:: Ray's Periodic Rantings ::

:: Monday, December 30, 2002 ::

Florida
Forget the beach. I am at my biomom's ranch in Central Florida at the moment, about as far from saltwater as you can be here. I just spent a sunny day hammering staples into a cow fence and helping (watching, mostly) load two pigs into a trailer. After several weeks of the cold, short days of winter in Chicago, the longer, brighter, warmer days are like a shot in the arm. I mean, it is 5:15 local time and the sun is still up! Woohoo! It is nice and quiet here, too, perfect for some R&R. Chicago may be home, but Bartow is a nice place to visit.
:: Ray 4:25 PM [+] ::
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Drivers Wanted
Last night I saw the best damned VW commercial ever. Thanks to the miracle that is Tivo, I was able to back up and watch it again...three times.

Set to the tune of ELO's Mr. Blue Sky, it showed scenes from the life of a youngish guy (who looked a bit like Beck) working in a large corporation. It is beautifully shot and edited, using techniques such as quick repetition and split screen to show how he passes his days more or less identically, not particularly happily. The result is more like a short film than a commercial. It had me guessing until right before the end, "what is this commercial for?" Just when I had realized it had to be VW, the choral end of the song kicked in, accompanying the visual of several inches of curved convertible roof going down, looking up at the young man, staring in awe, as the car the camera was apparently in drove away, and "New Beetle Convertible - Coming Soon" appeared at the bottom of the screen. We never saw the car.

I have driven VWs for most of my life. I plan to continue doing so. They break. But they are a delight to drive and they have character that Japanese cars can only aspire to. And so do their ads.

PS I must add, to my dismay, that Germany is woefully behind both America and Japan in cupholder technology. Do Germans not drink Big Gulps in their cars?
:: Ray 12:54 PM [+] ::
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Pageantry and Trivia
Last night I attended Redmoon Theater's annual Winter Pageant. It is not a Christmas pageant, but rather a celebration of the Solstice and the coming of Winter. Redmoon is an unusual troupe that works with puppets, large and small. They bring in artists and kids to produce this annual treat. This year's pageant involved a mother and daughter with a lot of puppet babies, a quest for electric repairs, the machinations of the electric company, and the return of the Winter Queen from vacation. But it isn't the story that is delightful so much as the inventive stage, clever props (my favorite being the cars that turned into cell phones several years ago), and creative shadow effects that make it such a wonder of a show from year to year. It plays for one more weekend. I highly recommend it.

This morning I heard this story on NPR, about the making of the TV special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The gem of info in the story that really made me grin was that Thurl Ravenscroft, the baritone that sang, "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch," is the same guy that did the voice of Tony the Tiger ("They're grrrrrreat!"). Of course the voices match, but I had never made the connection, and it is a fun one, if you ask me.

Happy Monday!
:: Ray 12:26 PM [+] ::
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Gutters and Cookies

Last night I performed a time-honored yearly midwest homeowner's ritual. I cleaned my gutters. It had been on my mind all autumn. It wasn't the ideal time for it, being cold and gray and getting dark, but I put myself in this position, having waited too long. I just seemed to have better things to do on all the warm, sunny autumn days this year. Fathom that. Exactly as I had imagined, the gutters were full of wet, decomposing leaves. The only good way I have found to get them out of there is to scoop them by hand. Cold, wet, muck. Whoooweee! This homeowner thing can be fun!

On a completely different note, one of our vendors at work sent the office what I have to describe as an impressively sized tin of Royal Dansk butter cookies (the good ones). I really never have seen one this big before. It has the girth of one of those huge tins of popcorn and almost half the height, and it is packed to the brim, 4 lbs, 6 oz worth. They will get inhaled before you know it, so I am going to go get some more right now.
:: Ray 1:06 PM [+] ::
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Religion Rant

I was in my car the other night, listening to the radio. Chicago radio can be pretty lame sometimes, and I found myself surfing around the low end of the dial, looking for something interesting. I ended up listening to a call-in show on a Christian radio station. What I heard was indeed interesting, but also disturbing.

Dr. Lewis Drummond, a divinity professor at Samford University, was being interviewed. The core of his message was that evangelical Christians must be more than just an audience passively observing their ministers in church once a week. They must be the ministers, evangelizing those around them, and their ministers in turn must be equippers, preparing them to do so. Further, it is not enough for them to thrust the gospel in front of those they are evangelizing, but rather they must know them be willing to listen to them and meet them on their own terms, with rational discussion of ideas.

I found this to be a valid, even profound idea, and entirely appropriate for Christians, the intended audience. To be sure, it was a bit patronizing, the notion that you want to get to know your evangelical target, not because you have any real interest in his or her beliefs, but because you are looking for the most optimum angle from which to introduce your own. What really offended me, though, was the pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo that Dr. Drummond wrapped it in.

The discussion was entitled something like "Evangelizing in a Post-Modern World." In order to explain what he meant by this, Dr. Drummond first defined the modern age as the era in which truths have been ideas that were demonstrated with physical evidence. He said that this notion has given us scientific and technical and medical progress, and made our civilization what it is today. He called these truths absolute truths -- and here is where he raised my hair -- and compared them to the absolute truths that all Christians believe in, those in the bible.

First, there are no absolute truths in science. Ideas are only believed to be true or not if they are proven or disproven, respectively. New evidence changes the ideas. Absolute faith in the face of new and contrary evidence undermines the scientific method and produces fiction, which won’t hold up a 20 story steel structure, refine oil into gasoline, or cure a disease. Second, the idea that the bible contains absolute spiritual truths would be disputed by the vast majority of the people on this planet -- the buddhists, the hindus, the muslims, the sikhs, countless other faiths, me -- and its text and ideas are not even agreed upon among Christians themselves.

Then the good doctor went on to define post-modernism as a rejection of, “absolute,” truths in favor of personal ones. He implied that post-modernists believed it was perfectly valuable to discard established scientific and technical and, of course, biblical truths, and instead choose to believe what they wish. His target here was clearly the new age movement and its acceptance of the rejection of established religion in favor of personal, often unorthodox beliefs.

As an artist, I can almost accept this definition as it applies to the art world. Post-modernism celebrates unorthodoxy. But I am certainly unfamiliar with any post-modern physicists or engineers, flaunting their disregard for what I would call established truths and promoting fiction. Certainly there are constantly people introducing new ideas in these fields, but like I said before, this is part of the scientific method. Evidence for these new ideas is either reproducible or not, and the ideas sink or swim accordingly. This is hardly post-modern.

To condemn this definition of postmondernism in the area of religion, though, sticks in my craw. Religion and spirituality should be personal things, not subjects of dogma and bureaucracy. A story about a guy who pissed off the Romans and got himself nailed to a cross 2000 years ago doesn't hold a lot of meaning for me. My own blend of Native American and Buddhist beliefs is the first thing that has ever made sense to me. The idea of spirit embodied in the energies of the earth and the sky and the seasons that we experience year after year, the idea of the world as a place where our souls come again and again to learn, these ideas helped me retain my sanity in the weeks and months after the death of my wife...I can’t think of a much stronger test than that.

I believe in freedom of religion and I would fight for that right. I try to respect other people's faiths and regard them as every bit as valid as my own. Ultimately, I don’t think that any of us are even capable of understanding the true nature of the spritual realm, of knowing the true face of God, and it is awfully egotistical of anyone to assume that their beliefs are the only possible ones that could be correct. As a result, I am disturbed when I see people use pseudo-intellectualism to justify their complete disregard for other people’s faiths.

We live in a spiritually pluralistic, heterogeneous society. We ought to celebrate that instead of plotting how to make it a homogenous one.
:: Ray 4:21 PM [+] ::
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The party went well (see the 12/6 entry). I had a good time, and everyone that came seemed to, too. It seemed like a very appropriate way to mark the occasion. The field-style strawberry margaritas went over pretty well. The recipe is pretty easy: fill a vessel with ice, squeeze in the juice of 1/3 of a lime, add a shot of good tequila, then fill the rest of the vessel with Jumex strawberry nectar (good stuff). Enjoy. I did.

So it has been a year. In some ways, the whole, wonderful year and a half that I had with her has begun to grow distant, like a dream. At the same time, every night, when I go to sleep and she isn't there next to me, it is painfully obvious that she is gone. I miss her. Life goes on, but I miss her.
:: Ray 1:10 AM [+] ::
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I have a busy weekend ahead of me. Saturday I keep fire for a sweat lodge and then enter a second one. It will be a long day spent outside in the cold and snow. We have the white stuff on the ground in the Chicago area, and if temperatures stay as low as they have been, it won't be going away any time soon.

The lodges are a Native American purification ritual. Bear Spirit Medicine Lodge hosts them monthly in Deerfield, IL, and they are open to all who wish to attend. If you are interested, please ask me about them.

Last night I bought insulated boots for the occasion, the first pair I have owned for a long, long time. They are warm and comfortable and waterproof. I feel like going outside and jumping around in the snow a bit, just to initiate them!

Most of the rest of the weekend I will be getting the house ready for an open house I am throwing on Tuesday, December 10, the first anniversary of Mary's death. Although I plan to observe a moment of silence at 9:37 pm, I hope to make it an otherwise upbeat occasion. I will be merrily making and serving my field-style strawberry margaritas, as served at Burning Man this year. I plan to get a bit loopy on them, myself.
:: Ray 2:56 PM [+] ::
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