Wonderblog

I have asked for the abolishment of certain words before (see ‘Teleconference’). I found another one: Capitalism

This article  provides an alternative:

 I refuse to use the word “capitalism” in this context, because it’s really a Marxist term and doesn’t capture the essence of a system in which individuals and corporations freely exchange goods and services without government interference, if indeed it ever did. When so-called “capitalists” who run the finance, real estate, insurance, and now automotive industries come to Washington, hat in hand, for taxpayer dollars, it’s laughably ludicrous to call them supporters of the free market. Moreover, the term “capitalism” doesn’t capture or connote the importance of property rights and the ability to exchange them freely that are at the base of human liberty in the way that the phrase “free market” does.

I’m irritated with the persistent of ‘Marxism’ as a valid political theory. It was a living theory more than a hundred years ago, but the world has changed.  Using Marxism as economic theory now makes about as much sense as using the four Humors for medical diagnostics.  When I hear people refer to it now, I think they are being intellectually lazy and not willing to reevalute the changes that have heppened during the 20th and 21st century.

So lets not use that word any more. Free Marketer can be a replacement.

My beautiful friend Wendee came to visit this weekend, and we went to the Pilgrim’s Festival. We enjoyed the rummage sale, perused the jam jars and watched part of the reenactment play.

Later we go home to  walk the dog. For dinner we went to Don Jose, which is large and homey and has blackand white photos of western movies up on the walls.

We stayed up kinda late talking, so I slept in later than usual for me. When I woke up I wanted to make a nice pancake breakfast for Wendee, but I remembered we had no syrup. I racked my brain for what sort of yummy food I could make, and then I remembered:

POPOVERS

We used to make these when I was a kid. The floury dough would sit low and unassuming in their individual muffin pan beds until

POW

they would explode up from their middles, arching into a shell that would crisp while the hollow center would cook into a soft doughy goodness.

There is a trick to popovers; you have to start them at high temp and then lower the temp just before halfways through. I had been nervous to attempt popovers with my old ancient oven, but now with my new and very temperature accurate oven I was ready to try.

Joy of Cooking gave me the same recipe mom had used, and I mixed up a batch. JOC says the ingredients have to be room temp. I let them get warmer on the counter while I waited for Wendee to wake up. The other very important part of popovers it that their deliciousness is greatly enhanced by eating them immediately after taking them out of the oven.

HOT HOT HOT and with butter and jam or sugar.

Wendee awoke, and agreed to the popover experiment. I greased the muffin pan, including a silicone one I got for my weddings, floured it and poured in the batter.

The result:

Perfection

Better even than I remember from childhood. Crunchy, crispy soft and doughy deliciousness with butter, tea and jam.

yum yum

So someone hooked me up to some facebook groups regarding the Christian culture of my youth. Some skeletons are stored much more comfortably in the closet.

But the doors were opened and out rattled the dusty (or not so dusty) bones.

The first one was, of course, A.C.E.- Accelerated Christian Education. That was where it all started. Here is a nice quote from the journal Phi Delta Kappa I found on Wikipedia regarding that initial horror:

“If parents want their children to obtain a very limited and sometimes inaccurate view of the world - one that ignores thinking above the level of rote recall - then the ACE materials do the job very well. The world of the ACE materials is quite a different one from that of scholarship and critical thinking”^[18]

‘Cause really, I prize the abandonment of critical thinking above most things. (where is the irony emoticon when you need it?)

But Facebook is demonstrating it’s wide range of people. There’s more!

HOMESCHOOL

That was lighter reading, perusing the groups of homeschoolers who reminisce about staying in their pajamas all day and finishing the day’s homework in 2 or 3 hours. And all this while testing 2 or 3 or 10 grades above their ’schooled’ peers.

The homeschool groups were cheerier. But then they dipped back into the dark. Someone mentioned being schooled by ATI, the homeschool program developed by Bill Gothard

Bill Gothard…*shudder*… and the Institute for Basic Youth Conflicts. Hard to get more hard core stupid…I hesistate to use the word ’stupid’ because it’s more damaging than that, but I want to be derisive and dismissive.

Gothard’s week-long seminar in Basic Youth Conflicts was a hitler-youth like winnowing of impulses and life choices into sin and salvation–and salvation always lay on the side of submitting one’s free will and personality to the authority of God. And the authority of God was not represented by an internal understanding or relationship with God…It was corporeally represented by the Church Leader. My pastor quoted Gothard almost as frequently as scripture.

Bill Gothard developed a highly structured Home School curriculum. THANK CHRIST I was spared that. I suspect it’s because it was expensive. But I would love to hear about what it was like from those who were subjected to it.

Facebook has a group for that, too. I found it through the “Bill Gothard is quite possibly the Anti-Christ” group.

I will tell you, this post has very little thought put into it.

I have 6 weeks of work left, and the things that I need to do are progressing nicely. There are a few more things that I have to do that I could be working on. But I’m not.

My motivation is low, and I’m scouting around for something to entertain me. No luck. The news is depressing, offering unsubstantiated expectations for the new president (euphoric, dire and cautious–covering the bases) and reports of massive massive layoffs.

pheh

Pop culture or other fluff seems silly and selfish in the face of this news, so no solace there.

The best place right now is in cute animal pictures.

I’ve been in the office for 3 hours now, and not getting much done.

Maybe I should unearth my iPod. A podcast would come in handy right now.

Well, I tell you. I am sad that my team did not win the Presidential election.

But I am not willing to go gently into that dark night. I feel ominous about what President Obama might choose to do regarding taxes and stifling business. Then I remember, he’s not the only guy with influence on these matters.

So here is my plan:

I will get the names and addresses of all my government representatives and create pre-addressed stamped envelopes for all of them. Maybe more than one for each. Then, when I hear of a situation that I have an opinion about, I can dash off a letter to the people who are handling that situation and let them know how I think it should be handled.

This election had a massive turn-out. I’m sorry they didn’t vote for my team, but it is heartening that so many people are willing to take action to be involved in government. I don’t think that momentum should be lost. So, I’m going to make my action kit of preaddresses envelopes and let my representative know that their job and performance is being scrutinized.

That wayI have a reason to stay on top of issues. Rather than just stewing about it, I can take action. I would hope to avoid frustration and impotent rage. Let’s hear it for potent rage!

I guess most of the country is pretty excited about the election.

I don’t know what will happen. I can’t predict.

But I will be walking into my polling place tomorrow.

See you on the other side!

I was with a group of friends last night, and someone was unclear about what exactly a blog is.

Don’t throw ME in the briar patch!

But you know, I’ve been doing this blog thing for 6 and a half years. It is a container to hold the mind-matter that might otherwise jam up in my head.

I dont’ know if it begets further mediocrity or if it actually helps me hone my thinking.

I guess what I know for sure it does is save trees. I would be writing SOMETHING even if were on notebooks that would pile up and be in the way. I do have enough of those hanging around anyway.

If we didn’t have this new container for writing, communication, creativity, what-have-you, this receptacle that is the internet…I think we would probably write more letters.

Or maybe we would put on local dispalys of art–theater productions, paintings, music sessions, something. At the risk of sounding like Captain Kirk, I think it’s part of what makes humans great.

And yeah, there are a lot of stupid outpourings. This particular post would be one of them. But then, there is the occasional flash of something greater.  I have a category “Attempts at Profundity” that is for those little flashes.

I guess capturing them is worth the rest of the drivel.

Last week, I got my piano moved out of the kitchen and into its home against the interior living room wall. We had to get a pro to do it, and use special weight distributing cups under the piano wheel so that this heavy thing does not leave long scars in the ancient floor wood of our living room.

I can see the whole blessed piano from the dining table and while lying down on the couch. It had a thickish coat of grimy dust on it from being so near the stove which cooks our hamurger meat. I lovingly washed it with Murphy’s Wood Soap. I needed the grease to be really cleaned off it before I got to the real prize:

Polishing the wood

I have put so much work and love into that worthless piano, and I love love love to see the wood that I uncovered by my sweat, blood and tears shine like a redeemed life. I use Solid Gold furniture polish (I would link to it, but the internet is not on speaking terms with that brand). I rubbed and shined the oily redemption on my gorgeous instrument until I could see every grainy swirl of the proud tree it once was.

I plugged the piano lamp in to shed light and stood back. Yes, that’s my piano. Beautiful. About a million years ago, when I finally put the finish coat on my piano and saw the color it became, I determined that the piano was the color that I wish my hair was: a shimmering multi-faceted auburn that licked out like flame.

Maybe I was high from the fumes of the chemicals. But when I put the love-polish on my instrument, it ignites the flame every time.

THEN I found my fake book and played a few tunes. My fingers were weak from not playing since…oh…forever or February, which is when we refinished the floors in the house and when it was relagated to the kitchen. The piano also needs a tuning. Middle ‘D’ is quite dissonant. Hard to avoid middle ‘D’. It’s a popular and useful key.

I’ve been longing to play my piano, and I spent some time on it. I think I’ll try to at least touch the keys every day. Making music is a joy that I should not neglect. Since Chris has his finished office now, I can play and make mistakes without bothering anyone.

I like to play and sing. One thing I enjoy doing is taking a well-known song and reinterpreting it to my own style.

I just heard a great duet reinterpretation, and I’ll share it all with you here:

Last time I washed the cat was right before we moved into our little house. He suffered a tail injury-perhaps it was merely a tail indignation-which required a midnight trip to the vet and much concern.

We figured that Cat would never be bathed again.

But he is fat, and lazy, and not so good about grooming. He was accumulating dirt on his catskin like sand. He spends a lot of time laying down, and I figured he  couldn’t  be comfortable with the grit rubbing against his hide. I nerved myself up to bathe Cat.  Chris was sick, so I had to do it alone.

He took it better than expected. No scratching or biting, just several attempts at escape. In the end, he lay down in the tub and yowled as I doused him with water and rubbed him with Chris’s Pert. That made it hard to wash his tummy, but I did my best. Brown streams of water came off him.

I raised him out of the tub wrapped in a towel and held him until his panicked breathing slowed a little. He’s such a fat cat I had some fear of him having a stroke or something. But he at last calmed down and began licking his paws. I left a clean, dry towel on the floor to help with the drying process.

Lucy Dog came over to inspect. Cat smelled funny now; he didn’t used to smell like Pert. Lucy really wanted to help Cat by licking, but she knew that Cat had never tolerated such impudence. She stood over the grooming cat with her tongue slightly out, showing moral support I guess.

It’s been three days since the bath, and he loves to lay on the towel. It’s his now. He is a pleasure to pet and proud of his shiny coat. We can tell he is proud because he slits his eyes and blinks with buddha-like satsifaction. I think this bath proves that we could do it again if necessary.

Chris has been keeping his eye on the progress, and this week we were the first on our block to get FIOS installed.

They said he might come as early as 8. But he didn’t get in until about 4. It took about 4 hours to install. They hung a box on the outside of the house, but they also had to put on on the inside. Unlike regular twisted pair phone wiring, fiber doesn’t carry power, so that means they had to put a battery pack inside the house as a backup for phone service in case the power goes out. They had to drill a hole in the wall of the house.

FIOS includes a TV service, but our neighborhood isn’t ready for TV yet. But since the guy had come out, he wanted to get it ready for when the TV would be activated. A coax cable needed to be run from the outside box into the hour near the TV. The easiest way to do this was under the house.

“Easy” is a relative term, though. There is about a 2 foot crawl space under the house, and Chris would have to swallow claustrophia to thread a coax from the living room corner out to  the far wall where the FIOS bos was hung.

He was successfull, but when he came out he was covered. He decided that the dust under the house was fine and floaty just like moon dust. He left a sifting in the house over to the bathroom where he immediately cleaned up.

“I should have worn my clothes into the shower and got them wet. It would have been cleaner.” he said.

Now, we have two buildings that needed to be served by this FIOS:the house and the office. As long as we had a cable running from one building to the other, that was fine. We did; when we built the office we had 3 runs of CAT 6 underground-rated cable.

Thing is, I’d never gotten the cable to work right. I punched down the cable on each end into RJ45 connector, the kind you use for network cable. But I’d never gotten it to work and I couldn’t figure out why. In despeartion, we’d put a strong wireless router in the office with barely and mostly reached the main house. That way I could still use my laptop to surf the web while watching tv in the living room.

Richard, the Verizon guy, was informed of my problems with the cable connecting the two buildings. He got a toner and confirmed that the cable was connected. He also checked my colors to make sure they were right. He assured me that it was indeed connected and it was punched in correctly.

I was glad to hear that I had done a good job, but that didn’t explain why it didn’t work. Richard got another tool to test each individual wire connection.

The problem was that the wires hadn’t been properly punched. Meaning, the little plastic punch-down tool hadn’t pierced the wire’s insulation enough to make reliable connection with the RJ45 jack’s metal connector.

“This is really tough cable,” Richard said. “Even using my good punchdown tool I had to push really hard.”

AT LAST! the problem was solved, and now I have FAT wireless connectivity in my home. Chris has superfast internetivity in his office and all is well.