Cleaning House

I should probably clean house more often.

To tell the truth, I've not been as bad as previously in my life the last year. I've cleaned my toilet more than three times in the last year. I've ironed my clothes a few times. In 2009, I've washed my dishes more than once a week on average (that's the biggest accomplishment of the year so far). I've ironed a couple of times. This summer, with the extra time, I've honestly done a great job of cooking and keeping house.

Anyway, I'm moving now, of course, and so I've been packing and putting everything in order, and I've really realized that I need to keep the keeping house up.

The first thing needed to do this summer to begin moving was to finish filing papers from the last several years so that they wouldn't get lost in this move. I had several boxes that have been piled up in the extra bedroom ever since I moved to Winters. So, I spent more than a week going through them late in June.

When I finished filing them all (it took days and days), I called Mom and said, "I just got fully moved into Winters." It only took two years. That was sad.

Sadder was how much money I've found cleaning house.

I'm not kidding about this number. I have found $2,685 that I'd forgotten about.

Most of that was in a check I'd been paid several months ago and forgot to deposit. I literally found it under the cushion of one of my chairs. About $180 was in cash found here and there. I even found a mysterious envelope, in a handwriting I didn't recognize that said, "John," with $110 in it. No telling where that came from.

It's all gone again already (dental stuff), but that was nice to find. I need to clean more. You would probably be smart to visit sometime and see what's laying around the house.

We Pierce's don't always think about what we're saying.

I spent most of the last couple of weeks in Menard, and my father, as is usual, cracked me up.

One evening, we had taken an elderly woman from the church out to eat (or, really, she took us out to eat, I guess).

Anyway, the occasion for the meal was that this older woman's two cats had recently died, and Dad had made a couple of grave markers for them (two concrete tiles with the named written on them with a sharpy). The woman was so touched that she insisted on taking us out to eat.

So, after it was over, she began to thank Dad again for the grave markers. She missed those two cats, and that had meant a lot to her. And Dad was trying to be very sympathetic:

"I know that must be horrible. I can't imagine losing Abbey (Mom and Dad's beloved cat). I think losing her would be just about as bad as losing a child."

I was, of course, sitting in the back seat, and I yelled, "Thanks Dad."

It was really the next day before he realized what he'd said. He didn't mean it. If anyone's wondering where I acquired my mouth, though, there's no need to look far.

Books Read 2009

It's really been a slow year of reading so far. I've been busier this semester than at any other point in my life (which is saying a lot), and reading's just not been any sort of priority. That's going to change though.

44. Selected Poems - R.S. Thomas 8/10

43. The Gravedigger's Daughter - Joyce Carol Oats 7/10

42. This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, About Living the Compassionate Life - David Foster Wallace 9.5/10

40. United Methodist Beliefs: A Brief Introduction - William Willimon 8.5/10

39. Welcome to the Episcopal Church - Christopher Webber 7/10

38. The Irony of American History - Reinhold Niebuhr 7/10

37. The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers - Robinson Jeffers 8/10

36. Falling Man - Don Delillo - 6/10

35. Collected Works - Wallace Stevens 6/10

34. The Guardians - Anna Castillo 7.5/10

33. The Road - Cormac McCarthy 9.5/10

32. The Known World - Edward P. Jones 8/10

31. Towards a Natural Narratology - Monika Fludernik 2/10

30. The Major Works - Gerard Manley Hopkins 9/10

29. Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch 8.5/10

28. Man in the Holocene - Max Frisch 2/10

27. Glittering Images - Susan Howatch 9.5/10

26. Kim - Rudyard Kipling 6.5/10

25. The World's Religions: Our Wisdom Traditions - Huston Smith 9/10

24. Letters from a Skeptic - Gregory A. Boyd 5.5/10

23. Small is Beautiful - E.F. Shumacher 8.5/10

22. Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate - Terry Eagleton 9.5/10

21. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Fred Engels 7/10

20. Glittering Images - Susan Howatch 9.5/10

19. Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity (a misleading title for that book) - Lauren Winner 8.5/10

18. Kim - Rudyard Kipling 6/10

17. Letters from a Skeptic - Gregory Boyd and Edward Boyd 6.5/10

16. Night - Elie Wiesel - 9/10

15. God Work: Confessions of a Stand Up Preacher - Randy Harris - 9/10

14. Life of the Beloved - Henri J.M. Nouwen 10/10

13. The Watchmen - Alan Moore - 9/10

12. Small is Beautiful - E.F. Shumacher 9.5/10

11. The Courage to Be - Paul Tillich - 8/10

10. Walking to Martha's Vineyard - Franz Wright - 9.5/10

9. Paul: A Very Short Introduction - E.P. Sanders 8/10

8. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - 8.5/10

7. The Princess Bride - William Goldman - 10/10

6. Fool - Christopher Moore - 8/10

5. The Abolition of Man - C.S. Lewis - 9/10

4. In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan - 10/10

3. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? - Raymond Carver 8/10

2. Fight Club - Chuck Palauhniuk 7/10

1. The Little Foxes - Lillian Hellman 9/10

OK, so Obama's not perfect.

I was really looking forward to American Idol tonight. Now, I have to wait until tomorrow. And then, the kick-off show will be on Thursday, the same night as 30 Rock and The Office. Couldn't he have picked a Monday?

This Spring Break, Kalyn and I are both home in Menard. We’ve spent part of the week going through my Grandma Pierce’s old things that have been stored in the garage for a decade.

Now, many of you probably know some things about our relationship with my grandma. She was a little crazy—in a good way, and she was our babysitter growing up. We played very elaborate games at Grandma’s house involving these large GI Joe civilizations built in her dining room. We had presidents, cabinets, wars, treaties, trials, schools, funerals, transportation, newspapers, etc. Everything.

Anyway, as we were looking through her stuff this week, we found things she’d saved from our playtime. We found pictures we’d drawn. We found toys. We found our newspapers dating from second grade where I’d written my “Dear Blabby” column. We also found our rules.

Pretty well everything we found told us something about how we’d become who we’ve become, especially what liberal wackos we’d become. But especially those rules told us stuff. I’ll stick my comments about the rules in parenthesis as I go along.

1. No shooting in Washington. (Washington was where Kalyn’s people were. Strangely, Washington gun control is something in the news where we’re still quite liberal.)
2. No starting a battle for no reason. (If only Bush had played with my Grandma.)
3. No hostage keeping. (Ditto on that last comment.)
4. No rioting.
5. No killing, except in times of self-defense. (We were clearly not quite pacifists yet.)
6. No stealing.
7. No animal sacrifice. (I think Grandma insisted on that one.)
8. No hunting without a license.
9. No owning more than six guns. (We’ve always been very pro-gun control.)
10. No disturbing the peace.
11. No faking for welfare. (We did have welfare in our civilization.)
12. Must obey in court or else be helt in contempt. (We did have court often, presided over by a GI JOE that Grandma had renamed the Pope. That’s also how I spelt helt.)
13. No lying in court.
14. No driving a train without a driver. (Seems very sensible to me.)
15. Must drive a train with a license.
16. No more than ten horses. (We were communists, clearly.)
17. Must have a license to drive a wagon. (Washington, i.e. Kalyn, evidently made a lot of money off of issuing licenses.)
18. Must be organized. (Ha. Grandma was even less organized than me and Kalyn.)
19. Has to get 6 hours of sleep before traveling.
20. Must have a license to travel on a horse.
21. No traveling at over 50 mph. (I wonder how often we broke this one on that dining room table.)
22. No discriminating against different races. (This is the one I couldn’t believe.)
23. No taking any kind of drug (alcohol and tobacco, too).
24. No attempting murder.
25. No breaking out of jail.

Signed by the following personages: Captain Senator (the leader of my group of GI Joes/Cowboys), White Nofeet (the plastic Indian leader of Grandma’s tribe—his feet had been chewed off by the dog), Al Gorey (One of the GI JOES had a passing resemblance to Al Gore, Grandma thought. He was her vice leader.) Shepard (another GI Joe guy on my side) Dr. Marsh (Any doctor visited by a family member eventually had a toy named after him or her. Kalyn’s representative. Also the president.) Fireman (the vice president)

I was fascinated by the article yesterday posted at the Christian Science Monitor about a predicted collapse of the evangelical community. I think the author, Michael Spencer, is generally right, especially in citing as a top reason for the collapse, "We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith."

That was the first thing I thought about today when I happened across Glenn Beck's Nine Principles. Now, I've never for a moment liked Glenn Beck. I use some video clips from his show every year to demonstrate to my class the use of logical fallacies and to demonstrate how cruel and dehumanizing some of our very mainstream rhetoric is. I knew I wouldn't like his nine principles. But this was really bad.

What stuck out was the order. Number 1: America is good. Number 2: I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

He's honest at least. He knows his priorities.

"If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it." and "The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me." Yeah, those don't contradict.

It doesn't get much better: "Government cannot force me to be charitable." Yeah, why would anyone want to practice charity?

I'll admit that figuring out what the heck the first two lines of this poem meant took a few minutes. But once that's clear, wow. It's a wonderful poem.

Petition – W.H. Auden

Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all
But will its negative inversion, be prodigal:
Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch
Curing the intolerable neural itch,
The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,
And the distortions of ingrown virginity.
Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response
And gradually correct the coward's stance;
Cover in time with beams those in retreat
That, spotted, they turn though the reverse were great;
Publish each healer that in city lives
Or country houses at the end of drives;
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at
New styles of architecture, a change of heart.