Thursday, 16 September 2010

I’m reading the book Human. It’s edited by Robert Winston and Don Wilson. It’s one of those Dorling Kindersley books that, instead of containing the usual linear text, has lots of pictures with captions that all relate to one another via a larger-font paragraph in the top left of each page. This book tries to bring in the whole of the human experience: Its 500+ pages spend some time discussing the origins of humans, all the major body systems, organs, and senses of the human body, and all the cultures around the world.

The chapter I’m in right now is called “Life Cycle.” This chapter goes through many of the traditions and rituals that humans experience during their lifetimes, as well as the changes their bodies go through. Early in the chapter, the book details various birth rituals. Since there’s a newborn in our home, I’ve been particularly interested in this section. Specifically, I’ve been trying to see if any of the birth rituals aren’t totally insane.

Here’s what the Wodaabe people of West Africa do: “First a goat is sacrificed in honor of the new life. Then the heads of the baby and mother are shaved, an act that is believed to strengthen the bond between them…In the evening of the ceremony, the baby is named by a village elder. Once the baby is named, the parents are not allowed to speak his or her name in case evil spirits hear it.”

Here’s another dozy: “A Muslim baby is often introduce to the religion within hours of being born. An elder of the Muslim community whispers the azaan, the call to prayer, into the child’s right ear and the Islamic creed into the left. This is done to ensure that the very first thing a newborn childe hears is the name of God. Often, the elder places a small piece of chewed date into the child’s mouth.”

Or how about this one: In the Hindu Chudakarana ceremony, the baby’s head is shaved. “After the hair is shaved off, it is mixed with cow dung and burned or thrown into a river.”

And from Russia: “It is a traditional Russian belief that the body should be immersed regularly in very cold water….Babies as young as a few months old are dipped into icy waters by their parents.” There’s an accompanying picture showing a Dad holding his baby, full submerged, in cold water.

From the crazy department: “The baby is laid on a cushion and held by a sponsor who has been chosen by his parents while the mohel cuts the foreskin with a double-edged knife. An empty seat is left next to the sponsor to allow room for the prophet Elijah….The baby is given a drop of wine.”  You can see why they’re god’s chosen people: only people who can delude themselves into thinking child-abuse is a fitting way to welcome a baby into the world could also delude themselves into thinking Moses’ ramblings have any real-life relevance.

Some, honestly, aren’t so bad: “In Nepal, a baby is marked with black soot in the center of the forehead as a protective sign to ward off evil.” Okay…so at least the baby isn’t harmed, but it’s a ritual based on a couple of false premises.

But the award for only-not-totally-stupid ritual goes to the folks of Northern Uganda: “Soon after birth and before being put to the mother’s breast, a drop of home-brewed millet or banana beer is placed in the baby’s mouth. Beer drinking is a communal event ….and is seen as a symbol of community life. The act of giving a child beer as its first drink reinforces the importance of the community to the child and the fact that the child is part of a wider group of people than its family alone. Whenever people are thought to be acting selfishly later in life, elders will remind them…’beer before milk,’ which means ‘remember others before yourself.’”

Not bad…but I think we’ll stick with passing out chocolate cigars.

Friday, 17 September 2010

Jennifer and I are trying to institute a don’t-go-out-to-eat policy lately. We like going out to eat but, let’s face it, it really eats into the budget. I didn’t think we were going to go out to eat that much in the first few weeks after Isla was born, but even then we still did. We ate a Ruby Tuesday one afternoon (as previously discussed) one day. Another day, we breakfasted at Mickey’s. We feasted at Brine’s during a daytrip to Stillwater. On our anniversary, we ate at Olive Garden. One day, while with Owen on a playdate with his former preschoolmates, we bought some sandwiches as Cups ‘n’ Scoops.

Today I had lunch from Jimmy John’s. Hey, at least I didn’t pay for it: it was free with my attendance at a webinar at work during the noon hour. I think I was the only person to order the 7-grain bread. I’m not sure if I think the 7-grain option is a better tasting bread than their standard bread, but it agrees with my digestive tract a lot more.

It’s funny how you can decide not to go out to eat, yet still get restaurant food so often: my mom took us out to eat for our anniversary, and some friends that stopped by to see Isla couple of weeks ago gave us a gift card to Jimmy John’s. During last week’s picnic with my group at work, I was treated to Holy Land.

I think, instead of just making it our goal to not eat out, we should make it our goal to eat out as often as possible without having to pay for it.

Monday, 13 September 2010

As part of my don’t-work-on-Mondays policy that I instituted in late July, I took the day off of work today.

Okay, really I took the day off of work since it’s my son’s first day of Kindergarten.

I think it went well. We were allowed to go into the classroom early, so that Owen could get used to it a little bit before the other students arrived. We put Owen’s backpack on the hook where his name was, and he put on the name tag provided. Inside, the teacher had set up an easel with all the kids’ names on it and she asked Owen to circle his name. He found his name quickly and, choosing the pink marker, circled his name.

We spent a little bit of time looking around the classroom; we found Owen’s name at one table, and at another we found a puzzle for Owen to play with while we waited.

The other kids came in quick, most of them had one or more parents with them. One little girl was dropped off by her older brother (he looked like he was starting 4^th or 5^th grade, and he was not happy to have to show his little sister to her new class). One mom was unabashedly crying. Another mom showed up with her fancy-schmancy camera and took pictures of her son’s first day.

About ten minutes later, the teacher rang the windchime hanging in her room and told the students to come sit on the floor next to her. Seeing Owen, she told him he could come sit right next to her. Cautiously, he did. And we slipped out.

I hope he likes Kindergarten. I did. So did my wife. I think, in retrospect, it was the best year of compulsory schooling I ever had. And the most important.

Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Oh. My. God.

Today , finally, felt like being back in the old routine. I’m at work, Owen’s at day two of Kindergarten, and Jennifer is taking care of Isla. The fun day at work last week (when there was a picnic) is over, and after going to work on three of the last 48 days, I now have no plans for any vacations. At all. I checked with my supervisor, however, and I do have 11 vacation days left, so if the mood hits me… (On the other hand, it might be smart to carry some of those days over to next year when I begin taking classes again.)

In other news: my worker sent me THIS LINK.

I’ve never seen a trailer for a book…have you? I thought trailers were just for movies and TV shows. Hm. This is a new twist in the world of advertising. And, apparently it’s effective, because after watching the trailer, I immediately surfed over to the library’s website and put the book on hold. As the site says, if the book is half as good as the trailer, it’ll be worth a read.

In other news: I received THIS BOOK in the mail today. Signed by the author, no less. I gotta say, I could really get used to authors and publishing companies sending me free copies of their books; “What, you mean it’s free as long as I write a critique of it? Uh…okay…since I’d probably write a critique of it anyway, you might as well send me a free copy.”

Yeah, so, anyways, I’ll put a link to my review once that’s online.

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

I got a call from my sister today. She says she won’t be able to make Isla’s baby shower (technically called a “welcoming the babies party” by the party planners) this weekend. She has to work most Saturdays, so her news was not terribly surprising. Another friend of ours sent an email saying they’re gonna be out of town this weekend, so they can’t make the party either. Again, no problems…it just gives me flashbacks to Owen’s baby shower. Journey with me back in time real quick here:

So, in 2005, when Owen was 5 weeks old, our friends, Andy and Bobbi, hosted a baby shower for Owen. I had been looking forward to the shower for weeks, hoping it would be a fun day that would lift Jennifer’s (and my) spirits and be an all-around fun day of being with friends. Andy and Bobbi, to their credit, cleaned their already beautiful house up even more. With help from my wife’s sister Kara, they decorated marvelously – even putting up signs down the block directing traffic. Our friend Laura, meanwhile, make the cake from scratch; a cake that, hands down, was one of the most creative a tasty cakes I’ve ever enjoyed.

But guess what? No one came.

Well, not exactly no one, of course. But close. Besides Andy, Bobbi, Kara, and Laura (the party planners), and their kids and spouses, the party was attended by our mom’s, our sister-in-law Tina, and two friends. One of those friends was actually the mom of my friend Jamin (who didn’t show up), and another friend was someone we hadn’t spoken to in years, but who had just happened to meet up with Bobbi at a recent Witness meeting.

I knew some people wouldn’t be there: my father-in-law and brother-in-law were already planning on attending the family shower one week later, so they probably saw no reason to come to both showers. My sister, as always, was working. My friend Nick had just gotten married and was still on his honeymoon. Other people didn’t bother to say they wouldn’t be showing up, but I found out why later: Jamin, unbeknownst to me, was off getting married. My friend Rhett had just broken his leg, and was immobilized. Meanwhile, Bobbi’s mom “Florida” (who had been invited), didn’t feel like showing up, but did feel like calling to see how the party was going. When her daughter mentioned that my mom-in-law Debbie was there, Florida said: “Oh, if I would’ve known Debbie was going to be there, I would’ve come.” Thanks Florida. That meant a lot to Jennifer and me.

At the end of the day, as we piled our cranky baby and gifts into the car and drove away, Jennifer said: “Well that was my worst nightmare come true.”

I think she was exaggerating, because it was nice of our friends to host that party, even though (almost) no one came; but I understood her meaning.

Enough whining. I hope we’ve fixed what went wrong last time: there’s no need to have a separate party for friends and family, for one thing. For another thing, this party is for my sister-in-law’s new baby, too, so that might maximize the attendance.

Saturday, 11 September 2010

As previously noted, today I delivered a presentation in front of the Maple Grove Critical Thinkers’ Club. The turnout was good; the club’s president told me there’s typically about 15 people at their meetings, but today there were 21.

It’s funny, whenever I give a presentation, I’m never quite sure what sort of questions people are going to ask. Perhaps I’m just not used to this; after all, when I performed public speaking at Witness meetings, the audience was not permitted to ask questions. So, you know, it throws me off guard a little bit.

For example, one woman asked who Jehovah is. Oops. I guess I should’ve mentioned that during my presentation. Someone else asked about how the local congregations are arranged and funded, and what sort of schooling the ministers have. There was particular interest about voting and birthdays.

I casually mentioned that Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays and, in mid-sentence, I was cut-off by someone asking, “Why don’t they celebrate birthdays?” My response was: “Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’m gonna answer it by saying that if any of you ever comes across a Witness that gives a coherent, logical reason why they don’t celebrate birthdays, then please tell me. Because, in all my years as a Witness, I could never find a reason.” I even admitted to being embarrassed about this rule back when I was a Witness.

But then a man raised his hand and said: “You know, my daughter’s been a Witness for a few years now, and she told me why they don’t celebrate birthdays. She said that they don’t want to draw attention to the individual.”

I tried to respond to this as tactfully as I could. Specifically, I said, “Yes, I’ve heard that one, and it’s complete bullshit.” I explained that Witnesses hold graduation parties, funerals, wedding receptions, retirement parties and even baby showers…so his daughter’s reasoning is only effective on people without the ability to reason.

At another point, I noted that Witnesses shun their ex-Witness relatives, and a woman (the only person in the room younger than me) said: “Well, one of my patients is a Witness and she talks to her gay son.”

Yeah… I said she probably does…but I guarantee she keeps the matter secret. And, besides, if her son was never baptized, then he’s technically not an ex-JW since he never was a JW in the first place.

All in all, a good time. Some of the questions were very thought-provoking, and there were some laughs, particularly when I reviewed “What to say and What not to say when a Witness comes to your door (assuming you don’t want them to come back)”.

A few people came up and thanked me for my presentation, a professor of religious studies at St. Cloud State gave me his email address and we’ve been in correspondence. Another man said I was doing the world a great service, and another man said that when Witnesses came to his door he asked them if Jesus ever got an erection. When the Witness woman said: “Oh, of course NOT!” The man asked her, “Why, was he impotent? Then he wasn’t perfect.” Ha!

The club’s president, meanwhile, enjoyed my presentation so much, I’ve been invited to speak again in January. Stay tuned. 

Sunday, 12 September 2010

So what’s the deal with the word “grey?” Or is it “gray?” See what I mean. It’s a conundrum that, normally I would simply find interesting for academic purposes, but now my wife is creating a birth announcement (did you hear we had a daughter a few weeks back?) and she wishes to quote from a song. Problem is, the song uses the word gray/grey.

I called up the lyrics to the song online, and the site spells it G-R-E-Y, but I don’t know how trustworthy lyrics sites are. For one thing, they always get lyrics wrong. For this song in particular, they misspell “yourself” as “youtself” and the put an arbitrary apostrophe in “gets.” They also put the word “or” when clearly the singer says “and,” which happens to be grammatically correct as well.

THIS SITE says to remember that grAy is American and grEy is European. Very clever. Even cleverer is THIS SITE which says that “gray is a color, while grey is a colour.”

Additionally, both of my dictionaries (American through and through) do contain entries for “grey,” but only to direct the reader to “gray.” They also have entries for “grayling,”  “gray matter,” and “gray wolf.”  

That seems to settle the matter; but Wikipedia directs all inquires regarding “gray” to their “grey” page. And those dictionaries? They both have entries for “greyhound.” Meanwhile, though the song was written by an American, it wsa performed by a Brit for a film that was created in New Zealand. Hm. Further, Jennifer is using the lyrics as they were performed live at the Oscars back in 1999, and not as they originally appeared in the film…so it’s not as if the booklet that accompanies the CD soundtrack is the end of the matter. Also, I don’t own the CD soundtrack, so I don’t even know what the booklet says.

I think I’ve convinced my wife to stick with “gray.” After all, we laugh at wedding invitations that “request the honour of your presence.” Sorry…my presence as no honour; only honor.

Wednesday, 08 September 2010

A couple of years ago, one of my co-workers went on a vacation to Europe. On the day he returned to work, there happened to be a planned outing with our department. Specifically, we went on a company-paid outing to a St. Paul Saints game. During the game, I turned around and said to my co-worker (who was sitting in the row behind me): “You picked the perfect day to come back to work.”

And, guess what? Today, I picked the perfect day to return to work, too. It wasn’t intentional; I planned to take off six weeks and today happens to be the day Isla turns six weeks old. I didn’t even know that today was going to be the perfect day to return until about three weeks ago.

See, one day, in mid-August, I checked my work email. I checked it a few times while on leave and, on that particular day, there was an email reminding everyone about a group outing scheduled for September 8^th.

So, today, I showed up at work for the first time in six weeks. I arrived at 8:15 and, at 11:30, I left to go to Fish Lake Park. For the next four hours, I ate, drank, and played volleyball and Apples To Apples. While playing volleyball, I accidentally launched the ball into my manager’s gut, who reminded me to be careful since it’s my first day back. I’m hoping he was just joking around.

Thursday, 09 September 2010

I spent my first “lunchbreak” finishing up my presentation for Saturday. In case you don’t know, I’ve been invited to speak at the Maple Gove Critical Thinkers’ Club this weekend.

My presentation will be four parts:

1 – The history and evolution of Jehovah’s Witnesses

2 – My story as a Jehovah’s Witness

3 – Why I left the religion

4 – Atheism

Yeah, that last one doesn’t really fit with the other three..so I’m just gonna spend about 2 minutes on that. In fact, I think I’m only gonna spend about 2 minutes on the first part, too. Because, of course, since I was raised as a Witness, I have no idea how the movement started. I’ll mention something about New York’s 19^th-Century Burned Over District, then move on to Russell’s move to Brooklyn, then Rutherford’s strong-arming, and probably end with “yeah, so, now there’s 7 million active Witnesses, and another 7 million who are too smart to go door-to-door.”

The president of the club says they’ll likely only be about 15 people in attendance, including a Scientologist, a Professor of Religious History, a psychiatrist who has worked with former cult members, and a former Mormon. Oh, goodie! I’m sure I’ll be roasted alive.

Friday, 10 September 2010

Well, it’s been a long week of work, what with not working on Monday or Tuesday at all, getting paid to go on a picnic on Wednesday and then – pow! – two grueling days of work (in a row!) on Thursday and Friday.

I think my workday really peaked when a co-worker sent me this link:

Yeah, that was probably the best five minutes of my workday.

I’m gonna have to remember to add that quote to my list of favorites: “In the middle of opportunity…excuse me.” Brilliant!

Despite it’s immense humor content, I want to mention a couple of more serious things about this video:

1)    Many of the commenters for this video feel that this is a perfect example of the Republican Party: How it uses fear and emotion to win votes instead of appealing to logic. Well, yes, this man doesn’t exactly shatter any stereotypes I have about Republicans, but here’s the tidbit in their favor: they didn’t give this man their enorsement. Yeah, that’s right, he wanted to be the Republican nominee for treasurer in Stark County, Ohio, but the Republcans who voted in that primary picked someone else. So…good for you Republican voters: thanks for weeding out the really terrible people.

2)    Some seem to doubt that his degree in communication is for real. Others wonder what sort of wacky college conferred such a degree upon this loony. My take is this: I doubt he was lying; I really believe that he DOES have a degree in communications. It seems odd, I know. But I’ve known plenty of excellent communicators with no degree whatsoever, and plenty of lousy communicators with degrees. I think the same could be said for just about any field of study, too.

Man, I’m spent now. Good thing I have a three-day weekend coming up

Tuesday, 07 September 2010

The arrival of September seems like such a transitional time in the year. With apologies to the equinox, summer is over. The weather this year changed on September 2^nd and it’s felt like fall ever since.

For many years of my life, September’s arrival was the arrival of a school year – elementary, high school, college. For several other years in my life, when I was doing volunteer work for the Watchtower Society, September was the start of a new service year, which meant the clocks were reset on achieving the 1,000-hour goal.

Another year, Jennifer and I were married in late August, so the beginning of September (when we finished our honeymoon), was the start of married life. And, back in 2002, I began a new job in early September.

So, here I am. It’s September. It’s fall. Owen is less than a week away from beginning Kindergarten and I am less than 24 hours away from going back to work.

August of 2010 will forever be held dear in my heart. It marked the first month, since I before I was 19 years old, that I did not work a single day. Ah…how nice is that? Not only that, but I still got paid for every single weekday. Yes sir, twenty-two weekdays in August, and I got paid for each and every one of them. This has not happened before in my adult life – not even when I had my wisdom teeth removed, not even when I got married, not even when in college, or when moving, or when Jennifer and I went on a two-week vacation; heck, it didn’t even happen when Owen was born.

And, sadly, it’s not likely to happen again. I mean, unless we have another baby and that baby happens to be born at the very beginning or end of one month AND I’m gainfully employed with a company that allows me to accrue such decent benefits AND I haven’t used up too much of those benefits by that point in the calendar year AND my wife and I feel that so much time off of work is warranted AND financially feasible.

Here, as the sun sets on my paternity leave, I must say – I’m grateful for this time that I’ve had off of work; I know many new Dads who were unable to take off so much time. I promised Owen we’d do many things together, and we did: Children’s Museum, zoo, Train Museum, Electricity Museum, lunch at Jimmy John’s, playgrounds, and walks. I even promised him we’d go golfing – something I finally made good on this evening.

When I returned to work three weeks after Owen’s birth, it seemed too soon. Jennifer also felt like she was expected to return to normal life too soon. So I’m glad I had twice that long this time. We dragged out our return to normal life for as long as possible; Jennifer laid in bed for ten days, our friends and family came in turns that took longer, and the meals people brought for us lasted longer. And even though I’m returning to work tomorrow, this still isn’t the end of the babymoon – there’s still one more appointment with the midwives, and a “welcome the babies party” (for Isla and her new cousin) is coming up later this month.

At any rate, I’m done being a postpartum midhusband. It’s not that I disliked the job, it’s just that the pay was so horrible. Tomorrow it’s back to my old job where the pay is…not so horrible.