I have the nebulous blues,
Or I just think it sounds cool.
I have the nebulous blues.
I listen to the news.
I wonder what I should do.
Who should I listen to?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Weather Report
Winter winked a last goodbye,
And then spring bounced in
More like summer
and then like
Spring again.
And then spring bounced in
More like summer
and then like
Spring again.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The telescopic view
Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the granderquote from Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
view? Choose. ...
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Looking at Life Through an Economic Lens
What follows is something I wrote a while ago. I ran across it today, and worked on it so that it would be not quite so rambling.
“During the Reformation….” Perhaps I could try to write a scholarly sort of thing about the Reformation, but I am not prepared to do that just now. I wish I could write about what I have read and heard on TV about the reformation just off the top of my head. But, I can't.
I am not sure how one would classify this bit of writing, I could call it “musings and ramblings on work and economics” or perhaps, “looking at life and history through an economic lens.” Sometimes I get focused that way on a particular way of looking at things. Just bear in mind here, that I am focusing on the subject of economics and work - that’s what ties all of this together.
Earlier this year I waded through a college textbook, a collection of essays on the Reformation. I found it mostly tedious, but I was interested by several Marxist writers’ analysis of the Reformation, oddly enough. I didn’t agree with their conclusions but what interested me was their research. This may be a subject that has been well discussed in academic realms. But it was fresh to me. Although, I was familiar with the term “Protestant Work Ethic”, I hadn’t read much about it.
The Marxist writers noted that economic prosperity followed the spread of Reformation ideas in Europe. The Reformation began in Germany and spread from there. And everywhere it spread, prosperity followed. I remember as I was reading about this, thinking that this was the blessing of God. The Bible does indicate that blessing will follow obedience.
In one of the books I read more recently “Trinity” by Leon Uris, about Ireland, the writer portrays the Protestants of Ireland mostly negatively. English Protestants settled in Ireland and for centuries they kept to themselves. They are the greedy, manipulative landowners who have made their wealth on the backs of Catholic laborers whom they have unfairly oppressed, all the while congratulating themselves that they have become wealthy because God is blessing them. This is the dark side of protestant thinking. Or one could argue it represents a twisted outgrowth of Protestant Reformation thinking. I concluded that although the idea of prosperity as being a sign of the blessing of God can be distorted, it should not to be discounted altogether either.
I used to live in Hawaii and have read some about the missionaries there. The first generation came to preach the word of God, but some of their children became wealthy landowners and merchants with perhaps similar thinking to the Protestants in Ireland. These wealthy men brought in workers from Japan, China, Korea and elsewhere and helped create the wonderful cultural mix that is the Hawaiian population now.
Those businessmen seemed to have been mostly thinking of making money, but it seems that good has come out of it. (However, the native Hawaiians don’t all see it that way. I guess it depends on your perspective.) This last Sunday afternoon, I listened to a Bill Moyer’s interview with Barak Obama’s pastor; Jeremiah Wright. He was talking about Joseph’s statement in the scriptures “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” Conclusion: God can make a blessing come from even bad motives.
On Saturday night, I was watching one of the many crime investigation shows (I forget which one). This episode was circling around the subject of the way young people were thinking during the 60’s and early 70’s. (There was a murder involved, of course.) Should I try to explain the whole show? The point is that watching it brought to mind some of my own thinking during that era. I was about 11, when I recall thinking that our country was becoming too commercial, some such notion. Shortly after that I began to hear people talking about hippies, the whole “drop out and tune in”, and “don’t trust the establishment” mentality, and I was thinking that maybe they were right. The hippies as I understood it were into dropping out of the status quo business world and going back to the land and being creative, making crafts and things like that. (And then there were the drugs and “free love”…) A few years later, I would still have been pretty young; I toyed with the idea of running away to Haight-Ashbury, the San Francisco mecca of the hippies. Maybe lots of young people of my day had such daydreams, and some did it.
Was I unhappy because my family life was not very great? The stereotypical image of a man going off to work in a business suit and tie with his fedora on his head, is somehow synonymous with, the iconic image of a person being stuck like a cog in a machine, no time for creativity or self-expression. Would I say that was how I saw my father? Well, not exactly, but maybe to some extent. Anyway, a feeling that business was corrupt had gotten planted in my mind. It would probably be over simplifying things to say that was the sum of how I thought of business after that, but it was lurking there.
When I was about 7 I remember Daddy coming in the door when he came home from work and running to greet him. He would holler out “Howdy” and I would run to see him as he would take off his coat and hat and shoes and put on his slippers - that is a happy memory. (That just sounds so 60s, like a scene from Leave it to Beaver!)
But somehow over the years my family life had become more and more disconnected. There was our increasing habit of eating in front of the television rather than at the dinner table. That disconnectedness left me vulnerable to the hippie culture. I know I was still grappling with this in college. I remember discussing it with one of my college profs.
I conclude that what other people are doing and thinking, their views toward work and leisure, collectively, “the culture”, has an affect on individuals and vice versa.
So, do I sound sort of academic? A little?
“During the Reformation….” Perhaps I could try to write a scholarly sort of thing about the Reformation, but I am not prepared to do that just now. I wish I could write about what I have read and heard on TV about the reformation just off the top of my head. But, I can't.
I am not sure how one would classify this bit of writing, I could call it “musings and ramblings on work and economics” or perhaps, “looking at life and history through an economic lens.” Sometimes I get focused that way on a particular way of looking at things. Just bear in mind here, that I am focusing on the subject of economics and work - that’s what ties all of this together.
Earlier this year I waded through a college textbook, a collection of essays on the Reformation. I found it mostly tedious, but I was interested by several Marxist writers’ analysis of the Reformation, oddly enough. I didn’t agree with their conclusions but what interested me was their research. This may be a subject that has been well discussed in academic realms. But it was fresh to me. Although, I was familiar with the term “Protestant Work Ethic”, I hadn’t read much about it.
The Marxist writers noted that economic prosperity followed the spread of Reformation ideas in Europe. The Reformation began in Germany and spread from there. And everywhere it spread, prosperity followed. I remember as I was reading about this, thinking that this was the blessing of God. The Bible does indicate that blessing will follow obedience.
In one of the books I read more recently “Trinity” by Leon Uris, about Ireland, the writer portrays the Protestants of Ireland mostly negatively. English Protestants settled in Ireland and for centuries they kept to themselves. They are the greedy, manipulative landowners who have made their wealth on the backs of Catholic laborers whom they have unfairly oppressed, all the while congratulating themselves that they have become wealthy because God is blessing them. This is the dark side of protestant thinking. Or one could argue it represents a twisted outgrowth of Protestant Reformation thinking. I concluded that although the idea of prosperity as being a sign of the blessing of God can be distorted, it should not to be discounted altogether either.
I used to live in Hawaii and have read some about the missionaries there. The first generation came to preach the word of God, but some of their children became wealthy landowners and merchants with perhaps similar thinking to the Protestants in Ireland. These wealthy men brought in workers from Japan, China, Korea and elsewhere and helped create the wonderful cultural mix that is the Hawaiian population now.
Those businessmen seemed to have been mostly thinking of making money, but it seems that good has come out of it. (However, the native Hawaiians don’t all see it that way. I guess it depends on your perspective.) This last Sunday afternoon, I listened to a Bill Moyer’s interview with Barak Obama’s pastor; Jeremiah Wright. He was talking about Joseph’s statement in the scriptures “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” Conclusion: God can make a blessing come from even bad motives.
On Saturday night, I was watching one of the many crime investigation shows (I forget which one). This episode was circling around the subject of the way young people were thinking during the 60’s and early 70’s. (There was a murder involved, of course.) Should I try to explain the whole show? The point is that watching it brought to mind some of my own thinking during that era. I was about 11, when I recall thinking that our country was becoming too commercial, some such notion. Shortly after that I began to hear people talking about hippies, the whole “drop out and tune in”, and “don’t trust the establishment” mentality, and I was thinking that maybe they were right. The hippies as I understood it were into dropping out of the status quo business world and going back to the land and being creative, making crafts and things like that. (And then there were the drugs and “free love”…) A few years later, I would still have been pretty young; I toyed with the idea of running away to Haight-Ashbury, the San Francisco mecca of the hippies. Maybe lots of young people of my day had such daydreams, and some did it.
Was I unhappy because my family life was not very great? The stereotypical image of a man going off to work in a business suit and tie with his fedora on his head, is somehow synonymous with, the iconic image of a person being stuck like a cog in a machine, no time for creativity or self-expression. Would I say that was how I saw my father? Well, not exactly, but maybe to some extent. Anyway, a feeling that business was corrupt had gotten planted in my mind. It would probably be over simplifying things to say that was the sum of how I thought of business after that, but it was lurking there.
When I was about 7 I remember Daddy coming in the door when he came home from work and running to greet him. He would holler out “Howdy” and I would run to see him as he would take off his coat and hat and shoes and put on his slippers - that is a happy memory. (That just sounds so 60s, like a scene from Leave it to Beaver!)
But somehow over the years my family life had become more and more disconnected. There was our increasing habit of eating in front of the television rather than at the dinner table. That disconnectedness left me vulnerable to the hippie culture. I know I was still grappling with this in college. I remember discussing it with one of my college profs.
I conclude that what other people are doing and thinking, their views toward work and leisure, collectively, “the culture”, has an affect on individuals and vice versa.
So, do I sound sort of academic? A little?
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Quilter's Poem
Love is a quilt - a quilt is love . . .
Both love and a quilt should be:
Soft enough to comfort you,
Bright enought to cheer you,
Generous enough to enfold you,
Light enough to let you move freely,
Strong enough to withstand adversity,
Durable enough to last a lifetime,
And given gladly, from the heart.
Author Unknown
Love is a quilt - a quilt is love . . .
Both love and a quilt should be:
Soft enough to comfort you,
Bright enought to cheer you,
Generous enough to enfold you,
Light enough to let you move freely,
Strong enough to withstand adversity,
Durable enough to last a lifetime,
And given gladly, from the heart.
Author Unknown
Thursday, October 2, 2008
I Hear You
Wondering wonders and worrying worries,
The wind blows through the willow,
Sometimes a whisper, sometimes wild,
And the willow bough bows.
The wind blows through the willow,
Sometimes a whisper, sometimes wild,
And the willow bough bows.
Songs in my head
Ever since I mentioned that I had bits of a certain song going through my head, I've had bits of other songs going through. Some not welcome. In the grocery store I heard I never promised you a rose garden. And the words "love shouldn't be so melancholy" keep running through. In the grocery it was Dolly Parton singing it.
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