WHAT IS A LUTHERAN SURREALIST?

The pastor today was sermonizing on what is a Lutheran and said it's not someone who eats ludefisk, or is a northern European, since Namibia is 95% Lutheran. In addition, 22,000 Japanese are Lutherans, and there is someone in Shanghai. There are even Australian Lutherans and Lutherans in India and maybe in Antarctica.

Lutheranism means that you believe in Jesus, and that's it. Anyone who tries to add on works righteousness as an aspect of Christianity isn't really a Lutheran. No one knows what they are, but they're not Lutheran.

So much for the Lutheran part.

What then is a surrealist? Well, surrealism is a French movement that ended in 1966 with Andre Breton's death. Or sputtered on for another few years, depending on which history you read.

Breton was an extreme secularist some say, but nevertheless he drew inspiration from George Hegel (who was a Lutheran), and from Soren Kierkegaard (who was a Lutheran), and from Marx (who was raised as a Lutheran), and who searched throughout his life for a spark of insanity from some unworkable system (he tried Marxism, but threw it over, and then the Occult (the above card is from a Tarot deck that was designed by a surrealist named Matta), and finally, anarchism, but never found anything that worked and his movement was ultimately eclipsed by the Existentialists, who took off from Kierkegaard, and managed to garner adherents throughout French Bohemia). Breton had been raised as a Catholic and his mother boxed his ears when he didn't attend Sunday School.

So breton rejected Christianity, but was he in fact a Christian? He was against sin: against mercantile exploitation, against high incomes, against the use of others as only a means to an end. Was he Christian in everything but name?

Lutheran Surrealism is a continuation of the Bretonian search for love and humor, as subsets of the marvelous, but we claim to return the movement to the Christian context that was foolishly rejected at its inception. Jesus was always the truest avatar of the Surrealist conception, and Lutheranism was always the truest aspect of Christianity. Thus, Lutheran Surrealism is an intertwining of two strands of research that were always looking for one another: the Lutheran part as ethics and religion, and the surrealist part as the artistic aspect. It's an open movement. Anyone can join in our conversations. Well, as long as you feel called to do so.

MY HATRED OF DOGS ABATES: REASON FOR CONCERN?

I have kept it to myself how I didn't like dogs, but then about a year ago I couldn't take it any more. I began to discuss it in public.

In a class, I admitted that I thought that dogs were wolves, and should therefore be removed from towns and cities.

One student said to me, "You just haven't met the right dog."

I considered this. Then last week I encountered a pretty nice Schnauzer. This dog trotted along and sat in a basket, and didn't even bark. I briefly considered petting it before I got control of myself.

Later, I thought: maybe I could have been friends with that dog.

Fortunately, the moment has passed. But something irreversible has happened. Although I'm not going to load up the house with 101 Dalmatians, I no longer hold in contempt dogs or their owners. I'm still concerned about the sheer level of filth. 200 million dogs and their filth (how many dogs are in America -- how much filth do they actually represent?). What is it doing to the country? Can't Obama do something? He himself owns a dog. If he's not part of the solution, he's part of the problem. I'll bet he never walks it himself. Probably lets his security detail handle it. Many presidents have had a dog. Roosevelt had Fala. Did Lincoln have a dog? Washington? There's something missing when you think about a president without a dog. Maybe this is why I'll never be president. If Lincoln did have a dog, imagine the dog after the assassination. Mourning, cursing the south. If there's anything sadder than a president without a dog, then it's a dog without a president.

If you could remove waste and barking from dogs, perhaps they'd be ok. I HAVE considered letting the children own one (they badger me about it but the excuses have been fairly constant: mostly, allergies). I must maintain resistance. The truth is that I am not allergic to dogs. I am allergic to cats. But I don't like the work that dogs represent. Cats are mostly self-maintaining. Give them a litter box, and a ball of string, and you can wash your hands of them for years on end. Dogs however require levels of help and training. They have to be taught how to fetch a stick, and you have to run across the yard and grab the stick in your mouth, and wag your rear end to show them. Plus, there is the cleanliness issue. Kids always say that they'll take care of things. But. I'm going to end up walking it, and scooping, and all that, so unless I'm getting some kind of pleasure from the dog, it's out.

I'd like a dog that was like a cat. I don't like dogs that are indiscriminately affectionate and climb up on everyone with their eyes popping out, tongue lolling, humping the furniture. I'm beginning to hate dogs again. I'm beginning to regain my sanity.

I used to feel this way about children, but now I have four of them and my life is irreversibly enriched. Don't tell me that dogs are going to be yet another layer of love and affection in my life. If so, I'm thinking I would like to get a relatively quiet dog, affectionate, with a cute face and big eyes. Perhaps one with long hair, or one of those dogs with wrinkly skin. But do I really want the mess of an intestinal tract? Kids can be potty trained. Can dogs? Perhaps a virtual dog would work out. No intestinal tract, no visits to the vet. OK, Let's forget about this.

Dogs are probably a Democratic thing: probably more Democrats own them. Roosevelt was a Democrat. Probably communists like them, too. I have no idea what I could have been thinking. If I get a pet, should it be an elephant, or a rhinocerous? Imagine the curiosity of the neighbors. But there is still the waste issue. You'd not only have to scoop, you'd have to have a dump truck. What if I were to put a butterfly on a tiny silk string? Could still get the amusement, but could cut down on the waste products. But they'd probably die in a couple of days, and my grief would be insurmountable. Birds are stupid. Fish? Perhaps a whale would be fun. But that's not really a fish. Still, they can talk, people say. But then, people can talk, too. How well do whales really listen?

JUAN WILLIAMS FIRED

I'm late to the party, but since we're talking about it let's talk about it in a thread of its own.

My opinion is that NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (who has a master in Russian Studies from Cornell) libelled Juan Williams when she implied that he was crazy to view Muslims as a potential threat when he boarded an airline. To imply that Williams has a psychiatrist is (if he has one) a breach of privacy, especially if she learned this in her capacity as his supervisor. If he doesn't have a psychiatrist, then to imply that he does is clearly an instance of libel, because it's a metonymic attempt to label him as insane (an old maneuver of the Russians under Stalin).

Insofar as Juan Williams was fired, Schiller is probably within her rights to do it (I haven't seen his contract, but I assume she has the right to fire him on the spot). But can she imply that he's insane and recklessly damage his credibility while she does it? If he IS crazy, then she should have protected his vulnerability by not pointing it out. If he is NOT crazy, then she has libelled him. Either way, I think there's probably an enormous cash settlement in this somewhere -- probably in the neighborhood of millions of dollars. Juan Williams is too liberal for my taste on most questions, but he has rights, and in defending them, he will defend all of us, and our rights to freedom of speech, from oppressive employers like NPR.

CAN THE SOUL GET FAT?

I lost ten pounds last spring while on sabbatical, partially because I could focus on the issue, and spend days thinking about not eating. When I am working very hard I can't remember what I am doing or how many calories I have downed, and some times get flustered and lose all sense of what's good for me, but gnosh something to regain contact with myself, that is, in order to recover from the alienation from self that work sometimes creates. Last night I went to see a movie with my kids called Guardians of Ghuoleua or something in which good owls fought Nazi owls and won.

I ate Sourpatch candies with the kids, and didn't even bother to check how many calories per slice. I think I ate all the yellow ones (there are four different colors as in the illustration above, but the boy didn't like yellow since it was a girls' color, and the girl didn't like them because she claimed the yellow ones were extra sour). So I ate them all and enjoyed them. I loved how they burned with sourness and then turned sweet, going from a powdery blaze to a jelly-like deliciousness that lasted for all of two minutes per piece. But how many calories were in each piece? What exactly were they made from? Who made them? They cost $3.50 for a box at the movie counter, and I did a cost analysis and decided they all had to be eaten and savored.

But did I need them?

No, I did not need them, but I never really thought about this, except with a brief twinge of guilt. It's just that the movie was very dark and scary as the owls flew out of the dark and bats went berserk, and blood flew all over the 3-D screen and I kept thinking oh my, I hope the good owls win, which was the sole reason I was able to endure this avian bloodbath. The kids were enjoying it, but I was frightened, and I thought I must not let them see this is easier for them than it is for me. The candies were distracting me from the screen, and reminding me I was in a movie and not in the middle of World War III.

Meanwhile, I have gained back five pounds of the ten I have lost from one little incident after another like the above. I think it's due at least in part because I feel alienated from myself. That's when I find I gnosh something. It's because I lose any sense of myself, and masticating something gives me back my own sense of inner warmth and identity that somehow gets lost when I am too rushed racing as I do from classes to kids' soccer games to kids' ballet classes while grading papers en route and trying to mollify my little passengers with the exact temperature they require in the backseat, fiddling with the controls, the CD player, and thinking how the day went, and how each student is doing, and whether anything can be done to enhance their educations before the semester is over and I no longer have the capacity to teach them argumentation, or about universal human rights, or aesthetics in Kant. Aboriginal Australians claim that when you travel by air you leave your soul behind because your soul can only move at the pace of walking. So that's how they explain the soullessness of western civilization. I don't know, they may be right, which would also explain what happens to politicians as they race about leaving their carbon footprints on the isolated population centers of their farflung gerrymandered districts.

Meanwhile, I find I pop things in my mouth and am barely aware of doing so and if a cookie is thrown in my general direction I leap up like a sea animal and give it a seal of approval, a bark, another bark, and gulp it down, and soon my gut looks like a seal's, too. I'm still slim enough to fit on the top end of the average part of the BMI (it's 174, and I am 172), but I am about to slip over unless I face this fact squarely and do something starting today.

People say that Michelle Obama is getting pudgy. Is she? Perhaps the hard work of squeaking about obesity from coast to coast is distracting her from her diet. As she flies to Spain for varous delectables perhaps she has lost her soul in the process. And with it, her sense of herself, and her very identity is wandering somewhere trying to reconnect with her. I think dieting should be a full-time job, and for the superrich, and models, it probably is. For the rest of us, it's very hard, but it definitely requires presence of mind. I just ate three handfuls of peanuts while writing this (borrowing from the future like Barack Obama borrowing from the future), enjoying the salt more than anything else, and wishing I could go down on all fours and bury my face in a dog bowl of peanuts and chocolate and wolf them until I am sick and just lie on my side, howling until the lights go dim, thinking about what I can do to get my diet going again, and how I'd really rather not.

Two things do reconnect me to myself fairly rapidly: hard exercise, and food. Of these, food is the easier to make time for. But right now I have about an hour, and will go down to the exercise room and see if I can get back on the right track. I had to grade fifty freshman comp papers over the last week, and that was an extra distraction. But I am through with that, and can begin to get back to normal, or even sub-normal. God, please help me get off my duff.

OBAMACARE IS THE MAIN ISSUE IN THIS ELECTION

It is probably OBAMACARE that is the main force driving this election. Other issues, whether or not someone is a bearded Marxist, or whether they are witches riding brooms over Wilmington, are fly-by-night matters that matter little. According to Rasmussen:

"Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters favor their state suing the federal government to fight the requirement in the new national health care plan that every American must obtain health insurance."

The government takeover of healthcare is what has frightened moderates into joining with the Tea Parties in terms of wanting a change in the makeup of the Legislature.

Martin Luther King wrote the definition of unjust law in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in 1963. Among other passages, he writes,

"A law is unjust if it inflicted on a minority that, as a result of having been denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law."

Republicans were shut out of the making of the law, and all Republicans voted against it. Furthermore, it is widely felt that the bill itself is unconstitutional (the challenge has yet to be tested in courts, but that it will go to court is almost certain). Almost half of American states have filed a brief against the bill, since it represents government take-over of commerce, which will in turn lead to larger government, and more government intrusion in the business realm. Dubious truths circulated regarding how much the bill will cost, buttressed by the flipflopping estimates of the CBO (CBO said it would save money just before the bill was passed, and then later re-estimated it would add trillions to the national deficit, which seemed to imply that the CBO was not being truthful in its original estimate).

Other issues: gay marriage, the Deepwater Horizon debacle, the passage of the second Stimulus Bill, the judicial activism against Don't Ask, Don't Tell, illegal Mexican immigration, Obama's seeming preference for the Arabs over the Jews, are minor irritants. What's driving this election is Obamacare, and the overreaching it represents. If Obama is repudiated on November 2nd, and all polls indicate that he will be, some will call it racism against the president, others will say that fascism has taken over the government. But it's about the fright that voters feel that the president has plans for the government to continue to take over the private sphere of business, and replace it with a socialist style of government-planning (think of North Korea) that simply never works, and leads to economic implosion. Government in this scenario is like a giant pirate ship that has hijacked business and sought to destroy the private sphere in favor of a totalitarian takeover. Even if there is some kind of "Robbin' Hood" like aspect to redistribution, and even while some are looking forward to the loot to be obtained, most Americans still believe in free enterprise, in freedom from excessive taxation, and in the Protestant work ethic as encoded in the parable of the Little Red Hen.

WHO'LL STAND UP FOR WITCHES?

There is a curious element in the Democrat party of misogyny in going after Palin and O'Donnell, and in the case of O'Donnell of bigotry against witchcraft. While Palin is probably only thought to be a witch, O'Donnell actually dabbled in the Craft in high school. A huge swath of the feminist group is interested in Wiccan ideas, and it's in fact the fastest growing religion in America (with about 500,000 official adherents -- doubling every year). O'Donnell should use the Seinfeldian maneuver -- "I'm not a witch -- not that there's anything wrong with that." Instead, she simply denies her association with covens!

Even the US military now allows Wiccans to practice their faith.

The Wiccans ARE a little outside of the mainstream, but I thought the Democrats were all-inclusive?

Has anybody spoken up for witches? Islam is apparently a religion of peace, and we let Nazis march through Skokie. Should witches not be allowed to present themselves as senatorial candidates? Isn't this against the first amendment? I am personally not for boiling babies and I take regular airplanes when I travel, but I've been shocked at how the Democrats are willing to demonize witches just because they have a pact with Satan. Many mainstream churches including the Episcopalian are all for redeeming Satan and bringing him back into the fold. It's almost like there's an assumption that boiling babies is wrong.

Where's the tolerance? I mean, it's a growing culture for heaven's sake. You'd think both parties would be scrambling for this demographic.

Why hasn't B'nai Brith spoken up on the anti-witchcraft rhetoric? Or have they? You'd think feminists would come out in favor of witches, and offer to ride escort for O'Donnell. Since the days of The Wizard of Oz (oh, it's ok to be a wizard, but not a witch?), we've been demonizing the witchy element. Hey, come on. Halloween is around the corner, and we're already brewing a barrel of cider for the little ones chez nous.

Bubbling bubbles of matriarchal brewski! Those Democrats used "voodoo" against Reagan, and are now appealing to the prejudice of Americans against Satan himself! What they won't do to magically turn an election!

This Election is About ...: Poetry Contest

$16.00 in the envelope today
My daughter put it in the gold plate
She also put 75 cents in the kids' plate

Bought the paper
W/ discrepant articles
One said women make 77 cents to the male dollar
The other said young women made 1.5 times as much as young men

Another article said 30% of teens are unemployed
And 50% of black teens have no job

Another article said no one wants the jobs
They want welfare

Stocks still not doing much
Employment down, national debt skyrocketing

My daughter wanted to sell something to me
For a dollar so she could get striped candy

I had no money so we ate green pepper
1.49 for the package of seeds
She spit it out and said never again

What is money
What is your relationship to it?
Is it a boomerang?
This election is about your money

Who understands it better:
The Republicans or the Democrats?
Obama or Bush? Angle or Reid?
Boehner or Pelosi?

Skull crackling with static electricity I reach for the lever!

(Poetry contest open until November 2 when the polls close at 9 pm EST. Money comments, but also comments about other top issues, in poetic format. Please, no more than 33 lines. Also, each participant can have one vote. You can't vote for your own pome. Voting to be held from 12:01 AM to 11:59 pm on the 3rd. Winner is political poet in chief of LS for two years -- title carries no responsibilities and has no benefits except bragging rights -- and is viable until next major election in 2012.)

The World's Shortest Man

The world's shortest man is less than two feet tall, is eighteen years old, and weighs 12 pounds. He likes to dance, and is interested in wrestling.

He lives in Nepal.

ED BAKER WINS COLUMBUS DAY POETRY CONTEST

On The Way Back From Pethcos

on the way back from Pethcos
it came to us

cities we could almost remember

it came with the rain
& our walking

with wind that cracked our faces

heroically

in the morning of our walking
we discovered our other country

GOD IN AMERICA

Last night I flicked on PBS and caught a two-hour documentary entitled, "God in America." It's the first of a three part series. The opening discussed the era from the pilgrims up until the years before the Civil War.

It showed Anne Hutchison and her stand-off with John Winthrop (he won the battle but lost the war for religious freedom). The program followed various key religious altercations. The most interesting was that Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia had an established church: the Anglicans (now known as Episcopalians). This group had a religious headlock on those four states. No one else was permitted to practice religion, and only members of that church were permitted to be members of government.

When Baptists moved down into the Piedmont Region of northern Virginia, their ministers were put in prison for preaching without license. They argued back that Jesus didn't have a license. They won the war, but they needed Thomas Jefferson to help them. He did, even though he didn't like the way they interpreted the Bible.

Jefferson was an Episcopalian, but not one of the more bigoted ones. Years ago an elderly pastor told me it was the Episcopalians in the Confederacy who championed slavery, and forced the south to fight.

The six-hour special will be streamed on PBS, and can be found here:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1610726967/

Jefferson and Madison were Virginians, and Episcopalians, who believed that the Baptists should enjoy freedom of religion, and it was on their account that they put into the Bill of Rights the widely misunderstood phrase,

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;," which many chronocentric secularists believe means that no religious people can run for office, and if they do, can't bring religion up. It's the first phrase in the entire document, for heaven's sake. The ignorant secularist interpretation would mean that only three percent of the public could run the government. We have had a handful of godless presidents (including the current one, perhaps), but the great majority are Christian. I think there is one Muslim from out in Detroit, who took his oath on a Koran. The rest, or the great majority of the rest, are Christians, who took their oaths on a Bible. Presumably, if a Wiccan wins some day, she can take an oath on a book by Anton LaVey.

Understanding this past is crucial to understanding our present.

So far, there isn't very much coming up about Lutherans. Unable to practice in New England because of the Establishment of the Puritans (who came to be called Congregationalists), and unable to practice in the south thanks to the establishment of the Episcopalians, they mostly settled in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the mid-Atlantic region.

The Lutheran tradition is a pickle, because of the two kingdoms approach. This is different than the Islamic tradition, in which one kingdom is all she wrote. Marxists are one kingdom thinkers, as are most Calvinists. Catholics believe in two kingdoms, but think the church trumps the state.

H. Wayne House, in his article, "A Tale of Two Kingdoms: Can There be Peaceful Coexistence of Religion with the Secular State?" (BYU Journal of Public Law, Vol. 13 (2), 1999, pp. 203-291) argues that:

"In contrast to the Roman Catholic view, Luther saw the church and state to be neither superior nor inferior to the other, but both as being created by God to different purposes. He viewed the state as being responsible to restrain evil. Believers belong to both kingdoms, the church and the state, and have responsibilities to each. Luther believed that believers relate to the first kingdom, the church, by faith, and to the second kingdom, the state, by reason" (244-245).

It is the lack of the ability to reason that ruins many one-kingdom states. Marxists put idiots into positions of enormous power simply because they were party faithful. This ruins those states and causes economic collapse. Islamic countries allow mullahs like Mullah Omar to make completely ridiculous laws such as deciding the length of men's beards, and whether or not women should be able to read and write (reason should tell us that they should), and this causes collapse.

The balance of two kingdoms, in which reason prevails in the state's sphere, even disallows the need for Christians to rule.

House writes, "Luther, unlike Calvin, did not believe that Christians had the right to use the state to promote Christianity" (245).

House writes in a footnote, "Luther is purported to have said that he would rather have a 'competent Turk rule than an incompetent Christian'" (note at bottom of p. 245 is attributed to David W. hall's Savior or Servant? Putting Government in its Place, p. 210).

Competence is the sole criterion of governance, and should be the sole criterion of whether or not a poet or musician is "good," or whether or not a car mechanic is "good." The notion of freedom of conscience, or even freedom FROM conscience, prevails in the secular sphere. Reason alone prevails there, in the Lutheran prescription. This in turn finds its justification in Christ's remark that we should "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" which implies that the Two Kingdoms idea is acceptable throughout Christianity.

The precise line between the two kingdoms has always been subject to debate. Our laws are based on the Ten Commandments. Our conscience does play a role in whether or not we permit abortion, gay marriage, to what extent we should help the poor, to what extent the rich are permitted to pile up trust funds, and whether we should eat Irish children.

God & America are not separate, but are intertwined from the very beginning, and continue to be intertwined even as we go into the last three weeks of this election. The desperate secular left unleashes salvo after salvo at Christian candidates, (demonizing one candidate for her adventure among Wiccans) but in doing so only reveal their secular (one kingdom) bias.

I'm with the right for purely rational reasons. If government gets too big, it can allow a dictator like Stalin or Hitler. If you put in redistribution schemes, they require an enormous bureaucracy. That bureaucracy is susceptible to hijack. Also, it is not reasonable to tax businesses out of business. Reason says that the business of America is business, as Calvin Coolidge put it. I think this is the rational foundation of the Tea Party, which traces its ancestry back to Locke, Madison, Jefferson, and up through Friedrich Hayek, and finds its voice in Glenn Beck, in Ann Coulter, and in other flawed characters such as Sarah Palin, and Christine O'Donnell.

Flawed as they may be, they are correct.

The left paradigm is unreasonable, and allows too much sickening sentimental faith to seep into the polity, which must be founded on reason, and on the almighty (albeit desperately weakening) dollar. Obama is a sentimental clod. We need someone competent in office. This doesn't mean that the person has to make fancy speeches (although it's nice). It means that they must be reasonable, and must have a background in a reasonable pattern of thinking. Whether Obama is a Marxist, a liberation theologist, a Muslim, or whatever he is: he isn't competent. His incompetence is costing us trillions.

Prayer: Please make government smaller, and more Hayekian in its outlook.

HOW SHOULD LUTHERAN SURREALISTS EAT?

Jesus drank wine, ate bread, and ate fish. He said we should eat of his body.

Many of us go to restaurants instead. Is it wrong to eat expensive food? I think I've never spent more than 25 dollars on dinner, and that would be an extreme upper end for me. I prefer to eat something fairly cheap and filling, like a bagel with cream cheese.

I don't know when I last ate a steak. These days, I order veggie burgers, and when they ask me how I want it (which I think means what do I want on it), I say, with as straight a face as I can muster, "Rare." The people look at me from behind the counter, but so far I haven't produced a laugh.

Many people in the Animal Rights movement believe we shouldn't hunt. I don't think anyone who comes here regularly hunts. Does anybody here own a rifle, or even a BB gun? I owned a BB gun when I was a kid. I shot a bird and cried for a week. It might be fun to kill a deer or a lion, but I couldn't take it.

Everything on earth dies. Only people go to heaven.

Everything else, it says in Genesis, was made for us, to sustain us.

In Portland, Oregon I once went to a lousy pizza place that had hard crust, and no cheese. I asked why their pizza was so lousy, and they said they didn't use bread that rose, and they didn't use cheese because enzymes are alive. The pizza was incredibly terrible. Sometimes good taste flies in the face of good taste. they were proud of how they had put good taste before good taste.

Jesus in all the depictions is fairly thin. To be like Jesus therefore I think we should match the norms of the BMI. I don't drink wine. I don't like fish. I do eat bread. I like oatbread the best, and like tomatoes, cheese, and raw onions.

I also like mind-blowing mustards, including horse radish.

What is the best diet, and what is the most expensive meal you've ever had? What is the single most expensive item you can eat in this world? What is the cheapest food you can eat that will sustain you?

When Columbus came to the west it was to get spices. The economics of spices required a shorter route. Most of what people do is economical, or an attempt to be economical. The cucumbers I grew over the summer (I grew 43) were from a packet of seeds that cost $1.49.

You'd have to figure in water, compost, and the time it took to weed. I wish we didn't have to eat food. I think it would be more pure to work like plants on the notion of photosynthesis. However, much food is delicious. Jesus rarely if ever notices how good the food he's eating is. And yet, when he turned water into wine at the wedding (at Cana?) everyone remarked that it was the best wine they had ever had. Did Jesus have good taste? Did he care about his food along the lines of a gourmet? What was served at the Last Supper? Was it especially tasty? How much were the waitresses (were there waitresses?) tipped? Is it wrong to make other people wait on you, while you eat? Is the buffet (self-service) more ethical?

COLUMBUS DAY POETRY CONTEST

Tales of discovery, specifically having to do with Columbus, or other explorers, in his spirit.

The Lutheran Renaissance in Miniature

A tablecloth on an infinite plain
With one wrinkle
And the Norwegian egg-people living in the shadow of this wrinkle

Now there are Catholic priests who specialize in sending prayers to God,
And curse the Lutheran egg-people
Who are taking prayer into their own hands.
But eventually the egg-people reform their table-cloth world,
Adjust the time-setting with their breath,
And then prepare to travel to other worlds to escape the Catholics
In egg-ships.

At the end of the table, God & his ministers
Are designing white paper cut-out dogs
For them all to play with
In the suburbs of Minneapolis.

Contest closes at midnight October 11, 2010. Please no more than 33 lines. Voting commences on October 12, and midnight is the last call. You can only vote for other peoples' poems, communists can vote, but their votes only count for 3/5ths of the people who are certain that they have souls.

G.M. Palmer Wins Parenting Poetry Contest!

For immediate release: G.M. Palmer wins LS Parenting Poetry Contest, with this poem:

Brooding
a villanelle for Heather, on our anniversary

Incomplete if not a pair,
we tramp together, sure and fumbling,
our children cleaving to our care.

Their cries and laughter rend despair
while our complaints go mumbling,
incomplete. If not a pair

of lovers buffeted through the air,
we cut a graceful flock: we’re stumbling.
Our children, cleaving to our care,

grow without warning—soon they’re not there;
our steps uncertain; we’re stumbling,
incomplete. If not a pair

of hearts will we fight the snare
of silence? Clinging to our mumbling,
our children, cleaving to our care,

we sacrifice our love affair
for simple love, pure and stumbling,
incomplete if not a pair,
our children cleaving to our care.

Truth, Justice and the American Way

Of all the basics of a community it would seem that telling the truth is the most essential act of neighborliness. Anyone who lies, who deliberately stretches the truth for private gain, is the worst of all possible citizens. One of the commandments says that one should not "bear false witness."

And yet, in Rules for Radicals, communist Saul Alinsky says that the ends justify the means. This apparently means that it's ok to lie. On that basis, how is it possible to ever achieve a decent community?

Apparently, some Muslims (all?) are also encouraged to lie. Why, I saw this just the other day on TV. One of the men on Christiane Amanpour's program said that Muslims were permitted to lie in order to spread their faith. That in the spreading of the faith, anything was permitted. There was a name for this, but I didn't get it. It's something like, Takija.

In the trial of Faisal Shahzad, the man who nearly blew up Times Square, he was asked by the judge "if he had sworn allegiance to the US when he became citizen last year" (Daily Star October 6, 2010, p. A9).

There is then this astonishing reply:

"I did swear, but I did not mean it," Shahzad said.

This made me wonder: are there really other whole faiths that permit their members to lie? Is this really possible? All the basics of our oaths, of our faith in community, are at risk, if such is the case. One thinks of the astonishing innocence of simply asking would-be entrants into the US:

"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?"

If communists are permitted to do anything to further their faith, what would prevent them from lying about this simple question?

What we apparently take as the most basic axiom of American citizenship is just a laugh to many of those who would seek to live among us. American citizenship is based upon Protestantism, and its rigorous prosecution of the truth, and its banishment of liars. Is this not the very basis of our prosperity, and our greatness as a nation? That our word is gold?

Is honesty not the best policy? How can you run a business, or conduct a marriage, or have a friend, or even say hello to someone, without this most basic act of trust? We should not accept as Americans people who belong to communities that license the commission of falsehoods as it will mean counterfeit Americans in our midst.

Parenting Poetry Contest

I'M YOUR FATHER

(sung to the tune of That's Amore)

Drink your milk
Eat your vegetables
Tie your shoes
I'm your father

Do your homework
Comb your hair
Brush your teeth
I'm your father

Hang up your coat
Wash the dishes
Mind your p's and q's
I'm your father

Dot your i's
Clean your room
Walk the dog
I'm your father

Take the garbage out
Feed the cat milk
Take a bath with soap-y water
I am your father!

Don't talk to strangers
Sit up straight
Go to sleep
I am your father!

(this will be a brief contest based on parenting -- closes October 6th (Wednesday), and I'll try to leave it at the top of the blog so people can focus on it -- voting on the 7th. Next contest, will be Columbus contest -- held over the weekend, and then, we should be close enough to the election to launch the election contest).

Christiane Amanpour on Moderate Islam

This morning I watched Christiane Amanpour field a roundtable on Islam and Terrorism. There were about a dozen panelists including several widows from 9/11, a man who lost a child there, plus Franklin Graham, as well as an angry Imam who wants the flag of Allah to fly over the White House (doesn't it?), and Daisy Khan, the lady who insists she's going to build a mosque on the site of the former Burlington Coat Factory. Other academics, and even Ayaan Hirsi Ali and various other Iranians with lots of z's in their names weighed in (Aziz Mofuzi, I think, the lady who wrote Lolita in Tehran).

What struck me as essentially fallacious is when the liberals on the show kept insisting that there are "many Islams," just as there are "many Christianities."

There can only be one Christianity. Jesus was one person, and he didn't mean EVERYTHING. If you are a strict Christian, you have to try to understand what Christ meant. He can't have meant just anything we want him to mean. Likewise, Mohammed can't be saying that just anything is ok. Either you have to wear the habib or you don't. You can't change what he was saying and still call it Islam.

Some long bearded imam with an explosion of vowels for a name called in from London to challenge Daisy Khan and to say she should be wearing a habib. This man said there is one Islam, not many. I had to agree with him.

An angry man whose kid had died on 9/11 said that Muslims are allowed to lie in order to spread their faith, so you can never believe anything that they say. This had a name -- something like Tajik. It means any way you can spread Islam is ok -- lies, slander, violence. No method of spreading Islam is off limits.

Is this true or false? I couldn't decide. But underneath all the lies and all the spins, there has to be one thing that Mohammed said, and one thing that Jesus said. There aren't many Islams, and many Christianities. There is only true one, just as there is only one true Christ, and one true Mohammed.

I thought the only persons on the show who understood this were Franklin Graham and the imam who wanted the flag to fly over the White House. Everyone else seemed to be arguing for relativism. There can only be one Truth. Of course, we may differ over what that truth is -- we may agree that like the blind men and the elephant not everyone sees the truth the same way. But there is only one elephant in the room. The elephant is always an elephant, meaning in this case that it's the true Christianity or the true Islam.

LET GREENLAND BE GREEN

It is confusing when a name no longer defines its object. Therefore, if Greenland were to turn green once more, the world map would have that much more coherence. Fortunately, there are signs that Greenland is turning green. The icebergs are melting & skidding into the oceans. Sheep farms on Greenland are now able to grow their own wheat for the first time in 1000 years.

"That's hot!" -- Paris Hilton

Folks around the equator are rarely well-dressed, but are often walking around in their Birthday Suits, according to old pictures from National Geographic. I think it makes God mad that they aren't wearing clothes, which in turn turns up the heat.

"Burn, burn, burn, like a ring of fire" -- June Carter

If the ideal temperature (for human beings) is 72 degrees, then communist climatological experts should demand, in the name of equality, an even 72 throughout the globe at all times of the year.

Some argue that 72 does not befit the polar bear. Nor is that temperature conducive to the maximum merriment of rattlesnakes. It is speciesist to put humanity's comfort above that of other living things. All things being equal, we must have a temperature that suits the penguin as well as the orchid, the tse-tse fly as well as the Sasquatch.

"Jesus answered, 'My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.'" -- John 18:36

Flooding Over in Delaware County, NY

Flooding has now significantly receded. Water is completely off the Legion Field (except small pockets), and the Sherwood Road Bridge is open again.

In the Legion Field are pockets of water, and in the pockets, you can find fish, if you look carefully (the picture of the small pocket of water does have some fish in it, but I'll bet no one can see them from this photograph). The water in the grass shot is in a standing pool of water near the main Legion Building. I found a fish in the water, but wasn't able to identify it. Had lots of spots on its underbelly, and was otherwise green. About five inches long.

Flooding in Delaware County, NY (2)

The rain has stopped. Kingston Bridge (in the middle of Delhi) is now open again, but the bridge to Sherwood Road in South Delhi is badly flooded, and the yellow home on the road down from Route 28 has been reached by the floodwaters.

In addition, the Legion Field (all the water stands on top of grass all the way to the far trees) is closed until further notice. There is no soccer practice. The soccer game tomorrow morning is canceled. I am one of the coaches. We were supposed to play Downsville last night, and Roxbury tomorrow morning. Maybe we could play in scuba gear.

NB: For those readers who aren't familiar with the area, the Legion Field ends at the trees (back by the baseball cage). Just behind the line of trees sits the Delaware River (usually). Generally, it sits down in its stream bed and you can't see it from this vantage point.

The other picture -- the one of the Sherwood Road Bridge, is also of the Delaware, but from the other side -- about two miles downstream.

(Click twice on the photos and you will get a lot more clarity.)

Flooding in Delaware County, NY

It's raining very hard in Delhi. The soccer field is under water. This photo is from Back River Road, looking out across the Delaware River toward Bridge St. (which is closed). I took it about twenty minutes ago (11:30 am). (Click twice on the photo and it expands.)

The rain is Biblical.