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The Fishermen and the Dragon by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Apr2

The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast by Kirk Wallace Johnson, author of The Feather Thief.

The fact that most of this true story took place practically in my backyard had something to do with its fascination for me, I’m sure. Nevertheless, I would recommend the book to anyone since it speaks to many of the issues that are still open and debated in our time: racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, mob action, government corruption, corporate greed, environmental activism, and more. The book certainly doesn’t do much to enhance the reputation of my particular community. All I can say is that, although I feared doing so, I did not find any familiar names or events in the narrative. Most, if not all, of the events in this book were news to me, even though I live just up the road from Kemah and Seabrook where most the story takes place.

I did know of some unrest and antagonism between the fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Texas coast and the Vietnamese immigrants who were coming into the area in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Many of these Vietnamese refugees were fishermen by heritage and trade, and it was natural for them to begin plying that trade along the Gulf Coast. It was also inevitable that there would be friction between these newcomers with a different language and culture and the Gulf Coast fishermen who were already struggling with decreased harvests of fish and other seafood and the poisoning of the bays where they made their living by petrochemical plants, oil spills, and and other hazards of modern life. But I thought the problem was over-fishing: not enough fish and too many fishermen.

But Mr. Johnson’s book shows that the problem was much more racial and cultural than economic. Yes, there was a problem with over-fishing, but only because pollutants were destroying many of the prime fishing areas. And generally the Vietnamese were willing to work longer and harder, often with the entire family pitching in to help, than the predominantly white fishermen were accustomed to working. So the Vietnamese got more fish. It wasn’t fair! They must be communists!

As tensions grew, a Vietnamese man killed a white “crabber” (crab fisherman) in self-defense. Then the KKK became involved, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and everything became much more theatrical and at the same time more enflamed and dangerous. And one lone woman was trying with her own theatricals to direct attention toward the encroaching danger of environmental pollution and corporate malfeasance while everyone else was either (the white guys) busy burning crosses and torching shrimp boats or (the Vietnamese) trying to protect their homes, families and livelihoods from the racist Klansmen.

It’s a fascinating story, and I only wonder what’s happened since this book was published in 2022. Near the end of the story, the author says that most of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. nowadays comes breaded and frozen from shrimp farms in Asia. It’s cheaper that way, and the shrimping industry along the Gulf Coast is minimal. “There were hardly any shrimp left in the bays,” writes Mr. Johnson. “Ninety percent of all shrimp consumed in America was now imported.” It’s a sad story.

The Superteacher Project by Gordon Korman

Jul17

What makes a good teacher? A great middle school teacher? A super-teacher? Well, a teacher should first of all know the subject matter that he’s teaching. Mr. Aidact, the new teacher at Brightling Middle School, has that covered. In fact, Mr. Aidact seems to know just about everything. His encyclopedic knowledge of algebra American history, French, song lyrics, trivia, and even field hockey (which he is assigned to coach) is amazing.

But to be a Superteacher requires more than knowledge. A teacher has to have the ability to impart that knowledge to students and to inspire or engage those students in learning for themselves. The jury is still out as to whether Mr. Aidact is capable of being that kind of teacher—and whether or not he can keep up with Oliver and Nathan, the resident pranksters at Brightling Middle School. And when Oliver becomes convinced that there is something fishy about Mr. Aidact, he’s determined to find out just who—or what–this new Superteacher really is.

The Superteacher Project is science fiction about the near-future and is therefore very up-to-date, dealing with current events, and that is both a positive and a negative. It’s probably going to be about as popular in the short term as Mr. Aidact because it deals with something that is the topic of the day, artificial intelligence. But it will just as quickly become dated as events progress. The characters in the books make references to Elon Musk, Motor Trend, and Jeopardy!, among other pop culture allusions. How long will those be known and understood cultural touchstones?

Nevertheless, it was a humorous and light-hearted read, with some thoughtful moments. I recommend it for the sake of entertainment and maybe as a way to open a conversation about AI and the implications it has for the future.

Why Marry?

Jun27

We live in a utilitarian age. If you can’t show me a practical use for any given practice or cultural institution, I’m free to throw it out, take it or leave it, make my own traditions, fashions, and rules. With this modern attitude, what is the use of marriage? Why go to the expense and worry of a wedding, why get a marriage license, why marry?

And many couples do not. They live together, engage in a sexual relationship, combine finances, make joint decisions, and even have children, forming families, without ever troubling themselves to obtain that pesky little piece of paper that legalizes and solemnizes their liaison. Some of these “partners” move from one relationship to the next, never settling, and never committing themselves to one person. But others are seemingly committed, seemingly married in everything but name, but just don’t see the use of getting actually, legally, really truly married.

So why marry? If you ask me to give you a utilitarian reason for legal marriage, I can’t really do it. Is it better for a society if the majority of couples who are forming families and educating the coming generation are legally married? Yes, I believe so. Is it better for children if their parents are formally and publicly committed to one another in marriage? Again, yes. Better how? Well, marriage implies and calls a couple to a stable and lasting relationship, a foundation that is important, even vital for the mental and spiritual health of children in a family. But you can answer that as individuals we are committed. We plan to stay together till death does us part. What difference does it make whether or not we have a marriage certificate or have had a wedding ceremony?

And in strictly utilitarian terms, I cannot give an adequate or convincing answer. The real reason for marriage, as I have come to understand after much thought, is not utilitarian at all. It is transcendent in nature–for Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus and other religious people, certainly. We all believe that marriage is a solemn vow of union before God. But even for many nonreligious people who still believe in marriage and who continue to marry one another, marriage is something more than “a piece of paper” or a legal contract or a meaningless ritual. When we get married, we are doing something real, initiating a relationship, that has meaning beyond the words we say or the papers we sign. We are making a commitment before God (whether you believe in Him or not, He is there) and our community to cleave to this one husband or wife and to no one else for the rest of our natural lives. We are initiating a new family relationship, husband and wife, a relationship that will exact responsibilities from us and give privileges to us and that will shape us for the rest of our lives, even if the marriage itself someday ends in divorce or in the death of one of the couple.

What I’m trying to say is that marriage has a transcendent meaning, and we marry because of that meaning. Yes, marriage is a picture of Christ and His church. That’s a part of the reason and meaning for marriage. And marriage was instituted by God in the beginning when Adam and Eve were joined by God and told to cleave to one another and be fruitful and multiply. That’s another piece of the meaning of marriage. Furthermore, marriage is an invisible bond and contract between two people in the presence of family and community to love and care for each other, both physically and spiritually. It’s an announcement that says, “Hey, world, we are not just interested in exploring or exploiting each other physically and sexually. We are a married couple. We are spiritually, mystically committed to each other in all senses, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and even supernaturally.”

If the man and woman involved in a physical relationship are not willing to make that announcement loudly, proudly and publicly in an actual ceremony of some kind and a legal binding contract, then there is something wrong with the relationship itself. The partnership that is not willing to be a marriage may be practical, sensible, and even lasting, but it is ultimately soulless. And that’s why we marry: for the sake of our mutual souls and for the creation of a one flesh spiritual union together.

A Few Short Truths

Mar21

I have some things to say, here on my own little piece of internet turf:

  • Teaching that sex outside of marriage between one woman and one man is immoral is traditional Christian teaching. It is Biblical, longstanding, and faithful Jesus’ teaching and to the Christian understanding of human flourishing. (Not to mention to the teaching of most other religions for the past six thousand years.)
  • Teaching that sexual expression outside of marriage is sin is not equivalent to denying one’s sexuality. The fact that we are sexual beings does not mean that we are compelled or allowed to express that sexuality in any and every way we want. In fact, sexuality is a gift with boundaries. And Christians believe that God asks us, for our own good, to have sex only within those boundaries.
  • If I say that those boundaries include no rape, no pornography, no homosexuality, no bestiality, no adultery, no prostitution, no fornication (sex before marriage), and no pedophilia, that does not mean that I am saying that fornication is the same as bestiality.
  • Nor does it mean that I am equating the people that engage in any of these sins or the people who are victims of those who engage in these sins with animals.
  • Nor am I “sin-leveling”: I recognize that some of these sins are more damaging to humans than others. Nevertheless, all are sin.
  • This teaching of “sexual purity” (if you want to call it that) does not lead directly or indirectly to murder.
  • Giving men and women strategies to use to redirect their thoughts away from sexual temptation does not lead directly or indirectly to murder either.
  • Jesus said, “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” He is telling men not to look at a woman with lust: the desire and intent to dehumanize and use that woman to satisfy his own sexual desires. Telling men not to look at pornography and not to look at actual human beings with lust, to look away when temptation comes, is not disrespectful to women, it is not blaming those women for his temptation, and it is not bad advice.
  • If a man or a woman does blame other people for his or her own temptations and sin, that person is engaging in an age-old attempt to justify his or her own sin. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. But God holds each of us responsible for our own actions.
  • There is hope for any person who believes he has a “sexual addiction”, and that hope is found in the forgiveness and redemption provided by Jesus Christ. Fall on His grace and then choose to follow Him daily, hourly, in obedience and love for other people who are all His creation, made in His image, not to be used or regarded as sexual objects.
  • There is also hope for those who are the victims of sexual abuse and objectification. Jesus has compassion for the suffering that any of us endure at the hands of others, and He offers rest for the weary and victimized and forgiveness for any sin which separates us from the perfection that God demands.

Documentaries: Take 1

Oct12

A member of a Facebook group that I’m in asked people to comment about their favorite documentary films. From all the comments that were posted, I made a list of documentaries that I would like to watch. And I’ve been watching some of them this week. So far, I have watched four films, and I have definitely thought that all four were worth the time and worth recommending.

Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry. (2017, watched on Netflix)
This film was good, but misnamed, I think. It wasn’t about Wendell Berry, the author, as much as it was about farming and farm policy and the takeover of commercial methods and big business in agriculture, the death of the family farm. As I watched I felt I understood the problem better, but I didn’t see the solutions. Maybe there is no going back to the way agriculture was done in the past on small farms, on a small scale. Even though the film showed some farmers who were trying to scale back and form small local cooperatives, it was obvious that tobacco farming, at least, was never going to be profitable or even doable on a small scale again. And since that’s the kind of farming Wendell Berry is looking back to as his ideal, I’m not sure what to think about the film itself. I also wonder if tobacco farming itself is going to be a thing of the past, since the advent of vaping and e-cigarettes. Unless someone finds other uses for tobacco. Maybe someone needs to do for tobacco what George Washington Carver did for the peanut and for sweet potatoes. Anyway, watch this one to learn more about the farming crisis and to learn a little bit about Wendell Berry. The musical score for the film is fantastic.

13th. (2016, watched on Netflix)
I watched this film about the history of slavery and prisons and mass incarceration with one of my adult daughters, and it was quite provocative and thoughtful. The title is a reference to the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It reminded me of the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, and sure enough, Mr. Stevenson was featured as one of the commentators on the film. Like I Am Not Your Negro, which I watched last year, this documentary helps explain some of the racial unrest in our nation and the Black Lives Matter movement in particular. I’m not at all sure I agree with all of the agenda that the film is trying push, but I do feel more informed and even empathetic. We do have a history of racism in this country, and that history does influence how black people and white people think about current events. It’s very difficult to think past one’s own presuppositions, especially when we don’t even realize that the underlying prejudices and presuppositions are there, in the first place.

Life, Animated. (2016, watched on Amazon Prime)
A 23 year old young man, Owen Suskind, uses his immersion in Disney films to make sense of the world and ameliorate and inform his understanding of himself and his place in the world as he deals with his autism. Of the four documentary films I’ve watched so far, this one was the best and most hopeful. I was delighted by this story of a boy who, at the age of three, suddenly became autistic and lost his ability to speak meaningfully or to communicate with family. Owen’s parents have a huge role in the film and in Owen’s life, but the film is really about Owen growing up and becoming independent as he deals with the knowledge that his parents won’t always be available and can’t live his life for him. It’s also about how the Disney movies helped and continue to help Owen to connect with other people and to understand the world he lives in. Again, I found this film fascinating.

AlphaGo. (2017, watched on Netflix)
The ancient Chinese game of “Go” is for some people, especially in Asia but really around the world, a metaphor for life and the struggle to live creatively and strategically. In this film, AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence neural network, competes against Lee Sedol, a top level world champion at the game of Go. Because, like chess, this game is for many people a life’s work, the competition between man and machine is particularly intense and consequential. Lee Se-dol, is a South Korean professional Go player of 9 dan rank. AlphaGo is a computer program that can adjust and “teach itself” to play Go and to win at Go, a very complicated game. Go is much more complicated than chess, for example. Anyway, the story of how Lee Sedol and AlphaGo played a three games out of five tournament and who won is a nail-biter. I’m not sure I understand all of the implications of this kind of “deep learning” network, but it feels significant and rather amazing.

So, those are the four documentaries I’ve watched so far. I’ll be back with more mini-reviews soon.

By the way, if you have any favorite documentaries to recommend, I’ll add them to my list. What are your favorite nonfiction films and documentaries?

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Oct9

Ghost Boys is the story of Jerome, a 12 year old black child in Chicago, who is shot and killed by a white policeman. For most of the story Jerome is a ghost who wanders around Chicago trying to figure out why he can’t move on to wherever he is supposed to go after death. The message is good: no black children (or adults) should die because someone with power and a weapon “made a mistake” or was racist in his or her judgments.

But the story was confusing, and many questions were unresolved. Are all of the “ghost boys” doomed to walk the earth for eternity, or until complete and perfect justice is achieved? If the ghost of Emmett Till was returned to earth to inspire Thurgood Marshall, then why is he still around after Thurgood Marshall has already passed on? Was the murder of Emmett Till really responsible for starting the entire civil rights movement? Are the “hundreds and hundreds” of black boys the only people who have been killed unjustly in the history of the world, or in the United States, or are they just the only ones who are doomed to wander seeking justice forever? If they are supposed to share their stories, why doesn’t Jerome tell Sarah his story instead of having her watch a video and ask her librarian questions?

I just don’t think this book is a great introduction to the subject of racial injustice, but maybe I’m wrong. I’d really like to hear the opinions of young people, black, brown or white, who have read the book. Maybe they would get more out of the reading than I did. I think I would have preferred a straightforward telling of Jerome’s story without all the confusing ghostly stuff, but maybe the ghost story aspect makes it more accessible and interesting to at least some middle grade readers.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

Wanted: Immigrants from ********

Jan13

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This is America.

We invite and welcome refugees who are fleeing from impoverished circumstances or from oppressive governments or from cruel persecution.

We want the tired and poor and wretched and homeless to come to America where they can rest and breathe and work and live and worship and add their skills and imagination and industry to further themselves and their families and to build up this country and make it truly great. We want all of those who with good intentions and noble dreams want to come and work with us to further the American experiment—a government and a country that is led and built by the people, for the people, and of the people.

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that America doesn’t want this kind of person or that kind of immigrant. Don’t listen to the worst voices who call you inferior or unwanted because you come from an impoverished background or from a disrespected group of people or from a place of war and chaos. You are wanted. You are needed. America is great only because Americans have welcomed those who came to help realize her vision of a free people, united in the quest to create liberty and opportunity for all.

America has not always lived up to her ideals. Sometimes, instead of being a shining city on a hill, we have been a purveyor of slavery and racism within our own borders and an exporter of American imperialism without. However, those tragic mistakes—the enslavement of black people and Asians, the annihilation of native American peoples, the imposition of foreign rule in other countries—are and have been just that, tragedies and a betrayal of the true meaning of the United States of America. We are better than our historic crimes and abuses, and we are and will be better than the current clamorous agents of dissension, discord, and disharmony.

I believe that those who are now using stupid and derogatory language to discourage and ridicule and disparage the homeless and the tempest-tost and yes, people of color, will eventually be out-shouted and out-numbered by the millions of Americans who join with Lady Liberty to say, “Send these! I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I pray that those true, good, and grateful American voices will be heard clearly and soon.

Thanksgiving Repentance

Nov19

Senator James Harlan of Iowa, whose daughter later married President Lincoln’s son Robert, introduced a resolution in the Senate on March 2, 1863. The resolution asked President Lincoln to proclaim a national day of prayer and fasting. The resolution was adopted on March 3rd, and signed by Lincoln on March 30th, one month before the fast day was observed:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us.

We have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and pray for clemency and forgiveness.” ~Abraham Lincoln, 1863.

When I see and hear a politician call the nation to repentance in the same kind of plain and confrontational words that this resolution uses, when I see that politician commit himself personally to repentance and prayer, then I will vote for that man or that woman with a clear conscience, Democrat or Republican or any other party. I am so tired of crooked, hypocritical, predator politicians who cover their own sins and ask us to join them in prayer that God will bless America. And I am tired of the people who make excuses and cover up sin and ridicule the prayers of broken and hurting people and tell us that “nobody is perfect” when the phrase suits their agenda, but point judgmental fingers at the sins of those who don’t agree with their particular political slant.

We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Our only hope is the mercy and grace of God that is mediated through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the sooner we get on our knees and pray for God’s mercy on this nation and on this world, the sooner we will be truly blessed and forgiven and preserved as a light and a “city on a hill” and a broken but redeemed blessing to others.

It’s not our health care system or our tax structure or our education system that is broken, although all of these may need repair. It’s we the people of the United States who have grown, as Lincoln said, “in numbers wealth and power”, but have forgotten grace, and humility and prayer. It’s me; I am more broken than the schools or the hospitals or the taxing authorities or anything else in this country. We are a broken people, and we see and experience things that are evil and we call them good so that we won’t feel badly about ourselves.

This Thanksgiving, Lord, have mercy on us. Give us clemency and forgiveness. Forgive us for treating the sojourner (the immigrant) as an enemy and an alien instead of extending hospitality and kindness. Forgive us for making excuses for those who would prey on children and on defenseless women and make them the objects of their sexual appetites and lust for power. Forgive us for believing lies when those lies suit our political ends and for disbelieving truth for the same reasons. Forgive us for murdering our own children in the womb before they even have an opportunity to breathe. Forgive us for watching violence and sexual perversion on screens as if it is acceptable as long as it is just pretend and done in the name of entertainment. Forgive us for taking Your holy name in vain, for ridiculing prayer and worship, and for thinking we are little gods ourselves, strong enough and wise enough and righteous enough to put the world to rights and make this nation “great again.”

God is Great. God is Good.
Let us thank Him for our food.

I learned that prayer about sixty years ago, and God help me if I have grown too wise in my own eyes to pray the same humble prayer now.

God, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Holy Spirit, forgive us and make us whole.

Harvey and Me Update #2

Sep11

Well, I’m still living in a post-Harvey world. I stayed home today for the most part, after having spent every day for the last couple of weeks at my church in Friendswood, Trinity Fellowship. I was helping all I could with the administrative side of our Harvey relief efforts, and I felt so much “survivor’s guilt” and so much grief and sympathy for those who flooded that I just couldn’t focus on things at home. I had to be where I was doing some good to someone else, not because I’m such a good person, but rather because there is just so much need and destruction and chaos.

So, I still couldn’t focus very well on things here at home today, even though I tried. What I really want is to give those ten families from our church of about forty families, one quarter of our membership, the ones who flooded or sustained major damage, another hug. I wanted to ask them again what we could do to help. I wanted to make them another meal or find them a team of strong guys and girls to do some more clean up or pull out sheetrock or spray for mold or wash their clothes or load their furniture that survived into a storage unit or do something. Then, I wanted to call all of the other families that I know who flooded, the ones I haven’t even been able to touch yet, and ask them the same questions, give them the same hugs, listen to their stories, too. But there are so many stories, so much pain, so many households being disrupted and so many precious belongings being trashed.

I needed to take a rest, focus on my family and my library, pull back a little, but it’s hard. I think Houston will have to take it a day at a time. I’ll have to take it a day at a time. In the meantime, keep praying. Keep sending help. Ask the Lord to give us all wisdom about a time to work and a time to rest. I’m sure I’ll get back to bookish posts soon, but right now it’s all too fresh and immediate.

Drone footage that my pastor took in Friendswood on September 9th, Saturday.

Harvey and Me

Sep8

I’ve been really busy and overwhelmed here in southeast Houston where we received over 40 inches of rain about a week ago. You may have heard something about that storm on the news. Anyway, sorry about the Saturday Review last week and the lack of blog posts this week. We didn’t sustain any damage at our house, but many, many friends and neighbors did. I have dozens of friends who lost almost everything they owned. We’re going to be digging out from under this disaster for years to come.

Here’s a brief video about what’s going on here in Houston now, post-Harvey. You need to know that these are my people, my church, my pastor, my friends and neighbors. I know many of the people in this video. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we are family. Please do what you can to help, either here or in Florida as Irma comes through.

Hurricane Harvey Response from EFCA on Vimeo.

Also, if you can share this video on Facebook or on your blog, it will help people to visualize the massive devastation that Houston has sustained and a bit of what I am afraid that Florida is experiencing right now.