Osler's Razor

I love haiku that tells a good story, and I particularly enjoy a story I can relate to.  That's why I liked Heather Garcia's verses about one particularly gross cycle of life in Waco:

The cricket plague stinks.
Literally. Thousands of
dead ones bring a stench.

Dead is better though
than flying in attack mode
through my living room.

They reign at gas pumps
too. I do a crazy dance
to get them off me.

At last the birds come,
migrating to my rescue.
They feast on my plague.

Three cheers for the birds!
…til they take over and I
become their target.

Proposal day, I
get congratulated by
warm goo on my face.

Like a lot of other people in my vocation, this is a difficult season.  Graduation is a good-bye; it is bittersweet to see students go on, even if they are going on to great things.

For teachers, not all moments are equal, not every month is the same.  There is a strong rhythm to the year, like a roller-coater that dips and soars the same way every ride.  That is one thing I love about it, of course-- that there is that strong sense of time passing in a discernible way.  That's the way it is supposed to be, right?

Too often we only read the start of Ecclesiastes 3, and don't get to the payoff in verse 12:


² A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
³ A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
⁴ A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
⁵ A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
⁶ A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
⁷ A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
⁸ A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
⁹ What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
¹⁰ I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
¹¹ He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
¹² I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.

I was always a little confused by the claim that (the super-creepy) Ronald McDonald is "America's Favorite Hamburger Clown."  I mean, how much competition is there for that title?  I wasn't aware of any other hamburger clowns until I dredged up old memories and did some research.  Here are just three (I'm leaving out the infamous Burger Chef, who wasn't a clown but instead seemed to just be a straight-out pedophile):

Every day seems to bring a new story about the advance of ISIS forces in Iraq-- most recently, their advance on a large dam on the Euphrates, after having already seized Mosul and border crossing to Jordan and Syria.

By every account the Sunni-run ISIS is a troubling outfit-- so bad, they reportedly were kicked out of Al Queda.  Wow!  That's some bad stuff.

What should the US do, as this war takes a strange new turn where we find ourselves allied with Iran?  The most common answer seems to be something, without more specificity.

I have a different answer:  Nothing.  We should not send "advisors."  We should not send drones.  We should not supply the government.  Instead, we should learn from the futility of our involvement in foreign civil wars, only one of which (Bosnia) went very well in the end.

I am willing to listen to other views, though… what do you think we should do?

10)  The Dollar Store in the basement of the Southdale Mall
9)  Radke's (hardware and hockey stuff)
8)  The Cranky Guy Hardware Store
7)  Target
6)  Food n' Stuff
5)  Holiday Gas Station
4)  This n' That for Pets
3)  Costco
2)  Waco Drive-In Flea Market
1)  J. Press

Uh-oh.  It looks like some of this year's graduates of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern had a typo on their diploma.   Not a huge, Damn You Autocorrect type typo, but still, not so good-- they spelled the word "integrated" as "itigrated."

What's fascinating about this is that students at Medill traditionally have gotten a failing grade on any work that contains a misspelled word or grammatical error (obviously, I am not a Medill student or graduate).

As someone who is terrible at grammar but still manages to get stuff written, I have always seen this as overly harsh.  Maybe this will give them permission to loosen up a little?

Two standout haikus from last week!

First, from Christine:

1982
Giglio; Italia
Crazy in the Shores.

"The Shores" refers to Grosse Pointe Shores, where her family and mine (down the block on Colonial Rd.) watched the games on portable TVs out in screen porches.

Then this, from Ang, just because it makes so much sense:

Temper tantrum flops
could give a three-year-old a
run for his money!

For reasons having mostly to do with Bill and Jane Smith, I went to college far away from home, in the midst of a very different culture.  I arrived at William and Mary with a suitcase in one hand and a portable typewriter in the other, having flown in from Detroit.  A cab dropped me off in front of Dupont Hall after dark, and after registration had closed.  Eventually, I found someone to give me a key, and found my room.  That's when I also found my roommate, John Donohue.

He was as much of an insider as I was an outsider.  He'd gone to a big high school in Northern Virginia, W.T. Woodson.  Because it was a good school, and William and Mary a state college that has to take at least 65% Virginia residents, there were a lot of people there from his class.  John was popular, the kind of people that others called out to as you walked across campus, new as we were to Williamsburg.  I spent those first weeks in his shadow, but that was a good place to be because he was generous and welcoming.  I got to know and love the school in part because of his kindness.

Unlike me, he already had an academic passion.  He loved classic languages and literature, and was a champion at Certamen, a kind of high-school quiz bowl in Latin.  He was a goofy normal guy, who would lapse into Latin phrases at any moment, a quirk that was both charming and kind of intimidating.

We remained friends through college, and there were a fair number of misadventures, many of them late at night deep within Colonial Williamsburg.   He was good that way-- the kind of guy who had ideas, fun ideas, that weren't too dangerous.  More than once, this combination of Latin scholar/mischievousness struck me as an ideal character for a TV show; he would have fit right in with the gang on Scooby Doo.

Then I went back to Detroit, and then off to law school, and we lost touch.

The year I graduated from law school, I stumbled across the January, 1990 edition of Reader's Digest, and found the story "The Unforgettable Maureen O'Donnell," by John Donohue.  It was John's account of the Latin teacher who had nurtured his passion and whose program he had taken over.   Reading it made my heart leap-- it was the perfect outcome for the guy I knew, the one who both loved the classics and was still about 22% 16-year-old boy.   I wrote to him; he wrote back.  We kept in touch in that too-loose way that guys do, a strand easily dropped.

This past Thursday night, I was watching IPLawGuy barbecue some chicken in his back yard (apparently, his recipe is to cook it at 170 degrees until the bird hits 160, which takes about 9 hours but leaves you with some great chicken).  It was a warm-but-not-hot clear-sky dusk in Northern Virginia, the Platonic ideal of a late spring evening.   I had spent the day working hard on clemency stuff in DC (there is quite a bit of that right now), and it was a perfect end to that frenzy of activity.  Sitting there, I realized that we weren't far from where John had grown up.

Maybe, too, William and Mary had been on my mind.  I was in a conference room earlier that day, furiously making notes before giving a short presentation to about 100 representatives of advocacy groups and an advisor to President Obama, when I felt strong hands on my shoulders from behind me.  Her voice said "you know who this is," and I did.  I did not need to stand or turn; I knew that it was Dr. Joanne Braxton, and it was.  There is sometimes that bond with those who have taught you.

With all of this, John kept coming back to me.  When I was back in Minneapolis on Friday, I looked to see what John was up to; we are friends on Facebook, so that is easy to do.  What I learned was that he died earlier this year of cancer.  He left behind a wife, two children, thousands of students, and a eulogy he wrote in the too-short time between his diagnosis and his death.

He slipped away when I wasn't looking, and there is something deeply sad about that.

There has been a torrent of rain here in Minnesota, and the creek by my house is raging-- it is now a river.  It spills over the banks, wipes out gardens, and sounds like power.  It is not the gentle stone-smoother behind the church anymore.

That's what happens here sometimes, in the Spring.  The water builds up, moves fast, demands its own path as it courses around you and you must struggle to keep up.  You lose sight of things, you're distracted, and then it happens-- someone has slipped under, and you did not notice.

I'll admit that I'm not much of an expert on social media, but I don't have the repulsion to it that some people do.  I understand the objection some have, that it pulls us away from in-person interactions, but I think that may be overstated.

My latest post over at the Huffington Post is about exactly this...

In a fascinating new development, the US Patent and Trademark Office has ruled that the Washington Redskins no longer have the ability to register that name with the Office.  In short, this doesn't mean that the Redskins can't use the name-- only that if someone wants to rip off their logo, the team can't sue under that federal law which bars illegal use of a registered trademark.

Obviously, this is IPLawGuy's thing, not mine, and I am hoping that he will chime in at some point before heading out to see the Nationals lose this evening.

It had never occurred to me that the way to confront this problem was through trademark law, and I really admire the lawyering...

Stanley Marsh 3, the West Texas eccentric who commission the Ant Farm to create the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, died yesterday.  An heir to an oil and gas fortune, he was a man of many antics (and apparently a few crimes, too).

The first time I saw the Cadillac Ranch, I just happened to be driving that way.  It caught the corner of my eye and I realized what it was.  Like a lot of things in West Texas, it was as much as anything a frame for the sky.  There is nothing like a West Texas sky.

Not so long ago, IPLawGuy and I made a trip out to West Texas-- El Paso, Alpine, and Marfa.  We saw many odd things (though not the Cadillac Ranch; we didn't go that far North).  IPLG had purchased "The Greatest Hits of Norman Greenbaum," and we listened to that and drove in the high desert, watching the sky as it trailed off to forever.

That was one great crop of haiku last week!  I think I was most jealous of the Medievalist:

Forty Baylor Bears,
Exploring the Alhambra,
Spain in the summer.

Though, to be honest, the Spanish are probably a little grumpy after their 5-1 World Cup thumping by the Netherlands, so I might want to lifeguard instead, like Casablanca fan:

Lifeguard at the pool
Tanned, flirting but ready
Save lives in a trice

... or "anonymous"--

I am a lifeguard.
Summer job: a perfect fit.
Meyers/Briggs says so.

Meanwhile, Ang's warning on movie popcorn bears hearing, as does the idea of staying away from Renee's sister:


A fellow waitress
Lobbed saltshaker at my head.
My testy sister.

I'm not spending a lot of time these days watching "Glee," but for some reason yesterday I found myself thinking about this version they did of Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal.

There is something about the orchestration that I really love.  It's a collaboration with a group called 2Cellos, which is, uh, two guys playing the cello.  For whatever reason, I have a strong reaction to string instruments played this way, with aggression and purpose.

My favorite in this genre has long been Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #3:



Do you like it?

A deep well of love
Mothers believe in their kids
Time and time again.

It's true.  They do believe, even when we say we will be there by 4 and that turns out to be an incorrect estimate, due to the interstate problem...

Razorite Craig A. is one of my favorite people.  In the last few years, I have gotten to see a whole new part of him emerge as he has started writing regularly for his local paper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch.  His columns are consistently challenging, moral complex, and genuine.  

I guess that it should not have surprised me that he has this talent.  He has always (well, since college, when I met him) been an inspiration and mentor to me, and it is exactly those things that are at the heart of his writing that I have always seen in his words to me and the way he conducts his life.

As I get older, I see the people around me trying new things, becoming deeper and better.  It's a wonderful thing, and very often I see it inspired by the spirit we celebrate today, on Pentecost.

That is all.

Maybe I went a little overboard yesterday about C. Everett Koop... or maybe I didn't go overboard enough!  It started me thinking about unsung heroes and surprising figures... and I think that should be our haiku topic for the day.  You have wide latitude here-- it doesn't have to be a public figure, or even someone you know much about-- just someone who has surprised you in a good way. 

I'll go first:

C. Everett Koop
Bow tie, amish beard, but a
Doctor most of all.

Now you go!  I have high hopes for this one...

In 1981, Ronald Reagan chose a renowned pediatric surgeon named C. Everett Koop to be his Surgeon General.  It was a controversial choice, fiercely opposed by liberals.  In part, this was based on the same thing that had drawn Reagan's attention:  A series of presentations with theologian Francis Schaeffer which challenged the ethics of legal abortion.  Ted Kennedy condemned the choice, and the New York Times titled its editorial in opposition "Dr. Unqualified."  Comedians made fun of his Old Testament look and the stern demeanor that seemed to match his worldview.

Everyone was wrong-- Reagan was wrong, Kennedy was wrong, and the New York Times was wrong.  Even the comedians were wrong.  Koop turned out to be the most influential Surgeon General in history.  He fought, and largely won, a battle to establish the truth about the dangers of smoking, despite the efforts of tobacco-state legislators.
Perhaps most importantly, he convinced the nation to set aside prejudice and attack the problem of AIDS with real vigor.  In 1986, Koop (who died last year) issued a blunt, true, and surprising report on AIDS that pressed for more research and condom use, and rejected the tactics of mandatory testing or quarantine.  What jumped out at me was this section of the report:

From the start, this disease has evoked highly emotional and often irrational responses.  Much of the reaction could be attributed to fear of the many unknowns surrounding a new and very deadly disease.  This fear was compounded by personal feeling regarding the groups of people primarily affected—homosexual men and intravenous drug abusers.  Rumors and misinformation spread rampantly and became as difficult to combat as the disease itself.  It is time to put self-defeating attitudes aside and recognize that we are fighting a disease, not people.

I was researching Koop in the course of writing a law review article for Rutgers.  My thesis is that we would have been better off if we had treated crack more like we did its contemporary health crisis, AIDS-- with a focus on systems analysis and problem-solving rather than moral condemnation and punishment.  Koop put it better than I could.  With one simple word substitution, I could make the last sentence quoted above my own thesis:  "It is time to put self-defeating attitudes aside and recognize that we are fighting a market, not people."

It's a wonderful thing to stumble across a new hero, and nothing less than that happened to me yesterday; thank you, Dr. Koop.

Well, I certainly got a lot of good advice from people in response to my post yesterday about musical theater.  RRL suggested I check out the Book of Mormon (above).  Gavin wisely pointed me to the Hennepin Theater Trust as a source for tickets to good shows just a few blocks away.  Also, some anonymous guy pointed out that I listed the Lion King twice.  Oops.

Perhaps most intriguing, though, was this message from my Mom:

In the words of King Lear, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

When you were a senior in high school, we took the whole family to the Fisher Theater to see "Les Miserables." It is my all time favorite show, and I was in seventh heaven. Evidently you were not! You did see it, though.

Ouch!  She is, of course, right, and you gotta respect the Shakespeare quote...

1)  Hair
2)  West Side Story
3)  Fiddler on the Roof
4)  Annie
5)  Wicked
6)  Cats
7)  Cabaret
8)  The Music Man
9)  Lion King
10) Oliver
11) Chicago
12)  Annie Get Your Gun
13)  < Whatever this is < (it involves a cow)
14)  Porgy and Bess
15)  Brigadoon
16)  A Chorus Line
17)  Fame
18)  42nd Street
19)  Kiss Me Kate
20)  Grease
21)  Phantom of the Opera
22)  Pippin
23)  The Lion King
24)  Gypsy
25)  South Pacific
26)  Jesus Christ Superstar
27)  Godspell
28)  Showboat
29)  Evita
30)  Mamma Mia!
31)  Carousel
32)  Rent
33)  Avenue Q
34)  My Fair Lady
35)  La Cage Aux Folles
36-100)  Pretty much every other musical ever

Musicals I have seen:

1)  Schoolhouse Rock, Jr.
2)  Oklahoma
3)  Spinal Tap
4)  Les Miserables, at the Fisher Theater, with my Mom (per the comments)

Today I preach at St. Stephens at Edina at 8 and 10.  Here is part of what I am going to say (as previously posted at HuffPo):

Christianity is at its best when it offers a way to see and understand the most profound human conditions: joy, love, fellowship, reconciliation. This week before Pentecost offers a view of a nearly universal heartache -- the pain of being left.

Jesus had returned from the dead, through the miracle at the heart of the church, and was talking to his disciples. They think, hope, that he is back to stay. "Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" they ask. They think they may be on the verge of an even greater victory.

They are let down, hard. Rather than leading them, Jesus leaves them. They never see him again. They are left looking up toward heaven. There is something so stark and universal about that image, that picture of the people who were left. It is the family gathered in the kitchen after a cruel and sudden death, the woman at an airport sitting in her car after someone she loves has flown off, the stifled heartbreak when a child leaves home. There is a quietness suffused with deep sadness in those moments.

To the disciples, it must have been crushing to see Jesus go. Think of Peter -- he had left his wife, his job, everything, to follow someone he had just met, and the experience had transformed him. He had spent years following Jesus through the desert, hanging on every word, sharing great and terrible days, and then he was left there, looking up to a blank sky. His feelings must have been complex as he remembered not only the victories but the mistakes such as his denial of Jesus during his trial. Haven't we all had that moment when someone has left by death or choice and we are left broken and confused?

Perhaps that is what this week is -- that time of brokenness. At one level, it is odd that the Holy Spirit did not appear as Jesus left. Instead, God constructed this story so that there was this gap, this time of bereft people left behind after Jesus leaves but before Pentecost and the arrival of that Holy Spirit.

It might be that it is exactly that brokenness that allows the Holy Spirit in. A mistake of modern Christianity is often that we present ourselves as people who are perfect, unblemished. It is simply not true. We are broken, often by are own mistakes. We have been left, and sometimes we were the ones who left. The church is a gathering of the unperfected, and an honesty about those broken places may well be what we need the most. There has been, and will come, a time when we look up and wonder what just happened. What Christianity offers is the hope of something better beyond that moment.