The 43 episodes are outside. Again. And they still want names – II
Now I have another problem. The problem isn’t the 43 episodes of House Stories that are again sitting waiting outside my door. The problem is that I have to be Adam-the-name-giver for all 43 episodes of House Stories. I know this. They know this. And I can tell by their looks that I better have an answer, a name, for each and every one of them when I open the door. Ah, but that’s the catch. For House Stories, names just haven’t come. I thought of just numbering. I thought of using long titles and longer summaries to introduce both. I thought of this and I thought of that. And none of them fit. I began to wonder if, to name them, I had to understand them, know who they are. Which is a bit of a problem to figure out with this bunch. Who is a story after all? Do I fight a story to know it? Do I have to wrestle all night with one like it was an angel? Or pretend I’m Serif and kung fu dance my Neo stories across the tables until we reach a draw? Researchers say kids already hear in the womb. They hear voices, they hear music, they hear us talking, they hear the news, they hear the television, and they hear us talk about all of that. By the time someone can read my words, they already know the monsters under the bed are real. Monsters are the dark, twisted, … Continue reading The 43 episodes are outside. Again. And they still want names – II
The 43 episodes are outside. Again. And they still want names – I
House Stories started when I saw something. What everyone else saw meandered off one way. Ah, but what I saw was something else again. A magical next happening imagined itself in my mind. And it was more interesting, strange and fun than what everyone else saw; interesting enough I told people. Again and again, I kept seeing wonderful magical things happen. House Stories was showing itself to me. And I was telling the story of another neighborhood that lived just out of sight, just a squint away. After a while, we moved. It seemed like I left both neighborhoods and I couldn’t find my way back. Progress on House Stories, the book, slowed to a crawl. Even when I drove through the old neighborhood, I didn’t see people I knew or sense the other neighborhood. I wasn’t connected anymore. And we moved several more times. For 41 days, we stayed in tents on a friend’s property. Not too long after dinner, the sun set. it was far enough from the city it got dark: no street lights, no hall lights, no table lamps. The sky screamed with stars but, when we looked down, it was literally lights out. Doing anything meant a lantern or flashlight. It was a bit like sneaking a flashlight into bed as a kid without the being sneaky part. Without sneaky as fun, unless the proverbial book is really really good, after a while, it’s time to do something different. And there’s nothing to do except … Continue reading The 43 episodes are outside. Again. And they still want names – I
The $40,000 Savings Account
Today, my daughter, my parents and I drove to the hospital in Boulder to see the latest member of our clan. My brother and his wife just had their first child and it was time to go a visiting. On the way back, my Mom talked about Presidential Candidate Carson’s idea for health care savings accounts. What was interesting was why the idea appealed to her. When she was growing up, most people didn’t have health insurance. You just paid out of pocket. If you can pay for health care out of pocket, then a savings account is a great way to be prepared. My Dad remembers leaving school and walking to his grandfather’s house where he read to my Dad. His grandfather could do this because he was a Veterinarian. Veterinarians, and Doctors, often worked for themselves out of their homes. Doctors could even make housecalls because they knew everything they needed to know and could carry most of their equipment in a bag. But, medicine no longer looks like that. One generalist with a handful of tools has exploded into miles of specialities and catalogs upon catalogs of medicines and equipment. That explosion has increased life spans but part of the price is equipment and medicine that costs more than most people could ever pay for out of pocket and sometimes more than the specialist’s price new sports car. Doctors don’t make house calls any more because that entire model of medicine is dead. We replaced it with … Continue reading The $40,000 Savings Account
A book!
I’ve got a book coming out on pressWoodInk about prayer as an intentional practice called Practicing Prayer. This one is going to be a publishing back-to-the-future. Once, books were often first published in serial form. Many of Dickens’ books originally appeared as a series of episodes in the newspaper. Publishing has rediscovered this and pressWoodInk is going to try out the idea with Practicing Prayer. The first part will appear soon. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook
News, Updates and the Hopelessly Interesting
What happened to my blog?! The colors and design and… wait? There are pictures showing up all the time? Waz up with that?! Well… the design is something of an accident. I moved the site to a different hosting company and my wordpress theme decide it was time to eat my (old) custom design work. Why didn’t it tell me it was hungry instead of eating some tastless CSS. Well, it was past due for an update. What you see (design-wise) is a crude placeholder. And, if I’m going to change the design, I decided it’s time to start using more images. The real change is in the content. While moving the site, I pulled in a lot of my blog posts that once appeared at eDao’s website and, before that, on the Data Wranglers’ site. It’s internet archeology with posts that pre-date Apple’s iPhone and iPod, the first internet bubble and the term “blog”. The (awkward) term back then was weblog. Oh my. But, back in 1997, I started (we)bloging under the subtitle “News, Updates and the Hopelessly Interesting”. Originally, each post was a bit of handcrafted HTML. Eventually, I crafted a very crude homegrown CMS to semi-manage it. Some it is a touch puzzling. Some of it probably belongs in the “who cares?” category. And, weirdly, on some of it I could change a few names and places and re-run it today. At one point, I changed who hosted the website and my home grown CMS blew up. But, now –with some digging and de-crufting, it’s … Continue reading News, Updates and the Hopelessly Interesting
My first job (at a swim meet)
I’m at a swim meet with my 12 year old daughter waiting for her first heat. In Twitter: @Kelsye: In SIX WORDS, write a story about your first job http://kelsye.com/six-words-fewer-write-story-first-job/ #6words I write throw papers avoid creepy old man I was a little younger than my daughter when I worked that job. The past shouldn’t echo but it does. We’re still waiting so I listen to BBC news. The reporter is at a hospital in Gaza. An old lady moves slowly down the street …with her husband… holds a white flag as far over her head as she can maybe they …miles away they… won’t fire on her? Beyond the reporter …end of the block… artillery? mortars? explosions. The reporter …war reporter… keeps going through a voice that wavers her past experience not enough? around the edges and shakes. She won’t can’t? describe the body in front of her. Into my head pops Monty Python explosion… Time Bandits midget gone. She doesn’t say if the old lady makes it. More explosions disappear Python. I think the reporter will make it. For me, BBC News has this weird quality that won’t countenance otherwise. It just wouldn’t be proper. What I don’t know is whether she’ll survive. And I’m not sure which she I really mean. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook
The Oracle: A Review
I rarely read books that are fresh off the press. Instead, they filter into my life through people I know, passing references in articles and happen-stance encounters years after release. This amorphous system filters through all the books I hear about (and many I don’t) and curates what I read. William J. Broad studied the History of Science and brought that focus to writing for the New York Times. Along the way, he’s collected a few Pulitzers. His 2006 book The Oracle: The Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient Delphi is a brilliant example of science journalism, covering both the science and what it means. In this case, the science spans one hundred years of trying to understand the Oracle at Delphi, particularly the work of four scientists who managed to upend a scientific consensus that had stood for most of a century. It’s a gripping read that followed a range of players, delves into their field work and helped me understand the scientific intricacies in multiple fields including geology, archeology and medicine that the players used to build their case. If there’s a list of well written science books that are also page turners, this book deserves a nomination. For me, the tour de force was the last forty pages or so where he stepped back from the details of the science and answered the question: “why does it matter?”. Why did these scientists spend years on this? In one of those strange coincidences, I read the same … Continue reading The Oracle: A Review
ISIS | ISIL update
Editorial apologies: occasionally I have to post but I don’t have time to proof and edit. This is such a time. It’s days after I put this together and well past midnight here. The thoughts go out now; typo or no. In the last three days, more news came out of Iraq. ISIL has taken the border crossings between “Iraq” and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia. What was lost in the cross-fire was what has happened with Kurdistan. They control the border crossings into Northern Iraq —including those into Syria. They’ve moved south to take cities they were disputing with Baghdad as well as to secure territory. They know control, based on what I’ve seen, an area fifty to one-hundred percent larger than they used to. ISIL controls much of the territory west of Baghdad. And Baghdad controls a wedge between Kurdistan, ISIL and Iran. The partition of Iraq continues. Much of the media calls them ISIS. At one level, they’re just one faction in a Suni coallition that’s fed up with Baghdad’s Shia exclusivity. They’re shut out. Malikhi is ensuring his people are no longer oppressed by arresting and excluding everyone else. And he’s opened a huge door for ISIS, a group that even Al Queda thinks is too extreme. But, that ISIS acronym is not a good translation. If I read it correctly, the Arabic is not the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria but the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The Levant is not Syria. It … Continue reading ISIS | ISIL update
Voices and What I’m not
Last night, I was the announcer at a swim event. What little I know about swimming, I’ve absorbed over the last year. Not because I’m a fan of swimming or because I’m a big sports fan but I’ve learned it because my daughter likes swimming. I take her to practices. I take her to meets. I get her fins and a snorkle. Along the way, I’ve pick up a little. Precious little. Is that freestyle? I think so… Emails kept going out from my daughter’s swim team: we need help! It’s the big event they host once a year and they needed people. Finally, I caved. I looked at what needed to be done and signed up to be an announcer. Last night, people kept coming up to me —are you the announcer? with a shade of awe in their voice— and complimenting me on how good I was doing. Tonight, I volunteered for an anonymous position: safety guy: make sure kids arn’t doing stupid dangerous stuff. We wander around the pool and through the locker rooms in an orange vest. I suspect it’s about keeping the insurance company happy. I know it’s about as anonymous as you get. The kids see the orange vest and stop doing what they already know they’re not supposed to do. Everyone else ignores us. It’s like a Romulan cloak: you’re invisible. People look right through you unless you’re “shooting”. Exactly one person sought me out tonight. The head ref asked were you the … Continue reading Voices and What I’m not
The Trace of God
I spent a few years working with Joseph Hinman to release his book The Trace of God: The Trace of God utilizes 50 years of empirical scientific studies and draws upon sociological experts including Abraham Maslow, Robert Wuthnow, and Andrew Greeley to establish that the Trace of God and religious experience has an impact that is not just positive and life-transforming but vital: that belief in God is rationally warranted. From a couple of reviews: a fine introduction and exploration of the meaningfulness of arguments from human experience to the reality of God. Ralph Hood, Jr, The Psychology of Religion and Handbook of Religious Experience Joe Hinman has injected some much-needed scientific rigour into the subject of mysticism and religious experience. James Hannam,God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science (shortlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books 2010) Hinman’s book will give you something to think about. Nick Peters, Christian Answers to This Generation’s Questions (with J. P. Holding) You can read more on the book’s page at GrandViaduct. Reviews since the book was released are linked on the blog and you can find it at Amazon. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook