Atheism

Beginning the conversation. Christianity does not hold the moral majority.

how to wrap bike handlebars

for me, for later https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MzIiv7pewE

WHAT IS FELICITY

not even sure what I want to say except that maybe I've been watching a little (a lot) too much Felicity and I think that I can make coherent sense of my brain if only I ramble enough. I spend so much time trying to have my cake and eat it too. I am pre-occupied with trying to keep all options open that I am not really sure what I want. Is it that I'm too afraid to go for it, whatever "it" is? I don't want to be afraid. I want to be fearless. (Not attempting sexy vagueness here. I really don't know what "it" is in this sense. I'm thinking about career and potential, imaginary life partners and houses and pets and careers-- I said that already-- and kids. I guess careers. Nursing. Nursing?) Felicity has this eerily recent quality about it... even though it was filmed 20 years ago. How is it that it makes the 90s look fashionable??? Also my enter /return key is definitely kaput.

Memories of George Whyte

I have many good memories of my friend and former colleague George Whyte, who died in a car accident a long time ago now, just before Christmas in December 1996. Here are some of them. I still take the time every so often to remember a great person to know. 

George found the world a funny place and he tried to make it funnier. When I was first new to Labé, Guinea, where we lived and worked together, he was showing me around town when we came to a field with piles of laterite boulders. George explained to me in all seriousness that those piles were altars and that we hoped to convince the people here that such altars weren’t necessary anymore. The boulders were really waiting to be loaded by hand onto dump trucks because there were no loaders available. 

In those days in the late 1980s, the road from Labé to the capital Conakry had lots of old road equipment abandoned along the road, just left to rust by the side of the road wherever it had broken down. George would explain to anyone in the car with him that in French these pieces of equipment were called “bornes” and there were a thousand of them along the road, and that this, in fact, was the origin of the card game Mille Bornes (Touring). 

George didn’t like having to stop too often to have people use the bathroom while he was driving. He explained to me, “I just thank God I have a 500 kilometer bladder.” 

The following is a story about George that language helper Oury Pilimini would tell. One day George was driving Dr. Hannes Wiher and Oury from Labé to Conakry. George was driving quite fast on the very curvy road and was also swerving around the potholes on the road between Labé and Pita. Both Oury and Dr. Wiher were getting somewhat carsick. Finally, Dr. Wiher said to George: “Monsieur, il faut choisir le bon trou ! (Sir, just hit the right pothole!)”

In the early days when we were in Guinea, the police in Conakry were continually stopping us for some supposed violation of the law and then asking for some terribly small bribe of 50 cents or a dollar’s worth of local currency. George said that one day they stopped him and told him, “Monsieur, your car is TOO DIRTY!” Later, when local kids in Conakry were continually offering to guard your car against theft and also to clean it while you were in a store or business or restaurant, George would warn them, “This car must be kept DIRTY!”

George and C&MA missionary Jack Campbell became good friends and were always together when they were in Conakry. The C&MA mission director Mel Carter found tall and eyes-wide-open George and short and droopy-eyed Jack an odd couple and called them “Mutt & Jeff.” 

There were often groups of missionaries from other countries who would, of course, speak in their own languages when they were together. I don’t remember any phrases from other languages, but George would learn some sentence in another language and then interject it into their conversation with no warning and no explanation. One such sentence in German was “Der Taschendieb ist hinter dem Bahnhof (The pickpocket is behind the train station).” He had another sentence in German about a helicopter that I’ve forgotten. 

West Africa in the 1980s was full of Peugeot 404 sedans and 405 station wagons, many being used as group taxis both within and between towns. We soon came to expect that in the taxis at least the door handles would be broken off on the inside of most doors, so one would have to open the door from the outside. 

George told a story about how he and Rhonda had gone out for dinner during their time in Abidjan with a French couple. George said he asked the Frenchman what he did for a living, and the Frenchman replied that he designed door handles for Peugeot. George would get a very strange look on his face, and after a long and pregnant silence, just ask, “What can you say?”

Once George and I traveled together to Freetown, Sierra Leone, for a conference. Assemblies of God Missionary Pastor Eli Chiarelli, a Canadian, rode with us. George put in a Willie Nelson cassette tape. Pastor Eli listened a bit and then said, “I don’t think he’s a Christian.” George changed to another cassette tape of Mozart’s Requiem. After a few minutes Pastor Eli asked what music this was, and when George told him that it was Mozart’s Requiem, Pastor Eli wanted to know if we prayed for the dead. We didn’t play any more music after that. 

George was the Field Director when I was first in Guinea for this combined Christian Reformed World Missions and Christian Reformed World Relief Committee joint effort. We had a meeting to make the CRWM budget for the next year, and George suddenly said, “Something’s wrong here! Someone has spent $10 on Evangelism!” (We were all in language learning and little else.) 

George did an excellent retelling of a sermon by one of his seminary professors at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, a “Just by chance” version of the story of Esther that started each new turn in the story with the phrase “Just by chance” to counter the claim that God was not present because the Bible didn’t mention him. 

George will always be missed. I look forward to our reunion. --Dave Wierda 

least fave holiday

I just found out I am NOT Irish so I would like to un-celebrate all prior St Pat's days and also take back any unwarranted pinches directed towards my arms BECAUSE I AM NOT HERE TO PLAY.

Also, I've chosen to embrace my mere 338 miles away change-of-heritage (British) by reading a very sad blog tonight and crying a lot.

No wonder I like tea.

off to bed, off to a better life tomorrow.


(My grandmother's father was adopted off the orphan train and we always thought he was Irish. However. His only surviving offspring just took a DNA test... and no Irish was found. Half Brit, half Dutch-- the Dutch part would be from his mom, my great-grandfather's wife. At least I have one-quarter proof of myself. Mom and I spent a bit puzzling over this. Who are we, really? Does it matter? We didn't get full-existential but we did agree to hold off DNA testing ourselves for now.)

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
Death cannot kill what never dies.
-William Penn

what to say when your grandpa dies

Hello,

I am Hannah, Rhonda’s daughter and Bob’s granddaughter.

Although once in a while Grandpa would mix us up and called me Honda. He always did love cars.

Grandpa had the brightest blue eyes and wit to match. He was an upstanding man. Punctual, exact, cautious yet confident— he seemed to be at ease in any situation. This is not to say he was perfect. He did have a temper, though his grandson John seemed to witness it more than the rest of us. He also loved to talk. A lot. But he knew so much, no wonder it was difficult to stop when he got started. I was older when I learned the term “Dutch bingo”, but I had witnessed Grandpa and Uncle Marlowe in action enough to know no one else was as much a champion at connecting dots.

He had a soft side. He grew roses. I think one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life was watching him break down in tears while praying shortly after my dad and sister had died. It was hard watching adults cry, but it was hardest watching Grandpa—a man who seemed so collected at all times—be overwhelmed by grief.

I talked to a dentist last night whose practice has burned to the ground a few years ago. “How’s it going?” I asked. “Well, I’ve had no bad days since then”, he said.

Today is a good day. Grandpa lived a full life. I am grateful for Grandpa’s diligence. His faithfulness to his faith, to his family and to his community was quiet yet steadfast. He adored my grandmother and I hope to have a marriage like theirs in the future.

Grandpa Pranger is not gone. He lives on. I see him in my mom’s dedication—to everything. Between Grandpa and my mom, the apple did not fall but was practically grafted onto the tree. I see him in my own stubbornness. And I see the fruit of his life’s labor in all of you gathered here. Thank you for coming to remember with us.

First the pain, then the rising

I made up for being ten minutes late to my last counseling appointment by showing up an hour early this time. And to prove to the world/myself that I was Legit, I pulled out my laptop and started working on next week's assignment. Which was to respond to a video by Glennon Doyle about her struggles with bulimia and addiction as if I was her nurse.
Instead and in keeping with my usual rabbit holes, I wanted to know more about Glennon. How did she get her name and her Michelle Obama arms? I found out that she married the father of her child, had two more kids, found out he cheated, decided to stay, wrote a book about it and then fell in love with Abby Wambach.

Phew. What a life. Also, totally here for the Wambach crush.

Something about her strikes me as a little off, like Kristin Chenoweth taking on a role as a traveling sales(wo)man, but then she'll throw in a line about the need for intersectionality and call out white women for needing to follow WOC as leaders.


Glennon Doyle

There's more, but now I go.

God of the gaps

Neil Degrasse Tyson

I want
you to have
this,

all the beauty in my eyes, and the grace of my mouth,
all the splendor of my strength,

all the
wonder of the musk parts
of my
body,

for are we
not talking about real love, real
love? --Mirabai 

dating advice

some f-bombs, but mostly a great big truth bomb

Things I Want, Always

To live by water. Lots of water. Crashing waves, clean beaches. To hear the surf from my open bedroom window.
To have friends near and far.
To see family often and to see us grow.
To find I've been useful to the world.
To read books and hear music that moves me.
To live.

My week in status updates

buying airfare before paying tuition #priorities


A patient scratched, hit and bit today. At least she didn't go for a home run and spit like last night.


Fell asleep by 9 PM. Living the dream. Or just dreaming.

Mrs. Lagos-- April 3, 2013

When I walked into the room today, none of the students greeted me. In fact they completely ignored my own greeting and continued their boisterous activities. Cinthia had pulled the teacher’s chair up to one of her friend’s desk and was sitting in it. I said, “Cinthia, will you please return my chair to where it belongs?” She ignored me. I had to ask three times before she finally pushed it a few feet away and returned to her own desk. “Cinthia, I have asked you to put the chair back where it belongs.” She looked up at me and said, “You have legs. Do it yourself.”

Today, as is typical, Luz, Danna, Cinthia and Ishla led the class in various forms of defiance and disrespect. They would stomp their feet and get everyone to do it, and then when I asked them to stop a student “rebelled” by sticking his legs straight out in front of him.  They also rapped on their desk and performed various other acts of disturbance. Next they moved on to coughing in unison, and Cinthia ran outside of the classroom twice without asking permission to “cough outside” where she laughed and danced around before coming back into the room. “Miss, I’m sick” she would automatically claim as she entered back into the room. Other times students have read so quietly that no one could hear them. Just yesterday, I asked Ishla and Danna at different times to write something on the board, and they both wrote with microscopic font. The majority of the times when I call on them, they will play dumb. The answers are obvious—for instance, yesterday I asked one of them, “Should singular subjects agree with plural or singular verbs?” and the student said, “Miss, I don’t know.” This is a small example—I was finding that nearly every question I asked them, whether devised by me or from their workbooks, they would claim, “I don’t know. I don’t understand anything.” And then proceed to tune out the rest of my lesson.

At another point in class today, four girls (Luz, Danna, Cinthia and Ishla) kept derailing my instructions regarding an upcoming exam. I had made it clear that I was not going to discuss anything unrelated to this future exam because I wanted to be certain that the students understood my expectations. However, the students would not stop talking and barely paid attention. I heard another of their favorite phrases—“Miss I don’t understand.”—from a student who hadn’t paid attention to anything I’d said previously. And the four girls kept asking me unrelated questions.

When I did open up our discussion to other matters, the four girls became increasingly belligerent towards me. They were frustrated and questioning me over a past exam and whether or not I would drop their (failing) grades. (Three had skipped the first twenty minutes of a class once and missed out on a quiz that the rest of the students were taking. I had previously stated that I was considering dropping this quiz, but also indicated that I was not certain. Given their behavior in class at this point I do not consider dropping this quiz to be an option.) I attempted to address them civilly but warned them that I would not continue engaging in conversation if they were going to continue their disrespectful line of questioning. They did not change their behavior, so I told them I wasn’t going to talk about it any more. Cinthia fired at me, “Miss, my father pays you a lot of money to teach. You need to be a good teacher and talk to us.”

I found this comment rather offensive but masked my irritation and attempted to dignify her with a response. “Cinthia, while your father’s money is a nice gesture, I am not here to make money. I am here because I actually want to be here.”

(“That’s the right attitude, Miss!” encouraged one of the other students—one of the few that have remained respectful.)

I continued, “I am here because I want to help—I will do whatever I can to help you guys out. But I am not going to deal with your disrespect. There is no point in me engaging in conversation with you if you are not going to talk to me civilly.”

I think the class is a self-contained unit, and I’ve learned that I cannot rely on outside forces to control the behaviors inside the room. However, this class is encouraged in their behavior BY outside forces—so I am swimming upstream in effort to curtail disrespect which has been encouraged—by Mr. Mayorga, parents, and even Mr. Rodriguez in his efforts to “counsel” them.

It’s infuriating to me that this has been allowed to continue. That Cinthia was granted the privilege of classroom instruction with me after her disrespect and obscene language—and that she was discharged with little more than a slap on the wrist. That experience apparently taught her nothing, as her disrespect has only grown.

A variety of explanations has been given as to why these students are acting out so much in my class. From boredom to teacher ineptitude, I’ve heard it all. I wanted so badly for things to go well that I was determined to work very hard in order to assure myself that I’d done everything I could to reach them. But despite my efforts, most of the students shut down the moment I walk into the room. Whatever I have to say is a rather moot when the students barely acknowledge my entrance, slouch or put their head down repeatedly, and feign ignorance whenever I call on them.

They are determined not to learn from me, and I don’t see the point in continuing to fight them on this issue. Class is not meant to be a battle. The anxiety I feel before entering the room is awful. I am effectively being bullied by my own students. This is so far from what I hoped would occur when I came to Honduras. I fell in love with the country, but have fallen out of favor with the school.

I don’t like admitting that I’m failing—but I really don’t forsee any changes in the future. I don’t see any point in me continuing to teach these students. They obviously have determined there is no point in learning from me. I also wonder if I should continue to teach at the school at all—as these problems are systemic.

I believe I’m rather realistic about things. I know that I am not a perfect teacher. I had some prior training and experience, but I still felt overwhelmed in this environment. I am sure that there are many other talented teachers who would never have come to this circumstance in the first place. The unfortunate reality is that we are in this circumstance and all prior efforts to ameliorate the situation have not done so.

I appreciated meeting with you and am glad that you took the time to talk with us—but I can’t wait around for more meetings and more promises.

It’s so late in the year to make changes to a schedule, and yet with the continued disrespect and refusal to participate, I see no benefit from the status quo.

I will follow whatever instructions you have. If that means discharging me from teaching 11^th grade—or letting me go as a teacher in general, I will accept your decision with no hard feelings. I am completely opening myself up to whatever you and the administration decide is the best course of action.

Thank you for your time and consideration in all of this. I appreciate the effort that you’ve put forth—not only with these recent hurdles, but even back to settling Eric and Candra in their apartments and all the assistance since.

Best,

Hannah

things I used to want

100 things

1.     teach abroad

2.     learn a new language

3.     graduate university

4.     learn to play mandola

5.     move out

6.     get married

7.     have kids

8.     own a dog

9.     publish & illustrate a children’s book

10. write a novel

11. go deep sea diving

12. lose 15 pounds

13. explore the UP

14. read more classic novels

15. get into PA school

16. get an A-/ B+ in organic chemistry

17. learn to make coffee

18. eat more local food

19. spend a summer with my grandparents

20. improve French

21. grow a garden

22. do callenetics for one month, consistently

23. write a poem anthology

24. write five good songs

25.  graduate with honors

26. learn yoga

27. run another half marathon

28. build a better core (abs, but heart too)

29. try on blue contacts

30. improve Spanish

31. learn Korean

32. tutor high school kids

33.  get a master’s degree

34. get into PA school in Florida