Priorities

OK, it’s ranting time. I heard a very interesting speech the other day in a Sunday school class at church that was given by Jim Wallis via the wonders of DVD (he is the editor for Sojourners). The upshot for his speech/sermon was that the Iraq war is not a just war, and that we as a nation need to repent of this war. All in all it was a great speech. He started off by saying the war in Iraq is personal for us as Americans. This he connected to our troops that don’t come home, or come home without a leg, or mentally scarred. However, I think the problem, in part, is that this war is not personal enough for us as Americans, and thus we allowed for it to happen, and continue allowing it to happen. So, here is a website that I came across thanks to FCNL. If you select your town it will calculate the taxes that the people in your city have paid since the war started and alternatives that money could have provided for instead. Turns out State College PA has contributed $32.9 million dollars in taxes directly to the Iraq war to date. For that price, 39, 587 homes could have been provided with renewable electricity, or 562 new music and arts teachers. It’s appalling. And that’s just to date. This year, our taxes could be spent instead to add another 10,000 homes with renewable electricity, but sadly, we’ll just blow some stuff up with that money instead. Seeing as State College doesn’t even have 40,000 homes it seems like a shame that our whole town could be completely renewable right now. And people complain that renewable energy is too expensive. I guess it is a matter of priorities.

Check it out for yourself.

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/tradeoffs

Let the masses weigh in!

As predicted, here is a blog about baby’s. Ours to be specific.

From time to time I learn a little Japanese. Little is really an overstatement. I probably pick up about 1 word a month. These words range from practical to silly. Everything from “thank you” to “that was totally delicious”. (In case you couldn’t figure it out “thank you” was the practical, and “that was totally delicious” was on the line of being silly—but still practical really.) Well, about 3-4 years ago I learned the word “shamoji” which means rice paddle. This wonderful little instrument is what we use to collect rice out of our rice cooker. It is a very useful tool that we would be lost without. Somehow it is specially engineered to prevent the rice from sticking to the paddle, something that amazes me to this day. Anyway, the word “shamoji” has a particular ring to it wouldn’t you say? I would and did. Just say it in your head a few times as your are reading this: “shamoji, shamoji, shamoji”. Oh yeah, a great word. In fact I clearly remember saying when I learned it: “hey, that would make a great name for our first child”. Now, before you claim this as slipping into the silly column, let me explain.

“SHA-MO-JI”. There, now you understand right??? Right!!!

I’ve been trying to explain this to Jori since she found out she was pregnant to no avail. “What would we do when we visit Japan??? I can’t tell people our child is Shamoji”. After a couple of hours of obstinately pleading my case as above, “SHA-MO-JI”, she eventually relented...sort of. The agreement was/is that we could call our child “Shamoji” until he/she is born at which point a “real” name would be given. I took this as a decent compromise for the time being counting on time to allow for “Shamoji” to grow on Jori.

My plan took a turn for the better the other day. By chance, for our Halloween party at youth group, a bunch of we leaders were dressing in green and going as gang-green (get it—sort of like gangrene). Anyway, Jori wrote the Japanese character for green on my arm as a makeshift tatoo. Fortuitously, someone who was watching asked Jori what it said.

“Midori” she replied.

“Whaaaaaaaat????” I said very excitedly. “Like the Japanese violinist???”

“Yes” she said

“How come a famous Japanese violinist can be called ‘green’ and our child can’t be called ‘rice paddle’”??? I asked incredulously.

I had her cornered. Lined up in the cross hairs. She replied with a somewhat lame retort of “it’s sort of like naming a girl April”.

I still think it is a great name. It’s a character building name. It’s unique (do you know any shamoji’s???). It even provides for some nice alliteration “Shamoji Sharda”.

Jori’s lab mates are doing a terrific job of using the name with great frequency and enthusiasm. In fact, in her lab you could say that Shamoji is developing character already. So, now I need your help faithful and well respected blog readers. What do you think of Shamoji??? It’s a great name isn’t it.

It’s a boy. Just kidding...sort of.

No we didn’t have a baby. What we did have was a healthy 5 pound daikon. For those of you who don’t know, a daikon is a Japanese radish (white) that is tasty in a number of Asian dishes including miso soup. It was so big though that we couldn’t resist having a little fun with some picture taking. Speaking of baby’s though, Jori is expecting, and is due around April 11. We’re having lots of fun in the anticipation process, and future blogs may contain lots of baby related posts. However, at my rate the next blog may be after April 11. hmmmmm. That would certainly be a baby related post at that point. One of the fun things that we have done recently is babysat for our landlord’s grandkids while they went to a football game. This involved dunking their 2 year old into an ice-cold pond in their backyard. It was a good learning experience with someone else’s kid and now we know not to do that with our own kids some day.

Summing up Grad School Life

One of the reasons that I love watching the Simpsons is because of their uncanny ability to stereotype. Here are two examples that hit close to home for me. I particularly like the second one. (I haven't figured out how to display these videos within my blog yet so all you get is a link--sorry).

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tAXN6gTmRN4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKJ652wtutg&NR=1

Revenge

Yesterday, while driving home form my guitar lesson, I was channel surfing and came across a radio station where the host was thankful that the gunner in yesterdays tragedy killed himself so that A: the justice system wouldn’t get a chance to “screw things up” by letting him off without the death penalty, and B: that he wouldn’t spend 20 or so years waiting for the death penalty while just soaking up tax payer dollars. I quickly changed the channel, so I don’t even know who I was listening too, but the level of revenge that people seek is very disheartening. I know that not everyone agrees with that sentiment, but I also know that those statements do represent the thoughts of a lot of people out there. I have a lot of upset thoughts on the matter, but I really don’t feel like fishing them out in a logical manner right now so I’ll just leave it at that.

A spoon full of water goes a long way to believing

I recently, or, as it were now, not so recently, returned from Christmas break after spending 2 weeks in Michigan.

While in Michigan, I was privileged to eat with many friends and family, including my 5th grade nephew Joshua and my 2nd grade niece Anna. As we were sitting down for lunch, Anna noticed that I had a spoon in my glass of water. What she didn’t know was that I had left the spoon in the glass from earlier in the day when I had used that very glass and spoon to make hot chocolate. She wanted to know why I would have a spoon in my glass of water, and I of course was going to have a little bit of fun with her curiosity. I responded with a straight face that I use a spoon to stir my water in order to make it taste better. By the look on her face I could tell that she wanted to believe me, but wasn’t quite buying it, so I emphatically told her to try it for herself. She immediately grabbed a spoon and started stirring her water, and a bit to my surprise, agreed that the water tasted better. I reassured her that of course it did. This inspired Joshua to reach for a spoon and perform the same ceremonial stirring of the water. He drank and responded, “it still tastes the same”. One sold, and one skeptic I guess. So, I pushed the sale a little harder by saying “that’s because you stirred it in a clockwise motion. You need to stir counter-clockwise for best results”. He almost started stirring in the opposite direction and then a sly smile appeared on his face as he turned to look at me. The gig was up.

This little story got me thinking though. As ridiculous as my water tale was, I couldn’t help but think of another tale that is equally ridiculous. That is the tale of Jesus Christ. The Son of God??? Died and raised??? For me??? For you??? Paul tells us:

Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. –1 Corinthians 1:22-25

I suppose Paul was right, Christ crucified is really a stumbling block. I also imagine that depending on what side of faith you are believing on, the ridiculousness makes all the difference. The difference of hope and gratitude, verses disbelief and doubt. If you believe in this ridiculous tale then you find the miracle and wisdom of Christ crucified. If you don’t believe in this ridiculous tale, then you find your evidence for doubt that this miracle happened, and proof that there is no such wisdom to be found in believing such stories.

What will we find if we jump in for the spoon that is Jesus Christ? Will the gig be up? Or, will we find the power and wisdom of God?

Who Put That There?

Our youth group divides itself in to more manageable small groups each semester, and this semester my small group decided that it would be a nice idea to take turns bringing homemade goodies to Wednesday nights to share amongst ourselves. We played the nose touching game to decide who would bring cookies first, and by the time that I realized what was going on, it was very clear that my nose was the only one that was not being touched. For those of you who don’t know the genius of the nose touching game, it consists of each individual touching their nose in order to ‘elect’ the last person to feel their nose to do a certain task (usually an undesirable task—it really is just a slightly refined version of the playground “not it” game). Anyway, last night I had to make some goodies for tonight and Jori was kind enough to help me out. Earlier this week she made some cookies for a lab meeting. They were easy to make, but she reckoned that the addition of butterscotch chips (lets call them BS-chips for shorthand) would significantly enhance the gooey goodness of these cookies. Unfortunately we did not have any BS-chips in the house, so my part in making the cookies was to go out and acquire some BS-chips. Our car recently died, and thus I had to literally run to the store.

I left out of the front door with some trash to take out on my way. I stopped off at the garbage can, and then was faced with a decision. Do I continue out the front way and walk around the block, or do I take a short cut through the back yard? Seeing as it was bitter cold out, I opted for the shortcut, and I also made the decision that running there would limit my time in the cold as much as possible. As I was running through the backyard, I thought that I would be ‘cute’ and wave to Jori in the kitchen, and just as I was realizing that she couldn’t see me out in the dark—Wam! I was flying high and down onto my back. What the??? As I collected my thoughts, I realized quickly what had happened. For what ever reason, someone a long time ago tied a telephone cord into our maple tree in the back yard. This happened so long ago that the tree has grown around the cord such that it is permanently fixed into the tree. Fortunately there is enough of the cord that we can stretch it to our back porch to make a nice clothesline. However, the telephone cord hangs about neck level, is nearly invisible in broad daylight, and completely invisible at night. So...you guessed it, I literally clothes-lined myself while running. It was classic. Straight out of Home Alone. Textbook. Neck gets snagged, feet continue in a forward and upward motion. Stay suspended for a brief moment in a parallel to the ground pattern and wait for gravity to take care of the rest. If only there had been more snow on the ground. As it would happen to be, there was only about 1 inch. Bugger.

As I got to my feet and did a self inventory for damages, I looked into the kitchen window. Jori still (and fortunately) couldn’t see anything, but I could tell by the look on her face that the sound had startled her quite a bit. Anyway, I continued onto the store sniggering to myself all the way. I picked up the BS-chips, and headed for home. When I returned, I naively asked Jori if she had heard a strange noise about the time that I left. She said that she did, and it sounded like the neighbor’s house was being broken into. I told her the real reason, and we both had a good long laugh. The good news is that I am fine despite a slightly bruised feeling in my throat. The bad thing is that it didn’t leave a really cool looking black and blue line across my neck. I mean, what fun is this sort of thing if you don’t have some evidence for the pain you went through right?