King Gyros

We're big fans of King Gyros. Enough so that when I went in tonight to pick up some food our phoned-in order was already totaled before I reached the counter. It's not quite "Norm!" status, but we're working on that.

Double Standard

After a liquid bomb scare the US government bans the carrying of containers of gels and liquids of larger than 3 oz on flights, but when someone kills 30+ people at a university, heaven forbid even considering making background checks mandatory at gun shows. Brilliant.

12 Months

My current impressions as to the 13 months in Elkhart, from tax-day 2006 to tax-day 2007 (to the best of my recollection):

 

April, May, June, July, August, September, September, September, September, January, March, May, January

April

This is what the weather looked last night at about 5:00.

And this is how it looks now.

Cold

The thermostat in the Conference Room reads 58 degrees.  That room is noticeably warmer than my office.

Bargain of the Day

Sawhorses. Buck twenty-five. We rock.

Privacy vs. Transparency vs. Accomodating Structures vs. Edenic Intent

A couple of weeks ago, at our weekly forum at seminary, a visiting pastor made some comments on the project he is working on while on sabbatical. Long story made shorter than it ought to be: we are fallen.

The speaker said that what both creation stories agree on is male and female -- different, but equal. Contrariwise, Genesis also suggests that humans are designed to govern ("have dominion"). Equality and Governance are not simply compatible, so humans tend to create structures that result in domination rather than equality. Hence patriarchal systems come about. Patriarchy leads naturally to monarchy (since, what is monarchy really than family patriarchy expanded to a national level), and that results in slavery (if you aren't king you aren't anything). And nearly all structures, including church structures, are created to support and perpetuate and inequality of some sort. This may be a poor interpretation of what the speaker said, but I think it is mostly fair. At any rate, this is just background and not really the point.

Somewhere in the midst of this narrative the speaker mentioned the state of the first humans: naked and unashamed. When he said this, he went off on a bit of a tangent about society being so concerned with privacy because privacy allows secrecy and secrecy allows power -- in heaven, he suggested, everything would be completely transparent as God intended it to be.

Since I am a person who generally thinks we have a bit too much privacy, and think of ourselves as more entitled to privacy than we really are, and since I think that we would be happier in the main if we were less concerned with whether people discovered our secrets and more concerned with living such that secrets were irrelevant, and since this forum topic arose the same week I received the Transparency Issue of Wired (the one whose cover I thought was going to be clever only to be sorely disappointed, though for different reasons than Andrew Keen was disappointed) wherein transparency in business is advocated as a strategy for growth (how cynical), and since whenever I find myself thinking about transparency I am reminded of Bible Stories for Adults, wherein God recognizes that the problem at the Tower of Babel was not that people understood each other too well but that they understood each other not well enough, and wherein God rectifies the earlier misreading of the human condition by making everyone understand each other fully with the somewhat predictable result that people can no longer stand each other or even themselves ... for all these reasons, I was struck with this thought: perhaps we should settle for translucence.

Ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges

Well, it happened. The office and both bathrooms now have a difference color scheme than they did before today. From blue to sage; from mint to blue; and from mint to purple (to, eventually, brick -- the purple is just how the primer looks). Tomorrow we get to tackle the trim, apply another coat of the green, apply the brick to the bathroom, and, conceivably, change the color of the dining room.

Overheard

One side of a cell phone conversation:

"Well, we're here, but just. We're in Millenium Station."

*pause*

"You are so not in Chicago right now!"

*pause*

"Ahhh, dammit!"

So, dear reader, were "you" in Chicago right now?

While I'm Here

I think the construction crew is getting started on the AMBS Library tower today. Not that you can tell from this morning's picture.