The other morning, while his newly-ordained mama is at work:
Zag: Is God real?
me: That’s a great question for your Mama.
[a thoughtful pause]
Zag: Is she that kind of scientist?
me: ummm . . . . yes.
There’s no earthly way of knowing
How long it will go on snowing!
There’s no knowing how deep it’s growing
or which way the snow is blowing!
Not a speck of light is showing,
so the snowbanks must be growing,
though snowblowers keep on blowing,
and it’s certainly not showing
any signs that it is slowing . . .
(with apologies to Roald Dahl)
Well, I can now banish any worries of an insufficient experience of winter. Last weekend we were without power for several days on account of a nasty ice storm. We got power back on Tuesday, and then it snowed on Wednesday, and on Friday, and Saturday, and it’s been snowing all day today so far, and forecast to continue doing so into the night. Of course, they also predicted that it would stop snowing yesterday before the current storm came in. Instead, it just didn’t come down as fast today. We’ve had at least a foot and a half so far–at least 20 inches predicted, I suspect it will be more than that when we’re done.
Zag and I are excited about all the snow, I think WB and the dog are a little more ambivalent. We let the dog out to pee, and she stands on the patio, looking perplexed at the sea of white that has replaced her yard.
We all went out on our snowshoes for a brief excursion in the woods yesterday. Then Zag became ambivalent. He was very enthusiastic about tromping around n the yard in his snowshoes, but wasn’t very interested in going out in to the woods at all. Ah well, he wasn’t really interested in walking in the woods when we first got here either, but he eventually came to like it. Maybe he’ll get more interested in skiing?
I love it. I love the quiet of the world covered in snow, the soft white blanket everywhere, the warm feeling of being bundled up and working hard enough shoveling or tromping around to take off layers so as not to be too warm. I can hardly wait to get out on skis again and hear the quiet hiss of gliding over new snow, but first, I think it might need to stop for a little while.
This would be so much fun. For Zag, of course. After we move.
(Via MAKE magazine.)
Some day, I’m gonna have to build me something like this. I’m a sucker for that art deco styling. I just I hope I can do it to a Mac.
and that’s good enough for me! Weirdbird had to go in for her shift at the hospital after an early dinner this evening, leaving Zag and I to finish up our dinners. Zag didn’t eat much of his Veggie burger and he uncharacteristically refused to even look at a potato, let alone eat any. But the bowl of steamed broccoli–he started eating straight of it, cramming it in. I said he looked like maybe he was the Broccoli monster, and he didn’t miss a beat–he kept kept cramming in the broccoli, and start in with his low growly monster voice “Bollicki, Bollicki, Bollicki!! Aaarm um yum yum!!!”
I can only hope that this lasts . . .
Well, I’m back. No Bonus posting while I was away–somehow I forget that these trips always end up with me working 10-12 hour days, plus this one had a demanding social calendar on top of it, cataching up with some of our old friends from Kampala and Mukono.
I got back Sunday about noon, and spent Sunday and yesterday with Zag and Weirdbird, getting the family reacquianted, and such. After a trip like that, I get 2 days of “post-travel leave” which makes re-entry a little easier, but also confusing. Yesterday felt like a Saturday. For that matter, so did Sunday. Add a little jet lag in the mix, and I’m pretty scrambled in my sense of time.
Today is Weirdbird’s first day of CPE–Clinical Pastoral Education–which is a sort of hospital chaplaincy internship. This is a 16 hour a week, unpaid program, that will make this an especially challenging year. She has a full day on Tuesday, and 8 additional hours the rest of the week. This morning I took Zag over to the person who is going to be taking care of him on Tuesdays, so it’s just me & the dog in the house today. Quiet. And I don’t quite know what to do with myself and my free time. It’s the kind of a day that wants some largish project to finish, but I haven’t got one lined up, since I just got back, and hadn’t really thought past this trip. So I’m whittling through a mail and email backlog, tidying around the house, doing some errands. Once the sitter calls to let me know that Zag is up from his nap, I’ll head over there and pick him up a little early, maybe go to the farmer’s market.
Tuesdays are going to be strange. I see very few people as it is, working from home. I’m going to have to find someone to have lunch with on Tuesdays or something, just so I remember what people look like.
I leave tomorrow evening for 2 weeks in Uganda, for work. Looking forward to at least parts of the trip–I’ve gotten in touch with a couple of friends from when Weirdbird and I lived there for 5 months or so in 2002, so I’m really looking forward to catching up with them. The work should be good to0–lots of tilting at windmills there!–but these trips are always pretty intense, and it’s hard being away from WB and Zag for so long at a go.
I’d say there was a chance that there would be minimal posting for a while, but that’s already the norm here, so instead I’ll say there’s a chance that posting may go up while I’m away! Stay tuned . . .
I spent last week working in Chapel Hill, which was mostly great, except for missing out on all the exciting developments back at home. Managed to see quite a few friends, which was nice, and met at least a few of the dozens of new people who have joined our offices since we moved to Cambridge last year.
I ended up renting a car, and I think I ended up spending more time driving in 5 days in Chapel Hill than I have in the last 5 months in Cambridge (excluding vacations), which was sort of surprising. It’s not just that public transit is somewhat minimal in the Triangle (at least, for where I needed to be), but also that there is construction everywhere. Big construction. Taking an hour to for what should be a ten minute drive type construction. Rewidening roads they just finished widening a few years ago. There’s certainly construction in Boston, but Boston and Cambridge are, for the most part, finished. There’s nowhere left to put anything. Chapel Hill and Durham are nothing near that level of density, so it’s apparently construction from now until the end of time. Fortunately, Durham is home to a really great jazz radio station, WNCU, so I had stuff to listen to all that time in the car.
Now I’m home for week, and the off again to Uganda on Saturday. This is quite a month.
 
The wizards at Ambient Devices have brought out this wonder of wonders, which makes me laugh: it’s a $125 umbrella that receives weather forecasts via built in WiFi in the handle, which then glows blue when there’s rain in the forecast, so that you know you should take it with you, so that you’ll have it to fight off the approaching orcs. Or something like that. What I want to know is, does this mean Orcs bring rain, or the other way around?
[via Unclutterer]
I see via Dylan’s blog that there’s an Episcopal priest in Washington who is claiming to be both Christian and Muslim, and who is continuing to practice as a priest even after her conversion to Islam. Unsurprisingly, this seems to have caused some controversy. Mostly, I agree with what Dylan has said, and AKMA before her.
Having spent a number of years in graduate school in History of Religion, I think I can say with some authority that there are real differences in religious traditions and religious communities, that they are not all the same, and that in general, one should be careful of anyone trying to convince you that they are. I will grant the possibility that all religions are paths up the same mountain or some such, but frankly, there’s not a whole lot of supporting evidence for that, and mostly I find that position to be a slightly passive agressive way for people to say “I can only accept you if underneath it all, everything you do and believe is really the same as what I do and believe.” That’s not real dialog, and that’s not real acceptance. If we can’t live with being different, we’re doomed.
The other thing that I am somewhat bothered by is the way this seems to reflects certain attitude, perhaps not unique to American protestantism, that suggests that somehow religious faith is a purely individual matter, and that you can believe whatever you want and call yourself whatever you want without reference to a larger community. (An idea that Slacktivist had some fun with a while back.) It’s not true. You can call yourself Jewish, or Christian, or Muslim, and then decide it means whatever you think it means, independent of the communities that those names, but that’s a sort of Humpty Dumpty approach to religion:
`I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”‘ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
`But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”‘ Alice objected.
`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’
`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master – - that’s all.’
It may well be possible for an individual in their personal spiritual life to have a strong identification with both Christianity and Islam, and make an individual reconciling of the beliefs and practices of each, but many members of both of those religious communities will not recognize this reconciling. Of course, many Christians do not recognize other Christians as Christian, so perhaps this is for many a non-issue. But people are religious in community. Indeed, I’m not sure it’s possible to be a Christian without a community. But that’s another post, and that’s not the real point of this post.
The real point of this post is to say that this story immediately reminded me of this classic article from the Onion:
which in turn, reminded me of this even more classic:
And if Christ can return to the NBA, then I can return to blogging.