Semester ending

Nobody but me ever sees this blog, and that's fine. Maybe I'll send a link to Melissa or Joel.

Got the second Covid vaccination a couple of weeks ago, and it went very well, as soon as I was officially able, I took off for the gym, and I'm very pleased with the results. The year of inactivity gave me a bulging belly and very soggy, flabby arms. Two and a half weeks of gymnasium, and I'm seeing visible results. Nice!

I started a blog for Grace Haven refugees, and after a couple of weeks with really great readership, it's dwindled to nothing. Oh well. Anyhow, one specific reflection was the weeks and weeks of counseling from people like Linda Kelso. There seem to be dozens of Ashland Seminary graduates with an MA in counseling. Looking at the Ashland curriculum, it's really just an introduction to the topic, and I'm aghast that these people thought they could help me work through chronic depression issues. I'm also sad that I never went to anyone else. Ashland really favors the now-disused Rogerian counseling model:

• Counselor: What brings you here today?
• Me: I'm sad, lonely, and depressed.
• Counselor: You're sad, lonely, and depressed.
• Me: Yup.
• Counselor: What do you think you could do about it?
• Me: Maybe I could try to find more friends.
• Counselor: Maybe you could try to find more friends.
• Me: Yup.
• Counselor: Well, our time's up for the day. That will be $100.

I figure I can do that with a pen and notebook, and not spend so much money. I found a very interesting YouTube discussion of the sources of depression—unresolved anger issues. I think I'll get out a pen and notebook and start working through those. That looks very promising.

War on Coal

When I drive back to Washington, I go through the mountains of Pennsylvania, and I often see signs demanding that Obama stop his war on coal. (Our president must be a very busy man to do all the things the Ultra-Right accuses him of doing.) On the same journeys, I run through a lot of areas where we are fracking for natural gas.

The problem with coal is not that the president hates it. The problem is that it is (to quote someone who was writing about steam locomotives) an ugly, dirty fuel. People die to get it out of the ground. It needs to be transported in huge trains. When it's burned, it releases sulfur and mercury and a lot of soot. And finally, of course, it leaves ash which must be disposed. It corrodes its boilers and generally causes a mess. None of those problems occur with natural gas. Yes, the fracking process is questionable, but once the stuff is out of the ground, it's a lot easier (and cheaper) to live with than coal, not to mention less likely to injure the people who must live near the electric plants.

At the moment, we also are being told that Obama is making war on the fracking process. Is this the same as raising legitimate concerns about safety?

Now we have the Charleston, WV issue of a mystery chemical that's used to clean coal getting into the water supply. I'm just waiting to see how this one plays out. According to one source I read, this chemical is quite obscure and nobody knows what it does to people when it gets into the water supply. Given the far right's tendency to personalize everything and to make every problem the result of an evil decision on the part of the President, I suppose they will have him kicking a hole in the holding tank the chemical came from. But won't that boost the fortunes of natural gas?

No, the real war here is between an older, more problematic technology and a newer one that promises to be cheaper. That's all.

In spite of

One of my Facebook contacts posted one of his inevitable comments today about true patriots opposing taxation. I was about to call him to task on this, but I went to www.dictionary.com to look up the definition of "patriot." There it was, the second definition:

a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government.

That got me to thinking. So a true conservative patriot, by this usage, is someone who thinks the government of our country is evil. I guess in light of the the first definition

a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion

this means defending the actual land mass, or perhaps the assorted like-minded people, against the USA and the Constitution.

Perhaps I think too much, but again I remembered the Conservative Bible Project, a movement to use public opinion and crowd-sourcing (presumably from the right kind of people, not those evil liberals) to rescue the Bible from liberal bias. Presumably, Jesus will turn out to be an anti-government capitalist who favors hunkering down in one's fortress and accumulating weapons. We will discover that Jesus was actually on the side of the Pharisees, not of the woman caught in adultery. We will discover that the basic gospel message was all about accumulating wealth. And in the garden Peter will be commended for cutting off the man's ear.

It's simply a question of who is the boss. The true conservative says, "I, myself, am the boss, the standard of the Universe."

Right Wing Rants

I guess it's the cold weather that has everyone inside and playing on the Internet. And everyone is getting cabin fever—which brings out the worst us, especially in the right wing Facebook people, already a gang that can pick a fight over the most trivial comment.

Anyhow, so far:

• A friend posted a picture of an electric lineman (we used to call them "stump-jumpers"), and I made the comment that they are worth every penny we pay them. This (obviously) led to a right-wing blast saying that raising the minimum wage is a Very Bad Thing, implying that the poor stump-jumper either doesn't deserve all the money we pay him to climb that pole in sub-zero weather or that somehow his wage got cut when the guy at the McDonald's counter got more money.
• I made a comment about how wild things were at Kroger the day before the big freeze. Obviously this led to a rather elaborate thing about the government crashing. I should have seen that one coming.
• Slate magazine ran a picture of people making snowmen in Washington, DC. That led inexorably to a comment about how the cold snap is Obama's fault, followed by a response that all politicians are terrible.
• And, right on schedule, one of my Facebook contacts posted his weekly "everyone stockpile your guns and ammunition" posts. The government is about to fail, he says, so apparently we need to be ready to murder a lot of people.

I draw several conclusions from my two days indoors playing on the computer:

1. Ultra-conservatives are always in a terrible mood, always ready to pick fights. This is a special reason to fear their "everyone get your guns" strategy.
2. No innocent comment, jest, or observation is immune from being politicized, even if it requires a total change of subject.
3. Facebook posts are normally made in anger.
4. I was wise to set this blog so responses are always moderated.

Vestry

I've been nominated for the Vestry at St. Matthew's. Because we don't do run-off elections, it's 99% certain that I'll be elected.

I was pondering this turn of events. I've been at St. Matthew's for about three years, and I'm now being asked to help lead things. I've taught Confirmation classes, run the website, and organized the youth group. Next Sunday, I'll be one of the people who counts the offering and prepares the bank deposit. I was at my previous church from 1977 to about 2010, about 33 years, and I got to teach a Sunday school class and do the PowerPoint slides.

Now, to be fair, the role of the Vestry is fairly narrow in an Episcopal church. The priest is responsible for everything related to worship and for the spiritual formation of the members. The Vestry worries about more "secular" stuff. (What will we do about fixing the roof? Can we afford to hire a secretary? How are we going to resist the plea to hang sappy religious art all over the newly-painted walls of the Parish Hall?) Vestry members are elected for a three-year term and usually do most of their meetings after church on Sunday. By contrast, at my previous church, the elders serve for life (which usually amounts to seven or eight years before they quit and leave the church) and they are responsible for pretty much everything. They do a lot of micro-managing, including a lot of conflict resolution between church members, and they have to run every small group in the church. It's a lot of work, and I am not surprised that they get burnt out. Maybe I'm glad I was never called on for that task.

Anyhow, soon I won't be able to complain about what "those guys" have done because I will be one of "those guys."

Whom should I shoot?

One of my Facebook contacts mentioned a comment by an ultra-conservative newspaper, saying that we should all stock up on guns and ammo because of the coming government crash.

(Parenthetical personal note: I remember my grandmother's second husband saying the same thing when I was a boy. He wasn't into guns, but he went out and bought a new 1965 Buick that he couldn't afford because after the government crash, we wouldn't be able to get good new cars. He also buried $2500 in Silver Certificate dollar bills because the Federal Reserve Notes would be worthless. Alas, the ground behind his Pennsylvania Avenue, Mansfield, house was pretty soggy so he ended up with some very expensive compost.)

Anyhow, this "stock up on guns" comment raises two very important questions: who will we have to shoot, and how many of them will we have to shoot?

There are exactly two possibilities. Either the government will crash or it won't.

If the government doesn't crash, presumably we'll be shooting government agents, either police or military, or perhaps both. These are the totally evil people who stole the country from us by the unfair strategy of getting more votes, so the "real" Americans (uneducated white men) aren't running things any more. There is one main problem with getting into a shootout with the government. They always win. It's pretty much impossible for one person to have enough ammunition to shoot and kill absolutely every police officer and military person the government can throw at you. And they aren't going to negotiate a truce after you've killed a couple of cops. They will keep coming because they have the funny idea that the point of having laws is to protect the majority of the country from people like you.

If the government does crash, apparently we'll be shooting our neighbors, who all want the drinking water and Power Bars we have hoarded. Maybe you'll be able to kill all the pathetic begging children and the little old ladies knocking at the door, but eventually the same scenario occurs. If everyone has guns to attempt to steal all of your Power Bars, you just don't have enough ammunition to kill them all. Though I suppose that after you've done away with a few hundred, the pile of bodies around your home will be sort of a barricade and a warning. Anyhow, there you'll sit, drinking your stored water and eating your Power Bars and wondering, "Now what?"

And that brings me around to the Christmas part of all this. Isn't it kind of odd that the right-wing Christian extremists who want us to buy guns to defend ourselves and our possessions claim to follow the Prince of Peace, the one who wanted us to share our possessions with the poor?