And That's The Way It . . . Will Be?

He is young; he is bright, bilingual, ambitious. And he wants to be a journalist.

We have had lunch and talked (watch short video* now).

A soccer player, he aspires to sportscasting. I haven’t doused his desire to reach ESPN.

Neither have I made all of this look easy (“like on TV”). Many journalists exert the dogged diligence of toiling on in relative obscurity. (Having served in ag journalism, I love the line about “pork belly futures . . .”) But this trait is unportrayed by the quick conflict/resolution plots of television and cinema.

The journalist was negative, more so than I have been. This is due in part to my young friend’s interest in sportscasting. Whereas people may starve themselves of news (especially international news, decimated by budget cuts) the appetite for sports coverage remains. “Seventy-five percent of what people come to the page for is sports,” observed Mr. C of the Deseret News.

Time was, sports formed a portion of a newscast, even as the audience grabbed a view of the world from trusted voices – journalists’ voices. Walter Cronkite comes to mind, of course.

As my young friend attempts to learn something from me, the easier part is to evaluate journalism of the past. The harder part – as audiences continue fragmenting into niche segments – is to predict job possibilities and the future.

And to sound authoritative and conclusive with a summarizing statement like, “That’s the way it will be . . .”

*Video by: Lee Gjertsen Malone.

Some Shots From Ecuador's Coast

Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,

Your justice like the great deep.

You, LORD, preserve both people and animals.




















Yes, he is in there . . . yeah, he's there. Possibly a stenocercus iridescens, or iguana to most of us.








Here . . . let's get closer. A LOT closer. Actually, I never got near him. I helped a small crab escape the swimming pool where someone had put it. Yeah, picked that out of the water.


As to the beached eel, I was willing to let it be. I pointed it out to a passing beachcomber, and with his stick, he flicked it into the water.






And what do you suppose is going on here?




















Pelecanus occidentalis, which is known as the brown pelican, captures fish by a spectacular plunge from the air. Other species of pelicans swim in formation, driving small schools of fish into shoal water where they are scooped up by the birds.












There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

Places Where Our Patterns Were Set

Yellowstone National Park

Another Astoria, A Different Aberdeen

It was a different Astoria than I'd known during my small town newspapering days of decades earlier. Crossing the long bridge, we entered the state of Washington.

So too, it was a different Aberdeen than I'd known in my younger years working at a rock AM station. At Aberdeen, Washington we stopped & piled out of the van at the Young Street bridge over the Wishkah River. We read the plaque informing us (perhaps incorrectly?) that ashes of a rock star, Kurt Cobain, had been scattered on the water after his premature death in the early 1990s. Amid the fame of his band, Nirvana, he was a self-confessed junkie.
After the trip, I am midway through Heavier Than Heaven, a Charles Cross biography of the musician. Musically gifted and artistically brilliant, Cobain spiralled downward inside even as Nirvana's popularity careened ever higher.

What went wrong? More specific to my own evangelical beliefs, what went wrong with Cobain's born again experience and exposure to Christianity years earlier during his teens?


A photo shows Cobain in Olympia, Washington. Behind him is a billboard that admonishes Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. By that time, the message seemed lost on him, although he continued exploring spirituality in one form or another. In a relationship, he sought unconditional love just as we all do.


"Come As You Are" Cobain urged a generation of young people. It is a message we need to hear from the Church -- that Jesus welcomes sinners in need of God's grace.


God chooses to love me, not for what I do but because He simply chooses to. His grace is central to the gospel message. So too, the doctrine of santification warns me that while forgiveness is great, God urges me on to holy living. I may come as I am, but He will woo me and work for a better me, a more complete me.


And another building block of Christianity - hope. Despite Cross' thorough reporting work in the book, I don't know just when it was that Kurt Cobain lost hold of hope.

Fabulous Falls and a Grand Gorge

Posting from Portland . . .

Watching Tony's Toes

He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger, he shoot coca-cola
-J. Lennon / P. McCartney


I promise that this will be my only toe jam blog entry. TMI (too much information!!) as the young people say.

At a coffeehouse open-mic evening, I played with Rick and band (dubbed as "Rick S & the Beauty Queens" by some wag) . The lyrics of "Come Together" are . . . very interesting.



"Toe jammed" again several days later, I watched as the main wheel of Toe Jam Music, Tony Melendez, strummed and picked his guitar on the floor . . . playing with his feet. For you see, Tony was born with no arms -- affected in the womb by the drug, Thalidamide.



With his feet, he also directed the crowd in doing "the wave" and tossed frisbees to us. Fun! His music ranged from Tu Eres Mi Dios (You Are My God) to a Lennon/McCartney classic, "Let It Be" to Ritchie Valens' La Bamba.

I'd been aware of Tony's story but his drummer, Tim Pope, fascinated me with his one-handed drumming. He kept full purcussion going with his left hand while the right hand played "bass" on a keyboard.

Yikes! This band has no bass player!

I hold no illusions; I play average bass
Dispensable?
Produce or Be Replaced?

Listen! to Tony's untiring message

urging me on
until one day when I see His face

the message in his life,
in his music
of God's fountain of grace.

The View from the Mountaintop

Two-Dollar Dental Work at a Mobile Medical Clinic

As a kid, I would watch as my dentist sterilized his instrument on a small Bunsen burner before proceeding on my filling. No reclining chair, no humor and certainly no laughing gas. Those were dental visits from the history books.

Eventually he moved into pre-retirement, spending more time grooming his yard and flower gardens with his wife. With this, he suggested that Mom seek a new dentist for me and my siblings. (Mom obliged by taking herself and Dad to a new dentist along with us kids.)

Was it that cut-the-kids ruling (I learned of it decades later) that prompted my own desire for kids to wait outside the medical caravan truck? I don't know, but as I watched, I wondered when the ax would come from Dr. Reinaldo:

"Afuera por favor." (Wait outside please.)

As he worked on mouth after mouth, the verbal "boot" never was uttered, not even under his breath. Even the returning 5-year-old, Andres, did not warrant a reproof. Instead, Reinaldo put himself on a first-name basis with the boy and conversed with him.

One girl stood and watch as Mom was attended to. Little Natalia came in unaccompanied, boldly acquanting herself with Reinaldo . . . until she was actually in the chair.

Cleanings took the longest; extractions were quickest. Extraction, filling, or profilaxis cost $2. The biggest currency that was pressed into my hand was a $10 bill, and by then I had enough in the coffee cup to make change. Part of the joy of this job was giving a Gospel of John to people as they left.

Most had just one procedure. But Edison, a young man with hand-drawn tattoos on his arms (yeah, I still notice) had two extractions one afternoon, then returned for another pulling the next day. Another man's smile revealed decorative gold framing his front teeth -- the handiwork of an earlier dentist elsewhere.

Reinaldo also did a few consults and charged the patients nothing for those. Beginning at 10 a.m., we saw 21 patients by 4 p.m. that day, then we, the two docs, and Ian packed up everything and backed the caravan off of the blocks.

Jofre moved the caravan to a new location nearby.

There were likely kids there too. And plenty of dental and medical needs.

Another dental diary is here.

The Need To Read

Kathy writes:

I have read several books in the past few months.

One was Peace like a River, the Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year.

The Midwestern family in this novel has miracles happen every few months.
It has me thinking about what kind of things our kids will remeber from their
childhood. Are Ralph and I reminding them often enough of the LORD's
miracles we have witnessed?

Another was One Flew over the Cookoo's Nest. Painful reading at times, knowing the tragic ending to come. Yet, I couldn't put it down.

Laurie Halse Anderson's historical fiction work, Fever 1793, was another one that had me hooked from beginning to end.

Phillip Yancey's I Was Just Wondering is the one that currently has my attention.
I read a long time each night before bed, while the supper is cooking, and
any other time I can catch a few minutes.

After explaining to students their assignments, I have been able to read
quite a bit while substitute teaching.

Various times the students would ask me about the book I was reading.
I was saddened to learn that so many of the kids never read, or only read
what they absolutely have to for a passing grade.

In the 8th grade English class, the kids had two months to read Johnny
Tremain. The day I had to sub was the 100 question test over that book. Many
of them complained as I was handing it out. "But I'm not ready"- "But I
didn't read it after the first 5 pages", etc.Some even joked about it and
seemed proud that they had not read it.

Reading is one of my absolute favorite things to do. I started reading aloud
to our kids when they were infants. I thank God that they all enjoy reading
for pleasure now. We have enough books in our home to start a library. When
I think of the books that I have read just in April, and all the things I
have learned, and how I have been challenged and encouraged in my walk with
Christ, I am overwhelmed.

To think that so many of the students I work with every day are missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures saddens me.

I have decided that talking about my current read is going to be a regular
part of my "good morning, class. Mr. So-and-So is ill today" speech.

It's my small way of trying to get the IM/Facebook generation back into books!

Vehicle Inspection

More info (in Spanish) is here.


Check emission gasses.

Sure hope the Jeep passes.


Seven-thirty was late.
So a two-hour wait.

My second time around.
Where vendors abound.




The vehicle now inspected.
Few(er) problems detected.


Yes!
It passed the inspection at last.



Finally!

Success!





but . . . . vehicle registration is next.

When People Go Away . . .

"Why does everyone want to go away? I love being home," was Beth March's query to her sister, Jo, in the movie "Little Women." The phrase has been on my mind with the departures from our community in recent months. We have shared sad news of a deportation, a drowning, and other deaths. These are not people who wanted to go away; circumstances simply took them.

We move ahead but the emotional burden adds up. One begins to feel the weight of mortality; the shoulders sag a bit.

First chair in the saxaphone section was vacant (see video clip). Kay had played earlier, but now was off bidding good-bye to classmates. Her visa difficulties had prompted this parting. Rob's send-off message encouraged listeners to Carpe Aeternitatem or Seize Eternity (this clip is even shorter.)

In the wider community, we lost three members of a family to a car crash over the Carnival weekend. And so, just weeks after Kay's special graduation, the chapel filled again for a memorial service for Emilio and Ana and their young son, Asaf.

These were people who seized eternity; they lived with a view to eternity. Amid the routine, there was a reasoned response to Jesus' claim that "he who loses his life for My sake, will find it." They lost themselves in something bigger (SomeONE bigger) than their own existence and so the tragedy of that weekend served as mere transition. Their eternity looks different to them now . . . but we don't know just how different it looks. They apparently saw it clearly before, even if "through a glass darkly."

Not long from now, a few dozen more will leave us for far flung places of the planet. No matter how the commencement speaker challenges these young people, I hope there has been, is and will continue to be an underlying theme of their years with us: Carpe Aeternitatem. Seize Eternity.

Russians Are Coming? No, Not Really

It will just never work to falsely report that your country is being invaded.

Afterthought attempts at damage control will see only limited success. Your media outlet will face angry accusations decrying that the independent media (pro-gov, anti-gov - no matter) is irresponsible.

A recent example occurred in the republic of Georgia, where an Imedi TV broadcast showed images of what could happen if the Russians invaded. The director of Imedi Media Holding, Giorgi Arveladze, at once apologized for, and rationalized, the controversial broadcast.

"We wanted to show something that we never want to happen," he said. As I watched, I noticed no disclaimer across the bottom of the screen.

Possible misinterpretations?

A true event.

Or perhaps nationalistic fervor overriding journalistic integrity.

Or maybe political opportunism on the part of the instigators.

Entertainment (ever growing as news content) also plays into such coverage. History shows that the martian invasion fantasy of New Jersey prompted public panic in the 1938 radio version of The War of the Worlds (reprises in Chile in the mid 40s and in Ecuador --with reprisals -- in 1949).

Re-broadcasts can even go awry. One month after and again one year after horrifying tornadoes whipped through Louisville, KY, WHAS radio attempted to rebroadcast audio describing funnel clouds that dropped down for devastating results. On both occasions, public panic prompted the coverage (which was to later win multiple journalism awards for WHAS) had to be pulled from the broadcast.

We could all learn a lesson from Georgia (in Euro Asia), but just watch. We will do it again.

Very soon in fact, we will do it again . . . as some fools stage an April Fool's Day "newscast" that will indeed fool those who still trust the media.