Turning Two

David turned 2 yesterday.  We had a little celebration at home with just the family, with pizza and presents and cake and ice cream.  David loved all his gifts, brightening his face anew with wonder and glee upon seeing what came out of the gift bags and gift wrap. 

He couldn't quite grasp the idea of blowing out the big #2 candle though.  He just stared at us for a while, stared at the camera, not sure what to do (but always with that adorable grin).  Finally, he leaned over the cake and stuck his face over the candle and singed his hair before we could pull him back to safety.  He never flinched, just laughed again.

Afterwards, we went swimming at the community pool, which David loves to do.  He has no fear of the water, sometimes alarmingly so, as he doesn't yet grasp that he will sink if i let go of him in the big-boy pool. 

A New Favorite Book

I'm now reading The Brothers K by David James Duncan.

had this on my to-read list for a couple of years now, and i'm angry at myself for not reading this book sooner. It's a great, great read, one of the most enjoyable reads ever for me. Pretty much every page is infused with religion or baseball or both, so how could it go wrong. 

I'll try to write more about it when i'm finished.  Only in about the 3rd inning right now, but i could easily see this book vaulting into my all-time Top 5.

The other baseball book i read recently, as noted in a previous post, was Summerland by Michael Chabon.  Here are 3 good quotes from that book...

"Errors … well, they are a part of life, Ethan. Fouls and penalties, generally speaking, are not. That’s why baseball is more like life than other games. Sometimes I feel like that’s all I do in life, keep track of errors.”

“A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.”

“Life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game which even champions lost almost as often as they won, and even the best hitters we’re put out 70 percent of the time.”

100!

The official temperature here in the Triad hit triple-digits the past few days.  Yesterday's 101 was an all-time high for that date.  I don't remember hitting 100 on any date since we moved here in 1999.

Today, i had to drive to Chapel Hill (and back) for a recruiting event for incoming MBA students.  When i left the office just before 11am, the car's temperature gauge read 97 degrees.  By the time i got to the b-school (it's very nice, by the way) at UNC, it said 106.  I parked in a covered garage, but when i left the school a couple of hours later, the car was still reading 106. 

It hit a whopping 112 - i kid you not - as i drove through Chapel Hill on the way back to I-40.  Now, surely that's measuring road temperature or something similar, surely not ambient temperature, but still.  112?  Not pleasant in a convertible (yes, the top was up).

Those readings remind me of the famous summer of 1980 in Texas, where temps reached into the 110s for a few days, and were over 100 for several days in a row.  That was the summer i spent a week at academic camp at East Texas State University (i see the place has been conquered by the Aggies).  We stayed in a high-rise dorm on the very edge of campus and had to trudge back and forth across campus in the sweltering heat.  It was miserable.  I spent a lot of free time in the game room playing pool and ping pong. 

Caroline Returns Home

Caroline comes home today.  Julie has left for Charlotte to pick her up at the airport there (and catch a little shopping with Leah in the meantime).  Caroline has been visiting her Florida relatives.  Not sure what all they've done, other than a short excursion down the Keys to snorkle.

It seems like a long time since we've all been together at home.  Between this trip, church camp (twice for Caroline), and the Texas trip, it's been a month or so since we had a full house for a full week.  (That is, if you count the house full when Caroline is most frequently off doing teenager things, doing them anywhere but home.)

Anyway, i look forward to her return.

Sweet Sixteen

Caroline turned 16 this month.  It's a great cause for celebration for a wonderful girl, a precious daughter.  And great cause for fear & trembling, and much prayer, for her dad.  For with this milestone comes car dating and a driver's license (actually, that won't come for a couple of months), and i'm not sure which is scarier.

For her birthday, Caroline received a notebook that her mom compiled, filled with notes of advice and encouragement and love from key people in her life.  Siblings, aunts, cousins, grandparents, friends, teachers, parents.  Here's an excerpt from my letter to Caroline...

When i met your mom, it didn't take long for God to send a lightning bolt through my heart, searing the truth that we could love each other for a lifetime or more.  That the deal included you made it the bargain of a lifetime.  Here was this incredible 2-year-old girl -- spirited, fun, bright, engaging, bold, loving, adorable, and just so very... alive!

Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen, Caroline!  I love you.

First Plane Trip

Emily & Jackson got to take their very first plan trips this summer.  I escorted them to Texas to visit their grandparents.  Jackson was especially excited, but both were bouncing off the walls on departure day, from the natural stimulant of adventure.  We had an early evening non-stop from GSO to DFW one Thursday in July.  Julie drove us to the airport, and then i navigated them through the traveler's ropes of baggage check in, boarding passes, security checkpoints, boarding by zones, row numbers, overhead and under-seat compartments, tray tables, seat belts, drink carts, long waits to use the restroom, how to flush in said restroom, and baggage claim. 

Jackson was thrilled with the acceleration g-forces upon takeoff.  Emily wanted to enjoy it, but couldn't decide if she should be nervous and worried instead.  Our only trouble on the flight itself was a bit of bickering about whether Emily's window would be open or shut, and the aforementioned bathroom waiting. 

I tried to take Jackson as soon as i saw the flight attendants rummaging around with the carts, but the rear was blocked by a drink cart and we were suggested to try the first-class restroom.  There, it too was blocked by a cart and also said it was occupied, so i ahem-ed the guy up there and asked if there was a 2nd one up-front.  He met me wide-eyed, alarmed, and barked that i wasn't supposed to be up here.  My first thought was that this was some silly class warfare thing, the coach intruder being shooed away.  I stepped to the side to show that Jackson was with me, and that he needed to go bad.  He repeated, still with urgency, that i couldn't be there, and should return to my seat.  I said that his colleagues had sent me up here because the back was blocked.  That's when he finally revealed that i was unwelcome not because i was coach-scum, but because he had the cockpit door open, apparently serving drinks to the pilots.  That certainly was a better explanation for his alarm than what i had thought the problem was, so we dutifully went back to sit down.  The crew guy later came back to apologize, not with an apology per se, but with a fuller explanation and a chummy pat on the shoulder.  It's all good.

The kids behaved really well on the plane.  In part because i promised that they could erase their 15 minute time-out to be enforced once they got to Poetry, as long as they were good on the plane.  Quite the ingenious leverage, if i must say, although i admit it wasn't planned that way.

My brother Marty picked us up at DFW, accompanied by his two oldest daughters.  That was a nice treat.

P.S.  For the return flight, the kids turned into grizzled travel veterans.  Jackson had already been promised the window seat, but Emily asked if she could have the aisle, leaving ol' dad in the middle.  They both snoozed, so i had a little precious head pressed against each shoulder.

WIRN: July 2007

What I'm Reading Now

Summerland - Michael Chabon.  This noted novelist takes a turn with teen-level fiction, with a treasure of a tale about baseball and a whole new world of imaginary creatures.  It's The Sandlot meets Harry Potter.

River of Doubt - recounts the adventure of Theodore Roosevelt, post-White House, and an entourage of naturalists on a trek in deepest South America.

String Bands in the North Carolina Piedmont - stumbled across this in the local library (i'm shocked it was on Amazon, though that provides an excellent example of the "long tail", another book i recently read)

Let Us Pray

There is a raging controversy right now here in our county.  For probably ever, the county commissioner board has opened its meetings with a short prayer.  I'd bet that (not that) long ago, one of the commissioners led the prayer, but now the board invites local ministers to give the invocation.  The controversy ignited when the ACLU threatened a lawsuit unless the board ceased the current practice, claiming that the Supreme Court has ruled it un-constitutional to have "sectarian prayer" in government meetings.  Their view is based on a flawed understanding of what "establishment of religion" means.

So far, the board has stood its ground, enlisting the legal support of a group similar to the ACLU, though with pretty-much opposite views on the constitutional interpretations of the religious freedom clause.  The local paper's letters to the editor have seen the usual collection of cranks on all sides weigh in.  Here's my take...

For anyone to suggest that there is a definitive answer on something like this really hasn't been paying attention to the mess that SCOTUS has made of the 1st amendment.  Going at least as far back as the nutty Lemon tests, the court has swayed in the wind on religious freedom, such that no one can really say with ACLU-like confidence that precedent is so obvious.  It is most dismaying, then, to see the county attorneys cave and say they won't defend the county if it goes to trial (wouldn't that be a fireable offense where you work?).  In this situation, at worst, it's an open question, particularly with a fresh court.

But let's consider a common sense understanding of religious freedom in the context of publicly offered prayers.  The solution proffered by the agitators is the least likely to be the constitutional one.  They demand that prayers not invoke the name of a deity.  That strikes a reasonable man as a case of the government dictating the content of a prayer.  Surely that is the most objectionable possible outcome for a free people.  I'd rather see no prayer at all than a dictated-content prayer.  A moment of silence perhaps.  The last thing we need is the government telling us how & when & where we can pray.

Besides the coercion angle, there really is no such thing as a "non-sectarian" prayer anyway.  There might be a mealy prayer, a meaningless set of nice & inoffensive phrases, offered to this newly created "government god", the Anonymous God of the Greeks that Paul countered in Acts 17.  Here in America, some 2 millennia later, that god is making a comeback, apparently.

 

An Emily Acrostic

Emily created this.  I'm guessing she did it school, because i found it laminated.

Explores places

Minds her Mom

Is very fun

Likes candy

Yawns sometimes

Then there is a P.S. of "sometimes" with an arrow pointing to the 2nd entry.

RiverRun Film Festival

Winston-Salem and our local North Carolina School for the Arts host a growing-in-stature regional film festival called RiverRun.  This was the first year (of 5) where i've been able to attend any of the screenings, and i was impressed.

First, the festival marked the first time, in my 7+ years here in Winston-Salem, that i've stepped foot on the NCSA campus.  It's very nice, and quite the hidden gem in the community. 

Over the 3 days, ending yesterday, i caught a few full-length features and documentaries, two collections of short films, and a Saturday-morning block of animated cartoons for the whole family.  I wanted to see more, but got blasted with a bad headache on Saturday afternoon.  Plus, the weather has been gorgeous around here, so you don't really want to spend too much time in a theater.

If i knew how to make a bulleted list, i would do so right here, to list the movies i saw, not including the shorts.

1.  Ten Canoes - tall tales from Australian aboriginal tribe called the Yolngu

2.  The Rape of Europa - documentary about the Nazis', primarily Hitler and Goering, plunder of European art, and the effort, in part from the US military, to recapture and restore the treasures.  While ancillary to the main topic, i was also intrigued to go learn more about the Siege of Leningrad and the battles for Montecassino.  This won the audience prize for best documentary at the festival, though i voted for this next one...

3. In the Shadow of the Moon - documentary about America's race to the moon, featuring extensive interviews with the Apollo astronauts, and never-before-seen footage of the moon voyages.

4. Son of Man - a nearly faithful retelling of the Gospel story, though set in modern-day Africa.  This was my favorite "narrative" film.

5. The Trials of Darryl Hunt - documentary about a notorious Winston-Salem case that saw a young black man accused, convicted, and jailed for nearly 2 decades for a brutal rape/murder of a young white woman, a copy editor for the local newspaper, back in 1984.  This powerful film tracks the legal and community efforts to free Mr. Hunt, who was ultimately exonerated of the crime.  This should be required viewing locally.  It premieres on HBO this Thursday.

P.S.  On Friday night, Julie & i attended a "Creative Chaos" party for the festival, complete with funky neon-colored hats, glow stick necklaces, and Cirque de Soleil type entertainment.  We didn't know a soul there (well, except for that one guy out of nowhere that Julie gave a big hug to), and so wondered how much fun it would be.  But we soon fell into conversation with the Thompsons.  He is in publishing in NY, specializing in finance and business books, and shuttles back and forth to Winston.  She is the marketing director for the NCSA.  We ended up chatting for more than an hour, and had a great time.