Archives
Living and Learning: December 10, 2008
Z-baby and I were going to pick up her brother from his math class, and we had this rather random conversation:
Z-baby: When someone becomes president, on the day he becomes president, do they have a Big Party or something?
Semicolon Mom: Yes, they do. It’s called an inauguration.
Z-baby: Does everybody in the whole country have to come?
Semicolon Mom: No, just his friends and supporters and other people who live close to Washington, D.C. will be there.
Z-baby: Why does Barack Obama have to be president of Texas anyway? Why can’t he just go be president of New Mexico or something?
(Impromptu geography/government lesson ensues in which Semicolon Mom explains that New Mexico and Texas are both part of the United States, and Mr. Obama will be president of all fifty states in the U.S.)
Z-baby: Well, at least maybe it will snow tonight!
extremely reluctant reader, the only one I’ve had to be so allergic to learning to read. (No, she doesn’t have a learning disability. She’s mostly just lazy and opinionated.) Anyway, I’m glad to have her bringing me a book and reading parts of it to me, with a smile!
To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 10th, Emily Dickinson, Mary Norton, Rumer Godden.
Will Duquette reviews In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden.
Semicolon review of Pippa Passes by Rumer Godden.
To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 10th, George Macdonald.
Thank You, President Bush
I know that Thanksgiving is holiday devoted to giving thanks primarily to God for His blessings and His care for us. However, I thought today I’d thank one of His servants, who deserves a little recognition and thanks in my humble opinion.
Count me in the whatever-small-percentage of Americans today who heartily approve of the job President George W. Bush has done in leading our country for the past eight years. No, he hasn’t been the perfect president. Yes, I’ve disagreed with him on some issues. But right now I want to say thank you , President Bush for:
Standing against terrorism without demonizing all Muslims or all people of faith.
Keeping terrorists in jail who want to kill and terrorize Americans and others.
Freeing women especially in Afghanistan from the prison that the Taliban had made of that country.
Ending Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program and standing against Iran’s push to obtain nuclear weapons.
Leading us to victory in Iraq —for us and for the Iraqi people.
Appointing conservative justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court.
Fighting against sex trafficking and forced prostitution.
Banning embryonic stem cell research and supporting the humane, and more promising, approach of adult stem cell research.
Advocating for abstinence-based sex education.
Keeping our country safe after 9-11.
Passing a tax bill that cut taxes for every American and defending those tax cuts throughout your years in office.
Staying out of the Kyoto treaty and instead pushing for alternative and cleaner-burning fuels.
Not responding to your detractors in anger or hatred, no matter how ugly and vicious the provocation.
Jim Towey: Why I’ll Miss President Bush
I’m going to miss him, too.
Pre-Election Prayer, Post-Election Promises
Tonight we gathered at my church, and for two hours we prayed for our nation, sang the songs that remind us Who is in control, and spoke encouragement and admonition to one another. We prayed for George W. Bush and for Barack Obama and for John McCain. We confessed our individual sins to God, and we confessed the sins of our nation and asked for God’s mercy. We came boldly before the throne of our Sovereign and Messiah, and we asked him to preserve the lives of the unborn and the elderly and the disabled, no matter who is elected tomorrow. We asked Him who is able to heal marriages and families across our land. We asked Him to place the widows and the orphans into godly families. We asked Him to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers and the hearts of all to Jesus. We reminded ourselves that God still reigns, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
And tomorrow I will vote, and then I will leave this election and our nation in God’s hands. I hope that I will not sin by neglecting to pray for our country and for whomever God places in power. I plan to remember that whether we as a nation of voters elect Obama or McCain, and whether we elect a Republican Congress or a Democrat Congress, neither of those results will bring about the redemption and salvation of the people of the United States. We trust not in princes or presidents; we trust in the Lord. Tomorrow and for all the days after, we Christians will still be strangers in a land that is not our home. And I will serve Him in my place of service here in Houston, and on my blog, and in my home.
This is a time for faith and determination
Don’t lose the vision here
Carried away by emotion
Hold on to all that you hide in your heart
There is one thing that has always been true
It holds the world together
God is in control
We believe that His children will not be forsaken
God is in control
We will choose to remember and never be shaken
There is no power above or beside Him, we know
God is in control, oh God is in control
History marches on
There is a bottom line drawn across the ages
Culture can make its plan
Oh, but the line never changes
No matter how the deception may fly
There is one thing that has always been true
It will be true forever
He has never let you down
Why start to worry now?
He is still the Lord of all we see
And He is still the loving Father
Watching over you and me.
~God Is In Control by Twila Paris.
Amen to this prayer from The Book of Common Prayer via Wittingshire.
At The Point: A Prayer for our Nation from the Book of Daniel.
For more reasons and encouragement to vote, check out “Blog the Vote” at Chasing Ray, a round-up of thoughts on the importance of voting from across the blogosphere.
To Vote or Not to Vote
I’ve had a lot of people telling me that they may not vote in this election because they don’t much like either of the candidates. One woman at church very eloquently explained how she saw both of the candidates for president supporting the 700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street, and how wrong that bailout was, and how she could not in good conscience vote for either candidate since she didn’t agree with their positions on the bailout and on immigration. Someone else who watched the debate said she didn’t trust either McCain or Obama and didn’t agree with them in several areas where they agreed with each other. So she was thinking about “protesting” by not voting.
I must say to these women, and to others of you who may be considering NOT voting in this election, that I believe that abstaining from voting in this election is a betrayal of trust, dereliction of duty, and just plain wrong. Because we live in a democracy, we, the people, rule this country. The system works imperfectly, and none of the candidates is me. So I can’t agree wholeheartedly with any one candidate. In fact, I’ll admit that I’ve never been very fond of Senator McCain, and Senator Obama doesn’t seem to me to be ready to run my local elementary school, much less the nation. Both men are flawed, and the vice-presidential candidates, both of them, as much as I like and admire Sarah Palin, have their problems, too. Mr. Biden comes across as a political hack, and as a mom, I’m frankly worried about Ms. Palin’s daughter and her need for mothering at a critical time in her young adult life. I could readily find reasons not to vote for any of them.
So, why am I saying that voting is a trust and a duty anyway? We live in an imperfect world. There are no perfect or perfectly righteous or completely wise candidates for any office, ever, as much as we may wish there were. So we choose the better of two (or more) imperfect candidates. We choose knowing that we may be mistaken, knowing that our candidate, if elected, will do things that we disagree with and will imperfectly implement even the policies with which we agree, if he can implement them at all. We vote on the basis of both issues and the character of the candidates themselves, knowing that our knowledge of both issues and character is also imperfect and incomplete. But to remain silent and nonvoting is also a choice. It’s a choice which says that I refuse to act in this world until I can be sure that my actions will not be misinterpreted, my plans will not go awry, and everyone else in the world will act in perfect integrity just as I do always. We don’t live in that world and won’t for some time to come.
God is in control, but he’s not running for president. When Esther was called upon to help rescue her people from the wicked designs of Haman, she had legitimate reasons to refuse to act. To go before the king might cost her life. And the king of Persia was a pagan, not a believer in the one true God. So did she have any business being in his palace in the first place? But Mordecai, her uncle, told her:
“For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”
God does not need your vote or mine to steer this country in whatever direction He pleases. But He gives us the privilege and the duty of participating in the great decisions that confront our nation. And we must choose the best we can with the wisdom that God has given to each of us. If you have not registered to vote, please do so today. And if you are considering the idea of sitting at home and not voting this November, please join me instead in committing your vote to the Lord and making the best decision you can, in His care, about the men and women who should lead this country. Who knows whether you have not been given your vote for such a time as this?
Grow Up, Ms. Pelosi/ Get Real, Mr. Bush
On the way home from taking Betsy-Bee to dance class this afternoon, I heard Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi being interviewed on NPR. Here’s my paraphrase of what she said:
1) This economic crisis and all the bad loans and everything is Bush’s fault —and somehow, by extension, it’s McCain’s fault.
2) Congress bears absolutely no responsibility for the crisis, and we’re not going to anything to resolve it. (That’s almost a direct quote.) Except McCain. Even though he’s a member of Congress, the same Congress that is not responsible for this problem, it’s his fault, and he should have done something to stop it.
3) I don’t know what to do. I didn’t know this crisis was coming. And it’s certainly not my fault. Nobody told me what was going on. I am ignorant and totally not responsible.
4) We Democrats will sit back and watch the country go to h— in a handbasket before we will work with the present administration or with Republicans in Congress to do anything. We might vote for something if you tell us what to do and then give us the credit if it works.
And now McCain is suspending his campaign to go to Washington to try to work with these people who have no interest in working out anything. I think it’s the right thing for him to do, but if The Anchoress is right, it’s also a bad move politically.
I don’t know if the decision is good politics or even if McCain can do anything with such obstructionists as Ms. Pelosi. But I admire him more than I ever did. I think he’s doing what he thinks is right for the country. And Obama says, “Call if you need me.”
By the way, this idea makes sense to me. Go, Dave!
I just listened to President Bush’s address to the nation, and here’s my interpretation of that:
1) I know you don’t want to give a lot of money to banks and rich Wall Street tycoons, and neither do I. But people who know stuff about banks and the economy told me that we have to do it.
2) So I’m reading this stuff about how all this economic crisis stuff happened, and I don’t understand it either. But I’m reading it anyway.
3) If we don’t pump seven hundred mumble, mumble dollars into the economy, then very bad things are going to happen. You might not be able to borrow money, even if you have a good credit rating, and your employer might not be able to borrow money, and you might lose your job.
4) So we, the people, in the form of your elected government, are going to buy all these bad loans that people aren’t paying because they don’t have enough money, and we’re going to hold them until the people do have enough money. Then, we’ll all get our money back, and everyone will live happily ever after.
War and Reconstruction: Establishing Democracy in Italy and Iraq
I read two books this month about U.S. attempts to establish democracy in a conquered/freed nation. A Bell for Adano by John Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. It’s about Major Victor Joppolo, an Italian American officer in the U.S. army who was “more or less the American mayor after our invasion” of Adano a small village in Sicily. Sunrise Over Fallujah is a contemporary young adult novel by Walter Dean Myers about young American soldier, Robin Perry, and his tour of duty in Iraq as a member of a Civil Affairs unit, a sort of put-out-the-fires public relations unit that’s called on to smooth relations with the Iraqi people in special, sometimes ticklish, situations.
The two books, although dealing with similar situations, had completely different atmospheres and a completely different take on war and its aftermath. Operation Iraqi Freedom versus Allied Miitary Government Occupied Territory (AMGOT). In one war, the Americans and their allies are invading an enemy’s country to conquer the fascists and establish democracy, no doubts that democracy is best or that it will work, just confidence and determination to finish a tough job no matter what the obstacles. Maor Joppolo must deal with army bureaucracy and with Italian obfuscation, but he is, as the author tells us from the beginning, “good.” In fact, again according to Mr. Hersey, “there were probably not any really bad men in Amgot, but there were some stupid ones.” Hersey’s American soldiers are more or less well-meaning, sometimes drunk, sometimes selfish, but bumbling toward a trustful relationship with the Italian people who are under their temporary rule in spite of mistakes and because of their essential good nature.
In the other war, the soldiers are confused about their mission, circumscribed and limited in their ability to do anything meaningful, worried about seeming too “gung-ho” and worried about not doing enough, afraid for their lives as they see roadside bombs kill comrades, and finally deceived and betrayed by their own commanders into participating in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. The Iraqis themselves are very minor characters in Sunrise Over Fallujah; one Iraqi who works for the soldiers at their base is asked what he thinks about the Americans being in his country, but his answer is ambiguous and noncommittal as befits some one who is being paid to work for the U.S. military.
All the Italians, even the “enemy” fascists, in Hersey’s book are somewhat comical and clownish; there’s not much to fear from the former mayor of Adano who can’t even decide if he wants to escape and run to the Germans or stay and be “reconstructed.” And Hersey’s good guys and bad guys are easily distinguished. Myers’ Iraqis are much more shadowy figures, and Robin can’t decide who the enemy is half the time. The issue of trust and whom you can trust in such a foreign land is a continuing problem in in Sunrise. Finally, the soldiers in Iraq in Sunrise Over Fallujah find that they can only trust their buddies, and sometimes not even everyone in their own unit.
In both books a child dies, by accident, at the hands of the Americans. But in A Bell for Adano the accidental death of an Italian child run over by an American military truck results in a new policy for ensuring the safety of the children who run beside the trucks to beg for candy from the AMerican GI’s. Major Joppolo says that the accident is a result of the Americans’ generosity:
“Sometimes generosity is a fault with Americans, sometimes it does harm. It has brought high prices here, and it has brought you misery. But it is the best thing we Americans can bring with us to Europe. So please do not hate the Americans.”
Throughout the book, Major Joppolo is sure that, in spite of mistakes and tragedies, the Americans are in Italy to do good, to defeat the bad guys and lead the Italian civilians to a better life. And the Italians, for the most part, go along with the major’s view of things. They see the AMericans as liberators, and even when mistakes are made, the Italian protest is muted and more mournful than angry.
In Sunrise Over Fallujah, children die as a result of “collateral damage” from an American bombing run, and the protagonist, Robin Perry, also holds a dying Iraqi child in his arms. (I don’t remember the exact circumstances, and I’ve already returned the book to the library.) No one talks about the good intentions of the Americans or tries to explain the tragedies as misplaced American generosity. No one is ever sure that what the Americans are doing or trying to do in Iraq is good or right or better for the Iraqi people.
I tend to believe that war and reconstruction are always much more Fallujah-like (confusing and dangerous) than Adano-like (good-natured and bumbling), but maybe the difference is one of attitude and a crisis of confidence. Was the American military governance of Sicily really more of a farce than a tragedy because the Americans of that generation believed in what they were doing and so made others believe in it, too, even their erstwhile enemies? Can we do the same thing, win hearts and minds, establish democracy, in Fallujah and in Iraq, or are the people of Iraq too foreign, too Muslim, too different, and too dangerous? I’m not there, and I don’t know, but reading these two books in conjunction with one another has made me think. We do live in different world now than my grandparents lived in after WW II, but we are engaged in much the same task as Major Joppolo was in A Bell for Adano. Surely, if we could win Italian hearts and minds in 1945, we can win Iraqi hearts and mind in 2008. It’s just going to take a bunch of Major Joppolos and a great deal of wisdom and restraint on the part of some very young soldiers like Robin Perry.
Just.
The Least of These
Milehimama designed this poster in response to Mr. Obama’s record on infant protection:
My sermon for today.
Sunday Salon: James Hilton, Wodehouse again, and Hurricane Blues
We’re still in Fort Worth, refugees from Hurricane Ike. Computer Guru Son stayed in Clear Lake where we live, and he’s in one of the few places in all of Houston that still has electrical power. It’s strange since Clear Lake was right in the path of Ike, but the power lines are buried underground. So I suppose that’s why we have electricity when no one else does.
Son took some pictures yesterday afternoon, but then he discovered that while he has electricity, he no longer has an internet connection. So I can’t show you what it looks like down where I live. He says that all the traffic lights are out (no power and lots of wind damage), everything’s closed except for HEB, and people are driving like crazy fools with no traffic signals. Some places such as Nassau Bay, Kemah, and Seabrook are still flooded, and police are allowing no one into those cities. Engineer Husband says NASA officials are “assessing the damage” and hope to reopen Johnson Space Center by the end of the week.
And what hath all this Ike news to do with reading, you ask? Well, I’ve had time to read while waiting to return home. We hope to leave tomorrow morning to go back. In the meantime, I’ve read Random Harvest by James Hilton, the same author who wrote Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hilton actually lived in Hollywood during the 1930’s and after, and all three of the above named books were made into movies. I’ve only seen the two versions of Lost Horizon. Mr. Hilton also won an Academy Award for his work on the screenplay of Mrs. Miniver, a movie I did see last year and enjoyed in spite of, maybe because of, its unabashed patriotism.
I also started on a new-to-me Wodehouse romp, Bertie Wooster Sees It Through. I’m fairly sure I’ve never read this particular Bertie-and-Jeeves adventure; at least the first few chapters don’t seem too familiar. So far Bertie’s been almost trapped into an engagement with a distant cousin, Florence, refused to shave off his moustache in spite of Jeeves’s disapproval, and spent a night in the pokey as the result of tripping a police officer. I’d says he’s off to a good start.
I may or may not have an internet connection for the forseeable future. I would imagine that restoring power to Houston is more urgent than restoring my connection to the worldwide web. If I’m not here in writing, I’m here in spirit. Keep on reading.
Charlie Gibson, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama
Charlie Gibson asks Sarah Palin if she’s conceited enough to think she can serve as vice-president:
GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say “I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?”
PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I’m ready.
GIBSON: And you didn’t say to yourself, “Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I — will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?”
PALIN: I didn’t hesitate, no.
GIBSON: Didn’t that take some hubris?
PALIN: I — I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink.
So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.
Charlie GIbson asks Barack Obama how he feels about his historic nomination to be the Democratic candidate for president:
GIBSON: Senator, I’m curious about your feelings last night. It was an historic moment. Has it sunk in yet?
OBAMA: No. You know … you have been working so hard, 54 contests, so many months, meeting so many people, and then to suddenly walk into an auditorium with 17,000 people and realize you’re the Democratic nominee. That’s a pretty big dose to swallow all at once, but I will say that talking to my grandmother last night probably drove it home.
GIBSON: What’d she say?
OBAMA: Here’s a woman, who, well, she just said she was really proud. And, I thought back to all the work she’s put in, all the sacrifices she made, ah, she’s now a little too fragile to travel and so she watches it on TV and she’s going blind, so to hear in her voice, what this meant to her, that was a pretty powerful moment.
GIBSON: Public moments are not your own. There’s a million people pulling you in a million different directions, but when everybody clears out, the staff is gone, you’re in your hotel room at night and you’re alone — do you say to yourself: “Son of a gun, I’ve done this?”
OBAMA: You do say to yourself, “My, how far we have traveled.” And, and I say a little prayer to not only thank God for the blessings, but also to make sure that you’re worthy of the honor.
Fair? Not even close. But Ms. Palin just keeps on ticking. I don’t think the press is going to be able to do anything about her popularity because no one really believes that they are fair and unbiased anymore. So we, the voters, take their interviews and their editorials and their punditry with a grain of salt and draw our own conclusions.