Today's Amusement

The return address on the billing for my recent blood tests is Billings, MT.

Community? Not!

I just heard it used again on a radio broadcast and I've had it. The speaker was representing "the hospital community." A few weeks ago a young woman described trying to break into "the modeling community." The "education community" is upset over the President-elect's choice for their Cabinet post.

Nonsense! These aren't "communities," where people live or have personal relationships with one another like the community in which I was raised or the communities with whom I worship the Lord Jesus. I didn't pass the CPA exam to become part of "the accounting community." These are businesses, trades, professions, industries.

I know. Language changes over time. Words take on expanded, or new, or even very different, meanings. And when that happens to help in understanding or communicating, it can be well and good. But more often than not these new "communities" are just trying to put a human face on something that is often not very friendly or neighborly.

The community doctor of decades ago listened when you weren't feeling well. I remember my dad's doctor -- and we were part of the Kaiser plan, one of the original "health maintenance organizations" -- coming to the house when he had the mumps. Just like Marcus Welby or Dr. Kildare! Recently the local hospital stopped allowing one's family doctor to be one's attending physician. You must be treated by their "hospitalist" and your doctor isn't supposed to even come in through the doors to be part of your care.

But this afternoon on the radio they're "the hospital community," kindly concerned about the repeal of Obamacare. Not the hospital industry having first access to everyone's money. Yeah.

Hey, It's a "Web Log."

I thought it was a bit chilly yesterday evening, but being raised to be parsimonious about public utilities, I have the heat set at 66°F (19°C for my metric readers) and I'll often just cover myself with a blanket while doing whatever I'm doing rather than kick it up to 68° or warmer. Besides it snowed Saturday and the yard was still beautifully covered in white. True, when I was a child in Canoga Park I was cold when it got below 70°, but my blood started to thicken with that 8 AM long distance running class at CSUN, there was winter 1990-91 in Helena, Montana (and this after a couple of summers in the Bay Area 😏), and this'll be my 24th winter in Peoria.

But when it seemed rather warm in the Parish Hall when I stepped in there for a few moments before going to bed and the temp in there was only 62°, I figured I needed to check the heat. Granted the Parish Hall always feels warmer than the Parsonage when their thermostats report about the same temp. But it was downright chilly when I stepped back into Parsonage. Still I didn't expect what I saw on the thermostat: 50°F (10°C)!

Well, come to think of it, I hadn't heard the furnace running, but I've washed dishes and done a couple of loads of laundry and I hear the water heater (and still feel hot water). But the furnace does not want to go on. And of course it's one without a pilot light, so this is not going to be something simple like the wind blew it out through the exhaust and I can simply re-light it. But I'm not calling someone at 11 PM, either. But with a hooded sweatshirt over the PJ's (my head is on the outside wall) and the oil-filled radiant heater at the foot of my bed, I was actually warm enough overnight.

Meanwhile, in this morning's mail is an invitation to join Sam's Club addressed to "Sandra Tibbetts" at the (correct) Parsonage address. Sandra Tibbetts? I have every once in a while received mailings for "Mrs. Steven Tibbetts" (who I have yet to meet, at least using that name), but this is the first time she's had a first name. Next to this address is a photo of a diapered baby crawling away, and on the other side is a mother with infant captioned "Big saving for growing families." I think not.

And no, that's not how I was warm enough last night.

Does One Laugh or Cry?

It's Not About the Nail from Jason Headley on Vimeo.

Tip o' the hat to "Ed" on Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor Mail.

The Old and the New

Early this afternoon I signed on to one of my banking accounts, where I was immediately instructed to change my password. The latest update of this particular institution's web site requires that one change the password every 6 months, and old ones cannot be reused. In a couple of years, I will run out of memorable passwords

On one of the Facebook groups I'm in, someone asked about locating a copy of Setting III of the Holy Communion liturgy from the Service Book and Hymnal, the worship book used by most North American Lutherans in the '60s and '70s. The preface to the hymnal mentions it, but it was not included in the published hymnal for space reasons.

The ensuing discussion got me doing a web search and suddenly I found myself reading a post on the Delphi Forums. I didn't think much of that initially until I realized the post was less that a year old. On Delphi? That had been one of the earliest computer bulletin boards systems long before "the internet." While I didn't go actually go online until 1992, the BBS world had been in the background of some of my reading interests for more than a decade earlier, beginning while I was in university.

My own first account was on CompuServe, but among science fiction writers and readers Delphi was among the more frequently used modes for this new form of communication. But with funds limited, it was for me not one of the best options to supplement CI$ and LutherLink in those MS-DOS/early Windows days. I kept bouncing my third account around, trying AOL, GEnie, Prodigy, and others. Then the online services started opening to the Internet and the early World Wide Web, changing the economics of the field. Prices dropped, the various services were bought and sold and/or consolidated or fell by the wayside as AOL developed a market hegemony by offering a service that, while certainly not the "best," was easy enough to use.

Meanwhile, back to post I was reading -- one I had initially gone to because the websearch had indicated its author was a Lutheran pastor I'd known from LutherLink. I clicked his member ID and, along with his profile, was an invitation to log in. And it struck me that I had indeed signed up on Delphi when it became a free service. I wonder....

"Enter your Membername or E-Mail Address." Hmm. That would have been a lonnnng time ago. I tried my old CI$ address and a likely password. No luck. But there's always that sign-in page link to "request a new password." So I tried my original numeric address (which I still remember by heart) -- "does not exist" -- then my "name" address. That was half-successful, for the address was valid and Delphi reported sending a request. Of course, CompuServe doesn't exist any more. Hmmm.

I wonder what will happen if I try that address with the likely password? And there I was. On my Delphi profile. One that I had opened in 1998. That was connected to a forum for alumni of my high school. The most recent post there was dated 6/25/2009. Better, the Delphi Forums profile page lists "recently visted forums." And when I last visted them. October 10, 2003.

Yes, I've updated my Delphi Forums profile. :-)

Customer Service?

Honest! I have a "confirmation e-mail" posted Dec. 24 at 12:21 pm:

Stop Date: December 27, 2012
Restart Date: January 5, 2013
Reason: Temp Stop - On Vac Pak
Action: Hold my papers

So, what is the first thing I find when stepping into the breezeway between the Parsonage and the Parish Hall on January 4 after a 9+ days away? Yup, individual copies of the Peoria Journal Star for every single one of those dates.

I wonder if they'll deliver my "Vac Pak" tomorrow?

Happy New Year!!

Tee-hee!

Continuing from last Monday's post, Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve is every bit as good as I remembered. No, it's not the best beer available, but it is better than most.

So, while I've not finished the 6-pack I bought last week, I purchased another this evening while getting milk at a different Kroger store. Where the young lady at the register asked to see my ID.



Granted, Kroger's policy is to ask for ID of anyone purchasing "adult" goods who looks under 40...

This, however, is so right!

At least I hope so. But it was about the very last thing I expected to find walking down the aisle at Kroger's -- an item I haven't bought in 20 years because it was 1) a West Coast brand that 2) had disappeared even on the West Coast.

And I'm not quite sure how it caught my eye since coming to Peoria I have purchased maybe 3-4 6-packs of beer. Not that I don't like beer; I do. I just prefer not to drink it by myself. "Lead us not into temptation..." and all that.

But tonight I'm making an exception, for there at the Kroger store in East Peoria, Illinois, was my favorite beer from California (actually an Oregon brew), particularly my Berkeley years -- Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve.

I hope it's as good as I remember.

"If I Wanted America to Fail"

Writes Morgan Richmond over at Hot Air, "A provocative new video from the folks over at Americans for Limited Government promoting a new project focused on economic liberty and free market policies." Indeed it is. Watch it.



Tip of the hat to Chaos Manor Mail.

Another One of those Ironies

I first started noticing ironies in "liberal" thought back in my school days. One moment was an argument over evolution vs. creationism. The next came a discussion of endangered species. And as far as I could tell, the ones who had been dismissive of creation and insisting that evolution and "survival of the fittest" was irrefutable scientific fact -- were then calling for the halt of any progress because of some snail that wasn't fit enough to survive.

In other words: those insisting upon evolution as the Truth were then turning around to outlaw it.

Today's irony: Today is apparently the 50th Anniversary of The Pill. Happy Mother's Day!!

Today

It happened to me again recently. I handed my business card to someone from Europe, he looked at my name, and immediately commented on it being like the country. You know: Tibbetts; Tibet.

Mom was a member of the Book of the Month Club for most of our youth and, while she didn't buy lots of books that way -- she was a housewife and we lived on Dad's teacher's salary in those days before strong teachers' unions -- the books we had at home covered a rather eclectic subject matter. I started to devour them when I was in junior high.

One was Lowell Thomas' book on the Dalai Lama, and I remember being fascinated by this story of a strange land (Tibet), how their leader was discovered and raised, and his dramatic escape over the Himalayas to India. But it would be years later before I made the Tibbetts-Tibet connection I like best.

Tenzin Gyatso fled Lhasa on March 17, 1959, arriving in India 15 days later.

And early on the evening on March 17, 1959, at the Kaiser Hospital on Sunset and Vermont in east Hollywood, California, I was born.

Tibbetts. Tibet. 51 years ago today.

Haiti Update

Sunday morning as we were making the pre-service prayer requests at Zion, the parents of the Friends of the Children of Haiti medical team leader (read about our connections here) was describing how the team, originally scheduled to depart Peoria for Haiti the next day, was scrambling to find ways to fly into Haiti given the cancellation of flights into Port-au-Prince.

I've been away from Peoria since late Sunday afternoon (I'm in Fort Wayne attending Concordia Theological Seminary's wonderful 2010 Symposia Series -- which, by the way, you can watch live through Friday Noon) so I'd not kept up-to-the-moment.

Turns out the team has been able to get charter flights from Ft. Lauderdale and, on Voices from the Clinic blog, you can read a bit about what they've been doing since starting to arrive at their clinic in Cyvadier on the southern coast of Haiti, which is just outside Jacmel and only 25 miles from Port-au-Prince and the epicenter of the earthquake. There's up-to-date photos from Jacmel and Cyvadier, too.

Bishop Hanson's Message on Haiti

An e-mailed message from ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson that received this evening:

January 13, 2010

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

The first chaotic reports and images now are coming out of Haiti, documenting the devastation caused by yesterday’s massive earthquake. Haitian officials estimate that more than a hundred thousand people may have died and that the quake destroyed major parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America already is responding through the Lutheran World Federation’s Haiti Program. Given the devastation caused by this earthquake, the ELCA has committed an initial $250,000 from ELCA International Disaster Response for Haiti and has authorized an additional $500,000 as congregations respond both to the immediate needs and long-term rebuilding efforts.

We give thanks to God that LWF staff escaped injury from the earthquake. We also give thanks that we have trusted and effective partners on the ground in Haiti who already are at work helping earthquake survivors. The ELCA is the largest regular supporter of the LWF’s program in Haiti, which helps communities escape the deep poverty in which so many Haitians live. Since staff is already in place, no precious time will be lost in shaping an effective response. The work of providing food and shelter and in helping people to rebuild their lives is under way.

We give thanks also for our partners in this work. The LWF staff in Haiti also was tapped to coordinate the responses of Protestant and Orthodox churches throughout the world through Action by Churches Together (ACT). In addition, the ELCA, in coordination with the Florida-Bahamas Synod, will be working to provide disaster support to and possibly through the emerging Lutheran church in Haiti.

More details of the ELCA's response and a disaster insert for congregational use are posted on www.elca.org/disaster as communication channels are restored. Please share with members and friends both the urgent need in one of the United States’ closest neighbors and the effective means by which their church is responding. Please go to http://www.elca.org/haitiearthquake or call 800-638-3522 to give toward our response to the disaster in Haiti.

In God’s grace,

Mark S. Hanson
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Haiti's Devastation

There's not much to add to the various news reports of the earthquake destruction in Haiti other than to note Pastor Zip's and Zion's connections to relief efforts.

For over 20 years Peoria's Friends of the Children of Haiti, has been sending medical missionary teams to Haiti several times each year. They have operated a medical clinic in the rural, seaside village of Cyvadier since building it in 1999-2000. Cyvadier is on Haiti's southern peninsula, "25 miles and one mountain rages south of Port-au-Prince," writes the Journal Star's Phil Luciano in today's paper. Luciano serves as president of FOTCOH's board of directors.

The next medical missionary team was scheduled to leave Peoria this coming Monday for its 11-day mission. This team's co-leaders are Zionite Sue Behrens, Director of Emergency Services at OSF St. Francis Medical Center, and her husband Eric, who is also FOTCOH's Executive Director. As of now the team is still going. The clinic has been damaged, but is operating. You can read further updates from Eric and Sue on the Voices from the Clinic blog. Click here if you are interested in contributing to Friends of the Children of Haiti.

Lutheran Disaster Relief is already involved in relief efforts in Haiti, and you can learn about that at www.elca.org/haitiearthquake. The Lutheran World Federation's offices and staff in Haiti were spared, so they are already at work with Lutheran World Relief.. You can contribute directly to Lutheran relief efforts from this page or over the phone at 1-800-638-3522. Lutheran International Disaster Response has already committed $750,000 to Haiti earthquake relief.

There are, of course, many other worthy organizations on the scene now and for the long-term. Support them. Pray for them. Pray for the Hatians.

Forgetting Who You Are?

Pastor's Zip's web browser opens to Google News and he'll read the headlines there. In the last day or so, one of the headlines was about a ruling in another part of the nation declaring that Bibles could not be given away on a public school campus. Naturally, I can't find that headline today (so maybe I imagined it?), but the search raised up controversial new law in Texas requiring that "Bible literacy" be incorporated in school curricula.

The controversy neglects discussion of something that, to my way of thinking, is more than a mere historical tidbit. Namely, that public schools were started in these United States for the purpose of teaching children how to read the Bible. Not simply to read, but read the Bible.

Meanwhile, in my car stereo I'm giving my first listen to the Verve CD re-issue of the classic Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book album, which I acquired earlier this summer for practically nothing while trying to burn up my accumulated points with the now-closed BMG Music Club. (Oh, am I enjoying riding in Sebastian -- yes, my 2002 Golf TDI has a name -- right now!) It would be hard to say what Irving Berlin's most popular song is, but it would be hard to top "White Christmas" and "God Bless America."

The latter song is sometimes looked at curiously, for while his father had been a cantor in a Jewish synagogue, Irving Berlin himself was not a particularly religious man. He was, in fact, another immigrant product of New York's public schools (albeit only to the age of 8) and streets (where he hawked newspapers and, later as a teen, even lived). One of hundreds of thousands. Berlin's lyrics reflect the language and thinking of the "average American" of his era, which was the first two-thirds of the 20th century.

And so, listening to Ella sing (with Paul Weston's marvelous orchestra), the seventh cut begins, "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan." A song I'd never heard before. And an Irving Berlin lyric that makes no sense at all apart from a Biblically literate society.

Farewell, Old Friend

My first e-mail address was 71554,3411. (I was able to type this from memory.) Some of you will recognize that as a CompuServe address. I'd first gone online after buying my Gateway computer in September of 1993. It wasn't my first computer; it was my first with a modem. It enabled me to enter a world I'd been reading about for a dozen years.

That particular world has evolved by leaps and bounds. CI$ opened up to internet e-mail, then added personal websites through Our World. Alas, the service wasn't profitable for its various owners and, while America Online talked a good game when it bought CompuServe in 1997, the service itself was never a serious priority for AOL. By the time I finally closed out my CompuServe Classic account in April 2007, the Forums I participated in were only a shadow of the old CompuServe.

I kept my account as long as I did because that's where Pastor Zip's Christian Links and my Lutheran Links sites were hosted there. It's only been a couple of years since I've finally closed the old account down. And then, shortly after my last post, I read this:

CompuServe Classic laid to rest

by Tom Krazit

CompuServe Classic, the initial on-ramp to the information superhighway for a generation of Americans, has died. It was 30 years old.

AOL, the current owner of CompuServe, confirmed the passing of CompuServe Classic in a message sent to subscribers last week. The company had announced plans to shut down the service in April, urging customers still dependent on cheap dial-up services to move to a surviving version, CompuServe 2000.

Back in the early days of the PC, CompuServe was the Google of its day. Introduced in 1979, it was the premier service for a small number of geeks in the 1980s looking to share files and conversation as well as corporate customers looking for ways to connect their offices. And by the early 1990s, before the dawn of the World Wide Web and browsers, CompuServe's forums were the place to be on the Internet.

Other Internet service providers, such as America Online and Prodigy, chipped away at CompuServe's lead with lower-priced services. AOL eventually purchased CompuServe in a complicated deal with Worldcom, which took over CompuServe's networking assets. Development of the service stagnated compared to AOL's primary service, and both brands fell prone to the gradual movement of Internet subscribers to much faster broadband connections provided by cable or telephone companies.

CompuServe is survived by thousands of 9 and 10-digit usernames assigned to e-mail subscribers, an astonishing number of whom can still remember their numbers to this day and who left their remembrances on a CompuServe discussion forum. Only 7 percent of U.S. residents still use a dial-up service to access the Internet, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

Oh, dear. I'm part of that 7%.

Do You Be Somebody? Or Do Something?

An interesting snippet from a speech given by our Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, at the Air War College in Maxwell, Alabama, last April, where he talks about Col. John Boyd, the "architect" of the American victory in Desert Storm.

As this new era continues to unfold before us, the challenge I pose to you today is to become a forward-thinking officer who helps the Air Force adapt to a constantly changing strategic environment characterized by persistent conflict.

Let me illustrate using a historical exemplar: the late Air Force Colonel John Boyd. As a 30-year-old captain, he rewrote the manual for air-to-air combat. Boyd and the reformers he inspired would later go on to design and advocate for the F-16 and the A-10. After retiring, he would develop the principals of maneuver warfare that were credited by a former Marine Corps Commandant and a Secretary of Defense for the lightning victory of the first Gulf War. Boyd’s contributions will resonate today. Many of you have studied the concept he developed called the OODA loop– and I understand there is an “OODA Loop” street here at Maxwell near the B-52.

In accomplishing all these things, Boyd – a brilliant, eccentric, and stubborn character – had to overcome a large measure of bureaucratic resistance and institutional hostility. He had some advice that he used to pass on to his colleagues and subordinates that is worth sharing with you. Boyd would say, and I quote: “one day you will take a fork in the road, and you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go [one] way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go [the other] way and you can do something – something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself … If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself … To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you have to make a decision. To be or to do?”

For the kinds of challenges America will face, the Armed Forces will need principled, creative, reform-minded leaders – men and women who, as Boyd put it, want to do something, not be somebody. An unconventional era of warfare requires unconventional thinkers.

This range of security challenges – from global terrorism to ethnic conflicts; from rogue nations to rising powers – cannot be overcome by traditional military means alone. Conflict will be fundamentally political in nature and will require the integration of all elements of national power. Success to a large extent will depend less on imposing one’s will on the enemy or putting bombs on target – though we must never lose our will or ability to unsheathe the sword when necessary. Instead, ultimate success or failure will increasingly depend more on shaping the behavior of others – friends and adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between.

This new set of realities and requirements have meant a wrenching set of changes for our military establishment that, until recently, was almost completely oriented toward winning the big battles in the big wars. Based on my experience at CIA, Texas A&M, and now the Department of Defense, the culture of any large organization takes a long time to change. The really tough part is preserving those elements of the culture that strengthen the institution and motivate the people in it, while shedding those elements of the culture that are barriers to progress and achieving the mission. All of the Services must examine their cultures critically, if we are to have the capabilities relevant and necessary to overcome the most likely threats America will face in years to come.

Secretary Gates may have been speaking to up-and-coming military officers, but his observations fit with any organization that (as nearly all do) develops a bureaucracy, large or small: business enterprises, schools, social service organizations, churches, etc.

Hat tip to Gary North's Specific Answers.