Towards Belief: Worthy of what humanity has become

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about how one negotiates community and personal identity. A couple of weeks ago my niece was baptized into the Mormon church. My sister asked if I wanted to stand in the circle (a big deal in the Mormon community) for her confirmation since I have the Melquisedec priesthood. I wasn't sure how to respond as I wanted to support her and my niece, but had to admit to her, as she already knows, that I don't believe in God let alone the notion of a priesthood. This didn't really bother her as she is not much of a literalist and has just recently gotten involved in Mormonism for the community stuff. Eventually she had me be a witness at the baptism which also requires the Melquisedec priesthood I believe. In part I think involving me was one way of helping my sister and my mother have someone from the family involved--my sister is divorced and her not-so-beloved ex did the baptizing.

Thinking about this decision connects, I think, to Spontaneous Expression's recent comment on my last post which you can find here if you scroll down. I was struck by the insight she gained when attending a church (not a Mormon church): "It made me reconsider the potential benefits of a formal organization, Mormon or otherwise." And then later in her comment she gives a typical SE zinger: "Let the believers believe in peace." Yes, I too want to let the believers believe in peace. I wish they could let me believe in peace, but I realize I can't let my actions to be contingent upon theirs.

And this is where I have to part ways with the likes of Richard Dawkin's and other new atheists who sometimes seem to want to get in a fight with religious folks. I have no desire to do this--well, only on bad days. In trying to find a new community, I bristle when "atheists" make judgments of religious people as simple-minded and fanatical. To me these kinds of blanket pronouncements only serve to reproduce the very same fanaticism these atheists proclaim to denounce, ultimately narrowing what it means to be human and spiritual. Of course I allow some leniency because this is such a minority voice and it can easily get completely squashed--still it ain't where I'm headed. And as long as there is a gap between our understanding of the world, there will be a place where art and religion seek out meaning. Even if I prefer art, I can see why religion fulfills this same desire, is experienced as art by some, and is preferred by many. To simply say religious people are wrong is simple-minded--clearly a creative and artistic imagination often-times flourishes in a religious environment.

I'm even uncomfortable with the term atheist. It seems to define me by what I am not--not a believer in God. This is similar to terms like "non-member" or "non-white," a type of term which helps create silly questions based on assumptions, "How can you not believe in anything?" As Greg Epstein, a humanist Chaplain (yes, chaplain, educated in a humanist rabbinical school), argues in his recent interview on Speaking of Faith, he is a believer, a believer in humanism, in life, in his family. I'm not ready to give up on belief as an important part of being human.

I turn to a quote from André Comte-Sponville's, a French philosopher, The Little book of Atheist Spirituality. It was part of the Speaking of Faith program I refer to above; again, as I've mentioned before in my blog, check out the program particulars created for each SoF program--they include extended quotations, titles to music, links, and images referred to in the program.

The quote below helps me to begin articulating the positive side of my beliefs, the what I believe in rather than the what I don't believe in. It's still wrapped up with God talk and religion, but it's a start:

***

Where morals are concerned, the loss of faith changes nothing or next to nothing. That you have lost your faith does not mean that you will suddenly decide to betray your friends or indulge in robbery, rape, assassination and torture. "If God does not exist," says Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov, "everything is allowed." Not at all, for the simple reason that I will not allow myself everything! As Kant demonstrated, either morals are autonomous or they do not exist at all. If a person refrains from murdering his neighbor only out of fear of divine retribution, his behavior is dictated not by moral values but by caution, fear of the holy policeman, egoism. And if a person does good only with an eye to salvation, she is not doing good (since her behavior is dictated by self-interest, rather than by duty or by love) and will thus not be saved. This is Kant, the Enlightenment and humanity at their best. A good deed is not good because God commanded me to do it (in which case it would have been good for Abraham to slit his son's throat); on the contrary, it is because an action is good that it is possible to believe God commanded it. Rather than religion being the basis for morals, morals are now the basis for religion. This is the inception of modernity. To have a religion, the Critique of Practical Reason points out, is to "acknowledge all one's duties as sacred commandments." For those who no longer have faith, commandments vanish (or, rather, lose their sacred quality), and all that remains are duties—that is, the commandments we impose upon ourselves.

Alain puts it beautifully in his Letters to Sergio Solmi on the Philosophy of Kant: "Ethics means knowing that we are spirit and thus have certain obligations, for noblesse oblige. Ethics is neither more nor less than a sense of dignity."Should I rob, rape and murder? It would be unworthy of me—unworthy of what humanity has become, unworthy of the education I have been given, unworthy of what I am and wish to be. I therefore refrain from such behavior, and this is what is known as ethics. There is no need to believe in God—one need believe only in one's parents and mentors, one's friends (provided they are well chosen) and one's conscience.

***
It helps, as Epstein argues and we can experience in this last quote, to connect my own beliefs in humanity to many great thinkers of the past. There's a lineage of folks throughout time who felt similar to me--that's community too. And just maybe these connection will help me, when appropriate, allow others to believe in peace, to even participate amongst them with all of our differences and similarities.

From the mouth of a 7 year old

Referring to his friend, "Shane is always so restless."

"He is restless, you say?" (I'm thinking what a vocab!)

"Yeah, he always wants to wrestle me."

***

I made no attempt to explain the conflation of the two similarly sounding words.

(un)belief in humanity

Does someone who believes in God have more faith? More hope? Are they, by in large, better people? More charitable? It seems a lot of those who believe in God think so (e.g. What would you live for without a belief in God or hope for afterlife with your family? Why be moral?) Another possibility, though not inevitable, occurs to me.

To be a good person, continuing to have hope in this life, without a belief in a God or afterlife asserts a genuine faith in the human ability to do good in spite of any retribution or reward. This is in stark contrast to some who believe in God because of their profound distrust in humanity and in their own ability to create meaning. With this in mind, some kinds of belief function to reduce the amazing adventure and wonder around us into a game with a list of rules where we play to win the ultimate prize--eternal life.

I used to justify my own shaky belief in God by citing Pascal's Wager that it's a wise decision to believe in God because as Pascal said: "If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing." The potential costs of belief were mostly lost to me then; now they are ever-abundant--the ease of judging others, justification of environmental degradation, avoidance of ambiguity, a lack of faith in one's self and others to do good for its own sake, the inability to confront one's mortal existence...

There are almost always costs and benefits to any decision we make though I'm not suggesting all those who believe in God necessarily experience these costs, but they are certainly risks. And, of course, there are costs associated with my belief in humanity over a god. To reiterate I do not think all believers experience these costs and, in fact, paradoxically, some use belief to avoid these very costs. But I do assert that there are real risks in an unwavering belief in God and real potential benefits to unbelief or belief in humanity. Amazingly to me these two facts are rarely admitted to.

Pascal's Wager turns on its head for me--a cost/benefit analysis of "belief" puts me squarely in the black with (un)belief in humanity.

Better than sex frivolity

I've been home all day, not getting much of anything done because I'm sick--the first time in at least two years. Not painful sick but sick and tired enough not to work. Thank goodness for March Madness. I'm sittin pretty with the Stanford (love those 7 ft Lopez twins) and Texas on the tv and Davidson (Curry is absolutely amazing) and Wisconsin on the laptop. To top it off I blog or read a couple of pages of Kindred by Octavia Butler when both games are on timeout. Sometimes I love all things frivolous--sports, recliners, technology, and sport star worship. And then being just sick enough to beg off of any work and engage it all.

What I learned while my wife was gone for four days

1. I don’t mind if the bed stays unmade for days on end
2. Seven year old son’s fingers get gross if not clipped
3. Someone signs buttloads of forms for school each day
4. Getting three kids ready for school by myself on time three days in a row is an amazingly difficult task
5. I sleep like crap without my wife
6. After getting kids off to school, dealing with homework, and making/serving dinner, I too am ready for the kids to be in bed at 8:30pm
7. Single parenthood must be exhausting
8. My wife and I spend a lot of time talking about the kids, our day, etc.
9. I can get a lot more reading done when wife is not here (see #8)
10. Even if I was getting more reading done, I’m very glad my wife is back—I missed her

Note on #1: I "straightened" the bed on the day my wife returned; even though the unmade bed still wasn't bothering me, I'm not stupid.

Rubber Rooms for Teachers and Retirement Homes for Chimps

Did anyone hear the Human Resources episode of This American Life? If not here are a couple of curious items from this recent episode.

Rubber Room

The rubber room in NYC public school district is where they send teachers who get in trouble, but not enough to fire them. Some teachers spend *years* showing up to a room where they sit all day and collect their full pay while waiting a hearing. There are actually several rooms where teachers can go; it seems each room has its own unofficial territory and leadership. And, amazingly, fights often break out concerning the only things—lights, where you sit, level of sound—they have control over. Listening to the absolutely ludicrous nature of this situation had me laughing uncontrollably; at the same time I felt a stinging sense of absolute futility.

The trailer of an upcoming (still seeking distribution) documentary on the rubber room:

See the NY times story about this http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10education.html

Almost Human Resources

A retirement home for chimps which have been used in experiments and as actors. Most include forested lands but some also include human-like environments with televisions and rooms. Many of the chimps have become accustomed to doing human things so they do not want to cut them off from these activities. Charles Siebert, who is writing a book called Humanzee, discusses these strange yet amazing places.

Link to the TAL episode with both of these stories: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=350

Printer Demons

Why do printers refuse to delete unintentional print jobs (like a 55 pages pdf file which you meant to print one page from)?

Why do printers not listen to me when I scream loudly to stop-stop-stop the fuck printing? no more, no mas!!

Why have I had like 102 bad experiences with printers which date back to the early 90s?

Why when I click on delete print job and cancel print jobs does it keep printing?

Why haven't I figured out how to put our home printer on a network so I wouldn't have to plug into said printer every time I need to print something?

Why do I always forget, when taking my laptop to the printer, to disconnect my I-pod which goes a flyin and causes me to cuss loudly?

Why do printers seem to have some sort of vendetta against you when you decide to cancel a print job? "NO, I will print every god damn page of this 83 page document! And I don't care if you turn me off or unplug me or jiggle me or open me up or or scream at me--come hell or high water I'm printing this. You said you wanted it and by damn you are getting it!"

Well, looks like it's done printing. There's no ink left and, well, no paper left but at least I got that one page I needed. Kind of an expensive page when you think about it but thank goodness we have the technological capability to print, to engage in the means and production of written texts. It really makes me feel like breaking something.

The multiple fronts of teaching

I’m really struggling to understand my teaching self.

I started my college teaching career trusting that students would read the text, think about the ideas, and be prepared for class. After having many experiences which eroded my trust, I’ve tended to become frustrated and even angry. There’s nothing I hate more than discussing an essay or chapter and it becomes apparent that no one has read it. It kills what I love about teaching—the give and take, the clash of ideas, the on-the-spot melding of differing views. To avoid being angry at students, I’ve tended to create more and more little assignments (busy work?) to “ensure” that students are prepared for class, that they have something to add to the discussions. I mean I don’t want to sit up there are lecture—many studies show this is not effective. Yet…

The unintended consequences are huge—one, students feel and report that they are too rushed, confused, etc. And I know this kind of feeling does not contribute to learning or thinking carefully—it just can’t. Also, I’m overwhelmed with the number of assignments coming in—I have three huge piles of the stuff next to me right now. Should I check them off in class? Give feedback? If they are important enough to assign shouldn’t I evaluate them? When I start looking at a batch of assignments it’s often clear that some students totally missed the point or merely wrote down some BS to get the points. So what am I really accomplishing with these little assignments?

It seems clear, then, that I should allow students to choose—agency!--to engage in the course; if they don’t then that’s their own problem and it will show up, generally, in the big papers. And I think I could get ok with this idea. I’m really not a control freak. But then what do we do in class? My pedagogy centers around having students share their responses to readings and the textbook in small groups and pairs. I like this because it pushes students to articulate the concepts to their peers, rather than just listening and writing notes. If they haven’t been given a specific assignment which forces (or at least invites) them to really consider the issues, then what will they talk about?

Also, while I always get dinged on my evaluations for expecting too much work, 99% of my students indicate that they were intellectually challenged by my course and many specifically mention this in their comments on evaluations. In a recent evaluation a student said, “He didn’t expect us to write papers in which we can b.s. our way through them. He expected us to actually delve into an issue and prove it! I love it! Way to go! About time!” Can I maintain this kind of rigorous atmosphere without these small, checking in, forcing to engage kind of assignments?

And that last comment introduces a whole other layer of complication. Even if I can decide for myself what the correct approach is with all this, some teachers clearly are asking for something else (“About time!”). Should what other teachers do and expect impact how I run my courses? Maybe what it means is that I must choose my battles. I know the battle I can’t give up on (pushing students to think, the intellectual challenge, the difficult texts) so then it seems simple—the battle I might need to give up on is workload. Sometimes, they say, less is more. And, for me personally, something has to give because I no longer have the energy to fight this battle on multiple fronts.

BTW I use the war metaphor knowingly (I just reread two articles by Lakoff) albeit uncomfortably. Maybe my whole construction of teaching needs revamped; maybe I need a new metaphor.

Juno does the trick

My wife and I went out to a movie in the THEATRE without our kids, a rare thing indeed. I have a hard time finding a movie that we will both enjoy and feel worthy of the 15 bucks. Juno was right on. What a wonderful film, some laughing a bit of crying near the end, and all of it quirkily packaged.

And Ellen Page—wow! I’m looking forward to many more films from this youngster. I knew I had seen her in a film the minute I saw her face but couldn’t remember the film till I IMDB’d it—Hard Candy, a hard hitting film about a young girl who turns the tables on pedophile. Page has all kinds of range and what things to come, given that she did something like Hard Candy so early in her career, from her will keep her on my radar.

Juno was as close to perfect as they come. It did just what it set out to do I think and I enjoyed every minute. How refreshing to see a film address teenage pregnancy without feeling like it needs to punish the “perpetrators” and bring them into the cold hard world of adulthood. Darkness is hinted at, but the hope of Page and innocence of her boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker—what a great name!, played by Michael Cera, carries the day.

We Living Clumps of Ash

Some of my skeptical blogging friends might be interested in Krista Tippet's recent interview with theoretical physicist Janna Levin on Speaking of Faith. Listening to it in the dark at 5:30 a.m. on my way into work really got to me. They tackle several ever-present questions for me: what do we really know about our world? are we really free agents? how far should we go in our pursuit of truth and how do we balance this out with the everyday "constructed" realities of life? And it offers stunning passages from her new novel (when do you get a chance to read a novel by a theoretical physicist?) A mad man dreams of Turing machines.

Here's one of the passages from her book that connected for me:

"I approach a man and a woman on a park bench. His glasses, her handbag, her umbrella. They're as still as stone. They're in front of me and then, within a few strides, I pass the green-painted bench with its concrete feet. I turn to watch them but they are swept along by time, unable to stop, dragged away along with the street and the wind.

I see them everywhere, my two mad treasures. An elegant man in a hat with an able, stocky woman at his side. A solitary black-haired boy with a peculiar stride. I am looking on benches and streets, in logic and code. I am looking in the form of truth stripped to the bone. Truth that lives independently of us, that exists out there in the world. Hard and unsentimental. I am ready to accept truth no matter how alarming it turns out to be. Even if it proves incompleteness and the limits of human reason. Even if it proves we are not free. [I love this bit though even in the loving I recognize that part of my love is not about the mere dedication to truth but also the romantic image of a brave soul pursuing truth.]

They are here in our minds, Turing's luminescent gems, Gödel's Platonic forms. There are no social hierarchies to scale. No racial barriers. Given to us along with our brains. Built into the structure of our thoughts — no bullying into blind faith, no threats of eternal damnation — just honesty, truth, and reason. [Again I'm motivated, motivated to know and focus on this truth: all these hierarchies are constructs which hold no reality to the being-me who is connected to the cosmos.]

I am here in the middle of an unfinished story. I used to believe that one day I would come to some kind of conclusion, some calming resolution, and the restlessness would end. But that will never happen. Even now, I am moving toward a train. My heart is thumping. My lungs are working. There is a man, a woman, a bench, the glasses, the smooth hair, an umbrella. We are all caught in the stream of a complicated legacy — a proof of the limits of human reason, a proof of our boundlessness. A declaration that we were down here on this crowded, lonely planet, a declaration that we mattered, we living clumps of ash, that each of us was once somebody, that we strove for what we could never have, that we could admit as much. That was us — funny and lousy and great all at once." [I'm reminded of a passage from a Dillard's unofficially entitled "Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak" from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: "We little blobs of soft tissue crawling around on this one planet's skin are right, and the whole universe is wrong." Later she dismisses this view, instead deciding that we are indeed freaks. Both authors confirm that I too will always be restless, always peering out there, often aware of the planet's skin, compelled to consider the biggest possible questions I can fit into my puny head.]

If you haven't had a enough yet, check out the "Program Details" for this episode. It's a multimedia retelling of the interview with links to the music used, YouTube videos explaining dark matter, the text of the passages read, and more details about the two scientists from the novel, Godel and Turing. Sometimes, I really love the Internet.

Searching for pens, but finding...

Have you ever noticed that pens seem to migrate to various drawers and baskets, but never to the places where you need them? For instance, I needed a pen to go through the roll on the first day of class this week—incredibly I couldn’t’ find one in my entire office except of course if I’d stolen one from Middlebrow’s desk.

This morning I decided to remedy the lack of pens in my work-a-day world; I went a searching and found pens aplenty. While checking a top drawer in our bedroom, I found a whole set of little things from that have been transferred from top drawer to top drawer in my bedroom for years. It’s stuff that has no real purpose, but I can’t quite throw away.

My MTC teacher badge. I taught missionaries for two years while attending BYU. What should I do with this now I’m not a believing Mormon? Do I want my own kids to stumble on it later on in life? “Dad use to teach missionaries, can you imagine?” If one of my kids gets married in the LDS temple, I will see if it can get me in.

Several knives. I have several knives, many my dad has given me in hopes of supporting hunting and camping and man-stuff. They haven’t gotten much use. Of course if I remember the knives in the throes of some house invasion, I can quickly sneak it out and stab the life out of the invader. There’s even a butterfly knife, a knife I found rummaging around at my grandma in the top drawer of my dad’s old room.

Birthday card from my wife: “I hope this year will be the year for fulfilling your Wasatch dream.” (Wasatch 100 mile race) Well, that didn’t go so well. I can’t even run a 5k now.

Two cases for glasses and one pair of old very round and big glasses which I’ve kept as a backup pair. Not sure these would be much help as things are quite blurry.

Organ donor card from 2000—I think this is marked on my Driver’s license or something. Hope they don’t need to find the card in order to donate my liver or eyes.

Many receipts: one for 6 used VHS movies from Movie Trading co. which is now out of business—that was a real smart purchase; another for $100 dollar Ascent Trekking poles I bought to use in the Wasatch race to cushion the downhill because of my patelar tendonitis—didn’t make it and looked silly as Unhip noted after pacing me, “You might need to work a bit on that downhill.” BUT I did just use the poles last week on a snow hike.

Several floppy disks: Why do I keep these? Well, because there might be something important on them, maybe a college paper I wrote that I’d like to read. Yeah, right. Hell, I don’t even have a floppy disk drive in either of our computers.

A interview tape of a student from 1996: Man, this stuff is depressing me. This was yet another failure—a Master’s thesis which never happened.

A 4x6 card with notes and pages numbers from one of the rare books I read but did not buy. I have no idea which book as I failed to indicate that but at least I know that on p. 35 it discusses “father in tree—death, bees.” WTF???

A connector TV thingy (EAGLE Model TM-1): You know it’s to hook up a TV antennae with. I’m proud that we had rabbit ears until just a few years ago when we had to do cable in order to get high speed Internet. And who knows—see what happened in I AM Legend—I might need it some day.

A Philmont Scout Ranch badge: This is a keeper as it reminds me that under no circumstances should I ever go on a horse trip of any kind, nor attempt to work with alternative youth (or any youth for that matter) in some outdoor adventure.

One Dry Erase Marker which I can actually use

Another Birthday letter (2004) from my wife with yet another “I hope you are able to do Wasatch.” What a fine woman.

Two foreign pieces of paper money I found in a used book. One is dated 1991 so I must have found them while working in the used book store in Provo. The owner was nuts; the job, sifting through a condemned warehouse of books with pigeon shit on them, was absolutely bizarre. The language on the money seems like Russian but I’m not sure; I’m sure though that someday they will make me rich.

Two “My daddy is my favorite pal!” cards from primary. There are several prompts inside that the children complete: I love when my dad… etc. On this one my daughter wrote “Kiss me.” That’s cute. On another prompt, My dad’s favorite thing to do is… my son wrote, “Teach his classes? Tells me to put things away every day.” Ok, that’s disturbing.

***

Oh yeah, and I did find two pens.

Entertainment over the break

Biggest disappointment: The Golden Compass

As my son said to me about half way through, "it feels like the movie is on fast-forward"--exactly! My critique is NOT that it wasn't as good as the book, a comparison I rarely find useful, but rather that the pacing and characterization were terrible. And it's not that the movie cut or changed too many things from the book (there were changes and deletions as there always are) but that they needed more deletions in order to slow things up a bit OR, and maybe this was out of the director's control (I heard he quit the film once), it needed to be a 3 hour film. A wonderful opportunity to broaden the audience of this brilliant trilogy forever lost.

Best find by oldest son: The Red Green show: Stuffed and Mounted 1 on DVD

The whole family, especially the oldest son, have really enjoyed this. A Canadian show that clearly demonstrates that money and Hollywood are overrated. I get such a kick out of the handyman skits where Red often starts with hardcore tools but ends up slapping on duct tap.

Most fun at the theatre: I am legend

Will Smith does an amazing job balancing sheer terror and loneliness with humor. Many great scenes: hunting deer in the city, chasing his dog into the warehouse--gawdam that scared me! and reeling in a "vampire."

Best movie preparation for book club: Branah's Henry V

Branah is simply amazing in this film and has a long list of interesting projects. And thank God for his Shakespeare adaptations which helped me understand how to read Shakespeare as an ungrad.

Best way to experience x-mas eve: It's a wonderful life

I know, no big surprise here but something is special about a movie which presents a view on life I disagree with (that if we were not here people would be vastly different because of it), has much silliness like Zuzu's petals and "every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings," and yet causes me to cry each time, no matter I've seen it 20 times, when the town rallies to save the fallen Jimmy Stewart.

Best old TV series on DVD: Northern Exposure (we are in season 5)

Humorous quirky characters yet serious, philosophical, and intertextual--I couldn't ask for much more.

Best adaptation of a book: Atonement

This experience helped me recover from my exasperation with the GC--for me easily one of the best adaptations of a book. The pacing was right on and the performances from Keira Knightley and James McAvoy were brilliant. I was nervous they would flub up the sexual tension (the fountain, letter, and library scene) but they didn't. I was totally sold by Knightley's confident demeanor as she strips down and plunges into the fountain for the broken porcelain and the letter scene is perfect, the "word" never uttered only seen, the typewriter keys haunting us throughout the rest of the film. And, I knew I'd seen and liked McAvoy but didn't remember the film till I IMBD'd him: Dr. Kerrigan in The last king of Scotland. Two very interesting roles for him; I'm excited to see what he does next.

Tales of first grader

Wisdom

So I've been living for almost seven years?

Yes.

That's a really really long time, right?

Patterns

UNO marathon when son stayed home from school sick: son 16 games won, dad 21 games won. Dad imagines son will tire of UNO at some point but dad is very mistaken:

Are you tired of UNO yet?

No dad. I'm doing a pattern like my teacher said. I watch tv, then play Leapster, then play UNO with you. And do it all over again.

Personification

My guy is hurting.

Your what is hurting?

My guy! See (pointing to crotch). He's having a bad day.

A Re-creation

Yesterday I finished the third, and final, book in the His Dark Materials trilogy. With 20 pages left to go I began to sniffle, with 10 a tear of two, with a page full on weeping. I cried for the loss Lyra and Will accepted. Lyra, the brave little 12 year old girl who left her world to save the universe, the Eve figure, the center of the retelling of the creation story; Will the uncared for boy who takes up the tool which can sever worlds. Of course the broad strokes are familiar: a grand journey filled with truth devices like the Althiometer and knives that cut into worlds, where children matter and understand something adults do not. But the details were breathtaking at times: Will's battle for the “subtle knife,” “god’s” thrown in heaven, animals who travel on wheels, brave male angels in love, and the grand reconstruction of the fall.

What got me the most, brought on the weeping, was the ending: “The Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn’t live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.” While a poignant idea, the tears were tears of reader response. My own life journey has just come around to this very conclusion. Finishing I saw clearly the simplicity of what I’m working for in life--the brevity, the moment, the words spoken about me by others’ lips. These are the only Celestial Kingdom I hope for.

Having enough of weeping, I pet the cat and then got ready for bed. Snuggling up close to my already sleeping wife, I thought about the very short time I would have to spend with her and each of my children, children who, as a good friend once said, will never love me as much as I love them.

The Ass Woman

I'm having stomach/ gastro tract issues again even though I've cut alcohol, all caffeine, and now chocolate. So I sought out a different doc and was referred to Dr. Holly _____. Yeah, Holly. I know I know I'm not supposed to care about this (it's just a social construction of gender based on power), but look I've never had a female doc (my lived experience!) and as you might guess a female gastro doc is worse--I mean it's the ass MAN not ass woman! But that's ok she came highly recommended and I really feel I need a second opinion. I Google her name to find out the phone number, hoping she is bland looking, maternal, even mean (I know, further social constructions of beauty, etc). But No luck!

I am man, hear me whimper!

387148 KB of Email

In the past I would get a warning about my email size a couple times a semester which would then force me to check out and delete emails from one of my listservs and/or go through my sent file. But over the last year or so it seemed the size limit was unexceedable. Well, I've found out there is indeed a limit--I got a warning at 387178 KB.

Of course I have no idea how much that really is. I do know that I have 1500 emails in my sent box, about a 1000 in my Inbox, close to 4,000 (I am just relishing Middlebrow's, the deleter of all deleters, outrage at all this) in my WPA listserv folder, and almost 2,000 in my children's lit listserv. And of course, several 100 emails that I've saved in all manner of categories (cycling, E-Portfolios--there's even one from MB, Faigley pilot, Friends, Multimodal literacies, OED--I'm unsure what's in there, personal, Trips etc.)

Technology is certainly not simplifying my life but it is allowing for redundancy which for me, a person who could forget his coat in a snow storm, is a pretty good thing. Unfortunately redundancy systems unchecked can than create a whole other level of forgetfulness and chaos. Ultimately, I believe technology makes me a better worker and person as it allows me to remember all kinds of details I wouldn't be able to get my fingers on (like responding to an adjunct a semester after visiting their class by rereading our email exchange) but as the numbers show the total build up of stuff threatens to tip over the entire project.

Golden Compass to 1 Nephi 13 in 5.6 seconds

I meant to write long post about the censorship of the new movie, The Golden Compass, based on Phillip Pullman's spectacular trilogy, His Dark Materials, but I never got around to it. In fact I meant to throw out a post and then revise it and send it in as a letter to the editor. Turns out "my" Mormon stake president found it his duty to have each ward call a special meeting in order to denounce the upcoming movie. I did not attend but heard about it from neighbors who readily admitted that only one person in the group, and it wasn't the stake president, had actually read the books.

It infuriated me because I realized with one fell swoop this myopic stake pres. could wipe out hours and hours of work we had just done in my children's lit class where we read the first book and several articles about the censorship debate--all that thinking, for some young mormon women, would be erased in a flash at such a pronouncement. Anyway, I never wrote that rebuttal, nor put the imagined huge Golden Compass poster in my yard, nor asked for a meeting with said stake president.

But I did get thinking, as I've read several articles about the movie, that mormons really should embrace this film as it takes up an old mormon practice that I participated in while serving a mission in Spain: bashing on Catholics. I mean come on, the mormons have a long-standing tradition of equating the Catholic church with the great and abominable church in 1 Nephi 13. And earlier mormon prophets kicked up the criticism a notch or two:

"Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the "whore of Babylon" whom the Lord denounces..."
- The Seer, Vol.2, No.4, p.255

"The Roman Catholic, Greek, and Protestant church is the great corrupt ecclesiastic power, represented by great Babylon which has made all nations drunk with her wickedness, and she must fall, after she has been warned with the sound of the everlasting gospel.
- Apostle Orson Pratt, Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon, p.84 - p.85

So, I'm thinking mormons should be all over this film: "We told you the Catholic church was evil." And what better face of evil for Catholics than the diabolically cunning face of Nicole Kidman?? If I were a believing mormon, I'd be sending checks into Pullman, buying up movie tickets, and getting the B of M language out there:

"Yes, this movie may be a bit hard on believers but it is spot on when referring to the abominations of all religions."
"Did you say abominations? Does it say that in the film?"
"Yes, I did. Not in so many words but basically that's the message. If you want a more clear criticism let me show you an ancient book of revelations from the Americas. The Book of Mormon."

This movie could help missionaries all over the world. A new cutting edge, modern version of the Golden Question, "Have you seen the Golden Compass?" That's much more in vogue than, "Do you want to read the book of mormon?" or "What do you know about the mormon church?" And then they could follow up with, "Do you know which church Nicole Kidman represented in the movie?...would you like to know another name for this church?....great abomination." And boom there are you are sittin pretty and cool talking about 1Nephi 13--modern fantasy epic to the Nephites and Lamanites in the Americas in 5.6 seconds!

What a waste of time thinking about a letter to the editor or my stake president--silly notions of interrogating assumptions and disrupting power and hegemony. What I need to do is take a meeting with someone at the MTC. I can package all this in a small pamphlet and make thousands.

Letting go of God with "Pat"

Last night I went to Julia Sweeney's (better known as Pat on SNL) amazing "Letting Go of God" with the other heretic in my book club, Spontaneous Expression. As you might imagine given my current journey into hell, the performance held me alternately between deep heartfelt laughs and poignant tears. It was particularly hilarious for all of us ex-mormons as Sweeney's spiritual journey toward atheism ironically began with the Mormon missionaries:

Preserving the Commons

I was a bit miffed that I would miss the BYU/ Utah game today as the cable offer we did in the summer in order to watch the Tour de France expired. Even though it wasn't that big of deal since I've barely watched any football this year, but eh this is the 34-31 rivalry. So I Googled around a bit and found it for free here

Small glimmer of hope in this commercialized world--just maybe the Internet can help maintain a free public commons...just maybe.

And yes I'm rooting for BYU because they have the highest rating and a slim chance at the BCS. I went to both schools so I have this privilege. (A Seinfeldian Kramer "ehhh!") I don't want to hear it.

The youngest child

It took several incidents of rustling and crumpling for me to realize that a fairly large mouse had setup shop under the bed in my office. It seems this was the best place to hide his halloween stash from his older siblings.

Yesterday was
a spectacular late fall day for roasting hot dogs and smores and it kicked ass over any church meeting I've ever been to. We probably won't be short-sleeved and out in the woods until the spring thaw.

AND, check out them roasting skills!






Hard to accept that our six year old will grow up some day. I wonder if he will always seem younger--more innocent, cuter, softer--no matter how old he gets.

A new blog, Miyazaki's Nausicaa

My brother-in-law, just to the right and left of me politically, has been commenting here (remember my atheist post with all-star contentious responses?) for quite some time and now has created his own blog: http://accountingforidiocy.blogspot.com/ First official post questions Gore et al on global warming. I'm finally getting a critical mass of far flung blogging family members: a cousin, a cousin-in-law, a brother-in-law and sister. Kind of fun.

***

Next week in children's lit I'm going to have students read the first volume in Nausicaa: of the valley of the wind by Miyazaki. Last year we read the first volume of Spirited Away; since then I've realized that Spirited was adapted from the film but Nausicaa was first manga and then made into a film. So, it seemed more authentic to read Nausicaa. Unfortunately that's about where my expertise ends in all things manga. Still, it seems worth it to learn together about an amazing artist. Seeing my first Miyazaki film, Princess Mononoke, blew me away and I hope this will happen for a few students.

The book's inside cover announces,

"IN A FEW SHORT CENTURIES CIVILIZATION HAD SPREAD FROM THE WESTERN FRINGES OF EURASIA TO SPRAWL ACROSS THE FACE OF THE PLANET. PLUNDERING TEH SOIL OF ITS RICHES, FOULING THE AIR, AND REMOLDING LIFE FROM AT WILL, THIS GARGANTUAN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY HAD ALREADY PEAKED A THOUSAND YEARS AFTER ITS FOUNDATION: AHEAD LAY ABRUPT AND VIOLENT DECLINE . . . ALMOST ALL OF THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH WAS TRANSFORMED INTO A STERILE WASTELAND..."

Clearly my mostly young, soon-to-be-elementary ed teachers, are going to love this story!!

This environment gone wrong is a theme Miyazaki often invokes, like in Princess Mononoke. But often it's a rich, complicated rendering like in Princess Mononoke where Irontown, run by Lady Eboshi, is clearly contributing to environmental degradation, but she is also using her money to free prostitutes who then work for her--there's never any clear sense of who is the good or bad guy.

Nausicaa is a princess of the wind based off the princess who helps Odysseus get home and the Japanese folk hero known as the "princess who loved insects." I think our world could use more princesses who love insects.

I'm quite excited to read it. Unfortunately I will be reading it right along with my students as I never got to it till now. My only claim to any authority is that I've seen all of his films several times and read a few articles about Miyazaki. And on that note, I'm off to wikipedia my way into authority.

Must blog, must blog, gust mlog: a meandering on TIME, life, and Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman

I've said this before and I will say it again...I don't ever remember being this busy EVER. I mean is it possible that I'm busier now than when I was working full-time as a high school teacher, plus two nights of night school, and getting a Master's degree? (and we were having our 2nd child and I did many more projects around the house since I was cheap). It sure as hell feels like it.

How does one add up life? Of course it never makes any fuckin sense. To wit (always wanted to write that in a post), I've currently cut out of my life all kinds of things trying to find more time for the essentials: no exercise (which has ballooned at times to 10-15 hrs a week, so this is not a rinky-dink savings); no Jazz or football (ok, I turn on the 4th quarter of some games and watch/read/talk to son if it's a close score); I read nothing other than what I'm prepping for a class or what we are reading in book club; I take extreme evasive action whenever potential house/yard projects are bandied about by wife (ok, I did get sucked into putting stairs into our attic, well, to be honest, I only assissited our 70 year old repair guy--how pathetic); and, for the most part, I forbid myself from blogging unless I'm all caught up, which is never so... Maybe if I weren't blogging right now, I'd have more time and could be caught up--yeah, right.

AND................GAWD ALMIGHTY I hate this "AND".....And I have so much more stuff I should do, could do, want to do, feel guilty about not doing. For example, I have about 10 students I should meet with weekly--if I were a man, I would require it. I'm confident a high percentage of these 10 students will not get the passing "C" they need in my course and some--3 or 4??--would pass if I were meeting with them weekly. Also, I should take time to experience wonder, like in my ice photos/posts of last year. Also, I should read stuff, like, you know, magazines and online articles--I mean I do teach English for godsake!!! And, hey how about a non-required book once in awhile. And how about taking time now to think of thoughtful x-mas gifts for each of my children, sisters, and, especially, wife? (I did decide to get my son a subscription to MAD magazine but it's a bit of a Homer gift as I get all dizzy with nostalgia thinking back to the many hrs I spent cozied up in my bed with MAD, putting the nifty covers togther to create the new cool picture, flipping desperately through the pages to find any bare breasts, getting my kicks off the satire of the Love Boat).

Ok, enough of this--I must focus on our book club pick, "Surely, You're joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman, a theoretical physicists who worked on the Los Alamos bomb project and then later won the Nobel Prize in science. If you ever read this book, skim the first part (it is badly written and a bit silly) until he gets to Los Alamos which is interesting for its history and then, amazingly, the writing gets better sylistically and the story is engaging: how to pick up women in bars, cracking safes...good stuff. And speaking of time, how the hell did this guy get smart enough to be chosen to work at Los Alamos and win the Nobel all while spending hours cracking safes, hitting on babes in bars, and writing a freakin' memoir?

If I don't finish this book by Friday, I'm blaming it all on YOU! Yes, YOU. I mean why do you sonsofbitches keep insisting on stealing my time!!!! It's really quite UNFAIR.

"The steady drip of dubious prose"

I'm breaking my vow of bloggering silence, descending from my higher pursuits of basic survival, because my email has been down all day. I hate to admit this but I feel a loss of connection when I can't email. It's like I'm disconnected from what's going on in the world, especially at work (of course probably not much going on since it's my work email that's down). Still, I needed something, so I allowed a short foray into the blogosphere which got me thinking about "You call this progress?" by Seth Shostak where he states that "E-mail has become a steady drip of dubious prose, bad jokes and impatient requests."

That steady drip phrase really caught my eye--a steady drip, a drip line which reaches embarrassingly to the very core of me. Because of these dangers, I've had to set email vows too as it can get out of hand. I do not allow myself to check email after 8 or 9pm and if I happened to check it I will not open any email that may be upsetting in any way (e.g. office politics, anything that smells of criticism, conference rejections, students I haven't seen for two weeks or who I chewed out...). So while I feel connection and have certainly connected with folks through email that I wouldn't have otherwise, I have to agree with Shostak when he says email is a "sure source of stress and anxiety." But I assume most of this anxiety is not connected to the genre of email itself--it's "built-in, insistent arrogance" as Shostak says--but rather because email is the portal to my various work projects, my students, and my social world.

But email can really consume me. And I think Shostak is right to insist that the "esthetic debilities" that we hear about too often in popular media are not the big threat: "rather it's the unstoppable proliferation." Yeah, I know that. Like when I try to set up a committee meeting and email out a couple of possible times and agenda items--later my box is filled with 20 emails some in chronological order, others coming in late, some chiming in without reading the sequence, all and all a tanglewood of prose, time/dates, and propositions. You'd think I'd just delete the mess but I don't--I mean someone has to go through these things, right?

As Shostak recounts, a friend of his confided that he couldn't afford to die because there's be no one to handle the pile up of emails--the drip, drip, drip...the horror of modern existence.

What happens in Vegas . . . unless you blog about it

Highlight of Vegas Conference trip so far—all before the conference even begins

** I naively forget about cell-phone in cargo pants pocket which upon the second infraction automatically triggers a sequestering behind tall glass walls and full-body metal sweep with long rod: “Hey, can you not put that radiation sticks so close to my boys?”

**Stupidly I decide to buy a bagel 15 minutes before scheduled take-off where a man with a voucher is trying to spend every last nickel (after buying a bagel sandwich, cookies, extra bagel with cheese: “let’s see I’d also like one of the special bagels, no not that one…so what happens to what I haven’t spent? Can you give it to this charity you are advertising”). All the while my now nervous colleague Brittany (note to self: take Brittany to lunch) stalls them at the counter: “I promise he was just here. This is his stuff. Can I take his stuff on? . . . Will you watch it, then? I’m sure…he’ll be here”

**When asking for directions at a booth on the strip:

Really, you guys are cute.

Well, thanks, but we are colleagues…

That’s not a problem. You can get married for 15 bucks have some fun and then get divorced for 5! What happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.

**The not so bright before-mentioned person: “Why don’t we skip the tram ride? The Dancin’ Queen is still coursing through my veins and I need to walk it off” One hour and 10 minutes later, one arrested hooker, much broken glass, and one cheap marriage/divorce offer: “Boy, these blocks are really making me tired.”

And now off to the conference.

O that I were and Angel

The round extensions of my body rolling over matted leaves, rocks, and mud. Beds of colored leaves on the trail, an exploding red maple in front of me. The Green Pond trail just below Snowbasin, a mere 25 minutes from my home, transports me to another world. From here clichés are my only tools: amazing, brilliant, awe-inspiring, enormous, epiphanies… Or I could try Thoreau: “I wanted to live deep and suck the marrow of life” and “to be awake is to be alive” and “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life.” And I did want all of these, wanted to lie down in the earth and roll around in her, taking in the smell of leaves and trees and dirt.

I recognize the ironies—the $2000 full suspension mt bike between my legs and the manicured trails—yet can’t deny the connection. I pop out into a tree cleared ski run—there’s a deer looking up at me. I stop, watch, she turns part way and crosses the ski run; I continue my traverse following along with the deer until we both enter the woods on the other side.

But this doesn't capture it, too staged, too perfect and this ain't no night at the theatre. Maybe this:

After ascending Lost Chance and reconnecting with Needles, I begin the descent, a descent many have paid for by way of the gondola, but in true Thoreauvian manner I climb each one hundred feet of elevation with my own strained muscle and pounding hearts and lungs, just as he found each board and nail. And then I plunge down and across, back up short stints, right pedal down back brake engaged slight S-turn left. On the straightaway gaining speed mud flips up on my legs, face, and back, stinging like the branches hitting my hands and arms. GOD I’M IN LOVE with this, the MOUNTAIN, the recklessness, the ABANDON, the air, the SOUND and ease of my rolling body over sharp rocks and roots.

Like Joseph’s powerful character, Alma, in the Book of Mormon, who declares “O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!” I too want to shake this mountain with my joy, calling to repentance my own soul and the souls of so many lifeless corpses, hands at 10 and 2, navigating through the lanes of I-15: “Awake my sons and daughters, partake of this bounteous offering from GOD, the leaves and everything in it, the mud and earth, the deer and birds. Behold this is ME, this is GOD.”

A six year old under the bed counting feet

My youngest son is right now under the bed in my office. Since starting the 1st grade he has taken to hiding out under there playing his Nintendo and spying on our feet as we walk by. I think the close space gives him security during this rough time—the other day he jumped up on my lap, got his face right close to mine with tears in his eyes, “I want to be with my mom and dad more.”

It’s been a difficult transition to full-time student. I’m not sure why I’m surprised that he is struggling—duh!, he’s been ripped away from the arms of his parents, set down with 30 other kids and some strange woman. I have to say the whole schooling thing we do is a bit odd if you really think about. I mean why do we send them away for 7 hrs a day to sit in a room learning stuff they forget over the summer? Mostly, I think, so they don’t drive us crazy. All that talk about learning, reading levels, and incremental learning is bullshit. Have you ever helped out in a first grade class? Talk about inefficient: some kids reading Harry Potter, others struggling over “the”; lots of noise and confusion, lots of songs and cupcakes.

I guess all an all it’s not as rigorous as say the manhood training described in Roots (our current bk club book): stealing the kids away at night, rumors of getting your “foto” cut off, permanent exhile from your mother's home, etc. But in the end maybe both events are basically the same. The most important thing about going off to school is the way it functions as a rite of passage, a separation from mother and father on the journey to adulthood and that’s it, nada mas.

The details of what we do in all kinds of situations (evaluating an essay, punching a time card, learning the times tables, giving a presentation) are not at all important. The only thing we carry with us is the ritual, the act, the fact that we did act. Of course one could then say why have kids learn all this stuff, why not do something else or nothing at all? But we must do something and we must do something with faith that it matters.

It seems to me that life is one faith sponsored act after another, that there might be very little real difference between the devout Muslim or Mormon and the skeptic atheist English prof. who religiously marks off each assignments, takes role, and evaluates carefully each piece of writing as if it all really mattered.

May that marvelous God in Heaven be with little Andrew as he sits alone in class today, missing hugs from his mom and bike rides with his dad.

Guitar Heroing with the kids

I'm embarrassed to say that I'm hopelessly addicted to Guitar Hero (the very cool game for PS 2 game systems). Until now I haven't blinked at any of the games our oldest son has played, but this one is somehow different, more participatory, more opportunities for a type of learning I understand. For those who haven't played, you actually have a guitar-controller and hit the "notes" as they come down at you on the screen. It's nifty because if you don't hit them then the song doesn't play that note. You feel quite like the superstar when you nail 40 or so notes in a row.

My rationalizations for spending time on that which I have no time for:

1. As pathetic as it sounds, it's the closest I will ever get to actually producing music as I have NO music background--none, no piano, can't sing tenor, nada

2. I am listening to and learning the titles to music, something I've always sucked at. Favorites so far: Smoke on the water by Deep Purple, Sharped dress man by ZZ Top, and More than a feeling by Boston from GH I AND Cherry pie by Warrant, Rock this town by the Stray Cats, and You really got me going by Van Halen from GH II (see complete lists here I and here II). It's amazing how many songs I'm familiar with but do not know the title or artists--i.e. Smoke on the water and Cherry pie

3. I get to spend quality time with my two sons. Of course I can't even come close to competing with my oldest as he has already passed off all the songs on medium and some on expert. But I was, for awhile, pretty competitive with my six-year old--an you thought the new music thing was pathetic. Eventually I did start falling behind so one day after I got home from work, he says, "Dad, I was feeling bad for you so I passed off two songs for you under your career" (each person has their own career where you add songs, venues, and even equipment as you pass off songs).

4. It's really quite challenging and takes an immense amount of focus; finally passing off Heart-Shaped box by Nirvana, though I don't particularly like the song, was quite an accomplishment for me. It's kind of unnerving when you start missing notes: the "crowd" starts to boo and then, if you keep missing, the song stops completely with a bing "zonk" type sound.

5. I'm participating in the cutting edge of physical participatory (ok, that might be a stretch) gaming. Still, how can one not enjoy this game as you move your fingers along the colored frets, while strumming the notes and hitting the wammy bar on the long notes?

High School Reunion Obsessional

I figured I might as well blog a bit as I basically wasted most of yesterday reading bios on my 20th high school reunion site, composing my own, and finding pictures to go with it. At first I wasn't going to get involved, as I say in the bio, but I was so taken in by everyone's life-stories I just had to. I'm no expert on high school reunions, but it seems the pre-reunion online bios is a must. Kind of loosens everyone up, convinces many (at least that's what lots have said) to attend and gives people who can't attend a chance to participate.

I really took to heart the advice I always give to students: compose early and then revise revise revise. I started writing my bio about a month ago. It's not like I was working on it daily, but every once in awhile I'd read over it. In fact until I came up with my "I used to think..." trope, I was absolutely positive I wouldn't send anything in. I just couldn't do the standard life-travelogue, my kids are amazing post. Don't get me wrong--I've enjoyed these kinds of posts, but it just didn't feel like me. Instead I had to play off the whole genre of the bio, take a few risks, and speak to the realities of life, so I could then later obsess about how it all will be received. Sometimes I think I'm a raving fucking lunatic.

I still can't believe I posted a bio and then immediately sent in $38 for the reunion dinner--where have my "I don't care," anti-high school selves gone? I doubt I could clarify my convoluted feelings on all this with 20 visits to my therapist. And what do I do with to salve my obsessional wounds? I write some more stuff that you all can look at and say, "Wow, that guy is a fucking lunatic."

Six Stitches, Seven dum-dum suckers, and a Frosty

Last night, right before we got the kids down, I was wiping brownish colored water (sign that cooler is a piece of crap) off my swamp cooler thingie and was just about finished with said job that I had put off for some time, when my wife (what was she thinking!) allowed our six year old son to fall in the tub, splitting his chin wide open. I jumped off the stool and wife immediately--she was like so much better in the panic than me--said, "Let's go to Weecare." Shit, shit I thought, selfishly grasping at fading images of my nightly microwave popcorn and episode of Northern Exposure.

Six stitches and seven (one for not crying during the stitches) dum-dum suckers later and we were headed to Wendy's, a post-stitches tradition, where son ordered a vanilla Frosty:

"Hey, dad?"
"What son?"
"Hurting my chin wasn't too bad," he said grasping all seven dum-dum suckers in his left hand and taking a large bite of Frosty in the other. "And it's late, right? I get to stay up late, huh?"

Well, I'm off to split my chin on the tub.

Listservs

I've been reading a backlog of emails for an hour or so from my children's lit listserv in preparation for teaching ch lit this fall. So far I found (reading a listserv is kind of like finding a cheap treasure at the DI) a great link to an article about Harry Potter by Stephen King which I'm going to pair with an article MB sent me about HP by Michael Berube. While I have never completely read a HP book and will not have my students read one, I do want to use the HP hysterium to discuss issues of writing for children, publishing, movie tie-ins, and, especially, children literacy or the perceived lack thereof, etc.

I still have 1735 messages to go through, the price I must pay to consider myself worthy.

Serendipity Supremo

Sometimes things work out much better than you could ever imagine—serendipity supremo. I’m cycling through Kaysville today coming back from a short yet fairly intense 30 miler. I’m at about mile 27 and it’s 100 degrees. Before my ride I spent 10 hrs in the sun at Lagoon—I’m wasted, very ready to be home. As I come up to a 4-way stop I slow down as a big truck pulls up to the side of me. A young male leans out of the window, “Hey asshole get on the sidewalk.”

It’s too much. I just can’t leave it alone. I look right back at him, my 130 pound ectomorph body glistening with sweat, “What did you say?” For a split second, seeming like minutes, I’m not sure what to do next. Then from somewhere, “Do you want to make something of this?” Shit, did I just actually say that? Luckily I’m saved by the one thing you could never hope for, could never imagine, could never even dream of…as I edge ahead of the truck, a Davis County Sherriff appears above their hood stopped on the other side of the 4-way. Without pause, as if planned, I point to the Sheriff, “Do you want to take this up with him?”

The sheriff turns his lights on and pulls the truck over. I recount what happened; he has me wait by his truck.

He returns, “Just a bunch of dumbass kids.”
“I figured. It’s just everyone seems to take pot shots at us ya know.”
“I’ll chew ‘em out good” he says fingering the two driver’s licenses his holding.

The adrenalin carries me at 24 mph all the way home.

I'm out of the Tour

Last night after an amazing, non-chemically enhanced mountain bike ride down the “Bobsled” above the U of U, I returned home late and tired. Instead of getting to bed like I should have, I stayed up watching 5 hrs of Tour coverage. For the 3rd time Rasmussen battled with both Contador and Leipheimer on the steep climbs of the Pyrenees. They threw everything at him—accelerations, team tactics, stare downs—and he still crossed the finish line first.

Can you imagine my surprise this morning when I turned on the Tour and did a double take when I didn’t see the little yellow jersey symbol indicating that the yellow jersey rider was in the peloton. Today is a flat stage near the end of the Tour—if the yellow jersey is not in the peloton then something disastrous has occurred. Sure enough, his team had sent him packing for saying he was in Mexico climbing when he was actually in Italy (where there are many drug docs) and missing several out-of-competition drug tests.

I was crushed. Hadn’t we all experienced this with Floyd Landis last year? It couldn’t, just couldn’t, be happening again.

Still I can’t be well up in ire at the individual cyclists because a huge portion of the blame must be accorded to the cycling organizations, teams, and sponsors who, for years, turned a blind eye on this problem as they lined their pockets with money. Nor can I self-righteously condemn them as cheats as I, in the same situation—wary that most, many or even just some of my main competitors were using drugs--would “cheat” too. In fact when training and failing to ever complete the Wasatch 100 which meant nothing in terms of livelihood or stardom, I routinely used oral steroids (prednisone) to fight inflammation. Not the same as anabolic steroids but still there is risk and it “unfairly” advantaged me.

And how about the Tour announcers (Phil Ligget, Paul Sherwin, Bob Roll, and Al Trautwig) who, this morning, began to speculate on who is clean in the Tour. What a farce! No one knows if anyone is clean. Instead of sticking to that line they began to suggest certain riders, the Canadian Cadel Evans, have looked like they have suffered on the climbs therefore they must be clean. Great, so anyone who doesn’t look like they are suffering in sports is dirty and those who stumble along are clean. Doesn’t that destroy the very wonder of sports? To see a Jordan effortlessly flying both horizontally and vertically? To witness Lance Armstrong, yet again, destroy everyone on the climb?

Now I participate as a fan and athlete in a tarnished sport, yet somehow baseball and football keep moving along, doping scandals a mere speed bump towards the cash. Of course baseball has certainly cleaned up its act. Just look how tough they’ve gotten: a 6 game suspension! Over the long haul maybe cycling will be revered as the sport who first took drug doping seriously. Or maybe it will just keep going on and on underground through newer and better synthetics.

All I ask in the meantime is that someone explain to my 12 year old son why I was up at 1am last night hooting and jumping around like a mad man as Rasmussen pulled away from Contador and Leipheimer and now that same Rasmussen is basically a criminal no longer in the race, his performance and my joy a figment of our imagination

July

The traditions of July are in full swing, a time when I can change up the pace a bit.

I upgraded my cable, as I've done the last three years, so I can watch each stage of the Tour de France; today was the first mountain stage, a steep category II climb in the Alps. A young German took the stage and the yellow jersey but tomorrow the real GC (general classification contenders) will probably take back the time he got today. Still, there's no apparent favorite which is exciting, for a change, after seven years of Lance domination and the Landis debacle. I picked yellow beans yesterday and today; today I searched out the first few early beans in barefeet, the dirt and beans working my visceral nerves. In addition to beans we ate delicious summer meal: spinach salad with bacon and homemade red onion dressing and chilled shrimp. On Thursday my six year old Andrew and I rode our bikes five miles to the dentist for our check-up, then ate at Jake's over the top--must dirty up those clean teeth as quickly as possible. Today, Seth (my oldest) and I searched the stacks of on sale shoes at our local Striders (a great privately owned running store btw) and then ate at a great little Thai place next door. Finally, I did 25 miles on the bike yesterday in 100 degree heat--it was great to clean out the old pores. As a bonus I caught last week's This American Life and listened to "Not ready to make nice" by the Dixie Chicks for like the 50th time. Each time I get a charge from "It's a sad sad story that a mother will teach her daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger. And how in the world can the words that I said, send somebody so over the edge, that they'd write me a letter, saying that I better shut up and sing, or my life will be over." If that doesn't get you up over a hill, nothing will.

So the summer goes. Even in the heat it feels quite refreshing.

Kitschy Kitty

There is a little kitty biting my toes under my desk. While I'm not much of an animal lover and I basically think it's unethical to intentionally allow your cat to get pregnant or impregnate (I'm not sexist) another cat, little kitties are amazingly cute and curious.

To be fair to me, it was my daughter's idea and how could I deny her?

Or his face? (a close 2nd in pleading for a kitty)

It's a beautiful kitty, you have to admit.

Once we took it home, it took to my son's favorite stuffed animal (Rabbi); in fact she tried to nurse from Rabbi.

From God to kitschy little kitties. Evolutionary predisposition binds believer and non-believer together whether they can agree on anything else or not.

A-dios God

Note: if you are a believer and sensitive of heart, please do not read this post; if you are a believer and read it, please do not think I'm judging you anymore than you are judging me when you express your beliefs in God or prophets or eternal life or the resurrection or the Bible.

I'm done with GOD; it's over or at least I'd like it to be over. I think I want to rewrite that great Simon and Garfunkel song "there must be 50 ways to leave your lover" (my ex-girlfriend played this song the first time we made out after my LDS mission--I'm confident she relished the irony knowing she'd dump me soon; still after-two-years of nothing, the make-out was tremendously delicious). I'm not a lyricist so I won't try anything silly, but the sense that you better "make new a plan" that you'll have to "get out the back" and "not discuss much" makes a lot of sense. God is a jealous lover. While I don't regret believing in "God" for about twenty years, it's damn hard to get out of the whole gawd damn GOD system. It seems human's conceptions of God, if you go down that road, seep into every crack of life: prayer in the morning, before bed and every meal, during a difficult time, connections to loved ones, marriage vows, THE reason for living, THE reason for doing good, ALL explanations of how we got here and where we will go after... It's an endless list of comfort thoughts.

I went on a couple hour bike ride through the potato fields of Rexburg, ID this past week. While riding I was listening to a Terry Gross interview with Phillip Roth. As they discussed his new novel Everyman, which is about the lonely deterioration and final death of a man who does not have religion, Terry seemed determined to raise questions about religion and belief. She asked Roth if he ever had the desire to believe in something (she knew he wasn't "religious"), he countered, "I've never desired delusion." Even when you were young, Gross pushed, "never." A powerful moment for me, a building of my new philosophy of life and death. As Richard Dawkins put it in The God Delusion one of the worst effects of religion is that "it teaches us that it is a virture to be satisfied with not understanding." Oh, the places one can go without the self-limiting baggage of religion. Not that these places or ideas will make one happier (Shaw said "the fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is not more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one"). I have a stirring desire to face life for what it is: 70 or so years (probably) with my family, friends, an amazing wonder which will then END, fading into the memory of those who knew me. I want to hold up my head and proclaim: I'm going to face this mother fucker head on, doing my best because that's what you do and that's it. I

Of course this isn't much different than I felt while "believing" in God as I was never too comfortable with the "rewards in heaven" speech. I just never understood, starting with that old girlfriend I mentioned and many others, who have told me they would live differently if they didn't believe in God and the consequences which follow. Several have told me they'd drink a lot, try drugs, have sex, cheat--what a strange way to live life. I mean if you want to do those things, do them, enjoy them and try not to hurt anyone, but to live your entire life being "good" because you hold a belief, one without any physical proof, that you will get a reward for being good... what a waste. Of course I know there are many religious people who, like me over the last twenty years, have a more existential, non-mathmatical view of it all. And even those who profess this type of do-good-now-for-rewards-lataer, wouldn't, I think, actually go do all those crazy things if they didn't believe in God. Which leads me to a mistake I think many religious folks make, including me on occasion.

We create a causal link between a person's disaffection with religion and their "bad" decisions. First, there's a huge evaluative judgment here--drinking, for example, is just fine and moral for many people though many Moromons would blame this "sin" on the someone's inactivity. But let's assume it is a real "bad" decision like a vicious and selfish divorce. Now, we can say, "Yep, if only he'd stayed active, but it was all downhill after he stopped going to church." Of course this kind of causal argument can easily be dismissed: there could have been any number of other essential factors like depression, a terrible wife, work stress, etc. But again let's assume that the mean-spirited divorce wouldn't have occured if the man had continued as an active church member. Yet again this is faulty reasoning because the idea of being active or inactive, going to church to prove one's worth etc., is a social construction which sets up real feelings and consequences in this life whether the religion is based in an real truth or not. Therefore the man who makes the bad decision could easily, conscious or not, be applying the rules of the constructed religion even as he moves away from it: "Because I'm no longer religious, I'm a bad person and will now act accordingly or at least have the leeway to do so." The very beliefs believers profess would have saved the man work against him in the negative.

There's some tough talk here, but in reality I'm quite nervous about proclaiming my new philosophy. I'm reminded of the Spanish film I watched several years ago, La Lengua de Las Mariposas (Butterfly in English), where a young boy, Moncho, develops an affection for his teacher, Don Gregorio, who teaches them about the amazing natural world around them. The film ends with Moncho angrily yelling, though probably feigning, with the rest of the town, "Ateo... ateo" (atheist) as they take Don Gregario away in chains, the now revealed communist. We sure hate godlessness. I hadn't heard the spanish word "ateo" for years until this past week. A man and a woman, speaking in spanish, were walking by our home looking for a "buton" (button) she'd lost. I interrupted my game of catch with my son to talk with them. Turned out he knew my mission president who presided over me in Spain. As we talked they, naively, assumed I was true blue believer. As we discussed Spain, he talked about how his cousin had dated several men from Spain and you know what, he pejoritively with much self-righteousness declared, "Alla todos son ateos." I was dumbstruck, finally mumbling something about how many of the Spanish people had struggled with corrupt "curas" (priests) which of course he agreed with, confirming his belief in the one and only true LDS faith. I considered clarifying my view but knew it wasn't worth it and would be difficult at best in spanish. Right then I realized with clarity that I too am some sort of "ateo" and all the terrible things that go along with it. Maybe it was so powerful because I was hearing the word in spanish, the langauge I had used to testify against godlessness during my mission.

As we figure out how to fully include gays and lesbians into the communal fabric of the US, we better start working on ateos, those godless sons of bitches. And this isn't merely pity party for atheists: it has immediate real impact at the highest levels. Tim Weiner, a NY Times reporter, in an interview again with Terry Gross, tells how President Eisenhower told the CIA to "inspire Jihad against the godless communists" in any way possible. This led to much arms and money, arms and money that are now used to fight against godless capitalism in the US, the most religious developed country in the world. What a waste of resources. And to think we will elect a president if he proclaims a belief in God, but we will not even seriously consider an impeachment process when it's clear his government created false accusations as the basis for a war which has killed tens of thousands; yet can you imagine any serious presidential candidate making it for a minute as an atheist or even agnostic? Not a chance. Much better to believe in God and then repent of laisons with mistresses, denunciations of blacks and gays, shady million dollar book deals, or any number of lies and atrocities.

Three men in a doctor's office

Can he see me today?

Yes, Mark, but it will be a little while.

Ok, he says with voice cracking. I’ll just sit down I guess.

***

Hey, you ok? says the man already waiting

Jussst real d-down, depressed.

I know what you mean. I’ve been depressed for seven years.

24 years for me.

I’m on Clanapin, Paxil--anti-depressants—Lithium for the mania and one other.

Really? Does it work?

Yeah, especially the Clanapin and Paxil together.

I’m going to tell my doc to put me on those two. I-I just don’t like the side-effects. They make me tired and I get limp dick.

Yeah, they all give me limp dick, goes with the territory.

***

How much longer is the doctor going to be?

Quite awhile; he’s booked.

Well, I gotta go now so I will come back. He gets up and goes out the door, passing Mark in silence.

***

Mark begins to tremble. He fumbles with his hat, looking straight down at the floor. He convulses slightly while groaning.

He gets up, hunched over, approaching the desk. It seems he may crumple into a ball and disappear.

Mark, are you ok? Do you want to come back in a room?

He begins weeping, his shoulders heaving.

The door opens and he’s gone.

***

I finally open up the book I brought along and try to begin Rosaldo’s “Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage”:

“If you ask an older Ilongot man of northern Luzon, Philippines, why he cuts off the human heads, his answer is brief, and one on which no anthropologist can readily elaborate: He says that rage, born of grief, impels him to kill his fellow human beings.”

I should really blog something serious...

It's been like a freakin stupid month and my last post wasn't anything to write home about--but I just can't. I mean I'm tired and I have to get ready for my 7am class tomorrow and, well, I don't have anything serious to say. Ok, that's not true. I have a lot of serious things to say, but when I start composing a post in my head it sounds dreadful, dull, and downright depressing.

For example I could say something about family trips, how they impact children, create memories...I can't, it's too painful because I'd have to mention that our four day camping trip to Bear Lake was cut to a one nighter, a night filled with scooping up barf out of...ok I won't go there.

Or I could say something about the whole God/god/gawd question I've been rolling around in my noggin. Hell, going to hell I'll bet, it's just a muddled mess in my head. Someday I need to write more about this, maybe after I finish the Dawkin's book or maybe after I become a practicing Buddhist, because god knows I can't discuss it with anyone I know. Either they don't understand my angst because they've never really believed in God or they would take my criticism of "God" so personal that our relationship would never be the same...ok, ok I'm not going write about this either.

I could also, and I'm quite tempted, write about my looming 20th high fucking school reunion. Of course the dropped F bomb already indicates that this topic is too raw for me to reflect on. Talk about depressing: I was forwarded the address to the in-process class of 87 (I won't mention the school in case my blog would turn up on some past high school acquaintance's Google search nostalgically tooling around for pre-reunion gossip) website. Oh my gawd I was depressed, Holden Caulfield like depressed, when I read through the little statements people had posted about their lives. Some mentioned all the great amazing things they've done with their lives; others revealed things they should only be sharing with a loved one (and we ain't your fuckin' loved ones! It's been 20 years!!!). Obviously I can't write about all this--too painful and clearly I'm being way too hard on these, I'm sure, lovely people from the past. Not too mention I'm an insincere bastard since I've been checking for updated bios two or three times a day--I have issues. I really do hope they spend some quality time together without me.

Well, since there's nothing to write about I'll just stop myself right now.

Summer Movies and Books

I'm kind of in between semesters except for a few hrs in the writing center and a number of projects I should finish before summer semester in a week and half. Having this extra time I've endulged in several movies and finally gotten around to a few of the books stacked on my desk and end table.

Wife and I watched Shut up and sing about the Dixie Chicks (well really the lead singer, Natalie Maines) "controversial" statements about being embarrassed that Bush was also from Texas. Wife and I really enjoyed the film and our respect for the Chicks grew--only slight disagreement was when I said, in earshot of a kid or two, in defense of Natalie's use of the F-word: "I think she is quite sexy when she uses the F-word." By which, I quickly added, I mean every time she used it in the film she was highlighting her tenacity in fighting against Bush, the war, and the shalacking they were taking by country music fans and radio stations. I think women can be sexy when they are tough--that was my point. Next time I might wait till said children are in bed to offer such profound insights into the F-word.

I just finished The Good Shepherd and I'm going to go out on a limb, even though I don't have a carefully crafted argument to support my claim: TGS should have gotten several nominations, one for best actor, Matt Damon, and one for best picture/director (it only got best art F.... direction! I thought it was genius but it seems understated, low key, subtle movies/
performances often get overlooked unless they are of the Merchant-Ivory variety. The film continues to float around in my head, especially Damon's character which was skillfully portrayed with nuance and reservation.

Oldest son and I finally watched Independence Day (certainly a fun popcorn movie as one review put it) and Pan's Labrynth (after hearing about it during the Oscars). Pan's was a wonderful, deliciously dark fantasy mixed with realism. A few gratuitous violent scenes which we fast-forwarded but the rest was spot on. I really appreciated how the film works both as a "real" (like this happened) fantasy/fairy tale and as a realistic psychological display of a child's struggle to deal with a the wicked (and very evil) step-father.

I'm reading both The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of darkness by Karen Armstrong and The God Delusion by the infamous Richard Dawkins. I'm not as far in the Dawkin's book as it doesn't have an engaging narrative like Armstrong's story of her recovery from seven years in a convent, but still the parallels are stricking. Armstrong, renowned religious scholar, retells her painful journey back to "regular" life, working through anxiety attacks, dangerous amnesiac episodes, and a bout with anorexia. Not only does she fail as a nun, she then fails her Oxford dissertation, thought a very controversial failure, after years of work. Somehow, as I kind of know how things will turn out, she makes it through all this to become a self-sponsored scholar, writing definitive works on all of the major relgions. Amazingly, on some level (not as "believer"), she works through the hate and dismissal of religion and turns it into her career. I can't wait to see how exactly she does this and compare it side by side with Dawkin's absolute refusal to see religion as anything but deception.