Check these out

Okay, these links are to a couple of posts in Fred Anderson's blog, but he actually is pointing to stories written by two others.  I thought they were both pretty good, so I figured I'd share them.  The first was written by a Unitarian (not sure who the author actually is, I haven't followed the links to see if NonnyMouse is identified further in the original) and discusses forgiveness after the tragic shooting at the church in Knoxville on Sunday.  The second is actually from the Huffington Post and I agree with Fred, I wish the Obama campaign would follow this advice.  By the way, where did the McCain campaign come up with the notion that calling his add "low politics" was somehow "playing the race card"?  McCain used to be someone that I admired even if I didn't entirely agree with him, but lately, not so much.  He's abandoned some of the positions I admired and is falling in line with everything that I detest about the current administration.  It makes me sad.

More on Ellie and other random thoughts

I guess I didn't mention in the last post that Ellie's middle name (Noel) was because she was a Christmas present to the kids (yes, I know it was July, but we explained to them that she was part of their Christmas present).  I still find myself tearing up from time to time.  I think the worst part for me is that I wasn't here.  I was in DC at SANSFIRE, which was a lot of fun, but that meant I wasn't here and didn't really have a chance to say goodbye.  Well, I guess it must be real because I just brought her ashes home.

On a brighter note, we have a functioning pool again.  The pump broke the night before I left.  Fortunately, the water has been just about perfect this year, so we just shocked the pool a couple of extra times while we waited for the new pump to arrive.  It got here on Monday, I got home on Tuesday, but didn't feel like doing anything about the pool, I was still trying to deal with Ellie not being in the house.  Yesterday, was pretty warm, but they were calling for rain, so I figured it was a better idea to try to mow the lawn after work.  This morning (I took part of the day off, since I was in class Saturday and Sunday last weekend at SANSFIRE), Shane and I finally got under the deck and disconnected hoses (trying not to lose too much water), pulled the old pump out, put the new one in and reconnected hoses.  The water is flowing again and should clear out the cloudiness (which really wasn't too bad and there was no live algae that needs to be dealt with) in about 3-4 hours.

Ellie Noel (19 Apr 1995-28 Jul 2008)

I'm pretty sad this evening.  Ellie joined us when she was 3 months old, 13 years ago this month.  This afternoon, she succumbed to congestive heart failure.  We have pictures (not digital) of her when we first brought her home.  In those days, she used to trip over her ears and get me up in the middle of the night every night (even recently, I used to joke that I only got a good night's sleep when I went out of town, though if I'm totally honest, she was sleeping through most of the night for the last few months).

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

A good Saturday night at the races

We sold our old house to Sherry's best friend, Cyndy and her husband, Beau, 9 years ago.  For about 15 years now, Beau has been racing at the Columbus Motor Speedway.  He was twice track champion in the street stock/sport stock division and has finished 2nd or 3rd in the points several more times.  A few years ago, Sherry and I started going out to watch Beau on Saturday's as our "date night."  Growing up I was always more a fan of open-wheel (Indy car) racing than stock cars, but Beau is starting to win me over.  Anyway, 2 weeks ago, Beau set a new track record in qualifying at 15.833 seconds, unfortunately, he got boxed in relatively early in the feature and ended up finishing a ways back (I don't remember 9th, 11th, something like that, I could look it up, but it isn't that important).  Last week, he was fastest qualifier, but the features got rained out.  This week he was again fast qualifier.  Since the track is small and the features relatively short (normally 25 laps in the sport stock division), they invert the qualifying order to set the field for the feature.  The fast qualifier pulls a number between (I think) 6 and 12 and that is where he/she starts 2nd fastest starts 1 spot in front, etc.  The idea is to make the races a little more competitive since the fast qualifier would almost always win if they got to start on the pole in such a short race.  Well, he was fast qualifier (16.089, I think, it doesn't really matter) and drew the worst possible number for the inversion, 12.  That meant he started on the outside of the 6th row, I think 20 cars started the feature, so more cars in front of him than behind him.  The cars in the outside rank got a great start and Beau had made up 3 or 4 spots by the end of the 1st lap.  By the time the first caution came out on lap 8, he was already up to 6th.  He had moved into 2nd by the time of the final caution on lap 15 and after a great restart won the race going away.  That was his first win in over a year and, I believe, moved him up to 3rd in the point standings.  Congrats, Beau

A few random thoughts for a Tuesday evening

As I sit here watching the All-Star game and hoping the NL wins (if only because one league shouldn't dominate for a decade at a time, well, that and I'm a Reds fan, of course), I'm happy to see Josh Hamilton did so well last night in the Home Run Derby (though I didn't actually watch it).  And, here he just got a hit leading off the bottom of the 6th inning.  But, this post isn't really about baseball.  This week, I read these two posts on marriage and the church.  The first argues that the church should get out of the marriage business entirely, that it is (and should be) a completely civil function.  The second, which is from Kim Fabricius (whose "10 propositions" posts are always thought provoking even if you don't entirely agree with them).  I was especially interested in a couple of his points.

2. A marriage is not to be confused with a wedding. “A wedding is only the regulative confirmation and legitimation of a marriage before and by society. It does not constitute a marriage” (Karl Barth). A ceremony does not make a marriage, consent makes a marriage. And even in the ceremony, and even in the Roman Catholic Church, the ministers of the marriage are the bride and bridegroom, not the minister. Indeed it was only with the Council of Trent in 1563 that the Roman Catholic Church insisted on an ecclesial occasion, and mainly to ensure, through the presence of witnesses, that the marriage was, in fact, consensual. In short, a church wedding does not create a marriage, it recognises and blesses a marriage that already exists. Nor should consent itself be taken as a punctiliar act but as part of an ongoing project of mutual discovery and affirmation. It is always sad to hear a couple say that their wedding day was the happiest day of their lives.

...

5. Although marriage is complete without procreation (Genesis 2:24) and remains complete after the kids have left home, marriage is the God-given unit for the birth and nurture of children (Genesis 1:28). There is, however, a teleology to raising children, namely that they may grow up to experience the joy and freedom of faith. “This means,” as Bonhoeffer says, “that marriage is not only a matter of producing children, but also of educating them to be obedient to Jesus Christ,” so that they too might become friends of God. The obedience course begins by telling your children that Jesus loves them – even when they are disobedient. As for the learning curve (or slider!), I recommend a Hauerwasian pedagogy: “Start with baseball and also teach them to read. Don’t teach kids a bunch of rules. Help them submit their lives to something that they find to be a wonderful activity that transforms them.”

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7. Tina Turner puts the problem – and the question I always put to dumfounded couples whom I prepare for marriage: “What’s love got to do with it?” Stanley Hauerwas: “Christians have far too readily underwritten the romantic assumption that people ‘fall’ in love and then get married. We would be much better advised to suggest that love does not create marriage; rather, marriage provides a good training ground to teach us what love involves.” Thus, most provocatively, to disabuse us of conventional notions of Mr or Miss Right, Hauerwas’s Law: “You always marry the wrong person.” (As Henny Youngman jested: I married Miss Right. I just didn’t know her first name was Always.) Thus does marriage become Luther’s “school of character”, or, better, a “class of character” in the school of the church. Of course a relationship begins with the chemistry of attraction, but unless it does graduate work in the art of loving, it shouldn’t be surprising if it ends in an explosion.

 and

10. Finally, if the heart of marriage is friendship, if marriage is for procreation in a gratuitous rather than an instrumental sense, as overflow rather than essence, then do we not open the way for the blessing of same-sex relationships? I think we do, though I think the term “marriage” is unhelpful. (And by the way, whatever the social and legal conventions, homosexual Christians, like heterosexual Christians, may have a vocation as parents in the church.) This view presupposes that natural law arguments against same-sex relationships are otiose – but then I think that the concept of natural law is otiose in a theology of marriage too! The point is this: if Luke Timothy Johnson is right to suggest that “If sexual virtue and vice are defined covenantally rather than biologically, then it is possible to place homosexual and heterosexual activity in the same context,” it is also possible to see same-sex relationships, blessed by the church, as an analogue of the relationship between God and his people, and a model of the church’s own proper economy of grace. In short, nihil obstat.

Finally, (for this evening), I came across this new blog by Fred Anderson, a retired Presbyterian minister.  I was impressed/moved/touched/challenged by his very first post which includes a statement of faith.  Read it for yourself here.

TdF

I probably first heard about the Tour de France when I was a kid, but I didn't really pay much attention to it until Greg Lemond won it in the early 80s.  I sort of followed it during the Lemond/Hinault/Indurain years, but it didn't get a whole lot of coverage here in the US.  In 1996, one of my co-workers at the time was into it and it was much easier to follow then after the arrival of the internet.  Of course, there has been a lot more coverage of the race in the last decade with Lance's arrival on the scene.  I must admit I haven't been following it as closely this year as I'd like to.  I haven't watched every stage on Versus like in past years, though I still check the results everyday.  I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed that Contador and Leipheimer won't get a chance to defend their podium positions.  Especially since about half the Astana team are ex-Discovery.  I am, however, enjoying the fact that both American teams, Columbia and Garmin-Chipotle are doing very well (Kirchen rides for Columbia, and Vandevelde rides for Garmin-Chipotle).  I hope they keep it up, but things should really get interesting starting tomorrow (the first mountain stage) with  its finish at Hautacam.  That one, I will watch live.

All 50 states before 51st birthday

I thought I had already posted this months ago when I started the blog, but I guess I hadn't so I'll do it now.

Two years ago, I went down to FL (well, AL) for my flight review and while I was there, Clint told me I could have the plane on Saturday afternoon to fly wherever I wanted for little more than the price of fuel (much better then than now).  I took it and flew to Pascagula, MS.  That made the 44th state I had been in at the (then) age of 44.  That was when I made it a goal to visit all 50 states by age 50 (before my 51st birthday).  I've since added 2 more states (AR and ME), so I am currently at 46 states and age 46.  I lost a week of vacation this year, though, which (combined with spending 1.5 weeks in Nicaragua) means I'm not sure if I'll be able to add another state this calendar year.  The only ones I still lack are LA, MT, AK, and HI.

The ORCC All-Star softball game

Sunday afternoon, the ORCC All-Star softball game was held at the VA Memorial Stadium in Chillicothe.  Team 2 was made up of players from the OU branches (Chillicothe, Lancaster, and Zanesville) and team 1 was made up of players from OSU-Newark, Miami University-Middletown, and UC-Clermont.  Erin got to play in the game and played well.  She entered the game batting in the top of the 3rd(4th?) inning and doubled in the first two (tying) runs for the OU team, but got stranded at 3rd base.  She then played the rest of the game in right field where she ended up making 2 plays.  The first one was chasing a ball that got by the first baseman and skidded on the artificial turf off the wall and back toward the corner.  She picked it up and threw to third to hold the runner.  The other play was a fly ball after the other team had retaken the lead, where she didn't get a good break and made it look like she was going to miss it, but she did catch the ball to end the inning and kept the lead from getting any larger.  In her final at-bat, Erin was called out on a pitch that was about at her ankles.  Sigh... Team 1 beat team 2 by a score of 4-3.  Still, the girls had fun.

Odd perspectives based on experience

I've long been fascinated by weather.  While I've never purchased a home weather station, I've often thought about it and I'm a Weather Channel junkie.  Weather became even more important to me when I learned how to fly.  Pilots (literally can) live or die by the weather.  If you read my earlier entry this evening, you'll note that it was raining and overcast nearly all day today.  The reason for the title of this post though, is that I realized as I was driving to Cincinnati and back (and to some extent during the game) that I was trying to estimate the ceilings (I estimate that they ranged from about 200' to maybe, briefly 1200 or 1500') and visibility (actually pretty good most of the time) and determine in my head whether the weather was MVFR or IFR (it was IFR pretty much until I got home).  Normal people don't worry about that, but this flying thing has (somewhat) changed my perspective on weather.  It isn't good or bad, just different and it struck me today, so I decided to write about it.

Trip #2 to GABP

Prior to this year, I hadn't seen the Reds play in person since sometime before they moved into Great American Ballpark.  That changed when Sherry and I went to see them for Fleece Blanket day in April when we got to see Johnny Cueto pitch.  For that game, we sat in the outfield just to the foul side of the left field foul pole.  Last night, on a whim, Sherry and I decided to attend today's day game, so we went online and I got tickets in section 424 (seat map can be found here), the lower part (6 rows) of the upper deck directly behind home plate.  It was raining all the way down to Cincinnati.  When we got in the stadium we went to the Home Plate Grill for lunch and to wait out part of what ended up being a 1:45 minute rain delay.  The game was scheduled to begin at 1:15PM, first pitch was 3:00PM.  The batting order was

1. Jerry Hairston, Jr - SS


2. Jay Bruce - CF


3. Ken Griffey, Jr - RF


4. Brandon Phillips - 2B


5. Adam Dunn - LF


6. Jeff Keppinger - 3B


7. Joey Votto - 1B


8. Paul Bako - C


9. Bronson Arroyo - P

In the bottom of the first with one out, Bruce doubled, then Griffey followed with HR #604 which gave him 5,001 total bases for his career (the 18th player in major league history to achieve that).  The picture below is Griffey touching the plate, Bruce is waiting for him, Phillips and Dunn are by the on-deck circle.  In the outfield, you can see the smoke coming from the stacks and they have just changed the 603 to 604.

Arroyo went 6 innings, Weathers, Burton, and Cordero each threw an inning and the final was Reds 3, Nationals 0.  By the way, I think Arroyo was robbed when they ruled his triple was an error by the left fielder.  It sprinkled a few times during the game and it was overcast the entire time, but it didn't start really raining again until just after the game ended.  By the time we got home, we had some blue sky here (though ceilings were probably below 2000' the entire time until we got to Pickerington).