Train Travel

I've always loved trains. It's kind of puzzling, actually. Even long after I should have become jaded to them, by living not two hundred yards from a track on which two or three go by every day, they still make me happy. So I decided someday I ought to take one to get between Cincinnati and Grinnell.
-I couldn't find a ride who would take me to Cincinnati for spring break, so instead I looked for a ride to Chicago, so I could take the Amtrak from there back home. Looking for this ride coincided with midsems week, so it took some effort to do both at the same time. I ended up sending out an APB to all the students from Chicago in the directory, and asking everyone I knew if they knew anyone riding to Chicago on Saturday morning. My search turned up two cars. Upon trading e-mails, I discovered both were completely full. It would be tmpossible for me to get to Chicago on Saturday morning, and I didn't want to spend the night there. Luckily, I also came across a shuttle going to Ottumwa, Iowa, on Saturday morning, from where an Amtrak could take me to Chicago and transfer me to the Cincinnati-bound train. So I did that instead.
-The shuttle was a small bus driven by a nice old lady; including the two Latina girls who set up the shuttle, there were just three of us. We got to Ottumwa in plenty of time for the 10:09 California Zephyr, and the guy at the desk informed us that the Zephyr would be arriving sometime around 12:40 due to delays.
-I was expecting that. The impression that I've gotten from online recountings is that, these days, Amtrak is pretty much always late. Ben, who lives across the hall from me, had told me he figued the train took about eleven hours to do a ten-hour schedule, and so on accordingly. The Zephyr had come from California, so it was bound to be a good deal late. It'd be nice if the trains could always be on time, but I recognize that that's improbable, giwen how marginalized Amtrak is by all the freight companies. Freight trains are way more numerous, so Amtrak has to yield to them all the time. Additionally, trains have had a sharp decrease in popularity as a means of transportation, so there are fewer and fewer, and delays have to build up instead of being overflowed into the nekt scheduled train, because it would be too long a wait. And then fewer people want to ride, because the train gets a reputation for being late. It's a vicious cycle, and a shame. But I wasn't in any hurry. I wanted to ride almost as much for the experience as I did to actually get somewhere. Lateness didn't bother me. It gave me and Laura and Viri some time to eat breakfast at the 2nd Street Café.
-We came back to the station and waited. Viri slept; Laura and I played some cards, and then she braided my hair, which was pretty nice. As she finished, it was getting time for the train to come. Everyone waiting in the station stepped out into the bright, cloudy morning - it had recently snowed, but all melted - and stood under the concrete canopy watching for the Zephyr to arrive. It came about when the old guy in the booth had said it would.
-I had to take a little stuff out of my huge backpack to fit it into the overhead stowage, but then I settled down no problem. A girl named Alisa was sitting next to me; she and a few friends were coming from Omaha, where they were in grad school. We were on the top floor of the double-decker car. It was pretty special. The first thing that impressed me was the legroom. On a bus, I'm never comfortable. On the train, I was really comfortable. The seats didn't suck; in fact, they were a pleasure to sit in. For a while, I just watched out the window. The first thing I saw from a moving train was a flagpole with waving US and Iowa flags. The scenery was typical midwest fields, mostly - I've heard people complain about ut, but I mean, really Amtrak can't help what the scenery looks like. Actually, I liked getting to see an aspect of cities that a lot of people don't get to see - namely, the area around the railroad. There are all sorts of buildings and other structures there that you just don't see elsewhere. Another thing is that it's nice and uncrowded. The only company you're bound to get is a freight train, passing by on the parallel track. When both trains are traveling at a pretty good clip, this results in a combined relative speed of approximately race car. So about three freight cars a second go by your window, probably less than two fet away from it. That's another thing I like: everything fits really closely around the trains. So as we were crossing the Mississippi River, the big iron bridge support beams rose up close enough to us that, if we could open the windows, we'd be able to reach out and touch them and get our hands messily chopped off, which is why the windows aren't openable, but coming back to my point, it's pretty cool how it's all so precise. It also meant that I could look almost straight down into the brown Mississippi water.
-But I wasn't staring out the window all the time. Mostly I read the books that I've been meaning to read all semester, but haven't found time for. I finished House of Leaves during the trip, and also How We Are Hungry. Until the train ride, all the reading was very piecemeal, taking what I could get. By the way, House of Leaves is definitely something to look for if you want something different. It's also really freaky and pretty unnerving as well. How We Are Hungry is more normal but still not quite normal. It's a collection of short stories, the strangest of which is "There Are Some Things He Should Keep to Himself". It's five blank pages. The rest are real stories, and (incidentally) good ones. I spent most of my time finishing these, not getting done until the middle of the night somewhere in Indiana, after transferring in Chicago.
-When we got to Chicago, we slipped under the city into Union Station, which is a nicely spooky place full of brown-colored light and chamber echoes of trains shifting around. We were late getting there, of course, but the connecting Cardinal train had been held up for us, so we were all able to get onto it if we needed to. When the Cardinal started moving after we got on, the passengers who'd been waiting since 17:45 (it was now 18:15) there started cheering. We traveled about five minutes out, and then waited for freight trains. We did a great deal of waiting. Amtrak really gets the shaft when it comes to right-of-way on the tracks, and it's hard not to get a bit of a sour taste in your mouth. We finally got moving properly fr the night at 19:45. But, as I say, I wasn't in a hurry, so I just read.
-Once I finished the books, it was about 01:00 or 02:00, so I decided to get some sleep and wait for Cincinnati. A couple times I woke up worried that we may have passed it already, but we hadn't. The train was scheduled to get to Cincinnati at 03:17; delayed in Connersville, Indiana, it pulled in finally at about 06:00 and let me off. And Mom picked me up, and we had IHOP for breakfast.

Soup Opera

That's my new neologism. I have no idea what it means, but it sounds intriguingly demeaning and funny. Anyone have ideas?

What's been going on? Well, classes, mostly. I've been trying to talk to more real people, also. That's something I've been poor at recently. There's a girl who invited me to watch Jeopardy! with her on weeknights sometimes, but then I went at 7:30 and discovered that she was three but watching America's Next Top Model. Turns out Jeopardy! isn't on at 7:30 here. It's Central Time, one hour behind, so naturally it's on at 4:30. "Wha?" I realized just tonight that, though I thought I was going to have a pretty easy midterm week, it's actually going to be a ridiculous amount of work. Maybe not ridiculous. Maybe so. It's because I'm in Press. That means I have a meeting to prepare for, which is going to happen on Tuesday. I also have to write a story or write something for craft of fiction and distribute it by tomorrow night. And I also have to become good at playing cadences for my keyboard lab on Tuesday. And I have to become good at sight singing, for my aural skills test on Tuesday. Yeah: it's a lot of work. But after Tuesday, I'm mostly free. Linguistics midsem on Wednesday, which will be a breeze (let's hope that doesn't become a jinx, but I don't think it will). All this basically means that tomorrow and Monday are solid work, and Tuesday is a culmination, and then I'm just waiting for spring break. For which I'm frustrated that no one has offered me a ride yet, despite requests both active and passive. I'm still looking, though.
-I watched a couple movies on the College's dime. No Country for Old Men was pretty awesome, and so was Into the Wild. Except for the dying young and alone part, Alexander Supertramp's looks like an excellent life. Llewelyn Moss's looks a bit less so, what with the being chased and executed by a madman who kills people with a cattle-slaughtering gun. On a vaguely related note, I had Imaginary Week in my journal, and in it I ran off and hopped a train to somewhere in Minnesota (that's where Imaginary Week always seems to end up). I camped in the snow, and later stumbled upon the camp of a girl who did the same thing, though she was in high school and so did it while still going to school each day. We camped together a few nights, but I refrained from taking the plot very deep in the relationship, because it just seems wrong to have my first significant relationship be one I completely made up.
-And, I've been working on Newt (the font), but because school has kept me so busy, I'm still not done. After Tuesday, I should be able to get through with it. After all, in various bits of free time, I've gotten to the last of the eight styles I needed to upgrade. So, once I'm done with that, I'll save it and take it home, or if I have time, I'll fix it up good here, and then I'll put the foreign stuff up on the Typophile Critique page, and then I'll sell it. Huzzah for making money! It seems this process is interminable, but it really is coming close to an end now. After it does, I'll be able to start working on Cyril, and then sell that. It should go for a good amount, since it has such extensive language support. I'm making a Greek for it, and the Greek looks really cool. I also made chess pieces for it. Here, I'll show you.

Edited: I don't know why, but the link only wants to show a picture I have of a guy holding an egg. It might work now.

Failure, occurence, success

I was prepared to accept failure on my shoelessness bill. But I wasn't expecting it to crash quite so hard. It got the fewest yes votes of all the initiatives on the ballot: 22%. It also got a significant number of no-opinion votes, and I think about 65 to 70% no votes. I was really surprised. I never thought such a hippie place as Grinnell would be so unprogressive on an issue like barefooting. Yesterday, I did an interview with a guy from KDIC, the college's radio station, and I think I pinpointed the problem: everyone here is probably only really progressive on the big, world issues, and doesn't really give a whole lot of thought to different viewpoints on small issues like barefooting. Yes, there are more important issues, but as long as you're voting, why not give barefooting a yes?

-I applied to be a GOOP leader next year. A few days later, I got a letter back saying that they had so many very qualified and experienced applicants that they had to make some very difficult cuts and we'll let you know if anything opens. I told them to please, please let me know. Nothing has opened. This summer, I'll apply to some sort of camp. Maybe Manito-wish.

-I ordered an album in the mail and got it. It's really good: The Sunset Tree. It's by The Mountain Goats, who came here before winter break, and I saw them in concert then. I like it a bunch, especially "Dilaudid".

-I made that snow sculpture. Here is a picture.

Here is a video. It shows me making it.

Demokrasy

I should stop spelling stuff wrong. Anyhow, here's my latest project. I've created a Student Initiative, which is where I come up with an issue and have the students vote on it. To get it on the ballot, which is this coming 18th and 19th, I had to collect a hundred signatures first, so I did that yesterday and Friday. I'm going to an open forum tonight to defend my position against potential detractors. What's my issue, then? I want to repeal the shoe requirement in the dining hall. What else would it be? As I was collecting signatures, I found that people had more hangups about this than I would have expected. Mostly it's just been "Wait, that's unsanitary" (it's not, at all) or "There's a law" (there definitely isn't).


-The weather is excellent here. Today we've got a big snowstorm moving through, leaving us 5 to 7 inches of snow on top of the 6 or 8 we already had. At this rate, I'll have all sorts of snow for the giant snow sculpture I'm planning. Last night I had to get out of the dorm room, so I went biking. This was at about 0100, which coincidentally was when the campus pub, Lyle's, closed after its first night of business. And, coincidentally, there was a bit of rain coming down and freezing onto the ground. So these little groups of drunk people were floating around on ice-coated campus. It made them delightfully unstable. I never saw anyone fall down, but many were evidently having trouble. For my part, I was on a bike, and discovered the ice the hard way. I thought it was slish, and took a sharp turn, and the bike bolted out from under me. I didn't get hurt, though. I just got informed. It was actually pretty amusing. After that I just kind of biked around the town. I had planned on biking north to the athletic fields, but the path leading to them hadn't been shoveled at all, so it was sleeping under five or six inches of snow. Not good for biking. Instead, I just cruised around town. It was quiet - go figure. I had to be careful of the ice, but I managed not to fall over any more. I did get some good fishtailing in.


-I've been doing stuff with the newspaper here:


Here I am being famous for krokay. (Back page)


Here's an article I wrote about our fireplace lounge. (Page 10) (Also note list of Student Initiatives on page 3, if you'd like)

Here are some pictures I've taken.

A snowy Grinnell
An art exhibition we have in the art building's courtyard

View from my window at night
View from my window by day


A train coming through the snow

The GKF

That's the Grinnell Krokay Front. We've started playing regular games; we've had one a week for the last three weeks. So far they've all been in South Campus, playing over the tracks, but I hope to diversify soon. I just need to find a way to get everyone to Krumm Preserve, where there's a pond. But it's difficult, because none of us have cars. I still have yet to come up with a way to move us. Yesterday was our third and most successful game. Five of us showed up in all, most of us somewhat crazy, as we'd probably have to be: Nicole, Dan, Seth, James, and me. Last week the railroad was a big problem, because there wasn't much snow, and if you got caught between the two rails, there was thus no way to get under the ball for a scoop shot. This week was better, because tere was plenty of snow, and no one got caught endlessly like that. Nicole and I took the lead position from the get-go, crossing the rails while the others entertainingly bogged down at the first right wicket (remember this handy diagram? It's from June).

Dan got out first, and started coming after me and Nicole, but we were pretty far ahead. Meanwhile, Seth and James realized that they had no chance of winning and that they had picked inadequate winter gear to wear, so they forfeited and went inside to warm up. Now it was a three-person race, with Nicole and me both at the 2nd left wicket - Actually, I think "2nd outbound" is a better name for it - and Dan was somewhere around the first outbound. We decided about then that we were going to forgo the poison portion of the game, because, well, there were eight inches of snow, which would make it next to impossible to actually hit anyone else without astounding luck. We could still be playing now. The endgame came. I was still slightly behind Nicole: she was between the two exit wickets, and I was before the first one. I planned to go through, take extra shots from her, and win it. I hit her ball, and it went through the last wicket, giving her the win. Gaarh! We wasted no time cleaning up the set, and we warmed up in the lounge at her dorm. And then I carried the set back to my dorm. So much fun.
-What else have I been doing? Eating ginger snaps. Learning the Dvorak keyboard layout. Writing a little. I need to write more. I'll be writing a lot these next couple days, though, for various reasons. By the way, the Dvorak keyboard looks like this:
' , . PYFGCRL?+
AOEUIDHTNS-
;QJKXBMWVZ
It keeps the most common letters on the home row, and has other various benefits. It was slow learning at first, but I'm getting a lot better. You can see I still make wistakes, though.
-I love the Iowa winter, by the way. There's been snow on the ground since about November, as far as I can tell. In Ohio, there've been 50-degree days all over the place, and very little snowfall. Iowa's pretty good, then. A trite little sentiment, but I don't really have something deep to say about it - I just like the winter here, is all.

Getting things rolling

On Wednesday, I started at my CERA job. I had expected there to be several student employees for each evening, but it turned out I was the only one. Larissa Mottl, the manager of the Prairie Studies program, drove me to the EEC (Environmental Education Center), which takes around 20 minutes to get to. On the way we talked about the snow, and how it's been melting. She's been living here since 2000, so she was able to tell me to expect probably at least one more good snowstorm, sometime arond the beginning of March. Coincidentally, we both want to build a snow sculpture with the snow when (if) it arrives. She wants to build a buffalo out front of the Prairie Studies office and even dye it brown. And I want to build this. She told me there's a snow sculpture contest in town that I could enter it into, but I haven't found out anything about it yet. The EEC is a really pleasant, curved building, and won the first LEED Gold Certification for low energy impact in Iowa. We went to a room overlooking the snow-topped prairie and she pulled out some equipment for the seed cleaning we would be doing: sieves, bins, and a grinder consisting of a rectangular boat-shaped wooden bowl lined with rough rubber and a similarly lined square block of wood with a handle. She also got out a big bag of leadplant seeds, and the showed how to go about getting them out of their hulls. We do this to make it easier to know how much seed we have, to make planting scientifically easier, and to concentrate the viable seed. It's a long process, and we'll be doing it for the next several weeks. I got to use a pretty keen blower to separate the chaff. So, I did that for my shift; she did a few other things around CERA, and then came back to work with me. We got through a fair amount of seed. It sounds like a really tedious and unrewarding job, but it's actually a lot of fun. The seeds release this hearty smell as they open up. It's a real smell, one straight from the earth, and I'd wear it before any cologne. Operating the blower is pretty neat. It doesn't get boring, somehow. I really like working at CERA.
-The Grinnell Krokay Front is now an official group. I've put up those posters, and we're going to play a game tomorrow at noon to draw interest. This game should turn out to have more players; they've said they're going to make an effort to actually come, instead of leave for D&D with no notice. So, this will start being somewhat regular fun.
-I got some books yesterday that I ordered in the mail. They're by Daniel Pinkwater. It feels really good to go back and reread these for the first time in years. This guy is so much fun. I sat reading them most of yesterday and today. I also borrowed How We Are Hungry from the library, and at some point soon I'll be getting House of Leaves. ("House" is always printed in blue in it. It's supposed to be a really interesting and odd novel. It has backwards, rotated, and labyrinthed text at parts; there's an appendix; it has footnotes, and its footnotes have footnotes.)
-And, I've been finishing the font. I was just about to sell it, but the rep said he'd like me to add some more characters first. Luckily, these characters are just the ones I have, with diacritics added, plus a few math signs, so I've been knocking out the expansions at a rate of three or four hours apiece, spread across whenever I have time. I should have them all done and ready for sale in a week or two. I ended up not needing to buy the expensive program I was going to buy, because I found a free one that will do the same stuff for me. I'll let everyone (and that's going to be a pretty inclusive "everyone", because I'll be very excited) when it goes on the market.
-Lastly, the GOOP leader training for this summer is starting next Sunday. It will only cost some time on Sundays plus $40 for a trip at some point, so I won't even need to ask for money. The leaders last summer told me they got paid $250 for the trip. Isn't that great? I'll be getting paid to go have a lot of fun!

Bourgeois Buffoon

I made a little snow sculpture today. Nothing as elaborate as the one I made last year, but here it is. (Link to the Calvin and Hobbes strip that it's from.)

Here's a bonus picture from a balloon shenanigan we had today.

The second semester

I've discovered that this semester is entailing a lot of work, but I don't hate it. My main gripe isn't that it's torturous, but rather that it takes up so much time that I don't get to sleep. I spent three hours yesterday doing my music homework - and that was just my music homework. Altogether, I basically spent the entie day working. (Today, though, the music professor asked ow long it had taken, and everyone said three hours, so he said he'd scale back.) I think it'nn get easier from here. I do really like my schedule; every day but Tuesday, I'm done at lunchtime. I start my CERA work next Wednesday, so I'll let you know how that goes.
-Jay and Jeremy recently got a TV. They use it to play video games. They invite people from all over campus to play with them. This means that, as I try to study in my room, I literally have gunfights blaring right outside my door. I hate you, Jay and Jeremy.
-There's snow here; plenty of it, in fact. I like how in Iowa snow isn't a special treat that you have to hold out for and that you might not get until January. We had snow starting in November, and it hasn't gone away. This last week, we've had snow more days than we haven't. Today a quaint and pretty storm left us with an added inch or so. I've filed the paperwork to get the Grinnell Krokay Front established, and this weekend I plan to hold an exhibition match somewhere around South Campus, to draw interest. I'll have posters up. I've already mostly designed them:
(Click for full size.)
The waterfall is a picture I found online of Dettifoss, Europe's most powerful waterfall, located in Iceland. The krokaying person is me; once again my new camera proves invaluable. Once I work out when we can play this weekend, I'll add that too.

Back

I'm typing this hunt-and-peck on the Dvorak keyboard layout, so I'm going to be brief. Handily, I have a camera that I can now use to tell most of the story.

-I'm back in Grinnell; Mom and I drove here yesterday and stayed at a motel last night. I recently closed out an old bank account. Check out how loaded I am.Other stuff:
The ugly dog. My favorite cat. My night-blooming cereus: it's growing a new, sturdy branch (bright green in center)! And another new one is sprouting (not visible here because it's so tiny)!

That's it for now.

Got me a new camera

I stepped forth into the information age today. Okay, well, I bought a digital camera.

Just a few useless pictures from a typical exciting day in the house. My watch says 21:02. (The orange hand indicates the charge, not the time.)

I still have my analog camera, but it's gone through some rough times; I tended to drop it a lot, and I don't know why. It's held together with duct tape and wishful thinking. It still works, and I'll probably use it from time to time. It's certainly served me well enough for these last three years. But this new camera (a Canon PowerShot A560, for those of you following along at home) will be my primary.

"Fun" in Cincinnati

Since the folks got back to the normal routines of life (work and school), it's gotten a bit dull around here. Most days I find myself waking up after noon, and browsing the internet. My own corner of the internet is the forums for the webcomic xkcd; that's where I hang out most of the time. There are some fun people around there, and interesting topics of conversation, and amusing games. It's an all right place. But I found myself wishing I were talking to people I know. That was a problem, because my excellently long break came with a disadvantage: it started much later than most people's, and didn't coincide with them very much. Last week, I mainly stayed in and hung around xkcd and read books. I finished Professor Savarese's book Reasonable People, which I highly recommend, incidentally. I only finished it yesterday, which will give you a sense of my distractability as regards reading in my free time. Micah comes home at 15:30 or so from school, and Mom and Dad usually come home pretty late. So it gets a bit monotonous around here. I decided I was going to do something more interesting. So on Monday, I did. I walked the dog briefly, and then got on my bike to ride to Finneytown.
-The first thing I discovered was that I've gotten a bit out of shape, not riding my bike in the last few weeks. I didn't bring my bike back, and I only inflated the tires on Dad's bike just last week. So mostly I haven't been biking. Enter the Galbraith hill. It seemed endless. As I pedaled up, the hill stopped me in my tracks. I had to pull into an entrance and just let my heart rate come back down from the ionosphere. As I kept going, I had to do that twice more. By the time I got to level ground, my chest was burning and each pedal stroke was a victory. But through persistence, I made it to my ultimate oasis: Chipotle.
-When I got there, I sat down in my booth and just figured out how to breathe normally, which took me five or ten minutes. Then I ordered a root beer and a fajita, and ate. I couldn't eat the entire fajita, so I carried it around with me in a bag, and biked to Warder. Warder was pretty much as I remembered it. There was a little bit of ice trying to form at Near Bank, and someone had cut through the tree that fell across the trail at Far Bank, so that the trail was passable without climbing once again. It was pleasantly quiet. I checked out the area by the Ivory Tower (a tall pine I think I've mentioned). The clubhouse had been torn down. I know the guy who built this thing (though I think he prefers to remain anonymous). It was a cabin, built sturdily and painted black. It had a lockable door and a mattress inside and everything. Even a walkway paved with stones from the nearby creek. There was an awesome fire pit outside. This thing was professional quality. Lined with not just a few rocks but an entire wall of them, to dissipate the heat, it also had a small wooden floor around it and a very high-class large grate for cooking. There were solid benches around it. Any professional outdoor chef would have been proud to own this fire pit. But the house had been destroyed; the walls were scattered willy-nilly, and the furniture from inside was all gone. They even dismantled the fire pit and flung it all everywhere. I figure it was some really spiteful vandals. I haven't gotten any word back from the architect yet, but I offered him my condolences. Really, a shame.
-From there, I killed some time biking aimlessly, and then at 15:00 finally sucked it up and went to the Finneytown Secondary Compound. I was not there for the nostalgia - in fact, the place actively repulsed me - but rather for the academic team game. Unfortunately, the team had decided nt to wait outside for the bus, but rather in Mr Lorenz's room, so I had to go inside. A bit depressing, but I tried to pay very little attention to the place. We eventually left (on, as it happens, a short bus), and arrived at Cincinnati State for the match. The team was playing Cincinnati Country Day, who were a little late, but did get there. While they played, Mr Lorenz asked about how things have been going since I got myself the hell out of Finneytown. I said they've been going pretty darn well. He told me about stuff he's been doing. He completed his first longbow recently; it's seven feet high and has a range of 125 yards or so. He hopes to get it up to 150 with better string. This is the man who also built a working trebuchet. I only really got to talk to the team on the bus, because they were occupied the whole game. I watched with regret. They were afraid of the buzzer! That, and they just didn't have as many answers as the other team did. All told, the varsity lost painfully at twenty-something to forty-something, and the reserve lost 14 to 36. It hurt to watch. They don't normally do so badly, but Tim and Christian were both out sick, and Christian is their answer man, so they had limited resources. As it was, they had to bring in a non-member just to sub. Well, anyhow, we left. I got to talk to Joe Rebman, and a few of the other players whom I never knew that well last year, like David Whitehead. There was only one new player, Brian Lee. They need to recruit harder next year. Joe told me he enjoyed playing vibraphone in pit this year, and he's going to do it next year. He gave me a little update on what's been going on around Finneytown's neck of the woods. Apparently Keith came back to the school for a visit one day, and got kicked out for "nut-checking" a kid (nut-checking involves inflicting a certain pain). You know, I haven't heard from Keith since we graduated.
-We got back, and I biked home, but not before enjoying a cone of Graeter's. The bike back was downhill and significantly less taxing. I came in the door and relaxed.
-I'm going to go to the gym next semester. Of the two gyms in Grinnell, I've been in one of them just a few times and the other not once since enrolling. (I only visited it during my tour last April.) That'll need to change; I'm becoming domesticated. Now, I think the strenuousness of Monday's ride is partly because Dad's bike needs some serious TLC - the back derailleur is stuck fast, and the brakes are seriously misaligned - but I still do need to avoid ignoring my fitness. I like being in good shape. I hate being in bad shape. It makes me feel impotent and even a bit ill. The gym is among the many fun things I'll be participating in next semester. Last semester, I didn't do much because I was new to the whole Grinnell thing, but now I've got lots of fun opportunities that I either didn't know of before or that are only now open to me. I'll be working at CERA, that place that I visited and wrote about on 16SEP. I don't know what exactly I'll be doing, but I've already been accepted for work there. With my new krokay set, I'll be starting up the Grinnell Krokay Contingent. I'll also be in the newly formed Parkour club, which will give me considerable exercise. I'll also have a linguistics class (fun!), a fiction writing class (fun! - hopefully, but people have been telling me the professor is a bad professor, so I'll have to find out), a Russian class (slightly fun!) and a music class (fun!). And I won't have to start from scratch with friends, which is always good. I'm going to be busy - busy having fun.

DAAAAAHG

Ever since Virgi visited the other day and brought her "shih tzu poo" (that has to be the worst possible name for a dog breed) along, Mom's been getting dog envy. I don't know why; she's never really hinted at wanting a dog for herself before. She's suggested we should maybe get one for Micah, but that's always remained in the realm of distant possibilities. We were more or less of the viewpoint that before Micah was allowed a dog, he would have to show a lot more responsibility in, well, everything. But for the last few days, she's been going around saying, "I want a do-o-o-o-og." On Sunday, she was a bit late in coming home. That's correct, she brought home a dog.
-Not just any dog. It's a puppy, but it's not cute. I think she said he's half terrier and half beagle, but from what I can tell he's just all ugly. He's got short nappy brown fur, his tail is bobbed, and his head is almost comically too large for his body. Moreover, he's pretty pungent. Well, I'll give him a chance anyhow, I figured. Even though we've already got two cats, one ferret, and (not to forget) four humans, and quite enough trouble balancing all of them. Now we get to double the load: because a dog is at least as much hassle as all of those put together. With the dog she bought a black metal cage and a leash and some house training stuff. (This, it should be noted, was not free, nor was the dog.)
-So what about the dog? Well, he's got a lot of energy, which is all well and good, but he uses it in being really enthusiastic and easily distracted. It's like he's on speed. I took him out for a walk, and he couldn't keep on task; kept getting wrapped around his leash and stopping and starting for no good reason. Occasionally he would start running until he forced me to pick up speed too, and then he'd run in front of me and stop suddenly. I think he did that at least twice in the course of a very short walk today. He's also the yippy type. This is why I prefer cats. They only occasionally get in your way, and they're almost always silent. I can add to that: they don't need to be walked, there are no leash laws for them, they can retract their claws, and, importantly, they bury their own poop. I'm going to abandon the pretense of giving this dog a fair trial now, because you've already figured out that I'm not overly fond of him. What does he have going for him? I can't think of anything. He's not cuddly, he's not very friendly, and he's needy.
-But, because I'm the one who doesn't have any work or school until later on this month, it of course falls to me to take care of the dog during these integral first few weeks. That means I have to walk him once or twice before Micah comes back. Now, on the face of it, that doesn't seem too tall an order. But, I also have to tolerate him for the whole time. That's not so easy. Here's what happens after Micah and Mom leave for school and work, putting the dog in his cage. Silence for a minute or two. Then the dog starts getting lonely. "Yeep. ...Yeepyeepyeep." Nothing doing, pal, I'm not getting out of bed at 0800. "Yeepyeepyeep. Yeep! Eef! eef! eef! Wrrrhooooyeeyeeyeeeeeee. Wrrrhoooooyeep! yeep! yeep!" Then he calms down a moment, but that's to give me a false sense of security. "Yeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyee! Weef! Weef! Eeeerooooooooeeeep. Eeeerooooooooeeeep. Eeeeroooooyif! yif! Eeyoooooooooooowoowoowooo!" Then he calms down again, but briefly. "EEEEOOO! WEEWEEWEE! weeWERFoowoowoo. WERFoowoowoo. WERFYEEPYEEPYEEPYEEP!! EE YEE YEE YEE YEE YEE YEE YEE!! WEEF WEEF WEEF!! AUROOOOOOOOWEEEEEOOEEEEEEEEEEEEE" BLOODY HELL MAKE IT STOP. So then it's either resign to waking up, and let the dog carry on like that until I take him out, or I can let him sleep on my bed so I can get back to sleep. In the latter case, don't forget that he's still pretty pungent. And I get to roll in his essence until I get up. Hooray for smelling like dog.
-Meanwhile, the cats are feeling shunted, and from what I can tell, no one's paid any attention at all to the ferret since the dog came. Make no mistake. The dog is the beginning of a new era, fifteen years of nuisance. This thing is going to grow up to be huge. Karl appraised it yesterday and predicted 60 pounds, if not 80. It won't get any more cute or cuddly either, so the best to hope is that it'll start acting with a little more common sense and quit arguing by volume. That is, if we don't do what I would do, and take it back and say, "We made a mistake. It turns out we weren't actually ready to have a dog." Just because we've bought some accessories, doesn't mean it's too late and we've irretrievably taken him on for the rest of his life. It's still quite possible, I'm sure, to realize that it's just not going to work, and tell the dog-selling people such, so they can find owners more prepared and less overworked with other animals.
-The other other option is Dad's. He got the ferret in retaliation for Mom's most recent cat; he says a dog results in a raccoon.

Let's get back on track, here.

With great readership comes great power. I've discovered I hav the power to make everyone worry about stuff. But my life isn't composed of worry. What else is up?
-I left that "nervous breakdown" notice up too long. Mom got back from the hospital that same night, feeling much better. She's now back to normal - or, well, as normal as you can get with Mom - and is eating food like normal people do. So, that's good. For my part, I had a krokay game on he 2nd. I invited a whole bunch of people: Aaron, Bryce, Matt, Rosie, Henry, Kristen, Tara, and BJ. To break in a set as good as this one, I had to have almost a gala. So, I caught a ride with Aaron, and we all met up at the old Winton Woods course. Only, this time we had a covering of snow, which we've never had before. That, and it was So Cold. Kristen and Tara couldn't come, but everyone else arrived at various times around noon. While Rosie, Henry, and BJ waited for Matt and Bryce, Aaron and I stuck around at the hillside and I set up the course. Then we waited for everyone else to come, but they didn't. After a few minutes, we trekked back to the turnout and found out that Matt and Bryce had gotten there, but no one was brave enough to cross the creek. Pansies! They had all given up and started leaving. I asked if they were sure they didn't want to brave it, but they said they were, and they drove to Rosie's house for hot chocolate; those remaining for krokay would join them later. The only ones who stayed were Aaron, Bryce, and me. We got across with minimal casualties - Bryce got his shoe wet - and hiked back to the hillside and got the game on. The first thing we discovered was that snow really slows stuff down. This was only Bryce's second krokay game (I don't know how many times he may have played croquet), so he had to compete with a pretty steep learning curve because of the snow. I took an early but slight lead, Aaron trailed me closely, and Bryce stayed hot on our heels. As we knocked our respective krokay balls under the various logs, through the snow, we became cold. I had left my gloves, so I probably had the worst of it, but it wasn't that bad. I kept my hands in my pockets a lot. We got used to the snow, and the mallets, for their part, incredibly didn't break. If we'd attempted this with the old set, I guarantee you at least two mallets would have snapped. This new one is tough. The game was full of victory and regret. ("Ahhhh! I should have had that wicket!") We traded banter, more about the cold than about the game, I think. Aaron sang, "My toes feel / My toes feel / My toes feel like they're made of ice!" Bryce said, "Hey, my soul feels like that!" We never did get too far apart; I dropped into second for a while, and eventually regained the lead, but they kept right on me. Finally I made it unpursued to the poison wickets, and became poison. Aaron got through one, but I made it to him before he could get the other. Bryce, back a wicket or two, tried to lead me off down the hill to catch him, but the snow kept me from sliding all the way down, and I eventually caught him with a triumphant long shot. Then, we pretty much packed up as quickly as we could and shuffled in a hurry off to the cars. I experienced the exquisite pain of blood rushing back into frozen extremities.
-With relatively few sidetrackings, we arrived at Rosie's house. They were playing football, on the street. So, instead of having hot chocolate, we three joined other teams. I was with Abie, Rosie, Bryce, and a guy I didn't know named Kenny. The other team consisted of Cooker, Henry, BJ, Aaron, and Matt. Bryce played in a T-shirt, for reasons known only to him. I'd only ever played football unenthusiastically in gym class, so I had to acclimate a bit. But once I caught on, I was really going. I made all sorts of catches for us. Bryce had magnet hands, too. It was pretty special to see this kinda portly guy in a T-shirt playing as the MVP for the team. Unfortunately, when Aaron and Matt had to leave, Bryce defected to the other side to make the teams even. Despite the loss, our team went on to clinch a commanding victory. All the more impressive because Rosie left to warm up inside toward the end. When the game finished, we went inside. Rosie made hot chocolate for all the cold people. Funnily enough, I hadn't had hot chocolate made with milk for years. Just water-type stuff. It was pretty great. Rosie, Henry, and Abie built a fire, and then afew of us played a slightly mean-spirited game of Uno. Cooker wins the award for best sinister laugh. Then we all basically collapsed in various chairs and sofas, and relaxed. Talked and stuff. Rosie says I'm really good at football. Some (crazy) people went back out for another game. The rest of us sat by the fire on comfortable furniture. Eventually Bryce took me home at about 7. I should hang around with friends more often. Super Great Day!

P.S.! I forgot to mention that I've made two new snapping videos.
Snapping "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (2'21")
Snapping to Tally Hall's "Banana Man" (4'11")

It wasn't supposed to be like this

Mom's going through a nervous breakdown. She revealed to me this morning that she hadn't eaten for three days. I made her one of her microwave Jenny Craig things, and she ate about half of it. She's been crying all day long. She's really at a low spot; I've never seen her like this before. This wasn't supposed to happen. If I'd known - if I'd even suspected - I would never have done it like this. Pray for her, if you will. Dad's taking her to Christ Hospital to get an IV, so she'll have some nutrients in her. She says she'll probably call off work tomorrow. I really hope she gets better, and in a hurry. I can't stand to see her like this. Especially knowing that I started it all.

What have I done.

What Mom is going through

There's no way I can imagine it completely. But I'll try.

-First, she's dealing with a new isolation, the one entailed by sending off her firstborn son last August to an institute of higher learning. Though he'll be coming back home for winters, summers, and holidays, she knows that this transfer is the beginning of the end of her parenthood. She knows that it has to happen, that she can't hold onto him forever. But at the same time, she's been with this boy since he was still inside of her. She knows his complete life story better than he does, and she's been with him for all the defining moments of his childhood: his first steps; his first words; his little obsessions like Attack Packs, coins, plants, and fonts; the first time he rode a bike; the first time he fell off a bike; his elementary school graduation; the stresses of high school; and his high school graduation. She looks for every moment she can spend with him. Even though she knows he's off at college and very busy, she chats online with him at any opportunity - but trying at the same time not to be a clingy old mom, and to let him do his own things. It's hard to find a balance between letting him live his own life and keeping him in hers. She tries not to let her sadder side show through, and to present a happy face for him whenever they chat. She loves him more than anything else in life, except her other son, whom she loves equally. But she still has to let him go.

-Against this background, he comes home for Christmas. At first, it's just a simple, joyous having him back for an entire month. The family pulls off all the Christmas festivities. Then, completely without warning, he drops this suddenly irreligious blog post.

-For his whole life, she's been working to get him involved in the Christian community. Most of the time it's been a losing fight. He goes to church, but he only ever does that, and doesn't take any interest in further Christian things, like mission projects or retreat camps. She's sent him to several church camps, but each time he's come back from one he's said that he hated it, because it's just a bunch of singing about God, and praying, and he can't relate to that. What, then, can she do? He says he's receptive, but through his whole childhood, he hasn't done much to demonstrate that. She feels helpless, as if any effort, any at all, that she could undertake to bring him closer to God would fall short. What can she do for someone who seems so stubbornly unmoving, so unresolvably without God? Instead of forcing him, she lets him make his own decision. She'd like it if he believed everything she said, but he also recognizes that that would prevent him from being himself. So, as he left for college, she encouraged him to join Christian groups on campus. That, she realized with a deep sense of despair, was perhaps all that she could do. She had to let him go and make his own life choices; the umbilical couldn't connect them forever. But, now, she sees that her plan didn't work. He's been thinking about Christianity, but he hasn't come out necessarily in favor of Christianity. These other ideas! She sent him away to college hoping he wouldn't change - that he'd always, deep down, be the cute, credulous little boy that she used to take to kindergarten. Instead, he's become someone who doesn't seem to have so much of a basis in her raising, her love-filled and Godly raising, but rather has more of a basis in the worrying environment of thinking on his own and coming to conclusions that she can't deal with. She feels as if her whole motherhood has come crashing down, and maybe she might as well have never parented him. Her heart is breaking.

-At the same time, she also has to deal with the substance of what he's asking. It's not just that his attitude is changing, but that his attitude is changing and there are reasons for it. What about this blog post that disproves the coexistence of Heaven and Hell? What is she to make of that? She knows - I know that I know that I know that I know - that Christianity is the real, ultimate answer. She's known it in her heart of hearts since she was fifteen years old. How can she get through to him? He seems like a brick wall. Or maybe like a sieve: only rational thoughts can get through to him, and anything that's based purely on her unshakable, deep-down knowledge of God gets strained out and falls to the floor. What to do! What can she do! How can she help someone whose nature seems to refuse help! She prays to God for answers. Not only for how to bring him into the Christian flock, but for how to make sense of the new things he's wondering - for the intellectual fulfillment of him and her. She believes! And that belief is the truth, but he doesn't seem to be able to say the same! No matter how long she nestles with him on the couch, their two souls won't melt together, and she won't be able to transfer this feeling from the core of her being to the core of his. She can't even express it in words. Her words seem to fail her, traitors running away. How do you express inexpressible truths? She knows that Heaven and Hell are both real. She doesn't know how, she just knows. When she tries to tell him why, all she can say is that the peace of God tells her that it's real. I don't know right now whether she's questioning the truth of some of her basic tenets, or whether she accepts them still as irrevocably true and is trying now to make them make sense in the context of her knowledge of logic and the world. Maybe even she doesn't know. It's the most unsettling thing in the world when someone points out a problem with something you know has to be true. She looks for answers to those who are more eloquent than she is. There are people who can explain it to him so that he'll understand. She'll bring him to those people.
-So she's trying desperately to remedy the situation. At the same time, a deep, all-pervading sadness has come over her, because she's dedicated her life not just to raising this boy, but to raising him in Christianity and opening the way to eternal life for him. She feels as though all those efforts are starting to collapse. And her little boy doesn't share this firm, unwavering, unshakable faith. That tears her to pieces inside. She cries all the time, for the Godly love that he seems to be tearing asunder. How can this happen? Is it because she wasn't good enough at bringing God into his life? She can't shake that feeling - the feeling that she didn't get him into enough church activities, that she didn't talk enough about God with him, that she should have made sure he knew God before she let him go. She's plagued by doubt. Was she good enough, was she there when he needed him? It makes her sad all the time. She can't escape the sadness.
-On top of all that, she has to deal with the physical demands on her. The hot flashes she's having are not helped in any way by this mental anguish; the two combine to give her a nervous breakdown. She relies on her Effexor to keep her from deteriorating completely. It takes its toll. She sleeps a lot to get away and to relax her nerves. But there's always the time when she's awake. She prays to God for guidance. She consoles herself with miracles she's seen and heard of.
-I'm writing this, Mom, not just to tell you that I know what you're going through. It's to tell you I understand it too. Right after I started thinking about all this stuff, I went through a time of unending emotional turmoil, with no end in sight. I tried to make everything just the way it used to be, to go back to where I was. It didn't work. I wanted to sleep too. I slept to forget. It was terrifying. But I pulled through it. And I want to say that I love you. That will never change. As long as you've been my mom, you've always been the most loving person in my life, always telling me how much you love me and how much I mean to you. I don't express it much, but I love you right back. I know that no matter what happens, we'll always both love each other. That's the most important thing I can imagine. You said yourself that you believe God will work everything out the right way in the end. I believe it will all work out just right as well. You have never, ever been a bad or an insufficient mother; even when you've been sleeping and I've wanted you to take me somewhere (remember those days?), you still always loved me. Don't even dare put down your mothering. There are so many people who are worse off than me in the parents department: people who have never felt loved, who have been abused, who have never been told that they're the best thing in someone's world. Despite your weirdness sometimes, I've always loved you, even though I didn't say it so much. You did great. No matter what else happens, know that too: you did great.

The history of thinking about it

The previous post was a real blitz. I don't know if that was the right way to go at this, but that's what I did anyhow, and it's too late to change it. The dam has been broken, I guess.
-Contrary to how it would seem, though, I didn't come up with this stuff all at once. Here's how this chronology played out. Before a few months ago, I never really did think about religion. I went to church, and that was that. I also went to school. Occasionally these two would create a slight conflict of interests, but I dealt with those by not thinking about them. Being taught about evolution, for example. I didn't try to merge that with Christianity and the Bible's history of the world. I just let them both be; I kept them in separate compartments. Whenever I came across something that criticized religion, I turned hot and red from something like embarrassment mixed with fear, and then turned the page and tried to forget about it. And I did. I erected a barrier in my head; on one side there was religion, and on the other real life and science, and I tapped into each when the time called for it. That sturdily built barrier lasted me for years.
-This summer, I left the nest. Mom encouraged me not to let college change who I was as a person. She assured me that she would pray for me every day, and told me not to become just a part of the college - it seemed she saw college as a sort of Borg collective, where all ideas are supplanted, by those inculcated by professors. Now, I know she didn't really see it that way. She knows, of course, that college is a place where you go to learn about stuff, not a mindless drone factory. But still, she saw me off that day in August as if it weren't. So I got there. We've all read that story. I learned about calculus and Russian and English and disabilities. The barrier stayed up; no problem.
-It didn't break at once: it melted gradually, made of ice and finding itself in the spring thaw. I started wondering, if evolution and Christianity are compatible, just exactly how? And other things. I still stayed Christian, and made lots of attempts to restore my faith. One Tuesday, when I had lots of work to do, I went to a worship service (a great deal of it was singing); I started reading C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity; I looked at all sorts of apologetics. It wasn't easy on me. I didn't want anything to interfere with religion as I'd always known it, but I couldn't avoid it. I tried to simply stop thinking about it, tried to turn my mind elsewhere and leave my thinking about religion just where it was. But it was too late for that; the ice had melted; I couldn't escape from myself. Each day, from the beginning of the morning to the end of the day, I was thinking about religion. It actually got to paralyze me a bit in my day-to-day life; I became abstracted and my mind kept wandering away from class subjects. The harder I tried to scrabble out of the well of my psyche, the quicker I lost my handhold on the slick walls. This wasn't losing religion, it was losing the ability to be complacent about it. But it jarred me anyhow, and I sank into a funk for a good while. I kept trying to reevaluate things so that I could still hold them. After I read Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth for class - an unexpectedly serious piece from him, pointing out a great many absurdities in the Christianity he had been taught, and especiall with that taught by the Bible - I fell into a hot swoon, and then tried to accommodate this new information. "I don't have to believe in the entire Bible to believe in God, do I?" I wondered. "No - I can let that go, because it has some contradictions in it that I can't work around, and sanctions lots of things that I can't condone*, and instead I can see God in the wonderful aspects of day-to-day life, like love and music and nature." I worked with that idea for a few days, but then realized that without the Bible, Christianity wouldn't even exist, and so how is it possible to believe in the Christian God without believing in the Christian Bible? So I was back to square one. What I looked forward to each day was going to bed, a sweet eight-hour respite from my own thoughts. It's terrifying to be held hostage by yourself, because the only possible escape I can think of is death. I hasten to add that in no way am I suicidal, at all, which is why I knew I had to find answers that would satisfy me, instead of madly running away from the questions.
-Where did all this thought come from, why did it blossom into existence so suddenly? To some extent, I think it is possible to point the finger at my change in environment. Before I left, I was almost always in the company of my parents, devout Christians, and I was taken to church frequently. Then I went to Grinnell, which, according to a survey of college students across the country published in The 361 Best Colleges (one of two big compendiums of college information that I used last year), is twelfth-to-last for prominence of religion in students' lives. (I found this out after registering there.) This meant that some of the best friends I now made were agnostic or atheist. We've already seen that my English teacher - an atheist - assigned me that Twain reading. However, no one ever actively tried to talk me out of Christianity. In this way, moving off to college simply acted as a catalyst, to get me started on applying critical thinking skills not only to the material realms of my life, but to religion as well. The more I applied these critical thinking skills, the less it seemed religion could work. "Tease out complexities," Professor Savarese had advised me on my first paper, which was a simplistic and very poor close reading of a text we were reading. I doubt I'll ever forget that exhortation; it works so well at getting a much deeper understanding of an issue. Instead of floating on my back in the ocean of religion, staring up at the sky and treating this water as an undistinguished whole that didn't bear deeper reflection, I dove down and asked questions. I composed a whole list of them, actually, compiling them in a blog post that I left unpublished but kept adding to, called "Questions". I extracted the questions that I'd kept crammed down deep down inside of me for my whole life, and found new ones, drawing from this inscrutable ocean. I snatched a few from the air, too, putting criticism to secularism as well: I'm an equal-opportunity questioner. I realized that I was asking
more questions of Christianity, though, and that they seemed much tougher to resolve. If you'd like, I can publish that post and see what you think of them. They're not easy questions. I plan to keep reading extensively about them and other things.
-I started my serious reading when I got back home for Thanksgiving. I'd been looking forward to it for quite a while, because I wanted to pick up The Case for a Creator, which I figured would show me that Christianity is compatible with science after all. I tried not to approach it with an eye to tearing it down, but ultimately I realized that that was a euphemism for trying not to approach it critically, and that I couldn't deny my nature in order to accept it unquestioningly. I read through it, finishing it in my dorm a few days later, and put it down feeling supremely frustrated with Lee Strobel, the author. The book was no good at all. Here's what it is: Strobel tries to show how science doesn't just leave room for God, but indeed points to Him. The most glaring problem is that Strobel only interviews scientists who are Christians. This is ostensibly because it "wouldn't make sense to rule out any hypothesis at the outset" (28). However, notice that in limiting himself to scientists who are Christian, he DOES PRECISELY THAT. I really want to shout that, because it makes me mad. He refused from the very beginning to give secular science a chance to rebut, making the book fairly well useless. Beyond that very elemental error: he also interviews those with doctorates, but on subjects that they did not earn their doctorate in, and he leaves out key hypotheses that science has developed, attacking instead a straw man - science as he chose to see it. His entire chapter about evolution can be refuted by two words - "punctuated equilibrium" - which I learned in my high school biology class, and other science is similarly misrepresented. Secular science was always kept in the distance, an idea that he mentioned solely as something to let go of immediately, and again, he interviewed no secular scientists to see how they explain the hypotheses that he refuted. He dealt with straw men, knocking down caricatures of science and keeping the real science perpetually at bay. At the end I was left with no faith in Strobel's ideas on the reconciliation of science with religion. So, I need to read different books.
-Books! Why, I continually wonder, should my understanding of religion be contingent on reading all the right books? Why shouldn't I be able to find the answers solely within myself? But whenever I look inside myself, I can't seem to find any religion. Is this because there is none for me to find, or is it because my book learning from an early age in school has pushed it aside, and because I haven't pursued a religious education to match pace with my secular education? I don't know. Here's something. I've prayed before. But I've never prayed just because I felt the need to; it's always been out of a sense of obligation to the church or to some religious person or group. And every time I have - even from a very young age - I've always held at the same instant a doubt, the question of whether I was sincere. Every time I pray, even in the privacy of my own bedroom in the dark, I feel like a goof: like I'm saying words to myself, emitting a radio signal that travels only to the rest of my brain, and then peters out. Those who hold to the power of prayer will tell me that I'm wrong, that God hears me. I realize that other people can pray without the slightest hint of irony. If you're one of these people, you'll tell me you've felt God in you after your prayers. You've had a stirring in your soul. I can respect that. But remember, so did the pagan Native Americans - they drew incredible strength from their worship of animals and stars. There are tons of stories about these feats, one of which I just recently read in this month's Adventure magazine, called "Running Away". Myself, I've never had any experience analagous to these ones. Lord knows I've tried. I've really tried to pray, but I've never been able to do it without coming away wondering if I'd just done anything. I've gone out into nature. Mom said to me once, "That's where you find God, isn't it?" I agreed. But when I've gone out into nature and tried to feel at one with God there, I've never been able to do it. I've wanted to, but I've never left the woods telling myself that I just had a real religious experience. I just enjoy nature for nature. Nature isn't an analogy; it's just nature. That's what I've always come away with. Understand, none of this is for lack of trying or from a mental block. For eighteen years I was unquestioningly Christian, and, listening to Mom, tried many times to personally experience religion. Prayer, nature walks, church. I tried to make these things affect me deeply, personally, and religiously. I wanted them to. But they never did. It got to where I couldn't enjoy nature as much, because my conditioning was telling me from the back of my head that, really, I ought to be experiencing some deep movement of my Christian soul. Nothing really happened. I've always thought it was strange that some people "felt" religion and others didn't. Why should that be? Tack that onto my list of Questions.
-I came back home for Christmas break, hoping to do some serious talking with someone religious about religion. I didn't do much of that in Grinnell. I waited until I got home, because I wanted to talk with Mom. That basically brings us to yesterday. I broke the dam.
-Mom's been, predictably, crying a lot. It's hard to argue against a person when she's crying and making arguments straight from the heart, bypassing the brain and talking with pure emotion. However, Mom didn't do exclusively that. She's mainly been giving me evidence that Christianity is true. Miracles, for example; we listened to Duane Miller's* recording. In that, Miller explains how he got sick with influenza, and the myelin lining in his vocal cords deteriorated such that he lost his voice entirely, and had to speak in a loud whisper. Then he puts on a recording of a service he was giving, and in the middle of it, as he's preaching about healing powers, his voice comes right back. So how does that work, if not miraculously? I don't know. It seems pretty real. But I still have lots of questions about miracles, even if we assume they're true. She responded to my proof of the impossibility of the coexistence of Heaven and Hell by saying that she doesn't know, that it's a mystery, and that God will give us the answer in the end. I can see where she comes from with that, but it still leaves me unsatisfied. She's telling me that God creates an area where everyone is without sadness and some people may experience a deep and pervasive sadness (such as the one Mom would definitely feel if loved ones of hers were in Hell), simultaneously. (She says she doesn't believe we forget everyone - that we aren't lobotomy patients there.) In mathematical terms, in heaven, P and not P are simultaneously true. That's a logical impossibility, akin to saying that in Heaven, 1=2. Some things have to make sense even for God. If P and not P are simultaneously true, there's nothing to stop Heaven from being a place where up is simultaneously down, someone is in one place and at the same time not there at all, and everything simultaneously exists and doesn't exist. Since that can't work, I subscribe to the view that, if Hell exists, it must necessarily be empty but for Satan, and God forgives everyone. In my Questions post, there are more reasons, in the form of questions, that I don't think it's logically possible to believe in a place of eternal damnation. I've heard (from Wikipedia, though) that this idea has some currency in religious circles. I don't know much about it, though. In fact, I don't know much about a lot of religious things. And I want to. That's why I'm going to read the Bible, cover to cover. I need to at least know something about the Christianity that I keep taking about - the Christianity that I was raised with, and which Mom tells me, with the most extreme confidence that I think exists in this world, is the real truth. I can't really make an informed decision about Christianity until I read its fundamental text. For now, the issue remains up in the air. I remain up in the air - I'm not even on the fence, I'm hovering above it, so don't even bother to ask which way I'm leaning. Over the last few months, I've felt as if I were on a seesaw. Some days I've felt like atheism is a universal solvent that will melt everything in its path - dogma, old-time beliefs, mysteries that religion doesn't deal with. Other days I've felt like Christ has to be the true, and I'm looking in the wrong places for the answers I can't seem to find. Time will tell. But I can never rebuild the barrier, and I won't stop short of truth, no matter where that takes me.

*From the aforementioned unpublished Questions post:
"Q: Why is it okay to ignore certain parts of the Bible, e.g. the ones that sanction the death penalty for extremely trifling crimes like working on the Sabbath (Exodus 3:52) and saying "Oh my God" (Leviticus 24: 10-16), and ban things like homosexuality and shrimp, and condone selling your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7), and stuff like that, but we have to scrupulously keep to the other stuff? Why aren't we allowed to covet? Coveting is what the entire free-market system is based on. If you don't covet, you're a communist or a primitivist, probably, yet Christianity is practiced mainly by adherents of other forms of civilization. Do we have to honor our mother and father if they're crack addicts or pedophiles? Should we just throw away the whole Old Testament for this reason, and stick with the less objectionable New Testament, which doesn't have all this wrath and these arbitrary rules in it?" Note that I haven't read the Bible all the way through, but I plan to. I'll see if it's possible for this stuff to work, but it doesn't seem likely. However, for other questions that don't seem answerable, go read the Twain that I linked to.

**There's a short recording on the link given, to his ministry, but for more background detail you'll have to go to this website, about halfway down the page, where there are longer recordings with expository details.

Note: I know everyone is going to want me to publish "Questions" now, but I think I'm going to let this stuff cool for a few days first.

Works cited:
Junger, Sebastian. "Running Away." Adventure December 2007/January 2008, p. 121.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for a Creator. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 2004.
(Now that I'm in academia, I feel the need to cite every reference. This probably means that I have no soul.)

I broke it

Disclaimer:
If you believe in Heaven and Hell, and you would like to continue doing so, leave this post immediately and continue living in blissful ignorance. I say this without a tinge of demeaning you, because I respect that. I respect it, that is, if you'd rather your beliefs go entirely unchallenged, and each time something contrary happens, you avoid thinking about it. I know that used to be me. Now, however, I can't stop myself from thinking. I respect your willful ignorance, if you insist on it: but do you?

I've been thinking a lot about religion recently. This is a new development. I never used to think about it at all, and that's the way it has to be. If I read anything that pointed out something wrong with Christianity, I turned red and hot with something akin to embarrassment or fear, and then tried my best to forget about it entirely. But now I think. That's incompatible with a lot of what I believed.
-I'm reasonably sure that I've independently proved that the concepts of Hell and Heaven are mutually exclusive. I'm sure other people have come up with this before me, but I figured today:

• Heaven is supposed to be a place where there are all the happinesses that exist, and no sadness at all.


• Hell is supposed to be a place of eternal torment, with no chance for reprieve.


• Some devout Christians - Mom for example - have deep love for atheists or agnostics in their lives (Micah*, Dan). I'll be focusing on Mom's example here.


• If the Bible is correct, atheists will go to Hell for rejecting Jesus, and Christians will go to Heaven for accepting him.


• The Christians who love atheists will then be sad. All throughout Micah's and my life, the shibboleth of Mom's motherhood has been, "I love you guys SO MUCH. I don't know what I would do without you." She could never, ever be happy if she were in heaven and Micah were eternally separated from her and being tortured in Hell.


• It's impossible to claim that Mom will go to Hell for loving an infidel, because according to the Bible, Jesus both loves all and is completely free of sin; loving an infidel is not a sin.


• Therefore, there are a few possibilities:


• -Everyone goes to Heaven, because God forgives all offenses, even atheism.


• -Everyone goes to Hell, because God doesn't think anyone in the history of Earth has prostrated themselves well enough.


• -There is no Heaven and no Hell, just our lives on Earth.

Whatever the case, I'm pretty sure this soundly indicates that we're all in the same boat, and there's no point whatsoever in trying to change it. Undoubtedly there's some sort of apologetic argument against this. But it's going to have to be pretty damn impressive before I recant this. I tried to come up with some myself. Perhaps when a Christian goes to Heaven they lose all their love for any atheists they know? Come on, that just reeks of nonsense. For one thing, it would entail God changing free will, which is pretty much the one and only thing he's not supposed to be able to do. For another, it would mean that the Christian in Heaven wouldn't be the same person as the Christian on Earth, but rather a gutted version, and aren't we supposed to go to Heaven as we are? Perhaps the atheist-loving portion of the Christian goes to Hell, and all the rest gets into Heaven? That really stinks, and I imagine no one holds that theory, that it only exists as something I just made up. I doubt there's even one passage in the Bible that suggests something that absurd. I found an answer from Thomas Aquinas. He says there are two types of pity, one that we feel with our earthly selves and one that we feel with our heavenly selves. In Heaven the first will disappear entirely, and the second kind will be unable to pity the damned because that would require that it want the damned to become saved. So, there will be no pity for the damned. What? So in Heaven, love for those who are damned will disappear as an inferior, earthly emotion? Then what about Jesus, who is said to love all? Surely he wouldn't immediately stop loving Micah if Micah died and went to Hell. Jesus can't be a fair-weather friend like that. This answer also sounds like the first one I made up: that something changes in a Christian when they go to Heaven from Earth, and they lose their love for people they love. It still entails God changing free will, or gutting it. If God suddenly took away Mom's love for Micah and me while she was on Earth, she would not be the same person, not by any means. Her love for us is an essential part of her being. If she went to Heaven as a different person, it would be pointless, as pointless as if she went to Heaven only under the condition that she forget everything she knows about humans, or mathematics, or science. Heaven cannot be a place where there is no knowledge.
-I'll keep looking, but I doubt there's any defensible answer to this boulder of logic. Of course, I'm willing to change my mind if there is. I have an open mind. I can't stop thinking about stuff, and that's what an open-minded person does. I thought too hard about the Christianity of Heaven and Hell, and I broke it. If there's a good answer, let's hear it. I'm completely open to anything. I'll point out a problem with any answer, and acknowledge any and all problems in this post, in the idea of being completely fair. Let's get to the bottom of this, if I haven't already.

*Micah has stated unequivocally that he doesn't believe in God, as recently as a few days ago.

Chrissssss Misssssss

It's no longer Hell Week, obviously. I finished it all, somehow. I stayed up well after 0300 every night, usually after 0400; it's the college student way. There were three main things I had to do: Russian final, calc final, and an English final paper. I did great on the Russian final; I guess I have a good command of what I've learned. The calc final was not so easy, mainly because I did most of my studying for it in the hour and a half before it started - I was too busy with other stuff. An hour and a half was actually a pretty reasonable amount of time, and I managed to figure out most of the questions, including one that a couple people I talked to were clueless on. I only had trouble converting Cartesian equations to polar, and evaluating ∫[0,1]∫[0,sqrt(1–x²)]e^(x²+y²)dydx. Coming out of the testing room, I felt like a new man, someone with no calculus exam in his future, someone in all likelihood done with math classes forever. That was an ideal mindset for finishing the English paper that I had started the previous night. I was writing on Walden and Thoreau's use of anecdotes in it. I managed to come up with an angle - Thoreau used several different kinds of stories for different reasons, and let's examine what those kinds and reasons are - and typed the last sentence on it at about 0300. Then I ate far too many ginger snaps, finishing off the container Grandma had sent me, and went to sleep.
-That morning I woke up at 1000 and tied up all my loose ends: turned in library books, printed my paper and turned that in, and had lunch. I was a free man. I think Ben across the hall embodied it best when he came in as I was working on my paper and started yelling about how great this was, and he could finally read for pleasure, and he finally had free time! Jeremy says that's the happiest he's ever seen Ben. I rode to Ohio with Dan Malarkey again, and this time with two friends of his as well. It was foggy in Grinnell: a dense fog that had been there since the day before. As we drove away from Grinnell, the fog stayed around, a constant. It was like driving through a glass of milk. The road had a shortened memory span and forethought; anything more than a hundred feet or so away was forgotten. We didn't know how much fog there was. As it turned out, there was about the Midwest's worth of it. We hadn't gotten out of it by 1700, or mid-Illinois, when it got dark. Then it dissipated a little. We still ran into some after nightfall. It felt like Waiting for Godot. We pulled in to Dan's house at about 2300, and Mom drove me back to Cincinnati. Then I was home. We played Scrabble, and I won.
-Christmas!* I went shopping the next day for my secret Santa person. WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD IF YOU'RE UNCLE DAN. I didn't know what to get Dan, because if he wants something, he probably already owns the best model there is. I ended up getting him a little assortment: some really thick, warm socks that say they'll last forever; a bucket hat; and a fishing lure.
-Then Christmas was first at Tami & Mike's house. I hadn't seen those guys in so long. Jackie and I traded card tricks. She has a little book of beginner level tricks, which are more cute than anything. She thought mine were pretty good. I taught her one, and it baffled Aunt Tami. (She tried to pull it on Travis, forgetting that he was in the room when I explained it to her.) Travis and I told the rest of the family what we'd been doing in college. Travis, as it turns out, had gone to Europe, and he showed us a slideshow of pictures on the computer. What really struck me was the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona. It looked like it was melting, or maybe it looked like it was alive. There's no end to the amount of detail in it. I didn't realize it was even possible to build something like that. In a way, it isn't so far: construction started in 1882, and Wikipedia says it's forecast to end in 2026. Apparently it was originally going to take several hundred years, but we've gotten quicker at architecture since the 1800s. His trip to Marrakesh was similarly incredible in that I saw an exotic place that only exists in pictures in National Geographic as a real thing that can actually happen: going to an airport where cats roam around freely, riding a camel through a sculpted sand dune, taking a series of hairpins down a sheer cliff face to the night's hotel. Studying abroad is looking more and more interesting.
-We opened presents; as I'd hoped, Nana got me some pants. All my khakis had disappeared! I only had jeans, and I like khakis better than jeans. She also gave a flat cap, of which I will post a picture not too far into the future. My flat cap is awesome and makes me look awesome. ...-er. Additionally, I got some mukluks (Tami & Mike, I think) and some peanut butter fudge (Nana of course) and a zip-up sweatshirt (chosen by Jackie). We had Cincinnati chili for dinner, and Micah declared it better than Skyline and Gold Star both. (First time I've had Cincinnati chili in months, and I had it in Dayton. Bizarre!) Eventually, though, we had to go home.
-The next day, the 24th, is Mom's birthday, so Grandma & Grandpa threw her a party with excessive amounts of rib roast, mashed potatoes, and other delicious food. Dave was there too, and Grandma & Grandpa made sure we wouldn't leave hungry. We had some ginger cupcakes for dessert. I, of course, had a black cow also.
-On Christmas we had Christmas. Before we left for Oxford, we opened our intra-family presents. Mom got Micah and me helmets, giving us at once handy protective gear and a lesson in the fine art of subtlety. We also got weird egg-shaped Weeble-type alarm clocks, which are kinda keen. And I got some more pants. Pants! And I got a 15-in-1 board game set. Then we left. It was really weird: we left on time. In fact, we got there slightly before Dave & Cº. Sierra and Jazmin brought some Christmas presents they'd already opened. Sierra had a pink thing where you put fancy dresses on Disney princesses. She showed it to me, and I said that was so great. Cute kids can cause you to lie right through your teeth. Sierra and Jazmin are awfully cute. Without much delay, we started opening presents. Dan & Tracy weren't there, so they didn't get to open theirs. Most of the presents went to the kids - Sierra, Jazmin, Hayden. They got toys. Ah, toys. You know, I never really liked toys all that much. As for the grown-ups, Mom got Dave a travel bag; Dad got Grandma some wine; Grandma got Mom an Amish-made oak cabinet; Maria made everyone spaghetti sauce; Tracy in absentium gave Dad a sensible fishing rod and reel and net, because she was tired of looking at his "oceangoing" assembly; Grandpa got Micah a TV; and Maria made everyone spaghetti sauce. Grandpa drew my name for the secret Santa, so I got lavished with a spectacular Leatherman and a really sturdy and excellent krokay set. This one is going to stand up to much more abuse than the flimsy model I had before. Grandpa liked it so much, he ordered one for himself after looking at it. This means I won't have to wait to start the Grinnell Krokay Contingent until I can get a custom set made. We can just use this one. Now, any wood set is going to eventually wear and need to be replaced, but I think that even if we play ruggedly and frequently, this one can last us at the very least to the end of the year, and probably well into next and perhaps beyond. Eventually, I'll want to get a custom set made, with nylon heads, but this one is probably the best one I could hope for outside of a custom set. It will work just right. I can't wait to try it out, and as I find people, I'm going to gather them together for a breaking-in game at probably Winton Woods, before I leave for Grinnell.
-I'm going to have to get my driver's license before I leave, because I don't think I'll be able to fit this in a car with the rest of everyone's stuff if I'm carpooling home. Hm.

*Most of this section presupposes you know all the names in my family. If not, just go along for the ride, I guess.

Just to let you know

This just serves to let you know: it's been Hell Week here, and I've been working the guts out of pretty much every hour of the day. Fortunately, I'm done with homework all except for one ten-page paper on Walden. That's not due until next week, but I'm going to get through with it as soon as I can, hopefully this weekend. I haven't been doing a whole lot outside of schoolwork. As you may surmise, I'm looking forward to coming home and relaxing.
-I tried to get a winter job, but the hiring person from Hillman says it wouldn't be cost-effective enough for them to train me for two weeks during the busy inventory period of the year for a four-week job. Even though I'd be coming back for spring and summer breaks, it wouldn't work, she says. So instead, I'm going to focus on my fonts. I'll be buying a copy of the industry-standard program (well, there are competing programs, but one of them - FontLab), as opposed to the watered-down version of it that I have now, and then I'll be able to make my fonts of professional quality, and start actually selling them, instead of talking about selling them. I've already talked selling with a guy from Veer, though we haven't mentioned any numbers yet; that'll start after my font becomes pro quality. So, hopefully that will start me off making money with fonts, and also it'll be cool to be "officially" a type designer, one whose fonts are for sale on the internet. It'll be really cool to start seeing my font in use all around the world. Now, you're not likely to start seeing it in your supermarket or just anywhere once it starts selling; there's too much type for every font to become widely seen just because it's being sold. But someone (I hope, at least) will use it for something, and I think Veer does a thing where buyers are encouraged to send in specimens of the font in real-life use. I'll enjoy that.
I guess you can tell I like fonts and talking about them.

Rally

There've been a lot of presidential candidates coming to Grinnell recently. I haven't gone, though, because I have a lot of work, and that doesn't so much prevent me from going as it limits my face-to-face interaction with persons, so I don't find out about them. Mitt Romney came, as did Joe Biden. I didn't go to either of those. Today, though, I went and saw Barack Obama talk. Yep, right here at the college, in the Harris Center for those of you who are familiar with the place. I went at 1830, just as the thing was starting, and was disappointed to find myself shunted into an overflow theater. There was a live audio feed from the full concert center just across the hall. There was also a screen, but nothing was being projected onto it. I thought, "This sucks pretty comprehensively," and stood in the hall, only to be told that I wasn't allowed to stand in the hall. So I made to leave, but as I did, a door from the entryway into the concert hall was opened, and I and a few other people snuck in through there.
-The entire room was filled, so it was good planning to have Obama on a raised platform. He made a rather good speech about how we need to leave behind the politics of pandering and start doing what's right. Of all the candidates I've heard of, Obama is the only one I can support. This is probably mainly because I've heard very little about the other candidates. The Obama faction is pretty active in Grinnell, postering on all the walls and bathrooms. The posters I've read describe him as a really honest guy, who gave a carbon-reduction speech in Detroit because he wasn't going to make two different speeches in California and Detroit. I know next to nothing about the Republican candidates; they don't really get much attention in Grinnell. But Obama seems like a guy with real goals and a real plan, whereas the rest of the candidates are "Not George W. Bush!".
-I realize this bit of politics is extraordinarily biased and that I could do with knowing more about the rest of the contenders, but I think there's at least some grain of truth in it. Obama's a good guy.