Enthusiasts

After finally getting the great "ohmyGoshweNeeditYesterday" project completed (as far as I know), I finally started digging deeper into all that 18th c. reading I've been collecting of late. I finished Common Sense last weekend, but one little pamphlet was just about perfect for the couple hours between work and bed -

The Indwelling of the Spirit, the common Privilege of all Believers,
a sermon given by George Whitefield in 1739. (replica pamphlet) (html version)

It begins slowly and methodically, building a theological case - but the last quarter builds to quite the emotional climax. I can only imagine what it must have sounded like coming from a man as gifted with oratory as he was said to be. Certainly, the root of what we'd recognize now as American Evangelicalism stands out bright and clear.

(The timing to having just read Common Sense was accidental, but fortuitous - you can definitely see strains of Whitefield running all through Patrick Henry, and no wonder.)

Which Founders we pay attention to - and what aspects of their character - certainly shifts over the years, as does what we think of them. I don't know if it's just what I've been paying attention to, or a shift in the larger zeitgeist of our time, but it certainly seems to be a trend on the rise.


So far, I think that's a good thing.
At the very least, it's probably well past time for the wheel to take another turn.

Dear client...

In the event you're wondering why the phone's turned off and I'm not answering email, here it is.

If you need something. ..
And I know you need something..
And you know I know you need something. ..

.. and I've agreed to do another frickin' all nighter to make sure you get it as soon as humanly possible...


..... know that answering phone calls or emails asking "is it ready yet?" means it takes longer to get it done.

sheesh. sleepytime.


(and to everyone who's been patient waiting on me to get emails or calls answered... that's why. Over the hump thought I think.)

Tuition payment

In conjunction with a long-delayed and much-enjoyed family visit, we just wrapped up the most wonderful tour of early (Southern) American sites, mostly centering on the Revolutionary era all up the Shenandoah from Appalachia to Williamsburg. From recordings of folks pickin' up a storm on handmade gourd banjos to 3-view measured photos of joinery to a notebook full of comments, it's been a "class" experience not to forget.

The high point for me was certainly the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia - especially the Ulster farmstead. Now *that* was a delight. Williamsburg, well... it was much more impressive to see, if not as homey. And then as now, the shopping in the city is a fair sight better.

I'd been saving for months for the trip.. both for getting there, admissions, and so forth - but also for goodies to bring home. I'll probably be a year in working my way through it all - lots of new books, a sewing project or three, some tools and toys..

Maybe some people can gain that understanding of an era just from reading about it. I can't.

I need to feel it.. to walk touch worn oak and carved stone, to stare in awed shock at the walls of Jefferson's study, to pull a full kettle across the hearth or try to force just one more ball down a fouled longrifle barrel. If it's not a visceral experience, it's so much harder to try and make honest sense of.

That's part of why of all the goodies, the best I think are the reprints of contemporary documents - Thomas Paine's Common Sense, a reprint of a Virginia newspaper in which some of our ancestors got their first look at the complete text of that document that changed the course of the world..

"When in the course of human events...."

Also some sermons forming part of the zeitgeist of the era, and all matter of other ephemera from the Williamsburg print shop. There's just something humbling about reading those words that moved our ancestors with such fire, in much the same form as they saw them. One may never be able to step twice into the same river... but it certainly doesn't hurt to stop and check the map a bit.

It was a different world... strikingly so in some ways. Surprisingly modern in others. But there's sure something to be said for a 2-week immersion program. This has been awesomely fun. :)


I confess, my bank account is still stinging a bit. But then I think.. compared to the per-credit-hour costs from college once upon a time? And books? When I compare money spent for what I learned.. and will continue to learn..

...this was a bargain.

Now. Back to the books.

"So I don't mean to be offensive..."

.. says my friend, who has lived in a number of nations prior to moving to Alaska. "... But it seems to me a great deal of American culture boils down to 'sod off, you can't tell me what to do!'.

"Oh.. yes, absolutely." this is supposed to be offensive?

"And better to head off into the wilderness than continue to put up with it, " she continues.

"Yep! And the corollary..... that if you insist and keep following me, I'll bury a freakin' hatchet in your head."

"....."







I love my captain country. :)

Hidden neighbors.

Wow.

via Marko.

I can only imagine it would be all the more poignant knowing Berlin.


Once upon a time, Daddy took me to a Civil War battlefield. I fear I can't recall which, other than a stone bridge crossed a river, and to the right of that stone bridge, just as you crossed onto it, was a tree. And that very tree, the crook of its branches just so - was very much recognizable in a painting from the era in a nearby museum. To know that selfsame same living thing had been there for that day was just.. heartbreaking, really.

It does make the past more real. Part of me wonders what it must be like to speak with them. Part fears what they'd say.

Out and about.

Sorry for letters unanswered.. today Miz D and I attended Arctic Thunder at Elmendorf, then after a wonderful dinner went to work on her plane. Well, she worked on her plane. I just held stuff and kept her company. :)

The wing actually looks like an honest-to-Gosh wing now, she's almost ready to cover it!
Of course, that means she'll be flying home soon. :(

Anyhow.. Arctic Thunder. It lives up to its name... earplugs. Bring earplugs.

We got an inside tour of an AWACS plane - very cool! The consoles look like something out of Star Trek. (The 1979 Star Trek, that is... yikes. Can we fire some TSA folks and get these guys some hardware manufactured in the last, oh.... decade or two?) Still.. can't deny they get awesome results out of what they have.

We also got to see some of the ground vehicles they said are phasing out the HUMVEEs in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't even want to think about the fuel bill for those beasts, but I have to admit.. I'm feeling less worried for my brother about to ship off for Afghanistan. I do confess, those are some tax dollars I don't begrudge in the slightest, if they keep him and his in one piece.

What most impressed me though - more than anything else - was the quality of the people we spoke with. I know, I know.. there's dufuses and jerks in every walk of life, in every profession. And yet, to a person - the men and women I spoke with were in courteous professionalism, in their technical precision when answering a question, in their combination of the best of "jock" constitution and can-do, and "nerd" technological understanding and creativity - universally exceptional.

I've known many a person who could meet one or another of those qualities.. but finding them all in a single person - much less a a community ... that's something to see.

I think it was after seeing the B-52 demonstration, I couldn't help but thinking...

Good Lord, the amount of devastation and human loss the machinery just on this field can wreck is mindboggling... and that thought was followed immediately by thank God it's these people here entrusted with it.


So, to the vets out there, one and all.. thank you.
We all talk about the loss and risk, the broken bodies and separated families. But for what it takes to make you, you - the character and ability I saw I know can not born cheaply or easily. So .. thank you. Thanks for the long dull hours of waiting, the late night cram sessions or night hikes, the forgone ice cream and the early morning runs. Thanks for the countless parade of little things stacked on little things that have made you so sharp.

Truly, I don't think we deserve you. But thank you.