church hop

Today was probably our family's last time attending as members of the church that we've gone for 23 years. My emotions about this are not easy to articulate.

We're not leaving because of any hurt or any issues that we have with church leadership. I actually really like the pastor, who will be celebrating his first year there in a couple of weeks. However, we're doing a trial move for NJ and CD.

Both of the kids have had anxiety at the church since before our new pastor started, each for their own reason. Much of NJ's anxiety stems from the fact that he understands that he's different from most of the rest of the youth, and he had a meltdown a while back that he's embarrassed about. There's a church in town that has a program during Sunday morning service that is targeted to teens and young adults with special needs. NJ has been going to their special needs youth group meetings on Wednesdays, and has done well there. So, we're going to attend that church for a bit to see how well the kids do in that setting.

There are only a few reasons that I would be okay with switching churches. While I'm not always the best at being a friend to everyone in church, I do believe that we should strive for this to be like a family. Over the past few weeks as I've been letting people know that we're leaving I've been feeling like I'm abandoning folks.

I explained our situation to our pastor, and to his credit he has been extremely supportive of this move. I know that this has to be hard to see congregants go elsewhere, regardless of the reason. I wish I knew how to repay this kindness.

We'll be visiting family over Labor Day, and so the week after that we'll be doing something as a family that I haven't done in more than half of my lifetime and visit a church with the potential of making it our new church home. It's my hope that whether this is the right move becomes obvious shortly.

neurotypical

Having a teenage son on the autism spectrum has given me pause to re-evaluate a lot of interactions that I've had with other people throughout my life. One example is someone I worked with for a month who I blogged about years ago who didn't understand who would be interested in a certain type of movie.

I remember a specific person who frequently visited someone in my dorm in college who I now believe was on the spectrum was generally kind, but also made me uncomfortable because of some of the very black and white statements and positions he took. I prefer nuance, and this individual did not.

As a parent who is neurotypical I feel like I'm equipped to parent a neurodiverse child, but that all of my instincts are wrong for parenting a neurodiverse child, and soon young adult. His logic frequently runs counter to mine, and we're frequently blind to what's important to the other or what the other is trying to communicate.

While things are definitely better now, our problems communicating and managing new hormones had us in a bad spot a year ago. We had almost daily meltdowns--true meltdowns--and it took a lot of time and effort to get to where that doesn't happen so regularly. That experience has really driven home to me how much I don't understand about the neurodiverse brain.

So much of what I learn now about people who were considered eclectic makes more sense now, and what drove things like the popularity of electroshock therapy and lobotomies in the past.

We've been working with therapists for a while, and they have always been optimistic about the future. However, the most frustrating thing is that we don't know what a realistic future for us and for NJ holds, and so it's hard to put together a plan to meet specific goals.

There really isn't a way to wrap this post up because we're in a very open-ended state at the moment. I'm hoping for the best, though.

fully vaccinated

Today is the two week mark after I received my second COVID shot, so I'm officially fully vaccinated.  I'm definitely excited for the opportunity that represents for our coming summer compared with how things were last year.

While I am excited about things opening up, I am one of those introverted people who genuinely enjoyed many things about being locked down.  Being able to work from home, having an excuse not to go out and do too many social things, and having more time in general around the house was wonderful, especially early in the pandemic.  I enjoyed it enough that I felt some guilt, since I know this pandemic caused serious health and economic problems for so many people, and because so many people lost loved ones.

The one big issue that this caused for our family is that NJ had a very hard time dealing with things getting cancelled, and with everything about the year being different.  We tried to allow the kids as many safe social opportunities as possible, but his autism makes him an extremely routine-driven person, and having everything about the routine of the year last year change caused quite a bit of distress.

I can't tell if the year has been hard on CD or not.  She has actually been more social with kids at school than she has been historically, but she has been less social with people at church.  We'd probably prefer it be the other way around.  She excelled academically this year, and we have gotten far more family time than any prior year.  I hope she feels she had a good year.

We actually did keep pretty busy last summer, but we have more things scheduled for this summer, just due to more opportunity and less danger.  I think the rest of the year is looking up.

overachievers

Every election there are some board positions on my ballot.  The local water system board, the school system board, and the community college board are all positions elected by the citizens.  So, some time in October I start reading through campaign websites and social media pages to get a sense for what qualifies the people running for these positions.  They definitely attract a type of person, but I genuinely don't understand that type.

It's fairly typical for a person running for a board position to highlight that they have multiple children, a job with some authority, and also hold multiple other board positions. This is ignoring other community and church volunteer positions that are typically listed.  I want to know why.  Why, if you are already being clearly pulled in fifty different directions would you want to add a fifty-first?  At some point you trade quality for quantity.  I don't necessarily want to elect someone to a board if they are already on four or five other boards that meet regularly.

I do understand wanting to be involved in decision-making when your life is more opened up.  If you are a semi-retired educator and want to use the breadth of your experience to help guide your local school district or community college through difficult decisions, this makes sense to me.  It also makes sense to me that a parent would want to join a board to have a voice.  I just don't understand it being the fifth board you're on, at the expense of time with your children.

working from home

My company decided that my office will be closed for the foreseeable future and I am now a work-at-home employee.  The official line is that this is permanent and not going to change at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, but I know that things can still change in a heartbeat.

I'm torn on this news.  Being a severe introvert, this has been a bit of a fantasy for me, and it has worked well for the month-and-a-half that I have been doing this.  It has been great having more opportunity to eat with and interact with the family while still being on top of my work.  I will miss my co-workers, though.  It also introduces some instability to my job.  Will my employer continue to consider me or the rest of the people in my office as important when no one physically sees me working, and will this make me more of a layoff target in the future?  It can't help.

I am among those who think this is a harbinger of things to come in business in general.  It often doesn't make sense to pay to lease and maintain business facilities when employees can be just as productive from home.  This pandemic is going to be an excuse for a lot of businesses to drop some facilities expenses from their books.

There are things that are important about an office, but I don't think they're always the things that management says are important about having an office.  The rationale that I normally hear is that an office makes it easier for workers to collaborate.  That may be somewhat true, but technology has come a long way in this regard.  The bigger issues I see are less opportunity to build rapport on a team and more difficulty in training new employees.  I don't have a good, non-buzzword solution for these things, but if someone does solve those issues a lot more business will be removed from traditional offices.

I do think this is going to lead to a fundamental change in much of society, and could be the beginning of a nightmare scenario for extroverts.  Will this drive extroverted people out of typical office jobs into fields where they can interact more with other people?  I know that finance, accounting, and technical fields already have a reputation for being a bit anti-social.  Will marketing, HR, legal, and PR follow suit as people in those fields work more from home?

genetic testing

I just rewatched Gattaca for the first time since the 90s last night.  For those unaware, the premise is that in the near future children who are not genetically engineered are discriminated as such, and cannot get the same opportunities as those who are genetically engineered.

This calls to mind a concern I have had, and how it affects some minor decisions.  If given the opportunity I probably would not have genetic testing done, and I probably wouldn't get screening for diseases which lack a cure, such as Alzheimers.  The reason is not because I am morally or intellectually opposed to such testing.  The reason is that I think it will eventually mess up my insurance.

In Gattaca, the protagonist experiences discrimination in his desired profession of astronaut because his health makes him a risk to a mission.  He is instead only able to get a job cleaning offices.  The plot of the movie involves how he gets around the system in his attempt to get into the space program.

I don't fear my genetics or the results of a test would eliminate me from jobs like the main character in this movie, though I am already medically eliminated from a few. I am alert to the possibility that one day such a test could cause me to be unable to get health insurance or life insurance, however.

Right now in the U.S. it is not legal for health insurance companies to refuse to sell insurance to someone based on pre-existing conditions.  That may or may not be reversed in the future, as there is a lawsuit going through the federal court system which may do just that.  This is something that I always need to keep in mind when getting tested.

Furthermore, the pre-existing condition limitation also does not apply to companies who sell life insurance.  If I were to have a test done that showed I had a mutation that made me a bit more likely to have a stroke or get Alzheimers, I would be obligated to share this information with a company I was planning to by life insurance from, and potentially get myself priced out of the life insurance market as a result, in the case that I decided to get additional life insurance to what I currently have.

Some would jump to the insurance company's defense and say that their job is just to provide a service that sets a price based upon a calculated risk.  I am not casting blame, however.  I am just saying that in the current environment, there is a potential motivation to not know everything about your health and genetics.

Policy makers should keep in mind that systems which allow for filtering on pre-existing conditions or genetic conditions motivate some people like me to simply avoid pursuing that data.  There has to be a better way, so that willful ignorance isn't a winning strategy.

talking politics with kids

In the past few years I have worked with the children's ministry in our church more than in previous years.  One thing that I have noticed is that there are specific people who insert their political beliefs into their lessons.  In at least one case this is because the person's political and religious identities are tightly linked, so that's where his mind goes when teaching about a virtue or a vice.

There isn't a great line regarding what is inappropriate to discuss with other people's children, but as I progress as a parent I am starting to believe that any political discussion with elementary-aged children who are not your kids or grand kids is unwise.  Certainly, teachers should teach history, government, civics, etc.  However, that should be the limit.  The downsides of pushing your political worldview on someone else's kid are stronger than the positives.

Much of my opinion comes from the fact that adults don't usually have the requisite humility to discuss political issue appropriately even with other adults.  Most political discussion involves first characterizing people who disagree with you as bad or stupid rather than having valid concerns.  This is wrong, but it is typical.  Speaking to kids like this only teaches them to approach things in a similar way.

Furthermore, I'm shocked that adults think that kids' parents might want someone else teaching them their political worldviews.  Even in an environment where most people believe a certain way there are some who will not.  It is more important rather than less important not to isolate those kids and make them feel like they don't belong.

I remember people talking politics to me and around me as a kid, and it did not occur to me at the time how inappropriate those conversations were.  I've since had several moments as an adult where I realized, "Hey, that adult shouldn't have made the child me believe that conspiracy theory," or "Wow, now that I can articulate what was happening at the time I can't believe that adult slandered that politician to me that way."

For what it's worth, in my experience people with both right-leaning and left-leaning viewpoints felt the freedom to push their opinions.  So, this is an adult thing rather than a right or left thing.

My kids are not as interested in politics as I was at their ages, however I do have an approach I take when a political topic is raised.  I always emphasize that when we have a specific political belief that does not mean that people who disagree with us are bad or stupid.  I am willing to tell them what I think of a specific issue if they want to discuss it, though.

For reference, most of the political questions I've fielded in the last few years have fallen in one of two buckets.

• "I've heard a lot of people say that President Trump is mean.  Is that true?"
• "A lot of people don't like President Trump.  Why is that?"

Sometimes I wish I was raising kids in a different era.  I'd much rather be discussing political issues than politicians' tactics and dispositions.

age

Over the summer I turned forty.  I genuinely don't feel forty.  I think that's going to be a theme every time I turn a new age.  Where'd my twenties go?  I can't be out of my thirties already!  I'm sure that fifty is the new twenty-five!

I've had a lot of observations about getting older, but three have been on my mind lately.

First, I've been weirded out by the number of times I've seen someone my age or younger who my mind has registered as old.  Just in the past day I saw someone wearing a shirt declaring "Established in 1979," who I did not think looked my age, even though he was clearly born in the same year.  This is very much vanity from someone who likes to think he isn't vain.  "I can't possibly look that age, right?!"

Second, while I see more overall growth in my life, it feels slower.  I mean this in the sense that old dogs can learn new tricks, and can possibly learn them better, but it takes longer than when the dog was younger.  When I look at the things I've learned and improved on in the last five years it's a numerically shorter list than from the five year period from when I turned fifteen to when I turned twenty.  I feel like a have a better grasp on that shorter list and that it includes a lot more soft skills, though.

I don't know if this is something anyone else experiences, but I'm not intimidated to learn a lot of things that used to intimidate me.  However, there is a real limit that I see to how quickly I can progress on a given skill-set or cache of knowledge.

Third, I have also noticed that in some respects age is a minor super power in the same way that working the same job for years on end is.  Some people are naturally wise and see how certain bad choices will go badly.  Some people are just old enough to have seen this rodeo before and know from experience that certain bad choices will go badly.  It's odd to see someone do or say something that I might have thought was a good idea years ago, but to immediately know what a mistake it was.  Some of that is just that it's easy to see things as a super power when you used to be thoroughly clueless.  I'd like to think that age does bring a level of maturity as well, though.

Here's to another decade which will undoubtedly conclude with my flabbergasted exclamation of, "Where did my forties go!"

d day

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

One of the most jarring scenes in any movie for me is in Saving Private Ryan. The camera takes the view of a soldier toward the back of a Higgins boat, the nerves of the young men in the boat are worked up, the front of the boat opens up for them to get out and approach to the beach, and the entire boat of soldiers falls victim to machine gun fire.  As an uninformed civilian, that scene sums up my view of the sacrifice of the D-Day invasion.  So many men who certainly would have preferred to be taking a different role than that on that day were forced into a meat grinder out of necessity.  Some survived and some did not.  However, for all of their efforts, Europe and the world are better places today.

There are a lot of battles through history that overwhelm the mind when I try to imagine myself in the shoes of someone who was there.  I don't know that any battle in history compares to this one in my mind, though.

Today, my mood is thankfulness for those who have served and sacrificed for the freedoms.  They're a privilege purchased at a high cost.

food after effects

When we visit my in-laws the kids love going to their local Godfather's Pizza.  They enjoy the food, and they enjoy the arcade area in that Godfather's.  So, we always have to make a trip there, which we did this past weekend as well.  This reminded me of something I have been noticing over the past couple of years.

Ever since I have been eating healthier I have noticed that I can seriously tell when I don't eat healthy.  It makes sense that eating healthier makes your digestive system feel and operate better, but the surprise to me is how much eating unhealthy makes me feel generally achy, inflamed, and lethargic.  Weird things happen like my tongue feels swollen, my legs don't seem to want to move, and my feet get a little tingly.  None of these effects are extreme, but they still pop out to me.  I'm now not sure if this is something that I've experienced my whole life and just never identified the pattern, or if it is something that is more noticeable since I am getting older.

As someone who doesn't normally eat breakfast, I've even noticed that if I do eat something unhealthy in the morning I feel worse than if I don't eat anything.  My stomach has always been a bit queasy in the morning anyway, but having something with a bit too much sugar also makes me feel generally achy and distracted for a short stretch of time afterward.

The positive from this is that it does provide extra motivation to eat right.  However, part of how I've stuck with eating healthy is planning out my cheat meals and snacks, and enjoying them to the fullest.  Understanding the repercussions may take away some of that enjoyment.

Am I the only one who has noticed this?  How do you feel after you've had a healthy or unhealthy meal?

tree health

We have two elm trees in our front yard.  Probably two-thirds of our neighborhood has them.  Slowly, you see the trees disappear as they die out in each person's yard.  It's an inevitability that ours will die as well one day.

This Sunday, as we were pulling into the driveway from church I noticed that the bark near the top of one of the trees looks different than I'm used to.  I don't know what a diseased tree looks like, but I do know that elm trees are prone to disease.

So, for the last couple of days I have been thinking about whether I need to get it looked at and what it would cost to hire a crew to come cut down both of the trees, since it's only a matter of time.  Today, I decided to Google what a diseased elm tree looks like.  "Huh, that's not what our trees look like," I realized. "I wonder what that could be."

It's lichen.  Lichen doesn't damage trees.  I feel dumb, but relieved.

signing bibles

I'm noticing that, while I frequently contemplate the implications of news stories and comment on them, the news cycle is so fast nowadays that by the time I have real fleshed-out comments to make on them they're long out of the news.

One such story is the somewhat recent kerfuffle about President Trump signing Bibles in Alabama.  If you asked me immediately after the news story broke I would have responded that him doing this was deeply offensive.  Now I still think it's offensive, but I also think it's one of the bigger non-stories of the past month.

My initial reaction was that President Trump should have known better, and that doing this exemplifies the criticism that he has a god complex and/or narcissistic tendencies.  Christians should revere Scripture to the level that turning a Bible into autographed memorabilia should at least give serious pause.  In my view, putting a signature on the cover of the Bible makes it look like the person signing has the same or greater significance than the Bible itself.  I still believe this after giving the situation time and thought.  The general shrug that a lot of believers gave the story is still bothersome from the perspective that the Bible should be given due respect, and in this case it clearly wasn't.

However, my originally harsh view of the event has moderated significantly.  The biggest reason for this is that it's very easy to imagine someone getting random things shoved in front of them to sign and not stopping to think about whether it's a good idea to sign every single thing.  One can argue about how prone President Trump is to stop and think in general, but I expect that a lot of people in that situation who aren't President Trump would have signed a Bible in that situation without thinking about it.

Second, there is some debate as to what specifically about signing a Bible is offensive.  Other presidents have signed Bibles.  Few people consider signing the inside of the Bible wrong, especially when the Bible is a gift to another. People used to use the family Bible to detail their family tree.  I have had more than one Bible with my name inscribed on the cover.  If I can't draw clear lines on the whys for when it's offensive to put a name in or on a Bible and when it isn't, I do need to give some grace.

Finally, what's offensive about this is more what it represents than the act itself.  The real issue is that there are believers who are quick to judge the morals of politicians they disagree with, but will give President Trump or other similar politicians a pass (or twenty) because he nominates the judges they want.  In essence, this issue was always a proxy for that other issue.  Rather than litigating concerns about hypocrisy as a proxy, those should probably be addressed more directly.

So, this is sort of a defense of Trump in this one instance without really being one.  It's indicative of the times we live in.

construction

When I was in high school I received one of the greatest gifts possible--a job that I desperately didn't want to make into a career.  The summer I turned sixteen I was having trouble finding places that would hire someone my age, and so a contractor friend of the family offered me a job on his crew.  I learned a lot from the experience, as I worked there the next three summers, but frankly most of it had to do with how I was not well-suited to working in construction.

The primary lesson regarding my incompatibility with construction had to do with the fact that didn't, and I still don't, do well working in the elements.  I recall one specific roof that we worked on on a day that was closer to 110 °F than 100 °F.  The sun was unrelenting, and it sapped the energy from the body as we did anything.  One of the guys in the crew who took a lot of pride in his work ethic got wobbly at one point, and had to take a long break in the shade on the ground.  It was impossible to do anything for more than a couple of minutes without downing a huge gulp of water, because we were sweating it out faster than it could be drunk.  I distinctly remember riding home from that job thinking that I clearly cannot do this for the rest of my life.

As bad as hot days were, the cold days were worse.  We didn't work many cold days, but I would help on random jobs in the spring or autumn.  I remember siding a house on a breezy October day wondering why anyone would put themselves through that.  At some point I couldn't reliably use my hands because they were too numb.  I cannot imagine how someone working construction outside on a winter day must feel.

I think about these situations a lot on days that are very hot or cold.  I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work in an office setting with a controlled climate.  That fact alone is worth the effort and expense I put into my education, and I am fortunate enough to know that I am fortunate.

A secondary lesson I received from that job was the fact that I realized that I am a klutz.  I have to have a job away from dangerous equipment, because otherwise I'll eventually hurt myself or someone else badly.  In the short time I was there I was able to observe that I got more cuts and bruises than the rest of the crew.  I have at least one scar from that period of time in my life, and I was fortunate it was as minor as it was.  I understood very quickly that it was only a matter of time before something very bad happened.  This was compounded with the fact that I took more chances on scaffolding than I probably should have.  My boss confessed to my parents once about watching me nervously on a scaffold, I assume it was from concern that I'd take a misstep from two stories up.

I didn't really need extra motivation to stay in school.  There was no chance of me quitting once I started, and it's the setting where I've always done best.  However, having a job like that, which I worked even through my freshman year in college, provided quite a bit of clarity regarding the sort of life I did not want to have, and the choices I needed to make to keep from going down that path.  There are probably a lot of people who don't have that opportunity, and they make life decisions without that same clarity.  I can now, twenty years after the fact, say that this clarity was a blessing.

self made

Twitter lit up a couple of days ago regarding Forbes declaring Kylie Jenner the youngest self-made billionaire, reaching that level at the age of 21.

I'll confess.  My gut reaction was the same as what a lot of other peoples' reaction was.  She started as a millionaire with every possible advantage available to her.  How "self-made" can we possibly call her?  In thinking through the logic of this assertion, I hit on what I believe are a few uncomfortable truths that a lot of people don't like to think about when comparing themselves to others.

Truth #1 - No one is self-made

While it is true that there is a sliding scale to how self-made a person is, the reality is no one is truly self-made, and I doubt many are even in the general neighborhood.  If you're even mildly successful in some area of life I can guarantee that many of the factors in that are gifts that were beyond your control.  I considered typing examples of this, but it's so specific to the person and the examples are usually embarrassingly obvious.

The response that most people would give to this is that, sure, I have some advantages in life, but not anywhere near the advantages Ms. Jenner has been given.  Perhaps this is true, but there are billions of people who don't have the advantages that I've been given in life.  In my moment of taking credit away from her I'm also thinking in the back of my mind that I've worked for and earned what I have.

Truth #2 - I am responsible for the opportunities I pass up

The reality is that I wouldn't have become a billionaire if I were Ms. Jenner.   I like to think that I would have made something of the opportunities would have had in her shoes.  I'm deluding myself to think that my grit and smarts would have outperformed hers.  Yes, she had every opportunity, but she also clearly used it.

I have to acknowledge that my life, like everyone else's, is marked by a series of choices I have made to do or not do certain things.  There are times when I have chosen a path that led to growth, and there are times when I have not.  There are times when I made actively destructive decisions.

Whether I have the maturity to make a wise choice is always on me.

Truth #3 - We value people too much for their wealth

While accruing a billion dollars in wealth is significant and noteworthy, this doesn't say anything about Ms. Jenner as a person.  The size of her bank account or assets alone doesn't validate or invalidate her as a person.

None of this is shocking, new, or particularly insightful.  However, I find that I constantly want to go back to the same broken patterns I see others stuck in.  So much of life is spent building a career with the intent to generate an income that it's easy for that to be my identity.  It's then easy to compare the life that my resources allow me to have to the lives others have, then to let that determine my value.

So, when someone is shown to have accrued wealth it is easy to think of that wealth as a gauge of their worth, and whatever I have accrued as a gauge of my worth.  I know it's wrong.  Most people factually understand this.  I also know I'm not the only person who naturally falls into this mindset, and has to combat it.

So, Ms. Jenner does deserve some congratulations on this milestone.  It's significant!  But, it doesn't make her a more or less significant person.  If she loses her wealth and everything else tomorrow she's no more or less valuable of a person than today as a billionaire.  That's a truth I find both the easiest and the hardest to believe.

february christmas lights

Over the last couple of weeks I noticed a handful of houses around my neighborhood and some of the areas I drive regularly finally take down their Christmas lights.  This wasn't a situation where the lights were up but not on.  The lights were turned on every evening like it was Christmas season.

I have also noticed that an office in my building has a Christmas tree up in a meeting room visible from a public hallway.  I haven't seen it lit in a few weeks, but it is still prominently displayed.

Part of me is irrationally irritated at this.  However, my irritation doesn't make sense.  If someone wants to leave lights up it isn't my business, and really Christmas displays are attractive.  It's just that seeing Christmas displays feels incongruous with the season.

I think this part of me is a little hypocritical as well.  I have believed and continue to believe that certain fashion rules are made to be broken.  This shouldn't be any different, right?  Is a lit Christmas display in February the equivalent of an all-white outfit in November?

cherokee princess

From when I was born until when I was elementary-aged my dad worked on a few different reservations.  We are as white as white can be, and no one in our family ever pretended any different.  It never crossed my mind to think any differently about the situation, either. However, one of the first questions I'd get from people who did not live near the reservation was whether I had any Native American ancestry.  This was almost always a prelude to someone telling me about their grandparent who was half-blooded [fill in Native American tribe].

Even as a kid, this pattern jumped out to me because it happened so often.  Why did people who had probably never been on a reservation care so much to identify with a specific tribe?  In my experience (from the 80s and early 90s) reservation life was different from life off the reservation in a lot of respects, so it felt a little like trying to gain the benefits of an identity without paying in experience.

I don't remember this firsthand, but there's apparently a joke that gets told among Native people about how every white person's grandmother was a Cherokee princess.  That does fit my experience.  Everyone and their brother seemed to want to tell me about their Native ancestor.  In fact, even if I mention now that I used to live on a reservation to a small group of people it is more or less guaranteed that someone in the group will notify me of their Native American heritage.

This is what has made the evolving story surrounding Elizabeth Warren fascinating to me.  I don't doubt that she fully believed that she could claim Native American ancestry.  I've heard enough people who were convinced of it themselves that it fits the pattern.  Why, just based on family stories, she decided she should assert that as an identity baffles me.  Even if she had a close Native ancestor, she clearly had to know that she was mostly Caucasian and lived a Caucasian life.  She should have especially known that as someone who originally hailed from Oklahoma.  Of all of the unforced errors a [future] politician could commit, this is among the dumbest.

However, as dumb as I think that scandal is, my experience says that Warren doesn't go much further than a lot of other Native American wannabes.  I am certain that a lot of the folks laughing about "Pocahontas" Warren's claims have also asserted their non-existent Native heritage whenever they got the chance.  The reason I'm so sure is that I've probably heard one of them talk about their Cherokee grandparent some time in the past.

1000

After nearly fourteen years, this is my 1000th article on this blog.  Since another word for thousand is "grand" I've compiled a few "grand" facts.

• "Grand" originally came from the French "grant."  Then, as now, it meant large or powerful. [source]
• The name for the 100 grand bar (originally, the $100,000 bar) was inspired by the popularity of quiz shows in the 1950s. [source]
• The Grand Slam tournament in tennis, which is a sport I hardly know anything about, includes four events across three continents. [source]
• Alex Rodriguez set the major league baseball record for grand slams with an astounding twenty-five during his career.  This is one of those records that requires both individual skill and the fortune to have teammates who put you in a situation where a grand slam is a possibility. [source]
• While a Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming was founded in 1929, the current park includes large portions of land that were donated years later by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. [source]
• The Republican moniker "G.O.P." now stands for "Grand Old Party."  However, it originally stood for "Gallant Old Party." [source]
• On average, two or three people die from falling into the Grand Canyon every year.  However, since millions of people visit a year it has to be considered a safe place to visit, statistically speaking.  That said, I would be uptight about the possibility if we visited it with our kids. [source]
• Gerald Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He holds the distinction of being the only U.S. president to hold the office without having been elected either president or vice president. [source]
• There is a World War II power station underneath Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, New York.  It was placed there to protect it from German sabotage during the war. [source]
• The first piano created was a grand piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Italy in the late 1600s or early 1700s.  It was originally known as the "pianoforte," which means "soft" and "strong."  It differed from the harpsichord before it in that you could modulate the volume of the instrument based on how forcefully or lightly you struck the keys. [source]
• The "grand theft" in "grand theft auto" refers to the fact that what is being stolen is valuable.  "Petty theft" refers to the theft of less valuable items. [source]

lessons at the mechanic

When I was at the mechanic a few days ago waiting to have the brake pads battery replaced on my car I noticed that there wasn't really a way to avoid hearing chatter around me.  I especially heard the conversations that other people had with the representative from the dealership who were explaining what they found wrong with their cars.

One man was told that he needed to replace his tires with a set that cost $800, but he declined to do so due to the lack of funds.  An older lady was told she needed to replace her battery, and was confused that it wasn't covered by her warranty.  Another man was informed that he had nails in two different tires, but that the fix was cheap and quick.

As a parent, it occurred to me that these are the sort of situations that I need to be training my kids to handle one day.

In the example of the first man, if you have a car or anything else that is expensive it will cost money to maintain.  Failing to budget for those expenses leads to inevitable unpleasant surprises.  I never really appreciated that at a younger age, and I certainly didn't maintain my vehicles as well a decade and a half ago as I do now.  We have had some unpleasant surprises over the years related to the cars.

In the example of the older woman, my initial reaction was to think that of course the battery is not under the car's warranty.  However, that is not necessarily an intuitive fact to know.  Why is the alternator something that would be under warranty (which the representative explained to the lady) but the battery isn't?  I know it's because the battery is guaranteed to need to be replaced, but an older lady may not understand this.  The kids need to understand that the stuff that is covered by warranty is almost always the stuff that is least likely to need to be replaced.  Warranties are useful, but they are also frequently written so that you still have to pay to fix the thing under warranty.

In the example of the last man, sometimes what sounds like bad news may actually be good news.  Had he not discovered the nails he may have had to replace the tires, but he was able to get them plugged cheaply.  Don't always expect bad news, and appreciate the good news when you get it.

The sorts of things you need to understand to manage in life aren't always what you learn in school.  It's hard as a parent to remember that there are lessons to learn everywhere.

family tree

I think everyone is interested in where they came from, but I've been much more in the years since we had kids.  Through the diligent work of various family members in researching, and the efforts of my mom in putting that research together in one place, I've learned a lot about different branches of my family tree that I did not know before.

One branch that I knew very little about bothered me quite a bit because it is the branch that my surname comes from.  I have always known my paternal grandfather father's name, but didn't know anything about him.  Furthermore, my dad only had limited contact with that side of the family when he was a kid, and so it felt like the source of my name ended with that one individual that I knew nothing about.

It's amazing how learning one or two small details about a person can fill in a lot of facts that you don't already know.  I recently discovered further information about this great-grandfather that makes his life seem both tragic and fascinating, but the details are minimal.

First, I found out that my great-grandfather was his father's fifteenth child to his third wife.  Both of his parents died before he was a teenager, so he was raised by a sister.  His father had been a devout Quaker, but I don't know if the family's faith or just the era in which they lived more influenced why he kept remarrying after his wives died and having more kids.

My understanding is that my great-grandfather was irreligious for most or all of his life--a seeming oddity in southwestern Missouri in the early 1900s--and I wonder if he blamed his father's faith for being without parents at a reasonably early age.  While most kids were expected to take on adult responsibilities at an earlier age in those days, I have to wonder how that affected him.  He would have had to grow up fast.

Second, I found out that my great-grandmother (my paternal grandfather's mother) died eighteen years prior to my great-grandfather.  This calls to mind something that my mind does every time I'm at a cemetery.  I look at the gaps between when spouses died and I imagine what their lives were like when they were together, then what sort of life the surviving spouse had afterward.  I know it's morbid, but I can't not do it.

I asked my dad what he knew about his grandfather's life during those eighteen years, and he said he lived alone in a very small house near the Missouri/Oklahoma border with a dog.  I asked if he were a reader, and my dad didn't recall that he was.  What does a person do for eighteen years without someone else around?  Nowadays, I can imagine being able to get on by yourself with TV, the Internet, etc.  However, I cannot imagine a life of that sort of solitude and minimal outside stimuli.

So, with a few additional data points that I have learned in the last few months I have generated quite a vision of how one of my ancestors lived.  It's a sad vision, but it's far more significant than a name on a line in a tree.

shutdown

"Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin." - Deut 24:14-15

"Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty." - James 5:4
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This isn't intended to be extremely political, despite the topic.  It's simply meant to be a doctrinal assertion.  In the moment it's going to come across as political, however.  While in any given situation this might target one party or government leader or another, there's no saying that the next situation won't involve the opposite party.

My assertion is simply that shutting down the government in the way it has been done recently very clearly violates Scripture.  There are probably extreme situations where a government shutdown is the least sinful course, but those situations are limited.  They certainly are not at play here.

I've been in an awkward place on this issue.  I think it's important to acknowledge in the church that this is a sin, while it is also important not to get overtly political in a church setting.  So, I keep to myself what I see as public sin by other believers.  I feel like there's an unspoken obligation in church to make a stand in calling certain sins sin, but also a similar obligation not to take a stance on other sins because some people in the church disagree that they are sins for one reason or another.  Clearly, if they are sins then this is a problem.

In reading the passages above, I don't know how a Christian can justify taking a public position that making government employees work without pay isn't sin.  I don't know how a Christian government leader could ignore Scripture to force people to work without timely pay.

The natural defense a person might raise is that this is a different situation because it's addressing rich land owners exploiting their workers, but that's a semantic difference more than anything.  It's looking for a loophole to lawyer out of God's instruction.  These instructions/condemnations come from the fact that certain people exploit others, and this puts them at odds with God.  Shutting down the government does the same thing, so it should follow that this puts the people who cause the shutdown at odds with God.  If Scripture is true, doesn't this mean that the cries of unpaid laborers are reaching God, and that those responsible for the shutdown are ultimately under God's judgment?

That this shutdown and previous ones have involved individuals who claim Christianity should be seen as tarnishing our faith.  To counter this more church leaders should be speaking about this situation in terms of its sinfulness.  While I understand the motivation of doing something like shutting down the government as a negotiation tactic, believers should have a high standard for people who claim to represent them as Christians in the public sphere.  For one, those representatives should abide by the Scripture they say they proclaim.