Impolite Company

Happy Thanksgiving!

Alice's Restaurant

Rather than turning this whole Thanksgiving thing into some sort of maudlin exercise in thinking about, oh-my-god-I'm-so-thankful-for-this-and-that, I'm going with the lighthearted approach.  Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful and stuff, but I've been known on occasion to over-do it.  So today I return to a Thanksgiving tradition I've all but ignored for many years now--listening to Arlo Guthrie sing through Alice's Restaurant.  So today, in honor of and in full thanks for father rapers, dog-sniffin' prints, 8x10 color glossy photographs, forms and pencils, circles, arrows, Group W, psychiatrists and all-American kids from New York City, I give you Arlo Guthrie.  Happy Thanksgiving to all:

World Toilet Day

People need clean water to live a healthy life.  That's pretty much a no-brainer but the corollary that we don't always think about is that people also need a sanitary way to get rid of human waste--the lack of a sanitary toilet system can negate the gains made when people get clean drinking water.  While somewhere around 880 million people worldwide don't have access to clean drinking water, 2.5 billion don't have sanitary facilities. 

November 19th has been declared "World Toilet Day" by a group of nonprofits which are trying to raise awareness of the two-fold nature of the clean water problem.  You can find out more about the problem and what is being done to address it at Water for People.

Balancing Act

In order to balance out what some might view as the not so terribly light-hearted previous post, I give you The Mighty Boosh and The Soup Song:

Never Shall I Forget

Elie Wiesel wrote this of his memory of the life that ended after his first night in Auschwitz.  As my friend Janice mentioned on Facebook, these are the images and thoughts that stay with you forever, the ones that remind us what human beings are capable of doing to one another:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.  Never shall I forget that smoke.  Never shall I forget the little faces of the children whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.  Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.  Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.  Never.

                                                                                            from Night

Elie Wiesel's "Night"

There are some books that defy description and Night is one of those.  Of all the Holocaust accounts I've read, Wiesel's is the most harrowing because he not only evokes the agony of the physical suffering of the camps, he also presents the full force of the spiritual suffering.  The excerpt I'm quoting today is at the beginning of the book, before the Nazis have entered his town, and it comes from a conversation between the young protagonist and Moshe the Beadle, a local homeless man who is also an adept in the ways of cabbala (Before the quote, I do have to acknowledge my friend from college, April, who I believe first introduced me to Wiesel--thanks for cluing me in to yet another author who has consistently depressed the hell out of me and given me exquisite tastes of the horror that man can visit upon his fellow man!):

After that day I saw him often.  he explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.

"Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," he was fond of repeating.  "That is the true dialogue.  Man questions God and God answers.  But we don't understand His answers.  We can't understand them.  Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death.  You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself."

"And why do you pray, Moshe?"  I asked him.

"I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions."

A Few More Thoughts on Asher Lev

This is probably going to be more about me than about Asher Lev, which is fine--I think Asher's gotten plenty of press over the years and he won't miss the attention.  On reading the final chapter a couple of days ago I experienced all over again why I loved this book so much the first time I read it, though I think it became more poignant on subsequent readings.  Asher is an Hasidic Jew, caught between the warring traditions of his religion and his art and his father's inability to reconcile himself to the choices that Asher makes.  The first time I read the story I was a student in a small Bible institute, tucked away in the Adirondack Mountains.  Though I was there by my own choice and I wasn't consciously feeling any conflicts between the way I thought and the way of life demanded of students at the B.I., the tensions in Asher Lev resonated with me and I'm pretty certain I cried reading that last chapter.  I had lived that conflict between the expectations of family and friends and the pointing of my internal compass in the past and I may have even figured that those tensions were going to become a part of my life again in the future.  

Leaves

The pink almost makes it too hard for me to look at this one:

More Karen Armstrong

Saturday mornings I usually wake up to the NPR show Sound Opinions.  Sunday mornings, I frequently wake up to Speaking of Faith.  Both shows are pretty cool because they introduce me to either music or religious perspectives that I may not be that familiar with.  On this morning's Speaking of Faith, there was an extended interview from 2004 with Karen Armstrong--you can listen to it in its entirety without edits at this link (1:26:00):  Unedited Interview with Karen Armstrong.  For other things Armstrong, check out her TED presentation from back in 2008:

To Be an Artist

I'm continuing a line of rereading that was touched off by Karen Armstrong's book, The Bible:  A Biography (a treasure trove of Armstrong will be in the next post after this one) and am reading another of Chaim Potok's books, My Name is Asher Lev.  Asher is a young Ladover Hasid, burdened and gifted with incredible ability as an artist and painter.  The major theme of the book is reconciling his two worlds, that of his religious life (powerfully influenced by his father's view of sketching and painting as foolishness) and his all-consuming life as an artist.  At one point, he reads Robert Henri's book, The Art Spirit and I found the following quote thought-provoking:

You can do anything you want to do.  What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing:  wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you.

A few pages on, in My Name is Asher Lev, I read the following:

"It will be five years," Jacob Kahn said to her.  "Millions of people can draw.  Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way."

"Or a laugh," she said.  "Picasso laughs, too."

"Or a laugh," he said.

The Pussycat Swallowtail

Of course I didn't loose[sic] it! My dear man the Pussycat Swallowtail

is the rarest butterfly in the entire world! It's the only butterfly

that escaped Lord Beasley.

                                --Gilligan's Island

This, my friends, is not the illusive pussycat swallowtail (as far as I know) but just another big ol' butterfly I saw in my backyard:

Originally, I didn't plan on the upper wings to be out of focus and the main body sharp but I like the effect in retrospect.

Nothing Could Be Finer

It appears that some friends of mine have secured housing for their sabbatical in Chapel Hill, NC next year.  In celebration of this (if for no other reason than that it gives me a chance to get my sister-in-law hooked on Texas 42), it's time for a song.  And, in line with my tradition of featuring albums by members of Star Trek casts, I give you Data singing "Nothing Could be Finer" from his album, Ol' Yellow Eyes is Back:

It's On!

Suddenly, it's gotten personal.  Amy Jones has thrown down the gauntlet on the Kickathon; she hears me breathing down her neck and has gotten scared, afraid that she will lose her precious $8 lead.  So, here's my offer for folks who live in Austin or who are willing to travel to Austin in order to enjoy the fruits of this challenge:  

If you pledge $100 or more I will cook dinner for you and one other person in my home.  Three courses and food from my garden as it's available at the time.

If you pledge $200 or more I will cook dinner for you and your family (up to six people) in my home. 

Beer and wine is included for those of legal age. 

You can pledge via my pledge page at:  Help Graham Beat Amy.

Please help me keep up with the Joneses.

No Power in the 'Verse Can Stop Me

Been getting too heavy with all the Bible talk and the Hasidic talk and the begging for money and what-have-you.  Time for some fun.  This is one of my favorite scenes from Firefly (the first time I watched the series it was okay but I'm liking it more and more as I go along):

Go to the other side of the fold to get to The Champagne Room (Fair Warning:  nothing on the other side of the fold is safe for work.  And if you don't like cussin', it's not safe for you anywhere).

"My Children Have Conquered Me"

Taken from Karen Armstrong's The Bible:  A Biography:

There could be no definitive interpretation of scripture.  this point was made in the very early days at Yavneh, when R. Eliezer was engaged in an intractable argument with his colleagues about a legal ruling (halakha) in the Torah.  When they refused to accept his opinion, R. Eliezer asked God to back him up with some miracles, and--mirabile dictu--a carob tree moved four hundred cubits of its own accord; water in a conduit flowed uphill; and the walls of the house of studies shook so violently that the building seemed about to collapse.  But the other rabbis were not impressed by this show of supernatural force.  In desperation, R. Eliezer asked for a bat qol ('voice from heaven') to adjudicate and the divine voice obligingly declared: 'What have you against R. Elizer?  The Halakah is always as he says.'  But Rabbi Joshua quoted a verse from Deuteronomy:  'It is not in heaven.'  The Torah was no longer confined to the celestial world; once it had been promulgated on Mount Sinai, it no longer belonged to God but was the inalienable possession of very single Jew.  So, commented a later rabbi, "We pay no attention to a heavenly voice.'  And furthermore, it had been decreed at Sinai: 'By a majority you are to decide', so R. Eliezer, a minority of one, could not override the popular vote.  When God heard that his opinion had been overruled, he laughed and said:  'My children have conquered me.'

Kickathon!

Sun Dragon Martial Arts and Self Defense is having it's third annual Kickathon this weekend and I'd like to give all of you Facebook friends of mine a chance to help us out.  Kick in five or ten bucks, whatever feels right to you and I promise you we'll put it to good use.  The Kickathon is our primary fundraiser for the year and we use most of the money to support our scholarship programs, which I'll tell you more about in a moment.  The actual Kickathon event is this Saturday--adults will be throwing 1000 kicks, our teens and youth students will throw 500 and our wee junior students will throw 200--the same idea as a walkathon, folks pledge money and we kick things.  This year we also plan to use about 10% of the proceeds to purchase mirrors for the dojo.  Sun Dragon is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization so you can write your donation off on your taxes.

Come again?  What's that?  A nonprofit karate studio?  What's up with that?  Well, we're more than just a karate studio, we're an organization that's dedicated to the proposition that by teaching folks self defense skills we can make Austin a safer and less violent place.  Violence occurs across a spectrum and can be as "mild" as verbal abuse in the home or in the workplace or as extreme as assault, rape and even murder.  Because violence occurs across a continuum and it's more likely to be a friend, a relative, someone that you're dating or your spouse than a stranger jumping out of the bushes, we think that people need to be prepared with a wide variety of responses.  Just like you don't bring a knife to a gunfight, it's usually not an appropriate response to punch someone in the eye who's merely called you a name or crossed other personal boundaries.  But just because you don't respond to verbal aggression with a physical assault doesn't mean that you don't respond at all.  Our method of teaching self defense includes verbal and non-verbal defenses, deescalation training, a major emphasis on trusting your instincts, as well as the physical skills that most people associate with self defense training.  We think that responding appropriately to violence in whatever form it takes makes you a safer person and we believe that everyone deserves to defend themselves and should have the opportunity to learn how to defend themselves effectively.

Good enough.  But that still doesn't answer why we're a nonprofit.  We're an education-based nonprofit, which means that our funding primarily goes to educational outreaches.  We provide scholarship assistance to students in our karate program and also provide scholarships to our self defense seminars because we don't believe that anyone should be left out because they don't have enough money.  In this past year we taught a free self defense against bullies clinic for school kids in conjunction with Equality Texas, we've worked with Safeplace, the Girl Scouts, taught classes at the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center for the Visually Impaired, participated in a Red Cross health fair, worked with all kinds of school kids and all of this is in addition to our regular self defense classes we hold for women, teens and coed groups at the dojo.  We've also started a Fighting for Justice Speaker Series that is designed to address broader issues of violence in our culture.

You can find out more about Sun Dragon by going to our website's About Page or, for a really good article about one of our students you can read Spike Gillespie's Fight Like a Girl post on Austinist (this article is especially cool because it was written in reference to our black belt testing and I am identified as "a grown man" in it).

So what do you think?  Five dollars?  Ten?  Maybe a little bit more?  It's up to you to decide what you want to do with your charity dollars but I'd love it if some of you would support Sun Dragon and you can do it quickly online at our pledge page (just takes a minute).  We do good work and I'd love for some of you to be a part of it.  If any of you are in the Austin area and want to watch the action, it starts at 10:00 on Saturday morning at the dojo.  

If you have any trouble with the pledge page link, here's my main Kickathon page.  Let me know if it gives you any trouble.  For my new Facebook friends, sorry to friend you just in time for the money pitch.  But I haven't friended anyone for probably four or five months and so we can all be thankful this was sufficient for me to get out there and mingle with you guys.

Bee with Pollen?

I was out looking at my garden this morning when I saw three bees tumbling in and out of a zucchini blossom and so I grabbed my camera and took the following picture.  Is that pollen on the bee's back? 

Here's a second crop of the same picture, probably blown up a little bit too big for the clarity of the focus but I still kinda like it:

Hasidic Judaism

I love it when I get involved in a project and it starts leading me to unexpected places.  For the last few weeks I've been traveling back to some places in my mind that I haven't visited for quite a while, the fundamentalist perspective on the Bible and some of the times I spent living that life.  To balance that out, I've been reading some other things, Armstrong's book (see below) for instance.  The Bible:  A Biography  and a conversation I'm having about it with a friend of mine has gotten me thinking about the Hasidim again and so I've been rereading Chaim Potok'sThe Chosen, set amongst the Jewish communities of New York City during World War II and following the trials of a brilliant young fish-out-of-water Hasid. 

About a third of the way through the book there's a chapter in which a teacher explains to his son the history of Hasidism and I really like this one passage that talks about the Ba'al Shem Tov (the "Besht"), the spiritual father of Hasidism.  I won't reproduce the whole of it, but here's a portion that talks about the Besht and his teachings:

Finally, he (Israel) began to travel and he became a Ba'al Shem.  he was kind and saintly and godly, and he seemed to want to help people not for the money they paid him but for the love he had for them.  And so they came to call him the Ba'al Shem Tov--the Kind or Good Master of the Name.  He mingled with the people and talked to them about God and His Torah in plain, simple language that they could easily understand.  He taught them that the purpose of man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life:  eating, drinking, praying, sleeping.  Giod is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly.  Evil is like a hard shell.  Within this shell is the spark of God, is goodness.  How do we penetrate the shell?  By sincere and honest prayer, by being happy, and by loving all people.  The Ba'[al Shem Tov--his followers later shortened his name and called him the Besht--believed that no man is so sinful that he cannot be purified by love and understanding.  He also believed--and here is where he brought down upon himself the rage of the learned rabbis--that the study of Talmud was not very important, that there need not be fixed times for prayers, that God could be worshiped through a sincere heart, through joy and singing and dancing.  In other words, Reuven, he opposed any form of mechanical religion.  There was nothing new in what he taught.  you will find it all in the Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah.  But he gave it a special emphasis and taught it at a key time to people who were hungry for this kind of teaching.  And these people listened and loved him.  Many great rabbis came to mock him and went away converted to his way of thinking .  When he died, his followers opened their own synagogues.  Before the end of that century, about half of eastern European Jewry consisted of Hasidim, as his followers were called, pious ones.  So great was the need of the masses for a new way to approach God.

Butterfly in the Back Yard

I took this shot a few minutes ago--the cool thing about all the rain we've had lately is that the wildflowers I planted last fall have finally bloomed.  Well, okay, that's just one of the cool things about it:

Meltdown at Madame Tussaud's

Get your gun....
Yo, it's a samurai showdown, samurai showdown
(Aight,A.T.M)How dare you challenge me?
You will die from the tip of my sword today
huh, the trenches, we must remain calm
Right,prepare to die

Listening to NPR's Sound Opinions this morning as I woke up, for their Halloween show they played Samurai Showdown (Raise Your Swords) from Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog and I thought that would make a perfect Halloween video to post.  Alas, the videos were less than visually appealing and so the Dog will be relegated to the other side of the fold.  However, it did get me on Youtube and I'd been thinking of this tune from Steve Taylor for some time, so I went ahead and gave it a gander.  Totally dated but I do like this song from one of the few very creative voices in Christian music from back in the day:

Shaping the Bible

At the suggestion of a friend, I'm reading Karen Armstrong's The Bible:  A Biography, which is a very good foil for some of the other reading I'm doing these days as I'm reaching back into the fundamentalist library for a project I'm working on.  It's interesting to cross-reference Armstrong's work with Charles Ryrie's book, A Survey of Bible Doctrine and to check to see what Wilkinson's Talk Thru the Bible flatly asserts about the authorship of various books compared to Armstrong's scholarship. 

There's a paragraph in the introduction in which Armstrong talks about the guiding principles of exegesis for some of those who have shaped the selection and the composition of the canon that I liked a lot.  It was actually one of the things that caught my ear when Bill was talking about the book.  So I'm going to get off the page and let Armstrong's words speak for themselves, it's good stuff I think:

Some of the most important biblical authorities insisted that charity must be the guiding principle of exegesis:  any interpretation that spread hatred or disdain was illegitimate.  All the world faiths claim that compassion is not only the prime virtue and the test of true religiosity but that it actually introduces us to Nirvana, God or the Dao.  But sadly the biography of the Bible represents the failures as well as the triumphs of the religious quest.  The biblical authors and their interpreters have all too often succumbed to the violence, unkindness and exclusivity that is rife in their societies.