Last Week's Posts

I'm transferring all my blogging to this location for now. So here is what I wrote last week!

The Joys of Adversity?

July 4, 2006

Adversity is highly over-rated, I think. One usually hears about adversity after someone has endured it and gone on to success. Being in the midst of it provides very little in the way of rewards or comfort.

The environment we live in tends to equate business and financial success with value and virtue and it merely looks like whining or "bookkeeping slight-of-hand" to point out "success" in other areas of life when bills aren't paid and businesses are hemorrhaging cash.

So, since today is the 4th of July, I guess one can look at George Washington and all his cohorts who endured through years of stress, deprivation and pain to success at the great American experiment. It really does seeem that very little that is great succeeds or happens quickly.

But how does one measure time in theses circumstances? Is a couple of decades or a life of struggle enough or many lives or years or decades? How long is one expected to "keep the dream alive?"

One of my favorite T-shirt slogans says something like "Losers quit when they get tired, winners quit when they've won!" Sounds good. Feels crappy.

So, looking at expectations and results? Frequently a painful situation.

But who knows. Tomorrow may look differently.

On to something that involves less navel-gazing!

I'm down the last role of slides in the my "Indonesia file." Here are couple that show a bit of what I hooked me about Indonesia. Age has taken its toll on them, but the beauty is still there, in my eyes, anyway.

This is a major thoroughfare near the compound where we stayed when visiting Jakarata. It was hot and dusty when it wasn't hot and muddy!

I shot this from the train on my last trip from Bandung to Jakarta. This was like most villages outside the big cities. Notice the complete lack of motor vehicles. These pix were shot in November of 1973.

This is one of my favorite shots. The light near the equator is unique. I managed to tweak this old slide to look a bit like what I remember the picture looking like.

Bad Theology and Bad Politics

July 3, 2006

I have been meeting about once a month for the last year with a group of guys who formed book discussion group. This group's stated focus is religion and its effect on culture. We've read a number of good books. Last month we read "Misquoting Jesus," a remarkable book on the "assembly" of the books of the Bible. Despite the rather attention getting title, it was remarkably helpful in looking at how the Bible books and text were affected by the skills (or lack thereof) of the scribes who were responsible for the care and tranmission of the documents that make up the Bible.

This month we are reading "The Left Hand of God" by Michael Lerner. Lerner is a rabbi with left of center politics who is looking at the reasons why right-wing politics and the Religious Right have become such a powerful influence in the country.

Despite a rather dense writing style, I have found his reasoning very persuasive. I've post several paragraphs below:

"It is a powerful deal that the Religious Right offers: affirmation for the parts of our psyche that yearn for the love, caring, and generosity that most people cling to even though they have been taught that these values are “unrealistic” for building an economy or society, coupled with the acceptance of the materialism and selfishness, the need for power over others and war, as the accommodation to “the real world” So every where in the world you will find some version of this Religious Right, whatever the religion in question, with this dichotomy. The right wing-churches, synagogues, mosques, ashrams, etc. can retain the voice of love, sing praises to a God or a prophet or a great teacher a or Jesus figure who embodies or preaches gentleness and caring for the poor, even while they align with a harsh, militaristic, and self-interested politics that is based on the (unstated) assumption that all that “love, kindness, and generosity” talk has no real world application outside of that church or religious institution . . ."

"The essence of idolatry lies precisely in denying the possibility of change and then accommodating to evil—whether this be the hatred and cruelty perpetrated by others or one’s own hurtfulness and indifference to the world’s suffering—as though there were no alternative. To believe that no alternative exists to evil is the essence of believing there is no God. So, from the standpoint of at least some of us on the religious Left, the problem with the Religious Right is not only bad politics and bad economics but bad theology.

This bad theology has been able to flourish in part because the political Left has given little attention to its own religious Left, presenting itself instead primarily as a secular force. Unfortunately, the Left at times seems virtually tone-deaf to the spiritual crisis of capitalist society. Lacking categories within its intellectual apparatus tha might allow it to comprehend and address that crisis. the Left is prone instead to dismiss the whole spiritual crisis as a right-wing fabrication."

I spent a chunk of the day yesterday cataloguing nearly 80 years worth of 16mm movies my Grandpa Nelson shot during his life. My sister Connie and I are working on generating the cash to get these films transfered to digital media so we can all explore them. Once we get this process started I'll be sharing some of them online.

The process of scanning slides continues. Below are a couple from my work this weekend.

This was the guy I bought my tofu from. The yellow stuff was particularly nice. It had a more chewy texture and was very good!

And this next one probably needs no explanation.

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What does it take?

July 2, 2006

Today Wired published the text of a document that apparently shows that AT&T was helping the NSA monitor email and phone messages long before 9/11.

Sigh.

I think it is time that the Bush administration got a clue. You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all the people some of the time, etc.

On to more fun stuff!

I've been scanning slides from my youth and here are couple recent scans that I find mildly amusing.

This is me on graduation day at the college where I taught English. It is circa 1973. The gentleman on my right (I'm still working on remembering his name!) was a great badminton player.

I don't know why, but I have always loved the shot below. This is in the fish section of Central Market (Pasar Baru) in Bandung, Indonesia. These folk just seem to be having fun!