Author Archives: The Night Writer

A bad week for human nature

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What a week for the misanthropes, eh? They’ve got to be hoisting a few glasses of grape (bitter as they may be) this holiday weekend and smugly toasting their own validation from recent events. Whether it’s the de-evolution of the rule of law into the law of the jungle in a major cultural center in just 48 hours (how’s that for “punctuated equilibrium”) to fear and rumor stampeding people to their deaths or to gas lines, it’s a great time to be smarter than everyone else. Ah, human nature – you gotta love it!

And as if the main course isn’t satisfying enough, there’s also the floor show — a cavalcade of finger-pointing, ass-covering and political hay-making all high-kicking across the room — all while bodies still bob in the waters of Pontchartrain. Human nature, again!

For that matter, they may still be pulling bodies out of the Tigris. The disaster in Iraq was one of those things that happens around the world, like a famine or an overloaded ferry capsizing, that makes us, in our human nature, say “I’m glad nothing like that can happen here” — until Americans riot over cheap computers or the levee breaks.

When it happens close to home there is nothing so predictable as the cries that that the whole situation was, itself … predictable. Yesterday Jeff Jarvis tapped his baton on an operetta entitled “More than a tragedy – a scandal“, launching commenter choruses of “they should have seen it coming” (they did, but – darn that human nature – didn’t leave), global warming (it was a hot day in Galveston in 1900, too) and “Bush was on vacation” (as was Congress and 90% of the French, for that matter, which is every bit as relevant) and it’s all Bush’s fault (because we can’t get troops and supplies into place overnight in a disaster area the size of Britain that has little functioning infrastructure). Of course, that’s all human nature, too.

Just as it is human nature for certain criminal elements to always try to get away with whatever they can — even in ideal conditions — when they think no one is watching or can do anything about it. How shocking is it, then, to see this sort rise up and run amuck in the absence or abdication of most controls? It does make one wonder, however, if missions to feed and deliver supplies to the weak in New Orleans will resemble our efforts to get food past the warlords and to the hungry in Somalia.

Hurricane Katrina is a large-scale natural disaster exacerbated by the usual dark comedy of human error. The current situation is not a Republican or Democratic Party failing (it would even happen to the Green Party if they ever get their hands on the levers, which they will no doubt use this event to try and do). It is a failing of our human nature that leads us time after time to choose short-term gain or convenience over the long-term benefit even when faced with a demonstrably “when” not “if” scenario. You know, scenarios like a sub-sealevel city in a hurricane zone, or a densely populated major metropolitan area resting on a fault line … or the implosion of the Social Security system.

All in all, it’s enough to make you pull the covers over your head and wait for God to hit “reboot” … except for the better angels of our human nature that draw us together and lead us to pray and to give, to go out of our way to help the suffering. It’s what drives the majority of us to say, “What can I do to help?”

Granted, there will also be the minority who ask, “What can I get out of this?” or who delight in celebrating how much like animals we humans are, or can be. I guess I understand their point … hearing or reading them tends to make me start to feel a little hairy myself.

NOTE: Earlier I mentioned the Comments section to the Jeff Jarvis post. While there was a lot of nuttery going on there, responses by people identified as Eileen and Petro were excellent and bear reading for their insight and ability to focus on the real issues at hand. Along that line, please read this link from that section that provides an insider’s detailed explanation of the logistical hurdles an operation of this kind entails.

Hurricane Katrina Blog For Relief Day

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There was one time I thought there was a good chance the weather was going to kill me. I was stuck in a line of cars on Highway 35W in Iowa during a blizzard with white-out conditions, waiting while a Highway Department snow plow cleared a path for us to turn around so we could try and make it back to Clear Lake. When I heard a distinctive crashing sound behind me I didn’t even check my rearview mirror, but pulled forward and to the left as far as I could. When I did look back it was just in time to see a semi pushing two cars through the space where I had been and into the ditch.

After I got out and checked to see if there was anything that could be done for the people in the ditch (there wasn’t) and then ran to the Highway Patrol car 50 feet away where the trooper was still oblivious to what had happened, I tried to make it back to my own car. Ten feet away from it I suddenly couldn’t breathe and almost passed out. I thought if I tipped over there – on the far side of my car from where everything was now going on – I might be frozen before anyone noticed my lump in the snow. Somehow I made it into my car, and that night — Christmas Eve, 1984 — I slept on the floor of the Zion Lutheran Church in Clear Lake with a hundred or so other stranded travelers, most of whom snored. I was tired, shaken and uncomfortable, but I knew that at some point I was going to get home.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be lying there and not have a home to go to.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be lying there and not even have a home town to go to.

At least I wasn’t hungry. Shortly after our group of wayfaring strangers arrived in the church its members started showing up with hams, turkeys, pies, cakes, mashed potatoes, bread — everything brought warm from their own holiday tables, perhaps even snatched from under the noses of their own families, and carried to us who were hungry, and we were fed. I think I started to think better of the world then, and I know that my own steps along a certain spiritual path — tentative until then — started to quicken.

I don’t have to tell you what has happened in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. I don’t have to tell you to give. I’m confident you’ll understand and empathize with the fear, the uncertainty and the desperation of those who have found a place to lie down (not necessarily to sleep) and are asking, “What do I do now?” I can tell you there are three organizations that I have some experience with and can recommend to you if you know you want to help but aren’t sure where to give.

The Salvation Army – I know the work they did in helping Grand Forks recover from its flood a few years ago, and I know of no group more dedicated and efficient in meeting desperate needs regardless of the creed, color or condition of the people who need help.

Samaritan’s Purse – our family packs several boxes every Christmas for their Operation Christmas Child program and I know the SP organization is masterful at the complex logistics involved in gathering, shipping and delivering materials to where they are needed. Their experience, and the experience of the Salvation Army, will be invaluable in this present situation.

Soldier’s Angels – this group is new to me, but we have adopted a soldier and I’ve been impressed with how this organization has grown up around a simple, heart-felt idea. I have heard that their latest idea is to reach out to the families of National Guard troops from the effected states who thought they were on the front lines, only to have to worry now about the homefront.

Whatever you do, I know it will make a difference and probably in ways you may never ever realize.

Also, see Instapundit’s flood-aid roundup and Technorati’s Hurricane Katrina tags.

The worst U.S. natural disaster ever?

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Heard Hugh Hewitt this evening describing Hurricane Katarina as potentially the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Katarina’s body count may well turn out to be staggering, but there are a couple of large events sitting at or near the top of the charts. The Johnstown Flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on May 31, 1839, for example, killed more than 2200.

Johnstown was a growing and thriving steel town built, unfortunately, on a flood plain, downstream from the derelict South Fork Dam. There was always talk about the dam giving way some day, but no one ever tried to do much about it. When the flood struck, survivors took to their attics and bodies were still being found months, and in some cases, years after the flood. It took five years for the town to be rebuilt.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), however, the biggest U.S. natural disaster was the Galveston hurricane on September 8, 1900 that killed a reported 8,000 people. You can find accounts and photos of the disaster here, here and here.

At the time, Galveston was the jewel of Southern commerce, an emerging economic power and the wealthiest city in Texas. It’s deepwater channel made it the most important seaport in Texas through which 70% of the nation’s cotton crop passed, and it was the first city in Texas to have electricity and telephones. It was also a popular tourist attraction for it’s warm, shallow Gulf waters. In fact, it shallow waters had led some experts to predict that the city was hurricane-proof, and a seawall was thought to be unnecessary. Despite telegrams and warnings of severe weather passed on from Cuba and Florida, the inhabitants were unconcerned; hurricanes had always passed them by before.

On the morning of September 8 many people were even down on the beach marveling at the impressive waves that were breaking. At the height of the storm that night the entire island would be underwater; nearly a quarter of the islands population perished and every home destroyed. Modern reconstructions of the storm’s fury calculate that it was a Class 4 hurricane with 130 mph winds and a storm surge more than 15 feet high. While the city was rebuilt (this time with a seawall) over the next decade and regained some of its prosperity, it became secondary to nearby Houston.

So let’s see if we can piece this recipe together. Take a noticeable natural feature, such as a flood plain, a sea-level island or even a city 8 feet below sea-level; mix in human hubris; add water; stir. Well thank goodness we won’t let something like this happen again.

What did you say – something about a San Andreas fault? Silly. It’s George Bush’s fault.

Filings: Is your God from around here?

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I once overheard part of a conversation where a young college man, fresh from his Comparative Religion class, was explaining to my wife and daughter that, according to his professor, Christianity is a Western religion. My ladies were politely having none of it since they’ve got a good understanding of both Christianity and geography.

I suppose that the professor could consider that the Middle Eastern religions – Christianity, Judiaism and Islam – are “western” in the sense that they are not from as far east as Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism, or that Christianity and Judiaism have had more influence in the West. Nevertheless, whether you consult Genesis or Rand-McNally, Christianity is an Eastern religion.

This is even more clear philosophically when you consider the religions of Greece and Rome, the root cultures of Western civilization. The Greeks and Romans shared the same cast of multiple gods only with different names. It should also be noted that this pantheon (look it up, homeschoolers) consisted of beings who were lustful, quick-tempered, deceitful, vain, petty and untrustworthy. Sounds like the cast for the next reality program, Survivor: Mount Olympus. In short, these were gods made in the image of humans. If you go further West into old Europe and Britain you find even more polytheistic paganism.

The Judeo-Christian and Islamic revelation of one God, perfect and all-powerful who requires not just worship but the pursuit of moral excellence (and provides the framework for doing so) is a radically different – and un-Western – spiritual proposition. In fact, it might be an interesting exercise for you and your children to imagine and discuss the effects on individual behavior and society of trying to serve arbitrary, unpredictable gods who were little more than immortal and more self-indulgent versions of yourself.

Another point to ponder is that polytheism hasn’t gone away. Today our worldly culture goes through incredible contortions to deny or ignore the first commandment. Science and law strive to claim there is no God while philosophy and the entertainment industry promote that there really are all kinds of gods and they all should be recognized the same in the name of diversity. Meanwhile law, science, philosophy, entertainment, politics and others all have their enthusiastic disciples eager to evangelize our children.

Sometimes it’s through head on confrontation, other times by a slow and steady erosion of relativity and rationalization aimed at sowing and watering doubt. Often it is the intellectual seduction of a respected teacher or professor saying, “Oh, surely you’re too smart to still hold those outmoded beliefs. Now let me show you how we turn gold into lead.”

At some point our children will face all of these and more. Their ultimate defense is not in simply knowing the Bible, but in knowing God. Others will try to turn God and Christ into mere concepts, and arguments about concepts are rarely productive and often dangerous. A young person who has sought a relationship with Christ, experienced a revelation from God, applied these to his or her life and achieved a noticeable result is young person who has a strong foundation to counter any argument or doubt.

Our children may feel strongly about something, but strong feelings are easy to come by, and are on every side of an argument. A personal testimony is virtually indisputible. If your child can say “God said this, I believed it, acted on it, and this happened in my life,” there is little anyone can say to refute it (especially if you have the x-rays to prove it!) Being able to recite scripture isn’t a bad thing; being able to apply scripture, however, will change the world.

Time Enough to Blog; sci-fi reflection

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I came across this quiz yesterday while on my way to somewhere else and almost passed over it. There was a time in my life – mainly my college days – when I read a lot of science fiction/fantasy books. I had more than a passing familiarity with masters such as Ellison, Zelazny, Herbert, Asimov and Howard. While there was certainly an element of the fantastical to their work, what drew me to them was the commentary and views of reality woven through their works. At the top of my list, however, was Robert Heinlein. Interestingly enough, here’s the results of my “What Science Fiction Author Are You?” quiz:

I am:

Robert A. Heinlein

Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.

Which science fiction writer are you?

My first semester in college a friend told me I had to read Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love, which had come out a few year earlier (1973) and was in paperback. Next to Wouk’s The Winds of War I think TEFL was the fattest paperback I’d ever picked up. It was also a tremendous story, telling the tale of Lazarus Long, a man some 2000 years old (not to be confused with the Mel Brooks-Carl Reiner creation). It was thought-provoking, even startling, look at the nature of time and social and sexual mores. The sprawling tale itself featured several other stories within it that could have stood on their own as short stories or novellas. And as an extra treat there were two interludes – squeezed in like frosting between layers of a cake – that were described as excerpts from the notebooks of Lazarus Long: pithy nuggets of wisdom and observations of life. From the obvious and mundane — small change may often be found under seat cushions — to the outlandishly practical — Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect — my friends and I would quote these back and forth to each other and most remain with me to this day.

One of the recurring theme’s in Heinlein’s work is that of the individual vs. the mind-numbing mass and his iconoclastic zeal for creativity and independence appealed to me. I can’t say how much his views shaped my opinions, or if I liked his work because it agreed with my own outlook, but I know that all of us become who we are because of the people we meet and the books we read; at the least Heinlein helped articulate for me what I may already have sensed.

Eventually he and I “parted ways”. His later writings – like those of Ayn Rand – ultimately exalted the individual to the point of nihilism, disregarding responsibility to others (at least in my opinion). His views of religion and the supernatural tickled my agnostic sensibilities for a time, but I ultimately came to see that what he viewed as unreal and intangible could be very real and tangible. Lazarus Long said, “What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what ‘the stars foretell,’ avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable ‘verdict of history’ — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!” I found there was truth in between every decimal place of his facts, and this portion of his “gospel” I rejected.

Reviewing the results of this quiz, however, brought back many of those Lazarus Long statements to my memory – along with a smile. Many still do a good job of summarizing some of my beliefs. Here are some I think you’ll enjoy:

The Leading Man Quiz: Jimmy Stewart? Well, yeah-eah

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Can you imagine that, Harvey?

Jimmy Stewart
You scored 23% Tough, 9% Roguish, 61% Friendly, and 9% Charming!






Link: The Classic Leading Man Test written by gidgetgoes on OkCupid Free Online Dating

You are the fun and friendly boy next door, the classic nice guy who still manages to get the girl most of the time. You’re every nice girl’s dreamboat, open and kind, nutty and charming, even a little mischievous at times, but always a real stand up guy. You’re dependable and forthright, and women are drawn to your reliability, even as they’re dazzled by your sense of adventure and fun. You try to be tough when you need to be, and will gladly stand up for any damsel in distress, but you’d rather catch a girl with a little bit of flair. Your leading ladies include Jean Arthur and Donna Reed, those sweet girl-next-door types.

Find out what kind of classic dame you’d make by taking the Classic Dames Test.

Wild Kingdom

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I like living indoors. That, and eating regularly, are two big reasons why I continue to work. Therefore I can understand on a certain level the desire of wild animals to move into my house. What I can’t understand is the recent appeal. Last Sunday it was a gopher. Last night it was a bat.

Our bedroom is on the second floor and we have a large awning over the window. In the dark I’m sure the space under the awning seems very cavelike. It’s also an old house and the top of the screen in the window doesn’t always stay in its track. Rather than find a replacement for the screen, I use the Red Green approach of strategically applied duck tape. About 1:00 a.m. my wife and I heard a tell-tale skritch at the screen, followed moments later by the screen popping and the sound of leathery wings in the room. I turned the nightstand lamp on to reveal a rather large specimen of a brown bat with a wingspan a little bigger than my hand, circling the room with lots of sudden changes in altitude.

Suddenly in the middle of our own Wild Kingdom episode, my wife claims the role of Marlin Perkins: “I’ll stay in the bed with the sheet pulled up to my eyes while John wrestles the beast into submission and counts its teeth.”

The first order of business is for me to commando-crawl over to the window to raise the screen in the hopes the bat will go out the same way it came in. Yeah, I know the bat doesn’t want to run into me anymore than I want to run into it, but it’s hard to maintain good posture when a crazed creature is zooming around at the level of your adam’s apple. Next, get on over to the small closet door and close it and the door to the master bath, and then into the walk-in closet to turn the light on. Past experience has shown us that if you give a bat a dark place filled with lots of clothes to hide in, that’s where it will go. This time it is too easy, as after about a minute of doing laps around the room the bat finally got itself lined up properly with the open window and was long gone.

We get about one bat episode a summer and I suppose I should try a more effective approach with the window screen, but I have to admit that this is kind of fun and a good source of material. The first time we had a bat in the house it came in through my youngest daughter’s window. She started crying about a bug in her room, which sent my wife in that direction, rather grumpily, wondering why a bug was such a big deal – until she opened the door and turned on the light. Stalemate. My wife wasn’t going in, my daughter wasn’t coming out, and the bat kept circling. I went in, scooped my daughter and my wife slammed the door as I came out and we left the situation for daylight.

The next day I went in with my leather work gloves, a broom and a dustpan and finally determined the bat must be hiding in the closet. I opened the windows and tried to make enough noise and commotion to flush the critter out, but it was hanging tough out of sight. My wife came in and started to go through the closet one hanger at a time, pulling out the clothing and shaking it while I stood ready to pounce on whatever moved. About a third of the way through the closet she shook a dress and the bat dropped out … and slid down my wife’s bare leg (she was wearing shorts) to the floor. I really wish I could have admired her bat dance in greater detail but I stayed focused on my mission and clapped the broom down on top of the creature. Once the secondary tremors had faded my wife grabbed an empty trash can and put it over the bat as I removed the broom; it was soon returned to the wild via the window.

The episode is one of our favorite family stories, and we’ve since learned that my wife’s bat dance is dramatically different from her spider dance. But that’s a story for another day.

Update:

When it comes to animal control problems, what are a few bats and gophers around the house, anyway? At least I don’t have to feed them. One man is going to great and hilarious lengths to keep his birdfeeder from becoming a squirrel’s answer to Old Country Buffet, and you can read about it here.

Win that hamburger eating contest, there are children starving in Africa!

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Last Sunday the StarTribune’s OpEx section featured two photos side by side that the paper had downloaded from its news service. The photos had come one right after the other and though they were for unrelated stories the editors couldn’t help but notice the juxtaposition: one photo was of a starving child from (I believe) Niger and the other was of competitors chowing down at a hamburger eating contest.

My copy of that section has long since wrapped fish, but my recollection of the text is that the Strib mainly pointed out the interesting coincidence of the order in which the photos arrived and let the contrast pretty much speak for itself. No doubt there may also have been an implied message of, “look how decadent – no wonder they hate us,” but maybe I’ve just become sensitized and cynical. My own thought would be, “no wonder so many people want to come here.”

I expected a flood of letters to the editor to appear declaiming American wantonness in the face of suffering and based on logic as thin as refugee camp gruel. Only a couple were printed, however, and they were not as mealy-mouthed as I would have expected.

The Sunday Op Ex pictures of a starving child in Africa vs. the American pig-outs at food-eating contests are stark! How often I’m reminded of our national feeding overindulgence when I see the leftovers at restaurants, especially at the “breakfast-special” restaurants or the “all-you-can-eat” buffets, with enough pancakes, toast, bacon, sausages and hash browns left behind to feed a Nigerian family for days.
– George Mayerchak, Long Prairie.

Yes, there is no doubt we Americans take our abundance for granted, are wasteful and even profligate. (At least in the Household of the Night we don’t believe in throwing good food away. We wrap a leftover and put it in the refrigerator and wait until it becomes bad food, and then we throw it away.) The reason is because food is so cheap. Say what you will about our culture, but our economic system has mastered the growing, raising, harvesting, processing, shipping and buying of food to such a degree of efficiency that something so essential can essentially be dirt cheap, even though everyone involved at every step in the process takes their cut. Am I going to save that last ear of corn from dinner when I can go to Cub tomorrow and buy six fresh ones for a dollar? (You might be able to tell that I didn’t grow up during the Depression.)

Hello, can you hear me now?

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It was Kevin who tipped me off to the World Map feature on Site Meter. I’d never looked at that until this week, and it was amazing to me. In the course of this week I’ve had visitors from New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, the Ivory Coast, Iran, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Belgium, Spain, the UK and the distant and exotic land of Canada. (Does anyone know how you say, “Hey, y’all” in Farsi?)

Granted, just about all of these came to me as a result of Google searches, and may have stayed only long enough to say, “Vas ist das scheisse?” but it’s still kind of cool that I have the potential to create an international incident any time I sit down at the computer.

To paraphrase Satchmo, “What a wonderful World(wide web)!”