Snow Day

Well, it's a snow day here in Our Fair City--socked with an ice storm overnight, with a half foot more to come today.  All the schools are closed, and even our fine university shut down.  So I don't have to take my thyroid test (as in, do I understand thyroid diseases?, and not, is my thyroid working?).

I put on my hikin' shoes and headed outside for some photos.

My street, snowed in.

Fifth Avenue.

The Twisted Vine on Fifth Avenue.

Nice houses on the street-- they don't make 'em like that anymore.

Frozen things.

Well, that's all for today.  Hope you liked the pictures.

Inauguration

I watched the inauguration today, and it made me glad to be an American.  

It's easy to neglect the tremendous blessing of a government--and the cultural milieu that produces that government--with relatively robust accountability, competency, and integrity. We're not without our problems, but a bit of perspective is in order...

My father has travelled all around the world for his business endeavors, and I've heard stories of the way things are run elsewhere.  He was in Bogota, Columbia in late 1993, when the country essentially had martial law declared, complete with tanks patroling the streets, stemming from the unrest over the fugitive drug lord Pablo Escobar, estimated at one point to be the world's seventh-richest man, whose cartel contolled 80% of the cocaine market.  Escobar had bribed and shot he way to the top, paying off officials and probably influencing changes in the Colombian constitution to prevent extradition while running his cartel from prison.  He is estimated to be responsible for four thousand murders, but the poor of Colombia loved him for his lavish donations and construction projects in  destitute communities.  After his escape from prison, several groups including elite Columbia police squads, trained by American Special Forces, and vigilante groups, funded by rival drug cartels and rebel para-government factions, sought Escobar's death.  A semblance of order resumed after he was gunned down on the rooftops of Medellin, Cololmbia, but this only allowed the rival Cali cartel to wrest control of the cocaine market, until it, too, was broken by the Colombian government in the mid-1990's.

Elsewhere:

• In the past few days, a government task force paper warned the Mexico may suffer a collapse of its government in the wake of narco-corruption.
  
• Last month, massive riots erupted in Greece; prompted by the police shooting of a teen, the uproar was fuelled by widespread dissatisfaction in economic conditions and governance among the youth.
  
• Zimbabwe continues its tragic decline under dictator Mugabe, and now boasts of the shortest life expectancy of any nation under earth.
  

Sorry to end on a downer. More thoughts tomorrow, but right now I am going to sleep.

Don't know much about economy...

Hey everybody. If you're like me, you probably get that glossy look in your eyes when people start talking about the current financial situation.  And I was an econ minor (although my education seemed to be largely relearning the same facts I learned in intro courses, except doing some calculus. Sweet.)

Anyway, here are some resources for you!

Paddy Hirsch's Marketplace Whiteboard series explains it all.  But their listed with the most recent ones at the top, so you'll want to start at the bottom, since the concepts often build on each other.

Also, Timothy Carney at Culture 11 posts a regular column, Heckonomics, (as in, what-the-heck-o-nomics) which will have you understanding things in no time.

Michael Lewis, in "The End of Wall Street's Boom," gives you a behind-the-scenes account of the housing bubble.

Happy reading.

At least the bank can't take your sense of humor

Time to laugh at the economy.  Or Adolf Hitler:

From Clusterstock.

Meanwhile, across the English Channel:

The Hiding Place, pt. 6

Others came to Bloemendaal, scarred body and soul by bombing raids or loss of family or any of the endless dislocations of war. In 1947 we began to receive Dutch people who had been prisoners of the Japanese in indonesia.

Though none of this was by design, it proved to be the best possible setting for those who had been imprisoned in Germany. Among themselves they tended to live and relive their special woes; in Bloemendaal they were reminded that they were not the only ones who had suffered. And for all these people alike, the key to healing turned out to be the same. Each had a hurt he had to forgive: the neighbor who had reported him, the brutal guard, the sadistic soldier.

Strangely enough, it was not the Germans or the Japanese that people had most trouble forgiving; it was their fellow Dutchmen who had sided with the enemy. I saw them frequently in the streets, NsBers with their shaved heads and furtive eyes. These former collaborators were now in pitiful condition, turned out of homes and apartments, unable to find jobs, hooted at in the streets.

At first it seemed to me that we should invite them, too, to Bloemendaal, to live side by side with those they had injured, to seek a new compassion on both sides. But it turned out to be too soon for people working their way back from such hurt: the two times I tried it, it ended in open fights. And so as soon as homes and schools for the feeble-minded opened again around the country, I turned the Beje over to these former NsBers.

This was how it went, those years after the war, experimenting, making mistakes, learning. The doctors, psychiatrists, and nutritionists who came free of charge to any place that cared for war victims, sometimes expressed surprise at our loose-run ways. At morning and evening worship, people drifted in and out, table manners were atrocious, one man took a walk into Haarlem every morning at 3:00 A.M. I could not bring myself to sound a whistle or to scold, or to consider gates or curfews.

And, sure enough, in their own time and their own way, people worked out the deep pain within them. It most often started, as Betsie had known it would, in the garden. As flowers bloomed or vegetables ripened, talk was less of the bitter past, more of tomorrow's weather. As their horizons broadened, I would tell them about the people living in the Beje, people who never had a visitor, never a piece of mail. When mention of the NsBers no longer brought a volley of self-righteous wrath, I knew the person's healing was not far away. And the day he said, “Those people you spoke of---I wonder if they'd care for some homegrown carrots,” then I knew the miracle had taken place. 

Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place, pp. 246-247.

Believers such as myself can easily fall into a saccharine view of forgiveness, seeing the joy of reconciliation but neglecting the hardship required to reach that point.  Forgiveness may hurt. Even if our hearts are filled with compassion for others, society-at-large may only harbor contempt.  Reaching out to the condemned may bring ostracism for ourselves, too.

Another point: it is easy to imagine loving the "deserving," those who suffer via some seemingly cruel twist of fate--a calamity that could befall anyone, including us.  Yet who imagines love for the unworthy, those who have brought calamity upon themselves, those who have committed or condoned atrocity?  And yet Christ commanded us not only to attend to the hungry, and the parched, and the naked, but the imprisoned, as well.  And he made no qualifications: he did not hedge with qualifiers such as the wrongfully incarcerated, or the minor offenders, or the well-behaved.  He calls us to love the damned--the rightfully damned.  

Caring for them, more likely than not, will be bittersweet.  We cannot approach them with naivete; tough love may be needed.  They are not monsters, though the temptation to call them that is strong.  Many have done monstrous things, and their bodies are scarred, their souls are disfigured.  This ugliness has been wrought by their own hands, sullied by blood.  But we know of the Fount of blood that washes, heals, renews.  When the ugliness is cleared away, we may find they were not monsters, but sons and brothers.

The Hiding Place, pt. 5

We lay back, struggling against the nausea that swept over us from the reeking straw. We could hear the women who had arrived with us finding their places. Suddenly I sat up, striking my head on the cross-slats above.

Something had pinched my leg.

“Fleas!” I cried. “Betsie, the place is swarming with them!” We scrambled across the intervening platforms, heads low to avoid another bump, dropped down to the aisle, and edged our way to a patch of light.

“Here! And here’s another one!” I wailed. “Betsie, how can we live in such a place?”

“Show us. Show us how.” It was said so matter of factly it took me a second to realize she was praying. More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie.

“Corrie!” she said excitedly. “He's given us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does! In the Bible this morning. Where was it? Read that part again!” I glanced down the long dim aisle to make sure no guard was in sight, then drew the Bible from its pouch.

“It was in First Thessalonians,” I said. We were on our third complete reading of the New Testament since leaving Scheveningen. In the feeble light I turned the pages. “Here it is: 'Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.'” It seemed written expressly to Ravensbruck.

“Go on,” said Betsie. “That wasn't all.”

“Oh yes: '. . . to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus-”'

“That's it, Corrie! That's His answer. 'Give thanks in all circumstances!' That's what we can do. We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!” I stared at her, then around me at the dark, foul-aired room.

“Such as?” I said.

“Such as being assigned here together.”

l bit my lip. “Oh yes, Lord Jesus!”

“Such as what you're holding in your hands.”

l looked down at the Bible. “Yes! Thank You, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here! Thank You for all the women, here in this room, who will meet You in these pages.”

“Yes,” said Betsie.

“Thank You for the very crowding here. Since we're packed so close, that many more will hear!” She looked at me expectantly. “Corrie!” she prodded.

“Oh, all right. Thank You for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed, suffocating crowds.”

“Thank you,” Betsie went on serenely, “for the fleas and for---“ The fleas! This was too much.

“Betsie, there's no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”

“'Give thanks in all circumstances,”' she quoted. “It doesn't say, 'in pleasant circumstances Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.”

And so we stood between piers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.

Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place, pp. 209-210.

You must read the book--the fleas, in the end, are a blessing.  But I can't give anymore away.

Housekeeping

Well, I'm gonna post a glut of new content. Some Hiding Place (remember that from July) that got lost inside my post manager and forgotten about. Some gallows humor for the economy. Other goodies.