Preparing for a Trip

Ginger and Tristan are at camp this week - Ginger as counselor, Tristan as one of 58 4th-6th grade campers - so it's just Ethan and me at home.  Ginger left on Saturday (staff arrives a day early) and Tristan on Sunday, and it took me until Wednesday to get caught up on the dishes and laundry.

It's fun to watch Ginger prepare to leave on a trip, as long as the watching is done from a distance.  She thinks she can do more in the time she has than is actually possible, a trait she shares with many people I think.  That's one of the difference between her and I; I tend to overestimate how long a given task will take, intentionally, so that I have some breathing room.  Ginger finds this annoying, because it often means arriving someplace ten or thirty minutes early, and having to sit and wait.  Oh, the horror of having to sit and wait because you arrived too early!  She would rather not start getting ready any sooner than she has to, so that she doesn't have to leave too early and arrive at her destination too early.

So.  After she left on Saturday (an hour late) I began cleaning the dishes, which were extra messy on account of the scones Ginger made from scratch Saturday morning.  ("Of course I have time to make scones!" she told me when she saw me raise my eyebrows.)  There were a lot of scones, and I figured that at least I would get to start the first couple of days of the week off with a delicious scone for breakfast, but alas, the dog (her dog, I might add, the one she got when I was out of town one weekend) ate them all while I was at church Sunday morning.

Three days this week, Ethan has summer school, although he stayed home sick yesterday.  Also, he has three doctor appointments.  I was only aware of one of them when the week started.  (We went to two of them; I cancelled the third.)

As we were leaving the first of his appointments, on Tuesday, I noticed the unusual clouds.  They weren't the normal marine layer that we get most morning this time of year, but splotchy, clumpy patches of white.  They were clouds that Ethan saw shapes in:  clowns, animals, etc.  (Our normal morning clouds don't look like anything, except perhaps a gray blanket that slowly disappears as the day progresses.) 

It was a pleasantly warm day, and I told Ethan that the clouds reminded me of Indiana, where we lived for three and a half years.  I wondered out loud if we'd get to see clouds like that in Nashville.

Yes, Nashville.  We're going there next week for our church's General Assembly.  When we made the decision to go, all four of us, Ginger was working, so we bought our plane tickets and reserved a hotel room. 

Then Ginger stopped working.

We've been doing everything we can to save, and have even received a little help from others, but it looks like this trip will erase what little savings we have left.  I've also applied for a new credit card, which I guess isn't such a bad thing since I personally don't have any cards except for a few store cards with no balance on them.  But still, I hope Ginger can find a job soon.

I'm trying not to be too anxious about all this - but since I seem to live off of anxiety, it's not easy.  On the other hand, I'm currently reading a novel (Shantaram) that's set in the slums of India, and it makes me feel better.  Whether that's good or bad, I don't know, but it helps to know that I could have a lot less, and still find happiness.

So next week, we head to Nashville.  If you're there, you'll recognize us:  we'll be the Ron Weasleys of the assembly, carrying around our ziploc bags of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. 

Like Snow

These flowers, which I came across at the nature center recently, didn't look real to me; almost like snow, or white crepe paper that someone left laying around.  I don't know the name of these flowers.

Guardians of the Breakfast Table

Unsure of what to post on my blog today, I looked on the camera to see if there were any pictures there that hadn't been transferred to the computer.  I found this one (and several like it). 

Lego figures like these are a common site around the house ... and even my office, as I currently have several guarding the table where we hold our weekly staff meetings. 

The owner of these figures, incidentally, is about to begin his freshman year in high school, and went on his first (group) date the other night.

Purple



Yerba Mansa

Taken near the south pond at El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach this past Saturday.  A sign in the nature center points out that the roots to this plant are aromatic and were once chewed to relieve sore throats and were also applied to the skin for skin problems.  However, the picture accompanying the sign was not as good as this one.  :-)

Last Week of School

The photo below shows my wife and I with our oldest son on the day he graduated from elementary school three years ago.  Now he is finishing middle school, and next week will be considered a high school freshman.  (His younger brother, meanwhile will move from elementary school to middle school.)

As the picture shows, some things change, and some things don't.  My wife still blinks for pictures, but if the three of us were positioned the same way, you'd never know it, as our son is now as tall as she is and would completely block her from view.

 

Twilight Tower

This weekend our boy scout troop joined dozens of other scouting units for the annual Scoutorama.  Our troop builds a tower for this event every year, using large wooden poles lashed together with rope.  Scoutorama begins early on Saturday morning; since it takes several hours to construct the tower, the scouts gathered the night before to build.

After the event, the tower came down much quicker than it went up.

In Search of a Prophet

I should start by pointing out that what follows isn't the "part two" promised in last week's post.  That "part two" will come in this Sunday's sermon, and it will be far less political than what you are about to read here.  However, I couldn't help but be inspired by a number of different thoughts and ideas as a result of the books I've been reading lately....

Here in California, César Chávez's birthday is a state holiday.  César Chávez was born on March 31, 1927, and he died on April 23, 1993.  Today he is studied by public schoolchildren, but since Chávez's death came as I was studying for final exams in my last semester of college, I neither studied him in school nor paid much attention to the news of his passing.

Several weeks ago, I decided to do something about my ignorance concerning César Chávez's life.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I began reading The Moral Vision of César Chávez by Frederick John Dalton. As a result, it is now easier for me to appreciate the extent to which César Chávez is worthy of having a day set aside to honor him.  He worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor and oppressed, speaking against oppression without denying the oppressors' humanity.  He organized farm workers into a strong union, but while many leaders of other unions commanded six-figure salaries, he chose to live in voluntary poverty.  Not only was Chávez a great cultural and political figure; he was also a true Christian prophet, basing his work on the teachings of his Catholic faith, and framing the movement he started and guided in terms of God's passion for justice as well as God's particular concern for the poor.

César Chávez saw clearly the disparities of power and wealth that led to the oppressive and dehumanizing working conditions for farm workers.  "The government represses our people and millions of farm workers are trapped in poverty while the growers lavish in the riches we have earned for them."

Conditions for farm workers have improved thanks to César Chávez and the movement he founded.  However, the disparity of wealth and power in this country has not improved.  In fact, it has gotten worse.

Looking at America as a whole, in 1965 - when César Chávez was just beginning his work at organizing farm workers - the average CEO earned 24 times what the average worker earned.  By 2004, that number had skyrocketed to 431 times as much.  Among some companies, the disparity is even worse; Walmart's CEO, for example, earns 900 times what the average Walmart worker earns.

It is the rich who make the rules, and the rules benefit the wealthy.  In the 1950s, when republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House, the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans was at 91%.  Democrat John F. Kennedy thought this was too high, so he lowered it to 72%.  Today it is at 35%, and still the politicians (influenced, no doubt, by their ties to welathy, corporate America) say it is too high.  We have a budget deficit, but they refuse to raise taxes on the rich, choosing instead to further cut programs that help the poor.

And so, for the vast majority of Americans, life is getting harder and harder.

In his book Rediscovering Values, Jim Wallis points out that the biblical prophets appeared only in times of great disparity.  [Most of the statistics in the previous paragraphs come from this book.]  In times when the gap between the rich and poor was not too great, no prophets were heard; but when that gap grew, the prophets spoke out about society's failure to maintain God's justice.

César Chávez organized workers to overcome injustice.  This was done primarily through strikes.  I wonder if it would be possible to organize all the workers in America who work for companies in which the CEO earns more than, say, 100 times what the average workers earns;  organize them, then call for a one-day strike in order to draw attention to the injustice and oppression of America's poor which continues even today.

If only we had a prophet....