by the Night Writer
We’ve had snow cover here in Minneapolis since, oh, Halloween. At least that’s what it feels like. Nothing like a yard-full of fresh snow, though, for doing your own census of local activity, as the following shows.
HT: xkcd, via the Lumberjack.
by the Night Writer
Hah. I noticed that the following poem was featured in the Writer’s Almanac on Saturday — the day after the Mall Diva’s ultrasound. The author is no W.B. Picklesworth, but he does have a knack for the subject.
The Alien
by Greg Delanty
I’m back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
is chockablock with quarks & squarks,
gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,
who art there inside the spacecraft
of your ma, the time capsule of this printout,
hurling & whirling towards us, it’s all daft
on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we’re anxious
to make contact, to ask questions
about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss
the whole shebang of the beginning & end,
the pre-big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,
to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we’d die
for you even, that we pray you’re not here
to subdue us, that we’d put away
our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.
“The Alien” by Greg Delanty, from The Ship of Birth. © Louisiana State University Press, 2007.
by the Night Writer
Like a big fist pounding on my door,
I never felt such a love before…— Bruce Cockburn
Sunday thoughts.
In church this morning we were exhorted, during the singing portion, to remember that with a shout the walls will come down. “The wall” in this case being whatever is standing between us and God’s will in our life. As I thought about it I remembered the wall, largely of my own making, that had stood between me and God. I had been pretty impressed with its craftsmanship, as I recall. And one day that wall didn’t fall, but suddenly had a large hole punched through it from the other side.
Twenty-two years and two months ago, my wife and I were in a small ultra-sound room while her ob-gyn — the same man who had performed her tubal ligation following a bout with endometriosis five or six years earlier — ran the hand-held device over and around her abdomen. Her home-pregnancy test had been positive that morning, and her report had caused some surprise and concern on her doctor’s part. Surprise because he had never had a ligation “fail”, and concern because the test raised a possibility that she was having an ectopic — or “tubal” — pregnancy, which is a serious problem. As he moved the scanner back and forth, up and down, we all watched the grainy, black and white images on the screen as the patterns shifted. I remember the doctor saying, “Hmmmm” and “Hmmmmm” and “Hmmmm” every so often — but nothing else! Finally I asked, “Is it a baby?”
“Yes!”
“Is it where it’s supposed to be?”
“Yes, it is!”
I don’t know what the learned professional, who had carried out the procedure, was thinking then. I do know that I, the expert who had carried on a campaign of intellectual seeking, asking (and even demanding) evidence from people of what God had actually done in their lives, now had to wrap my mind around a startling new reality. Certainly the first impulse was to try to pick up the imploded bricks from that wall and try to fit them right back where they came from. I would, however, come to see these as just so much rubble to be cleared away.
It didn’t happen overnight, but the clearing definitely began. I was very new to the “things of God” at that time. Willing to “try” something new but probably not that firmly anchored. I had heard some wonderful and exciting teaching but it was still largely theoretical at the time. A new and dawning awareness of the reality and power of the Word of God was coming into my life as a preview of the teaching and discipleship I would be receiving in the years to come, and that first punch from the other side of the wall would be followed by a series of shakings and renovations (via revelations) that probably aren’t finished even now.
My daughter arrived a little more than eight months later and I was able to learn and grow in these things as she, herself, grew. The lessons and experiences my wife and received shaped our lives and our decisions and were reflected in the way we lived and raised our first daughter and the one who came after. Even though there were often voices who said, “That’s not how you should do it” or “you’re only making it tougher on her in the long-run”, we resisted much worldly wisdom and held fast to what we were seeing and experiencing and stayed committed to putting in the values and expectations we thought our girls would need to succeed. We raised them not as though we were their friends, but to help them become the kind of adults we’d be pleased to have as friends. I’d have to say we (and especially God) have been very successful in this mission.
Two days ago, we were once again in a small ultra-sound room. My wife, myself, my two daughters, as well as the husband of the eldest. Two generations gathered around the machine, hoping to catch a glimpse of a third as the technician ran the scanner back and forth, up and down, on my married daughter’s stomach. At last, there was the proof. He has given us a son…and so very much more.
by the Night Writer
I went on to Amazon a little while ago to check something or other and under the “Related to Items You’ve Viewed” heading was a book I’ve never read: After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. Ok, the title sounds right up my alley (and perhaps very close in topic to the book I’m working on), but what really caught my eye was the photo on the cover:
Very evocative…and very familiar. Virtually the same photo of Grand Central Station was used on the cover of one of the editions of my all-time favorite book, Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. The photos are almost, but not quite, identical.
What’s really amazingly coincidental is that I happen to be re-reading Winter’s Tale right now as part of an on-line book club (only two “meetings” so far, here and here, and I’m the only commenter besides the host so far but I’m hoping that will change). I’ve probably read this book all the way through four times and regularly pick it up and read random pages just for the heck of it. Even so, I’m noticing new nuances and descriptions in Helprin’s enrapturing prose this time through that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s very exciting.
In considering the two titles here I see another conceptual connection: descriptions of a mystical reality in the midst of the real world illusions that surround us. I have been moved, challenged, convicted, inspired and ultimately lifted by Winter’s Tale. I’m thinking the same might happen if I pick up After You Believe as well.
by the Night Writer
Does anyone else remember seeing Luca Brasi at the wedding last May?
I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home on the wedding day of your daughter. And may their first child be a masculine child.
So be it. The grandparents-to-be, parents-to-be and Auntie Ninja squeezed into the ultrasound room yesterday for the first glimpse at the next generation: Benjamin West Worley.
Boy. Oh boy. And quite a looker, too. He gets that from his grandpa.
by the Night Writer
The official plein air artist of The Night Writer blog, Sharell at Zumbro Falls Impressionist, came across a curious operation while seeking inspiration for a painting (the painting and full story here):
One November Saturday I came down the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary path to find 4 mini-vans parked in a circle and about 20 ardent people dressed in fluorescent orange vests, safety glasses, hard hats and rubber gloves. They were moving through this grassy area in the painting and stroking the grasses with their gloved hands. My curiosity was piqued and I found the only friendly person in the group to ask what they were doing. “Collecting seed,” was her curt answer. Then I asked about the gear and she retorted, “For safety purposes [idiot].” With that I backed away and left for a quiet corner of the sanctuary.
Okay, there isn’t a clear indication that this was our tax dollars at work as Sharell didn’t say whether there were state emblems on the sides of the mini-vans, but the protective gear and prickly attitude have the tell-tale ear-marks of a Minnesota Department of Something-or-other. Orange vests? In case of heavy traffic. Safety glasses? Sure, laugh if you want; it’s all funny until someone gets a seed in the eye, buddy. Hard hats? Nature sanctuaries are notorious for having all kinds of birds flying overhead.
And let’s not forget, they were harvesting wild seed. Seed Collection Officer down! Seed Collection Officer down!
by the Night Writer
Can it really be five years since I cracked the code and put up my first blog post? Yes, indeed, it can be and has.
It feels as if the time has gone by so quickly. As I look back over the archives I’m surprised to see comments from “new” friends that first appeared three, even four, years ago. It’s amazing what has taken place over some 1,589 posts and 4,250 comments (about 85% of which went to my daughters’ posts). Meanwhile my daughters have grown up, posting here and bringing their own verve and attitude and even another contributor! Thanks to blogging, one daughter found herself a husband and we hosted the first (that I know of) live-blog wedding this last May!
I can’t claim anything so dramatic, but I have made a number of dear friends over the years here, some of whom I have yet to meet in person! It would be hard for my family and I to think of what our lives would be like right now if it wasn’t for this wonderful community. I don’t want to get too mushy here, though, because that can start to sound like a foreshadowing for an announcement of quitting. No such plans (or luck, depending on your perspective). While I have cut back a little of late due to other commitments and to putting time into helping Tiger Lilly with her books and writing one of my own, I do miss it on days when I don’t write here. There are no plans, then, to pull the plug here, though there is always a possibility for this blog to change form or focus.
I never set out to be anything in particular with this blog. From the beginning I just wanted to write about things that interested me. The thought of being strictly a political blogger, or a “religious” one, or a “daddy”-blogger would put me off the whole thing entirely, I think. I like to get up in the morning not knowing what I’ll write about that day (if anything), or, for that matter, who I might meet. It’s kind of like not knowing what I’m going to see when I visit my friends’ blogs each day…the variety, with just the right amount of familiarity, keeps it fresh.
Most of all, thank you for reading. People often refer to the “solitary” blogger, but that concept doesn’t work for me. I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do this if it was just going out into the ether to bounce of Jupiter but not touch anyone else. The feedback and the relationships have been the best parts of all of this. They’ve meant a lot to me, and I hope that on occasion something here has meant something to each of you.
Ever since I reformatted this blog last spring I’ve been trying to tweak some things here. It will likely always be a work in progress, but one of the things I’ve accomplished over the weekend was to create a new page in the header entitled “Nights to Remember”. This has given me the opportunity to go back through the hundreds of posts and select the ones that I thought have been my best, or that generated the most interesting comments, or perhaps gave me a foothold to push off into something deeper. The page is still a work in progress, but there’s a double-handful of posts from 2008-09 there if you’re feeling nostalgic.
So, it’s been a slice…and I expect to take a few more whacks at the apple. Thanks for being along for the ride.
by the Night Writer
In case Tiger Lilly’s previous post wasn’t enough to lighten up your Thursday, you might want to consider the Strib’s laughable expose from earlier this week, What’s Killing Minnesota’s Moose? Then go over to Powerline’s devastating rebuttal, which perhaps ought to have been entitled “What’s Killing the Star Tribune’s Credibility?”
Personally, I give moose a lot of credit. Nobody, however, gives them more credit than Monty Python:
Continue reading
by the Night Writer
We once had a little baby that would wake up in the morning, or from a nap, and instead of crying she’d let us know she was awake by giggling. I’d go in to get her and she’d look at me with bright eyes and smile as if to say, “It’s you!” Even then she was no doubt amusing herself with her own stories inside her head.
Seems like that was only a few weeks ago, but here we are and it’s time for singing “16 Candles”, or perhaps in this case, “16 Ninjas”. Our little Tiger Lilly has grrrrrown up and she’s still telling stories — only now they’re in a form where other people can understand them; well, read them anyway. Last week she sent off the manuscript from her first novel to a national contest for as-yet-undiscovered writers. We should know how that works out in the next 30 days or so. Should the judges be so thick-headed as to not rush contracts and cash advances in this direction we’ll look at serializing the story here or somewhere on-line.
As for today, something nearly as exciting: birthday dinner at Tiger Lilly’s favorite restaurant, Hell’s Kitchen in Minneapolis tonight! Happy birthday, sweetie. I can’t wait to see what you’ll dream up next!
by the Night Writer
According to Gregg Easterbrook in his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column at ESPN, the New York Times has had its hands full just in fact-checking itself.
In the past six months, the Times has, according to its own corrections page, said Arizona borders Wisconsin; confused 12.7-millimeter rifle ammunition with 12.7 caliber (the latter would be a sizeable naval cannon); said a pot of ratatouille should contain 25 cloves of garlic (two tablespoons will do nicely); on at least five occasions, confused a million with a billion (note to the reporters responsible — there are jobs waiting for you at the House Ways and Means Committee); understated the national debt by $4.2 trillion (note to the reporter responsible — there’s a job waiting for you at the Office of Management and Budget); confused $1 billion with $1 trillion (note to the reporter responsible — would you like to be CEO of AIG?); admitted numerical flaws in a story “about the ability of nonsense to sharpen the mind;” used “idiomatic deficiency” as an engineering term (correct was “adiabatic efficiency”); said Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride occurred in 1776 (it was in 1775 — by 1776, everybody knew the British were coming); “misstated the status of the United States in 1783 — it was a country, not a collection of colonies” (dear Times, please Google “Declaration of Independence”).
The Times also “misidentified the song Pink was singing while suspended on a sling-like trapeze;” confused the past 130 years with the entire 4.5 billion-year history of Earth (see appended correction here); misused statistics in the course of an article complaining that public school standards aren’t high enough (see appended correction here); said Citigroup handed its executives $11 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses, when the actual amount was $1.1 billion (in the Citigroup executive suite, being off by a mere two zeroes would be considered incredible financial acumen); said a column lauding actress Terri White “overstated her professional achievements, based on information provided by Ms. White;” identified a woman as a man (it’s so hard to tell these days); reported men landed on Mars in the 1970s (“there was in fact no Mars mission,” the Times primly corrected).
The Times also gave compass coordinates that placed Manhattan in the South Pacific Ocean near the coastline of Chile (see appended correction here); said you need eight ladies dancing to enact the famous Christmas song when nine are needed; said Iraq is majority Sunni, though the majority there is Shiite (hey, we invaded Iraq without the CIA knowing this kind of thing); got the wrong name for a dog that lives near President Obama’s house (“An article about the sale of a house next door to President Obama’s home in Chicago misstated the name of a dog that lives there. She is Rosie, not Roxy” — did Rosie’s agent complain?); elaborately apologized in an “editor’s note,” a higher-level confession than a standard correction, for printing “outdated” information about the health of a wealthy woman’s Lhasa apso; incorrectly described an intelligence report about whether the North Korean military is using Twitter; called Tandil, Argentina, home of Juan Martín del Potro, a “tiny village” (its population is 110,000); inflicted upon unsuspecting readers a web of imprecision about the Frisians, the Hapsburg Empire, the geographic extent of terps, and whether Friesland was “autonomous and proud” throughout the Middle Ages or merely until 1500; inexactly characterized a nuance of a position taken by the French Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (philosophy majors must have marched in the streets of Paris over this); confused coal with methane (don’t make that mistake in a mine shaft!); on at least three occasions, published a correction of a correction; “misstated the year of the Plymouth Barracuda on which a model dressed as a mermaid was posed;” “mischaracterized the date when New York City first hired a bicycle consultant” and “misidentified the location of a pile of slush in the Bronx.”