Saturday, April 22, 2006

Graham Across America

(From our regular contributor, the YB of the SC)

2,000 miles of road laid out before us like too much homework.
Chicago to L.A. by air is a newspaper and a nap,
Chicago to L.A. by road is too many trips to the bathroom.
The citizens are waiting for us with their "open for business" signs.

The engine won't be heard over the sound of the radio.
Asia takes us across America and America is not a great band,
Boston may get us through Denver, but Denver should never take to the air.
When the lights go down in the city, we want to be there.

Two drivers with one wheel, someone has to go along for the ride.
Images from old movies come back to haunt us, like Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Elf provides a scene where the world's best coffee is acknowledged,
I provide a scene where the attendant is told she is the only game in town.

3 days are plenty when you're running on caffeine and sounds.
Rain, snow and sun take their turn in the winter, but in spring the sky is clear.
Summer is out there somewhere and the tides are growing warmer.
Time to blow the dust off of your swim fins and kill the spider on your board.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

For the YS of the Yakimaniacs

A Poem for the "YS of the Yaks that is stuck in the horribly flat Midwest."

You were placed in the land of Goshen
that you might grow and flourish and become strong.
Soon you will be released from your bondage,
and from your servanthood you will be set free.

West you shall travel to the promised land,
but you will cross many rivers and plains.
High mountains, yea many high peaks you will climb,
deserts and valleys and plains! Deserts and valleys and plains!

You will be lonely and tired but not forgotten,
(road) weary you will be but falter you will not.
For Avalon awaits you with blossoms sweet,
and friends, little friends and the great milky way.

Beyond the Blackfoot and the Nez Perce you will fly,
even the fair land of Rohan will see you pass.
When you cross the great and wild river,
you will know your journey’s end is near. Tis near.

And you’ve come to Avalon–sweet land dear!–that home,
that place of waters clear.
Towering peaks will beckon and glaciers will call your name,
lifting your gaze from forest glade to kingdoms of snow.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

An Excellent Adventure

Part One:
A Late Start


You might not know this but I am a skiing fanatic. (I cannot be classified as a ski bum because I have a steady job.) Even though I started skiing with my family when I was very young, six years old or so, my addiction began when my son expressed an interest in skiing. He was nine. After a career change and a series of low paying jobs, I finally had a job and income that would allow me to buy used equipment for myself and my son. We skied for two years before that, renting our skies, boots and poles. We could only go up to the mountain a few times a year because of the cost. Then our local ski resort, White Pass, started selling adult season passes for $200.00. The stars were aligned! We bought equipment and passes and started skiing like there was no tomorrow. Every weekend, rain or shine, between Thanksgiving and April 30. It was a wonderful time for father and son and we created many lasting memories. I watched him develop into a strong young man and we honed our mountain skills together. Along the way we skied in Oregon, British Columbia, Idaho and other resorts in Washington. We also picked up a skiing buddy in my cousin Chris. She is about my age and also a skiing addict. More recently, after my son went off to college in the flat lands of the Midwest, Chris and I would drive up the mountain together sharing the gas expense and many childhood memories.

Last weekend I stayed home and did yard work. It was the first time I had missed a Saturday skiing in a long time. All this week I had been watching the mountain weather on the Internet. It snowed almost every day at the higher elevations of the Cascades and the temperatures were dropping. The poor fruit growers in the Yakima Valley were keeping watch on their thermometers by night but I was filled with anticipation. The forecast was for four inches of new snow on Friday and another six on Saturday with the high temp not expected above 30. I called Chris on Thursday. No go; she had Easter preparations. The forecast held and I was set.

A little explanation is in order here. This time of year the snow conditions and weather can be dicey in the Cascades. Snow conditions and weather are two separate things, not always related. Without boring you with the details, spring skiing can bring beautiful sunny weather but unskiable snow conditions. On the other hand a storm can bring foul weather but fantastic snow conditions. There are lots of variables. I much prefer the latter and will take good snow over good weather any day. Three weeks before, I was skiing in 45 degree weather so I was more than a little excited at the prospect of this spring storm and low temps.

I rolled out of bed at 8:30. Mrs. Yak likes her rest on Saturday mornings, besides when one has a season pass one can afford to be leisurely. I went to the computer to check the blogs. I was burning up the time and I would regret it later but I had to publish a few comments and read a few emails. I looked out the window to the west; the foothills were socked-in stormy, the balsam root was in bloom on the nearby hillsides and an American Goldfinch was singing his three-variant song in a tree next to the house. I watched and listened for a minute. I knew this was going to be a great day! The doorbell rang. Ciro (possibly the subject of a future post) had stopped by to check on the new valve box he had installed for me. We chatted and he left. I needed to get moving.

I threw my gear and clothes into the venerable Nissan, brought Mrs. Yak the paper and was off…to the gas station and the latte stand. After a fill-up and a hazelnut latte from Miss Pippi Longstocking, the cute redhead at my favorite drive-through, I set out west on Highway 12. The Mariners were on the radio, playing the Red Socks at Fenway. It was the first inning and Joel Pinero was in a jam. I accelerated to 60 miles an hour.

“Here’s the payoff pitch. Its high and outside! He walked him!”

I crossed the Naches-Tieton River at Painted Rocks. Two more stop lights to go. (Between my house and White Pass there are exactly two stop lights unless I get a latte from Pippi. Then there are five.)

The Valley’s stone fruits are in
bloom: apricots, nectarines and peaches. So are the ornamentals: pears, cherries and plums. It’s a kaleidoscope of pinks and whites and purples as I rocket by. Up here in the northern end of the Valley, the cherries, apples and pears are not out yet. Maybe another week or two. The roadside fruit stands are shuttered after the close of the fall season but their signs still call out to passing motorists:

FRUIT 1000 FEET
WALLA WALLA SWEETS
PEACH SMOOTHIES
FRESH CHERRIES

I glance at the thermometer. It’s 45 degrees. A week ago it was that warm at the top of the pass and I haven’t even left the valley floor! I knew I should have left earlier but I tell myself that every Saturday.

David Ortiz singles to the gap in right.

I just went though the last stop light, (it was green). I’ll soon be out of cell range so I call Mrs. Yak to tell her goodbye. I grumble about paying $2.79 a gallon for gas. I’ll call her again at 4:30, on the same stretch of road, on my way back. This too is a Saturday ritual.

I’ve gone ten miles. In a few minutes I’ll see my little friends again and travel the Milky Way.

(To be continued.)

Friday, April 14, 2006

The “Good” in Good Friday

In a chapter of his book The Cross of Christ, John Stott attempts to answer a question about God that is posed in every generation. It is not a question really, but an accusation. And since there is, for many people, no good answer, the question ends up as a condemnation.

Stott relates a story told by Elie Wiesel in his book Night, the account of Wiesel’s boyhood experiences in the death camps of Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald. “Perhaps the most horrifying experience of all was when the guards first tortured and then hanged a young boy, ‘a child with a refined and beautiful face,’ a ‘sad-eyed angel.’ Just before the hanging Elie heard someone behind him whisper, ‘Where is God? Where is he?’ Thousands of prisoners were forced to watch the hanging (it took the boy half an hour to die) and then to march past, looking him full in the face. Behind him Elie heard the same voice ask, ‘Where is God now?’” Wiesel says that he heard a voice inside himself say, ‘Here he is-he is hanging here on this gallows.’

Stott makes the point that Wiesel’s "words were truer than he knew." While Wiesel makes it clear that he considered God dead at that moment, refusing to believe in a God that would allow people to be tortured, gassed and burned, the scriptures are full of statements and examples of God suffering with his people and also of God in Christ suffering with us yet.

God suffered with his people enslaved in Egypt. Jesus wept over the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the coming destruction. Jesus asked Saul on the Damascus road why he was persecuting him, signifying his identification with the persecuted early church. Jesus clearly identifies himself with the stranger, the sick, the naked and the prisoner: as we treat them so we treat him. And of course God humiliated himself, became human and subjected himself to hatred, cruelty, injustice and death on a Roman cross.

I do not worship a God who is aloof and above and beyond human suffering. He is not immune or insensitive to the misery of my world. Wherever I go I follow in his steps because he came before me and suffered.

Stott concludes, “That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his.”

The suffering and death of our world makes sense only in the light of divine suffering, of God’s sacrificial suffering on the cross. This is why I can claim the “Good” in Good Friday.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

“Brave Sons and Daughters True” Part One

In case you missed this March 28, 2006 news story:

A federal appeals court ruled that Rep. Jim McDermott, Wheaton Class of 1958, violated federal law by turning over an illegally taped telephone call to reporters nearly a decade ago.

In a 2-1 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court ruling that McDermott violated the rights of House Majority Leader John Boehner, who was heard on the 1996 call speaking to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The lower court had ordered McDermott to pay Boehner more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and at least $600,000 in legal costs.

McDermott, D-Wash., leaked to The New York Times and other news organizations a tape of a 1996 cell phone call. The call included a discussion by Gingrich, R-Ga., and other House GOP leaders about a House ethics committee investigation of Gingrich. Boehner, R-Ohio, was a Gingrich lieutenant at the time and is now House majority leader.

A lawyer for McDermott had argued that his actions were allowed under the First Amendment,
and lawyers for 18 news organizations including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post filed a brief backing McDermott.

But Boehner's lawyers said McDermott's actions were clearly illegal.

A spokesman for McDermott said the congressman had just received the ruling and was studying it.

Also you might remember that our fair congressman from King County visited Baghdad for private consultations with Saddam Hussein during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Alma Mater is curiously quiet about this, one of its more illustrious, alum.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

A Musical Intervention

Dear Smoking Christian,
Recently on your blog there have been comments about the problem of the YB’s music. While I find it nearly impossible to imagine that the YB is stuck in a thirty year musical rut, who am I to question what goes on in the Mooney household? Yet something must be done!

After a thirty-year lapse: What to do? He is obviously not ready for a steady diet of Hoobastank, NIN or Mudvayne. Perhaps Switchfoot? Yellowcard? No. A more gradual transition is in order. This will take time.

Here are my suggestions for you to gently bring the YB back into the contemporary music scene:
Coldplay; X&Y
Death Cab for Cutie; Plans
Zero 7; When It Falls
If he wants to know what he is getting for his hard-earned cash, tell him to imagine Enja in an elevator. With drums.

If you want to make an appeal to his religious roots get him:
Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama; There Will Be Light
Tell him to imagine a black guy, no a bunch of black guys (some blind), singing Negro spirituals.

If he wants to mellow-out during his morning commute get him:
Robert Cray; Twenty
Imagine a talented black, singer/songwriter/guitarist supporting three old white guys on drums, bass and keyboards singing about unrequited love, infidelity and betrayal. There is also an anti-war bromide, but he can skip that track.

DO IT NOW! Run, don’t walk to the CD store!
You must restore the mythic status of the YB as a music avant-gardist and purveyor of the new, the unusual and the hip.

Thank you,
The (concerned) Yakimaniac

P.S. Perhaps others, the recipients of so much love and light (musically speaking) from the YB, would like to contribute their selections to enhance his road to recovery.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

The Good Stuff

What would it be like to get 111 comments on one of your posts? That’s right, I said, “One hundred-eleven!” Recently I visited a blog called New York Hack. It’s a blog by a New York City cab driver, a woman, who takes pictures in the course of her day and adds her comments about situations that occur along the way. She has lots of readers.

I visited her blog sometime later and to my shock she had 319 comments! This on a post announcing her book deal. I didn’t realize this was possible. I should have. Publishers are eager for the novel and the unique. Then again maybe it's just New York. I once bought a book about a New York City locksmith. I thought it was interesting so I gave it away as a gift.

Is it possible that a publisher would be interested in a former ad exec who smokes fish in his garage? I hope so. Maybe it's Los Angeles too. I once rented a movie about a guy who ended up in a bad section of LA after a Lakers game. He was rescued by a tow truck driver but I was so unnerved by all the bad things that happened in the first half of the movie that I missed all the good stuff in the second half.

Let’s make a deal: if you stick around for all the good stuff to come, I’ll do the same.
Shake?

Saturday, April 01, 2006

The Consummate Stylist

I thought it timely to point out to our readers one example of the sparkling literary talent right under our noses. I do so because on the blog The Smoking Christian, the brilliant subject matter often blinds one to the stylistic device. To wit: the dramatic sentence fragment.

“Nothing so firmly demonstrates your command over the sentence as a judicious fragment.” So says Sheridan Baker in his book, The Complete Stylist. The sentence fragment is conversational in tone. It lets the reader feel in on the conversation. The Smoking Christian is nothing if not conversational and this is why we love it so! This doesn’t happen by accident. Peter works very hard at getting it right and it shows. But he is so accomplished that, as I said, the reader doesn’t even notice. The following are examples of dramatic sentence fragments plucked from previous posts on The Smoking Christian. Note: In context, they are positioned exactly at the place where they will have the most impact.
Enjoy!

“But I don’t mind.”
From “MY THOUGHTS ON ‘THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM’”
Friday, March 31, 2006

“People you’ve heard of.”
From “THE SWEET SMELL OF DISTRESS”
Friday, March 31, 2006

“I go alone.”
From “EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE”
Thursday, March 30, 2006

“BUT, WE MOVED.”
From “DADA DADDY DO DAH”
Saturday, March 25, 2006

“Well, I guess I did.”
From ‘“TROUT MASK REPLICA”’
Thursday, March 23, 2006

And from some older posts:

“Fact!”
From “INTRODUCING ‘THE SMOKING CHRISTIAN’S DELICIOUS WORLD OF LIVING MARINADES’”
Wednesday, October 26, 2005

“Yes, very, very good.”
From “MY FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS THE SMOKING CHRISTIAN”
Monday, October 24, 2005

“He pointed.”
From “MY IMAGINARY TWIN (WHO ACTUALLY WRITES ALL MY POEMS)”
Thursday, October 20, 2005

Turtles All the Way Down

Cambridge professor Stephen Hawking in his book, A Brief History of Time, tells the anecdote about a scientist who was giving a public lecture on astronomy. During questions, a woman stood up to disagree with what he had said and exclaimed, “The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist asked the woman what the tortoise was standing on, and the woman said, “It's turtles all the way down!”

Whether this story is fact or fancy it illustrates precisely what most scientists believe: all that exists is the result of natural phenomenon, one after another, from the beginning until now.

Praise be to God; I got off that train when I was five years old!