The Primaries

I'm still a Democrat. Should I change parties so I can vote in the Republican primary, or stay a blue-dog Democrat? Staying a Democrat, I would vote for Hillary, and there's no question about that. Moving over, I would be in a quandry. Just whom can I trust over there? I think I know what I have with Hillary. I thought I knew what we had with GW, and I was wrong in some very important respects. As to the Republicans, I like McCain (good comments from others to that post), Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, in that order. As to Huckabee, I just don't know. Is he a dark horse or a Trojan horse? I find him worrisome, more so than, for example, Giuliani.

I'm talking primaries here. Not the general election.

Fortieth Thanksiving

Carol and I will have our fortieth Thanksgiving together tomorrow. The first two were before our marriage in 1970. They each took place in Greensboro at Carol's house. I was in law school, and I flew down from Chicago. Carol remembers that I didn't like mushrooms then, and that among the dishes her mother, sister, and she prepared for the first Thanksgiving were green peas mixed with pearl onions and mushrooms. She remembers that I picked out the mushrooms. In fact, she says that the only thing she remembers about that Thanksgiving is my picking out the mushrooms. How did I ever get this woman to marry me?

Tomorrow it will be just the two of us for Thanksgiving dinner here in Miami Springs. This will be only the second one we have spent alone together, just the two of us. The first one was my third year of law school. We had been married in September of that year, just a week or so before the school year began. We lived in an apartment in one of the law school dorms. We were "resident heads", and our job was to look after the other law students who lived there. It was a co-ed dorm, and our apartment, made from three adjoining dorm rooms, was on the floor where the women lived. The dorm was built in college Gothic style and was old and stately. The room that served as our living room had a fire place and was well furnished. It had a bay window that overlooked the reflecting pool in front of the dramatically modern law school building. The dorms adjacent to the law school (known as "Burton-Judson") had a dining hall. The ceiling was two stories high, wood beamed across the ceiling, with heavy rectangular tables and high back chairs. The dining hall crew had a Thanksgiving meal for those who stayed there over the holiday, and that's where we had our first Thanksgiving feast. So we weren't really alone, because there were students and dining people there too. Carol had to work that day at the UC Hospital, where she was employed as a "ward secretary", but she came back across the Midway for the dinner.

Carol remembers that we were alone together one other time, "when we had Macon". Then she thought that maybe Walter had been born by then too, so maybe not. I pointed out that we would not have been alone together even if Walter had not been born, if we had Macon. She thinks I misunderstood what she said, but, on behalf of Macon, I took umbrage. The fact is that one is never alone when Macon is in the same house. But she was talking about our being the only adults. So I calmed down and let the umbrage pass.

Anyway, we will truly be alone together tomorrow for the meal, although we will go down to the Lahmeyers for dessert.

By the way, I'm over the mushroom thing, but there still won't be that dish tomorrow.

ZoomRoom

To think that we could have avoided all that renovation.

Question for Christian Republicans

Now tell me again why you are supporting Giuliani and not McCain? (Thanks, Glenn.)

Is it the social issue thing?

Versailles Restaurant

"The unofficial town square of el exilio." If you come visit, we'll go have dinner there.

Salad vs. Big Mac

Why a salad costs more.

On "Going Home"

Great new post on Mary's blog. And a fascinating first comment to that post as well.

Sean Posts!

Sean has interesting posts on Beowulf and on "Sibling Effect". Check 'em out.

"Therapeutic" Cloning: Right.

The idea is to create an embryonic clone of a patient, then transplant altered versions of that embryo's cells back into the patient. Because the DNA of the transplanted tissue would match the DNA of the patient, the immune system likely wouldn't reject it.

From the WSJ's Health section on Thursday, in an article reporting that monkey embryos were cloned by scientists in Oregan. (Originally reported in Nature.) The next step is to take a rhesus embryonic clone to full term "and thereby create the world's first cloned money." Next is to test "whether fresh tissue derived from rhesus clones can treat diabetes or other diseases in a monkey, a process known as therapeutic cloning."

And the next step after that? Oh, we already know that, there was a movie about that two years ago.

Primary Trouble in Kenya; RVA's First Term Nearly Over

Mary posts on primary election difficulties in Kenya this week. She links to an All Africa news post about ballot day on Friday. (The article refers to "rungu democracy". What's a rungu?)

I found it interesting how thick the news account was with stories of guns being drawn and fired. Kenya has very strict gun-control. Oh, well.

The account also reports that a particular polling place was invaded by two rogue elephants. Elephants. Hmmm. Probably Bush's fault.

Democracy is a messy enterprise, and I pray that Kenya gets through this election season in good shape. As I do for us here in the US and our own election season.

Mary reports that classes for the first term ended yesterday and that exams begin this Monday and finish on Tuesday, Then the kids are gone. On the evening of Thanksgiving, Nov. 22, commences the AIM-Kenya Missions Conference, and it goes until Monday, Nov. 26. Teacher work days are scheduled for November 27 thru November 29, with a special luncheon for the teachers in Nairobi on the 27th. Then the term is over for the faculty by November 30. (It was about that time last year that we journeyed to Kijabe. Wow, the time went by fast!) We look forward to hearing about Mary's plans for the break.

Preach the gospel to "panta ta ethne"

I am enjoying and being instructed by Fr. Donovan. He points out that when Jesus commands us to "preach the gospel to all the nations of the world, to disciple, make disciples of, to evangelize all the nations" the Greek words for "all the nations" is pantha ta enthne. Rather than to nation states, Donavan writes, the words "would refer more to ethnic, cultural groups, the natural building blocks of the human race."

It is surely here in the midst of the cultures of the world, and not in the church, that the ordinary way of salvation must lie, the ordinary means of salvation, the very possibility of salvation for most of the human race. Or else it is a very strange God we have.

The gospel must be brought to the nations in which already resides the possibility of salvaton. As I began to ponder the evangelization of the Masai, I had to realize the God enables people, any people, to reach salvation through their culture and tribal, racial customs and traditions. In this realization would have to rest my whole approach to the evangelization of the Masai.

Pretty radical, no? Sounds a little missional to me, by that I mean the idea that God is already working in peoples outside the church, and it is our job as missionaries somehow to get involved with his work. Do I have that idea of what missional means right? Anyway, I'm reading on.

Found: the Perfect Christmas Gift for You Know Who

I think I'll link it to MoveOn.org.

The Few. The Proud. The Wow.

Did you see that new commercial for the Marines? The one with the guys doing a 21st century manual of arms to a military drum beat with a whiff of hip-hop and cutting back and forth to action scenes? Where do I sign up?

(Here it is.)

"If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance."

But we can't.

Melissa's Engagement Party

This afternoon we attended Melissa's engagement party at Jack and Lynn's house. Melissa is Mary's great friend. She is in the fashion industry in Manhattan, and will be taking her 6th trip to China shortly, where she goes to examine products intended to come stateside. She and Scott are to be married at our church in Miami Springs in March. She asked me whether I would sing, as Mary won't be able to be there as a bride's maid. I would be happy to stand in for Mary, as long as I don't have to wear a dress. (Of course, we would all like to have Mary there.)

The first photo is of Melissa and Scott. The second is of Melissa and Mary's parents.

She's Got all Kinds of skills

"I'm Confused by the Fact that I'm Happy"

WaPo articles the angst of young, beltway do-gooders who see themselves underpaid.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds, who picked this up and comments. Also see Glenn's follow-up post here.

"The statistics are that 30,000 orphan children die a day."

The November 3 World Magazine has an article featuring Jim and Suzanne Faske, a couple in Brenham, TX, who have adopted to the point where they will soon have 15 children. They are in an adoption support group called Forever Families and work with a Campus Crusade group called Hope for Orphans. The title to this post is part of a statement Suzanne makes in connection with a struggle they had to adopt "Rachel, a little girl from China with arthrogryposis, a congenital disorder that gave her clubbed feet and a dislocated hip at birth". (The Faskes are on the Forever Families website here.)

The article states that China recently capped the size of adoptive families at four children and, at one point, even shut down its government adoption agency. China was embarrassed that it was pulling ahead of Russia in the number of children being adopted away.

Mary reports that Kenya discourages foreigners from adopting their orphans and taking them out of the country. See her comment.

When Carol and I were in Kenya, we spoke to a young couple who were missionaries working with one of Kenya's national prisons. They told us how a guard begged them to take newly born twins that he and his wife would not be able to support. The missionaries refused, because they said that if it became known that they would take in such children, they would be flooded with requests.

UPDATE: There is more about Rachel, mentioned in the World article, here. Warning: if you are attempting to suppress an interest in adopting a child, do NOT read about Rachel nor otherwise explore the Forever Families website.

Pirating "American Gangster"

In a post earlier this week, I described overhearing on MetroRail two young men discussing a pirated version of American Gangster. The movie opens today, and there is a very favorable review of the film in the WSJ.

In a related article in the WSJ, the movie is also discussed, along with several others that, according to the writer, are part of "Hollywood's Quality Glut" this fall. In that article, the "inside track" on American Gangster is this:

Veteran produce Brian Glazer calls this film, in development since 2000, the "hardest movie I've ever made". Under director Antoine Fuqua, the budget started to spiral upward, and Univeral Pictures shut the picture down after sinking $30 million into the project. Then Ridley Scott took the helm. The latest misfortune: Copies were leaked onto the Web more than 10 days before the film opened.

Remember, you heard it here first.

"Jesus Died for MY SPACE in Heaven"

T-shirt on a young, Asian male in SBUX this morning. PTL.