The King Swing

(Warning!! This post is of a very personal nature and may offend some readers.)
This is a video from a very popular rock climbing route in Yosemite. This technique is called a pendulum traverse. Climbers call it "The King Swing” and it takes place on a route called “The Nose” on the 3000’ feature called El Capitan. About halfway up this particular route the cracks and features kind of peter out once you get to the top of that flake the photographer is standing on. Since the rock doesn’t have any little cracks or bumps there is subsequently nothing to pull up on or stand on. Therefore, no way to climb it. The only solution is to go back down and see if you can find another path. Sometimes you see another path but there really isn’t any way to get to it from underneath. The only feasible solution is to do a pendulum traverse. Just as the name implies you lower down as far as you have to and swing back and forth until you can grab a section of rock that is will allow you to climb it.

I’ve done several pendulum traverses, although not this one. They can be quite intimidating. Sometimes you’re not quite sure if you’re swinging into a section that will be just as unclimbable as where you were. One time it was an emergency situation and this was the safest technique to get off the rock during a thunderstorm. But every time I was more than a little apprehensive. The technique requires much more planning than it appears and things have to be done just right in order to stay safe.

Even though the route ahead seems insurmountable it’s quite a weird feeling to hang your butt on the end of a rope and run back and forth hoping to grasp something better, something that will allow you to keep progressing. It’s not exactly the safest thing to do. The times I’ve done them were only in situations where I was absolutely sure that it was the only way to keep on progressing. The risks can be high, but the rewards can be even greater if this leads you to better climbing or a way out of the current predicament.

I’m at a point in my life where I need to take the King Swing. I’ve been on a path that has provided me with much joy and happiness up to this point. I felt like I was growing, learning and progressing. But for the last several years I’ve been stuck on a ledge looking for ways to keep moving up and not finding anything to hang on to. It has taken me quite a while to even consider looking for another path. I’d been raised to believe that the path I was on was perfect and there was no reason to stray from it. But I just couldn’t see where or how to continue. Consequently, I’ve lowered down a little bit and begun to swing back and forth looking for another path.

I believe I’ve found a path. I’m not quite sure how good the climbing will be over there but I’m sure it is more promising than where I am now. Who knows? This new path may lead me back onto my original path from a different angle. Or I may end up having to lower back down this new route too and look for yet another path. I just don’t know right now.

To those of you who aren’t having any problems negotiating the blank sections of the original route, I have no criticism at all. Congratulations. You are better skilled at finding the route than I am. Simply because I am looking for a different path I have no criticism at all if you are making it work for you.

I’m not suggesting that anybody take the steps that I about to without doing at least as much thorough research, soul-searching and earnestly looking for all of the answers. This decision, to take the swing, has not be reached casually. In my case it has been years and years of agonizing study and prayer that has brought me to when I am now.

It’s time to set the metaphor aside. This post has nothing to do with rock climbing. I’m talking about my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. For the past several years I’ve been stuck on a ledge and could find no way to keep moving forward. I’ve discussed some of the specifics on this blog numerous times, but I don’t wish to get into them today. To my friends and family who are members of the church I hope that you will take this with the spirit with which it is intended. I am very grateful that you are in my life and I mean absolutely no disrespect to you at all. I have never felt that absolute agreement on everything was necessary for me to love you and this decision will not stop that. I hope that you can see it in your heart to still love me. The most apprehensive part of this decision has been the considering, reconsidering and re-reconsidering the effects it will have on my family.

I fully expect that many of you will not understand my decision. I’m under no delusion that this will be easy. But I believe it will be better in the long run. I’ve seen other friends and family members struggle with some of the same issues that I have. It’s been very selfish of me to let them struggle alone while I conceal my struggles and go through some of the same things they have been.

I am grateful for everything that I have learned so far on my path. Please don’t think that I am going to consider abandoning all of the progress and the good things that I’ve learned in the process. I have no plans to start stopping by liquor stores or breaking any other of the moral and ethical codes the church has taught me. Quite the opposite; I cherish those values and I look forward to continuing to incorporate them into my life.

The private answers to the questions I have asked in my prayers have led me in an unexpected direction, a spiritual path which, at least for now, has proven incompatible with Mormon doctrine. This search for a new route has brought me some of the most profound surprises and also the deepest sadness of my life. It is very hard for me to leave a path that I love so much.

Bittersweet

We’ve started making the plans for our biannual family adventure. Every other year our family does a reunion. This year it’s in Utah. We do our best to attend and we also try to make a big road trip out of it. The kids really look forward to it. This year we plan on hitting several of the National Parks in California as well as some old favorites, possibly Yellowstone and Carlsbad again. We’ll see. The hardest part about planning these trips is reminding the family that we only have two weeks to get everything in.
The bittersweet part of this adventure comes because we are going to have to leave one of the family home. If he wants to graduate on time Aaron’ll have to take a summer school class which means that he will not be going with us. While I recognize that he has to sleep in the bed he made, it’s still rather tough to make plans like this knowing that we won’t all be going.

What’s in a Name?

Except for a few years of my life we have always had Volkswagen’s in the family. I have fond memories of camping in the green 1970 transporter that my folks bought new while my dad was in graduate school. I remember the day in 1976 when my brothers and I tried to talk them into getting a VW Campmobile, a yellow one just like Pippi, but we ended up coming home with a Rabbit. Later we bought another Rabbit and then I bought a ’67 Beetle while I was in High School. Shortly after Victoria and I got married we found Pippi, our 1976 VW Campmobile. I’ve always had an affinity for the brand.

VW stopped making the Beetle for the US market in the late 70s. But in the mid 90s they announced that they were going to start production of their New Beetle. We were living in Salt Lake City at the time and Victoria and I made a trip to the dealership to see one. We weren’t in the market for another car. I was just curious about it.

After only a few minutes at the dealership I was ready to go. The car was nice but it just wasn’t what I had expected. The car was so different from the original Beetle that it left me pondering why they even continued to call it a Beetle. The Beetle, the original one designed by Dr. Porsche, had a flat-four air-cooled engine in the rear and was rear-wheel drive. All of those things are significant defining characteristics of the car. Yet this New Beetle had a straight-four, transversely mounted water-cooled engine in front of the car and was front-wheel drive. The New Beetle would resemble the original more if you drive it around backwards everywhere. Except for the rounded body styling it did not resemble the original at all. It was much more similar to the Golf, which I later found out the car was based on. Mechanically it was a Golf with just a throwback body styling. Don’t get me wrong, the Golf is a great car. It just ain’t a Beetle.

On the way home from the dealership I complained to Victoria and waxed philosophic about our experience. So how many details could they have changed and still made me comfortable with calling it a Beetle? I’ve blogged a little bit about this once before. I don’t know the answer to that question. But clearly they had changed too many for me. As cute as this new car was I just could not get comfortable with how drastically different it was. Why didn’t they just call it the VW Retro or something else? But as far as I was concerned it sure wasn’t a Beetle anymore.

For the past several years I’ve been going through a transformation too, not completely dissimilar to the example above.

For my whole life I’ve been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormons to most of the world. Mormons have a set of core beliefs that define them. Since I was a young child most of my beliefs have fallen well within the guidelines of the church. I was comfortable calling myself a Mormon and they were comfortable with me.

Like any healthy mind should, I continued to learn. A calling I had teaching Aaron’s Sunday School class got me really studying about the church. I read just about every history and biography I could about the church. After finding more questions than answers using the official, church sanctioned materials I was prompted to look elsewhere for some of my answers. I just couldn’t make certain aspects of the church’s history and doctrine line up without digging a little deeper. As I uncovered new truths, new to me at least, I did my best to incorporate them into my set of beliefs and still continue to call myself a Mormon. One issue at a time and little by little I found myself having to really bend over backwards to make myself fit into the mold that the church was providing. (I’ll spare the specifics of the changes for other posts. I’ve already detailed many of them over the last few years.) How many defining characteristics of being a Mormon could I change and still identify with the name? Like VW did with their Beetle I was rearranging and redesigning massive amounts of technical details while still doing my best to keep a rough tribute to the original.

A few months ago I was in another teaching position at church. The lesson for that day called for me to teach a principle that I no longer believed. In fact I found the whole Old Testament story of genocide difficult to even read. Yet I was being asked to tell the story and then give the official position of the church as if I believed it. I just couldn’t do it. It was an eye-opening experience for me. Just as if I had walked to the back of the car, popped the latch and sat there looking at a spare tire and an otherwise empty trunk rather than the engine compartment I had expected to be there. Things had changed. And I couldn’t stand at the back of the car and pretend that there was an engine back there anymore.

The next week I asked to speak to our Bishop and I told him what I was going through. This would be the third Bishop I’d conveyed my struggle to. At the time I just asked to be released from the teaching position. I just couldn’t be honest with myself and still teach from the official lesson plan.

So on the cusp of this new year I look back at where I was and where I am now. I no longer have so many of the characteristics that used to defined me as a Mormon. My beliefs have changed. Like the Beetle, do I still deserve the name? Am I still a car with a flat-four air cooled engine in the rear with rear-wheel drive? Or have I evolved into something else that deserves a different name? Here’s a little bumper sticker philosophy for you. “If you were accused of being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict?” or in my case, “If I were accused of being a Mormon would there be enough evidence to convict?” I just don’t know anymore. So that round car based on the Golf that VW came out with in the 90s, I’m just not comfortable calling it a Beetle. And whatever I have evolved into in the last several years probably deserves to be called something else too. I’m just not sure what it is yet.

Trying Not to be Cynical

So this morning I was approached by a woman at the gas station claiming her car had broken down and her kids were sleeping in the car. Yeah I know, it’s a typical panhandler line, but I was feeling charitable so I tried to help her and her kids out. I’d had a really bad week and I was projecting a little bit. If her week was half as bad as mine she could use someone to trust her.
Well to make a long story short: I never saw the kids or the truck and I got cussed out when I wouldn’t pay for a hotel room. I told her she could get out of my truck here or I could drop her off at the police station a block away.
Yeah I know it had all the signs of a scam from the beginning, but don’t they all? So here’s my question. How do you give people the benefit of a doubt without setting yourself up for being scammed? I stuck to my rule of helping rather than just giving them a handout. And I’m glad I did. But how do I now prevent this experience from jading me for next time? What tools do you use to tell who really needs help?

Priorities

One of the reasons I really enjoy rock climbing is because so much of what you learn on the rock carries over into our daily activities. Maybe this is just me but hear me out for a little bit.
A few weeks ago I guided a small group of boys form our church on a rock climbing trip. We went to a place that I know better than any other climbing area, Mount Yonah near Cleveland Georgia. After spending half the day climbing some relatively easy stuff a few of the guys wanted to do something harder. So I took Aaron and another boy, Alex, up to help me set up a few top ropes on the harder stuff. They had both shown considerable interest in learning how to safely set up the anchors. In order to get to the anchors for these routes we had to rappel off of the top of the rock which was over 200 feet tall and down to a ledge in the middle of the rock. I let Aaron rappel down to the ledge first since he had a little more experience than Alex. Alex would go next and I would come down to the ledge last. That way I could inspect everybody’s set-up before they rappelled.
So Aaron gets his rappel set and heads down to the ledge with no problem. That’s when all the drama started. You see the ledge was home to hundreds of biting ants. They were big red things with black abdomens. No sooner than Aaron got on the ledge and they were attacking his legs. It also seemed that the death of their sisters brought out even more worker ants to join in the attack. As bad as the ants were Aaron really had no choice but to stay on the ledge until Alex and I could get down to him, bring down the ropes and rappel the rest of the way to the ground.
So we did just that. Alex, knowing full well what he was getting into, rappelled down to the ledge, safely clipped into the anchors and proceeded to help Aaron slap off the ants until I could get down. I followed as quickly as I safely could and set up the ropes to get us off the rock. The whole process took about half an hour and we all had quite a few ant bites when the event was over.
I was very proud of Aaron and Alex for keeping their cool. It was a very stressful place to be. My biggest concern was that in spite of the ants they would abandon the relative safety of the ledge, unclip from the anchors and try to go over to another ledge without as many ants. They both realized that the ants were annoying but they weren’t deadly. Yet unclipping from the anchors to get away from them could be deadly. It’s in exactly these types of situations that it is even my important to do things correctly. Both the boys realized this and did everything they could to help me set up the anchors as fast a possible yet also as safely as possible.
As their guide for the trip I regret that they had to learn this lesson in such a stressful way but I’m glad that they learned that some things in life just aren’t worth the gamble. Many times in life what may seem like the quick and easy way to solve a problem may in fact be risking a whole lot more than if you patiently solved it the correct way.

Sibling Solidarity

(This is another personal post that will likely upset some readers.)

I love my kids. Sure they can frustrate the hell out of me sometimes but I still love them. I didn’t enjoy being a teenager and I can tell that my two teenagers aren’t exactly digging it either. It seems that most of their troubles come from peer pressure; so-called friends attacking them, frequently physically, for their opinions and beliefs and trying to get them to just go along with the crowd. What’s really upsetting to them is that most of this criticism comes from people whom they think should know better, members of our church. As a parent few thing make me more proud than when one kid stands up for the other, especially in a situation where they really don’t have anything to gain my doing it. We had just such a situation last night. And although it was very traumatic for her, I couldn’t have been more proud of my oldest daughter.
A little back history: Aaron hasn’t been attending church at our ward for the better part of a year now. He has been arranging, on his own, to get rides back and forth from the Brocket Ward. He gets along with the kids in that ward better, they accept him and genuinely love him. In stark contrast, the kids in our ward tease him, call him a Satanist and frequently physically assault him. In his own words it is rather ironic that the least spiritual hours of his week are spent at church. He doesn’t participate in the Varsity scout program on Wednesday night. We’ve moved him to another troop that is a real community troop where sharing the same religious upbringing is not a requirement to hold positions. He gets along much better with these guys. On Wednesday he even arranges for rides over to Brockett to hang out with the kids from that ward that he gets along with so well. In the entire time that he has been attending that Ward only one person from our ward has asked about Aaron. He was genuinely concerned and I thanked him for caring and not forgetting about him. Not a single other person has given us the slightest clue that they’ve even noticed his absence. In stark contrast, the leaders from Brockett comment to us about how they enjoy having him there and miss him when he’s gone.
Well last night I dropped Rachel off at the church for her Young Women’s activity. She typically doesn’t have the same issues as Aaron so I was a little surprised when Victoria brought her home and she was in tears. I asked her what was wrong. Rachel then proceeded to ask if she too could attend Brockett Ward rather than our ward. Apparently even in his absence Aaron is still a topic of conversation. A few of the kids were making fun of him and it really upset Rachel. I found a bit odd that their primary criticism of Aaron is that he “believes in evolution”. Rachel has never been one to gossip and hence she refused to tell me which kids were involved. But she did say that it really surprised her because she had though that these kids were above that. Apparently she had spent half of the meeting outside crying and just waiting for us to come pick her up.
Rachel didn’t openly defy these kids, that’s just not her style, but she did refuse to be a part of what they were doing. They still fight like, well brothers and sisters, but when the chips are down it’s really nice to see them standing up for what they know is right. Rachel didn’t want to tell anybody, especially Aaron, about what happened. I thought that he needed to hear it. After he was dropped off from his activity at Brockett we talked about it and he gave his little sister a nice big hug.

I chose to post this in order to add my name to Rachel’s. I stand behind my family. You criticize one of us you criticize us all. And we won’t tolerate it.

As far as the chief complaint lobbied again Aaron goes, Evolution is a fact. Get used to it. It used to be a theory but it has long ago graduated to a fact as far as I am concerned. I would even go so far as to say that evolution is more of a fact than gravity. Gravity is still lacking a clear definition of how it works. Like evolution gravity has been tested and tested and tested thousands of times but gravity is still lacking a carrier. We don’t quite know how it works. We have hypothesized the existence of the graviton, but haven’t actually seen one. In contrast we have found DNA and natural selection, the elements that make evolution work. So in a very real sense there is more evidence supporting evolution than gravity. In the past when people have asked me if I “believe” evolution I’ve had to rephrase their question in my answer. Because belief requires faith I don’t think it applies to evolution. Faith is a belief without evidence or even in spite of the evidence. You just aren’t looking if you don’t see evidence of evolution. So I respond something like this, “I accept the overwhelming evidence that life evolved via natural selection.”

"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality." The Dalai Lama
Wise words. It's a shame more people don't apply this same idea to thier own beliefs. I'm glad my kids are.

Puzzles

It’s been a few years since I’ve done a jigsaw puzzle. But last month my youngest asked me to sit down with her and work on a small one that she got for Christmas.

This puzzle was of a horse wearing a Native American blanket. We went through all of the standard techniques for building a puzzle. First I propped up the box lid so we could see the picture that it was supposed to look like when it was finished. Then we proceeded to flip all of the pieces so that the picture side is up and the raw cardboard side was down. Next I started sorting out all of the pieces that had a flat side, assuming that these would be the border pieces. Ideally, in the process we’d find the four corner pieces. Then the two of us started sorting the pieces by color, trying to group the pieces into smaller groups to work on separately; horse, sky, grass, blanket, etc.

Next came the process of assembly. Each of us would pick up a piece and try to see how it fit into other sections that we’d already assembled. I started by looking at the picture and trying to establish the border. I don’t always start with the border but it seemed to work for this puzzle. Sometimes it’s easier to start with a predominant color and try to get it together first and then work in the border later. I don’t really have a preference as to which method I choose. It just depends on the puzzle.

Eventually you’ll end up with a few sections assembled but not linked together. At this point you start looking for pieces that have a little bit of two different things on it, pieces that could conceivably go into more than one pile. The pieces with a little grass and a little bit of horse help tie those together and the pieces with the grass and sky help defiant he horizon. The “ah ha” moments of most puzzles come when you can link two large parts together with just a few small pieces or sometimes with just one. The best pieces are the ones that help tie three different chunks together. Once you’ve linked them you start looking for support pieces that also connect those chucks. Those help reinforce that your linking pieces are correct. Sometimes they disconfirm and force you to look for new ways to link the puzzle together.

At some point it seems you are always stuck with a bunch of pieces of relatively the same color and your only clue as to how they need to be assembled is to look at the shape of the pieces themselves and try to make them work.

Using these methods we were able to assemble this 200 piece puzzle in about 15 or 20 minutes. It struck me that in order to assemble it we had to make several assumptions about the puzzle.

1. The picture on the puzzle is the same as the picture on the box. I’ve put puzzles together without the box just to see how much longer it would take. If I had to guess it’d take at least twice as long. I’ve also participated in a team building exercise where the puzzle was put into the wrong box with a similar but just different enough image n the outside.

2. The pieces only have images on one side and raw cardboard on the other. I have actually done a puzzle that had images on both sides, but the stamping process made for edges that were easy to determine which side of the piece was for image one and which was for image two.

3. Flat edges are for the border. It’d be really sneaky to see a puzzle that had a jagged edge to the image and flat pieces that but up together inside the body of the puzzle.

4. The completed puzzle has no missing pieces in the body. We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve lost one piece and we just don’t feel like we’ve finished it.

5. All of the pieces have to be used. Want to really throw your head for a loop? Throw in a few pieces from another puzzle just to spice things up. I remember doing a puzzle and my grandmother’s house and having exactly that problem. She’d found a few pieces on the floor and just threw them into the first box she found.

I can think of several more assumptions that we make when we try to make sense of the scrambled pieces in front of us. But this will do to start out with.

Lately I've been working on a puzzle that seems to violate all of these assumptions.
No picture on the outside of the box. No raw side to the puzzle and no obvious way to tell one side from the other. Flat edges in the middle and bumpy edges on the edges. A few holes in the main body. A few extra pieces from other puzzles.
And the coup de gras of the whole puzzle is that I have a few large chunks of the puzzle that don’t even attach to each other.

Anyway, that’s my little analogy for today. I think I stopped talking about jigsaw puzzles a few paragraphs ago.

Amen

I've just discovered this guy and I love his work. Far too much of what we call entertainment is about stuff that really doesn't matter. This guy is not.
He could have done with out the potty mouth on the last line but I wouldn't suggest he change it.

Civility

Last week I was taking my lunch hour walk and listening to podcasts just like I do every day that the weather will allow. I came across an interesting scene that at first I didn’t know what to make of it. A white car was pulled off to the side of the road and an elderly lady was standing in the sidewalk. A man in overalls was doing something to the front of her car. Parked across the street was a small pickup truck with some appliances and tools in the back. The truck had some minor damage to the rear bumper. The scene was kinda odd. That’s when it hit me what had happened any why I thought it was so abnormal.
From what I could piece together the truck and the elderly lady were at the same light and she rear-ended him as he was turning and she was going straight. Both car had a little bit of damage but the truck driver apparently didn’t think his damage was bad enough to get upset about. On top of that he seemed to have to tools in his truck to help the lady fix her car. He was hammering out the bumper and even had some kind of buffing compound to clean up where the plastic bumper cover had been discoloured.
All too often, we hear on the news and the radio about how this world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket. It was very refreshing to see that human decency and civility can still exist in a situation. All it takes if for cooler heads to prevail and people to treat each other the way they would like to be treated. I hope to see more of these type situations. I will consciously look for opportunities where I can help to create them.

Creatures of Habit

So this morning as I walked to the door of our office building there was another employee waiting there. Our building has an electronic card reader and then about a foot above that is a button that opens doors. She was waiting outside because she didn’t think her card was being read. I walked past her and simply opened the door for her. She was amazed that my card worked and hers didn’t. Now here’s the catch. I hadn’t scanned my card. Apparently the card reader was working just fine but the handicapped door opener button wasn’t working. She had grown so used to her pattern of holding the card in her hand an hitting the button that when the door didn’t open she thought she was locked out, even though she could have just walked up to the door an pulled it open just like I did. Later on I noticed that a crew was out to repair the door, which was knocked out by the lightning last night.
I’ve heard similar stories of people think they were locked out of their cars just because the battery was dead on their remote. The event got me wondering how many times I’ve done similar things.

Misdirection

When I was about twelve years old my scout troop and I went down to Emory University to assist in a study that some of the students were doing. We were told that the study was to test reaction time. They sat us in a chair and them they moved the chair into a very dark box with a monitor on the far side. We were then given an Atari joystick. None of the directions worked they just needed us to push the fire button on the top. We were asked to stare at a small X in the middle of the screen and to push the button when the X changed to an H. They started the test and I was eager to show that I had really good reaction times so I stared intently at the X in the middle. When it would change to an H I would hit the button as fast as I could. This went on for about ten minutes.
When the test was over they pulled me into another room and asked me some follow up questions while the next scout was actually taking the test. The follow up questions really surprised me. They didn’t ask me about the X changing to the H at all. The questions seemed to last longer than the test and they kept asking me about things that were happening outside of the task I was given.
“Did you see the large monkey at the top right of the screen?”
“No”
“What word was inside the large circle that kept going around the screen?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“The M just to the right of the center of the screen changed color at least five times. What to colors did it change back and forth from?”
“Um, I didn’t see an M.”
“Do you remember any of the other words that appeared around the screen? There were over a hundred?’
“Um, I thought y’all were testing reaction time so I didn’t pay any attention to that other stuff.”
As we drove home that night I felt that I’d been dupped. I talked to my Dad about it. He told me that the joystick probably wasn’t even plugged into anything. The test seemed to be a test of peripheral vision and not about reaction time at all. They basically had to lie to me to get me stare at the center of the screen. Had I known it was to test my peripheral vision I’d have not been focusing on the center and I’ve have been looking all around the get the right answers. So If I’d have known what the test was about I’d have given them faulty data.
Nurses frequently use a similar ruse. When they take your vital signs to put on your report one of the things they measure is your breathing rate. Do you ever remember being asked to sit back and breath normally? No you probably don’t. If you have been asked that, the nurse more than likely did not get a normal breathing rate for you. Most nurses are trained to take you pulse for 15 seconds while looking at their watch and then multiply that number by 4 to get your pulse. But they actually hold your wrist and appear to be looking at their watch for at least another 15 seconds. For those last 15 they are actually watching your chest rise and fall and counting your breaths. Like the joystick, the watch is just a misdirection.
So, why do I bring this up? Well lately I’ve been experiencing a lot of the same frustration that I felt as I left that Emory study. I feel like I’ve been concentrating on everything that I’ve been told was important. Yet now I’m beginning to wonder if many of these other details are just the misdirection so I can be tested on what the testers were really looking for. I’m afraid that when the test is over and they start asking me the follow up questions I’m just going to be stammering like I did when I was twelve.

Goals

Growing up when I did, a teenager in the early '80s, I was exposed to a lot of video games. I even have a job testing video games for a few years before I went on my mission. I kind of kicked the habit while on my mission and ever since I've found most video games interesting from an outside observe stand point rather than from a participant. I just don't find them as interesting as I used to. There is a common theme among most games that I find a little depressing. The goal of most games seems to be simply avoiding death. In fact nearly every game ends by showing your character explode, melt or other symbol of death. Even the best player of the coolest game out there just manages to evade death longer than an average player. On top of that the theme that prolonging your own life requires you to kill most everything else that moves on the screen and I just haven't found most video games too enjoyable.
I was listening to a podcast today on my lunch walk. Krista Tippets was interviewing a chaplain and game warden for the state of Maine. Her job called for her minister to people who had just had a family member get lost or was missing in the Maine wilderness. She was dealing with people who were at the "end of the game". I encourage you to listen to the podcast. I found her perspective very insightful.
One of the most profound insights she had had to do with postponing death. She said that our lives have to mean more than simply postponing death. If our goal is just postponing death then any victory is only temporary. Eventually death will win. Back to my video game analog: if the only goal of the game is to stay alive longer the only victory you could claim is a little more mileage on your quarter. Surely our lives are worth more than that.
For her the victory comes in learning to love each other. In her situation it is frequently all about the hundreds of people who get together to help look for the missing child in the woods. That outpouring of love is the goal. If you have that as the goal then no matter what the outcome of the search there is a victory and in her eyes, that is where the miracle is. Everyone will have tragic event in their lives. What makes us divine is that we refuse to let each other go through them alone.
She ends her interview by describing an event around ten years ago. An elderly woman with Alzheimer’s had wandered into the woods. Thousands of people from the local community gathered together to help in the search. The lady's son was deeply moved by the outpouring of love for his mother and expressed that "surely this was the real miracle." She stopped her story there and did not even say if the woman was found or not. When pressed she said, "well this was ten years ago and she was already old and sick." The insinuation here was that she is dead now, but did not elaborate on the outcome of the search. Did she die then or not? Her point was to identify the miracle and not take away the focus onto looking at what happened after the miracle. We all die. It's what we do in the mean time that matters. Did we learn to love each other like we're supposed to, or not?

Tough Decisions

I'd like to share a rather bittersweet event that happened last night.

Aaron and I attended the scout meeting for another troop. Troop 129 has been chartered for over 50 years and is a very well run program. We showed up last night primarily as observers. They introduced us both and then just went about their normal meeting. I was impressed at how little the adults did. The boys were clearly in charge. And it wasn't just token leadership for a few minutes until they turned the time over to an adult. Besides about 5 minutes worth of announcements the adults were not involved at all.
They guys had just gotten back from Summer camp and they also had another group off at Florida Sea base so there was only about 20 scouts there. The patrols are not sorted by age. I really like that. The younger guys can learn a lot from their elder scouts in the same patrol. It also makes inter-patrol activities a lot more level than having all the 12-13 year-olds in one patrol, the 14-15 year-olds in another and the 16-17 year-olds in a third. Yes, you heard that correctly. They have boys active in the program right up until their 18th birthday. Last night they even had an 18 year old alumni visit from college. He was looking for some assistance to go help do some up keep on his Eagle project.
I spent about 30 minutes talking with their scoutmaster about the troop and the boys' plan for the the next couple of years. It was refreshing to hear him frequently refrain from telling me what they were going to be doing just yet. You see they have a PLC, a boy lead planning meeting, on Thursday and until then he doesn't really know what the boys will be planning for next year. It really is up to them. After that meeting he will take their plans to the committee and see what assistance they may need from the adults. This is how the program is supposed to work. And it has been working very well at this troop for decades.
So by now you may be wondering why I said it was a bittersweet event for me. You see part of me feels like switching to a clearly superior troop would be throwing in the towel on my current troop. Aaron and I have had several conflicts recently with the way the LDS church administers the scouting program. Far too much of the program is dictated from the top down. The SPL must be the deacons' quorum president which means it's an appointed position rather than an elected one. I ask you, whom do you respect more, the leader you elected or the the one that was appointed to govern over you? We've also had a few instances where the boys' plan was deliberately overridden for no real reason at all. We were just told to follow the directives of our Stake leaders. This is fine in any other situation, but it simply isn't the scouting program. These issues would be bearable if it were not for the fact that the church has turned a voluntary organization into a compulsory activity. Some of the boys Aaron's age would never have any interest in Scouting were it not for the church requiring it. There's nothing wrong with that at all. They may fit in just fine in school sports programs or other activities. Many of the same leadership and teamwork skills taught in scouting are also taught equally well in these other venues. Not coincidentally, these are the very same boys with whom we have the hardest problems. They simply are attending because the church and their parent make them. Personally, I think it's a waste of their time and it degrades the program for those that really want to attend because the enjoy Scouting.
Another part of me really hates to give up on the other boys in the troop who are enjoying Scouting. There are about five that would continue to attend and enjoy it even if the church stopped making it compulsory. I've grown to love them all, even the ones that don't want to be there. I've just grown weary of the constant struggle to do it the way Baden Powell set it out and the way the church wants us to do it. There are just too many conflicts.
Fortunately, the other troop meets on Tuesdays and my troop on Wednesdays. I will likely bring Aaron to 129 on Tuesdays and work behind the scenes at that troop, while still maintaining my Scoutmaster position at 519. That is at least until the church decides that somebody else needs to take the reigns for a while. As difficult as it is to work with, I've made a commitment to these boys in 519. I'll continue to struggle to make it work for those few boys that still want it to work.

Commitment

There's an old metaphor that gets used a lot to explain the difference between involvement and commitment. You need look no further than your morning breakfast of milk, bacon and eggs. The cow and the chicken were involved in providing the milk and the eggs, but the pig was committed to provide the bacon.

Last month my youngest played the cat in her preschool class's production of "The Little Red Hen". You know the story. The hen looks all over town to find some help to make some bread but nobody is willing to sacrifice anything to make it happen. Yet when the bread is done they all want to take part in the feast. It's amazing how timeless some of this fables actually are. I think I've had to face this situation much more as an adult than I ever did as a child.
Lately I've been dealing with a lot of people who haven't even been willing to provide milk or eggs or help at all in baking the bread and it's very frustrating. They don't even come close to the Pigs level of commitment. Yet I'm sure that some of these same people will be the ones knocking on the door to participate once the aroma of the bread starts wafting out the windows.
Perhaps they all should have paid a little bit more attention when they were in preschool. Or maybe they just need to have a 5 year old tell them the story.

Science Project

My 13-year old son is home-schooled. Last week he started a science experiment of his own design. He decided to test a few of the additives that people put into fresh flowers to make them stay fresh longer. The protocol consisted of filling 4 identical glasses with 8 ounces of water at the same temperature. One glass was left alone as a control. The second glass had 1 tablespoon of sugar added. The next had two aspirins added. And in the last we added one packet of the plant food that came with the flowers. Into each glass we placed one small flower, with the stems cut to the same length. All the glasses we placed in the window sill in the kitchen.
I thought he'd come up with a pretty good protocol and I was looking forward to seeing his results. Well a week went by and all four of the flowers showed no real change. My son was a little upset. He wondered what had gone wrong and wanted to start over rather than write up his conclusions. I took advantage of this teaching moment to explain that he needs to complete his observations and turn in the report. I them explained that this is probably how 99% of all science experiments end. Astronomers don't find new asteroids every time the look into the sky. Research doctors don't see measurable effects of new drugs every day. Even though Aaron's experiment did not product the effect that he wanted he still had learned something. As his experiment was designed ,5 days is not enough time to measure any difference in the effect of the chemicals being tested. Although mundane this is important information that future researchers could use to improve their experiments. Aaron agreed and is currently writing up his conclusions.
Science is sometimes victim to publication bias. Like Aaron they are hesitant to publish studies that don't have dramatic results. Dramatic or not the results are still science and those result should be published. Personally, I think that there is just as much value in a study that says "Acupuncture does not have a measurable effect on pain under controlled tests" is just as valuable as a study that say, "An aspirin a day will lower your chance of a heart attack". Both give me concrete practical data that I can use to live a better life.
I probably took Aaron's report a little more personally than I should have. When I was in High School I worked with my father, a CDC microbiologist, on a science project. I hypothesized that military labs would be less accurate than civilian labs in testing for certain diseases. I took data from all over the world that had already been collected and just analyzed it in a way nobody had thought of before. My dad was really excited for me and even thought that I'd win the science fair. I got an "Honorable Mention". One of the judges said that I should have actually done some of the lab work myself for better marks. Never mind that I had a sample size of several thousand lab tests, she didn't think it was science because I used a computer rather than a test tube. Another said it would have been more impressive if I hadn't disproven my hypothesis. He actually suggested that I should have rewritten my initial hypothesis so it looked I had successfully predicted the result. Not only did I find this suggestion unethical it is not what real science is all about. In the long run I didn't walk away felling like my project was a failure. I learned that there is no statistical difference in the ability of military labs to detect certain diseases or civilian labs' ability to detect the same diseases.
My dad eventually took my report and got it published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a peer reviewed science journal. That meant more to me than the "Honorable Mention" from my science teachers.

Lists

In The Year of Living Biblically A J Jacobs tells a story about how he used to keep of list stored in his Palm pilot of all the times that he was right and somebody else was wrong. The list was rather petty and the only reason he kept it was so that he could refer back to it the next time he got something wrong. "Oh yeah, well remember that time you thought it was so-and-so in that movie and it was actually whats-his-face...?" To his credit part of Jacob's spiritual journey included confessing that this list existed and deleting it. "And I the Lord will remember their sins no more."
Jacob's admits that the only reason he kept the list is because his memory is so bad and he wanted to remember these petty little details. He admits that the whole concept is just sad and has put it behind him and learning to forgive.
I have an idea along this line that I'm going to put into practice. I'm also going to start a little list on my Blackberry of little details that I'd like to remember. But in contrast to Jacob's list, my list will be of endearing details about my friends and family. There are several things that I'd like to remember but I just forget. More than just birthdays and anniversaries, I'd like to remember things that will brighten people's day.

Here's the start of my list:
(I've blanked out the names so as not to violate anyone's privacy.
-______ is collecting all of the 50 state quarters.
-_____ would like to take a Cake Art class.
-Given the chance to do anything in the world ______ would probably take the time to do something for somebody else.
-_____'s birthday is the same as Eve's and he climbs Stone Mountain every year on that day.
-_____ wants to be a marine biologist.
-_____ donates platelets but doesn't like to be recognized for doing it.
-_____, _____, _____, _____, and _____ are all on the mend from ordeals with cancer and all are handling it much better than I would.
-_____ recently had her mother move in with her due to early stages of Alzheimer's.
-_____ is going through a nasty divorce and still holding up pretty good.
-______ is one of the more spiritual people I know, but he's so humble about it he doesn't like me to point it out.
-Every time I recommend a book to ______ he has already read it. Next time I should ask him what he's reading.
-Next time ____ is talking just sit back and listen. Don't change the subject, just listen. She's very profound for a 5 year-old.

I look forward to adding more and hope to never completing this list.

Compromise

During the summer my wife and I were discussing the fact that we'll need to replace her car in the next year or so. We sat down and created a short list of features that we'd like to have in our next car. We'd like it to be four-wheel drive so we can get out of some of the sticky situations that we find ourselves in from time to time. It needs to have at least 6 seat belts so we can safely carry the whole family. I'd like to find a diesel so we can start using biofuels once they're more readily available. We both would like it to be stick shift. And she'd like it to handle like and be just as cute as a Mini Cooper.
We'll from this list it's obvious that we're going to have to compromise a little to get a new vehicle. We haven't yet figured it out but we're hoping that our current vehicles will buy us a little more time to figure it out.
As I was standing in line at the polls this morning I felt a similar sense of compromise. I have a long list of issues that I feel passionate about. Not one of the candidates on either side of the aisle shares more than a couple of the same opinions that I do. If I were buying my car today and not picking a President I'd have to drive away with less than half of my desired options. Even if I concede that the diesel, automatic, 4x4 Suburban is the best compromise it's still a bittersweet accomplishment considering the other features that I had to sacrifice to get it.
To continue this analogy, I've found that several options come bundled together and it's next to impossible to find the two separate. Six seat belt vehicles are almost always automatic transmission. So finding a six-seater with a standard transmission is quite difficult. The same follows with my choices today. A feature that I like is bundled with a feature I don't. Supporting the FairTax is bundled with teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. Getting out of Iraq is bundled with socialized medicine. Fiscal conservatism is bundled with tolerance of "waterboarding".
So when I left the polls today I found that I was more than a little disappointed. I hadn't voted for somebody that I really felt would lead out country to where I wanted it to go. I just compromised and voted for the one I felt could do the least amount of damage. Considering the choices I can live with my decision. Just once in my life I'd really like to feel good about who's going to be running our country.

Born Spellers?

I love Arthur. For those of you who don’t have kids I’ll give you a quick introduction. Arthur is an animated Aardvark who has his own kids show on PBS. The characters were created by Marc Brown. The plot lines have some very deep and surprisingly sophisticated themes.
One of the chapters of Mistakes Were Made deals with the drastically different approaches that Americans and Asian cultures take on the issue of making mistakes in school. In American schools there seems to be a theme that certain people are born better at one subject than others. If they don’t excel in that subject rather than being asked to apply themselves and devote a little more effort on homework they are told things like maybe “this just isn’t your thing.” Performance and lack of performance is blamed on inherited ability or the lack thereof. The side effect of this is that by linking it to innate ability the student doesn’t have to feel too bad about not excelling in that subject. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. When students succeed they are denied the right to take credit for their accomplishments. What is there to take credit for if you didn’t have to do anything to achieve it? I might as well just be proud of my accomplishment of having blue eyes. That’s another genetic trait that I had nothing to do with.
Conversely, Asian cultures and encouraged to tough it out and work through problems in all subjects. Mistakes are not viewed as failures until you quit trying. Perhaps this attitude explains why Asian and Middle Eastern cultures do so much better that Americans in math and science; not because it’s genetic but that they just work harder because they know it is within their control. True the stigma of failure may be strong in those cultures but the joy of success if proportionally greater.
So I’m listening to the current episode of Arthur while I check my email. I’m not listening too intently until I hear the line, “Don’t worry Arthur. Some people are just born good spellers.”
Knowing how well Marc Brown weaves deeper philosophical themes into his stories I turned around and watched the rest of the show. Arthur was studying for a spelling-bee. Just as I suspected Mr. Ratburn, Arthur’s science teacher, took a more Asian philosophy to learning. He encouraged Arthur to enter the spelling-bee because it was hard for him. He empowered Arthur to not be afraid of mistakes and to just keep trying. Later on Arthur’s sister, DW, used the line, “Sorry. Arthur can’t come out to play. He’s exercising his brain.”
Arthur’s brain exercises paid off when it came time for the spelling-bee, in spite of his earlier advice that he may not have been a “born speller”.
This is one of the most powerful lessons that I learned from Mistakes Were Made. I’d like to thank Arthur and Marc Brown for reinforcing this idea with my family.

Hyperwhelmed

Perhaps it is just my own lack of linguistics skill however, I’ve found that there are times when the English language falls short in its descriptive ability and new words are required. Last week a coworker was trying to describe the extreme level of micromanagement that our new parent company was putting on us. Since the increase seemed to be exponentially greater than previous “micro”management they coined a new word for it.
Nanomanagement: The process of upper management micromanaging the micromanaged details that middle managers pass on to lower management. (micro)²=nano

Along these lines, lately I’ve felt the need for another neologism. Overwhelmed just does seem to cut the mustard when it comes to my life lately. Let’s start with work. In the past month three of the best engineers in my group have left, two of them promoted within the company and one outside. We’ve hired two new folks to replace them. Since they have little to no experience the extra work load from the three who left is falling primarily on the experienced folks who are still around. Also, the two new guys need to be trained. This is falling to; you guessed it, the experienced guys who are still around. This week the only other experienced guy whose been sharing the load is out on vacation. So today I am quite literally handling the work that two months ago five engineers were doing. Oh yeah that reminds me, my supervisor is taking the next two days off. So today and tomorrow I have to do a few tasks of his while he’s away. And oh yeah I almost forgot, I am also on a special project team to help build our facilities so that they will handle HD video service. So I just kind of giggle when people pop into my cube and ask, “Are you busy?”
Outside of work I am a Boy Scout scoutmaster. I have a great team of assistants and committee members that help ease the load but it still takes a chunk out of my week. I’m also on our church young men’s presidency. Alone this isn’t too stressful but it just becomes one of the many straws.
We’re getting ready for a family Christmas party this weekend. We decided to finish a couple of the rooms that we never got around to from last year’s remodeling project. So my evening and weekends have been loaded with hardwood flooring, painting and crown molding. Victoria and I spent our anniversary weekend together alone at the house, painting, laying flooring and putting up crown molding.
In today’s “No child left behind” world even my 7 year old comes home with two or three hours of homework. Victoria and I end up having to help one or all of them with homework up until 9:00pm or sometimes even later than that.
Overwhelmed? Overwhelmed implies a position above whelmed. Not sure what whelmed actually means but if is a state of normal expectations then I’m definitely well above it. I could cut my work load in half and still classify as overwhelmed. Here comes my new word for the English language. Hyperwhelmed. If active, overactive and hyperactive are the accepted convention for these words then let’s apply the same logic to whelmed.
I apologize to my few regular readers for not posting a blog more frequently than I have lately. I’ve just been hyperwhelmed with the details of life. I’m typing this up on my Blackberry as I wait for a contractor to show up at a job site where a large cable has been cut.
“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”
-John Lennon-

Metaphors

A few days after every caving trip I find that muscles I didn’t even know I had ache. I also find a bruise or two that I can’t even remember how it got there. Saturday’s trip to Petty John’s cave was no exception. For the last couple of years every time I’ve dropped into a cave it was in a guided situation where I was the guide and most everybody else it was their first time into a cave. And typically it’s a rather large group, ten or more. Last weekend was a significant departure from the norm. The group was relatively small. There were only six of us. Two of us had a great deal of experience in this cave. Aaron has also been in Petty John’s five or six times. Although he’s only thirteen, in the past I’ve used him to lead groups much older than him through the tight spots so I could “bring up the rear” with the folks who need more assistance. Two others had been in the cave with me before and took to it very well. We only had one complete novice and he did amazingly well for his first time.
With such a motivated group we were able to descend all the way down to the waterfall in what they refer to as the lower stream passages in record time. This was no small feat and I’m very proud of all who came along. We were able to go into some places on this planet that relatively few people will every see.
Every time I take a group of people climbing or caving all I ask is that they do their best. I don’t care what your ability may be I just want you to push yourself right up to that limit and keep trying. I get much more frustrated with people who quit too early and stop trying than I’ve every been with folks who just kept on trying no matter what level that took them. This group did very well. There was a great deal of the reaching down to provide a hand hold for the next guy and even a few situations when we would literally stand on each others shoulders in order to help each other get to the next level spot. I find this type of teamwork to be spiritually fulfilling no matter which side I’m on. Whether it’s my shoulder being stepped on or I’m the one doing the stepping. When I find myself in the position of the step I reflect up the examples of those that have taught me in the past. Considering the many great leaders that I’ve had in my life it is very humbling for me to fell the weight of others no relying on me for their progress. I doubt I am worth of this respect and it causes me to be very introspective as to whether or not I desire the trust that they have given me.
I have no delusions that I’ll discover any new passages or make any amazing breakthroughs in speleology. However, I doubt that I will ever stop caving. The metaphors that become literal in this situation are far to powerful for me to avoid.