese Walt Disney. I was happy that the book was printed in mirror image (yes, I'm cancerously westerncentric in that way) and I enjoyed the book--even at 821 pages it didn't feel too long, even if I was never totally enamored. ¶ The eponymous character is a doctor studying Monmow Disease--cause unknown; causes the ill to degenerate until the skull and limbs become distinctly doglike. While studying the disease in the village the cases come from he contracts the disease himself. One thing leads to another and he ends up everywhere from Taiwan to Syria and everyone from newborns to whores ends up dead in a series of tragedies. It's all very sad. And laden with surprisingly heavy Christian imagery. But with excellent heroic characters: the selfless nun, notably. Into selfless nuns? Have I got a book for you!
one week

054) Polygamy Was Better Than Monotony by Paul Bailey, finished August 10

I think Paul Bailey named this book what he did because he regretted not thinking of it earlier and putting it on Grandpa Was a Polygamist. Or maybe he had thought of that title, but hadn't given up on being popular in Utah yet. Get the full details at the Wikipedia article I started up for him! ¶ Anyway, the truth of the matter is this book has precious little to do with Polygamy--it's really his personal memoir, and although his polygamist grandfathers do play into that, they hardly deserve to have the book named after them. An ironic "Daddy Sacrificed His Second Estate" would have been better, for instance. ¶ Although he's not as successfully funny and his failings as a Mormon are more spectacular, those of you familiar with Robert Kirby might find the comparison helpful. ¶ But all that stuff aside, what I liked most about this book was its clear-eyed vision of small town Utah ninety or a hundred years ago. It's fascinating, to see an area I know so well, through such a very different pair of eyes. And the stories are like none I ever heard in Primary! For instance: getting baptized with tobacco in your pockets and coming out of the water, eight years old, clean, and surrounded by floating brown particulates of sin. Or: a desperate father yelling at President Heber J. Grant in his own office. But also: a town pulling together and rebuilding a downtrodden family's home after a disasterous fire. ¶ The book feels rather unplanned and slapped together a little too quickly. But it was like reading a nonfiction Great Brain (and I loved those book as a kid--even if they did make me feel slightly heretic), and, overall, I enjoyed it. I will be interested to see if his other books--his fiction maybe--read smoothly.
less than seven months but probably more than six

053) Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, finished August 7

This is a delightful book. No school was given that many pages, but as a fun introduction to many schools of thought, it's right on. And if you don't want to learn anything, that's okay too: the jokes are awesome.
two weeksish

052) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling, finished July 24

Hoooooo. Decompress. ¶ So I thought the first Harry Potter book was nice but unremarkable. The second didn't really justify the hype. I loved the third and fourth books and was dismayed by the fifth. I did like the sixth, but really, it all came down to this one. Could Rowling stick the ending? ¶ And the answer is a qualified yes. ¶ This book made me cry time and again. There is a portion near the end where everything could touch off the wellings. It's Neville! The letter his Gran wrote him! The prat brother! The twin! Lupin and Tonks! It was a brutal stretch. And I qualify the yet only because the book had so much more to do after that. But I do not begrudge it any of this. You write a 4100 page book (more than three times as long as LoTR), it can take some time to wind it down. And the readers deserve that. Fair enough. ¶ I'm not going to be willing to comment on whether or not Harry deserves to be called Immortal Literature, but that he is Immortal Literature in every reasonable sense seems impossible to argue. Probably, over the course of this week, more people have read more pages of this book than have ever read as many of any other book in history. Ever. Including the Bible. And the Quran. Do you doubt it? ¶ Anyway, important issues: No, I am not fully satisfied on the Snape issue. Yes, I thought the Dumbledore thing was good and important and in keeping with the well established themes. Okay, I guess I follow the King's Cross deal and the seventh Horcrux thing and all the mythology, and I guess it works well enough for me. Yes, the action was excellent. Yes, the casualties, though horrible, were also good and important and necessarily artistically. No, I'm not anxious to pick the books up and read them all again. Yes, I may well someday. Yes, I will recommend them to my children. Yes, I am glad I read them. No, I'm not sure which last line was the last line she's had all this time and so no, I'm not satisfied with its weight in contrast with its expected weight. ¶ Any questions?
three days

051) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling, finished July 21

When this book came out, I rushed through it so no one could ruin any salient plot points. But I entered it unprepared. I had read Order of the Phoenix the same way and had not touched Harry Potter at all in the interim. IN large part because I didn't much care for Order of the Phoenix--I found it overcooked. And besides: Harry was at a very annoying stage of life. He was intolerable. ¶ I didn't want to make the same mistake entering final book of the series, so I decided to read the last hundred pages of Half-Blood Prince before getting into it. The trouble was that I kept putting it off and putting it off and even though things I read like this and this should have reminded me, it wasn't till I took it off the shelf and started to read that I remembered that, unlike Book 5, I really liked this book. And so I determined to read the entire thing. ¶ I skimmed less important passages, but the book is surprisingly short on such. And I was also reading some passages more critically that I might feel better informed on such things as the Snape Issue as I attacked the final volume. ¶ I'm reasonably certain this was time well spent. ¶ Even if I am a day behind now....
two days

Previously on Five Books....

050) The Ruins by Scott Smith, finished July 13<
049) Favorite Stories by Margret Rey, illustrated by H.A. Rey, finished July 12
048) Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins, finished July 2
047) Flight Volume Three edited by Kazu Kibuishi, finished June 27
046) Nobody Is Perfick by Bernard Waber, finished June 14
045) First Paragraphs: Inspired Openings for Writers and Readers by Donald Newlove, finished June 12
044) The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking, finished June 11
043) Dune by Frank Herbert, finished June 9
042) The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels by Thomas Cahill, finished June 8
041) The Roald Dahl Omnibus by Roald Dahl, finished June 6
040) Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo, finished May 31
039) The End by Lemony Snicket, finished May 23
038) The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 by Charles M. Schultz, finished May 22
037) The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket, finished May 21
036) The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket, finished May 18
035) The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, finished May 15
034) Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, finished May 14
033) Chip Kidd: Book One: Work: 1986-2006 by Chip Kidd, finished May 9
032) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, finished May 7
031) The Complete Peanuts 1959-1960 by Charles M. Schulz, finished April 25
030) Devils & Demons edited by Marvin Kaye, finished April 23
029) Talk Talk Talk: Decoding the Mysteries of Speech by Jay Ingram, finished April 23
028) Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, finished April 20
027) The Long Chalkboard: and Other Stories by Jennifer Allen and illustrated by Jules Feiffer, finished April 19
026) Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, finished April 19
025) Frank by Jim Woodring, finished April 12
024) The Complete Concrete by Paul Chadwick, finished April 3
023) The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde, finished March 30
022) Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, finished March 28
021) Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller et al, finished March 23
020) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, finished March 16
019) Batman: Gothic by Grant Morrison et al, finished March 13
018) Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, finished March 7
017) Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid by Megan McDonald, finished March 7
016) 50 Professional Scenes for Student Actors: A Collection of Short 2 Person Scenes by Garry Michael Kluger, finished March 6
015) Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda, finished March 5
014) Frindle by Andrew Clements, finished March 1
013) Brain Wave by Poul Anderson, finished February 27
012) The Best American Comics 2006 edited by Harvey Pekar and Anne Elizabeth Moore, finished February 26
011) Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, finished February 15
010) The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ edited by Mormon and Moroni, finished February 7
009) Lisey's Story by Stephen King, finished February 1
008) The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, finished January 26
007) Empire by Orson Scott Card, finished January 24
006) Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, finished January 22
005) Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, finished January 17
004) Superman Adventures Vol. 1: Up, Up and Away! by Mark Millar, finished January 16
003) A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, finished January 12
002) Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, finished January 11
001) Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut, finished January 10

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