The Beautiful South: Part Two

As I was saying, my son and I made the trek to my brother's house in south Georgia a week and a half ago. We traveled with my sister and her daughter. Some highlights:

We knew that we weren't in Atlanta anymore when we saw this at a local Wal-Mart:


We stopped at a sleepy McDonalds where we were met by two busloads of marching band. My niece played her Gameboy DS under a blanket. My son said little. After three hours of silent patience he finally asked, "Why is it taking forever?"

The hotel was actually a resort at Georgia Veterans State Park. My son thought the room was great. It had closets, a TV, a view of the lake, a screened in porch, and.....a bathroom. He was so excited about the bathroom that he just had to use it even though he didn't really need to.

The party was fun. Burgers and sausage from Striplings (motto: "you never sausage a place") were grilled to perfection and cake and ice cream was enjoyed by all. If you have ever been to Lake Blackshear, then you know Striplings. If you haven't, then you can check them out online. You can order their sausage and beef jerky, a large variety of Striplings seasonings, but not the butt rub. They sell a sausage that would make a great addition to a low-country boil, the best beef jerky I have ever had (should be for $20.00/pd), and sundry items.

We were warned to be on the lookout for large animals on our drive back to the hotel room. After all, we were in the neighborhood of Hogzilla.

My son is a fine traveler. He only complained twice on the long rides to and fro. We had a great time, though far too short and incomplete without wife and daughter.

Peace

You Know It is the Day Before Spring Break When...

...a quarter of students show up to first period with 1st degree burns covering their body as a result of emergency visits to the tanning beds. I'm not kidding. Tans are not something for which one should cram.

This week our school has hosted Spiritual Emphasis Week, a sort of annual revival; next week our students will experience Physical Emphasis Week, a sort of annual bacchanalia. Somedays, I wonder why we even try.

Peace

Snack Mishap

I have spilled Coca-Coca on my keyboard. This is major disaster for two reasons: One, the "t", "w", "h", "g", "n", and "u" keys nowwwwwww stttttick. Second, approximately 4 ounces of soda has been spilled and cannot be recovered. A moment of silence for this painfuuuuuuuuuuuuuul loss.


Thank you. Part two of Sunday's story will be up as soon as I get a new keyboard. Until then, here is a teaser:


Veterans Memorial Park: In Honor of Those Who Have Served


Peace

The Beautiful South: Part One

A two hundred and fifty mile long pine needle laid west to east across a map of Georgia with one end in Columbus, the middle across Macon, and the other end terminating in Augusta will neatly illustrate a major geographical feature of the state. North of the needle will be a region of low, round hills bubbling over verdant green valleys, streams still cold from their Appalachian sources, and dominated by a growing algeous stain known at "The ATL". This region is the Piedmont and has been my home for thirty-plus years. Continuing north of this region, one will stumble blissfully into the foothills of ancient mountains and tread knee-breaking trails blazed by the Cherokee. South of our piney boundary (sometimes called the gnat line) of the Piedmont is a sprawling region that is generously referred to as the Coastal Plain.

The Coastal Plain is more plain than coast and is characterized by long, hot summers, gnats, long stretches of flat, sandy soil, and pine trees. It can be a hellish place.

I went to school in the Coastal Plain. I have never been quite sure how one of my best friends induced me to enroll at Georgia Southern University. Maybe I thought he said Georgia Mountain University. That whole episode is in lost in the fog of memory.

It took a couple of years living in hell before I was able to begin seeing the beauty of the region. While the campus of GSU itself and the environs of Statesboro are fairly hideous, one doesn't have to travel far to come upon sudden beauty. In all directions one comes upon formal pecan orchards, lush wetlands, cotton-coated fields, languid rivers, and spreading oaks that look as though they have forever shaded farmsteads in all stages of repair. And small towns, each with a claim to fame: Vidalia has its onions, Dublin has its Irish, Vienna has its Big Pig Jig, Americus has its Jimmy Carter, and Cordele has its watermelon.

I spent a pleasant part of this weekend in the Coastal Plain visiting family. It was cool tending toward cold whenever the wind blew off Lake Blackshear. The landscape was painted in the unique shade of green that appears with the advent of spring, and the wisteria and azalea was in full bloom.




Peace

Monday Miscellany: Poppolacracy, or Everyone Else is Doing It

When I log unto my computer at work, I often say triumphantly as the desktop loads, "Okay, we're in." Is that weird?


My American lit students are presenting the findings of their research projects this week. Their assignment was to research themes of American pop music (in the broad definition; anything but classical). I had to put severe restrictions on the content that they could use in their oral presentations, though they were fairly free in their written paper. After two presentations, one of my juniors exclaimed with surprise, "It's amazing how pervasive profanity is in music today!" Exactly.


A former student dropped by today (class of '02). She had been just passing by and decided to drop in. She had forgotten my name, but sought me out to thank me for teaching her economics. Our stock market simulation had sparked in her an interest in economics (I had no idea). She ended up taking a number of economics courses in college and almost majored in it. Anyway, she just wanted to express her appreciation and encourage me to keep it up. If this were an everyday an event then I wouldn't relate this tale. Alas, it is quite rare and all the more precious for that.


Poppolacracy: the rule by popular opinion polls

Americans spend much of their time in raising and teaching children two main ideas: First, we want our children to do what is right, even if it is not popular. Second, we want our children to question popular wisdom and to refuse to go along with the crowd if the crowd is in the wrong. What child hasn't heard (and what parent has uttered), "If everyone else was jumping off of a cliff, would you jump off of a cliff?"

In case you missed, this weekend was the third anniversary of the Iraq war. John Murtha and William "The Gambler" Bennett were on CBS Sunday Morning presenting pre-recorded statements about the Iraq war.

What struck me strongest about Murtha's argument was the rationale he employed in proving his point. He did not talk about either the rightness, effectiveness, or competency of the war. His made three main points, and all three were based on opinion polls. In other words, he thought that since the war was unpopular, unpopular, and unpopular that it was not worth doing.

Granted, I have seen Murtha express his opposition to the war much more eloquently, but the citing of opinion polls as a reason for doing things (other than the voting off of Idols) is not leadership, it is followership. A true leader must be resolute and willing to stand for the right, especially when it is unpopular. How can we teach our children to do what is right when our leaders tell us to do what is popular?

BTW: Do you like polacracy, pollacracy, polecracy (sounds kinda like pole-crazy), or poppolacracy better?


Peace

Donuts with Daddys

Thursday was Donuts with Daddys day at my son's school. I took the morning off and spent an hour in my son's class. The class had been working for two weeks in preparation for this day. I got:

A tie.



















I wore my tie to work for the rest of the day. My students kept asking me, "Did your kid make that?" Eventually, I started making up answers. "Umm...No...Why do you ask?" "No...I did...does it look like something a child could do?" It was great fun and gave me a lead into bragging about my boy.

A book with a portrait of me.



















According to the book:
Daddy (that's me)...

"works at a place with markers and he's a teacher" (whenever he visits me at school, my son spend his time drawing on the whiteboard)

"is 81 years old" (a joke typical of my son)

"favorite thing to eat is turkey" (I don't know where he got that)

"his favorite things to do at home are teaching me and play rock, paper, scissors"

"favorite color is orange" (my boy assigned favorite colors to everyone in the household when he was three; mine has always been orange. I don't know why)

"favorite sport is soccer" (true)

"favorite thing [my son] to do with Dad is play Star Wars with light sabers" (true, but did he have to tell everybody that?)

Finally, "I love my Dad because he is funny and cool" (also true)


I also got three Munckins, but my son ate one of them. I didn't mind too much.

He didn't mind it when I had to leave, but I had to step over three girls that were in severe emotional distress after their fathers left.


Peace

Saturday Stumps

Saturday was the perfect day. The day conformed exactly to the hopes that I have always had about what it would like to be the father of a boy. On so many other days I fall far short of what I want to be that this day stands out in stark contrast.

It was a warm, sunny spring day. I decided to take the boy to the Chattahoochee Nature Center for "Much Ado About Bugs", a short class designed for kids. I hoped that there would be live bugs. The boy did not. He got his way. He enjoyed the craft portion of the class (he made a bee). Afterward, we walked the trails and talked of all things of five-year olds.

The Nature Center has a live bald eagle in one of its enclosures (as well as several owls and hawks). I had never seen a bald eagle before. "Majestic" falls far short in describing the bird. It would be a wonder to see one in the wild.

We passed a large stump.

"Look at this daddy!"

"That's a stump. The tree must have died and the people here cut it down, leaving this stump."

"Trees die?"

"Yes." Uh-oh.

"Do all trees die?"

"Eventually. Though they can live for many years."

"Will my tree die?" There is a tree in the back yard that I planted after my wife made me save it when it seeded itself too close to the house. Now it is my boy's tree. As he grows, it grows.

"Um. Hmm. Yes, eventually it will die, but it is young and should live for a long very time." As should you son.

He paused and asked with some concern, "Will I die when my tree dies?"

Not unless you are a dryad, I thought. What a melancholic question. I answered his questions, feeling like I was on the losing end of police interrogation, and we continued around the lakes (they have two).

We lunched at McDonalds where the boy polished off his entire meal and a towering cone (without losing a single drop--an impressive feat).

I took the kids outside when we got home. The boy and girl helped me plant some new bulbs and clean up the yard. The boy went about as my helper saying, "Yes, Sir!" and "No, Sir!" and feeling quite important. A rousing game of tag ensued after the girl went inside. The boy amazed himself with a face-saving leap over a large rock, and we went inside, red-faced and exhausted.

The perfect day.


Peace

Spring Surprise

Matthew 13: 1That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3Then he told them many things in parables, saying: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9He who has ears, let him hear."


Several years ago, I dug up what was left of the previous owners' flowerbed around the mailbox. One of the things I dug up was some kind of bulb that came up every year but never flowered. I dumped the refuse, including the bulb, in an unused area of my garden where it somehow found a way to live. It sent shoots out every year, failed to flower, and then died back about mid-summer.

Eventually, I needed the spot where I had put my pile of refuse, and in a fit of enviro-friendliness, I threw it onto a new compost pile.

Last year that bulb found a way to survive and sent up shoots in the midst of my compost pile. Even after turning the pile several times, it found a way to green up.

Today, I came home early from a teacher workday to hear shouts from the backyard. Good, I thought, the kids are playing outside. I went back to join them. My wife and I walked around our spacious backyard, making our ubiquitous Spring-time, unrealistically optimistic plans for the yard and the garden.

We made it back to my sad little compost pile, dreaming of fences, when my wife said, "What kind of flower is that?"



I don't know what it is. It is wonderfully aromatic and quite beautiful. It hadn't flowered by the mailbox. It hadn't flowered in my garden. It flowered in the rotting refuse of yards gone by.



There's a lesson here somewhere.

Peace

I'm not exactly a strict sabbatarian but...PART 2

I was posting a comment to respond to the astute comments left on my last post when I realized that I was rambling out a long and cumbersome reply comment that would probably be better served by rambling out a long and cumbersome post. Most of what I has to say probably boils down to a point of semantics, but…

For many years, I have personally wrestled with the proper way of honoring the Sabbath. I went through a period where I tried to make sure that no one had to work on my behalf on the Sabbath. Then we had children. A lot of previously held, Moses brought them down from the mountain by the hand of God on tablets of stone, convictions are set aside when children come into your life. I am still not convinced that my conviction concerning the Sabbath was wrong, merely inconvenient. Few churches are willing to even address the point. Other than homilies on the virtues of Truett Cathy, there is a lack of substantive discussion about this issue in Christendom. Discussions of Cathy fail to reveal a substantive rationale for admiring Cathy.

In my last post I pondered..."is it inconsistent for a Christian to admire Truett Cathy of Chik-Fil-A for sacrificing profits by closing shop on Sundays in order to honor the Sabbath by giving his employees a day of rest if the same Christian goes out to eat after church every Sunday, thereby forcing someone to work for him?"

4boydad rightly pointed out that my question was incomplete:

If your reason for admiring him is because you think people shouldn't work on Sunday, then yes, it is inconsistent.

If your reason for admiring him is because he's taking an uncommon and potentially unpopular stance to stick to his own beliefs, even if you may not agree 100% with those beliefs, then it is not inconsistent.

I see his point; Tennyson made the same observation about the Charge of the Light Brigade. One doesn’t have to agree with British intentions to defeat the Russians, nor even with the tactical intentions of the British at the battle, to recognize the bravery of the British charge. At the same time, Tennyson understood that the charge itself was a foolish waste "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die".

In addition, I can respect the bravery of those willing to storm the beaches at Normandy and be in full agreement with their mission, but be personally unwilling to take that risk myself. But, if I am in the boat heading to the beach and run away (or swim away) then I am a coward.

My problem comes with the typical Christian admiration of Cathy's honoring of the Sabbath. If one admires him for honoring the Sabbath in this way (which is the way I most often heard him mentioned), then one must believe in honoring the Sabbath. Why else would his story resonate so strongly with Christians? If he is honoring the Sabbath by his actions, then what are my intentions when I am rude to my waiter and send back my steak at lunch after worship? Either his actions honor God by honoring the Sabbath or his actions are a foolish squandering of the resources that God has put in his stewardship. If his actions are a positive virtue, shouldn't mine emulate his? Shouldn't admiration inspire emulation?

Another question: Doesn't one have to, at least to a degree, agree with the stand that is being taken to admire that stand being taken? That is, can one truly separate the means of the stand from the ends of the stand? I don't much admire the "uncommon and potentially unpopular stance" of suicide bombers. Brave? Yes. Fools? Yes. Admirable? Certainly not. I respect suicide bombers, but I do not admire them. Many see Cathy as a fool, sort of a suicide businessman. They may respect his stand, but do not admire him because they see him as foolishly throwing away potential profits.

I admire those who stormed Omaha beach because I wish I were as good as they, and I agree with their mission. I do not admire the rebel soldiers who crashed into Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg in an act of gallantry almost unequaled in the annals of American history because I do not agree with their mission. I respect their bravery, but do not admire them. I warned you that this would get semantic.

In January Joel Stein of the LA Times created a short-lived stir with his honest and brave assertion that "I don't support our troops." In doing so he revealed the logical problem of claiming to support troops while doing everything possible to make sure that their mission fails. He doesn't believe that the means can be separated from the ends. If one disagrees with the mission, one can't very well support the missionaries. Personally, I thought was about time that someone pointed out the hypocrisy of the anti-war left and right. The anti-war crowd had a certain unity of thought in the Vietnam era when they were against the war and the entire military-industrial complex. Look at who is to blame in the lyrics of Donovan's Vietnam era "Universal Soldier":

And he's fighting for Democracy,
He's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all.
He's the one who must decide,
Who's to live and who's to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.

But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Labau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He's the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can't go on.

He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can't you see,
This is not the way we put an end to war.

(Emphasis mine)

It comes down to: Can I truly admire the bravery of a wrong-headed fool?

I am struggling through the answer to this. My gut tells me that it is convenient hypocrisy to admire a man but to be unwilling to follow his example. At the same time, separating the means and ends is a strongly compelling way to "admire" bravery. But why is it compelling?

I cannot agree more with 4boydad when he writes:

"Personally, I quietly cheer the Closed on Sunday stance Monday through Saturday, and then quietly curse it on Sundays when I want something to eat."

Ask my wife how many times I have said with sudden joy and anticipation, "Let's get Chik-fil-a today!" only to be met with the 'what are you talking about' look and to sadly realize that it is Sunday.

Does that make me a coward?

This post should lead to some interesting search results. And yes, I realize that I have engaged in a little of my own version of reductio ad Hitlerum. Suicide bombers and chicken sandwiches...a bit ridiculous to compare, don’t you think?

Peace

I'm not exactly a strict sabbatarian but...

...is it inconsistent for a Christian to admire Truett Cathy of Chik-fil-a for sacrificing profits by closing shop on Sundays in order to honor the sabbath by giving his employees a day of rest if the same Christian goes out to eat after church every Sunday, thereby forcing someone to work for him?

Just wondering.

Peace

Black History Month Over...Does that mean we only talk about whites now?

I was deeply impressed with Morgan Freeman's comments concerning Black History Month on 60 Minutes back in December 2005. In case you missed it, he essentially said that black history month was ridiculous. Read about it here. I could not agree more. I wrote a bit about this issue here.

When I teach American history, I refuse to be part of a "Coloured Only" month. The influence of blacks on America, as individuals and as a culture, is inarguable, immense, and vital to the understanding of American history; I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't integrate their history at every significant, as opposed to trivial, moment. My teaching of "black history" begins during the first or second week of school when we talk about the importation of the first slaves and the role of free blacks in colonial America. I never stop teaching "black history"; it is American history. Though I am white, it is my history. It is neither logical to teach American history in self-contained months outside of a narrative framework, nor is it conducive to a true understanding of equality.

Jay Nordlinger remarks in todays NRO:

"So, it's going ahead: The National Museum of African-American History and Culture will be built on the Mall, to be part of the Smithsonian Institution. I have not studied this issue, I must tell you — but, as usual, that won't prevent me from writing about it.

I have never liked segregation, in history or elsewhere. And if black Americans aren't part of the general American story, no one is. This new museum gives official, federal sanction to historiographic segregation. It is the Smithsonian's own February.

Well, if we must have such a museum — better make it good."

Historigraphic segregation: I like that phrase. Loaded but accurate. Unlike the Vice-President's gun.

Timely reporting and commentary (a story from December and a three week old shooting)...that's what the Ohoopee is all about.

Peace