All posts by David Todd

Christianity, research

The Major Research Project Is Finished

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Somehow, these pages had to speak to me and tell a story thought lost forever.

As I’ve written here before, I’ve been working on the book for our church’s Centennial. It was July 8, but due to the pandemic and construction adjacent to the church, we pushed the celebration back a year. It was last November that our pastor asked if I would do it, I said I would, and got going on it. It took me a while to get into it, but by January I was rolling.

As I researched the history and wrote the book, one item nagged at me. We had twelve acknowledged charter members, but a statement about our first church service said there were 63 charter members. Who were the other 51? I didn’t have the names because, if they kept records during those first 3 1/2 years, they are lost. The fourth pastor, Rev Joe Mickel Tyson, began keeping records on Jan 1, 1925. One good thing he did was reach back into the past and write the names of those he knew of that were members before he came. I imagine he queried the then-current members to ask who had been members and left before he got there.

Somewhere in those names were the missing 51 charter members. I was sure of it. There were 170 names who were members of the church before Rev. Tyson came. Subtracting the 12 who were known left 158 names from whom to extract the 51 who were the unknown charter members. I knew it would be an impossible task, so I decided not to do it.

Then, I finished writing the book, and I thought again about the 51 unknown charter members, and the 158 names gathered by Rev. Tyson, and decided I needed to see if there was any way to research those people and make an educated decision as to which of the 158 were the 51. Is this making sense?

So, it was sometime in July, I think, that I decided to do the research. Today I finished it. Two months, maybe a little more, pouring over the names, looking in on-line genealogical and related databases, to see what I could learn about them. I was about three weeks into the process and was, I thought, about 3/4 done, when I realized I needed some type of objective criteria to use for making the 158 decisions I needed to make. I took a few days off to ponder what criteria I could use and developing those criteria. Once established, I had to start over with the research.

I wasn’t able to do this fulltime, as other endeavors needed my attention. But rare was the day since I started in July that I didn’t do some work on it to some extent. When this week began, I felt that I was down to needing to choose about 14 more members from about 40 names. I decided it was time to knuckle down and get it done. As of Thursday night, I had all but two people fully researched. I had them and another 8 people to choose between for the last two final charter members.

Friday morning I went back to it. The two remaining names were Mr. & Mrs. L.F. Barry (yeah, Rev. Tyson mainly used initials for the men and no names for their wives, only “Mrs.”). I didn’t find the Barrys in our county in the 1920 census, one of my criteria. Nor did I find them elsewhere. I searched a little deeper, and found a marriage record for L.F. Barry and Jessie Weaver in our county in 1915. Bingo! They were here. He was 66 and she was 36 and had never been married. But were they still here in 1921? Did they really have any connection to our church?

I had looked for this couple before at the finagrave.com website and not found them. I looked again. And there, in the main cemetery in Bentonville, was Lafayette Barry. He died in 1936 and was the right age for someone who was 66 in the 1915 marriage license. And, someone had pulled the story of his death and funeral from an archived newspaper and attached it to his grave record. In that story, our church featured prominently. I had my final couple. Based on the criteria I established, the list of charter members was complete.

Is it right? My criteria isn’t perfect. Of the seven criteria, five are not as rigorous as I would like. I could easily include someone who wasn’t a charter member and exclude someone who was. But it’s the best I can do. It may be the best anyone can do. As one of the Centennial committee members said to me, “No one is going to question who you designate as those missing members.” I suppose that’s correct.

So the major research project is over. I now have a small section of the Centennial book to rewrite to insert these names. And I have to gather all my research notes and put them in a reasonable format to store in the church office. I don’t want someone writing the sesquicentennial book, in 2071, to bemoan that guy who wrote the Centennial book and did a slipshod job of researching.

Now, I can return to my normal, busy programming.

Christianity, miscellaneous

R.I.P. Thelma Skaggs

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A gentle soul, Thelma will be missed by a host of people. May God comfort those who knew and loved her.

A long time member of our church, Thelma Louise (Baggett) Skaggs, went to her heavenly reward on September 9, 2021. She was 82 years old. While the death of someone of that age is obviously possible at any time, her death was still sudden, occurring two days after she had a medical procedure performed.

Thelma was probably the member of our church with roots going furthest back to our founding. As I’ve been researching our history to write our Centennial book, it didn’t take long to learn that her family had been continuously part of the church the longest time period. Her uncle Dallas Baggett found salvation in a revival the church held around 1929 and before long had his whole family coming to church, including Thelma’s father, Lonas.

I sort of knew some of this before, but learned in from Thelma in two interviews, one by phone and one in person. In addition to those interviews, I talked briefly with Thelma a number of other times as questions came up that I hoped she could help me with: identify someone in a photo, learn who had been part of the church at different times, hear anything she knew about a certain family from the distant past. She never hesitated to help me however she could. Prior to my work on this book, I knew Thelma, but more to say hi than to have long conversations. My mother-in-law was in the Life Group class that Thelma’s husband, Bob, taught, which resulted in my interacting with them from time to time.

Thelma was a pianist extraordinaire. She was one of the rare musicians who could play both by ear and by sight. Put any piece of music in front of her and she could play it. If she heard a song on the radio, she could go to her piano and play it without a musical score in front of her. Her musical ability became apparent when she was just 3 years old.

It was less than three months ago that her son, Steve, passed away suddenly. Now Thelma dies as well, also sudden, but obviously different at her age (82) as opposed to Steve’s (57). Bob is left to carry on with his two remaining children, grandchildren, brother, and in-laws and other relatives and friends. I can’t imagine the pain he is going through. Two deaths so close together has to be hard to deal with. But Bob is strong, and has many memories to recall and cherish.

Heaven gained another musician this month. That heavenly choir has a new accompanist, playing by ear or by sight or by practice. And Thelma has now heard those words we all long to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in life. Now come, share in your master’s happiness.”

book reviews, poetry

Book Review: Collected Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay

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This thin, mass-market paperback was an okay read, but is not a keeper. I have another, more complete collection of her poems.

Almost all I know about poetry I learned by myself. A series of secondary school English teachers covered poetry every year, and I’m afraid I was a poor student of it. About all I learned was the names of the major poets, and a little of what era they were in.

One of those names was Edna St. Vincent Millay. I knew of her, but nothing about her.  That changed after I began studying poetry about twenty years ago. I read somewhere (probably Wikipedia) a short bio about her, and read a few of her poems in different anthologies.  Then I picked up a biography of her and read it, telling me something about the woman. Finally, in my library, on my poetry shelf in the storeroom, I found Collected Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay. This little mass-market paperback belonged to my sister, for she signed it and put her homeroom down. it was published posthumously in 1959. This particular printing was from 1966.

Lots about poetry confuses me. What do they mean by “Lyrics”? They mean lyrical poems, I realize, but how do lyrical poems differ from other poems? I tried to figure that out some years ago and failed to grasp the difference. I do note, however, that this book contains none of Millay’s sonnets. So I reckon sonnets are not lyrical poems. I’m starting to think that lyrical poems are poems that don’t fit into a prescribed form—although I’m sure that’s not right.

No matter. The poems collected in this book run the full length of Millay’s poetic career, from Renascence in 1919 to Huntsman, What Quarry? in 1939 and scattered poems after that up to her death in 1950. She was quite a gal. I won’t go into her background. Let’s just say it’s well worth reading a biography about her.

As to the poems, I have a mixed reaction. I would for sure say she is not among my favorite poets. I had difficulty finding meaning in many of hers. Because of her background, one first attempts to read her poems as autobiographical. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I prefer to assume any poet’s poems are not autobiographical. But so many of hers I just can’t figure out. To keep from glazing over as I read her poems, I read the book slowly, a few pages at a time, over almost a year. Maybe it was more than a year. In hindsight that may not have been the right decision.

I tried to read the poems carefully, not glossing over them. Many I read twice, having come to the end of one and thinking “What did I just read?” Alas, most of the time the second read made little difference. I still had little understanding of the poem.

So my two questions I try to answer in these reviews: Should you read this, and is the book a keeper? Reading poetry is a good thing; Millay is a major poet from the not too distant past; so yes, you should read her. Whether her lyrics taking in isolation from the rest of her work is another question. I think maybe a different of her books is in order.

As to keeping this, that’s a harder question. Or is it? So far, I’ve not sold any of my poetry books. But I have another book of Millay’s poems, one that is more complete than this one. I don’t know that I need two. So, off it goes. I’d return it to my sister but I’m sure she won’t want it. Nope, into the sale/giveaway pile it goes. Goodbye, Edna. See you in another book.

book reviews, Christianity, fiction, Writing

Book Review: Behind The Stories

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This is like a time capsule of Christian fiction around the turn of the millennium. Well worth the read for anyone writing Christian fiction.

Some time ago (as in a couple of months), having finished reading a book and wanting to find one to read that I wouldn’t keep, thus reducing my inventory, I found on the bookshelf tucked in my close Behind The Stories: Christian Novelists Reveal the Heart in the Art of their Writing. I don’t know where I got this, but suspect I picked it up at a thrift store. Nor do I know how long I’ve had it, but I suspect ten years. The copyright date is 2002. I have a fair number of books for writers on writing and publishing, and I need to work through them, read the ones I haven’t read and decide if any of the ones I have read I shouldn’t keep.

That makes it almost a time capsule type of piece. The author is Diane Eble, though in some ways she is more of an editor than an author. The book covers three to four page stories from 40 Christian novelists. This is as things existed in 2002, or a year before that based on publication schedules. So it misses any that came to prominence before that. Many of the names are familiar: Jerry B. Jenkins, Karen Kingsbury, Janette Oke, Bodie Thoene, Terri Blackstock, Francine Rivers, Beverly Lewis. Others are not as famous, but I actually met some of them at writers conferences: Robin Jones Gunn, Alton Gansky, Angela Elwell Hunt, Deborah Raney. They cover the full spectrum of types of Christian fiction.

It was encouraging to read their stories. Almost every one of them went through some kind of trial. Maybe it was a difficult childhood. Maybe it was a struggle to find their voice. Maybe it was the busyness of life. Each persevered and found authorial success. That is an encouragement for me.

I rate the book 4-stars. It loses a star for something I can’t quite put my finger on. And, it is not a keeper. Next time I leave The Dungeon, I will go out to the garage, and take it to join the other books for sale. Maybe someone else can find meaning in these brief stories.

Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, Health, History, home improvements, reading, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

Post Not Ready

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Six ads running for this, getting impressions, clicks, and a few sales. Other promotion is bearing fruit.

This morning I went outside to work shortly after I got up at 6:45 a.m. The temperature was 60°, and it felt good. I planned to work a half hour, mainly cleaning up a few things and pulling a few weeds from the backyard. When I did what I wanted and went inside, I was surprised to find I’d worked more than 45 minutes. I was way past scheduled time for my blog post, but I wasn’t worried about it since I had a post partially started—two posts actually—and thus could post it quickly once I got to it.

Alas, I finally came to my dashboard here, found there was only one post, and realized it is no where ready to be posted. Bad memory I have.

So here I am with nothing prepared to say. I could talk about any number of things off the cuff: what I’m writing, what I’m reading, how book sales are, what I’m doing for book sales promotion, life in general. I guess I could tackle all of those.

I’m still working on little changes to the church centennial book. I got some new information yesterday that will require a minor change. I also have decided to double-check a couple of places in the book. One I’m fairly sure will require a change, the other one maybe or maybe not. Still, I come closer to done on this every day.  Also, my short story inches along. Every couple of days I open the file, re-read it to remember where I was, and add a few hundred words. I need an uninterrupted , undistracted couple of hours to finish it.

For reading, my time is taken up with Way Truth Life, the book for our Life Group lessons. I’m also reading a book on the Genesis flood. Sorry, I don’t remember the exact title, except that it might be The Genesis Flood. It is a scholarly work from the late 50s-early 60s. I’m not enjoying it a whole lot, but will stay with it a while longer. As to recently finished books, I have four sitting here on my work table waiting for me to write my book reviews.

Book sales are good in September. So far I have 14 sales outright, and I think two accesses from Kindle Unlimited with both people finishing the book. This is my first time to have KU reads (not many of my books are in KU), and I need to figure how to account for them in my stats. I suppose as 2 sales, bringing the total to 16. That’s a good start to the month.

Sometime soon I’ll make a presentation to the local Civil War Roundtable. That will be my first author event since June 2019.

I have been a little more active in book promotion the last week. I still have my Amazon ads running for three books, and they seem to be generating sales. I contacted two influencers in our denomination, both men I’ve interacted with in the past, about giving a shout out to Acts Of Faith. I heard back from one on Friday and he is going to put a promo in his next newsletter.  Another promotional item concerns my Civil War book, Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Back in July I gave a copy of it to the president of the local Civil War Roundtable. I heard back from him yesterday. He liked the book and wants me to make a presentation to the Roundtable. I don’t yet know when that will be, but should know today or tomorrow. So book promotion is in progress and, at least a little, seems to be working.

Life in general is good. I’m still having trouble losing weight, but in general my weight is dropping very slowly. My blood sugars have been under control, though just a little higher than I’d like. This morning’s was good. My right knee has been hurting more of late. Perhaps replacement surgery will have to be moved up. Although, the last three or four days I’ve done a few different things to try and ease the pain and it seems to be working. Four nights of good sleep in a row. Yardwork is in much better shape than in past years. Household projects are slowly being done. My devotional life remains consistent, with room for improvement.

Life goes on. I’ll have a better post on Friday, and will start getting some of these book reviews done.

book reviews, C.S. Lewis

Book Review: The Joyful Christian

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A posthumous compilation of excerpts from a number of Lewis’s writings, this was a little hard to get maximum value from.

When you get a library book you are under a deadline to read it. Oh, sure, sometimes you can renew it, but you can’t count on that. In early August we went to the Bella Vista Library, mainly to get some novels in a certain series. I browsed (after taking a look through the large, recent expansion that seems to have doubled the library’s size). Nothing struck my fancy, as I have many books at the house I’ve yet to read

But I found this C.S. Lewis book, The joyful Christian: 127 Readings. I’m a sucker for anything by C.S. Lewis, and it’s a shame to go to a library and not bring something home, so I checked this one out. Three weeks to read it and get it back.

C.S. Lewis, however, is best read when you have plenty of time and no distractions. I wouldn’t say I had plenty of time to read this, but I had enough time. The readings were pulled from many of Lewis’s writings. At the place in the book where the writings were, the publisher/editor didn’t provide from which of Lewis’s writings the reading came. You had to go to an index of writings and look under the title given to the reading. I did that for a while, but found it unfruitful and quit before I got 1/3 through the book.

The book was a little weird, what with the readings coming from so many works. I didn’t think they all fit the theme of “joyful Christian”. But it was good. I don’t think I’ll read it again, but it was good.

It’s now back at the library. I wasn’t prepared to spend time there, so I just left it in the outside book drop. Now, back to my own library.

 

goals, research, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

August Progress, September Goals

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I must be losing my mind, for I forgot that, at the change of the month, I was supposed to do my usual progress and goals post. No, not losing my mind, but totally absorbed in a research project. I finished that Friday (I’ll discuss it in the progress section below) and it was like blinders came off. I realized I needed to do this post. But, having already made a post on Friday Sept 3, I’m writing this on Friday but will schedule it to post on Monday Sept 6.

First, here are the goals I posted to begin August and what progress I made against them.

  1. Continue to tweak the church anniversary book. I can think of only two more interviews to do. I may add in photos this month. Well, I more or less did this. I tweaked the book. I did all the interviews I intend to do. I even reached out on the internet to find relatives of our church’s charter members, with some success. I added a few photos, but for the most part let the research of charter members overwhelm the tweaking/finishing the book, so it will be a September goal.
  2. Finish a short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series, tentatively titled “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”. I wrote four pages in July to share with the Scribblers & Scribes critique group when we met that month. With just under 2,000 words written, I believe it’s 2/3 done. I guess I did some work on this, since it sits at 3600 words, but it’s not done. Add it to September goals.
  3. Work on the middle grade novel I started in July. The Forest Throne is technically to be co-authored by my oldest grandson, though I’ll do most of the writing and he will edit it, helping me to understand what 10-13 year old boys like. I wrote the first chapter of this in July and sent it to him for comments, receiving his approbation of the sample. I’d like to add another 5,000 words to it this month to go with the 1350 written so far. I’ve brainstormed out most of the plot but not specific scenes. No writing on this at all. I brainstormed the plot some more (which is work and progress) and figured out how to solve another plot problem that I was uncertain of. Hoping to get back to this in September.
  4. Blog twice a week, as always. Did this, as always.
  5. Do some work on my website. I’m not sure what, but I have to overcome this technophobia and improve it. Nope, put this off again. I still need to do this. Oh, if I were only a techie!
  6. Attend meetings of my three writing groups, assuming they don’t get cancelled because of local corona virus outbreaks. Two of the groups cancelled, with the pandemic figuring in each. The Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista met, and I attended.
  7. If the cover artist gets the covers re-done, re-publish the three older church history novels, updating them for new copyright info and list of works, as well as link them in a series. The cover artist wasn’t able to do this, so my goal remains not done.

So, what are my goals for September 2021? Just about everything from last month, I reckon.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  2. Wrap up my research project on our church’s charter member. I’ve come to a stopping point of sorts. What remains is to get my research notes into a useful format so that a future researcher, maybe at our 150th anniversary in 2071, will find the notes legible and useful and the research accurate.
  3. Finish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, the short story I’ve been working on for two or three months.
  4. Link the books in my Church History Novels series on Amazon. This is an easy process. I’ve been holding off until the new covers were done, but it’s time to just do it.
  5. I still have a few more tweaks to do on the church centennial book. I’m going to work on it after I finish this post and may finish them today (Friday afternoon).
  6. Attend my writers’ groups. At the moment all three are scheduled.
  7. Document one Bible study idea I had and put it in the queue.

That’s enough. I wonder if I can achieve much of this in September. See you in early October. October 1 is a Friday, so possibly I’ll post progress and goals on the 1st.

C.S. Lewis, rant, Wesley, Writing

It’s Time To Modernize Citations

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This is how I would like to see citations done. Kudos to the author and publisher. Pay no attention to the curving text. That’s a photographer’s error (meaning mine).

A couple of days ago, a Facebook friend I seldom interact with posted a C.S. Lewis quote. I’ve seen this quote before. It seems to be politically conservative, would seem to support certain memes you see on social media. The quote was not attributed except to say it was by C.S. Lewis. Having seen it so posted at least three times, I decided to not let it go this time. I asked the poster what the source was, where Lewis wrote this. She came back with a fuller quote and said it was from “God In The Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (1948).

Fine, I thought, I have a copy of God In The Dock. I’ll just go there and see if I can find the place. Alas, as I looked through it, I re-discovered (having seen some time ago but forgotten) that GITD is collection of essays. As I looked further, I discovered that not only was GITD the title of a book, it was also the title of an essay. “God In The Dock” was an essay from 1948. God In The Dock was a book, a collection of Lewis’s essays published posthumously in 1970. Which did she mean? Since she said 1948 in the source, I figured it was the essay. So I went to it in the book and…the quote wasn’t in the essay.

A little bit of searching—something I’m getting good at these days—revealed “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”, an essay that appeared first in an Australian periodical in 1949 and republished in an Australian legal journal in 1953. So her source as presented was technically incorrect.

All of which got me to thinking about sources, which in turn got me to thinking about footnotes and citations. I do a lot of reading and research in the older writers, those who are long out of copyright. You can find lots of their works on line at no cost, though not the more modern reprints. a book I’m reading right now has a lot of quotes and citations in footnotes. In quotes from the writings of John Wesley, they refer to a specific set of collected works. Here’s an example.

4. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, vol. 12 (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1978)

If I wanted to find this particular quote, perhaps to read it in context and see if the author had used Wesley’s words correctly, I would have to go somewhere and get that specific set of his collected works and find the specific volume, the specific page—oops, he didn’t give the page. Shame on the author and the publisher. Let’s try a different citation in a footnote.

16. Wesley, Works, vol VI, 512

A footnote immediately prior to this one identifies which of Wesley’s collected works is meant. That’s a little more helpful, but, again, only if I have that specific volume. But, all of Wesley’s works are out of copyright. They are all available in a great on-line library called the Internet, both pictures of them from the 18th and 19th centuries and electronic versions newer than that. Why not just say where it’s found? Why not say, for example:

John Wesley, “Sermon No. 17”

or whatever of Wesley’s writing you need. How easy it would be to find the original document and do the research you want to do.

So I am making the proposal that we start modernizing citations and footnotes to recognize how data is accessed these days.

Back to the C.S, Lewis quote in question. Here are two ways to do that citation, first the old way, then my proposed new way.

  • C.S. Lewis, The Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis, 2003 (New York, NY, Inspirational Press), 499
  • C.S. Lewis, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”, 1949, paragraph 10

I ask you, which would be easier to find? You can go to whatever Lewis collection you have, find the essay, thumb to the paragraph, and read the quote. You can read the whole essay to get the context, and make up your mind if those posting the quote are using Lewis correctly. Or, if you don’t have it, you know what to look for in a library or a book store. Want a little more information? You could expand it as follows.

  • C.S. Lewis, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”, paragraph 10. Anthologized in God In The Dock,

Since God In The Dock, the book, has been published several times in several formats, you don’t even need to give the year of publication of who the publisher is. The name of the book is sufficient for any reader or researcher of reasonable intelligence to find the work, verify the quote, and go on with whatever project had caused him to look the information up.

I followed this system, at least somewhat, in my two family history/genealogy books. I referenced works without getting into specific printed matter, publishers, and dates of publication. I like the way it turned out.

And, while I’m at it about citations/footnotes, how about we once and for all bury Latin references and abbreviations? Sure, I can look up what op cit and ibid mean and learn them. But with the cost of printing as cheap as it is nowadays, why not just repeat the work, perhaps in a slightly shorter form, and change the page number? Give complete references in a Bibliography at the end. This I also did in my two genealogy books.

Well, that’s my proposal. I don’t expect it to catch on in my lifetime, but I made it and put it out there for public scrutiny. I’d like to hear what everyone things of it.

Oh, to be fair, the book I’m reading for church does include some footnotes as I suggest. For example:

12. Wesley, “Sermon 85, On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” III.2

So maybe my proposal isn’t so far out.

America, Health, Politics

So Tired Of Covid Protocol Arguments

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“I’m not wearing a mask. I’m a free person and you can’t make me! The government can’t make me! I won’t be a sheep like you!”

“If you don’t wear a mask you are purposely killing people. Murderer!”

These are the two ends of the covid argument, and I’m sick of it. The rhetoric is way over the top on both sides. It’s the same for the vaccines, though, if anything, it’s even worse for the vaccines. People yelling past each other on each of these issues, not only on social media, but in real life as well.

I’m trying to ignore it as much as I can. I’m a reasonably intelligent person and don’t really feel like I need the government telling me what to do. They are a good data-gathering organization and, if they will just do that and make the aggregated data available and easy to find and understand, without hiding any data that might argue against some kind of prevailing wisdom. I can then make good decisions. I did that. I received a vaccine (J&J was the one being offered at the place where I went) and, since the resurgence in covid cases I’ve gone back to wearing a mask in public.

But the question I have is do people not know how to get what they want? It’s an old business adage: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to get what you want?” The idea behind this is sometimes you might be right and lose the argument or not get what you want. A hypothetical: You’re a Republican and want to put a campaign bumper sticker on your car. But you want to get business from a certain city and the mayor is a Democrat. So, to get what you want (more business and more profit) you don’t worry about being right (displaying a Republican bumper sticker). Don’t worry about being right; instead get what you want.

On social media, George Takei posted this:

Telling me you are proudly unvaccinated is like telling me you’re a drunk driver. You’re not a patriot. You’re not a freedom fighter. You’re a menace.

Does Takei really think this will convince people who have resisted getting the vaccine to now get it? Is this how you win arguments? I don’t think so. I suppose Takei feels pretty good about himself. In a witty way he called those who refuse the vaccine idiots. But he is, in fact, hurting his own cause. No one is going to decide to get the vaccine because George Takei calls them a menace. Because Takei speaks this way he will cause some who were on the fence to do the opposite of what he wants them to do. So I say to him, “George, learn how to get what you want rather than be right.”

I want to suggest an alternate approach. It’s the approach our church took. First, a little history. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, our church ended in-person services. Services went on-line. Sometime around June 2020, they began services in-person but continued on-line and did not encourage in-person attendance. The sanctuary that seats 600 was reconfigured to seat less than 100. Masks were required. Physical distancing was required. Life groups didn’t meet in person. Hand sanitizer was everywhere. Then, in September 2020, we increased seating in the sanctuary just a little. That’s when I went back to in-person church. Then, somewhere around Jan-Feb 2021, things opened up a little more. People started coming back in larger numbers. We still physically distanced, but masks were mostly done away with.

Then, somewhere around June 2021, covid cases began spiking in northwest Arkansas. A few people went back to wearing masks. A few vulnerable people went back to on-line church. In July the church re-instituted a protocol, a recommendation, to wear masks in any part of the church where you couldn’t distance from others. But this was all made voluntary with a request/strong suggestion that you do this. And, since that was re-instituted, we have had 100 percent compliance with these voluntary standards. 100 percent compliance. Maybe some who can’t wear masks or won’t wear masks decided to stay away or attend on-line.

Our pastor wrote a blog post about this. It’s worth reading.

An Open Letter To My Church

It’s a little long, but not so much. I hope you read it. Here’s the salient point in it.

I looked around the lobby this past Sunday and everyone was wearing masks, complying with the recommendation of our board. This happened not because you were forced, but because you believed the wellbeing of your neighbor was more important than your personal comfort or freedom.

My point is that beating up people, insulting people, shaming people, to convince them to wear a mask in public, be vaccinated against covid, or practice physical distancing won’t work. It won’t. But giving them information and explaining to them what you think is right, what you hope they will do and want them to do, for their own good and for the good of the community, will result in people doing what you want—to a much larger extent than shaming/insulting/belittling.

expatriate life, Politics

Remembering Kuwait As Afghanistan Crumbles

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[Dateline 26 August 2021, the 24th anniversary of Dad’s death]

Remember the oil wells set afire by Iraq? It really happened. Here’s Lynda in June 1991 when she went back to Kuwait as a Red Cross nurse.

A mere five days ago, the Afghan national army collapsed. They’d been fighting the Taliban for years in a broad civil war, backed up by our equipment, money, and a handful of troops. Why did they cease fighting? I have a thought on why. Perhaps I’ll speculate on that in another post on another day.

In light of that, a massive air evacuation has been ongoing since then. News reports are saying as many as 90,000 people have air lifted out. If true, it’s a tremendous achievement. But it needed not have happened. Other courses wee available. Perhaps I’ll speculate about those in another post on another day.

Then, today, bombs went off near the airport in Kabul. At least twelve American servicemen are dead, and an unknown number of Afghanis and other foreigners. News reports indicate they were set off by suicide bombers, with detonation locations selected to inflict injury and embarrassment to us. News reports are horrific.

This is all so familiar to me. It was August-December 1990, thirty-one years ago, that Iraq invaded Kuwait. At that time we were residents of Kuwait, though we were in the USA on annual leave when Iraq attacked. Some of you might remember that, though because of our involvement, my memories are sharp. At that time you only had four news outlets, no internet, no social media, no You Tube. News was somewhat scarce. What had become of our many friends in Kuwait, American and foreign?

Negotiations with Sadam Hussein resulted in the release of some Americans while others were taken hostage to various military targets in Iraq, thinking that America wouldn’t bomb places where they knew their citizens were. The planes began arriving at our Airforce bases, and we watched people deplane. Every plane had people we knew on it. We even saw one of Lynda’s best friends, who had been Sara’s 2nd grade teacher, deplane in London.

Eventually, Secretary of state James Baker conducted other negotiations, and those who had been held hostage were released in early January 1991. On January 17 Operation Desert Storm began. The liberation of Kuwait was on. The occupation of Iraq, and trying to change it into a democracy similar to ours, began, Twenty-three years showed that they would never become culturally like us.

I went to Kuwait in Jan 1988, Lynda and the children joining me in March. In the six or seven weeks I was there without her, three different terrorist bombs went off in Kuwait City. I heard two of them. They were set off at a time and place where they made a statement but didn’t hurt anyone. The third bomb was being delivered when it went off, killing the two delivery men and burning a nearby palm tree.

We enrolled the kids in the American School of Kuwait for the completion of their third and first grade years. In the parents’ packet was information on where we would find our children if for any reason they had to evacuate the school property. That hit us hard. The Iran-Iraq war was still going strong. We sometimes saw tankers smoking out in the Persian Gulf. Lynda and I had a discussion: what would happen if the war spilled over into Kuwait? What could the US government do for us? We decided they could do nothing; we were on our own.

So here it is again Another Islamic country that we tried to help has blown up in our face. Iran in 1979, Iraq-Kuwait in 1990, and Afghanistan from 2001-2021. We send in our military, or our influencers and try to change them into a country that is culturally similar to ours. It doesn’t work. Their culture has been set for more than a millennium. I time of trauma followed by a decade or two of our influence is not going to change them. Once we are gone—and at some point we will always be gone—they will revert to their long term culture. If they oppressed women before we were there, stopped doing that while we were there, when we are gone they will again oppress women. We can’t change them in two decades.

They say we are getting out. I hope we are getting out. We could have done it better, a whole lot better. We should have done it better. I hope we don’t ever go back in.