Osler's Razor

Bonjour, Américains stupides qui sont amoureux de "Kim" Kardashian! Nous, à l'académie française de l'agriculture, avons acheté ce blog de M. Osler, qui était très triste au sujet du haïku de Nick la semaine dernière:

Quand vous êtes assez grand
Ennuyer les autres est mauvais
Mais le dédain est pire.

Nous avons payé Osler en vin rouge et cravates. S'il vous plaît préparez-vous pour une calvalcade de la culture française ici au rasoir d'Osler!

Last night I saw a movie that featured lots of Michael Cera driving around New York in a yellow Yugo. They were a pretty fascinating/awful invention-- a Yugoslavian version of the Fiat 127, which wasn't a great car to begin with.

It was an interesting experiment though, and promised something good-- to bring a reasonably-priced car to Americans who otherwise would end up with pretty bad used cars.

In the current market, one has to wonder why there are no Chinese-made cars sold in the US (other than a few sneaky Volvos). Not that I think that would be a good thing, necessarily... it just seems odd. Various outlets have blamed quality problems and the competitive market, but those seem to be challenges that Chinese manufacturers have overcome in other product areas.

One of my guilty pleasures is reading the Letters to the Editor in the Waco Tribune-Herald. Many are thoughtful and clear-- my own favorites are the ones that thanks some community member for a kindness of some kind (one of the great traits of Texans is a general willingness to help a stranger in need).

Then there are the unhinged missives, which come from both sides but most often sound like a Fox News commentator on a bender. For example, here is one from earlier this week:


So many questions!!!!

-- John McCain is a Democrat?
-- Robert DeNiro et al. are socialists?
-- Socialists want to tax the middle class to finance a tax cut for the rich?

At any rate, this is probably a good insight into how many people in our country see things right now. I'm not quite sure what can be done about that.

Yesterday, I came across a fascinating and deeply troubling story on CNN.  Workers excavating ground for a school came across 95 unmarked graves.

Experts have concluded that the bodies were the remains of former slaves who were forced-- after emancipation--to work in the "convict-leasing system" that created an incentive to convict black men of crimes, so they then could be leased out by the state to work under horrific conditions. The Sugar Land plantations that leased prisoners were so bad they gained the nickname "The Hellhole on the Brazos."

We don't have that form of prisoner leasing any more, not exactly. We do pay prisoners shockingly low wages (ie, 47 cents an hour) to work in difficult conditions. We do create incentives to lock up far more people than we need to. We do disabuse the idea that what we value is liberty and equality in the way we construct our criminal justice system.

Tomorrow I get to talk about that, just a little. I look forward to it.

Daniel Price, are you worried about your daughter at all? Based on your haiku:



Gavin had my favorite:



While this one from Christine made me hungry:



And Arce had a recipe, of sorts:



But it was the Medievalist who wrote the one I will remember:

On Friday night, I headed over to the Bryant-Lake Bowl, wove my way through the restaurant and the bowling alley back to the theater, and saw Sherry Jo Ward perform her one-woman show "STIFF."

I know Sherry from my Baylor days, and she and her husband Thomas lived here in Minneapolis later (they are back in Texas now). Sherry has contracted a very rare neuromuscular condition called Stiff Persons Syndrome, which (according to the National Institute of Neurological disorders and Stroke) is marked by ever-increasing muscle stiffness and acute sensitivity to certain stimuli. The play recounts the physical and emotional effects of this change in her life.

It's very real. And brave. We so rarely put our most vulnerable selves out there, and this play was about a compounded vulnerability.

But what a reaction to a tragedy! To reject the impulse to crawl under the porch like a sick cat and instead take all that comes with an illness and put it out for the public to see, to invite them to compare their own misfortunes to this one. And everyone in the audience-- the other people with SPS, the old friends from Sherry's time in Minnesota, the people who wandered in from the street-- likely did exactly that. That's what art does so often: it says "Here's something. What about you?"

It made my own fears of aging shift. Yeah, I notice things-- that when I run just a few miles I feel it, that I need reading glasses more often than not. But I'm complaining? Really?

Brutal honesty about one's own challenges is not really a brutality. It is a gift.

It's true... a lot of these I didn't get.

I was kind of fascinated by a recent report in the Waco Tribune-Herald, titled Study: City Should Push Grocery Store, Walkways, Restaurants Downtown.

The gist of the piece is that the city hired a consultant to conduct a 19-month study of downtown Waco and how the city uses special tax funds that are used to support businesses (and sometimes the Baylor football program). In short, this extensive study concluded with the following recommendations:

-- The money should not be used to fund apartments near Baylor or developments next to the interstate
-- Rather, the tax funds should be used to lure a grocery store, a three-star hotel, and certain other businesses to the downtown area
-- Also, the city should consider "walkways" in the downtown area

The last one really fascinated and confused me. It could mean one of two things, after all.

First, they may be envisioning the type of second-floor walkways that have turned downtown Minneapolis into some kind of wonderful Habitrail for humans, allowing for a second city to exist superimposed over the first one, essentially. That would be kinda cool, but weird. After all, Minneapolis has those because of winters that polar bears dream of.

The second conception would simply be adding walkways-- crosswalks, for example-- at ground level. That would actually be a great new focus for Waco, a city that is positively hostile to pedestrians in some areas. For example, when I lived there, a theater sat just a few hundred yards from my house. Yet, there was literally no way to walk there, because a big busy road (Valley Mills) lay between me and the theater, with no pedestrian walkways to be found to cross to the other side.

Either way, I am for the walkways!

I asked for it-- I got it!

IPLawGuy tagged the horrible comedy "Splitting Heirs":



Meanwhile, the Medievalist identified a very weird movie indeed, "Howard the Duck":


DiaDaKendell... Is there really a Toxic Avenger?


And Steve wisely chose the worst of the "Ape" movies:

I was crossing the border into Canada yesterday (that's something people in my part of the world do periodically), and had the following exchange with the Canadian border guard:

Him: "Where are you from?"
Me: "I live in Minnesota. [long pause]. Minneapolis."

He took a cursory look at my passport--which clearly describes my home as being in Edina, not Minneapolis-- and waved me on.

As I drove away, I realized that I had been asked exactly one question, and had answered it both awkwardly and incorrectly (since I really do live in Edina, not Minneapolis). Yet, there were no consequences whatsoever.

How many times have I been this lucky? The answer is, a lot. An awful lot. And the collective grace of those who let my fumbling and mistakes go is what has let my life be whole and fulfilling.

I realize that the near-miss on identifying the location of my home may not seem like too big of a deal, but that is only true if one receives grace. Consider the other option; if the discrepancy had been seen as suspicious, and I was sent to secondary to fumble around on a bunch of other questions... and who knows what happens then? Perhaps if I was of a different ethnicity or spoke with an accent, the outcome would have been very different (since racism and bias are not limited to our side of the border). Privilege is a thing, and we don't always know when we benefit-- and when others do not.

But, that bit of mercy it is not an isolated incident, and usually it does not have the tinge of possible bias. I saw my parents yesterday, too-- sat on the porch of their house and talked and drank coffee in the cool of the morning. How many times, how many dozen, how many hundreds, thousands, did they make a mental note of my mistake or a mis-statement and just... let it go or we’re gentle in correcting me? And those others, many of them, who have done the same? I say and do stupid things, and have for a lifetime. Those who love me and a lot of people who don't have often been gentle with me when they did not have to be gentle.

We think of grace as this occasional grand gesture, the elaborate pardon of sin, but in our real lives grace is almost constant, barely noticeable, almost a part of the air around us. We breath it. And yet it is that-- the things people choose not to judge-- that makes life, and especially a good life, possible.

For your entertainment and edification: The story of one of the stranger corners of my home state.

Some terrible movies are popular; others go straight to landfill. But we have all seen them at one time or another. Let's haiku about that this week! Here, I will go first:

Oh, "Barry Lindon"
Will this movie ever end?
Glaciers run faster.

Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable formula and have some fun!

I know there is a lot I could write about today. The political churn has been just ferocious of late.

But... sometimes, I just don't have it in me. Like the chained Baylor mascot forced to drink Dr. Pepper in this photo, sometimes I just want to stop and do something else.

Like a car trip! Or maybe some time up on Osler Island. Or perhaps I will read a book. But not about politics; something where this one guy thinks he is way over this girl, but then she shows up again out of nowhere, but then there are some issues with his job where he has to go to some unexpected locale. Or maybe I'll read the paper. Actually, that won't help much.

Or, there is always watching "Gilmore Girls" re-runs. Except for local Stars Hollow elections, politics seems to play no role at all in their lives...

Photo by Dan Collison

On Sunday, I became the first holder of the Ruthie Mattox chair of preaching at 1st Covenant Church in Minneapolis. It is really an honor, both because of the church and because of Ruthie.

1st Covenant is a remarkable place. It has gone through a series of transitions, and it is now thriving as something dynamic and open and Christian. Much of that has to do with the leadership of Dan and Holly Collison, but the soul of the church extends beyond them.

Ruthie is someone who has been through all of those transitions. She first came to that church when she was 3, which was 72 years ago. Since then, she has been the person who makes churches work-- the one who serves on committee and makes sure the tables are set up for the lunch and looks after kids and worries about who is not there. My whole life, I have counted on people like her to keep things going, and rarely even thought about it.

Her vocation-- and it was a vocation, in the best sense-- was nursing, and she excelled at that in a variety of situations. All of them, though, involved healing and love.  Ruthie did not endow the chair with money; rather, she endowed this church with her whole being.

Nursing is like criminal law in that much of it is managing tragedy. But in my work, tragedy is often seen at a certain remove;  sometimes it is just reading letters from prison. Ruthie held babies who were dying. That is a quantum of tragedy I could not bear for long.

How lucky am I, to have my name associated with this church and this person?

Recent clemency recipient Alice Johnson sent me a video to use as part of my sermon last Sunday, and it is wonderful! When it is available, I will post a link here to the full sermon with a little story about Ruthie Mattox...

Good haiku last week, on a confusing subject!

Silly American gave us the video above to go with her poem (and I LOVE the totally-unremarked-upon appearance by Smokey the Bear at the end), and Jill Scoggins gave us this:




I know that it is true, too-- I have the mistakes to prove.

And CTL's, too, had the same kind of wisdom, really:

Yesterday, I went to the air show up in Duluth, where stunt planes and fighter jets did all kinds of crazy things. There were two things that struck me.

One was that, like so many other public events, the repeated theme of nearly every act was "a salute to the military" in one form or another. Eventually, if we honor one sector of our society over all others as singularly valorous, it will come to define our culture. There are nations like that-- North Korea is one-- but the United States has not been one of them. I fear that constantly wreathing the military with indiscriminate honors will make us less thoughtful about war and all that comes with it, while at the same time it diminishes the meaning of any genuine tribute.

The second was this singular moment: The Air Force Thunderbirds were performing, and four of them were executing an elegant and remarkable diamond formation as they traveled straight up, in front of and to the left of the crowd on the flightline. As we all were looking in that direction, a fifth jet came in unseen-- fast and low directly over the crowd from behind-- and the sound and realization of it made everyone jump. That happens, over and over, doesn't it? We are looking at something, admiring it from afar and BOOM... something else, close but unobserved, explodes into view.

Today, I am giving a sermon, and an important one. I'll report back on that later...

President Trump has begun a program of raising tariffs on foreign goods, threatening the outbreak of a trade war. Which means that finally the Smoot-Hawley Tariff disaster is getting some attention again!

Here is what happened then:

-- After the market crash of 1929, Republicans in Congress began calling for tariffs on foreign goods
-- Reluctantly, President Hoover (who knew better) signed the new law
-- The result was a hastening of the Great Depression.

Of course, you know... history.

It's not that our current political maelstrom (whether you like it or not) isn't significant; rather, it's that we have almost always been in some kind of mess politically.

In my clemency clinic, in the course of explaining the Nixon pardon, I find that I have to go back and review exactly what happened in Watergate. It is shocking: The Attorney General of the United States coordinated the criminal break-in of the opposing party's headquarters and was convicted and imprisoned as a result. The President of the United States lied about it, and resigned before being impeached. The Vice-President who ascended to the presidency, Gerald Ford, was never elected to that position; he was appointed after the resignation of Nixon's VP, Spiro Agnew, who was facing bribery, conspiracy, and tax charges.

That's a mess.

Let's haiku about other mayhems today-- political, personal, whatever! I'll go first:

The chopper awaits
And off goes the President
The stench remained.

Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable formula and have some fun!

The benefits of industrialization go largely to the wealthy and the new middle class that industrialization hopefully produces. The costs- as usual-- will be borne by the poor.

I think this matters; it is a tragedy that will play out in my lifetime. But I worry that even in functional democracies (like ours), those who will be most affected by climate change are not a significant force on environmental issues-- at least not enough to elect those who would make dramatic changes.

What do you think?

This Sunday, I've got a big event: I'm giving a sermon at 9:30 in the morning at First Covenant Church/Minneapolis (all are welcome-- directions here).  The amazing Holly Collison will be providing the music for the service.

What makes it an even bigger day for me is that I'll be inducted as the first holder of the Ruth E. Mattox Chair of Preaching at that church. They are naming it after someone important, the kind of person who too rarely is recognized for the role they play in making the world a better place. Here is how she is described in the program:

Ruth Mattox has been a lifelong member of First Covenant Church who embodies the best of the church over time and through its most epic cycles of renewal: a passion to explore new ideas, a commitment to connecting Christian faith to everyday life, and a steadfast willingness to lead a courageous life of love for Christ and on behalf of others. 


Ruth is a nurse and has travelled the world as a humanitarian worker. She has a photo album filled with images of over 80 babies that she has fostered in their most vulnerable moments of early life. And, Ruth has always loved outstanding preaching in worship, as well, considering it an essential task in community and to inspire Christ followers to action. 


The Ruth. E. Mattox Chair of Preaching shall be appointed to women and men with demonstrated commitments of bridging their Christian faith to real life and courageously on behalf of others. They will bring a high level of skill to the preaching task, and yet do so for the purpose of leading the congregation into the world with humble generosity.

If you can, please come!

So, Gavin nailed an essential truth of summer with his haiku:

Every town has her
The lifeguard boys would “drown” for
Wendy Peffercorn.