Book Commercials & Misanthropic Observations

Sorbet for the brain

I believe our brains require regular exercise to stay sharp as we age. Learning or thinking about something new washes the dust of the day-to-day grind from our brains, helps bring a fresh perspective to our worship, loves, lives and jobs.

I can tend to get obsessed with work- and just like a vacation helps me do a better job when I get back, a little brain candy in the form an interesting off-beat topic is like sorbet for the my thoughts. Things “taste” better to my brain with a little refreshing of the palate.

This theory is related vaguely to why I believe hobbies help create sanity and stave off depression. They give you a reason to learn something new, to practice a skill, something to do, a purpose.

Anyway, what’s my point? Well I’ve just been thinking lately about why I like Jeff Burton’s blog so much these days. His topics are so seemingly random (which may offend him to discover that I can’t find a discernable pattern) yet interesting and not so out there that I can’t understand. It’s brain candy.

Yesterday at Borders I found a book called The Intellectual Devotional. Each entry is drawn from a different field of knowledge; History, Literature, Visual Arts, Science, Music, Philosophy, and Religion. Read one passage a day and you will explore each subject once a week. I really love it and plan to share random snippets as I am inspired.

Dear Jeff Burton

Thank you, thank you, thank you for lending me your copy of Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer.

This was one of those books that would have taunted me for years as I would be heading for some light reading by Mark Twain with strains of “ aren’t you curious to know what an insider has to say about the Christian Coalition? Come on, buy me instead ”.

It has taken me so long to read because I found myself needing breaks from the venom and utter self-absorption of the author, and yet, unwilling to give up getting to what I thought would be “the good stuff”: his years on the evangelical lecture circuit.

It was page 73 before he said one kind thing about his parents- I remember because I noted the page aloud to Hannah when I finally came across some measure of compassion for his father’s humanness and imperfection. His point was well made by then, I am forever repulsed by his mother. This is the same effect that gossip has in my daily life- my opinion of people is formed before I ever know all sides - and a positive effect of this book is that I will be quicker to run from such talk, I hope.

I appreciate his disgust of hypocrisy, shining of a spotlight on my own tendencies to pretend, to avoid the unsafeness of dealing with real people, hiding pregnant girls away, of parroting the “party line” without thinking it all the way through. His chapter on how the republican and democratic parties fell on the sides of abortion they did is something I am still happily chewing on. He’s not an idiot, but boy is he resentful and arrogant. And that acidic style drove me to take 3 and 4 day breaks in my reading.

There was a false humility, presented as “being real” in his presentation of himself. One can “share” what an ass they are, be all self-effacing, laying themselves bare and still come across with an unbelievably high opinion of themselves. Frank Schaeffer seems to be an acquired taste, a recurring story is how his friends would get to know him and begin to see him as less of an ass, love his honest style. I have not acquired this taste.

I actually felt guilty at the end of this book- as if, because I did not like him, I was just one of the stupid groupies he so often mentioned.

I also realized that this autobiographical style is one of two possible types. I have read autobiographies that focus on the things the author observed and experienced; the story of the people around them. This style is different- the author cares so much more about himself than anyone or anything else.

The difference between academic exercise and real life

One of my current reads is Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (Revised and Updated Edition) - Paul Ekman

I’ve come across multiple references to Mr. Eckman’s work over the last couple of years in the following books:
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcom Gladwell
• Intuition: Its Powers and Perils (Yale Nota Bene) - David G. Myers
• Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last - John Gottman
• Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts - Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson

All these authors bow to Ekman as the master of reading faces and emotions. Knowing this to be an area that I can be hilariously imperceptive, one day this summer I picked up 2 of his books. (I have yet to start the second one.) I should confess that one reason I am so insensitive in this area is my simple lack of interest in people, and what I consider to be unnecessary melodrama. I also know that this is a weakness and should be addressed; hence my interest.

I am on a chapter where he tells of the different experience he has between
1. training professionals, CIA, Law enforcement, NSA and Secret Service in the art of catching lies, and
2. Teaching this as a college level course to both professors and students.
He states that: with the exception of the Secret Service, who surprised him with their skill level, both groups have an equal level of ability, or more accurately, lack of ability. What astounded him, though, was that the academic world was infinitely less open to correction and growth. The reason he states is that the academics had more invested in their reputations and could not admit to not being experts, whereas the law professionals knew they needed to simply be excellent in this area, regardless of how it wounded their pride to have to admit they were not as skilled as they thought.

Where this one aspect of this fascinating book applies to us is this:
1. We can be academic theologians, taking pride in our knowledge and reputation for Godliness, pompously writing off anyone who does not fall in line,
2. Or, we can understand that this is real life, and Truth matters and we do not already have all the answers. And we need simply to be excellent in our pursuit of being more like Christ, regardless of how it wounds our pride to discover (and have others know) that we are not as skilled as we thought.

Let’s talk about money

I learned a new term the other day: SPAVING. The act of spending to save. This could be in turns true and sarcastic. It is sarcastic when you buy something you didn’t need because it was on sale and you “saved money on it”. It was true however, when the act of buying a book gave me the shot in the arm I needed for some consumer spending self control. Given my digital toys habit, this $17.00 expense – hopefully - will help me not spend hundreds or thousands more in 2007.

The book is Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders by James Scurlock. When I first saw it a few weeks ago at Borders I was very interested but found it funny to pay a hardcover price on a book about how we spend too much. I was just gonna wait for the paperback.

But as I watched my thinking habits, I caught myself considering charging expensive things I wanted, telling myself that “we could pay them off easily, life is good, what’s the worry?

I know this thought process- it is my nemesis. It has gotten us into trouble before. A few years ago - I would say maybe four- Paul and I were at a flash point in our marriage. We were shocked to discover that we had somehow skipped our way into somewhere around $11,000.00 of consumer debt. (A fancy term for credit cards) Now, this wasn’t all done by actually charging stuff on our card, although a healthy percentage was. A large chunk came by having our credit card attached to our checkbook as emergency overflow. Then we didn’t balance our checkbook but since we never got any overdraft notices we noticed nothing amiss. What was happening was that any time we would have bounced something, instead it just was added to our credit card balance. As those payments became higher, our regular checkbook balance became lower, making more “overdrafts” and on and on we spun. AND during all this, we never once checked our lifestyles or spending habits, including vacations and large purchases. I don’t know why Paul never looked at my spending, but for me, I didn’t want to be too nosy or controlling of him. We were happy campers.

Then God woke us up - it was not fun. I can only say that our marriage was tested. Nothing else will do it justice anyway.

We both say that we are blessed. We know we can weather a hard time, learned that we are accountable to each other, and we got cold buckets of water over our heads before we were more like something around 50,000.00 in debt- not unheard of in the United States.

We got a home equity loan that covered the 11,000 and some unpaid auto loans (we didn’t even consider the auto loans to be debt- why, I don’t know. Maybe it would have been too much for us to face head on) and started living on an allowance and something that could be called a budget, sort of. Since the home equity loan was for 7 years and the interest was so much lower than credit cards the payment was about ¼ what we were spending before to pay off the same debt. We felt like we had breathing room, finally. This would have been a wise move and lesson well learned if we had really changed our habits. But I, for one, didn’t really.

Now we began to charge items and pay them off within a couple of months, because we seemed to have so much more income not going to that old debt. I told myself I was such a good budgeter, I always paid our credit cards off in a few months. It never occurred to me that it would be wiser to SAVE for something and pay cash for it. And since I was always spending our discretionary income to pay off something we already owned, when real bills came due, like ferrelgas or property taxes, I had no cash. No problem, I just charged them and scrambled over the next few months to pay them off too. We were treading dangerous waters, friends.

This story has no second dramatic event – just a growing realization on my part that this was not what God wanted for us and how precarious our situation was.

So in December 2006 we decided to treat our second mortgage like an actual debt. We actually had to refinance again to fold in the trickle of debt I had built up with my good budgeting habits, and cranked up the payments until it hurt. We also started saving. Our target date is Jan 2010 to have that paid and some emergency savings – my goal is 3 month’s worth of expenses. And we do ok. We each get an allowance, we don’t live miserably, but we don’t charge things that are not in the budget, and we pay off in full every month (after having locked the credit cards in the safe for a few weeks to just break the habit). Now I use it like a check card, but with better rewards points–SO FAR.

But I was just catching myself dreaming the other day…

Save those pretend credit cards

Hello all,

Could you please start saving those fake credit cards that come with the credit applications in the mail? I want to use them for some photos too. Much appreciated.

Out you go- silly books

9 books were eliminated today. 6 were cookbooks, (the Venison cookbook won’t actually go into the garbage; it’ll go to Dad)

1. The Bible as History by Werner Keller- Don’t let the title fool you like it did me- this one is fluff marketed as “proof of the truth of the Bible”. It’s full of long reaches to “prove” the exodus that actually embarrasses me with its lack of supporting facts.
2. The Frugal Goumet- our immigrant Ancestors- I dropped this one in the tub once- it’s hashed.
3. The Bible Promise Book K.J.V. – where did I get this? I can’t understand anything in K.J.V.
4. Simplify Your Life: 100 Ways to Slow Down and Enjoy the Things That Really Matter- Spending time reading about how to spend less time on trivial things seems trivial to me…
5. Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Juices: What’s Missing in Your Body? – As you can see by the title, this book has a bit more of an agenda than just some good juicing recipes. I’m kinda over the “health nut we must evaluate our poop to see if we are getting enough vitamins” phase.
6. The lifechange Cookbook- Paul got this when he was doing a web job for the author. Never cracked it open.
7. Gifts in a Jar: Soups (Gifts in a Jar, 4) – Charming idea. Always seemed like so much work for gifts.
8. The Yeast Connection Cookbook: A Guide to Good Nutrition and Better Health – We actually went on this diet once. It was great for Paul- he dropped alot of weight. I became ill from not being able to find enough calories in the allowed food for my metabolism. Got REALLY sick.
9. Venison Cookbook (A. D. Livingston Cookbook) – What? Kill our own food? Huh?

Cleaning out the library

Believe it or not, 5 beautiful bookshelves in the living room are not enough to hold our library. I do have a “spare” bookshelf in the sewing room for overflow, but it’s time to winnow the collection.

I think a good blog topic is which books I remove and why. If they are in the house, I must have thought at one time they were worth reading. It should be interesting to note which titles are not “re-readable” in my opinion. (That’s one reason I’ve mentioned before for owning books- I am a re-reader).

First toss: The Worth of a Woman’s Words (1999) by Dianna Booher.

The book jacket says: With heartwarming stories and thought-provoking quotes and Scriptures, Dianna Booher shows 41 ways our words can build, heal and encourage-and 29 ways our words can discourage and destroy-challenging women to think about the power of words and to use them wisely and well.

I found this to be about as challenging as “Chicken soup for the soul”. Mushy fluff marketed to Christian women. Why do some expect so little intellectually from us? This kind of material is one of the things that drive me away from cell groups.

Movie review: Alpha Dog

I am not a good watcher of situation comedies. I mean the ones where all the humor is based on someone hiding something from someone else; like when someone ends up with 2 dates for the evening and all the humor is based on close calls. Whenever I watch those with Paul, I invariably say “Why doesn’t he just tell so and so?’ I genuinely wonder why anyone would keep themselves in a high pressure situation when it could all be cleared up so easily. (This drives Paul nuts, by the way.)

We watched ALPHA Dog last night. This movie was no comedy. But it was a situation that could have been cleared up so easily. And it’s a true story.

Do I recommend it? Well, yes and no.

Yes as a study of sin. Yes as a study of a situation that honestly, until the very end could have been redeemed. ANY SECOND. And Paul and I really liked it in that we were enthralled and the time went by fast.

No, because I am still disturbed today. Still thinking about it – it wasn’t just a movie. It was shell shock. Also, knowing my usual blog friends, I should also warn you that the film holds the fourth highest total of most uses of the “F” word (367) in a feature length film, with the word being used more times per minute than even Casino. Violence, sex, completely disturbing.

But we didn’t even notice, somehow. I was just glued to the spiraling situation. “Just come clean- please! It’s only gonna get worse. You may think it’s gonna be bad if you fess up but it’s gonna be immeasurably worse if you keep going.”

And what I am ruminating on now is that’s exactly what happens when we protect a sin. When we don’t wanna get caught in a lie or an action. We just spiral. When we care more about ourselves than anything else; Or we care more about the wrong things: in this case, 1 dirtball over a 15 year old kid. In our own cases, our public image more than truth. BUT at ANY SECOND it would be better if we would just come clean regardless of the consequences.

It’s also what happens when we don’t notice how dangerous our situation is because we are interested in the sex, the partying, the feeling cool. This boy could have walked away. But he stayed. AUGHHHHH! He prefered this to going home and getting in trouble for being caught with pot. We were completely shocked at the end- we didn’t know the story ahead of time.

If you don’t want to subject yourself to the movie, read the story here. Read all the chapters, not just the first page. You won’t believe it.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/celebrity/jesse_james_hollywoo/1.html

Our yard is for the birds

A fun new side effect of the the dog fence we put in last year, besides the fact that our dogs are completely happy and spoiled in the sunshine all day: Birds in the front yard.

Spud would love nothing more than to catch a bird and spent her days chasing them out of the yard any time we let her out. Now that she is restricted to the back, our front yard is full of visitors. I count 11 dark litle birds with red breasts by a lazy glance out the window. Oh- one just ate a worm. I love it.

I’m going to have to go to Borders and get some backyard birding books. You know, what kind of flowers they like, tips on bird houses, what a great new thing to enjoy. God makes such cool stuff.

A book review, sort of

I finally got a hold of readable copy of Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed”.

Finally because I have been wanting and trying to read this one for years.

Wanting because each review and description of it has made me say “I gotta read that”. Granted, I am a huge fan of what little I’ve read through the years; Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, and so am already biased and it wouldn’t take much to get me to want to read another one of his works.

Trying because I have downloaded the public domain version from the Gutenberg press, and have begun to read the penguin classics version. Both were too heavy for me. It’s hard enough to swim in all the long Russian names, each character goes by both formal names and multiple nicknames. It takes a while for me to connect them. Add antiquated language and I am completely lost.

(call me slow: I once spent a summer attending weekly Shakespeare in the Park because a good friend was in a lead role. The same play every week: “The Tempest”. It wasn’t until the 3rd showing that I was really comfortable with the language and enjoying the punnery.)

This translation was published in 1994 and renders the title “Demons” rather than “The Possessed”. I have much more to say about this book and Dostoevsky in general – I want to talk about all the unnecessary intrigue and drunken explorations of philosophy.

But my hair needs rinsing- the color has been in for 50 minutes now and it may fall out if I don’t go… I’ll have to tempt you with an enticing review later. Stay tuned- you’ll be a Dostoevsky fan yet.