May 2020 - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Lydster: balancing act- what to share

more photos!

The primary balancing act in this here blog involves my daughter. When she was really young, I would put photos of her. Eventually, though, that seemed to be potentially unwise because people are strange.

Even early on, it was also true in the written content. I wasn’t about to write something that would potentially embarrass her years later. Of course, it’s always tricky to ascertain what will mortify a teenager.

I have several photo albums of my life prior to getting married in 1999. But I have none of the pictures from this century in books. However, I do have the pictures. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

My daughter was allegedly helping me to clean the office when she got distracted by the photo books. My, she could be brutal about a pose I made, or a look I had back in the day. It was humbling, to say the least.

But she can be rather unforgiving of the way she looked when she was younger. I think she’s very cute. So does her mother. But she seems to think otherwise. Who’s right here, her or her totally unbiased parents?

Clean up time

In the months before I left work, I found a treasure trove of emailed photos there. I sent them to my personal account. Now, in the midst of purging said emails – from 10,7000 down to 4,000 so far – I’ve decided to use some of those pictures here, each month because I can. They’ll be in no particular order.

The photo below is from July of 2007. We were visiting a married couple in the Binghamton, NY area. She was in our wedding in 1999. We were in their wedding in 2002. That’s our kids playing in the sprinkler, my daughter to the left.

I think the picture above was in Oneonta later that summer. Perhaps at Brooks BBQ? Maybe somewhere else? It doesn’t much matter. The kid’s cute, though, right?

A global ceasefire: a way to remember

blind, deluded militarism

global ceasefire Several years ago, I came across a list of American Military Deaths in the Iraq war since May 1st, 2003. Though the list hasn’t been updated since early 2012, and the count since mid-2016, it’s still meaningful. This guy from North Carolina was killed by an improvised explosive device. That guy from Texas died from “wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with small-arms fire.”

There is something very powerful about seeing the specifics. These people who died aren’t just numbers. They are spouses, siblings, sons, and daughters. My opposition to that war, from before the beginning is well-documented in this blog.

What happens next?

Will the current regime participate in a global ceasefire or more lost wars? As the subtitle of the article reads: “Like his predecessors from Truman to Obama, Trump has been caught in the trap of America’s blind, deluded militarism.”

“Undercover of highly publicized redeployments of small numbers of troops from a few isolated bases in Syria and Iraq, Trump has actually expanded U.S. bases and deployed at least 14,000 more U.S. troops to the greater Middle East, even after the U.S. bombing and artillery campaigns that destroyed Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria ended in 2017. Under the U.S. agreement with the Taliban, Trump has finally agreed to withdraw 4,400 troops from Afghanistan by July, still leaving at least 8,600 behind to conduct airstrikes, ‘kill or capture’ raids and an even more isolated and beleaguered military occupation.

“Now a compelling call by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a global ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic has given Trump a chance to gracefully deescalate his unwinnable wars – if indeed he really wants to.” I assume it’s harder to fight a war when your hands are slippery from hand soap.

There was a recent 60 Minutes report about the military during the pandemic. Exercises were canceled. Extra precautions were taken not to infect servicepeople. Fighting an “unseen enemy” has put the brakes on many activities. Perhaps it is a sign of what we should do going forward.

Or not.

Open up houses of worship?

some church music

open the church doors Catbird asked me a question:

I just saw da prez say he’d overrule governors if they didn’t open up houses of worship this weekend. A legal analyst in the same BBC broadcast said he had no constitutional or legal authority to do this.

I suppose said houses of worship will decide for themselves.

I know you’re actively involved in your church, so I’m interested in your opinion on whether God cares WHERE people pray.

My understanding is that even in the strictest of interpretations it doesn’t matter more THAT one prays than where one does it.

What do you think?

My first response, I’m afraid, was lacking in Christian charity.

I will say that whoever has been advising “da prez” on these things has picked the confluence of several religious traditions. Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost in the Jewish tradition, is May 28-30. The Christian iteration of Pentecost is May 31. Ramadan ended the evening of May 23 for Muslims. And of course, Memorial Day begins the secular religion of the barbecue.

But, of course, it is false piety on his part. He can’t mandate it, but that’s not the point. He’s stirred up the base. “These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united. “The people are demanding to go to church and synagogue, go to their mosque,” he said.

Sure you can theoretically bring churches/synagogues/mosques back, with 10 people, socially distant, masks. Maybe more people in cathedrals and larger structures. No way you safely have a traditional choir. At my church, online services even offer the opportunity for communion.

Connecting remotely

I found this posted by a choir director of mine from a quarter-century ago. He quoted Tom Trenney, Minister of Music at First-Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln, NE. “Our church is open. Open to patience and wisdom. Open to science and common sense. Open to discovering new ways to connect when it is unsafe to ‘do it the way we’ve always done it.’

“Open to saving lives by giving up some of the traditions and sacraments we hold dear. Open to wearing masks to show we love our neighbor. Open to keeping the sanctuary closed so more of us can come back together safely when it is time. Our church is open to following Jesus who, himself, spent time in the wilderness. We will remain open, and someday, by the grace of God, we will be able to worship together again.”

Or, as someone else noted recently, “If the only place you can worship your god is in a building specially built for it, you have a very small god.”

Obviously, we need some church music:

Date to Church – the Replacements
I Met Her In Church – the Box Tops
Church – Lyle Lovett

And some more religion tunes:

Have a Talk with God – Stevie Wonder
Down to the River to Pray – Alison Krauss
Wayfaring Stranger – Rhiannon Giddens
Personal Jesus – Depeche Mode
(What If God Was) One of Us? – Joan Osborne

Maybe a service:
Zoom Church – Saturday Night Live

“My cardinal song is a call to you”

Speak their names

cardinal male After my father-in-law, Richard Powell died on April 22, I received over 125 comments on Facebook. That was very nice. My wife isn’t on Facebook, and I don’t blame her, frankly.

She received about 30 sympathy cards. You know, the ones you buy in a store, sent via the United States Postal Service. Many were from members of our church, and the rest from friends and present or former colleagues. Quite a few included lengthy hand-written notes of condolences. It was very clear that the messages were based on their own experiences of grief.

One, in particular, included an extended note recommending the book Healing After Grief by Martha Whitmore Hickman, which I was able to download for free from here.

Hickman writes about the time after the services are over – and for my FIL, the services haven’t even taken place. “Now there are spaces in the mind, spaces in the days and nights. Often, when we least expect it, the pain and the preoccupation come back, and back—sometimes like the rolling crash of an ocean wave, sometimes like the slow ooze after a piece of driftwood is lifted and water and sand rise to claim their own once more.”

I didn’t leave; love never dies

Another enclosure in a sympathy card was two poems, Speak their names and Red Feathered Soul. The latter was written by Elle Bee.

You might think cynically about Red Feathered Soul, considering it mawkishly sentimental, and I understand that.
“My cardinal song is a call to you
To tell you that I miss you too.”

But the day after my FIL died, my wife and one of her brothers saw a cardinal. At least a half dozen times in the two weeks after he died, my wife and I saw a cardinal in our backyard when usually we see one or two per year. And neither my wife or I had actually heard a cardinal sing in our yard until this month. Make of it what you will.

Today would have been Richard Powell’s 84th birthday.

Being a good black person with a gun

the perception of arms and race

art of the shot — Photo courtesy of the Department of Defense

Annoyingly frequently, a story will catch my attention in the “while black” section of the news. In this case, “sleeping while black.”

A black woman was shot and killed after Kentucky police entered her home as she slept, her family says. “Louisville Metro Police Department officers were looking for a suspect at the wrong home when they shot and killed Breonna Taylor, according to a lawsuit.” Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who had a licensed firearm, fired his gun when he thought someone was breaking in. He was arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder on a police officer.

People have asked me if I would feel safer being a good black person with a gun. Hell, no.

Back in 2018, a black man killed by police in Alabama mall was shot from behind. “Emantic ‘EJ’ Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., 21, was shot when police officers responding to reports of gunfire at the mall mistook him for the gunman. According to witnesses, Bradford was helping other shoppers to safety.”

That same year, there was an interesting article in The New York Times. ‘I Am the “Good Guy With a Gun’: Black Gun Owners Reject Stereotypes, Demand Respect. “After recent incidents in which police officers shot black men who tried to stop a shooting, African-American gun owners told us how they navigate being wrongly perceived as a threat.”

In the second half of 2018 alone, at least three black men in the United States had been shot by police in separate incidents while trying, according to witnesses, to stop an active shooting. Jordan Klepper, in his short-lived series, produced a piece, Open Carrying While White vs. Open Carrying While Black.

Philando Castile, RIP

I’m still pained, and slackjawed by the death of Philando Castile in 2017, a black man with a legally-owned gun, who announces in a traffic stop that he has a weapon in the vehicle and ends up dead.

This story is interesting: Racism and the black hole of gun control in the US. “Would tighter gun laws help protect African Americans or make them more vulnerable to racism and police brutality? Charles E Cobb Jr notes of the civil rights movement that “if not for the threat of gunfire, many more peaceful protests – and possibly the movement itself – would have been silenced by violence.”

Still, the perception of arms and race are quite different. And historical. Check out The Racist Origins of US Gun Control Laws Designed To Disarm Slaves, Freedmen, And African-Americans by Steve Ekwall.

In 2016, Agent Orange encouraged supporters to “watch” polls on election day. And similar noise is being made this year. Yet the tiny New Black Panther Party doing it in previous years was seen as terrorism, not Second Amendment freedom. What’s the difference here? It’s as simple as black and white.