The New Relic

Kosovo and a sense of place

2008-03-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

I find it difficult to explain what Kosovo means to most Americans. It is often referred to as the “Serbian Jerusalem”, but what does that mean?

By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down, yea, we wept
When we remembered Zion.
We hung our harps
Upon the willows in the midst of it.
For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song
And those who plundered us requested mirth
Saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How shall we sing the Lord’s song
In a foreign land
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget its skill!
If I do not remember you,
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth-
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.

Remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom
The day of Jerusalem,
Who said, “Raze it, raze it,
To its very foundation!”

O daughter of Babylon who are to be destroyed
Happy the one who repays you as you have served us
Happy the one who takes and dashes
Your little ones against the rock!

(As an aside, I’ve often heard any number of “spiritualizations” of the exhortation to dash the little ones of Babylon against the rocks, but perhaps instead of finding the spiritual aspect of such a line, or, God forbid, using it as justification, perhaps it should simply and soberly illuminate the voice of despair and hopelessness to us.)

Modern Americans, for the most part, do not have a sense of place, much less a sense that God gave us the place we live and we were given to the place. For most people today, one place to live is as good as the next, assuming some materialistic criteria are met. A man born and raised in Philadelphia will generally think nothing of moving to Phoenix if a job requires, or even move to a bigger house in the suburbs when he is able to afford it. In fact generally speaking, people today do not shop for a place to live, but a house to live in, the place being of secondary importance. Of course society has become so homogenized that the distinction between places is largely blurred. Were I to drop you into a modern subdivision on a day that was sunny and warm, were it not for the license plates on the cars, you would be hard pressed to tell me where you were.

So how do you explain to people who more often than not do not live in the same state they were born in, may have moved several times while growing up, and often do not live within a days drive of their siblings or parents what one place can mean? Does the person who moves his family cross-country for a better job feel like an exile? Does the family that sells the house to buy a newer, bigger one understand that they are depriving the children born in the old house of their ancestral home? Of course our consumer culture insures that all places are the same, and we can find the same “entertainments” and consumption wherever we go.

Ultimately the land of Kosovo means something to the Serbian people, they are tied to that land on a deep, spiritual level. In Serbia when meeting someone for the first time it is far more common to ask them “Where are you from?” than “Where do you live?” (Of course for most Serbs the answer would be the same to both questions.), and generally people who live in the cities will not tell you they are from the city (unless their family really is from the city), but instead which region or village they hail from. For the question, “Where are you from?” is more fundamental to who someone is in that culture. To ask the question to the Serbian people as a whole, “Where are you from?” The answer is: Kosovo.

The abject stupidity of the US government

2008-02-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

The entire article can be found here. However the salient part of the article is this statement by the Secretary of State:

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was time for Serbs to accept that Kosovo is no longer theirs. She also suggested it was time to drop centuries of grievance and sentimentality in the Balkans.
"We believe that the resolution of Kosovo's status will really, finally, let the Balkans begin to put its terrible history behind it," Dr. Rice said Friday. "I mean, after all, we're talking about something from 1389 – 1389! It's time to move forward."

The Bush administration clearly does not get it. The nail in the coffin of my support for the Iraq War (tenuous as it was) was the realization that the same foreign policy and rhetoric were being used to justify Iraq as they were in Kosovo (minus the non-existent WMDs).
My thanks to John from Notes from a Common-Place Book for the lead.

Not of this world

2008-02-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

Не од овог света

Колико је њих, мајко Србијо
волело име, име твоје
због соли православља у њему.
Нека им Господ, Господ дадне
за дела вере, наде, љубави,
да виде, тебе виде
у Христу, на гори Таворској
са Петром и са Синовима грома.

Не од овог света, у зло огрезла
не од овог века, земна, пролазна.
Ти си део вишњег Јерусалима,
твоје име звучи као молитва.

Колико је њих, мајко Србијо
певало песме, песме теби,
због крста који сија над тобом
и даје снагу твојој деци
да се у молитвама уздигну
изнад блата и прашине
и да у твоје име утисну
образ свога небескога дома.

Не од овог света, у зло огрезла
не од овог века, земна, пролазна.
Ти си део вишњег Јерусалима,
твоје име звучи као молитва.

Not of this world

How many of them, Mother Serbia,
Loved your name
Because of the salt of Orthodoxy in it
For them may the Lord give,
For their works of faith, hope, and love,
To see, to see You,
Christ on Mount Tabor,
With Peter and the sons of Zebedee

Not of this world, violated by evil,
Not of this age or land passing away,
You are a part of the heavenly Jerusalem
You name resonates like a prayer

How many of them, mother Serbia,
Sang songs, songs of you
Because of the cross that shines for hope in you,
And gives strength to your children,
To lift themselves in prayer,
Above the mud and ashes,
And in Your name to touch,
The face of Your heavenly abode.

Not of this world, violated by evil,
Not of this age or land passing away,
You are a part of the heavenly Jerusalem
You name resonates like a prayer

(any errors in translation are my own)

"But, the curse of God be on the traitor"

2008-02-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

The Fall of the Serbian Empire

From Jerusalem, the holy city,
Flying came a swift grey bird, a falcon,
And he carried in his beak a swallow.

But behold and see! ’Tis not a falcon,
’Tis the holy man of God, Elias,
And he does not bear with him a swallow,
But a letter from God’s Holy Mother.
Lo, he bears the letter to Kossovo,
Drops it on the Tsar’s knees from the heavens,
And thus speaks the letter to the monarch:
“Tsar Lazar, thou Prince of noble lineage,
What wilt thou now choose to be thy kingdom?
Say, dost thou desire a heav’nly kingdom,
Or dost thou prefer an earthly kingdom?
If thou should’st now choose an earthly kingdom,
Knights may girdle swords and saddle horses,
Tighten saddle-girths and ride to battle—
You will charge the Turks and crush their army!
But if thou prefer a heav’nly kingdom,
Build thyself a church upon Kossovo,
Let not the foundations be of marble,
Let them be of samite and of scarlet....
And to all thy warriors and their leaders
Thou shalt give the sacraments and orders,
For thine army shall most surely perish,
And thou too, shalt perish with thine army.”

When the Tsar had read the holy letter,
Ponder’d he, and ponder’d in this manner:
“Mighty God, what now shall this my choice be!
Shall I choose to have a heav’nly kingdom?
Shall I choose to have an earthly kingdom?
If I now should choose an earthly kingdom,
Lo, an earthly kingdom is but fleeting,
But God’s kingdom shall endure for ever.”

And the Tsar he chose a heav’nly kingdom,
And he built a church upon Kossovo,—
Did not bring foundation stones of marble
But he brought pure samite there and scarlet;
Summon’d there the Patriarch of Serbia,
Summon’d there with him the twelve archbishops.
Thus he gave the warriors and their leaders
Holy Sacrament and battle orders.

But no sooner gave the Prince his orders
Than the Turkish hordes swept on Kossovo.
And the Jug Bogdan leads there his army,
With his sons, the Jugovitch—nine brothers,
His nine sons like nine grey keen-eyed falcons,
Each of them commands nine thousand warriors,
And the Jug Bogdan commands twelve thousand [1].

With the Turks they fight there and they struggle,
And they smite and slay there seven pashas.
When the eighth advances to the battle
Then doth Jug Bogdan, the old knight, perish,
With his sons the Jugovitch—nine brothers,
His nine sons like nine grey keen-eyed falcons,
And with them doth perish all their army.

Moved their army three Mernyachevichi:
Ban Uglyesha and Voyvoda Goïko,
And the third, the mighty King Vukáshin;
And with each were thirty thousand warriors,
With the Turks do they there fight and struggle,
And they smite and slay eight Turkish pashas.
When the ninth advances to the battle
Then there perish two Mernyachevichi,
Ban Uglyesha and Voyvoda Goïko;
Many ugly wounds has King Vukáshin,
Turks and horses wade in blood above him,
And with him doth perish all his army.

Moved his army then Voyvoda Stefan;
And with him are many mighty warriors,
Many mighty warriors—sixty thousand.
With the Turks do they there fight and struggle,
And they smite and slay nine Turkish pashas.
When the tenth advances to the battle,
There doth perish the Voyvoda Stefan,
And with him doth perish all his army.

Then advances Tsar Lazar the Glorious,
With him moves a might host of Serbians,
Seven and seventy thousand chosen warriors.
They disperse the Turks upon Kossovo,
No time had the Turks to look upon them,
Still less time had they to stem the onslaught;
Tsar Lazar and all his mighty warriors
There had overwhelm’d the unbelievers,
But—the curse of God be on the traitor,
On Vuk Brankovitch,—he left his kinsman,
He deserted him upon Kossovo:
And the Turks o’erwhelmed Lazar the Glorious,
And the Tsar fell on the field of battle;
And with him did perish all his army,
Seven and seventy thousand chosen warriors.

All was done with honour, all was holy,
God’s will was fulfilled upon Kossovo.

Agrarian Quotes

2008-02-18T18:28:00.000-08:00

From "Our Vanishing Landscape", by Eric Sloane:

Farm life offers the complete satisfaction of knowing that each day's work has been truly productive, a joy scarce in present times. Yet strangely enough, the early American farmer's greatest satisfaction came not from his daily chores, but in his ability to make provisions for the future and an awareness of his part in fashioning the nation to come. He equipped his home with far heavier foundations than were necessary. He built his barn to last for centuries and he laid a rail fence to survive ten generations. He built stone walls that have lasted so long that they are now a permanent part of the landscape. None of these things are done now, nor do we often consider doing them. (boldface mine)

************************************************************************

Perhaps one of the greatest changes in American building and farming philosophy has been the abandonment of the enthusiasm for permanence.

Against the dehumanization of art

2007-12-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

An excellent essay by Mark Helprin, one of my absolute favorite authors.
From The New Criterion

Agrarian French-Canadian musicians

2007-12-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

Courtesy the Grumpy Old Man

A quote

2007-07-07T07:06:00.000-07:00

"I am not an educated man except that I have educated myself, and, because I have educated myself, what I say will not stand up, for lacking recognized authority. This in turn leaves me free to say what I will, in the hope that, like those small forces that do not threaten empires and are thus not fully pursued, the things in which I believe can survive in some high and forgotten place until the power of empire subsides.
And although I know that few will listen to or credit this, I think we are in a lost age, in which holiness and charity have been traded for the victory and penetration of knowledge, though all the knowledge in the world has not brought us any further than where we can go without it even in the outermost halls of grace. I believe that more is to be known and apprehended from the beauty of a face than in delving, no matter how deep, simply into how things work, no matter how marvelous they may be. The greatest substance in the world is immaterial, the province of the heart, and its study cannot be forced or reasoned. Merely to touch upon the edge of thing in parsing their mechanics is to forswear their fullness, for the entry to this fullness lies not in science but in art. I cannot prove this, for it cannot be proven, but I claim, assert, and have seen it."

- "Il Colore Ritrovato" by Mark Helprin

The old names and sideways houses

2007-06-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

Our little 1-acre family homestead amid the wilds of suburban Edmonds, Washington is on the side of a hill. The overly busy street our property fronts is at the bottom of the hill (a valley really, as another hill begins to rise about 50 yards opposite), and the top of our property is just shy of the top of the hill. I have known, for as long as I can remember, that I live on Cherry Hill, though the name appears on no map of the area, and there is nothing official marking that particular place-name save "Cherry Hill Estates", a 70's era housing development located on the broad, flat top of the hill. The reason our hill is called Cherry Hill is simple, there used to be cherry orchards on the hill. When we walk our dogs I'll point out the few surviving cherry trees, now old, bent and gone wild for lack of pruning, that are the only reminders of the agrarian past of my neighborhood. We are lucky enough to have one of these old cherry trees in our orchard, the only fruit tree in the orchard that pre-dates my parents' ownership of the lot. The tree still bears fruit, though it is so tall now that the birds get most of the cherries, and since we have three other cherry trees of manageable height, I'm willing to let the big, old trees fruit go to the birds. It somehow wouldn't feel right to try and aggressively prune the old tree into productivity, though since it is good stock, I have toyed with the idea of taking cuttings or trying to germinate seeds from it.
The street in front of our house is officially called Olympic View Drive, though by a quirk of some sort, mail addressed to our house with 68th Ave West as the street name instead arrives just fine. Our house is one of the oldest on the street, and due to poor planning on the part of the City of Edmonds and the City of Lynnwood (the street being the border, my house is in Edmonds, my mailbox across the street is in Lynnwood), none of the houses on our block are in order numerically. The Postal Service seems to have resigned itself to this anomaly, but UPS, FedEx, and pizza deliverers can't seem to figure it out. To add to all this confusion, when I was growing up, my road was not known as Olympic View Dr or 68th Ave W, it was known as Snake Road. I don't know why this name came about aside from the fact that the road becomes very sinuous about a mile from my house and it winds its way down towards downtown Edmonds. Nevertheless I do have old maps of the area that show the road as Snake Road. It is not hard for me to see a Chamber of Commerce conspiracy behind the name change. After all Olympic View Drive is a more "marketable" name, despite the fact that over its three or so miles of length, there is only a 1/4 mile stretch where one can actually view the Olympics. I've often had a mind to mail myself a postcard. but listing my address as being on Snake Road.

There are still vestiges of the agrarian past in the area, reminders of a time gone by, whose continued existence is an indictment to the sprawl that surrounds us for those who know what to look for. The are a number of old farm houses, tucked away inside obnoxious housing developments. They would be instantly recognizable, even if by their architecture and quality of construction they did not counterpoint the homes around them which combine the worst of socialist homogenization and capitalist greed. The things that makes these home stand apart is that they are facing the wrong way. The old houses face the main street, and what was once the driveway is now the cul-de-sac that the rest of the cookie-cutter homes face. This leaves the old house in the awkward position of presenting its side to the new street, and its front to the house next to it. I can hardly understand why these homes, a poignant momento mori to a bygone age were suffered to remain. Since these developments are all built by giant house-building corporations (I will not deign to call them home-builders), which are by nature soulless, it must be some historical preservation law that requires it. Whatever the reason, I am glad for their reminder.

Libertarians and Marx

2007-06-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

I've always looked at Libertarians with a slightly jaundiced eye. Once one gets past the populist "Reefer and machine guns for everyone!" aspect of their philosophy, and disturbing materialism becomes apparent. The fact that this materialism is in the service of the sovereign individual as opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist materialism, is no defense as far as I'm concerned. Materialism is evil regardless of who or what is being served by it. I always wondered if there was a connection between Libertarianism and Marxism, aside from the surface-level connection that both philosophies seem to produce ratchet-jaw ideologues that make poor company and tend to spoil the conversation at genteel dinner parties. Even the much-vaunted individualism of the Libertarian counts for very little when this sovereign individual is reduced to an abstraction, or to quote a certain Libertarian, "Consumers are necessarily free agents who exercise choice among competing alternatives."
Thus it was much to my delight that I found an article which makes the connection between the two:
Why Karl Marx supported Libertarianism

A quote...

2007-06-18T20:47:00.000-07:00

"Every man is followed by a shadow which is his death - dark, featureless, and mute. And for every man there is a place where his shadow is clarified and is made his reflection, where his face is mirrored in the ground. He sees his source and his destiny, and they are acceptable to him. He becomes the follower of what persued him. What hounded his track becomes his companion."
- Wendell Berry

The next best thing to a goat

2007-05-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

For clearing brush, pretty much nothing beats a goat. Not only do they diligently dispose of all manner of unwanted (and occasionally wanted) plants, they also produce milk, and are themselves quite delicious when young and roasted on a spit. Alas the City of Edmonds would not permit us to keep a goat, and I doubt my lovely wife would be up for milking said goat every day. Of course considering we only have a half acre of "back 40" we could theoretically get a goat, let him eat the brush until it was gone, and then eat the goat ourselves, but the complications outweigh the advantages.
Last year, while my mother was in Serbia I asked her to bring me home a scythe blade. I figured (rightly it turns out) that since scythes are still a commonly used item in Serbia, one from there would be a more workmanlike piece than any I could find here. Our old scythe had reached the end of it's useful life. The blade was starting to break where it attached to the handle, and it had been sharpened so many times that the blade itself was becoming thin. I had forgotten my scythe request when my mom and grandma returned from Serbia this last fall (wedding preparations were on my mind in any case), so I was shocked and delighted on Western Christmas (my father, raconteur that he was, delighted in calling it "Catholic Christmas", much to the annoyance of my mother's Protestant family), to open an oddly shaped package containing a beautifully curved scythe blade. It is called a "Silver Special" and boasts the image of a rooster on a green background on the label.
After allowing the backyard to become horribly over grown the last couple of years, I decided it was about time to reclaim the space. I have two gas weedeaters, neither of which works very well. I decided that before I went through the agony of getting the weedeaters running, I'd be a proper agrarian and give the new scythe a workout. I dismounted the old blade from the handle, planed the end down a bit to accept the new blade and set to work.
I few swings were all it took to make me rue my stupidity. The scythe was so much superior to the weedeater in every way, that I felt like I had been cheated in using them all these years. Not only does the scythe, once one figures out the best method of swinging it, cut a much wider swathe than the weedeater (and does so without clogging up the head, which the weedeater inevitably does with tall grass), it does so without the noise, the deadening vibration, and stink of the weedeater. Furthermore, aside from sharpening and oiling the blade, and basic care of the handle, the scythe consumes no fuel, requires no spark plugs, and cost a tenth as much as the straight-shaft 32cc weedeater I bought.
I spent a couple hours of good, honest work clearing a large patch of the hillside. The rhythmic sound of the scythe cutting the grass was a pefect accompaniment to the sounds of the birds and the breeze blowing through the locust tree. Furthermore, the exercise did me good, though once I got a rhythm down, the scythe practically swung itself.
My schooling has given me an appreciation for the delight to be found in wel-made hand tools. In the realm of woodworking tools at least, the majority of the tools today are markedly inferior to the ones available 100 years ago. Even discounting the overall workmanship, the quality of steel has even declined. My classmates and I have talked of traveling to some remote village in Armenia or somesuch place, where we will find a man who can still make fine steel, who will hand forge us plane irons and chisels from steel alloyed in a secret method known only to him and his ancestors. In all seriousness, it is a shame that with all our knowledge and engineering these days it is difficult to find good tools. So many of the tools sold these day seem to be an aggregation of geegaws, to the point where the basic function of the tool is almost lost. Valerie and I went to Lowe's today to buy a ditch scythe, which is shaped like a large stirrup, and the model they offered, aside from having a handle so short that I'd need a chiropractor after a few minutes of use, had a blade that was poorly designed, and would have been pointless to sharpen. After rejecting it in disgust, I decided I'd have to make my own from an old handsaw blade I picked up at a garage sale.

The War and American foriegn policy

2007-02-24T20:44:00.000-08:00

I started out supporting the Iraq war. In the last year or so I've come to myself and decided that it was a bad idea. Of course I've decided that American interventionism in general is a bad idea.
Here are two articles from the excellent blog Notes From A Common-Place Book which very well explain a "conservative opposition to the war. I don't entirely agree with everything written therein, but it is a good start:

One from the LA Times
The other from the normally idiotic New York Review of Books

Read and be edified.

The Newly Illumined Handmaiden of God Valerie-Elizabeth

2006-12-18T14:07:00.000-08:00

My beloved fiance Valerie being recieved into the church yesterday. She choose St. Elizabeth the New Martyr as her patron saint, and recieved a secondary relic from the casket of St. Elizabeth from our friends James and Susan, who recieved it from Fr. Christopher of St. Elizabeth church of Poulsbo. Needless to say we were all humbled by the gift.

Valerie recieving absolution.

What now?

2006-12-16T17:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, at about mid-day, I finished the 20th Aubrey/Maturin novel by Patrick O'Brian, Blue At The Mizzen. While the novel ends with Aubrey receiving news of his promotion to Rear Admiral of the Blue, a life-long dream and source of worry, the full tale of the two men remains woefully unfinished. I am of two minds about reading the fragment of the 21st book, left unwritten by Patrick O'Brian's untimely death. While the end of the 20th book left me hanging (as most of the Aubrey/Maturin novels tend to end a tad abruptly), reading only part of the 21st novel would be even worse. More importantly, where do I take my reading now? I had planned on reading my way through the Lord of the Rings over the Christmas break (I try to read the trilogy once a year), but I also promised my wife-to-be (exactly four weeks until the wedding) that I would read something new over the break instead. I have the first two Hornblower novels, but having thrown in my lot with Aubrey and Maturin over 20 books, I find myself strangely prejudiced against Mr. Forester's canon.
What to do? What to do?

Illiterate Christianity

2006-12-16T17:34:00.000-08:00

Is it possible for someone who does not know how to read to be an Orthodox Christian (or any sort of Christian for that matter)? Occasionally when whenever I hear someone discoursing on an obscure matter of theology or expounding on the writings of one of the Fathers, I think of my grandfather, my father's father, who while functionally illiterate, lived a pious Orthodox life by all accounts. Was his Christianity somehow lacking by not having read any works of Orthodox theology? I don't know how much he read Scripture outside of church, but I guess the broader point is, can one be Christian with only that Scripture that is read in the church? I am not familiar with any Orthodox declaration about the necessity of the Holy Scripture for a layman. Certainly one can be fed as it were a great deal of Scripture by participating fully in the life of the Church.
I suppose for many Protestants, an illiterate Christianity is not possible, since without the Bible there is no Christianity. Yet there were Christians long before there was a Bible, and there were Christians long before literacy became a common trait in the late 19th century. Do not mistake my purpose in posing these questions. I am not looking to ditch Scripture or other writings (anyone who has been in my study will know that not to be the case), but I wonder how much reading and learning Christianity on an intellectual level can interfere with us being Christians. One can memorize the Bible front-to-back, as I am told Pope Shenouda of the Coptic Church has, and still remain beyond the pale of Christian belief. On the other hand I get the impression from some Orthodox I know that one can gauge their spiritual development in terms of how much Orthodox-related reading they have done.

Abbots, Sex, Crypto-Agrarianism, and non-Uberfrommity

2006-12-11T21:04:00.001-08:00

I had the great pleasure this last Saturday to attend an all-day presentation (well I was there most of the day... My friend S and I were told by a fellow parishioner of a pawn shop having a 50% off sale on guns so we missed about an hour on our fool's errand- all the guns had sold out hours ago, aside from a couple exceedingly disreputable looking Turkish Mausers) by Abbot Jonah of the St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco Monastery, formerly at Point Reyes, CA, but recently relocated near Redding. My fiancee and I also attended a talk he gave at Fr. James house the night before about spiritual maturity. I was struck very much by Abbot Jonah's frequent denunciation of piety that is not judged in the light of love, God's love and our love for our neighbor. He also went into a lengthy discussion of how the dualistic and in some ways Gnostic errors of Origen had found there way down through the ages, tainting some of the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers, and generally contributing to the tendancy in Orthodox monasticism to despise the body, sexuality, and marriage. Abbot Jonah's honesty when confronting the errors of monasticism, and the way he exclaimed against Uberfrommity as I understand it, at one point saying, "All of this [indicating the iconostasis] and the Liturgy, and how we pray and cross ourselves will drag us to Hell if we don't love our neighbor.", were refreshing and surprising to say the least. Part of the morning session was on sexuality and family life. It warmed my heart to hear him explain how the collapse of the extended family which began after WWI and the collapse of the nuclear family that began in the 60's could really all be blamed on the Industrial Revolution. The full session was recorded and will be available as a podcast and MP3 download shortly, and I will provide the link as soon as it is available.

Choose your poison

2006-12-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

Ultimately, the ills of this nation can be solved by either Secession or Monarchy
Take your pick.

Fame of sorts

2006-12-10T08:13:00.000-08:00

As of this morning, when you Google "crypto-monarchist" my blog is sixth from the top. Typing in "crypto monarchist" without the hyphen (and under-used piece of punctuation in this day and age), I'm only ninth. The New Relic will work hard to become Number One...

Did we have an election?

2006-11-27T14:57:00.000-08:00

At one time I considered myself fairly politically astute, and tried to keep tabs on the political happenings in this country, but lately I've found myself realizing that it doesn't really matter. If Republicans are still worried about why they lost the elections a few weeks ago (rather than turned to more pressing matters like getting the Lexus serviced, managing their investment funds, or getting tickets to see the Nutcracker during the Chrsitmas run), I might suggest that the first step would be to run a candidate. In the 21st district here in Washington, there was a state senate seat and two legislative seats open, and the Washington State Republican Party couldn't be bothered to find a single candidate for any of the three positions. Now granted this is a pretty liberal (OK not 'pretty' but rabidly) part of the state, but if they are gonig to play games of running for "competitive" districts, they can kiss my hind-end. I've been debating whether running no one is better or worse than the crazy old man, "Cowboy" Wilson, who ran last election under the Republican ticket for my district.
But back to the larger question, Does it matter?
People are fond of huffily stating "If you don't see the difference between Reps and Dems, then you aren't looking close enough." But actions speak louder than words. Most Rs support military adventurism in support of "freedom" and "stopping WMDs", while Ds support military adventurism in support of "humanitarian intervention" and "stopping genocide". Rs want soulless corporate bureaucracy to govern our lives, Ds want soulless UN bureaucracy to govern our lives. Rs give you the bread and circuses of piddling tax cuts and professional sports, Ds give you the bread and circuses of "entitlements" and MTV.
Aside from the war in Iraq, the real hot-button issue that divides the two parties is abortions, and for all the screeching about Ds being the party of death, what exactly have the Rs done to limit abortion since gaining a majority? The silence is deafening (and people who brag on GWB's Supreme Court nominations distinctly underwhelm me).
My father was fond of muttering that this country needed another revolution, though with the state of the nation, we'd probably end with a government as stupid and corrupt as this one. It's a shame there is no New World to sail off to.

We're not building a piano

2006-11-27T14:17:00.000-08:00

Due to a paltry few inches of snow here in the Puget Sound region, everything is shut down, and i have a respite from boatbuilding school for the day. I have been living with my Slovak hillbillie brother James and his family on the Indian Reservation, during the school week in my 12' travel trailer, and coming home to Edmonds on the weekends. I was home Wednesday night for the Thanksgiving holiday break, and due to the snow yesterday, I've had an extra day tacked onto my holiday (though after spending a winter in Fairbanks, and equipping myself with a AWD Subaru, I find the "winter storm" less than impressive).
So far boat school has been everything I could want and more. There is something very refreshing about learning an actual trade, and my progress is measured in what I actually produce, rather than the ambiguous nature of most "intellectual" schooling. No amount of rhetorical shell-games will keep my instructor from telling me to re-make my dovetail joints because they do not fit together well. When I was a boy my father would often excuse little errors in home repair projects by saying "Well we're not building a piano." Learning boatbuilding, it has become clear that there are many cases where the work must rise to the standard of building a piano, though our instructors are also quick to point out places where "eyeballing it" will suffice, and in fact, be a wiser choice.
When school begins again tomorrow we will be finshing up our lofting projects (the drawing out of a boat in three views full-sized on a floor, and hopefully by next week we will be building our first boats, 12' flat-bottomed skiffs constructed by each of the three instruction groups.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the skills I am learning is the ability to accurately construct wooden structures with few, if any, square corners or right angles. Aside from the obvious application to boat-building, I'll have, if nothing else, first-class finsh carpentry skills. Aside from our practice joinery, we've made a dovetail jointed tool-box, a wood bodies smoothing plane, spar gauges, bevel gauges, bevel boards, a lathe project (mine was making a belaying pin to a pattern out of black locust), and a half-hull model of the boat we drew in drafting class. Aside from a miniumum of power tools, almost all the work has been with hand tools. Even the drafting was done with pencil and paper- much to my delight and manual drafting is something I really enjoy. Aside from the tradition focus of the school, the instructors have told us that they want us to be able to do our jobs with a minimum of tools, and what might be primitive conditions.
All in all the work is a refreshing change, being able to work with God-given materials in an act of subcreation is an agrarian's dream come true. Furthermore, such an obscure trade as wooden boatbuilding is so far outside the mainstream of the corporate-commercial world, as to be largely insulated. The impression I have gotten is that in this field things are still done as they were, and there is a pride in craftsmanship and respect for the craftsman. My only regret is that there is very little that is done in wooden boatbuilding that is affordable to the "workin' man". Most people who work in the trade would not be able to afford the boats they build. The amount of labor involved and the price of wood being what it is, I will have to resign myself to catering to wealthy clients.

Staring down at my own shoes

2006-09-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

A month an a half since my last post and I manged to let the waves of 9/11, and the Pope's pseech pass right over me with little notice on my part. I was shocked on September 11th when I went to the bank and did not know what date it was until I saw the handy date reminder on the deposit prep table. Oh, yeah... 9/11. I won't bore you with an "I remember where I was...", but I will offer that as terrible as 9/11 was, it was obviously not terrible enough, because aside from altering our foreign policy and causing inconvenience at the airport (along the usual partisan nonsense from our elected officials), very little has changed.
Wiser heads and better polemicists than I have analyzed the speech by Pope Benedict to death, along with the depressingly predictable reaction from the Islamic world. Frankly I'm beginning to wonder what the deal is with Islam, or rather, our collective obsession with Islam. A group of people who collectively cannot deal with historical fact don't deserve to have their faith taken seriously. Mohammed was a homosexual drunkard, so there.

But in more importnat news, or more local news, which is the same as more important news, I've passed over the penultimate hurdle to beginning my schooling to become a wooden boatbuilder. I've gathered nearly all the tools needed, and God rest his soul, my father bequeathed me enough tools that I only had to buy half of what was on the list; along with most of the books, and the requisite Carhartt bibs (which I believe you are absolutely mandated to wear at wooden boat school from what I've seen). All that remains is to drive the Al-Can with my good friend Berne, to fetch back my Bronco which I abandoned in Fairbanks when the motor blew a couple weeks prior to my departure. Once home I'll be preparing my 13' "Home away from home" that my Slovak Hillbilly Brother James and his wife Susan have graciously offered to let me park on their property to give me a place to stay during the school week, eliminating the half hour ferry ride and associated costs that would form my commute to school otherwise.
Valerie and I continue to look for property upon which to begin our agrarian utopia, but so far nothing is in the offing. In a related note, our wedding plans continue to develop, though aside from providing a list of addresses for invitations and spearheading the pig roasting, my responsibilities have so far be deliniated as: Show up, dress nice, bring a ring.

Hooked on sailing

2006-07-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

My dear fiancee and I took a little sailing trip this last Monday evening. Valerie, desiring me to have some practical seamanship experience before I start school, contacted the Puget Sound Sailing Institute and booked one of their 3 hour introduction to sailing trips. We arrived at the Pier 66 marina in downtown Seattle at 5pm, and met our guide Mike, who introduced us to the 22 foot boat we'd be taking out. With very little ceremony Mike had the small outboard running adn was motoring us out of the marina. Once out onto Elliot Bay he handed the tiller over to me with even less ceremony and began raising the sails. Once the sails were up and trimmed he reached back and said "we won't need this anymore" as he hit the kill switch on the motor. All of a sudden our boat was being compelled forward by the invisible wind. Mike gave me some basic directions at keeping the wind at the right point and the sails drawing and we were soon flying across Elliot Bay, heeled over (to Valerie's slight distress) and casting a fine bow wave. For the next three hours we sailed around the bay, tacking back and forth when necessary while I got as much instruction as I could from Mike.
The word sublime is under-used these days, and the old habit of granting it a capital "S" has sadly died away, but sublime is the best description for my first sailing experience. The feeling of being propelled by the wind, actually pulled by the wind in some cases was excellent in a way that even the most powerful motor-boat could not equal. Every motor boat I've been in, alays feels as though it is struggling against the water. Even when the wind was abeam and our progress was slow, the pace always seem natural. The ever-practical Valerie was pleased to hear from Mike that one could fish from a sail boat. In any case, a sailboat (preferrably wooden) is now high on my list of things to own. Once we move across the water, I even hope to make it a semi-regular form of transportation if possible.

Something we can all agree on...

2006-07-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

... that is assuming one is a man of literary refinement.
As if one needed a reason to esteem the departed servant of God Jaroslav Pelikan more highly, he was also a man who appreciated fine literature. From the preface of "Whose Bible Is It?":

One day she asked me rather casually, in what Patrick O'Brian in the fourth of his Aubrey/Maturin novels calls "a fluent though curious English devoid of articles"...
[emphasis mine]

Orthodoxy at the "Amish point"? Part II

2006-07-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

If we admit that Orthodoxy is not growing in America and that our faith and praxis somehow seem lukewarm, and that the Orthodox Church truly is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, then the fault must lie in ourselves and how we are living out our faith. The essential problem is that we have not made Orthodoxy the foundation, adapting it to our modern lives and not the other way around. We start out as Republican and Democrats and then find ways to dovetail Orthodoxy into our existing beliefs. Thus you have the spectacle of those trying to defend economic libertarianism or veganism, or materialist consumption as somehow compatible with Orthodoxy, when we should be doing just the opposite. If the teachings and witness of the Church, the message of the Gospels, and the lives of the Saints contradict libertarianism or radical veganism or what have you, then we must be willing to abandon those secular doctrines in the face of Christian teaching.

This is where the Amish provide a powerful example. Despite the criticism by those who at heart are probably profoundly uncomfortable with what the Amish stand for, the Amish are not “stuck in the past”. While it is most visible in the realm of technology, the Amish are engaged with the modern world, but the critical difference between them and us is that they meet the modern world on their terms. Anything that enters their society is prayerfully evaluated on whether or not it is compatible with their beliefs, and what the possible effects will be on their families and society. I would submit that us Orthodox in America as a whole would be well served such an outlook. Replacing our modern life with the Orthodoxy “add-on”, with a way of living that was Orthodox first, with modern life intruding, if it all, only when and where it is found compatible with the Orthodox faith. If this means starting from scratch in an agrarian fashion, so be it. But even without a “back to the land” ethic, would mean a more organic sense of community. It would mean Orthodox faithful living with a close distance of the nearest Orthodox church, and thus each other. It would mean an end to “commuting” to a distant church simply because you like the icons there, or they aren’t “ecumenist”, or they speak your grandfather’s native tongue. In order to attend my Serbian church I must drive past (or further than) SIX canonical Orthodox churches. While I speak Serbian semi-fluently, and understand the Slavonic liturgy, does it make sense to drive an hour to church? Am I ever going to have a shared sense of community with the other Serbian parishioner who drives an hour from the south and thus lives two hours away from me?

Ultimately our Christianity, our Orthodoxy is not radical enough. I mean this not in the sense of the joyless Orthodox piety-fascists one meets here and there, but in the sense that, like the Amish, we need to start making Orthodoxy the foundation for how we live our lives, and how we interact with others and God’s creation. We need an Orthodox ecology (in the broadest sense of the term). If living in humility means watching a 20” TV (though the argument could be made that in truth an Orthodox Christian has no business watching TV at all) instead of a wide-screen plasma; or driving a ten-year old Subaru station wagon instead of a new Hummer H2 then what is stopping us? If it means becoming agrarians and living at peace with God’s creation and our neighbor, not participating, or participating as little as possible in the exploitive and soul-warping chaos of secular materialist society, then what is stopping us?