Sin, Pain, and Suffering

"We were made to suffer, it's our lot in life" - C3PO, Star Wars
"Life is pain, highness, and anyone who says differently is selling something?" - Westley, Princess Bride

Most Christians I've met tend to give sin as the explanation for pain, thereby implying that it is a choice. However, it is quite possible to be hurt by the sins of others, and there is no personal choice involved in that. Furthermore, they are forgetting the doctrine of original sin, which says that although individual sins may be the results of free choice, a sinful human nature is not (except perhaps for Adam and Eve). I tend to see evidence of original sin everywhere - I do not deny it's existence - but I've yet to comprehend it's fairness, or even it's purpose?

There may be ways to avoid some pains in this life (and I am all for such endeavors), but ultimately I do not believe that pain is a choice. We do not have a choice about being born with a sin nature, and for that matter, we do not have a choice about being born either. Most Christians would even say that suicide is further sin - so, we're born as sinful creature in a fallen world, and we have no way out! You must sin, and you must suffer! As I said, there seems to be alot of supporting evidence for original sin, in that nothing in this world is perfect; everything is somehow broken and less than it could be, or perverted or otherwise not good. Yet despite believing in the reality of original sin, I still hold out for an eventual bliss. The best I have ever been able to describe this bliss was in a discussion of The Count of Monte Cristo. Someone had said that they saw the book only as a fun story, not as something of any philosophical value which could be analysed. I countered with what I thought some of the philosophical lessons were:

2. [there were a total of 5 points] There is no such thing as pleasure or pain, only the comparison of the two. You cannot fully appreciate either in the absence of the other.

Now, having stated those, I must say that I disagree with number two. What I am about to say may not apply equally to all people, but in most cases I do believe that innocent bliss can be appreciated within itself. Pain hurts, and often even after the tragedy is passed the pain can remain, marring what might otherwise have been a happy resolution. If pain reoccurs too many times, or occurs without any apparent reason, or for reasons beyond one's control, it will lead to an insecurity that will never allow happiness to be fully enjoyed ever again. The doubt will always remain that happiness can be taken away at any moment, for any reason, or for no reason at all... my two cents ;)

...so, in other words, I reject what I call the "Yin-Yang Hypothesis," that is, pain is necessary for the appreciation of pleasure. I believe in pleasure as a self-contained positive good, which is great enough not to be dependent on pain (Likewise, I believe in Good as something which is greater than, and not dependent on, Evil). However, this leaves me viewing pain and suffering (and therefore much of life itself), as completely unnecessary. Certainly I have seen individual cases where someone chooses to commit a particular sin, and later they suffer the consequences. If the sin had not been committed, the consequences would not have been necessary, and I cannot believe that the particular sin was necessary, so how can the consequences be thought of as ultimately necessary? On a much larger scale, I do not see why sin nature should be necessary, and so also I cannot see the endless resulting pain and suffering as necessary either. Furthermore, in my opinion, purposeless, unnecessary suffering is the worst kind of all. It reminds me of a quote from Atlas Shrugged (which I recently included in another blog on Irony and Paradox):

“Like that dog she heard about, she thought…somebody’s dog in somebody’s laboratory…the dog who got his signals switched on him and saw no way to tell satisfaction from torture, saw food change to beatings and beatings change to food, saw his eyes and ears deceiving him and his judgment futile and his consciousness impotent in a shifting, swimming, shapeless world, and gave up, refusing to eat at that price or to live in a world of that kind."

Purposeful suffering may accomplish something great or at least teach a lesson, but purposeless suffering is cruel and destroys reason. What lesson could the dog possibly learn from inescapable random torture? What lessons can humans learn when pain is likewise inescapable? It is this very problem, I think, which drives many to atheism. I am reminded of a dialogue which I can't quite remember and can't seem to place, but it goes something like this:

Woman: Do you believe there is a God?
Man: I feel that there must be, and this makes me angry.
Woman: Why?
Man: Because I feel pain, and if there is a God then He created this pain.

If you reject the "Yin-Yang Hypothesis," you can feel angry at God, or you can choose atheism and accept that random pain exists because the world is random. Or, you can try to suspend judgment, as I do, and simply wait for better information to come along. Specifically, I am very reluctant to choose atheism. That choice would seem to ease the pain, since pain would then be seen as a mere accident; but, it also means that pain very likely will never subside. The "Yin-Yang Hypothesis" also suggests that pain will never subside (unless pleasure also subsides). Perhaps I am naive, but I'm still stubbornly holding out for all imaginable perfections, non-random answers, and persistent pleasures.

Just for the record, I'd like to add that I do not feel that my life has been particularly painful. That is to say, I haven't had to endure many actual tortures or deprivations. My pains tend to come in the form of desiring things which I cannot have. Sometimes I desire a perfected version of what I already have (fully knowing that true perfection is impossible), sometimes I desire things which I could only have now if my past had been different (and time travel, as far as I can tell, is impossible), sometimes I desire things which are logically impossible (ie having your cake and eating it too), etc. Why would God create me to want so many things which I cannot have?

Eastern mystics tend to believe that the cessation of desire is the way to happiness - but what is wrong with real desires, why should they be so impossible? For example, I like chocolate. Eating a bit of real chocolate makes me happy for a few moments; why does that have to be thrown away? Maybe I had to work to get the chocolate, but in the end I'm still happy to have it despite whatever small cost was involved. If I would then desire the chocolate to be incapable of making me gain weight or to be without other adverse side effects, why is that off-limits? Why am I supposed to be happiest of all when I don't even want chocolate? I think desires are wonderful - sometimes they take alot of time and work to attain, but I don't see a desireless world as something very appealing. I can't! I'm ok with learning patience and a work-ethic as long as the reward really is waiting there for me at the end. But, I'd hate to think that I was the dupe, and exhausted all my time and efforts for nothing, or for something less than what was promised - which is what often seems to happen in life.

Charity-minded individuals would probably say something like "Think of all the poor starving orphans in Africa who have nothing. You should be happy!" But, seriously, how is that supposed to make me happy? Now, on top of not getting what I want, I'm supposed to feel "lucky" knowing that I'm already ahead of 98% of the pack. Perhaps I am supposed to fell guilty, too, for their being behind. Even if I do not feel guilt, I still feel pity, and it doesn't make the world seem any closer to the place that anyone wanted it to be.

I am vaguely reminded of this song:

Pete and Repeat were brothers...

"Pete and Repeat were brothers. Pete and Repeat went down the river in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was left?" - source unknown

    When I was about 10 yrs old, I took a personality test which identified me in the Littauer/Hippocrates tradition as sanguine (though a few years later I was split between sanguine and melancholy). Note that one of the possible weaknesses mentioned in the test is repetition. Generally speaking, if I like something, I like to repeat it, often to the point of annoying other people. I also can annoy certain adventure-oriented people by insisting on repeating familiar things which I like, rather than trying something new (which I may not like). So, I guess that's why it's considered a weakness. And yet, it has always been hard for me to think of it as a weakness, I simply thought of it as a quirk. One of my favorite Chesterton quotes shows how repetition and sanguinity are inter-related:

"It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead."
   
Though I now have a degree in physics, with a minor in statistics, I have not always been good at math. I started to get good when my parents enrolled me in Algebra 1/2 at our co-op, and I did Saxon math the way it was meant to be done: every problem in every lesson! That is alot of homework, doing about 1 lesson a day, with 30 or more problems per lesson. Much of the point of Saxon math is repetition, and building concepts just a piece at a time, every day, and then practicing that over, and over, and over. I know other students HATED this. I think even my parents, and some of my later math teachers (and certainly most college math teachers/students) saw some of this as unecessary. But for me, it was the key. Without the gentle but persistent method employed by Saxon, I don't think I ever would have built enough math confidence to major in physics. I remember another homeschooler complaining to me that he was so sick and tired of the repetition in Saxon lessons, and I tried to encourage him, saying something like: "I try not to think of the lessons as work. In music, there is lots of repetition, each verse in a song is a different variation, and the choruses are often repeated endlessly. We enjoy this repetition in music, and in Saxon lessons I see something similar going on. It all becomes so predictable after a while, and I actually find that very comforting. I love the sense I have of knowing what's coming next." In fact, I like to paraphrase something Saxon himself once said: "Math is not difficult, math is just different. Time is the elixir that turns things different into things familiar." Furthermore, I can't help but compare this to the end of Matthew 11, as phrased in The Message "Come to me...I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you." So, for me, repetition is the comfort of the familiar, and it is often ONLY in that comfort zone that I am able to confront and master new material, and expand my comfort zone. I know many educators think that rote memorization and drill is boring and unproductive, but I'm glad that I was in a situation where the Saxon method was allowed.

Also, the more repetition that is involved in learning something, the longer one tends to remember it. I think that studies of various reinforcement schedules in conditioning show this not just for me, but for almost everybody. I have often thought that if my college textbooks had mimicked the Saxon method, my college education would've been a much more valuable experience (as it is, I feel I've forgotten so much already). Anyway, I once read a book called Positive Addiction, which was mainly about the phenomena of runners high. Running is a very repetitive activity, almost mindless in fact. I started thinking about the "comfort" produced by physical repetition, and how that might be related to learning and creativity? Lots of people (including me) tend to pace when they think (although my doing this annoys some people). So, perhaps creativity can be related to so-called mindless repetition? If the brain is more-or-less a neural network, then each repetition will widen the brain pathway for a given "thought." They also say that if you study in a specific setting, you will do much better on a test taken in the same setting.

In fact, there exists a whole class of people who seem to be obsessed with routines, familiarity, and even physical repetitions (such as rocking, or other obsessive-compulsive behaviours): autistics. The reason why I find this interesting is because a small amount of them are savants. Though savants are not known for being creative per se, they have some exceptional skills! If the skills of savants are related to their obsession with repeating certain behaviours, even certain mental behaviours, then I think that would open up new frontiers in learning. I have never seriously tried this, but part of me thinks it would be fun to try acting autistic for some time, and then see if I might be able to gain any slightly savantish skills? Another reason why I thought this is because I read Tesla's autobiography . I gained three rather interesting observations about Tesla from that book:

1. Tesla has some bizarre, autistic like habits/obsessions (counting steps, calculating the volume of his meals, etc)
2. Tesla has some bizarre mental capabilities (being able to visualize exact blueprints for devices that when built would work without having the prototype go through testing processes)
3. Tesla believed his abilities could be taught to other engineers.

So, anyway, that's something to ponder; and in some degree, I think the old idea of having students write something on the blackboard 100 times was actually not a bad idea.

As an afterthought, there is one more place where I have noticed some interesting effects of repetition. As my family moved towards being Messianic, we began to celebrate the traditional Jewish feasts (now I celebrate some of them, and others I do not). In the Bible, important events often align with the celebration of these feasts, particularly in Jesus' life. This is true not only in a temporal sense, but in meaning as well. The most notable example would be Jesus dying as the sacrificial lamb at Passover time. Furthermore, if there is anything to Biblical Eschatology, I think it must involve the feast-times. Which brings me to the closest thing I can give as a summary for this blog: Time allows repetition (and recursion, which I will mention in a later blog, I hope). Every day is a form of repetition. Every year is a form of repetition. Perhaps it is possible in an individual sense to pay attention to your life, and develop a sense for what is coming next?

My Heaven I

One of my favorite songs by Margaret Becker is My Heaven- but that's not what this blog is about.

Actually, as a teenager, in addition to normal teenage facial acne, I had rather severe acne all over my upper back. It was often painful, and I still have some scars on my back from it all to this day. Anyway, I remember going through a certain mental excercise every night while lying in bed that always made me feel better. I would imagine myself suspended in a river of the purest, clearest water, and somehow it was breathable, like amniotic fluid, so that one could stay submerged indefinitely. However, this "water" was special far beyond that, for it had certain nanotechnological curative properities such that as it came into contact with your body, it would cleanse and renew you, cell by cell, molecule by molecule. And I would imagine each pore of my skin being gently cleared, and healed, and all the nasty substances just floating away from me in the current. Then, as each skin cell was healed and renewed, it would have this same effect on all the adjacent cells, so that the effect would spread throughout the body. I even imagined that it would turn my gray hairs back to their original color. Sort of like the fountain of youth, in river form.

Eventually, after a few years of this, my parents took me to a dermatologist and I got the Accutane treatment, which pretty much cured me. So, I didn't have to deal with that anymore :D But, from time to time, when I'd have an occasional pimple, or simply a cold or some other irritation, I'd go through this mental exercise again. As I began to think about this more "objectively," I finally began to think of calling this "The River of Life," (as in Rev 22:1). And why shouldn't it be like that? Perhaps death, for those who go to heaven, could be like passing through just such a "River of Life," healing and making young not only your body, but your whole mind and soul as well.

Later, when my family started to move towards being Messianic, we would sometimes study the Jewish context of certain words and ideas. Once we were studying baptism. The Hebrew term for this is mikveh, and it was used by Jews for all sorts of ritual cleansing. The main point in a mikveh setup is to keep the water running, and not stagnant. In fact, this is the very word Jesus uses, which is usually translated "living water." The traditional Christian interpretation of baptism is that you die to the flesh, and are reborn in the spirit. So again, I ask, why shouldn't death be like that?

More recently, I have begun to think of heaven as a place of perfection. To quote an earlier blog:

I think that my reasons [for believing in God/heaven] now are something like perfectionism. I want perfection, and it isn't here. The only possible way I think perfection could ever exist is if there is a God [...] maybe my desire for perfection is the proof. If I have never seen perfection (and I don't think I ever have - surely I would remember if I had), and if I myself am not perfect (I am not), then how could I ever have come to know perfection enough to realize it's absence, and to desire it?

After reading Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy, I wrote another blog, which developed another possible view of heaven, or more specifically what "the kingdom of heaven" or "heaven on Earth" might be like:

the coolest part out of all of this, is the kind of picture that I come away with of what real eternal life might be like. The book, as I said above, presents the idea that He does want us to improve and strengthen our own kingdoms. But, we can only do this with His power. Willard makes an analogy with physical power. With the strength of your own body, you can accomplish a certain amount. With mechanical power, even more. With electrical power, even more. With nuclear power, almost more than you can imagine (in fact, it's so much power, that we can't really use it because it's so hard for us to control). Likewise, joining the "Kingdom of Heaven," is kind of like someone living in a rural area getting hooked up to the electrical grid for the first time. The main difference is that God's power is somewhat directional - there is plenty of room for creativity, but you can't "use God" to do evil. I can only think of this other power as will power. I think that being created in the image of God basically means that we are meant to basically be able to do whatever we can imagine, and whatever we desire. Like Phoenix/Dr. Jean Grey from X-men! But think about what happens in that movie, her power is directly linked to her will, and her emotions, and even the slightest lack of self-control on her part has disastrous consequences. She kills the man she loves and who loves her, she kills a man who is trying to help her, she almost kills another man who loves her, and in the end she kills herself. Her power is beautiful and terrible! I think we are all meant to be like that - but God can't give us the power to do what we want to do, because we haven't learned self-control yet. As we begin to learn self-control, and patience for His timing (impatience isn't self-control), He will be able to give us more of His power, and then we will be able to do more of the things we want to do. Like Phoenix. How cool is that?!?!?!

FB Leftovers

I keep saying I'm gonna quit Facebook, and towards that effort I keep moving memorable stuff here, but then I keep going back to FB and doing more stuff - which I so totally WASN'T going to do! I guess it's because everybody else is there? Anyway, leaving FB has proved to be a bit like trying to cross Zeno's bridge. But I'll just keep putting one foot in front of the other and see what happens. So, here's some more of my old posts that I just think are kinda funny or interesting, and worth saving:

February 8 at 7:21am
hopes everyone enjoyed the Centrifugal Bumble Puppy bowl.

January 29 at 7:01am (I re-posted it after Rachel posted it)
Please put this on your status if you know someone who has been eaten by dragons. My wish for 2010 is that people will understand that being eaten by dragons is not something to be ashamed of. Dragons are nearly unstoppable and are truly terrifying. 93% won't copy and paste this... they have been eaten by dragons.

November 4, 2009 at 10:05am
lolA "Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down-from high flat temples-in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan." (and not at all like Humphrey Bogart. "Consummate v's! I said consummate!") - The Maltese Falcon
November 4, 2009 at 10:55am TAG
ROFL
November 5, 2009 at 9:00am KelMcC
Hey, at least Effie truly loved him
November 5, 2009 at 9:24am (me)
It wasn't only Effie. Apparently, a blonde satan can be quite a ladies man ;) But it's also funny because the author is obsessed with painting Sam with v's. Just like another artist that Rachel and Tommy and I happen to know about.

See this blog on StrongBad stuff.

October 30, 2009 at 12:51pm
Jennifer reviewed Six Characters in Search of an Author  in Visual Bookshelf
Interesting, I guess. The part that probably stuck with me most is "life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true [...] to reverse the ordinary process may well be considered a madness: that is, to create credible situations, in order that they may appear true. "

September 11, 2009 at 2:05pm
"Yes, but who ever became more intelligent by reading Voltaire??" - Kurt Goedel (explaining why he didn't suspect a conspiracy against Voltaire, and he did for Leibniz)

 September 10, 2009 at 2:02pm
...[Goedel always maintained an active interest in physics] "Active interest" in Godel's case means a level of competence that for any normal person would constitute a career. - Palle Yourgrau

July 24, 2009 at 11:36am
"Jennifer, only you would have ''Adam Smith, Hegel, Darwin, and cream of mushroom soup" all written on the same piece of paper." - I had my mom and bro over for dinner last night, and my mom happened to idly glance over a scrap of paper I had lying around

June 24, 2009 at 9:15am 
[the library] would contain a four-thousand-foot mosaic, the mosaic you passed today on the way in here, depicting Andrew Carnegie burning in hell. - Storytime by Edward Bloor *stifled snickering*

June 18, 2009 at 9:13am Jennifer took the Which mathematical function are you? quiz and the result is Gaussian: e^(-x^2)
You are centered. You are just where you want to be. Some mistake your quiet nature for mediocrity, but you are anything but ordinary. You don't show off, you don't brag,

 ...so, I'm not just average, I'm the entire basis for the whole concept of people (or anything) being average (or not). This is... vaguely disturbing.


June 19, 2009 at 1:58pm Jennifer completed the quiz "What Plastic Army Man Are You?" with the result Minesweeper Guy!.
Semi-worthless. You benefit society somewhat, but usually end up being shot, or blown up..
 "Aaaaaagh! Jennifer! You blew yourself up... in bootcamp. *slaps forehead*" - my younger brother commenting on my performance in the Army Men computer game.
(For more on this, see my blog Video Game Violence)


January 18, 2009 at 2:26pm Rachel Giles
hey my wonderful sissy! what do you want for your bday??
January 18, 2009 at 3:45pm (me)
A fireberry.
January 18, 2009 at 3:57pm Rachel Giles
I take it that's some kind of plant...?
January 18, 2009 at 4:07pm (me)
Remember in, I think it was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there was that really old guy, some kind of retired star, and every morning the birds would bring him a fireberry, and he would eat it and grow just a little bit younger until he was young enough to be a star again.
January 18, 2009 at 4:13pm Rachel Giles
lol awe ok. but... you're still considered a 20-something and I thought that was the ideal age that everyone wanted to be... ps I'm taking glass blowing lessons! it's freaking awesome, you and Adrian should do it too!!
January 18, 2009 at 4:18pm (me)
Once I'm 27, it'll only be 3 years until I'm 30. I don't wanna be 30!!!! 3 years isn't long. Time just keeps getting faster and faster... I feel dizzy just thinking about it. Anywayz... glass blowing??? AWESOME!!! Where do we sign up?
January 18, 2009 at 4:28pm Rachel Giles
lol well sis my dear, you're 26 which means it's only 4 years til you're 30... 4 years and 3 years aint that much of a difference. plus why in the world is 30 a bad thing? you don't die at 30. you don't even get old at 30. you're not even middle aged at 30!
lol and Janet (age 36) is sitting behind me and says to tell ...you "oh, waah.". seriously, when I met her I thought she was late twenties at most... so it's not how old you are it's WHO you are! lol don;t I make an excellent motivational speaker?!
I found glass blowing on craigslist... they've got all kinds of cool stuff on there! just go look under "lessons" or "classes".
January 18, 2009 at 5:18pm (me)
I'm 26 and 11 months. I'll be 27 next month. I'm going to be 30 soon and I don't even have kids yet. I'm too young to be old! Where did my life go? "Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day... And then one day you find ten years have got behind you." Seriously, I almost couldn't sleep last night thinking about ...it. Then, when I did get to sleep, I had a nightmare about you. We were in this weird jungle/haunted mansion place, and you got pulled way down under the sea by a giant squid, and then he, um... attacked you. Then you made it back to the surface somehow, and we were walking around this mansion in the dark, and you were walking straight towards this big hole in the floor, and I was yelling at you to stop, but I guess you couldn't hear me, because you fell straight through the floor into some kind of ravine and plummeted to your death. ...so, yeah, guess I'd better check out craigslist. Now I really wish this conv was on my MySpace wall instead of Facebook.
January 18, 2009 at 5:38pm Rachel Giles
rofl. wow. I'm sorry... but you don't NEED kids to make your life full and meaningful... and you're still YOU no matter how old you get and the ppl who you care about are growing old right along with you, it's not like you're the only unlucky soul that's getting older. and aren't you GLAD that you're getting older? that you've learned so much and that you're a cooler person now (although you were always pretty freaking awesome) than you used to be? I'd give anything to be 30 right now and already have hard lessons learned, be more mature and responsible, learned how to have healthy relationships, done a lot of freaking awesome things! lol like glass blowing! just do cool things every year and it's awesome getting older, not depressing!
January 18, 2009 at 5:41pm Rachel Giles
and I had a nightmare last night too... in fact I couldn't get to sleep til about 3:30 then woke up for no reason @ 5am! but MY nightmare was about my teacher and about how for some reason I couldn't answer this really simple question that he asked me and i just couldn't think or get out a word. rofl and then he handed me this note in teh middle of class saying he blamed me for how horrible his life was because I couldn't answer the incredibly easy question and that he was going to commit suicide because of it and all teh students were going to blame me. lol that was MY nightmare...
January 18, 2009 at 5:54pm (me)
 So you have guilt trip dreams too, huh? That's interesting. That's *very* interesting. Maybe it's hereditary? Wait a sec, you're probably just making that up... like the dream about us going down the amazon river in a house boat for two years? BTW, I happen to think I was quite mature even 10 yrs ago, thank you very much.
January 18, 2009 at 7:17pm (me)
Adrian and I've just been watching a movie from the libary with the girl who plays Eowyn. It's an Australian comedy called "Danny Deckchair" - kinda based off the idea of lawnchair Larry. Yesterday we watched another old comedy called "The Russians are Coming." These are kinda like Balderdash movies!
January 18, 2009 at 8:00pm Rachel Giles
lol this dream is real I promise. lol I think I'm going to have trouble facing this professor on tuesday... and yes you were very mature 10 years ago, but you also missed out on a lot by being so mature so early. :-P go be crazy a little, be irresponsible!! I think I've see the Russians are coming! is that the one about this Coke bottler guy whos daughter falls in love with a communist?? or maybe that was another one... yeah cause that one was in germany. lol oh well.
January 20, 2009 at 2:28pm (me)
I don't think that is the same movie... but I think I've heard about that one before. Tell me the name and I'll probably find a way to see it. Anyway, in answer to your original question, since fireberries are fictional anyway, I think I want a yardbird for my birthday. A pink flamingo. *defensively* Kurt Goedel supposedly had one in his yard!
January 20, 2009 at 8:27pm Rachel Giles
oo oo! lol or how bout a lawn gnome?? I could totally send you pictures of him in all the interesting places here!! but yeah, I think the dragonfly sundial is more pretty than a lawn gnome OR a pink flamingo.... although I'm strongly tempted to get you one just so I can tell ppl my sister is the type of person that has a pink flamingo in her front yard, to which they will nod knowingly and I'll have to explain no further. :)

The Conductor's Apprentice

Back when I was a kid in Tulsa, I remember the Tulsa Zoo used to have symphony days. Most homeschoolers are big on field trips, so we would always go to these whenever they were held. Anyway, there would always be a point during the presentation when the conductor would let a kid come up and pretend to conduct. I always wanted to be that kid! So, I think sometimes when I was listening to music at home I would "practice" hoping that I'd get better than all the other kids at "pretend conducting," and somehow the conductor would know and pick me!

Anyway, he never did. But I enjoyed "pretend conducting" at home, anyway. When I was in my mid-teens. I fell in love with Star Wars (because that is, more-or-less, when I saw it for the first time), including the music. For Christmas or one of my birthdays, I got the special edition soundtracks. Since I didn't have the movies, the next best thing was to spend hours listening to the music. Which, of course, I conducted from the privacy of my own room. My favorite to conduct is The Imperial March! Try repeatedly conducting that for hours on end... that'll work out your tricepts and bicepts!