Is Arrogance a Progressive Value?

In November 2010, I moved from Chicago to Bellingham, WA, where I moved into the house of a fellow Christian who was also a Facebook friend, and who had chosen (admirably) to respond compassionately to the fact that I'd just been evicted from my room at the Lawson House YMCA in Chicago.

Unfortunately, until I actually moved in with my friend, I was unaware of certain things about my friend. They were things which, if known by me, might have given me second and even third thoughts about moving in, if it had not been for the fact that I really had no choice, in my desperate circumstances.

This is not to say that I was ungrateful for the help. But living here was (and to some extent has been) a challenge, nevertheless.

One of the first thing I learned at the time was that my friend was a passionate "progressive" (whereas I, as a Republican, was by implication a "regressive", even though I was sufficiently savvy with regard to modern technology that I was able to be able to get my friend out of some jams by helping him with his computer).

I had come to Bellingham because my friend ostensibly thought that my goals were worthy of attention, with regard to a project I called the Christian Arts Initiative. One might have thought, therefore, that he was a particularly artistic person. But I suppose that some folks define the arts differently than others, because my friend didn't really seem to show a very pronounced interest in the arts. So far as I could observe, he almost never read novels or watched movies or even listened to much music (other than the classic rock tunes he sometimes listened to on the radio in his car).

Instead, my friend's entertainment appeared to consist primarily of two things:

1. Spending long hours in conversation threads on Facebook (which, of course, was how I met him in the first place).
2. Watching MSNBC on his satellite TV, often for hours on end. (To some, this is apparently entertaining. Then again, some folks like watching a nice car wreck, I've been told.)

I knew very little about MSNBC, but I would soon learn that it was a media haven for liberals (excuse me, "progressives").

The more I watched the network, the more I came to realize how much MSNBC resembled Rolling Stone magazine (a magazine which has long delighted in putting the spotlight on the most appalling role models one could possibly choose, such as Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears and Iggy Pop and countless others over the years). Like Rolling Stone, MSNBC is, as some might say, a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the Democratic party (in terms of its content, not necessarily in terms of who actually owns the network).

For instance, there was Keith Olbermann, whose most distinguishing characteristic seemed to be that he would end each show by throwing papers at his viewers in what appeared to be his attempt to demonstrate that his mentality had never progressed much beyond the mentality which he'd had when he was in kindergarten. (He now appears to have another show elsewhere, after having been fired by MSNBC, possibly after throwing one too many televised tantrums.)

A similarly childish attitude was observed in Rachel Maddow (whose apparently never met a lesbian she didn't like) and Ed Schultz (whose catch-all word "crazytalk" appeared to describe any talk with which he didn't completely agree, which made me wonder if he'd ever said a humble word in his life).

There were other, somewhat more moderate hosts, but they all started to blur together for me after a while. I came to expect a pretty steady diet of incredibly biased commentary in the guise of "news". They would sometimes feature guests, some of whom were even conservatives, but it soon became apparent that the conservative guests had been cherry picked and invited to the MSNBC shows precisely because they made for such easy targets.

Ed Schultz's show was called "The Ed Show". One night, Ed's guest was the pseudo-commedian known as Bill Maher. On that episode, Maher referred to a conservative female politician as a "mouth breather", a phrase which in some circles has apparently come to mean "as stupid as dirt".

Now, I have to admit, I've been known to breathe through my mouth occasionally myself. For instance, I've had colds in which the primary feature of those episodes of illness was that my nasal passages would become congested, and I would find that I could only get enough oxygen, while lying in bed, was to breathe through my mouth. I sometimes breathed through my mouth for somewhat similar reasons, back in the days when I ran track in junior high, and when I was running as hard as I could run, around the track. And of course, when I took a course in SCUBA diving back in college, I found that it was pretty necessary to breathe through my mouth while swimming twenty or thirty feet underwater. Pretty much every SCUBA regulator I've ever seen or used is designed to go into one's mouth, not into one's nose.(Ditto for snorkels.)

God, in his wisdom, gave people two different orifices through which to breathe: A nose, and a mouth. Undoubtedly, breathing only through one's nose, and reserving one's mouth for speaking and eating, is ideal. But there are times when breathing through one's nose just isn't very practical or feasible. It's a lot better to breathe through one's mouth than to stop breathing altogether, or so it seems to me.

It therefore seems to me that a person who uses the phrase "mouth breather" as a synonym for "stupid" is, by definition, stupid. The fact that MSNBC thinks that Maher is qualified to talk about politics says a lot about that network's definition of the word "competent". And it definitely says a lot about Mr. Schultz.

Back when Gabby Gifford was shot, Ed Schultz had the audacity to imply that political conservatives were to blame for the shooting, and then to call for more "civility". As if continuously slandering all political conservatives in various ways was a good example of civility. (Practice what you preach, Ed.)

Thanks to the examples of various people on the staff at MSNBC, I've come to realize that being a progressive means not being constrained by the rules of what most people regard as logic or genuine civility. Being a progressive, apparently, means using slanderous innuendo, when the stockpile of weapons in one's intellectual arsenal is particularly low.

The political condescension isn't limited just to MSNBC, either.

Eric Alterman, for example, had an article (The Nation, June 20, 2011, page 10) entitled "The Problem of Republican Idiots". In that article, he wrote that "it is hardly an exaggeration to insist that (an) astonishing combination of willful ignorance and stubborn stupidity can be found virtually everywhere Republican politics are discussed."

Eric, in case you're reading this, let me just say this: I am a Republican, because the Republican party has, in my judgment, taken the right side on one of the most important issues of our time, which pertains to the question of whether or not we will affirm the important principle that all human beings are of equal value, by opposing the legalized murder of millions of unborn children. Undermining the idea that all human beings are of equal value by supporting the so-called "right" of women to kill their own unborn progeny is, in my opinion, the quintessential act of hypocrisy, for Democrats who claim to believe in equal rights.

My IQ has been tested at 140, so I hardly think that by any objective criterion, I could accurately be described as "stupid".

In any event, there's a difference between intelligence (which we cannot for the most part control) and wisdom (which we can all attain, if we will humble ourselves and ask God for it).

All of us, whether we are geniuses or idiots or somewhere in-between, will be held accountable on the day of judgment for how we have lived our lives. According to the Bible, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Laugh at me and mock me, if you will, for my "stupid" and childlike faith in divine justice. Call me a "loser" if you like. But it's a bit premature to declare winners and losers, it seems to me, when the game is not yet over.

Here's a clue for the clueless, regardless of where you may stand on the political spectrum: YOU will not be the one making that judgment call (about who is and is not a loser) when each person's life is at its end. So try showing a little bit of humility in the meantime.

Isn't Howling What Animals Do?

As a child, I was taught in school that poetry was an art form, with an emphasis on the word form. Rhyme and meter were probably the most obvious aspects of poetic form, but I gradually became familiar with other aspects of poetic form as well.

Not that there wasn't also a substantial amount of thought-provoking content in the poems of people such as Robert Frost. In fact, the poems with which I initially became acquainted were actually about something; and rather than trying to cover up a lack of content by writing in such an obscure and formless manner that one spent most of one's time trying to decipher the meaning, the form actually seemed to enhance the meaning of nearly every poem.

It was a lot easier to respect poets back then. They actually seemed to exhibit a certain measure of self-discipline in the ways that they wrote.

Such poetry didn't usually leave readers feeling befuddled and confused. It might take a little bit of work in order to understand every last reference in some  poems (especially when reading poems which had been written centuries ago), but an imperfect understanding could usually be achieved, unless the poem was one where the entire point was to engage in verbal gymnastics which would delight readers with the sound of the words alone, without reference to any content.

I am thinking, for instance, of the writings of Lewis Carroll, whose poem "Jabberwocky" was considered to be an example of the genre known as "literary nonsense". I'm not sure who came up with that label, but you have to hand it to them for their honesty.

However, compared to the writers of some of the garbage now being marketed as poetry, Lewis Carroll demonstrated that he was a master of clarity.  At least Mr. Carroll was somewhat funny, which is more than many modern poets can claim.

Is it any wonder that poetry sells so poorly these days? People don't like wasting their time trying to decipher the intentions of writers who don't seem to have any idea what they are trying to say.

The way I look at it, the whole point of expressing things with words is communication, not obfuscation! If a writer cannot be bothered learning how to communicate with clarity, then why should I be bothered trying to read that writer's mind in order to compensate for that writer's laziness and communicative deficiencies? Life is too short for that kind of time-killing nonsense.

Traditional poetry nearly always required mastery of whatever form might be required for a particular kind of poem. Epic poems were dramatically different from haiku, and both were dramatically different from psalms, but all three forms were definable. They all possessed certain characteristics which could be both studied and mastered.

Traditional poems might can be somewhat constrictive, compared with prose, in the sense that poets who hope to create poems with a definable style are not (or traditionally have not been) free to use all of the words in the dictionary in any way they see fit. But that, it seems to me, is part of the secret to the delight which well-written poems can bring.

If everyone could competently create good poetry, everyone would do it.

By creating an "anything goes" climate in which no one has a basis for declaring a poem to be objectively good or objectively bad, the pioneers of modern poetry effectively created a situation in which any pretentious person with nothing much of value to say can therefore claim to be a poet and an "artiste".

There is order in the universe, as seen from the viewpoint of a Christian such as myself. That sense of order can be seen in many traditional poems, regardless of whether or not the subject of those specific poems is specifically Christian or religious. Notice, however, that I describe such poems as traditional. As time has gone by, we have entered an era in which rules of any kind whatsoever have come to be seen as anathema.

As a side comment, I might note that anathema once referred to rejection by eccliastical authorities within the Catholic church, and to some extent, it still does. But popes and Bishops hold less sway these days, so that the word anathema is also defined broadly as "something or someone that one vehemently dislikes". (Merriam-Webster)

So, for example, if a person is excommunicated from the Catholic church for practicing homosexuality, then that person is "anathema" according to the older definition of the word. But if members of the "gay community" vehemently dislike Catholic leaders for the reason that gays embrace an utterly different set of values, then those religious leaders are likewise "anathema" according to the newer, secondary definition of the word.

When one thinks about it, that's kind of amusing. Gays like to criticize their critics for being "judgmental," but it turns out that they are just as "guilty" of judging others. The only difference, as far as I can see, is that they are subservient to a different (contradictory) set of moral principles.

When freedom is seen as a necessary means to a desirable end, then it is worthy of being defended. But freedom for its own sake can, ironically, become a form of slavery.

It might seem odd to some readers that I'm talking about relativistic morality, when the original subject of this blog post was modern changes of attitudes regarding poetic styles. But bear with me, because I think there is a relationship.

Carl Sandburg, from Chicago, was one of the poets to begin to challenge the rules of poetry. Free verse seemingly operated in accordance with a rejection of the use of rules and formulas, regardless of what the nature of those rules and formulas might be. Robert Frost once wrote that free verse was comparable to playing tennis without a net. (And how long would you want to spend, watching that kind of a tennis game? Without the net, how could either player legitimately declare victory?)

Some people might argue that a lover of jazz, such as myself, ought of all people to appreciate the value of spontanaeity. But this displays a sad misunderstanding of jazz. It's true that jazz involves a level of improvisation which is seldom observed in modern performances of classical music, which is mostly about the interpretation of written transcriptions in an attempt to replicate the original experience of listening to those pieces of music for the very first time. But even classical music has changed over the last several centuries. Improvisation was a component of the original performances of classical music (as seen in the movie "Amadeus"). I suspect that if we had high quality recordings of those pieces as performed by people such as Mozart, as is the case with even the earliest examples of jazz, the differences between jazz music and classical music would be far less obvious. There would be more improvisation of classical music, because modern performers wouldn't be burdened with the preservationist functions which now dominate the manner in which classical music is usually performed.

Jazz is just as beholden to form as any piece of classical music. In fact, it's precisely because the jazz format is so well known that jazz usually sounds so coherent (even when jazz musicians are  "jamming" with musicians they've never even met before), in spite of the improvisation. (There are exceptions, such as the "free jazz" of Sun Ra, but that is not by any means the only type of jazz; and in fact, it's doubtful that the majority of people who consider themselves to be lovers of jazz prefer that type, preferring instead the numerous other varieties, including Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Hard Bop, Fusion and "smooth jazz".)

It's been written that "free verse" is not utterly lacking in form, but rather, that the poet is "free" to make up his own rules as he or she goes along. But of course, a "rule" which is non-binding isn't really a rule at all. If a "rule" is known and understood only by one person (the person who has just finished making it up), then it really isn't a rule at all, is it?

It doesn't take much of a stretch, in my opinion, to see a connection between that rather noticeable aspect of free verse and the moral relativism which dominated modern thought during the twentieth century.

The connection between the two had not yet become glaringly apparent in the poems of Sandburg, but by the time when Allan Ginsberg read his profanity-filled so-called poem "Howl", it had become glaringly apparent that poets were no longer content to thumb their noses at the stylistic rules of traditional poetry. They took things to their logical conclusion, and decided, as well, to thumb their noses at the rules of traditional morality, and to foolishly spit in the face of God.

Inasmuch as one of the stylistic elements of traditional poetry is alliteration (from which I occasionally derive a certain amount of amusement), I found myself composing a little alliterative poem (earlier today) which poetically describes how I might have talked about Ginsberg if I'd tried to do so while he was still alive:

Please pray
     for the puerile poet
with the pathetic propensity
     for pointless profanity.

Some might use the preceding poem as evidence of my "judgmentalism". I would wear such a criticism as a badge of honor. In this modern era, in which art is whatever anyone chooses to call art, and in which anyone who shows any backbone with regard to matters of morality is ostracized by the self-appointed arbiters of all that is "cool" and "hip", I long for a time when the word "standards" did not just refer to tunes which all jazz musicians were expected to know by heart.

It also referred to moral standards, without which the world would be ruled by chaos.

Artists, whether they be poets or novelists or musicians, ought to care less about whether or not they will be embraced by the self-appointed taste makers (who, in many cases, are pathetically out of touch with the values of ordinary people in the real world) than about whether or not they will eventually be embraced by God, who is the source of the artistic impulse which is so frequently abused.

Compassion and Condescension

Some words have multiple meanings, some of which are positive, and others which are not so much so.

One such word is the word "condescension". Usually, in American culture, it has a very negative meaning. People who act haughty and arrogant and who rub their alleged superiority in other people's faces are said to be "condescending".

Perhaps that comes from our cultural background and our assumptions to the effect that no one is better than any other person. Anyone who thinks that he or she is better than any other person is thought, by default, to be seriously mistaken, if not downright delusional.

When I was young, I recall hearing one or two kids say, "You think you're better than me," with the unspoken conclusion "... and that's obviously not correct." But it seems to me that that begs the question: Is it invariably true that no one is better than any other person?

Certainly, it is true from the perspective of a Christian such as myself that no one is more loved than God than any other person. God loves all people equally, because God is the essence of love itself. God, says the Bible, is "no respecter of persons". All people are equally valued by God, and our history in America seems to demonstrate that in spite of our obvious failures to perfectly embody our ideals, we have repeatedly returned to that theme, which was the very backbone of the Civil Rights movement.

Still, I'm not quite sure that saying that all people are equally valuable is quite the same thing as saying that all people are literally equal. Are all people literally equal in terms of intelligence? Are all people literally equal in terms of strength or physical health? Are all literally equal in terms of wealth? Are all people literally equal in terms of wisdom or insight? Are all people equal in terms of moral character? It seems to me that the answers to those questions and other similar ones are obvious.

In fact, it is precisely because of the fact that people are not equal to one another in every respect that we need to be reminded that God loves and values all human beings equally, in spite of their observable differences. What establishes a basis for equal treatment under the law is not the literal equality of all human beings, but rather, it's the fact that we are all equally valued by God, who shows no favoritism with regard to how he treats individuals. The same mercy available to one is available to all. Conversely, all will be equally subject to God's justice. No one gets any special favors on account of class or race or any of the other criteria which have so often tainted the judgment of human authorities.

If indeed it were true that no one was better than anyone else, there would be no incentive to aspire to greatness. After all, greatness often requires special effort, and even a certain amount of self-sacrifice. If all people are literally equal, why bother?

Saying that God loves everyone equally is not tantamount to saying that there are not differences between people, nor is it the same as saying that there will be no rewards or penalties attached to those differences. Saying that God's judgement is and will be impartial is not the same thing as saying that there will be no judgment at all.

We often think of condescension as a negative thing, and it often is. But there is a kind of condescension which we should all covet. Here's one definition of condescension, which I found at Dictionary.com:

"To put aside one's dignity or superiority voluntarily and assume equality with one regarded as inferior: He condescended to their intellectual level in order to be understood."

In the preceding definition, the word "assume" (in the phrase "assume equality") is not being used to indicate a person who believes something falsely, without any real factual basis for that belief. Rather, it's being used to indicate someone who takes something upon himself, as if he or she were putting on a cloak.

In that definition, we see a kind of positive condescension which is for the benefit of others. A person who lives life in this manner demonstrates through his or her actions that moral superiority is impossible without genuine compassion and humility. To be genuine, compassion must be communicated in a manner which causes the recipient of help to genuinely believe that he or she is completely and unconditionally loved.

Jesus had every right to act "condescending" (in the negative sense) towards every human being he met while he was here on earth. Yet, he put that right aside voluntarily, out of compassion for the human race. He humbly washed the feet of the disciples, not because he had to do so, but because of his colossal love for us. There was nothing snide or haughty about the manner in which he did so.

"This," said Jesus with his actions, "is what it means to be a true leader." We Christians should demand nothing less of our leaders.

Too often, people unfortunately choose to work in the service professions for ulterior motives which reveal the extent to which they have failed to get that message. Having been in a position where I was forced by unfortunate circumstances to plead for help, I have felt the brunt of the negative condescension which seems to motivate some people with whom I have had to deal. For example, some folks seem to find it difficult to wrap their minds around the idea that in spite of my current need for emergency help, I am nevertheless a highly intelligent, highly talented and highly principled person who has a lot to offer to the world and to the church. Consequently, I have been treated as if I am in some second-class category, to be tolerated and maybe even grudgingly helped when doing so does not take too much effort, but not taken seriously.

The presumptuousness behind that kind of treatment has suggested to me that such people are sadly oblivious to their own vulnerabilities. They seem to think that just because they have been materially blessed more than I, they are therefore more virtuous than I, even though they may know little or nothing about the specific circumstances behind my current condition. It is only on account of the grace of God that their material circumstances are temporarily better than mine, so I don't envy such people, because I know that God will humble them in due time, if it proves to be necessary to do so. But of course, if they would choose to humble themselves voluntarily, that would not be necessary.

In the book of Job, Job's so-called friends made the mistake of assuming that God must be punishing Job for his iniquity. The real story, as readers of that book know, was that Job was a righteous man, who had been set aside by God precisely because God was confident that Job would pass the test, thereby putting Satan to shame.

Such truths about people are often hidden for a season, but people need to remember that a day of judgment is coming, and on that day, all will be revealed. When all is revealed, it will result in punishment for those who deserve punishment and who have failed to avail themselves of God's mercy. But the positive side is that it will also be a day of vindication, when people's presumptuous and erroneous judgments will be rebuked. The haughty will be laid low, and the people who have been abused will be rewarded for their longsuffering.

I believe these things to be so, not just with respect to those who have treated me disrespectfully, but indeed, with regard to those who have wrongfully treated any other people in such a manner. I believe these things, because I have read the Sermon on the Mount, and I have observed that Jesus lived his entire life as if he really believed that sermon to be true.

We need leaders who will condescend in the positive way that Christ condescended: By putting aside their own superiority, whether real or imaginary, and choosing to love and serve mankind as Christ loved and served mankind.

Whether or not one is truly superior to another human being is, in a sense, utterly beside the point. If Jesus Christ could voluntarily humble himself, in spite of his utter perfection, what makes anyone else think that he or she is entitled to do otherwise?

Health Suggestions for McDonald's

I'm reading about a new, healthy menu at McDonald's. But so far, I still haven't seen much about any hot green vegetables. You know, like broccoli, spinach, carrots, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts. Lettuce is not the world's only green vegetable, and adding a little bit of green pepper doesn't help very much.

Dr. Praeger's (www.praegers.com) has shown an ability to make very tasty and quick snacks made from such ingredients. I particularly like their spinach pancakes, and I'm guessing that their spinach "bites" are pretty good, too. Plus, they're easy finger food, so they're just begging to be sold by a fast food company such as McDonald's.

Also, how about some onion rings, and sweet potato fries, too. Sweet potato fries are very tasty, and I had never even tasted them until moving to the Pacific northwest! (Imagine an optional topping of marshmallow creme on them. After all, isn't that how lots of people eat sweet potatoes or yams on Thanksgiving?)

And while you're at it, McDonalds, lay off the excessive salt on your fries. At the McDonald's on Chicago Avenue in Chicago, one could specify normal fries, or one could get them with no salt whatsoever. Is a "happy medium" too much to ask for when it comes to salt on fries? The aforementioned restaurant could kill slugs with those oversalted fries of theirs. Or more accurately, they could kill old folks (like me) suffering from high blood pressure.

By the way, some folks may think that it's strange to list carrots or cauliflower as "green vegetables", but my mother told me that there were basically two categories of vegetables, "green" and "starchy". I'm not sure whether or not that was correct, but it certainly made sense to me. (Potatoes and rice were both considered "starchy", as was corn, or so she said.)

I have nothing against french fries, in moderation, but a constant diet of the same is more than just unhealthy, it's also just plain BORING!

Regarding the seasoning on their green veggies, I recommend Mrs. Dash, not salt. Much tastier.

McDonald's is improving, incrementally, but the pace of the improvements really needs to speed up.

My Recent Stroke

© Mark Pettigrew

When I was young, in the fall of 1970, my grandfather (who we'd nicknamed Grandman) had a stroke, following a heart attack he'd had earlier that summer. The stroke was what eventually killed him, while he lay in a bed at a nursing home in my home town. He was 65 years old at that time.

The last thing I remember Grandman saying to me after having that stroke was "german chocolate cake". What part of his brain triggered that thought, I don't know, but it comforts me to think that he was probably having a pleasant memory of a dessert he'd once enjoyed eating.

It was my first experience with the death of anyone I loved, and I remember that I couldn't contain my tears when I attended his funeral. In some respects, they were selfish tears. I couldn't imagine life without Grandman. I sensed that life, in many respects, would soon change for me in many ways. I was right about that.

Most of those changes weren't good. Two years later, my parents got divorced, and I suspect that the stress from the loss of my grandfather was one of the factors which led to that divorce, although I can't prove it. Of course, the fact that my father decided to start committing adultery didn't exactly help, either. It's a good thing Grandman never lived to see the betrayal of his daughter and his grandchildren.

I never thought I'd experience a stroke myself, and certainly not at this age of 54 years, but several weeks ago, I woke up with what seemed like a really, really painful leg cramp. I tried to let the cramp work itself out, the way I had done on previous occasions when I had similar (but less severe) leg cramps. It didn't seem to be working this time. I tried to stand up and walk to the bathroom to relieve myself, and I almost collapsed. My right leg, in particular, seemed to have lost a lot of its strength. I managed to make it to the bathroom, but just barely. My balance had been severely affected, and I was lurching around like a drunken man. I'd never gotten drunk in my life.

That day, Everett Barton, with whom I'd been staying in his home in Bellingham, had planned to go with me to a local meeting of the Band of Business Brothers, being held at Cascadia Pizza. I still wanted to attend that meeting, because I hoped (in vain) to receive some encouragement and help in relation to the Artistic Rescue Project (related to my desire to sell digital fine art prints for the purpose of raising funds both for myself and for the victims of the recent devastating tornado in Joplin, MO). So I managed somehow to get dressed, and we went to that meeting together. But Everett could tell just by watching me attempt to walk that I was in a bad way. When I got to that meeting, which was being held on the second floor of the restaurant, I appealed to that group for their prayers. I also told them that I suspected that my difficulty in walking had something to do with high blood pressure. One person made a comment which was somewhat dismissive of my analysis, saying essentially that I shouldn't pretend to be a doctor. That was somewhat unfair to me, I felt, because I had never claimed to be a doctor, or a medical expert of any kind. But what I did know was that my blood pressure had very recently been tested, and I'd been told that it was dangerously high.

After the meeting ended early in the afternoon, I just barely managed to walk downstairs and out to the car, by holding onto the banister. But the problem clearly wasn't going away, so I asked Everett to take me to Peace Health St. Joseph hospital, which was very close nearby. It took a while for me to check into the hospital, and of course, they had to run a variety of tests. Just as I'd suspected might happen, the emergency room doctor told me that my blood pressure was "through the roof".  Then he told me that they thought I had very likely suffered from a couple of small strokes.

I spent the rest of that weekend in the hospital, from Friday night until Sunday night, while they ran several tests, the most unpleasant of which was my first ever MRI. Two MRIs, actually, the first one of which lasted a half hour, and the second one of which lasted about 45 minutes. I felt like "the man in the iron mask" (for those of you who have seen that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio). They'd asked if I suffered from claustrophobia, and I'd told them that I didn't; but then again, I'd never had an MRI before, and I had no idea what to expect. To spend such a long period of time in a contraption like that, while all kinds of banging noises are being constantly made near one's head, while one's head is encased in what does indeed feel a bit like an iron mask, was a very unpleasant experience. The second time they ran the test was easier, though, even though it took longer, because they gave me a Valium pill beforehand, and it enabled me to relax without experiencing the anxiety I'd felt the first time around. I've heard of people getting addicted to Valium, and I would never want to experience such an addiction, but I have to say, I wouldn't have wanted to go through that second MRI without it.

The tests they ran on my brain in the hospital apparently confirmed that I'd had a couple of small strokes. Later on, when visiting www.strokeassociation.org, I learned that the major symptoms I'd personally experienced were listed as significant signifiers of a stroke. I was fortunate that Everett had advised me to seek hospitalization when he did.

In the hospital, they gave me some medications, to try to get my blood pressure under control. The medicine seemed to be helping somewhat, but even when I left the hospital, it was clear that it would probably continue to be a problem for some time to come. I've tried to remember to take my medications every day since then.

I was still feeling weak and very unsteady on my feet on the Sunday when I was released from the hospital, and I was also a bit embarrased on account of having urinated all over my hospital gown earlier (on Saturday night) when I was attempting to use the restroom. (The fact that the tie on the back of the gown wasn't working didn't help matters any, since the gown kept falling down in front of me while I tried to use the toilet.) But I was able to walk around a bit in the hospital halls, while holding onto a cane and also while holding the physical therapist for some support and balance. They characterized my gait using the word "hyperextension", and I felt as if my legs were made out of lead, but at least I did manage to walk a short distance.

A stroke can affect cognitive abilities and speech, among other things, but after I'd had those various things tested repeatedly, it seemed that I'd been relatively fortunate. I was able to speak clearly (with just a little bit of slurring of my words), and to clearly identify various objects, and to follow various verbal commands. (For instance, "Touch the tip of your nose, then touch the tip of my finger.")

Even after getting out of the hospital, I continued for quite some time to struggle with my balance and with strength issues pertaining to my right leg. When I got a cane at the nearby Lion's Club (after struggling for about a week with a more unwieldy support which had kindly been given to me by a man from the Band of Brothers men's group), that cane was a blessing.

As recently as Sunday, however, I still experienced problems. Specifically, I'd gone forward to ask for prayer, and when I tried to use the cane to stand up again, my balance temporarily failed me, and it was only on account of a nearby brother who caught me in time that I didn't fall flat on my face.

Nevertheless, with the help of the cane, I managed to walk over to the Haggen grocery store today and to do some computing here, just as I was doing before having the stroke.

I think that the worst aspect of my stroke, however, has been that it's made me abundantly conscious of my vulnerability, and aware of how short life can be (especially for someone whose parents and grandparents were not especially well known for their longevity). Thankfully, long before my stroke, I'd already accepted Christ as my lord and savior, so I wasn't worried that I wouldn't go to heaven if I died. But what did concern me, and still does, was the thought that I'd die before I had a chance to really achieve my full potential. And that still concerns me, because I've already wasted a lot of time in my life, not because I wanted to do so, but because I had difficulty procuring the material help I needed in order to make the most of my talents.

I still struggle with anger, to be candid, with regard to certain obtuse Christian leaders who seem to be oblivious or indifferent to my need for their help along those lines. That isn't universally true, of course. I've received support and help from other people in positions of Christian leadership. But a lot of people seem to be less interested in getting done things which badly need to be done than in making lame excuses for their unwillingness to do so. Fault finding and nitpicking seem to be the order of the day. Defending myself against unwarranted accusations has exhausted me, and I'm also inclined to suspect that the stress from repeatly being forced to do so played a role in my recent stroke.

Regarding my relationship with God, I know that I can't earn my salvation. But it isn't a matter of trying through my own accomplishments to prove that I'm worthy of salvation. It's a matter of wanting to achieve the satisfaction of a life well-lived, which I define in large part as a life in which I've achieved what I am capable of achieving, not only for my own benefit, but also (potentially) for the benefit of many other people. I've had the pleasure of a few small achievements in my life, but I still feel as if I've also lost out a lot in that regard. Time is running out for me in some respects, and frankly, contemplation of that possibility makes me sad (and more than a little bit depressed) on a pretty frequent basis.

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I find myself wishing that I had not done so. I even find myself thinking that surviving my stroke has been a mixed blessing. If life is going to just be constant reiteration of past failures, I wonder, then what's the point? The salvation I most need, and which I have not yet experienced, is not salvation from hell, but salvation (or rescue, if you will) from a lifetime of mediocrity. Maybe there are people who don't quite understand that, but I hope that some people do understand it, or at the very least, that they will try to do so. Maybe I'm naive, but I continue to believe that even at this stage in my life, I still have a lot of untapped potential.

I therefore need a real breakthrough in my life. I hope that that breakthrough comes soon. Even though I don't feel much confidence in the idea that the leaders of my current church will do much to enable me to experience such a breakthrough, I hope and pray nevertheless that they will do so.

Neglect Is A Type of Abuse

© Mark Pettigrew

When people talk about "child abuse," they're usually thinking about outward and deliberate acts of aggression towards children. One particularly egregious example of child abuse could be found in the book "A Boy Called It" by Dave Pelzer. Among other things, Dave's mother fed dog feces to him and made him eat them.

But just as abusive, in its own way, is the fact that she regularly starved him. Feeding one's child is not optional for a parent. Neglecting one's responsibility towards others can be a form of abuse.

After he had been rescued from the abusive and neglectful "care" of his natural mother, Dave was put into various foster homes. The women who headed those households were not related to Dave by blood, but they were just as responsible for his welfare, because they had accepted that responsibility. If they had similarly chosen at a later time to neglect the responsibility to feed Dave, they would have been just as guilty as his natural parents had been earlier.

Sometimes, one has a responsibility towards another person simply on account of circumstances which have placed that person in one's path. In Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, the man who had been beaten by robbers and left at the side of the road to die was the responsibility of every passerby who was aware of his predicament. He might not have been a child, but his extreme need made him every person's responsibility nevertheless.

What made the "good Samaritan" different from the other passersby was not that he was any more responsible than they, but that he alone recognized and acted on the responsibility which God had sovereignly given to him. He's considered to be the "hero" of the story, not because he was so heroic, but because the others acted so selfishly and despicably. Compared to them, he was indeed a hero.

Today I read an Associated Press news story about a 36-year-old woman who drowned, in public swimming pool in Fall River Massachussetts, because two lifeguards neglected their responsibilities to respond appropriately when a 9-year-old boy informed them that the woman appeared to be drowning. Saving Marie Joseph was their job, but they neglected their job responsibilities, and the result was that the woman unnecessarily died. Appalling as that fact might be, what makes things even worse is that it took them several days to find her corpse in the "murky" water. Keep in mind that this was a public swimming pool, not the ocean. Why was the water in a public swimming pool "murky" in the first place? And why didn't they search the waters thoroughly as soon as they were made aware (by that 9-year-old boy) that someone might have been drowning?

Unsurprisingly, the young boy who told the lifeguards about the woman's jeopardy has been traumatized. He keeps crying, says his mother, and he thinks he could have saved the woman. There were two victims of those shamefully lazy lifeguards that day. It will probably be a very, very long time before that young boy will trust lifeguards again. My heart goes out to him. What a horrible way to learn just how cruel this life can be.

As this recent news story ought to make clear, people have a right to expect an appropriate and timely response when they make people who are in a position to help aware that they need help or that other members of the human community need help.

This is particularly true when they are reporting those needs to members of the clergy, who in other circumstances often claim to speak on behalf of God.  There are noteworthy exceptions, fortunately, but such people seem to have a pretty bad track record, from what I have seen, when it comes to their recognition of the fact that their jobs come with responsibilities, not just to their own families, but also to all of those in the community who come to them for help.

Far too often, their focus, when people come to them for help, seems to be on finding excuses for neglecting the needs of needy people. Instead of being assured that one's needs will be met in time, regardless of what is necessary in order to make that happen, one is likely to be told that one didn't ask for help in "the right way". One's desperate (and possibly demanding) tone of voice, one's allegedly bad timing, one's "unsubmissive attitude" or any number of other alleged faults are likely to be cited as reasons why one cannot receive the help one needs. Why such so-called leaders think they have a right to demand submission from others, when they have not earned that right by serving people in need, is a mystery to me. True authority comes from a lifetime of humble service, not from one's job title.

People shouldn't have to be perfect in every respect to be able to expect that they'll receive the help they need, when they need it. There is no acceptable excuse for unmet needs in the "Body of Christ". Not in one of the most prosperous nations in the world, at any rate.

The mother of the boy who cried out in vain for help says that the lifeguards who ignored her son need to be fired. I think she's being charitable. I think that they need to be fired and then imprisoned. A woman died on account of their incompetence, for crying out loud.

In all fairness to them, though, it would seem that the failure is not theirs alone. The fact that the woman's corpse wasn't even seen when the pool was initially inspected by pool inspectors, on account of the fact that the water was so murky, suggests that the incompetence was widespread. Long before those lifeguards neglected their job responsibilities, there were people who neglected their seemingly insignificant but nevertheless real responsibilities to keep the pool clean. The time to clean the pool is not when there's a corpse lying at the bottom of the pool.

Why did the customers just accept the murkiness of the waters, instead of complaining until the pool was cleaned? Had they been so intimidated into silence, by people who'd ignored their prior complaints, that they didn't think that there was any point in complaining? Or were those customers' standards so low that they thought that the murkiness of the water was normal and acceptable?

Problems of that nature are rarely the faults of just one or two individuals. They tend to be system-wide issues. To extend the metaphor to the church once again, problems within churches tend to be widespread.

One can talk all one likes about how a church should be a true "community," but talk, as they say, is cheap. Both church leaders and ordinary members of local church communities need to regularly and conscientiously reach out to members of their churches, and even to casual visitors, so that they are aware of the struggles their alleged friends are going through, and so that those issues are addressed.

Neglectful Christian leaders are a disgrace, just as surely as they would be if they'd committed sexual abuse, or if they'd absconded with the money in the church's bank account.

The real problem is that we have allowed our leaders to operate with impunity, for far too long, in a subservient climate where such leaders are not held accountable for how they treat people.

In our churches, we need to start expecting, yes, even demanding "clean waters", instead of settling for less than what we really need. Contrary to what was recently suggested to me by a young man who was about to be hired as a new pastor at my church, there is nothing wrong with having high expections of our leaders.

As Jesus said in the book of Luke, "To whom much is given, much will be required."

Password Problems with Blogger and Google

I've been using Blogger.com as my blogging service for a very, very long time. But Blogger.com used to actually be owned by the folks who created this service. No more.

Google recently acquired Blogger, which would be fine with me (and maybe even nice in some respects), except for the fact that I've had all kinds of problems with this account, subsequent to the Google takeover. It doesn't help any that it's next to impossible to get technical support from a real human being in relation to Google.

When I try to log into the account associated with the original blog and other Blogger blogs I created back in the days before the Google acquisition of Blogger, I frequently find that it won't recognize the password which, to my knowledge and best recollection, is still associated with that Blogger acount. So it forces me to reset the password to something new. Thank goodness it still sends the password reset link to the original Hotmail account under which the original blog was created (and under which I had created a number of additional blogs, prior to the Google acquisition of Blogger). But I've had to do this on a number of occasions. After a while, it's hard to keep track of what the latest password change has been (partly because this is not by any means the only password I have to remember), and I'm forced to change the password once again. What a pain in the behind!

Here's the bottom line: I believe that I know what my current password is, for this particular set of blogs, but who knows? I could revisit the site tomorrow, and try to log in, only to discover that I'm once again locked out of my own blogs. I can't count on being able to sign in again in order to edit an old post or create a new blog under this particular account. Hopefully, that won't happen, but if you visit this particular blog and find that I haven't entered a new blog post in quite some time here, don't be particularly surprised.

I'm just glad that the old posts still seem to be here and that they haven't been deleted. But in order to create a new blog post which has new and updated information (such as my current address, as of 7/1/2011, in Bellingham, WA), you may need to visit a more current blog of mine, created under a more current account (or, if necessary, under a new account created with another blogging service altogether).

Just for the record, in case that happens, my current address as of 7/1/2011 is:

Mark Pettigrew
2826 Undine
Bellingham, WA 98226

Not Exactly The Master of My Domain

Back when the sitcom known as Seinfeld was still on the air, Jerry Seinfeld used to joke that he was the master of his domain. That was easy for him to say. He was taking in millions of dollars at the time.
Me? I'm not even the master of my domain names. Years ago, I registered MarkPettigrew.com. But then I let my payments to GoDaddy.com lapse, so I lost that domain name. Now I find, when I try to re-register it, that it's already "taken" (although there are other variations in terms of domain name extensions).

The same thing happens when I try to register ArtisticChristians.com (in which I invested a fair amount of time, when creating an earlier website at that address). In addition, I lost the full site which existed at that address, when I fell behind on the hosting fees. I'd backed up all of the files for the ArtisticChristians.com site, but even if I were to start up another hosting account with GoDaddy, I'd have to do some substantial editing of the site just to update it so that all of the links to internal pages went to the correct new pages which reflected the domain name change. To say nothing of having to update the various blogs of mine which linked and still link to pages at the original domain name.

This is just one of the hassles associated with the period of unemployment and related poverty I've experienced during the past several years. It isn't as devastating as (say) losing one's entire home in a tornado in Joplin, but it's pretty frustrating, nevertheless. The more heavily one gets involved with various web-based endeavors, the more of a hassle it can be to keep track of all of the necessary payments (even when most of one's web content is on free services, as my Blogger.com blogs still are) and password changes, and to regularly renew all of one's subscriptions.

Apparently, the world is full of "domain name vultures" who have some way of finding out which domain names have recently become available again, just so that they can swoop in and buy them up and then try to re-sell them to the people who owned them in the first place. I assume that that's what's going on. I can remotely conceive of people wanting MarkPettigrew.com (since there are a few other people of that name in the world) and ArtisticChristians.com (since I'm hardly the only artistic Christian), but I think that the "vulture" theory is far more plausible in my case.

Thankfully, I hadn't put a lot of money into promoting those names via printed materials, TV advertising and the like. But even after my financial situation is back where it ought to be, there's going to be a lot of work involved in recovering, to the best of my abilities, what I never should have lost in the first place. And I may end up settling for domain names which aren't as good as the ones I had earlier.

This is just one of the reasons why I need to find a way to get a regular source of income sufficient to enable me to protect my domain names and the various sites associated with those names.

Maybe some company ought to come up with some kind of "domain name insurance" and "hosting insurance" to cover those times when one is on the verge of losing those things because of one's financial situation. (Hmmm, I wonder if one could protect one's domain name via trademarks, by simply including the extension in the trademark, so that if someone tries to take it, one can sue that someone for trademark infringement.)

I will try to be much more careful in the future, because I can't afford to pay money just to get back assets which were originally mine..

MSNBC, The Democrats and the Pepsi Challenge

Over the months since I first moved to my current location in Bellingham, WA, I've spent many cumulative hours of watching "The Ed Show" and other similarly predictable shows on MSNBC Normally, this isn't the type of thing I'd willingly watch on TV. The fact that I've done so despite my preferences is attributable to the fact that I'm currently the house guest of a "progressive" who loves that network, despite the fact that what the network offers a steady diet of Mostly Snarky and Needlessly Biased Commentary, not anything which could even remotely be described as objective, intelligent journalism.

It occurred to me one evening that watching Ed Schulz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Schulz) was very similar to watching an old TV ad for Pepsi (except, of course, that the old Pepsi ads had a whole lot less shouting in them, and a whole lot more good taste).

Many years ago, Pepsi had a TV ad campaign it called the "Pepsi Challenge". They would set up a table in a supermarket, along with a bottle of Pepsi, a bottle of Coca-Cola, a couple of glasses of cola,  and a camera operator and a person with a microphone, in order to find out how well each brand did in comparison with the other brand during each "taste test".

It's been pointed out many times that one reason Pepsi consistently did better than Coke was that it was generally a bit sweeter than Coke (which is precisely why Coke decided to create the "new Coke", until the marketplace told them that in fact, they should have stuck with doing their thing their way, because what those Pepsi ads didn't reveal was that there was a substantial number of people who actually preferred the taste of Coke, not the slightly sweeter taste of Pepsi. (My own mother told me that she preferred the taste of Coke. Personally, even though I could detect a difference, I found it to be a pretty subtle difference. If I'd had any preference at all, I'd have said that I preferred RC Cola, but even there, I thought that it was a pretty trivial difference, about which I was anything but passionate. What I mostly hated was the cloying aftertaste of the "diet" versions of those various colas.. Why didn't Pepsi's"taste tests" address that issue? Because, hey, there was money to be made, even though many scientists later persuasively argued that diet drinks were utterly ineffective at combatting obesity.)

The folks in charge of Coca Cola wouldn't have wasted their time trying to win the taste test wars if they had dared to question the premise on which those Pepsi ads were based.

First of all, the premise was that the test was a fair test. On the surface, the Pepsi ads were designed to make their "test" seem fair and unbiased, and they might have been fair if Pepsi had been committed to the goal of presenting the results of all of their tests in a fair and unbalanced manner, whether the results of the tests had favored Pepsi or not. But Pepsi was in complete control of what happened to the developed film they'd created during those tests. If it had turned out that the tests favored Coke, Pepsi didn't have any particular legal obligation to publicly release ads which featured the test results which were unfavorable to Pepsi .If those "tests" had favored the Coke over Pepsi, logic would tell you that Pepsi would have quietly buried the results by choosing to put those rolls of developed film in the nearest "circular file", also known as a trash can. The success of those ads when they were running regularly relied almost totally on the willingness of extremely gullible TV viewers to assume that since the tests were conducted with "real people" in a real world environment, the tests portrayed in those ads were therefore "scientific" and unbiased. But there are all kinds of ways to lie covertly without doing so in ways which can be proved to be false and deceitful, especially when one is dealing with film (or video) which can be edited in ways which distort the truth.

There are also ways to produce the results one wants to get and therefore misrepresent the truth, simply by polling people whose probable preferences are already well known. For instance, if Pepsi had already run various marketing tests in certain areas of the country (and I'd bet that they had done so), they would have known which areas were most likely to give them the results they wanted. Therefore, such ads would have been deceptive, even if those folks were speaking from the bottom of their hearts with regard to their own personal preferences.

Even without any subsequent chicanery in the editing room, Pepsi could have distorted the truth simply by conducting their "tests" in environments or neighborhoods where Coke was at a known statistical disadvantage, and where Pepsi's marketers could therefore predict with a fair amount of reliability that they would prevail during those taste tests.

All of this reminds me of how Ed Schultz handles controversial issues on his show. He does have guests on his show, it's true, but the vast majority of them have clearly been cherry picked precisely because of their sycophantic predilictions, meaning that they are boot lickers who will say just about anything in exchange for having their egos stroked by Schultz. In other words, just as Pepsi's methodology was a type of propaganda, and therefore untrustworthy, the same could be said for Ed Schultz's methodology.  In both cases, it's a "filtered reality": when we are in need of the "unadulterated truth", we get someone else's idea of the truth instead.

Schultz clearly knows that, and he milks it for all it's worth. On rare occasions, he will invite his political opponents onto the show, but even then, it's usually pretty clear that he asked them to appear on the show precisely because he was confident that it would be easy to openly ridicule them, with little or no fear that they would be well-informed adversaries who would promptly and expertly put him in his place. It amazes me that people play into his hands as often as they do, but then again, it never ceases to amaze me when I consider the number of people who have gladly endured the humiliation of appearing to millions of TV viewers on shows hosted by people such as Maury Povich and "Judge Judy" (who I suspect got her law degree and her arrogant and abrasive personality out of a cereal box) and Jerry Springer (the king of sleaze). Schultz deals with more issues of national importance, but when I think about how he's treated some of his conservative guests, with extreme disrespect, I think he's pretty much in the same camp.

Schultz is not particularly averse to trying to shout loudly enough to drown out his guests if he dislikes what they have to say. In my books, that makes him a bully, not a competent journalist. However, to give credit where credit is due, at least Schultz doesn't end each show by throwing a handful of loose papers at the audience, as Keith Olbermann did before management at MSNBC showed Keith the door! Wow, talk about juvenile behavior which would embarrass most 5-year olds.! I guess that's what liberals do when they run out of cliches with which to avoid actually addressing the issues.

If worse comes to worst, and if Ed's guests prove to be less predictable than Ed clearly thought they would be, he can always completely ignore them when they dare to dispute him, as one of his guests did the other day when she was unwilling to say what he clearly expected and wanted her to say. A more intelligent man would realize that he'd just been revealed for the manipulator he is, and such a man might have even been humble enough to apologize for his presumptuousness, but not our Ed. No sir! He went on to make a total ass of himself without skipping a beat.

What now passes for TV journalism would have struck the journalists of the sixties and seventies as laughable, or possibly as cause for a day of national mourning. It's just another example of how things in this country are going downhill. Maybe it makes me seem like a cranky old man for me to say such a thing, but I'm only two years younger than Ed, and he's more than a little bit cranky himself, especially for someone who acknowledged just the other day that he was in the top 2% of the country's richest people!

I'm financially destitute, and people like Schultz have (by dominating the media) deprived me and others like me of a real voice. Unlike Mr. Schultz, I have good reason to be a little bit cranky, when I consider the deceptive ways in which I've been regularly "dissed" by people like Schultz, even though such people have only rarely bothered to ask me my opinions. What, exactly, is his excuse?

By the way, since Ed supposedly has great empathy for impoverished people such as myself, why does he feel that he needs to be coerced by the government into doing the right thing to help poor people like me? He seems to think that we should be impressed by his willingness to be taxed at a very high rate, but I ask: What's to stop him from sharing his wealth with the poor voluntarily? Hey, if he wants to demonstrate his sincerity with regard to his alleged concern for the poor by sharing some of that wealth with me, so that I can be assured of not having to sleep under the nearest overpass if I should lose my housing during the next year, I'm an easy person to find. (My e-mail address is mwp1212[AT]gmail.com.) He merely needs to send me an e-mail message to the effect that he wants to share his wealth with me.

Nah, that would be too easy, and it would deprive liberals of the feeling of power which is their actual objective whenever they argue that the only proper way to address the needs of the poor is to rely on government action.

Speaking as one such American, I don't much care how folks choose to help me when I'm down and out, as I am to some extent even now. I just care that it gets done (which is precisely why I recently created an online community I call the Need Meeters' Network). Or one of the reasons, at any rate, since I do genuinely believe that that network has the potential to help a lot of people, not just me.

When one is able to totally control the conditions in which one faces down the opposition, then it's easy to take them down (or more accurately, to put them down). So easy, and in fact tempting, that Ed has a regular feature called "The Take Down". (Gosh, why do you suppose that so many conservatives have a negative opinion of the media? Could it be that so many so-called journalists have become little more than shills for the Democratic party, which is less interested in solving problems than in winning the next election?)

Not long ago, MSNBC argued that America needed a return to "civility" in the political arena, not so subtly implying that the blame for the decline in such civility belonged solely to Republicans. Well, I acknowledge that some Republicans need to be taught better manners. Their point was not lost on me.  Yet it was going way overboard when they implied that all or most Republicans were somehow responsible for the horrible shooting down in New Mexico. (Even a cursory examination of the facts revealed that the shooter was motivated by his mental illness, not by any strong commitment to any political party.) How, exactly, does taking cheap shots help America to return to civility? When it comes to cheap shots, it seems to me that both parties are equally guilty.

MSNBC regularly employs acrimonious, self aggrandizing idiots like Ed, who are less interested in fairness or deep thinking than in promoting the Democratic "brand" with such ridiculously overheated rhetoric that one would think that every Republican on the face of the earth was a clone of the Devil. MSNBC would have a lot more credibility if that network's employees practiced what they preached.

A very rich clone, I might add, since the rhetoric which regularly spews from Ed Schultz seems to rely upon stereotypes to the effect that financially impoverished Republicans such as myself simply do not exist. (I assure Mr. Schultz that I am very real, even though he clearly wishes that such was not the case.) Like most of his cronies, Schultz almost never seems to acknowledge that a substantial number of Republicans such as myself consist of people who vote Republican for reasons having a lot less to do with economic considerations than with the fact that Republicans have historically opposed legal abortion, because they understand that the legitimacy of any government relies on whether or not that government consistently treats all human beings as if all people are indeed created equal. Treating people in some age groups as if they have a right to government protection from those who would wish to kill them, while treating others (specifically the unborn) as if they have no such right, is irrational, and utterly inconsistent with the values which we claim makes America so great.

Not only that, but a failure to consistently defend the value of human life in all of its manifestations is a failure which ultimately undermines all human rights. It does little good for someone to defend my right to free speech, my right to freedom of religion and other important but comparatively minor rights, unless that person also defends my right to be protected from others who would seek to kill me. If one is free to murder others and thereby deprive them of the right to live, then he can (by killing them) simultaneously deprive them of the ability to exercise any other rights they may have. Because it is such a fundamental right, the right to life is arguably the most important right of all. Those who deprive others of the right to life for reasons as flimsy as those which have been cited by defenders of legal abortion may not realize it, but they are engaged in an enterprise which ultimately jeopardizes every other right they might conceivably enjoy in the future.

The instinct for self-preservation has always been manifest by intense desire to protect one's progeny, even amongst lower life forms such as grizzly bears. (Many bear attacks against humans are attributable to their desire to protect their cubs.) There is something extremely unnatural about people who act in a manner which is the opposite of what one would expect from people who care about self-preservation.

If this were solely a matter of their own survival as individuals, then one might argue that they had a right to jeopardize their own survival or the perpetuation of the human species. But the issue has been misrepresented, by people who speciously argue that a woman has the right to control her own body. Such an argument is specious, indeed ludicrous, when one considers that the bodies people usually seek to kill at the local abortion clinic are not theirs.  A child is a stewardship, not a mere possession to do with what one will. (Talk about an extreme manifestation of the capitalistic impulse! Ayn Rand would be proud.)

Once a woman becomes pregnant, the question is not whether or not she will become a parent. Biologically, she already is a parent, so she already is a parent (as is the man who inseminated her); the only question is whether or not the two parents will maturely accept the fact that parenthood comes with certain responsibilities.

Ed and his cronies at MSNBC regularly refer to "the people" during their evening diatribes. Which people are they talking about, exactly? Funny, I don't recall going to them and asking them to speak for me. Last time I checked, I was a person. But of course, you have to keep in mind when such people use such phrases as "the people" that they don't feel any guilt when they treat millions of unborn children as if such unborn children are not real people whose lives are worthy of consideration. So basically, "people" is a term they feel free to redefine in whatever manner they deem politically expedient for the party. And if they think that it's expedient to promote stereotypes which ignore the diversity (one of their favorite words) of the Republican party, then who are the American people to think for themselves? If Ed Schultz insists on seeing me as one of those "rich Republicans", then who am I to point out that I've suffered as much from this poor economy as anyone else? Who am I to suggest that people so self-centered that they make all of their political decisions solely or primarily on the basis of how it affects their own pocketbooks are people unworthy of leadership positions, regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats? Who am I to suggest that we will all face God on the judgment day, or to suggest that it is unwise to neglect that consideration when making life choices which may very well influence God's judgment of each of us on that day?

Maybe, when it comes to civility (not to mention humility), people such as Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and others at MSNBC need to practice what they preach. But I'm not seeing it yet on MSNBC, and I doubt that I will anytime soon.

Projects Of Mine

I'm publishing this blog post for the purpose of sharing information about several projects in which I've been particularly involved, especially since moving from Chicago to Bellingham, WA in November 2010. The following is a summary of those projects:

THE CHRISTIAN ARTS INITIATIVE

The Christian Arts Initiative is an ambitious multifaceted project pertaining to my desire to help to start a "righteous Renaissance" by empowering and encouraging artistic Christians such as myself to more effectively use our various artistic talents and skills for the purpose of bringing glory to Jesus Christ, thereby making this world better, and more beautiful, than it was before we came here.

Admittedly, that's a pretty vague "mission statement", but if you'll contact me with an e-mail message, I'll gladly answer any questions you might have, and I'll also send you some relevant links which will enable you to better understand my vision, in terms of some specifics.

My e-mail address is currently mwp1212[AT]gmail.com.

I especially recommend that you visit the Artistic Christians' Network, which I created slightly less than two years ago. The ACN is an online social network which currently has roughly 30 members. Its name is pretty self-explanatory, to some extent, but you'll learn more if you visit the site for yourself. The web address for the ACN is: http://artisticchristians.ning.com. I invite you to visit that web site, check out the numerous blog posts I've written, and otherwise investigate the web site in order to get a better idea of what it has become, and what I hope that it will become once people have begun to use the site more fully.

Keep in mind, when you visit the Ning.com site, that any references to www.ArtisticChristians.com are references to a web site which is currently out of commission due to financial difficulties which caused me to fall behind on the web hosting fees for that site. But I hope to get a new version of that site back online again, once I've addressed various issues I'll need to address in order to bring that site back again.

In addition to developing the Artistic Christians' Network, site, I hope to start local fellowship meetings and planning meetings in the Bellingham, WA area, in relation to the local chapter of a group to be known as the ACE Fellowship of Artistic Christians. (ACE is an acronym, in this case, which stands for Artistic Christian Endeavors.) With the help of the members of the ACE Fellowship, I believe that it's feasible to achieve great things in the Pacific Northwest! If you like that idea, please e-mail me in order to discuss the idea of having such a meeting soon.

THE NEED MEETERS' NETWORK

More recently I created a second online social network which, like the Artistic Christians' Network, is focused on a specific objective. In this case, the objective is to create a Christ-centered network specifically for the purpose of empowering people who have a wide variety of urgent and not-so-urgent needs, such as the need for employment, the need for adequate and affordable housing, the need for medical and dental care, the need for friendship, and much more. The idea behind the Need Meeters' Network (NMN) is that many of those needs can be much more effectively met if needy people can become part of a "caring community" in which they are encouraged to openly share their various needs more clearly with one another. People can't usually meet the needs of others if they don't know what they are! That's just logical.

The Need Meeters' Network (NMN) only has two members so far, including myself, because I only created it a few weeks ago, and I'm still tweeking its design and developing the concept, not to mention the fact that I'm dealing with other issues in my life which are in some cases quite urgent. Based on feedback I've gotten from others when I've discussed the project with them, however, I think that the project has huge untapped potential, especially when one considers that I also hope to use the NMN to similarly empower various nonprofits, social service agencies and churches which are regularly involved in helping to meet the needs of others in various ways. The interactive nature of the Need Meeters' Network will enable various "need meeters" to develop active partnerships and alliances with people and organizations whose agendas and missions overlap to some extent. I'm committed to the goal of maximizing the usefulness of the NMN to such organizations, especially if they in turn will help to publicize the Need Meeters' Network.

Now, I'll openly confess (because I see it as no cause for shame) that I myself have a vested interest in the success of the Need Meeters' Network. Specifically, I have often found myself in situations where I needed a more effective way to communicate my own needs with people who might be both willing and able to meet those needs, or at least to help to meet those needs. One such need (which I'll discuss more in future blog posts, unless the issue is fully resolved before it becomes necessary to do so) is my own need for emergency housing, if my current housing situation should become even more unstable than it already is.

[As I said once in this blog post already, my e-mail address is currently mwp1212[AT]gmail.com.]

Time limitations often prevent churches and other traditional institutions from offering adequate opportunities for people to share their needs with others. Fortunately, web sites such as the NMN are usually accessible 24/7. So there's really no reason for failing to use such communication options, other than not caring about the needs of others. I'd like to think that most people (especially Christians such as myself) do care about people in this world who are hurting in various ways. So I invite you to visit and join the NMN (for free), in order to help make this world a better place, while simultaneously making it more likely that your own needs will be met in the future.

MY CURRENT JOB SEARCH

Ever since moving to Bellingham from Chicago, I have known that I needed to procure employment so that I could be relatively independent, instead of relying upon the help of  Everett Barton, who generously invited me to stay with him when I lost my room at the Lawson House YMCA in Chicago on account of having fallen behind on my rent. I've spent some amount of time in pursuit of that goal. But probably not as much time as I ought to have spent, since I was preoccupied to a great extent with the other projects listed and described in this blog post.

Part of the reason, I must admit, was that I found it very discouraging to have to try to find a job in this economic climate and this job market, especially when I considered the impediments I faced when seeking employment, particularly in terms of my age (of 54 years), and when I considered how long it had been since I'd even had a part-time job, to say nothing of how long it had been since I'd worked full-time.

While it would be accurate to say that this has been a "crisis of confidence" to some extent, I want to emphasize that the crisis pertains to my ability to persuade someone to hire me for the type of job I need, and for which I'm qualified. There is no crisis insofar as my ability to actually do such a job, if I can procure such a job. I'm a skilled worker, with a strong work ethic, and I merely need a chance to prove that that is the case. Ever since I first entered the job market in 1972, I've worked in a number of restaurants, retail establishments and offices, and I've also worked in other positions, such as the time I worked as a news announcer at KSOZ, a 20,000 watt FM station at College of the Ozarks (or School of the Ozarks, as it was known at the time in late 1977). Also as a telemarketer, a telephone surveyor and more.

Any assistance I could get with regard to my current search for a suitable job would be greatly appreciated, because my ability to achieve the other goals discussed in this blog post is contingent first and foremost on my survival! If you believe in the value of those other goals, then please help me to achieve them by assisting me in finding employment in the meantime. I'll be happy to furnish you with my resume if you'll e-mail me at mwp1212[at]gmail.com and ask for the resume. If you have any questions related to my job search, I'll try to answer those questions as well.
 
MY OWN ART, MUSIC, POETRY AND PHOTOGRAPHY

For years, I have been forced by my circumstances to rely for my financial support on the income from a variety of jobs in a variety of work environments, from restaurants to retail businesses to various offices. I would never claim that I was "too good" to do so, but even when this country was not afflicted by its current economic woes, it was more than a bit frustrating for me to have to support myself in this manner, because it always felt like something of a compromise, when I gave serious consideration to what I believed to be God's vocational calling on my life.

This fact would not and will not detract from the quality of my work, if I find myself employed in a "normal" job again, nor will it cause me to seek to end such a job as soon as possible. Once hired, I generally do my best to keep that job as long as possible. In this economy, it would be foolish for me to do otherwise. Besides, I don't plan to rely solely on an outside job in terms of the totality of my income. Rather, I hope and plan to spend a lot of my "free time" when I'm not clocked in by focusing on the goal of raising additional funds, by means of entrepreneurial efforts involving the online sales of various high quality products of my own creation, such as greeting cards, fine art prints, books of my poetry, CDs of my music (once I have adequate time and equipment with which to create those music recordings) and more.

That has been my goal for many years, but it's only been recently that it was feasible. I now have the ability (and at least some of the equipment) with which to implement a plan to sell art-related products online. Every online sale of such products will take me closer to achieving my other financial goals, in a manner which will be consistent with my overall agenda, and which in fact will help me to achieve those other vocational objectives. So please visit this blog page (and other, newer posts at http://markpettigrew.blogspot.com), and check out the links I plan to periodically add to this blog post, in order to learn about my progress in terms of setting up an online storefront and/or selling various products in other easy-to-implement ways (some of which may involve income-earning opportunities for individuals, churches, etc. who are willing to help me to market my products)

If you're visiting this blog post as a result of being directed to the post by materials connected with another artistic expression of mine (such as a piece of my visual art), please consider putchasing a copy of that work of art so that I can spend more of my time developing the Christian Arts Initiative and the Need Meeters' Network, and less time trying merely to survive. Thanks!

Hell and Popular Music

Over the years, I've heard a number of popular songs which have referred to hell. Often, they've made it sound as if hell is a marvelous place to be. For instance:

"You know you got to go through hell, before you get to heaven"
... from "Big Ol' Jet Airliner" by Steve Miller

"If you wanna' get to heaven, you've got to raise a little hell"
... Ozark Mountain Daredevils

And who can forget the songs "Hells Bells" and "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC? ("YEAH! Party on, dudes," said the embarrassingly drunken frat boy.)

In my opinion, there is no better way to demonstrate one's ignorance (or, dare I say it, utter stupidity) than to write songs that make hell sound as if it's a vacation paradise (or as if it is a stepping stone on the way to heaven).

I believe that hell is very real, and it's not a place where any sane person would ever want to be. Jesus died an excruciatingly painful death on the cross precisely so that we could avoid hell, if we would only make the simple choice to follow and obey him.

The fact that we live in a culture which treats hell as if it's a big joke says something really sad about that culture. People who have bought into the lies promoted by such songs can look forward to a very unpleasant wake-up call when they die.

That's one extremely compelling reason why we need to invest in turning our culture around, by helping to finance the creation of Christ-centered works of art and music.

Wise Words from Dale Pollard

In the past several months, I've been involved with a Christian men's group, here in Bellingham, WA, known as Prodigal. Some of the Prodigal men meet weekly, on Thursday nights, at Hillcrest Chapel, where I attend church.

I just got an e-mail from Dale Pollard, who leads the Prodigal group. The e-mail ended with the following statement, which I found to be quite astute:

Mostly we think of people with great authority as higher up, far away, hard to reach. But spiritual authority comes from compassion and emerges from deep inner solidarity with those who are "subject" to authority. The one who is fully like us, who deeply understands our joys and pains or hopes and desires, and who is willing and able to walk with us, that is the one to whom we gladly give authority and whose "subjects" we are willing to be. It is the compassionate authority that empowers, encourages, calls forth hidden gifts, and enables great things to happen. True spiritual authorities are located in the point of an upside-down triangle, supporting and holding into the light everyone they offer their leadership to. Peace, Dale

It can be difficult, in many churches, to find leaders who exhibit this kind of a Christ-like mentality. Peace to you, too, Dale.

Should I Say Goodbye to Facebook?

For the past week or so, getting into Facebook has been an incredible pain in the neck, thanks to what I just learned is known as the "Koobface" virus. In articles I've read online about the virus, it talks about messages one should not open. Well, I can't recall having received such messages, much less clicked on links in those messages. But it appears that the problem may even affect people who haven't been lured into the scheme, since the ability to reset one's password isn't currently working at Facebook.

Facebook had better fix this problem pronto, because even though I've benefited from participation in Facebook to some extent, there was a time when I had never heard of Facebook, and I got along just fine without it. If necessary, I can do so again.

Abortion, Environmentalism, Morality and Public Policy

This week's issue of Cascadia Weekly, a free newspaper distributed in grocery stores and other outlets in the Bellingham WA area, has an article about a forthcoming visit and book reading, by author Kathleen Dean Moore, of her book Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.

I only just now heard about the book, so I wouldn't presume to be qualified to make any kind of definitive judgment of the merits (or lack thereof) of the book. But the article contained the following thought-provoking quote from Ms. Moore: "Clearly, information is not enough. A piece is largely missing from the public discourse about climate change; namely an affirmation of our moral responsibilities in the world that the scientists describe. No amount of factual information will tell us what we ought to do. For that, we need moral convictions."

I'm all for the idea that people need moral convictions, but I find presumptuous the implied idea that all people with strong moral convictions about global warming will by definition agree with one another about what we should do about it. That idea seems to stem from the debatable idea that disputes about factual aspects of the issue have already been resolved, and that we can now dismiss any arguments to the contrary as "crazy talk" (to use a phrase which seems to be especially popular amongst the progressives at MSNBC, whenever they'd rather engage in subtle ad hominem attacks than in actual refutations of beliefs with which they disagree). I've seen enough evidence, in the form of books seen at major bookstores, to suggest that such is not the case.

Could it be that arguments on behalf of the idea that something needs to be done have failed because people have found the premises on which such arguments are based to be unconvincing? Could it be that it's unreasonable to expect people to be so bowled over by the academic credentials of the people making such arguments that they will willingly ignore the contrary evidence in the form of their own senses and intuitions, as well as the evidence presented to them every day by their local meteorologists? Could it be that a year in which record snowfall paralyzed large areas of the continental United States does not constitute the sort of physical evidence one would expect when seeking confirmation that the global warming alarmists know what they are talking about?

When it comes to the subject of global warming (and more importantly, its causes), the trendiness of the issue seems to have created an atmosphere in which people are often persuaded to join the cause just so that they won't be branded as "out of touch" with their peers. What that has to do with the actual truth about the issue is anyone's guess. Truth is what truth is, and one's desire to be perceived as "hip" ought to be subordinate to one's responsibility to believe things which, first and foremost, are objectively true.

Not all scientists have acquiesced to the dogma currently being promoted by the majority of the scientific community; and lest we automatically reject the opinions of the the dissident minority members of that community solely because they are in the minority, we ought to humbly remember that scientific dissidents have sometimes been vindicated by subsequent discoveries. The so-called experts once believed and taught that the world was flat, and they ridiculed people, such as Christopher Columbus, who dared to think for themselves instead of being intimidated into agreeing with the majority solely for the sake of doing so.

The majority is not always right. So if you want to persuade me that something is true, even though it seems to fly in the face of the kind of evidence which ordinary people can experience with their own senses, you're going to need to show me evidence which is a lot more persuasive than what I've seen so far from the global warming "true believers", especially if I'm being asked to make major changes in lifestyle on the basis of a belief in the truth of a particular premise.

I bring this up, not because I possess enough scientific expertise to be able to know with certainty that one side or the other is factually wrong, but because it seems to suggest to me that there are those who fear genuine debate over those factual issues, and who therefore prefer instead to engage in name calling as a means of effectively silencing dissident voices. Specious argumentation of that nature seems to have become a fact of life when it comes to the subject of global warming, and that in itself helps to explain, in part, why I am suspicious of the motives and agendas of those who claim that the dispute over the facts has been resolved.

Second, even if it's true that we are suffering from unnatural climate changes which can be blamed almost entirely on man-made carbon emissions from transportation and manufacturing (and not on other factors such as bovine flatulence), it's noteworthy that some liberals understand that the facts alone are not enough to automatically cause people to agree with them insofar as their analysis of what we ought to do is concerned. So they invoke "morality" as a means of spurring people to take action in accordance with their agenda. That's not particularly rare. Many of the issues nearest and dearest to the hearts of political liberals are basically matters of morality, although it is in some cases a type of vague squishy brand of New Age morality rarely to be found in the Christian tradition or scriptures.

Why is it OK or even admirable for liberals to impose their morality on others when it comes to issues pertaining to global warming, but evil for conservatives to impose their morality on others when it comes to the subject of abortion? As I see it, this kind of hypocrisy is the very essence of irrationality.

If political liberals and progressives can't even grasp the simple principle that people should practice what they preach, then why should I trust that they are any more rational when it comes to their ability to intelligently debate the merits of arguments which hinge on sophisticated analyses of scientific charts and graphs?

None of this is to say that I oppose efforts to limit carbon emissions or to otherwise take our responsibilities seriously when it comes to stewardship of the earth's natural resources. In fact, I am greatly pleased to learn that Christians (such as Peter Illyn and the members of his group Restoring Eden) are doing their best to remind Christians of their moral responsibilities to take care of God's creation. I don't think that one has to believe in man-made global warming in order to believe that we should do everything to reduce pollution or to reduce American dependence on foreign oil. Both of those needs existed prior to the relatively recent time in history when the phrase "global warming" became part of America's lexicon.

It is not for the sake of protecting the vested interests of the oil companies that I express my reservations about the global warming movement. Rather, it is on account of my aversion to ideological propaganda and intimidation, regardless of whether it comes from the political right or the political left.

My advice: If you genuinely believe that global warming is an objectively real problem, and that users of internal combustion engines are largely to blame for that problem, then by all means, say so (and back that up by actually living as if you actually believe what you claim to believe). But try to show a little civility and courtesy towards people who have reached different conclusions.

2/12/11 Update

I'm currently sitting in the dining area at the Haggen grocery store (in the Barkley Village shopping center in Bellingham, WA), accessing the Web with the new Toshiba L655 laptop PC I bought late last week at the Office Max in the Sunset Center shopping center. (It was on sale, enabling me to save $100, compared with what I'd have paid the previous week.)

It's likely to take me a little while to get used to the quirks of this machine (such as the upgrade to Windows 7, and the fact that the Synaptics touch pad has a bunch of features which I regard as somewhat superfluous and not entirely predictable). My new Toshiba doesn't yet have any major software applications other than the basic edition of Microsoft Office (not the version which includes Access database software). But it's still much better than being limited to one hour of computing time per day at the Bellingham library. That's only half as much time as I was getting from the Chicago library (or even less if one considers that the Bellingham library is closed on Sundays, unlike the Chicago library). 14 hours per week at the Chicago library was insufficient for the work I needed to do each week on the computer, and being limited to 6 hours per week at the Bellingham library later on was even worse. It scarcely gave me enough time to check, read and respond to my most crucial e-mail message, much less do all of the work required to adequately deal with my needs in terms of job applications and so forth were concerned. Now, having finally gotten my own PC again, things are looking up again for me to some extent, though I haven't yet been hired.

Unfortunately, I also caught a cold late last week, so I've been coughing and sneezing a lot for about two days. But I've asked God to heal me, preferably sooner rather than later, so I'm confident that he has already answered that prayer, even though I haven't yet experienced the manifestation of that healing. Meanwhile, I'm keeping the napkins handy, to wipe my runny nose.