I’ve got a soft spot in my heart (and on my reading list) for science fiction. It probably started when I was reading Michael Crichton as a 12-year-old. OK, Crichton might not be the first one you think of when I said “science fiction”, but Crichton’s mix of legit science into thriller novels was an appealing first taste. (Jurassic Park? eh, fine. The Andromeda Strain? Better.)

There’s an awful lot that gets passed through in the name of “science fiction” these days, though. For some incomprehensible reason, our libraries lump sci-fi and fantasy together, which means you’ve gotta be careful or instead of picking up a hard-science space opera you’ll end up with some multi-volume epic starring sexy telepathic cat people on a far-away planet that resembles nothing so much as medieval England. But I digress.

I started with Crichton, but progressed quickly to Asimov and Arthur Clarke. Later on I enjoyed Stephen Baxter’s Manifold trilogy and some of Robert Sawyer’s stuff. I still browse the New Sci-fi shelf at the library on a regular basis, but most of the time when I pick up an interesting-looking volume, it turns out to be Volume 17 of some big space opera, and ain’t nobody got time for that.

A couple years ago, though, The Incomparable podcast devoted an episode to Hugo Award nominees, and somebody brought up Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem. I was unacquainted with Liu, but found that this prolific Chinese author was finally getting a book translated into English. And what a book.

The Three Body trilogy continues with The Dark Forest and wraps up with Death’s End, the translation of which just released this fall. I finished reading Death’s End last night and wow, what a epic, sweeping trilogy. It begins as a current-day encounter with an alien race of such advanced technology they can hardly be understood, and traverses time and space to some distant future where the universe collapses in on itself only to explode again in another Big Bang.

Liu digs in to communication via gravitational waves, the survival strategies of intergalactic civilizations, and lightspeed travel, while telling a story expansive in spacetime in a way that hearkens back to Clarke and Asimov. The English translations are excellent, and while the books aren’t short, they kept me engaged through the final page.

If you’ve stuck with this post this far, The Three Body Problem might be one you want to pick up.

I’ve enjoyed baseball for as long as I can remember. I have fond memories of attending my first baseball game (the Omaha Royals) when I was probably 7, and of watching Game 7 of the 1985 World Series (Royals win in 7!) when I was 8. I followed the Rangers when I lived in Texas in high school and college, and enjoyed getting to see Nolan Ryan pitch and attending the 1995 MLB All-Star Game.

Then I moved to Iowa, and with a bunch of new friends who were Cubs fans, I became a Cubs fan. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

I remember sitting in a friend’s basement watching the famed Bartman game in 2003. They were so close to the World Series, and then collapsed. Again.

Then came 2016. The Cubs started off hot and stayed that way. I followed them more closely than I had in previous years, and my kids were now old enough to enjoy the games themselves. That the Cubs would make the playoffs seemed a foregone conclusion; the question was could they finally go all the way?

I told the girls that if the Cubs won the World Series, everybody would be getting new Cubs swag. As the playoffs progressed, I wondered a bit whether they were cheering the Cubs more to see them win, or to get new t-shirts. But cheer they did.

I pretty much lost faith around game 4 of the World Series. The Cubs were down 3 games to 1, and looked terrible doing it. I refused to watch Game 5. I didn’t want the stress. My wife turned on Game 6 after the Cubs took a lead. And then came Game 7.

You can’t not watch Game 7. And you can’t really send the kids to bed for it, either, even if it is a school night. We were feeling pretty good about it when the Cubs had a lead early. Addison was painting Cubs artwork in the basement during the middle innings. Then the Indians tied it up and my heart was in my stomach. Here comes the collapse, I thought.

Our youngest daughter finally gave up trying to stay awake about 10:30 and went to bed. When the game went to extra innings and a rain delay at 11:00, we sent the older two to bed. But 15 minutes later when the game resumed and the Cubs got a couple hits, they heard me yelp at the TV and came rushing back in to watch the game.

So at 11:30 on a school night, the four of us sat in bed and counted down the last three outs for the Cubs to win the Series. I hope it’s a memory that sticks with them as long as my memory of Bret Saberhagen coming off the mount to talk to George Brett prior to getting the final out in 1985.

Then this weekend we went shopping.

Maybe next year…

…they’ll win it again.

#FlyTheW

This showed up in my Twitter feed over the weekend:

twitter.com/mattmaher…

“Worship Night in America”. To quote my friend Chrissy: “NOPE. Big, big NOPE.”

I dug into Tomlin’s website for more details. Billed as “An Evening of Unity and Prayer for Our Country”, it features Tomlin along with musicians Matt Redman, Phil Wickham, and Matt Maher, along with speakers Max Lucado and Louie Giglio.

Event sites have been set up at theaters across the country - there are two listed in Iowa including one here in my hometown of Cedar Rapids - with tickets on pre-sale for $12. Per the FAQ, these sites won’t actually host the event unless some minimum number of tickets are sold in advance. For an additional $3.99 ($15.99 total) you can get a CD or digital copy of Chris Tomlin’s new album along with the ticket.

Also from the FAQ: even though it’s a “one-night-only” event, this is not some sort of live simulcast. “Worship Night in America was created by Grammy-award winning artist Chris Tomlin”, and “the event was recorded at Madison Square Garden and edited for theaters and non-theatrical venues.”

Where do I even start?

The Title

I gotta admit, when I hear “Worship Night in America”, the first thing I think of is “Football Night in America” - the tag line NBC uses for Sunday Night Football - and then quickly to “Hockey Night in Canada”. Hey folks, let’s hype a trendy event! Who’s got an idea for a name?

The Medium

First it started with video venues for churches - some local live staff, sure, but we’ll pipe the popular preacher in from some other campus. Then came “online church” - just stream the service on your computer, submit your prayer requests via a web form, and tithe with your credit card, all from the comfort of your jammies and your couch! Now we have “worship night”, where we line up to sit in a theater and watch a pre-produced event from Madison Square Garden featuring only the hippest musicians and high-octane speakers.

Virtual ain’t church, folks. Don’t get me wrong - I see a huge value in (and have personally benefited greatly from) friendships cultivated primarily online. But the body of Christ is called to assemble in person, and there’s a vast amount of encouragement, accountability, and support that can only really come with in-person assemblies. We’re fooling ourselves if we try to argue otherwise.

The Politics

Any other year, I’d be 95% certain that this sort of event, scheduled one week before the elections, was going to be leveraged to push attendees hard toward voting for a certain sort of Republican candidate. This year I’m not quite so certain. The FAQ says that the event “is not tied to any candidate or political affiliation”, which is good. I guess I’m cynical enough to assume that a flag-waving prayer-and-worship evangelical event the week before the election is another “If my people who are called by my name will GET OUT THE VOTE then I will heal their land” sort of event. I hope they prove me wrong.

The Money

It’s no accident that the new Chris Tomlin record is slated to come out the same week as this event, and that attendees can get a copy for only $4 when bought in conjunction with the event ticket. In the same way authors can hit the bestseller list by engineering the sale of lots of copies of their book, musicians can hit a similar list with first week sales. So, 95 event sites listed at the moment. Say they each sell 200 tickets, and 50% of the ticket buyers also get a CD. That’s nearly 10,000 copies of Tomlin’s new album sold that week. That’s not insubstantial.

Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with marketing and wanting to sell lots of records… but attendees should be aware that this “evening of unity and prayer” also looks to be a pre-produced marketing event to sell a lot of records.

So here’s a thought

If you want an evening of unity and prayer leading up to election day - and Lord knows we could use both - invite some people from various churches in your community to get together. Make sure you invite some who have a different skin color or accent than you do. Have somebody bring along a guitar. Sing some songs you all know. (Or learn some of each others' songs!) Pray for each other and for your community. Listen to each others' stories. Make new friends.

That will be a productive step toward building Christian unity in your community, far more than plunking down into a theater seat and singing along with the screen.

I haven’t been posting on every book I’ve read, but wow, this was a good one.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is a history of what she calls “America’s great migration” - the movement of African Americans from the south to northern, midwestern, and western urban areas between 1930 and 1970. She follows three primary characters through their journeys from the Jim Crow south to new jobs and lives in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Wilkerson weaves together their stories with the bigger picture of a changing country, where racial discrimination stubbornly persisted (persists?) even in states where the Jim Crow laws didn’t exist.

Given the unrest in the country at present this was a timely read. It struck home more than history often does because its time frame was so close to the present. It’s easy for me to think of even the 1960s as an old, black-and-white time; each of the characters Wilkerson follows, though, live at least into the 1990s… which I remember well.

Our history in this country is short, and this book was a good reminder that the racial tension we have today isn’t far removed from a long history of racism and slavery. We have so much yet to learn.

We’ve been in a sermon series on Revelation at church, so when a couple recommendations for Reading Revelation Responsibly came across Twitter, I had to pick up a copy. Dr. Michael J. Gorman, the author, is a United Methodist professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at the very Roman Catholic St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Gorman makes the case that the book of Revelation is a book of prophecy, but, he says,

prophecy, in the biblical tradition, is not exclusively or even primarily about making pronouncements and predictions concerning the future. Rather, prophecy is speaking words of comfort and/or challenge, on behalf of God, to the people of God in their concrete historical situation.

Gorman suggests that Revelation encourages the church to resist the allure and pressure of un-sacred civil religion.

Calling Revelation “resistance literature” is appropriate because one of the primary prophetic purposes of Revelation is to remind the church, both then and now, not to give in to the demands or practices of a system that is already judged by God and is about to come to its demise.

One is reminded of N. T. Wright’s line that saying ‘Jesus is Lord’ was (is) a political statement, because if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. Gorman argues that this un-sacred civil religion is similarly prevalent in modern America as it was in ancient Rome. As such, he says, the lesson for the church today is to resist the call of our civil (political) religion, because it will undoubtedly conflict with our call to follow Jesus.

The early church had a natural suspicion of Roman civil religion because it was so blatantly pagan and idolatrous—though even it could be appealing. Contemporary Christians can much more easily assume that Christian, or quasi-Christian, ideas, language, and practices are benign and even divinely sanctioned. This makes American civil religion all the more attractive—that is, all the more seductive and dangerous. Its fundamentally pagan character is masked by its Christian veneer.

What becomes clear from Gorman is how timely the message of Revelation is for us today. Not because it is giving us some sort of end-of-days timeline, as the popular dispensational position would claim, but because it calls us to recognize the danger of buying in to any empire or lord except Jesus and His kingdom. Our systems of government and power today are modern representations of Babylon.

Babylon makes promises, demands, and claims that are appropriate only for God to make. It sacralizes, even divinizes, its own power, and then it requires absolute allegiance to that power. The progression of this course, as Revelation 18 makes especially clear, is the pursuit of luxury and the neglect of the poor, first by Babylon itself, then by its clients, then by its everyday citizens. One inevitable result is the treatment of certain human beings as goods to be traded (18:13), and the elimination of others for their failure to offer absolute allegiance. Another is violence and war, death and destruction, hunger and famine (ch. 6). The final inevitable result is the destruction of the earth without fear of consequences, temporal or eternal (11:18).

(I think Gorman has also probably read his Stringfellow - I’m reminded of reading An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens In a Strange Land a few years back.

I’d highly recommend Reading Revelation Responsibly for anyone who wants to give Revelation serious consideration. It’s not a difficult book - 10 chapters, and written at what might be considered just a slightly advanced popular level. It’s an insightful, encouraging volume that’s worth the time.

A million people have undoubtedly posted this already, but… wow. So good. Bono and Eugene Peterson sit down at Peterson’s kitchen table to discuss the Psalms. This is worth 20 minutes of your time.

A couple friends shared this old compilation video of Fred Rogers appearing on the Charlie Rose interview show, and while my memories of watching Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, while definitely present, are indistinct at best, I couldn’t help but spend 15 minutes listening to it. What struck me this time wasn’t so much Mr. Rogers' lovely insights into life, but in how uncomfortable Charlie Rose looks performing the interview.

First - and I may just be imagining this, but I don’t think so - Rose is challenged by Rogers' deliberate pace. Rose’s normal tempo is likely something a lot faster, but Rogers refuses to be hurried. And through the interview clip you hear Rose start to slow down, never quite reaching Rogers' slow cadence, but certainly influenced by his quiet and calm.

Second, and more profoundly, Rose seems ill at ease, I think, simply because he recognizes in Rogers a spiritual and emotional quality that he wishes he had himself. Quickly behind that is the thought that the absence of those qualities is a real personal shortcoming somehow.

To say it much more simply: this is the discomfiting presence of a saint.

I’m reminded of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 2:

But thanks be to God, who… uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?

To those of us who recognize and embrace the presence of Christ in Rogers' life, it is a pleasing aroma - one that makes encourages and challenges us. To those who don’t, it can be deeply troubling. My desire is to live with such an awareness of Christ in my life that I, too, could have a transformative presence like Mr. Rogers did.

When the Relay podcast guys announced a show about space, my first thought was “sure, Stephen and Jason are great, but they need Geof as a third host”. Well, he hasn’t made it that far yet, but I was excited yesterday to see that he did make it on to Liftoff episode 12 as a guest.

Geof works at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as a Payload Rack Officer for the International Space Station. I’ve heard bits and pieces about his job over the last year, but I learned a lot listening to him talk here. If you’re interested in space, Liftoff is worth a listen.

Oh yeah.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a record catch my attention and get stuck in my head like Hamilton has over the past couple of weeks. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you’re already probably tired of hearing about it. But in the spirit of it’s-still-stuck-in-my-head-and-I-want-to-talk-about-it, I’m writing a blog post in the hopes of reaching a few folks who wouldn’t likely otherwise familiarize themselves with it.

On the face of it, the summary of this new Broadway musical sounds, frankly, bizarre: a rap/hip-hop musical, featuring nearly all non-white actors, about the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.

To Hamilton’s writer/composer, though, it makes perfect sense. Lin-Manuel Miranda, a thirty-something New Yorker and son of Puerto Rican immigrants, sees Hamilton’s story as a classic immigrant story. Born in the Caribbean, no father around, mother died when he was young. Immigrated to America, and with great ambition and drive played a significant hand in the founding of the USA, only to die in a duel at the hand of Vice President and long-time rival Aaron Burr. So why wouldn’t you tell this story?

Miranda gave an early performance of what would become the opening song of the musical at a White House evening of poetry, music, and spoken word back in 2009. (He was invited after penning his first musical, the Tony Award-winning In The Heights.) You can see the range of reactions in this video: at first, everybody chuckles at the idea of a hip-hop album about Alexander Hamilton. But 4 minutes in, he’s really good, and they’re hooked.

After hearing friends rave about Hamilton for a few days I went ahead and bought the cast recording. It’s clear at once that Hamilton is serious story telling. It’s not played for laughs or trying to highlight the incongruity of a Hispanic man in the lead and African Americans playing Burr, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. After 10 minutes you’ll buy into the idea, and by the end of the musical you’ll have a new perspective on immigrants shaping our country in its infancy.

What grabbed me first about Hamilton was the lyrics. I’ve always been a fan of smart wordplay, whether it be in silly family pun battles, Mel Brooks lyrics, Andrew Peterson songs, or Danny Kaye movies. And in Hamilton they’re smart, and they’re incessant. In the Alexander Hamilton character’s introductory song “My Shot”, he raps without hardly taking a breath, about his plight as a new immigrant:

I’m ‘a get a scholarship to King’s College. I prob’ly shouldn’t brag, but dag, I amaze and astonish. The problem is I got a lot of brains but no polish. I gotta holler just to be heard. With every word, I drop knowledge! I’m a diamond in the rough, a shiny piece of coal tryin’ to reach my goal. My power of speech:unimpeachable. Only nineteen but my mind is older. These New York City streets get colder, I shoulder ev’ry burden, ev’ry disadvantage I have learned to manage, I don’t have a gun to brandish, I walk these streets famished.

The musical traces Hamilton’s life through his move to America, his marriage to Eliza Schuyler, his involvement in the revolution and the founding of the country, his writing of many of the Federalist Papers, the affair that most likely cost him a shot at the presidency, the untimely death of his son, and his final showdown with Burr.

This bit from CBS Sunday Morning back in March is a nice brief overview of Hamilton the man, Hamilton the show, and the magnetic and clearly brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda.

If you’re mildly interested by this point, I’d recommend checking out the cast album. (It’s up on YouTube to stream if you’re not ready to commit to a purchase.) It’s possible it won’t be your thing - Hamilton is currently sold out for goodness knows how long at the Richard Rodgers Theater on Broadway, but your standard Rodgers & Hammerstein musical it ain’t - but if you can immerse yourself in it for an hour or two I don’t think you’ll regret it.

As a footnote: my friend Bethany pointed me toward the #ParksAndHam mashup on Twitter, wherein folks are combining Hamilton quotes with pictures from Parks and Recreation. If you’re a fan of Parks and Rec, there are some pretty great ones out there.

twitter.com/pastaisco…

So yeah, it’s one of those months. I need a clone. Or two. Or five.So yeah, it’s one of those months. I need a clone. Or two. Or five.

Think of it this way:

“Chris gets work done, Orphan Black-style”

Family

Orphan Black has Sarah - mother, sister, daughter, driven by love for family.

I have Dad Chris.

The Pretty Face

Orphan Black has Allison - perky suburban housewife who runs her own business and is dabbling in politics.

I have soon-to-be-a-manager-at-work Chris.

The Technical Expert

Orphan Black has Cosima - cute hippy scientist who gets crap figured out.

I have engineer-who-makes-sure-our-products-don’t-crash-airplanes Chris.

The Meanie

Orphan Black has Rachel - brutal corporate executive.

I have doesn’t-put-up-with-any-crap-from-program-managers Chris.

The Scary One

Orphan Black has Helena.

I have after-a-long-day-of-juggling-all-this Chris.

I think it would work out rather nicely.

[Yeah, we binged on Orphan Black this summer at our house. Love it!]

How am I old enough to have an 11-year-old? It doesn’t seem I’ve gotten that much older… and yet this young lady grows in stature, beauty, and general awesomeness every year. Whether she’s playing with the cat, hanging with her sisters, helping her Mom, or having some other sort of fun, she’s a delight.

Happy birthday, Laura! You’re a blessing to our family, and it’s a wonderful treat to be your Dad.

Seventeen years ago, on a sweltering Friday night in Charlotte, NC, two youngsters stood before God and a few hundred friends and family and made promises that they surely didn’t fully understand.

In some ways it feels like it was just yesterday… until I start thinking about all the intervening events. 17 years later we’ve added three kids, cycled through about half a dozen cats, have a lot less hair, and still play church softball every season. (This year’s team’s infield: two married couples. One husband/wife at short and second; Becky at first and me at third. Such fun… until I start airmailing my throws to first!)

God has been good to us, and we keep learning every day (or at least most days) how to love each other better and become even better friends. Today is our seventh prime number anniversary, and here’s to another 10 or 12 primes before we’re done.

I play with a band called Standing Before Giants off and on. (I don’t show up on the official band info, but they pull me in for gigs on a semi-regular basis. It works.) On Sunday we’re playing at Praise on the River - a fundraiser for the local free medical clinic.

To publicize things this morning we played a 30-minute acoustic set on the stage at the local Farmer’s Market. Nothing like having to be tuned up and ready to sing at 7:30 am!

If you’re around Cedar Rapids tomorrow (Sunday June 21), come down to the amphitheater and listen to the music! Full band mode will be engaged for that one (i.e. I’ll have my keyboard with me!).

Photo credit to the estimable John Walton.

As a worship leader I confess I grumble from time to time about the current propensity of our songwriters to appropriate and revise classic hymns in ways that just drive me crazy.

For example, my worship pastor has heard me rant on more than one occasion about Chris Tomlin’s modification of the last verse of Crown Him With Many Crowns. The original lines directly address Jesus:

All hail, Redeemer, hail, for Thou hast died for me, Thy praise and glory shall not fail throughout eternity…

But Tomlin, for some reason that doesn’t entail the rhyming scheme, revises the words to talk about Jesus rather than to Him:

All hail, Redeemer, hail, for He has died for me, His praise and glory shall not fail throughout eternity…

Why, Chris, why? You could’ve modernized the language without screwing around with the perspective of the song. Argh.

Oh, and don’t even get me started about the multiple Christian-ese re-writes of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. Yikes.

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox.

This past weekend we had a garage sale, and among 3 big boxes of sheet music my Mom brought to the sale, I found a book that lets me know that this isn’t a new problem.

“World Famous Christmas Songs, containing the best and most popular Songs of the Nativity”. Compiled and Edited by the Reverend George Rittenhouse. Published in 1929, it’s an eclectic assortment of both secular and sacred songs.

What stuck out to me as I paged through was that when it says “edited” by Rev. Rittenhouse, they weren’t kidding. His fingerprints are all over this thing.

For instance, he rather ambitiously chooses to re-harmonize Angels We Have Heard on High with some extra movement:

Another place he appropriates Bizet’s L’Arlessienne and some old lyrics to create a rather bombastic tune subtitled “The March of the Kings”.

Then there’s this gem, wherein he re-writes the lyrics of “O Tannenbaum!” to give them a Christian angle:

O Christmas Tree! Fair Christmas Tree! A type of Life Eternal! O Christmas Tree! Fair Christmas Tree! Your boughs are ever vernal. So fresh and green in Summer heat, and bright when snows lie round your feet O Christmas Tree! Fair Christmas Tree! A type of Life Eternal!

A classic waiting to happen, right there. There are two more verses if you’re really interested.

The more things change…

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that these impulses have been around a long time. (Picture a musician in the court of King Hezekiah - “gah, why can’t we just sing that psalm the way King David wrote it?") But it was comforting to see that confirmation, and to be reminded that history has a way of weeding out the material of lesser quality and holding on to the good stuff.

I guess I can be patient.

I had about five things turn up in my RSS reading today that I want to blog before long. But it’s Friday, which merits things entertaining and lighthearted.

First up: a jazzy cover of Radiohead’s classic song “Creep”, with American Idol singer Haley Reinhart on vocals. (They replace the F word in this version with something cleaner, so it’s safe to turn on in front of small children.) I love how great songs manage to be viable and stay great even when transformed into a different genre. This is a good example.

Next up: Sesame Street reminds us again that it writes most of its humor to amuse the parents who would otherwise grow unbearably weary of its puppets. The latest example: “Game of Chairs”. Fans of Game of Thrones should be quite amused.

We’re finishing up Birthday Week at the Hubbs house by celebrating today as the youngest turns 6. KP is a pistol - always moving fast to keep up with her sisters, often singing quietly to herself while she plays, she loves to laugh and dance and wear shirts that have flouncy tutu waists.

Given the photos available to me on my phone for sharing here, she also appears to like eating ice cream and taking selfies with dad.

Happy birthday, little lady!

I’m not a big listener of CCM and Praise & Worship music, but Matt Maher’s stuff has been growing on me lately. He has a new record out this week called Saints and Sinners, and I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit.

Here he goes full Springsteen on “Glory Bound”, which is a heckuva lot of fun:

Our middle daughter, Addison, enters her last single-digit year today. Hard to believe that nine years have flown by so quickly!

This young lady is a free spirit, a voracious reader, and a math whiz. Life is never dull with her around. She has a sense of style and funky attitude that set her apart from the crowd.

I love this young lady dearly and couldn’t be prouder to be her dad.

OK, I’m just shamelessly reposting something Jason Kottke dug up, but it’s fascinating - somebody took the courtroom scene from A Few Good Men and edited all the dialogue out. It holds up really well; a sign, I would imagine, of the quality of the filmmaking.

Wendell Berry is an author many folks have never heard of, but boy, once you get into the right circles, you never hear the end of him. And while I haven’t read but a couple of his books, his fans' high praise doesn’t seem unreasonable or hyperbolic. Berry is conservative when it comes to culture and community, but then holds positions on environmentalism and pacifism that are more aligned with the political left.

Festival of Faiths / Flickr

All the while, he’s a local Kentucky farmer who writes books, poetry, and has received significant awards for doing so. I have many friends today who approach Berry with the sort of awed respect that you can imagine them directing, in a previous era, to C. S. Lewis. (Don’t believe me? Just go read Andrew Peterson’s blog post from 2010 where he recounts a visit to meet Berry. It’s pretty great.)

My thoughts were directed back to Berry this week after reading a piece on Berry written by Gracy Olmstead on The American Conservative website. It’s a delightful interview in which Berry opines in his earthy, plainspoken way about the current state of politics, conservatism, community, and faith.

I love the humor that comes along with the critique, for instance, in his response to this question:

GO: You write a lot about the importance of conservation—which, really, conservatism is supposed to be about. How have conservatives lost an understanding of proper conservation?
> WB: For those who enjoy absurdities—as I do, up to a point—“conservatives” opposed to conservation are vibrantly absurd and worth at least a grin. But such conservatives have achieved this amusing absurdity by a radical and dangerous narrowing of purpose. They apparently wish to conserve only the power and wealth of the most powerful and the most wealthy. The conservation of wilderness and “the wild” seems now to be recognized as a project belonging exclusively to “liberals.” But that also is a dangerous narrowing of purpose. It is true that “liberal” conservationists also fairly dependably oppose the most excessive and sensational abuses of “the environment,” such as oil or slurry spills (in some places), surface mining (off and on, never enough), extreme pollution of air and water (mainly as it affects cities), and so on. But in fact most politicians, “conservative” and “liberal,” are the pets or juvenile dependents of the industrial corporations.

In Kentucky, for example, the Party of Coal has swallowed, digested, and shat nearly all politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike. Above all, it is still virtually impossible to interest any of the powers of politics in the economic landscapes of farming and forestry. In those landscapes the gravest and most extensive damages are being done: by soil erosion, by toxic pollution of soil and water, by impairment of the diversity and integrity of ecosystems, by drastic interruptions of the fertility cycle, by the devastation of rural communities and of our never adequately developed cultures of husbandry. There are reasons to hope for and even to foresee the coming of more honesty and better purposes—the need for a sustainable economy, the increasingly obvious failures of industrialism and corporate rule—but no extensive improvements can come easily or soon.

Or this rather pointed barb when asked about seemingly continuous wars:

I don’t believe we can hope to make sense of our modern wars until we have acknowledged that war is good for business.

On a Christian response to war and persecution of Christians:

Only a few marginal Christians have dared to think that Christianity calls for the radical neighborhood, servanthood, love, and forgiveness that Christ taught. I agree with them, and much against my nature I have tried to make my thoughts consent. I do not say this with confidence.

And this response when asked about his concerns with modern Christianity:

I don’t know when, why, or how it happened, but at some time the mainstream denominations put themselves in charge of the Sunday job of accrediting people for admission to Heaven, turning the workdays, the human economy, and the material creation over to the materialists. And so it became possible for people to commit their souls to God while participating in an economy dedicated to the swiftest possible extraction and consumption of everything it values in God’s world, with unlimited collateral damage to all creatures, humans included, that it does not value. Once this desecration of creation, of life itself, becomes conventional economic practice, then the submersion of the Gospel in nationalism and the waging of Christian warfare readily follows.

Love him or hate him, Berry is a fantastic writer, a thoughtful philosopher, a man whose thought we ignore at our own peril. I’d encourage you to go read the whole interview at The American Conservative. Me, I’m off to buy a copy of Jayber Crow.

A few months back I replaced my old (still working) HdHomeRun networked tuner with a newer model (recently rebranded the “HDHomeRun Extend” which provides H.264 transcoding. I was feeling cheap and so purchased a used model from Amazon for about half the price of new. It is functionally fine but has a small fan that went bad. (Nasty grindy noises from a fan: not good.)

From a bit of online investigation it sounds like SiliconDust (the makers of HDHomeRun) will repair/replace units with bad fans, but given that I got mine second hand that’s likely not an option. So, we go to idea #2: add a new fan myself.

A little online browsing pointed me to the Nexus 80mm Real Silent Case Fan and $13 and free two-day-shipping later I had one in my hot little hands. Then the fun ensued.

The case mod on the HDHR consisted primarily of cutting a hole in the top of the case to let air through. This was accomplished quite effectively with a little cutting wheel and a Dremel tool. Also used the Dremel to drill four holes for the rubber fan mounts.

You can sort of see the hole I cut in the top looking through the middle of it here.

The old fan came out easily - just three screws holding it in - and I left the old heatsink in place. I ran the fan wires out of a vent hole in the side of the case, and had to get the soldering iron out to tin the ends of the wires so that they had enough stiffness that I could push them in to the little clip in the fan power connector.

Wires are coming out the side and go up to the new fan…

It all went together quite smoothly and now instead of a noisy grinding fan I have one that runs almost silently to keep all that transcoding circuitry cool. A fun little project and a profitable end!

In former days the weather gods spake to us through almanacks and prognosticating rodents, but in these latter days they speak to us through television channels.

In the seventh year of President Obama’s reign, the word of the weather gods came to the prophet Cantore, saying:

“Behold, Midwesterners, though thine January hast been mild, and thy hopes look tomorrow toward a groundhog’s tidings of early spring, yet before the ground thaws and the streams murmur with hopes of warm weather, a storm shall come upon you the likes of which has not been seen in your environs for many months.

And woe unto you, who live near the Great Lakes, the mid-Atlantic, and the Northeast, for neither shall you be spared. Though your earlier drifts may be melting , yet these storms will restore them to their former height and even beyond, if it be possible.

Behold, Juno and Kari shall come from the north, and Linus from the northwest, and shall fall upon thee with cold and heavy snow. The sun will be blocked out, and in blizzard conditions the visibility shall be near to nothing.

The prophet Cantore’s message was briefly interrupted by Local on the 8’s.

For more than 24 hours this storm shall be upon you, leaving as many as twelve inches of snow behind. Once the clouds depart, yet shall the winds remain. And all the low places will be filled up, and the drifts shall rise as high as the horses' bridles.

But this is not the end of sorrows.

For after Kari and Linus have left thee, behold, a clipper from Alberta will visit thee for a time, times, and half a time. It shall bring with it unbearable winds, and temperatures for which the zero on the thermometer is insufficient.

Woe to those who are traveling when these things occur! And pray that thy children have relief from school. We, the weather gods have spoken, who form the storms and call them each by name. Others may speak and promise warmth, but hearken not to them, for they promise falsely of warm-ups which shall disappoint. Maintain thine eyes rather upon the jet stream, for by the jet stream are thou chilled, and by the jet stream thou shalt be warmed in due time.

This cold shall not last forever. Stay tuned to my words, when after a brief message I shall speak of hopes that may bring ye warmth by next week.”

We got my first computer when I was 7. My dad was writing a book, so bought a little PC with two 5.25" floppy drives and a monochrome monitor. (Ah, the good old days when you had to put the MS-DOS disk in to boot, then remove it to put in a program disk.)

Dad had a tech-savvy friend come over to show him how to run Wordstar and Datastar while I looked on over their shoulders with great interest. I apparently soaked it in pretty well, because it wasn’t long before Dad would call me in to answer his questions before calling his friend, and 30 years later I’m a “computer guy” with an engineering degree and a programming job and still actively in family tech support.

As my three daughters have gotten older (the oldest is 10), I’ve uneasily looked forward to a day when there’s some issue of tech which has me confused and one of them says “oh, Dad, it’s easy! Here, let me show you…” But I’ve always figured it would be quite a way off.

But then yesterday after some begging and pleading for a membership on some money-grubbing movie-associated game site, we settled on a different option: the full-blown version of Minecraft.

Parents these days are probably familiar with the game, at least by name. It’s a low-res graphics world-building game that has Creative and Survival modes and the ability to play solo or to join up to servers on the internet to collaborate with others. The girls have been playing a stripped-down iPad version for months, but got a few Minecraft books for Christmas and have been wishing for the full version.

So last night I bit the bullet, bought licenses so they can play concurrently, and set up a local server so they can play together w/o having to deal with the outside world. But once I showed them how to log in and start the program, I realized something: that’s all I know about it.

If they have questions about how to do something in the game, I’ve got no clue. I had to Google to figure out what the keyboard controls were for my five-year-old since the 10-year-old had the book in the basement.

They played the game for 30 minutes before dinner last night and while at the dinner table it was non-stop jabber about what they had discovered. “Hey, did you know how to do this?” “Did you know that if you do that then this will happen?” “I made it do this!” But while I loved their excitement, I’ll admit that the rest of it sounded like Greek to me. I’ve got no clue.

In many respects it feels like a new era. Here’s a computer-based thing that they know and I don’t. And I’m cool with that. Really. * deep breath *

My ten-year-old is getting into programming and if that persists, we’ll get a Raspberry Pi for her birthday and then I’ll be able to prove (at least for a little while, I hope) that I’ve still got a thing or two to teach her about technology.

But kiddo, fair warning: at this point you may as well start counting down the days until you starts getting phone calls from me. You have been warned.