Category Archives: Musings

More AUDACITY

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I was very confused by this passage on p. 177 of Senator Obama’s THE AUDACITY OF HOPE:

…FDR recognized that we would all be more likely to take risks in our lives — to change jobs or start new businesses or welcome competition from other countries — if we knew that we would have some measure of protection should we fail.

That’s what Social Security, the centerpiece of New Deal legislation, has provided — a form of social insurance that protects us from risk.

I guess I don’t understand this because the fact that I have a Social Security account that I’ve been paying into for the last umpty-ump years doesn’t enter into my calculus on whether to change jobs or anything else. Nor do I see how Social Security protects anyone from risk. If you lose your job, or your business fails, you don’t start drawing Social Security — in fact your overall Social Security status is hurt because you’re no longer paying into the system.

So if someone could explain that to me such that it makes sense, I’d appreciate it.

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More Books I Want to Read

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“So many books, so little time” has been a refrain in my life for years. My Christmas list is full of books, and I barely get through the ones I receive one year before the next set of gift books arrives. (I’d do better if I didn’t go to the library and pick up books from time to time.)

This evening I had a nice chat with John, a friend from church, and he told me about two books from the Barna Group that I added to my “want to read” list. The first is unChristian, and it presents “research into the perceptions of sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds” that “reveals that Christians have taken several giant steps backward” in terms of how we come across to nonbelievers. The second is Pagan Christianity, which traces the historical development of the church structure and service to see how different the current church is from the original church. Both of them sound fascinating to me.

In Heaven, after the feast is over, you can find me in the library. 😉

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Bankruptcy Notice

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Some disappointing news today: the furniture store I used to work at,* C.J. Woodmaster, closed this past weekend and will file for bankruptcy.

The announcement was in Saturday’s News & Observer (second item).

The CJ Woodmaster furniture stores in Raleigh, Cary and Fayetteville have closed. Those three stores, plus the one in Durham, which had already closed, will file separately for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a few weeks.

I drove by the plaza on Sunday afternoon and it looked dark, but it was just a little after what would’ve been opening time so I didn’t think much of it. I hadn’t seen the newspaper article; one of my old associates called me this evening and let me know.

That’s too bad. I worked there a little over a year — the longest I’d ever worked in retail — and knew they were having trouble when they let me go (right before Christmas last year). I’m sorry to hear that’s how it ended.

___
*Apologies to the grammar ninnies: “at which I used to work.”

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And now, it's a lawsuit…

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Just 3 days after I found my house on Google Map’s “Street View,” I saw that a family is trying to sue Google for posting the images of their house. As if anyone can’t drive by and see the house — so what if they use the Net to virtually “drive” through the neighborhood?

Okay, it was a little creepy to open Google and see my house. But not creepy enough to file a lawsuit over.

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I Saw My House on Google Today

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Not on the overhead satellite view in Google Maps, which is pretty neat, but on the “street view.” It puts you right out in front of the house: look, there’s the car in the driveway.

The picture looks to be 6-9 months old (the plants around the mailbox are different now and the neighbor’s house is no longer for sale), and apparently has been on the Net for about 6 weeks. Why our little suburb was important enough for them to photograph and upload, I don’t know; but if it’s any indication, I expect your house will be up there soon.

What a world we live in.

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Fixing Broken Links

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This weekend I worked on my monthly website update, between sessions of reading a high-priority manuscript for Baen and, for the university, editing a bunch of page-long program descriptions into single paragraphs each. Not only did I not get as far on the update as I would’ve liked, I got bogged down trying to fix a bunch of broken links.

I’m pretty certain I missed a few, and the question is whether I’ll be able to find and fix them before I go final with the April installment. I think I already know the answer to that one.

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Play Ball!

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Opening night of the new baseball season, with a stirring rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and a decent first pitch by President Bush — not a strike, but better too high than to throw it in the dirt.

Now, if only I didn’t have two simultaneous projects to work on so I could actually enjoy the game….

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Suburban Decline

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I sent this article — “On Borrowed Time,” by Michael Gecan (from Boston Review) — to the rest of the folks on the Public Arts Advisory Board, but other civic-minded folks would probably be interested in it as well.

It discusses urban decline, suburban growth, urban renewal, and suburban decline in the Chicago area; specifically, DuPage County. Given the growth issue here in Cary, NC, this passage caught my attention:

By the date of the meeting, however, the developers who had helped double DuPage’s population in just 30 years had run out of land. The income generated by their construction efforts had dwindled to a trickle. Education and public safety costs continued to climb.

His run-down of ways municipalities avoid reality — denial, gimmicks, blaming “others,” and withdrawal — was especially interesting. Good food for thought for anyone involved in city or county government … even those of us on advisory boards.

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Underperforming … the Story of My Life

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Best of the Web Today pointed us to this article from The Boston Globe, which reported that administrators, principals, and teachers in Massachusetts are agonizing over the impact to morale of labeling schools “underperforming” or “chronically underperforming” that generate poor test results.

We can only hope that those administrators, principals, and teachers agonize half as much over why their schools turn out so many graduates (and non-graduates) who read poorly, figure poorly, and reason poorly compared to the numbers of graduates they turn out who read, figure, and reason well. Inasmuch as (to give them the benefit of the doubt) they presumably are doing their best, they have a point: hanging a label promotes more shame than improvement, because the label itself doesn’t explain how to improve.

Who among us hasn’t experienced the difficulty of doing one’s best without knowing exactly what to do or how to do it? We might label ourselves as “underperforming” or worse, but if we’re serious about what we’re trying to do we will find someone to teach us what to do and how to do it well. If we’re not serious, we should look for something else to do.

My writing career is like that. Some things I do pretty well, others not so well at all. So I seek out people who, hopefully, will help me overcome my weaknesses; which is why, in six weeks, I’ll be in Utah at Dave Wolverton’s writing workshop.

I hope those educators can do the same: admit their weaknesses, and find real experts who can help them overcome those weaknesses. But as long as these things have been going on (far longer than the decade-and-a-half since my book came out), I don’t have a lot of hope.

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The Season of My Discontent

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Karina Fabian posted an interesting item on her blog about teaching children to appreciate what they have. She wrote, “It seems to me that the more people have, the easier it is to feel dissatisfied.”

I think she’s on to something: it sure seems that the more we have, the more we want. We find it hard to emulate St. Paul’s “I have learned to be content” attitude.

Then again, if everyone were completely content, not much would get done. A lot of ambition and achievement comes from wanting more and being willing to work for it. (It’s that last item that’s the sticking point for most of us; the wanting is easy, the working is not.)

So perhaps, following the 3rd chapter of Ecclesiastes, under the sun there is a time for discontent. It might even be included in the “time to break down, and a time to build up.”

And does anyone besides me hear “Turn, Turn, Turn” in their head when they read that chapter of Ecclesiastes?

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