Great things about my summer

Reading.
Playing with my kids.
Getting to know my wife.
Not going to work.
Singing more.
Reading.
Seeing my sister.
Seeing my sister's kids.
Listening to my nephew play ocarina.
Going to the White Mountains.
Not having my house burn down.
Going to San Francisco.
Seeing "Whistler's Mother" at the DeYoung Museum.
Seeing humpback whales off the California coast.
Spending a week in San Luis Obispo and the Central Coast.
Reading.
Getting bobbleheads at all 4 D-backs games I went to this summer.
Watching the D-backs win all 4 games I went to this summer.
Reconnecting with old friends.
Finding out my teaching schedule for this year is OK after all.
Reading.

Thanks for reading. I'll try to do better next time.

Another reason I'm a teacher

I have always enjoyed being a teacher, even when I don't have a lot of reason to continue. In Arizona, we are the least appreciated profession and I am given more reasons to despair than I would have thought possible. But every now and then, something happens to remind me why I do this. I do this job because it lets me have a small part in the lives of amazing kids who grow up to be amazing adults. Case in point: I just discovered that one of my former students is part of a project that is focused on relief efforts in Africa. She was a member of my favorite graduating class of all time and I discovered her work by accident. You can check it out by clicking on her blog, "The Indestructible Beat," on the right side of this page.

I would be lying if I thought that her work had anything to do with my classes. I do believe that, deep down somewhere, a little piece of her time with me has influenced her life. Some days, that's all I get, but, thankfully, it's enough.

Thanks for reading. I'll try to do better next time.

More great Rich Mullins

I just felt like writing about Rich Mullins. Here's one of my favorite Rich Mullins quotes:

"This is what I've come to think: that if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my Savior and Lord, the best way I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers, but they're just wrong. They're not bad, they're just wrong."

Amen, Brother Rich.

Stressing me out

I can't stand the way things are going in Arizona right now. Our legislature is fiddling while Rome burns. For instance, yesterday they spent time voting to put the 10 Commandments in front of the Capitol building, which I'm not sure they even own anymore. Now they'll get sued and waste more money, instead of finding a way to pay for education. My current vote for worst person in Arizona is State Senator Russell Pearce:

What a dope.

I hate not sleeping. Anybody got any tips on how to turn off my brain when I turn off the lights?

The Olympics are great and I'm really enjoying them. I want to try out curling. It seems to be about my speed.

Rich Mullins is still my hero. (Honorable mention to Tony Kornheiser.)

Pitchers and catchers report in 2 days and I'm thrilled.

I'm trying a kind of short duration, high intensity interval training and it's kicking my butt. It also seems to be working.

Jon Randall is a highly overlooked and underrated singer-songwriter. Go buy his CD.

Thanks for reading. I'll try to do better next time.

Random Wednesday One Day Late

I'm trying to do this quickly, before Kanye West arrives...

I love my life. My classes are great, my wife is amazing, my kids are stupendous.

Having said that, my ankle and shoulder hurt.

I miss Mary Travers and Patrick Swayze and Larry Gelbart.

Tony Kornheiser has the best radio show in the country. If you are in DC, it's ESPN 980. Everywhere else, it's podcasted. Listen, laugh, and enjoy. (It's on ESPN for some reason, but it's mostly not sports, so don't let that scare you off.)

It switched over to autumn a couple of days ago here in the mountains. It's a nice change, but sorta strange.

If anyone has good ideas for what kind of superhero I should be for a pep assembly next week, I am all ears.

The D-backs just stink. And I'm sad about it.

Kettle corn is the best food on earth. It makes me sad that the county fair is over. The idea of chocolate covered bacon, doesn't.

Thanks for reading. I'll try to do better next time.

An oldie and a goodie

I've been gone for awhile, but I wanted to jump back into the fray. I'll be trying to do more frequent updates, but I looked back over my writing and found the best political thing I've written. It still counts as my mission statement of sorts. I don't want to be offensive to anyone, but I truly believe all of this and I can't understand the point of view that opposes this. Anyway, enjoy, I hope...

I have stayed out of the political debate for too long. As I looked at American culture and the political landscape, I saw bad things, but I largely held my tongue. I supported candidates I believed in, but I left it at that. Now that we are coming to the critical point in the election cycle, I see how close we are to getting the bad people (conservatives) out of office. I can’t stand on the sidelines anymore.

Let me be clear. The conservative movement has been bad, and only bad, for the United States going back decades. The conservatives brought us religious intolerance, states’ rights, and slavery in the 1800’s. They initiated a civil war in the 1860’s which threatened to destroy the country. Conservatives gave the country a morally bankrupt Jim Crow social structure starting in the 1870’s and lasting until the 1960’s in much of the country.

Conservatives consistently give unwarranted power to big businesses, the other great evil in our country. From the corruption of the 1920’s, which led to the Great Depression to the financially and militarily immoral Reagan administration, which gave rise to the “me-first-and-screw-everyone-else” policies of the 1980’s, conservatives have torn at the basic goodness of the American people. And this is to say nothing of the current administration. It is the ultimate irony that the bad people of American politics (conservatives) want to be known as the champions of personal freedom, yet they want to control the most intimate details of our personal lives. The “freedom” they tout is the freedom to give more money to big corporations at the expense of regular Americans.

In that same time frame, I can point to no large-scale benefit brought to the country by conservatives. Of course the Standard Oil Trusts and Enrons loved them, but regular people got nothing. The overwhelming majority of Americans suffer at the hands of politically evil conservatives. While I hold a single viewpoint claimed by the conservatives (I am pro-life), I could no sooner support a conservative and the rest of their corrupt ideas than I could support a child molester who had once given a few dollars to charity. Taken as a whole, the conservative movement has damaged my workplace, my church, my planet, and my country, all of which I find unforgivable.

The conservatives have only managed to maintain control by demonizing those who oppose them. Well-meaning Americans who didn’t know better supported conservatives as an alternative to what they had been told were “evil liberals.” Now, however, there can be no doubt as to the true evil in American politics: conservatives. The left has recently shunned the term “liberal” because those on the right have made it into a pejorative. “Liberal” should no longer be a bad word. All the good that has ever been done in this country has been done by liberals. No thinking person with an ounce of decency or concern for humanity could vote for a conservative. It is time to call a spade a spade and clearly label the conservative movement as bad for America.

A person who identifies himself or herself as a conservative is allied with all the evil our country can produce. I can respect a Republican, and I do; Republicans are not the problem. I cannot respect a person who calls himself or herself a conservative with a full understanding of all that the word implies. “Conservative” is a title of disgrace and we need to treat it as such. We need to treat those who claim the title of “conservative” as we would those who claim the related titles of “thief,” “robber,” and “criminal.” “Conservative” is a bad word.

Sometimes I'm just wrong

A while back I ranted about how Arizona was going to heck in a handbasket because the new Governor was going to rubber stamp everything the nutjob legislature threw at her. She is still way too conservative for me. (Keep in mind, conservative politics is ALWAYS wrong.) However, she has drawn a line in the sand and has followed through by vetoing the budget which crushed education in AZ. I don't know how much better it will get, but she stood up to the neo-fascists and we at least have a chance to get this right.

When I'm wrong, I admit it. I was wrong about Governor Brewer. I'm not a huge fan yet, but I could be persuaded. Now, if we can just get her to veto unlimited guns in bars...