Past Ruminations...

May 12-21, 2002

Changes ahead Part 2.  I am back and ruminating. As I reflect back on my time in Houston and combine those insights with the current turmoil in the help industry (where I primarily work)  I continue to see changes coming in my life.

Sometimes we play the "what if?" game. That can either be constructive or destructive, depending on the circumstances and the issues involved. I consider my current effort constructive. I have asked myself, if money were not the issue, what would I really want to do with my remaining years. The answer I get from myself is to write fiction and to index the Bible, which is a form of writing.

The results of the game came into sharp focus this weekend at the ASI (American Society of Indexers) conference in Galveston. During some conference discussions, my longtime avocation to index the Bible came into play and the possibility of actually pursuing the project was raised a few notches. If I can find a publisher, this project may become a reality, along with the joint participation of ASI.

On the broader subject of writing, I am engaged in that right now. This blogg, however, is an exercise and experiment not really a goal. The real goal is to write my quintuplet of historical novels about the life of Moses and from there go on to the other ancient Hebrew prophets and Nehemiah, the rebuilder of Jerusalem.

When I was nineteen, having just moved to Florida, and working in a drive-in restaurant, I was asked what I wanted to do with my life. I replied that I wanted to write the "great American novel". While I have given up on that particular version of the writer's dream, I haven't given up on writing and the possibility of seeing my efforts at historical fiction come to life.

Life is a series of decisions, and some of those choices radically change our direction. As I said in an earlier post, I feel like I am approaching one of those nexus points. This weekend only brought that feeling into sharper focus.
 

Foot in mouth disease.  I had earlier discussed the problems of a vendor in the online help industry (the people who make help files for software programs). They are at it again. Due to the industry discussions that surrounded the original problems I discussed, they have become even more defensive and terminated three of their certified instructors, two of which were also MVPs (Most Valued Professionals) for the vendor, a recognition they also rescinded. Since most of the people reading this will not know any of these people or anything about the industry you should know that one of those booted wrote, at the vendor's behest, the definitive book on one of their products. The other two are serious industry heavyweights.

This vendor is creating real enemies and considerable industry ill will. However, I don't believe it is the company as a whole that is following this destructive path. I believe it is primarily two people who are driving this lunacy. It has created a difficult dilemma for some of the remaining certified instructors (of whom I am one). Some sort of protest is coming. They have really opened a hornets nest this time and it won't just die down on its own.

Email avalanche.  It is amazing how much email piles up in just six days. Part of my flood is due to the groups I belong to, but it seems overwhelming trying to catch up on everything, and there is a lot to catch up to.

Travel day. Today is a travel day. The security checkpoint is a little less intense at Houston Hobby then it was in BWI, mainly because it is a smaller airport and the concourse has less gates. That means there is a smaller load on the checkpoint. However, four sets of eyes still checked me over, as they had in Baltimore.
 

X Fizzled Files. The X Files imploded in an unsatisfactory conclusion last night. Chris Carter's inconsistent and tortured mythology fell apart in a poorly written attempt at closure. Whether it was a lack of talent or just the accumulated burden of the incompressible storyline, the final two hour episode was a major disappointment. The storyline will go into movie sequels now, but I have to think that the botched closure will have drained away a lot of interest.

Not a normal Sunday. I am still at a conference and the last sessions are this morning. Instead of the Prayer Book, it is indexing style guides and instead of coffee and pastries in the fellowship hall it is the closing luncheon with an address on the indexer's place in the online information universe. Interestingly, both my Sunday experiences reflect the search for order and discipline, for a way to define my place within the demands of God and those would-be gods of editors and publishers.

While I firmly believe in the vital necessity of a regular worship experience, God is where you find Him, and He can express himself as much in the search for structural guidelines as when pondering readings from the lectionary. Not to say that our efforts at structuring our indexing efforts is on par with scripture, but the search for decency and order reflect a submitted spirit and remind us that there is a unity in all creative efforts, both ours and God's.
 

Diminished capacity. We saw Star Wars: Attack of the Clones last night. While the visuals and effects were superbly done, and the mythology reflected the same substantive storyline, the acting, story flow, and dialogue left much to be desired. Most good television has better writing and acting than this movie. It makes me sad and I wonder where the director of American Graffiti, one of the seminal movies of my youth, went.

While Lucas' contemporary, Stephen Spielberg has grown into legendary status, it seems George has lost most of what he began with. Attack of the Clones is all art direction, choreography, and special effects, with very little actual story, writing, acting, and direction. A few of my conference associates and I were talking about this and we agreed that given these last two efforts, the only reason the Star Wars franchise has succeeded as well as it has, was because Lucas had not directed the second (The Empire Strikes Back) and third (Return of the Jedi) movies. If he had, the series would have lost its appeal long ago.
 

Stormy. The wind and rain this morning are reminiscent of a hurricane. I found the timing interesting, especially after learning of Galveston's history yesterday. The rain is coming down in sheets and the trees are bowing in radical submission to the high winds. The weather people say it is just a front in the Gulf, but the winds sometimes gust over 60 mph.

Sitting at a break table, having coffee and a Danish, I watch the violence outside from a distance, protected by walls of steel and glass and I think about how much of my life is protected, from violence, from tragedy, from disruption, by the defenses both society and I have put in place. Some of those are structural, but many of them are relational, dependent on the good will of my friends, business associates, and neighbors.

My wife is leaving for a job in Tallahassee, Florida this weekend. It is a difficult transition since we are approaching our 25th anniversary at the end of the month. We will be separated by circumstance, not choice per se, and the separation brings some things into sharper focus. The wind and rain battering the windows in front of me takes on deeper subjective meanings as I sit alone thinking about being separated from my wife, which causes me to reflect on the protection systems in my life. I can see that this will be area of rumination over the coming weeks.
 

Galveston. This is my first trip to the east coast of Texas. At different times in my life, I have been in San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin, but this is the first time seeing Houston and Galveston. Galveston is a barrier island that abuts the Gulf of Mexico. Last night, as we waited for our seats for dinner, a few of our party went wading in the heavy surf.

Galveston had its first post office in 1836 and was incorporated as a city in 1839, so it has been around for some time. The city has a tragic history, being at the mercy of hurricanes and severe storms. In September of 1900, one of the severest natural disasters in U.S. history occurred when over 6,000 of its 38,000 residents were killed and one third of the city was destroyed by a hurricane. 

Attempting to prevent a future disaster, the residents began building a seventeen-mile long seawall, 16-20 feet high and 3-5 feet wide at the top and up to 40 feet wide at the base. They combined this barrier effort with a grade raising project that began filling in the island with sand and dredging material from the ship channel, raising the island by over six feet. Houses were raised and materials filled in beneath them. The project took eight years. Subsequent hurricanes had minimal death tolls and property damage.

As I read about Galveston's history, I could not help but think about the tenacity with which we American's hold onto what we hold dear. We strongly resist having things taken away from us, whether it is land by hurricanes, or freedom by terrorists.
 

Virgin supply. I was thinking today, as I shot across the hopefully friendly skies, about Islamic martyrs and their virgin reward. My research, while admittedly not exhaustive, has not been able to turn up where these young (presumed) lovelies (also presumed) are supposed to come from. Does Allah create them fresh from the hopper for the benefit of these self-sacrificial enthusiasts? If not, are they to be gleaned from the existing human population? If so, do you think it is possible, with all of the martyrs hitting Paradise lately, that virgins are getting in short supply?

Security. This is the third time I have flown since September 11, and there was a big difference this morning at the security checkpoints. I fly out of BWI (Baltimore/Washington International). When I got to the Air Tran counter, the ticket agent told me to make sure I did not waste any time before going to the gate. She said that the FAA took over security yesterday and things will take much longer than I was used to.

Fortunately, I arrived at the line before the rush, but there were still about 10 people ahead of me in my line (there were three lines for the whole checkpoint). It took fifteen minutes to get through. There were two reasons for this. One was that everyone was new and they were being very careful with everything. Each belt screener had a supervisor pointing out things to them on the display. They would move the belt back and forth, as they reexamined items. This will speed up as the screeners become familiar with the system and the issues involved. The second was I had to pass through the scrutiny of four separate people directly assigned to examine me personally, as well those who wandered around looking at everyone.

There is no comparison to what I experienced the first two times I flew, once in December and then again in February, and this intense, but professionally focused effort. The earlier screenings were more haphazard and the people had an edge of desperation to their efforts. This new sense of seriousness at the checkpoint appeared matched on the concourse. It will be interesting to see how the situation at BWI adjusts over time and whether these federal employees will maintain their initial level of professional alertness.
 

Martyrs in the dock.  Martyr is a term that gets bandied around a lot lately. It is the primary currency of Islamic suicides who use their willingness to die as a means of taking a large number of targeted others along for the ride. There is a problem. They aren't martyrs. Their currency is bogus.

Martyrs are people who have death or intense sacrifice forced upon them and it comes from refusing to give in to coercion. When faced with a choice of change your view, renounce your faith, or die, they choose to die. That is radically different from attacking those you hate or disagree with using a suicidal maneuver. One is passive acceptance of an unavoidable fate, the other is active aggression.

Martyrs don't commit suicide. They may die, but death is not their choice; it is the only option left to them by the ones threatening them. The Christians who died in the Roman arenas, torn to shreds by Lions, were martyrs. It was renounce your faith or die. If one of them had attacked Caesar's box, throwing poison in every direction and died in the process, they wouldn't have been a martyr. If they succeeded, they may have even been a murderer. The key point is that martyrs become martyrs by having their life taken from them, against their will.

Why are these distinctions important. I said in an earlier posting that whoever controls the definitions controls the battleground. As long as Islamic leaders are able to twist the meaning of martyr to include suicide/homicide they control the battleground. It is time we stand up to this misuse of language, these basic lies.

Someone who purposely blows themselves up, taking with them as many bystanders as possible is not a martyr. They are a murderer. Shakespeare understood the principal very well; a murderer by any other name is still a murderer and they still smell just as foul. Ý

Suicide and murder. One of the obfuscations employed by Islam in the service of the Palestinians is how it defines those who blow themselves up in the midst of Jewish civilians within Israel. The preferred term from the Islamic side is martyr. The preferred term from the victim side is terrorist or suicide bomber. A recent article in World Net Daily discusses the debate raging in Islamic circles over the choice of terminology. There is an interesting point made by Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, Editor in Chief of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. (emphasis added)

The great majority among us call it "martyrdom." Others tend towards the old term – Fidai [martyrdom] operations. The Israelis protested against the use of the term "suicide operations," claiming that this term expresses heroism. They demanded the use of the term 'terrorist' operations. Some American officials call a martyrdom [operation] an operation of deliberate murder – a crime of homicide instead of suicide. But most of the Western papers have refused to give in to the pressure and kept the word "suicide," which they saw as a newsworthy word 

Note the positioning of the argument. To call this murder, rather than suicide, is succumbing to pressure. Leaving that aside, there is a fundamental logic break here. Even if you don't consider killing yourself "self-murder", unlawfully killing anyone else is. So when your suicide results in others dying, especially when that is its goal, you are a murderer. You have committed homicide. It is the same as if you detonated the bomb without the suicide part and just killed people.

It would seem that any reasonable person would see the legitimacy of that argument with its straightforward logic. However, there is a catch-22 in operation here. While some Islamic religious leaders have argued against suicide bombing and said that those doing this would "go to hell" that is not the entire story. In an earlier posting, I discussed a fatwa on suicide bombing issued on www.fatwaonline.com. The relevant passage to my argument is below. (emphasis added)

Because this person has killed himself and has not benefited Islaam. So if he kills himself along with ten, or a hundred, or two hundred other people, then Islaam will not benefit by that, since the people will not accept Islaam, contrary to the story of the boy. Rather it will probably just make the enemy more determined, and this action will provoke malice and bitterness in his heart to such an extent that he may seek to wreak havoc upon the Muslims. 

Note the operative principal, "benefited Islam."  The argument is not built around an objective definition of murder as we would understand it. The bomber isn't condemned because he kills people. Instead, the morality of the act is entirely subjective, not objective, and the arbiter of that subjectivity is a perceived benefit to Islam.

With that as a basis, how is it possible for Western societies to have any rational dealings with Islamic societies that have a basis in objectivity? This would include treaties, contracts, or even simple safety in the streets. If in the end, every act or denial of responsibility is based on whether it in some way benefits Islam, how are we to proceed?
 

Suicide bombing and the end of civilization. There is an email making the rounds from Soviet dissident Elena Bonner. For those of you who do not know, she is the 77 year-old widow of the Soviet dissident and Noble Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov. Herself a noted Soviet dissident and camp survivor, she has been outspoken on her own, especially in relation to the current crisis of terrorism. She foresees a bleak future.

 On April 2, Donald Rumsfeld announced that Saddam Hussein had instituted a $25,000 payment for suicide bombers. How should the civilized world regard this gruesome form of terror and Saddam's peculiar subsidy for it? We are familiar with murders committed by hired killers acting for the mafia. These are horrible crimes, but the persons ordering the murders try to remain anonymous in order to avoid arrest and trial. Saddam, on the other hand, has advertised his support for the suicide bombers and the fact that he ordered their actions, secure in the knowledge that he won't be prosecuted for this. Moreover, people are not killed one at a time; the idea is rather "the more, the merrier." The innocent victims are killed only because of their race, religion or political opinions. The suicide bombers have introduced a new weapon - cheap and easily transported - into the business of terrorism. And without a doubt, it will spread around the world, not only to promote the political aims of various extremist groups, but also as a way for tens and hundreds of mentally disturbed persons to solve their problems. Anyone - tacitly sympathizing with the suicide-terrorists - who thinks that this new weapon of murder-on-command can be kept localized is mistaken. If there is no attempt to fight back against them, very soon the suicide bombers' attacks will spread beyond Jerusalem. Their bombs will explode on the Champs-Elysees, on Red Square, on Broadway, on Picadilly, and on the streets of Peking, Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus, depending on who orders and pays for the explosion and what are his goals. And the suicide squads may use weapons more dangerous and destructive than bombs strapped to their waists ... Sudden death will become an everyday occurrence, and fear will be omnipresent. The idea that some states will be exempt from the plague is an illusion. You won't escape being eaten by an alligator even if you feed your neighbors to him one-by-one. Those who hailed the 1938 Munich agreement in hopes that it would secure peace learned this much too late. They helped bring on World War II. ... Either terrorism, nourished by anti-semitism, anti-Americanism, and the ambitions of some politicians, will win, or our common human reason will defeat it. No third way can be found!

If Elana's concerns are accurate, it would radically alter society as we know it. Large gatherings would become much more dangerous, making everything from movies, to sporting events, to even to going to church on Sunday morning suspect.  Ý

Spiderman's success. Saturday's take for Spiderman was in the neighborhood of $30 million. That is 70% of its first Saturday's take. These numbers are unheard of for a blockbuster opening. The industry expects large openings on over 3,000 screens to bleed off much of the demand the first weekend and then drop over 50% the second weekend. It only dropped 30% Saturday. The drop for the whole weekend is estimated at 37%, still unbelievable numbers.

I think it has a lot to do with word of mouth and whole families going to see the movie. As I said earlier, we saw Spiderman on Friday night with friends. The theater was primarily filled with families, whole families (4-8, mom, dad, and kids) seeing the show. I don't remember the last time I saw so many whole families in the theater together. I also don't remember when I have seen such a family friendly movie that adults could also enjoy so much. It will be interesting to see how Star Wars: Attack of the Clones impacts Spidy next weekend and the weekends after.

Changes ahead. This week is a busy week. Clients need work done; I am going to Galveston for the ASI (American Society of Indexers) conference, and my wife leaves for points south, for a new job that will bring her home only several weekends a month. Lots of changes ahead, with increasing demands for me. I now have to take care of the three cats and the dog, the large yard, and all other sundries myself.

This brings me to this blogg. Am I going to be able to continue to write it every day? Even if I do, can I afford to spend as much time as I have in the past? I don't think so. This week alone, I may be out of online communication from Wednesday through Monday afternoon while I am at the conference. There is no way I can guarantee that I will be able to effectively update the website, since my online status is less than sure when I travel now.

So. I apologize in advance for any missed postings. I will still be writing, but the postings may appear in bunches rather than every day. I just don't know.
 

Inheritance and heritage. On Sundays I go to church and when I can I attend the adult education class. I have to remind myself to keep quiet and not ask too many questions, since as a verbal thinker it is hard sometimes to just sit an listen when ideas begin stampeding through my intellectual pasture.

This morning something jumped out at me and started a deluge of thoughts. The teacher mentioned that there was the difference between inheritance and heritage. Both are supposed to be passed from one generation to the next, helping each successive generation to have the necessary base so that it can stand on their predecessor's shoulders and reach higher or further than they could done have alone.

While there are tax issues with inheritance and even gift tax issues on giving assets to your children over 21, I was more interested in the discussion about the necessity of passing on heritage. From my perspective, there are two kinds of heritage, family and national. There are your ancestors, who they were and what they did in life. There is also your country, how it came to be what it is and what it means for you to be part of that.

Interest in genealogy has risen considerably lately and many of the people I know are building family trees and exploring their family foots. That is good and it helps build a family history that we can pass on to our children. But countries have roots also, and as we live our lives in our country, we become part of not just a family experience, but also part of a national experience. We do learn about some of that national experience through our personal and family histories. We remember the family stories about uncle John in World War 2 or dad in Korea. We also remember what we did and what we experienced as we walk through life.

However, most of the national experience beyond our immediate experience is transmitted through history. History explains to me how the United States I am living in today came into being. It explains the national aspirations, goals, successes, and failures that make up that American experience. There is a problem with history; you have to learn it. It has to be actively studied. If not, except for the smatterings of information that you mind find in movies or television (which may or may not be accurate), you will know nothing about the past, about your national heritage.

A recent CNN article pointed out the dismal grasp of history by current graduating high school seniors.

Only 43 percent of 12th-graders had at least a basic understanding of U.S. history, unchanged from 1994, the last time the test was given.

"Clearly our high schools are failing to teach U.S. history well and to awaken mature students to the value of history as a study that matters deeply in their own lives and to the life of our nation," said education historian Diane Ravitch.

You may ask why this lack of historical knowledge is an issue. 

 Ravitch...called the scores "a mixed and troublesome picture" and said the seniors' scores were "truly abysmal."

"Since the seniors are very close to voting age or already have reached it, one can only feel alarm that they know so little about their nation's history and express so little capacity to reflect on its meaning," she said.

Nothing is done in a vacuum. Much of what we do today is based on the issues surrounding decisions made in our past. For example, much of the geopolitical issues facing the world today are an outworking of World War 2 and the Cold War that followed it. Yet World War 2 had it's seeds in the results of World War 1 and the long and convoluted history of European wars and colonialism. That previous sentence may or may not have any meaning to you, depending on your knowledge of history, both of the United States and the world.

Being a democracy, when we vote, we affect more than our local neighborhood, our state, over even the larger country. The decisions that we and our elected officials make, in many ways affect the entire world. This can be seen in the current debate surrounding our response to September 11, and our involvement in the problems between Israel and the Palestinians. Those events, their causes and their possible solutions, are rooted in history.

I am not suggesting that there was some golden age in which national heritage was effectively passed on from generation to generation and now we have lost that. History was never something students as a whole really enjoyed. However, I need to ask a question. Is there a minimum amount of information a person in a democracy needs to have to make an informed decision when they enter the voting booth? I am not talking about their attitudes about the information and whether they agree or disagree with any historical event or decision; I am simply talking about their knowledge of it.

The question begs asking. Is there a minimum requirement of historical knowledge in the population of a modern democracy for that democracy to act effectively in making the necessary decisions facing it? I believe there is. I believe that this is all part of the responsibility of living in a democratic republic like the United States. In the future I want to examine how political correctness is distorting the apprehension of that understanding and in many ways destroying any chance of an accurate assessment of the American heritage.  Ý