Category Archives: Engineering

Bible study, Christianity, Engineering

Not Useful

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Trying to remember why I started spot-reading this.

I have e-books on my cell phone to read at odd moments, such as waiting rooms. I have them as Kindle books, Nook books, and Google Books. Different books on each service, more books than I’ll ever to be able to read in this lifetime.

Document one of four in this discussion.

I recently had one of those odd moments and went looking for something to read. My choices at the top of the Nook and Google  reading stacks didn’t excite me. I had just finished a book on Kindle in the previous odd moment. The next book in line was titled WTJ+53.2. What the heck is that? I wondered. Opening it, I found it was an issue of the Wesleyan Theological Journal, probably Vol. 53 No. 2. You might wonder what I, a layman, is doing with a theological journal on my phone. I actually scan that journal’s archives about once a year, and once in a while have found nuggets applicable to what I was teaching in adult Sunday school class or to support something in one of my books. So it’s a good thing to have to browse or read in one of my odd moments.

Document three in the chain.

I opened the book. I had previously opened Vol 53 No 2 to an article and read approximately 1/3 through it. The article was “Miracles, Theodicy, and Essential Kenosis: A Response to John Sanders” by Thomas J. Oord, [Oord 2018]. I had/have never heard of Sanders, but I recognized Oord’s name from a news story, so must have decided to download and read this article. I finished the 21-page article about a week ago, and am just now setting down my thoughts.

It is Oord’s response to an article by Sanders titled “Why Oord’s Essential Kenosis Model Fails to Solve the Problem of Evil While Retaining Miracles” in Vol. 51 No. 2 [Sanders 2016] of the same journal. Sanders had critiqued Oord’s book The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence [Oord 2015]. Oord says in his 2018 article that in his 2015 book he referred to Sanders’ 2007 book, The God Who Risks [Sanders 2007]. Oord doesn’t say his book is in response to Sanders but does mention devoting a chapter to Sanders 2007. So this is the progression of documents being discussed:

  • Sanders 2007: The God Who Risks (book)
  • Oord 2015: The Uncontrolling Love of God (book)
  • Sanders 2016: Oord’s Essential Kenosis (article)
  • Oord 2018: Miracles, Theodicy, etc. (article)

This reminded me of engineering journals and how they did things. They would publish an article and invite discussions. People would write in discussions (either criticism or agreement), then the author would have a “closure”, which was a refutation of the various discussions or once in a while acknowledgement that the writer (of a discussion) had something valuable to say. I participated in that process once, in the late 1970s, early in my career. A journal published an article on wastewater treatment processes that seemed off the mark. I wrote a discussion on it, but, due to my relatively junior status, elected to mail it directly to the author rather than to the journal for publishing. The author called me, was very angry that someone would dare to question him, and kept saying, “You don’t know sh— from Shinola.” I let the matter drop. Somehow my boss got wind of it and gave a copy of the original article and my discussion to our chief process engineer. He said my discussion was spot on, that the author didn’t know what he was talking about, that he would handle this, and that the journal he had previously respected and published in had obviously gone downhill.

All I’ve read in this progression is Oord 2018. On the first page were the words ontological, epistemic, theodicy, and of course kenosis. Not one of those words was ever defined in my engineering classes. I doubted that I would ever have to use one of them teaching adult Sunday school. I doubt they’ve been used in the SS teacher’s books I’ve studied from. I should have abandoned the article and closed the book right there. But I read on, struggling all the way with the concepts I barely understood and through Oord’s many uses of the current buzzword “I affirm…” I even re-read the first third of Oord 2018, since there had been a long time lag between my initial and final reading of the article.

I have no expertise in the areas of Oord’s and Sanders’ back and forth, so obviously can’t engage in polite discussion of them as I tried to with the s–S guy. But after 35 years of adult Sunday school teaching and administration, I think I have a little expertise in churchmanship and my own Christian walk. Here are my conclusions, for what they are worth.

  • I find nothing in Oord 2018 that will help me live a better Christian life.
  • I find nothing in Oord 2018 that will help me teach others to live a better Christian life.
  • I find nothing in Oord 2018 that is the least bit encouraging or uplifting.
  • Based on this one article, I conclude WTJ obviously isn’t intended for a layman like me and will look for some other scholarly journal to fill my odd reading moments. I also wonder, though haven’t yet so concluded, if those involved in WTS aren’t wasting their time. To be fair, the world they live in, move in, and have their being in doesn’t seem to be my world. Most likely someone gets good help from reading this.
  • While kenosis might be essential (or unessential, taking it to the opposite logical conclusion), it is most likely none of these four documents are and I won’t be looking for the three I’ve not read.

I’m not an idiot. BS and MS degrees. Nine Bible study books written and self-published. A dozen other Bible studies developed and taught. Close to two dozen engineering articles presented at conferences or published. But I’ll be danged if I can see any reason to waste time on the stuff of this article.

Decumulation, Engineering, home improvements

Trophies

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The trophies have to go.

So, in the interest of decumulation, I’m getting rid of books—even cutting deep into books I would like to keep and read someday, I’m getting rid of photographs. They don’t take as much space as books, but they are more numerous, are a burden rather than a blessing, and someday will be a burden to our kids. What else can and should go?

Every now and then I take a “tour” of the basement storeroom, looking for what should go next after we finish with current decumulation projects (mainly the photos). I see boxes of old Christmas decorations we haven’t put out for years. Same for other holidays. I see a couple of boxes of old camping equipment that I’m sure we will never use.  At some point we’ll tackle them, but I don’t think the time is right just now.

The pants I wore to church yesterday seemed pretty big on me. I checked the size, and they are 42s, about 10 to 15 years old. I don’t know, but maybe I’ve lost enough weight that 42s are now too big and I should get rid of them. That, of course, brings up the whole subject of clothes and closets, which is a huge project. Do we tackle that en-masse or one garment at a time? I’ll be pondering that this week. It wasn’t too long ago that I stuck an old pair of 44 corduroys that were way too big in the donation pile and took them to Goodwill.

Last week, seated at my desk in The Dungeon, I looked at the shelf above my computer desk and saw it adorned with what I can only call “stuff.” Some of it is left over office supplies that I “might” use some day.  Some is misc. things. Not quite sure what to do with those. But one thing I noticed is my trophies. These are things I got for delivering technical papers at engineering conferences. One year my paper was awarded best paper at the conference, and I received a trophy for that (actually two, since the first came with a typo and they sent another). The company I worked for then awarded me trophies for writing the papers, as a means of encouraging others to do the same.

Those trophies sat on a shelf at my office. When I retired over six years ago, I stuck them on the shelf in The Dungeon and more or less forgot about them. But what good are they doing me now? None. So I have decided they will go in the trash on Wednesday. The shelf above my computer desk will be a little barer, a little less decorated, but a little close to being ready to be moved somewhere when moving time comes.

One small decumulation step; one giant leap toward downsizing.

books, career, Engineering, Genealogy, memories

Weary Work

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Into he trash went my engineering seals, lead sharpener for engineering drawing work, and service anniversary pins.

The main work I’m doing now—work at home that is, but not including my writing and stock trading work—is shedding possessions in anticipation of future downsizing. It’s wearying work. Not so much physically wearying, but mentally so. For a couple of months we’ve been pulling books from the basement and listing them for sale on Facebook Marketplace. We’ve sold a fair number, though have many more to go.

We have cleared out a fair number of things. We donated 400 children’s books to a church function. With our son’s and daughter’s help, on separate trips here, we took at least three loads of donation stuff to Goodwill. That included some odd pieces of furniture.

Some day I’ll have to actually read this old probate document and see how it fits in with family history.

One thing I was doing, but which was delayed by my hospitalizations and recuperation, was scanning my genealogy papers, saving them electronically in a retrievable manner, and getting rid of the paper files. This week I got back to that project, and over three days got rid of around 50 sheets. Some of those sheets were probate records from Massachusetts in the 1600s and 1700s that I had my son research years ago. The sheets are difficult to read, and I don’t really remember how some of the people fit into our family tree. I’ll have to transcribe the probate documents and figure out exactly who the people are (ancestors or relatives). That’s something I can do from the electronic files better than the paper files, because I can enlarge the e-docs and read them easier. But when will I ever take the time to do this additional step?

You know dis-accumulation cuts deeply if I’m getting rid of Carlyle books.

Another thing that we did in the storeroom was pull out our daughter’s old bedroom set, unused for at least 10 years, and little used for 20 years before that. We snapped some photos and I listed it for sale. Only one person showing interest so far.

With the bedroom set pulled out and on display, this allowed me to reorganize stuff. I moved an old entertainment center and restacked stuff around it. That allowed me to see what stuff we have, and gave me an idea of what we can get rid of soon with the greatest reduction in volume. Those would be the old VHS tapes.

Some of the things I’m going through are cutting deep. In a box of things I brought home from the office, I found my professional engineer seals. It took me a few minutes to make the decision to put them in the trash. The seals meant a lot to me when I was a practicing engineer, but that ended close to four years ago (retirement followed by two years on retainer. I also found a large roll of discarded engineering drawings that I salvaged with the intent of using the backs to draw big genealogy charts. But I now know that’s not going to happen, so the paper roll is moved to recycling staging. Last week I tossed twenty-five years of continuing education certificates and a couple of stacks of my old business cards. Next will be my many organization membership and annual licensing cards.

One big space keeper is my old stamp collection. After years of storing it in the storeroom, I’ve decided to get rid of it. I don’t know if it has any value these days. Does anyone still collect stamps? Are dealers out there and are they buying? Or is it possible to find a private collector?  So much work to do.

Downsizing, which requires dis-accumulation, has become more important now that I’ve had health issues. My recovery from heart surgery is going well (including three days a week in cardio-rehab), recovery from my last stroke less so. But clearly my health is not what it was a year ago. We’ve got to cut deeply into our possessions, got to. We are leaner than we were a year ago, and significantly leaner than we were four years ago. But we have much much more to do.

All this is quite wearying. Dealing with the genealogy papers is more wearying than anything. Each piece of paper I toss in the recycling basket feels like I’ve parted with something I should keep, something that someone among my descendants may want or benefit from someday. Ah, well, in the future the Internet will contain so many records and resources that my paltry files may have no value.

Tonight, after dealing with books for about an hour, I pulled two genealogy notebooks off the closet shelf and went through them. They were mostly forms for copying information on. I kept two of each kind of sheet and discarded the rest. I did keep any lined sheets without writing on the front or back (maybe 20 of them), as who knows what I could use them for someday.

Engineering, miscellaneous, Personal Growth

Things Proposed On Facebook, Pt 3: Surround Yourself

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I find truth in this saying, but when do you get to the place where you give rather than get?

Continuing with my mini-series of mini-posts about advice found on Facebook, here is the third one. On Facebook, you have heard it said:

If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.

Said another way:

Surround yourself with people who are better than you are.

Admirable sentiments, don’t you think? How can anybody object to that? In order to improve yourself, choose your friends wisely; make sure they are smarter than you, better than you. Let their wisdom, experience, and common sense rub off on you. You will soon find yourself a better person.

But…but…if you really, rigorously do that, you might help yourself, but can you ever help someone else to be better? You can’t. You will always be taking, never giving.

So it seems like this is the height of selfishness. Yes, sometimes surround yourself with good, smart, better people, and grow from your association with them. But at other times, be the smartest, most experienced person in the room and help others to grow.

I remember back to college. I think it was fall semester sophomore year. Several of us in the engineering program were in the same calculus class. This was level three calculus. We’d already been through calculus both semesters freshman year. Third level was what was supposed to weed out those who would make it or not as an engineer. I was working a lot of hours at the Burger Chef that semester, riding my 5-speed bicycle the 5 miles each way, along with 18 credit hours, leaving little time for study. Leading up to a critical test, I thought I knew the material fairly well but still wanted to study more.

But two other guys in the same class with me were struggling big time. They asked me for help. So between classes and work, rather than study on my own to improve my knowledge, I met with them and went over the material. The test came without me doing my normal intensive study for a math test. I felt fairly good, but thought I could have done better if I had found the time to study.

The day the grades were supposed to be posted, I went to the professor’s office. He walked in about the time I got there. He said the tests were graded but not yet entered in his book. Would I help him do that? I took the pile of tests and read off the names and grades while he entered them in his book. Yes, this was a primitive time, long before computer databases and grading systems. Page by page I read, over 60 students in his three classes of this course. Finally I came to my test. I got a 100. My best grade of the year. It paid to help my friends study what they needed to know, perhaps more than studying on my own.

I want to be careful here. Making sure others in the room are smarter than you may be a form of selfishness, but making sure you’re the smartest in the room could easily lead to arrogance. Some balance is required.

But I think it’s easy to reject this Facebook advice. Be in the position with others that makes sense for you. Look for smart people when you need help and needy people when you need to minister.

book reviews, Engineering

Book Review Concluded: The Control of Nature

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The third part of John McPhee’s The Control of Nature concerned the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles. I had a difficult time identifying them on maps and aerial photographs, so this review will not be illustrated. See part 1 of this review here, and part two here.

Somewhere close to L.A., this mountain range is unusual in that it is growing, not eroding. Tectonic forces are pushing the mountains higher. Yet, the mountains are eroding in a sense in that they are sloughing off rock. In any given heavy rainfall, rocks and mud flow down from the mountains. No big deal, you say…except the growth of Los Angeles has caused subdivisions to be built up onto the mountains, right up to the point where the land gets too steep to build on. These subdivisions are what the sloughing rock and mud encounter first.

McPhee does a good job of explaining the terror that residents had when first the noise, then the detritus, hits their property. The flow goes into yards and through houses, or sometimes moves houses, and tears up and blocks streets.

To protect residences, various governmental agencies, such as regional flood control districts, have been formed to construct and maintain catchment areas upstream of the houses. I have a difficult time envisioning this. Since the rockslides could come anywhere on the mountains, and since predicting the quantity of “rock flow” would be less of a science than predicting runoff from rainfall, for this to be effective, you would need a huge catchment basin across the entire face of the mountain range. It sounds physically impossible and financially impractical.

Yet, it is being done (as of 1989, the time the book was written, that is). Sometimes the catchments are successful, sometimes not. But officials and residents labor on, doing whatever can be done to anticipate from whence the rock will come, and catching it before it hits houses—to control nature.

In this section, as in the two previous ones, McPhee tells a compelling story, but tells it too long. Too many stories. Too many names of victims and officials. Too many occasions for the reader to zone out, as I did all too frequently. The 272 page book would have been just as informative and more compelling if it had been told in 200 pages, in my engineering opinion.

Now, the big questions: a rating and a disposition. The latter is easy. This book is not a keeper. I read it in anticipation of putting it on the donation/sale stack, and there it goes after I post this. As to a rating, I think only 3-stars, and those two stars marked off because of the length. Would a non-engineer be able to read it and glean information from and be entertained by it? Yes, absolutely, maybe even more than I was. This is a book I’m quite glad I read, but could never see myself reading again.

book reviews, Engineering

Continued: “The Control of Nature”

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The new volcano threatened to close the harbor that runs left to right in this photo. The harbor entrance used to be twice as large as it is in the photo.

In my last post, I began a review of the book The Control of Nature by John McPhee. I mentioned that the book had three parts, and that I would be doing a review in three parts. See the first part of the review here.

The second part is titled “Cooling the Lava”. This concerns a volcanic eruption in Iceland in February 1973. It’s now been over a month since I read this section (maybe closer to two months), and I don’t remember all the names involved. Basically, this was on an island named Vestmannaeyar on the south side of Iceland. It included a sizable town, an important port, and a valuable fishing fleet and the infrastructure to support this. The town was Heimaey. The volcano was a new one, coming up from nothing but the hot works below the nation’s surface. See the photo I clipped from Google Earth.

Almost from the minute the volcano appeared, the fire boats, engines, hoses, and water came out and people directed it onto the flowing lava. People in the country laughed at them. But as the lava increased, so did the hoses and water. The laughter faded away and fear came.

McPhee does a good job of explaining how mankind cannot always allow nature to have it’s way.

Many people fled Heimaey. Others came and joined the fire brigade. Slowly, the hose holders won the battle. The lava hardened at the surface and new lava, when it came, piled up higher and higher, but ceased to move forward. The harbor was saved. In fact, the harbor entrance width was cut in half, reducing wave intrusion from the sea but leaving plenty of space for ships and boats to get in and out.

McPhee does a good job of explaining what was done, how the lava behaved, and the aftermath. I especially enjoyed the later. The surface cooled enough to walk on, but stick a thermometer through the surface, and a few inches down you have temperatures that will boil water. The crust, though hard enough to walk on, is thin. This is true even years after the eruption.

My main complaint about this section of the book is the same as the first section: it was too long. McPhee went on and on. He shifted from Iceland to Hawaii, where they took the opposite tack from Iceland. They let the lava flow and hoped for the best. It was interesting to learn about the difference in approaches, but it really dragged out this section. Actually, the Hawaii part wasn’t too long. It was the Iceland portion. I don’t know what I would cut out, but something really needed to be cut.

This makes two parts of the book with the same opinion on quality. Stay tuned for the third part, and my overall conclusion. I’m not sure whether that will be on Monday, or perhaps later.

 

book reviews, Engineering, flood studies

Book Review: “The Control of Nature”

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McPhee does a good job of explaining how mankind cannot always allow nature to have it’s way.

Approximately 30 years ago, the head of our company gave me (as he did to others) a copy of the book The Control of Nature by John McPhee. I’m sure he thought that this would be a good book for civil engineers to read. Well, it took me a while to get to it, but I finally did, reading it over the summer. The reading ran a little longer than it probably should have. 288 pages long, I think it took me close to a month to read in ten page sittings.

The book is in three sections, each dealing with a case where man has battled what the natural world is doing in a place where man doesn’t want change to happen to his built environment. The first is where the Mississippi River, in its meanderings upstream of Baton Rouge, it trying to spill out into the Atchafalaya River, which is known as a distributary.

This illustration from Wikipedia shows what’s going on between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya.

This is flat country. The river flows slowly, but it has a lot of water in it. Some of that water escapes from the Mississippi River watershed into the Atchafalaya River watershed. This has been going on for a long time (as in centuries), but is slowly accelerating. If nature had its way, just about all of the Mississippi would have, by now, been re-routed into the Atchafalaya. The Lower Mississippi will have ceased to be a major river, and New Orleans and Baton Rouge would have become untenable as major ports.

We can’t let that happen the Corps of Engineers decided over 60 years ago. So they built control structures. The first one worked, but wasn’t enough. So they built another, and another. Then the floods came, and everyone involved held their breath to see what would happen. The structures held. The “father of rivers” stayed in its banks. The control structures let water through, but just enough to keep the Atchafalaya flowing as it’s supposed to.

McPhee goes into great detail about how this all came about, how it is being maintained, and what the (then, around 1988) future was likely to hold. The structures had held up for a couple of major floods, though sustained wear and tear. What would happen in the future.

The area where the control structure are. They appear to still be working.

It occurred to me that if these structures were still standing I ought to be able to find them on Google Earth. Sure enough, there they are, though added to since McPhee wrote about them. They now include a hydroelectric structure on one overflow channel. The next photo, from closer in shows water flowing in the channels. The Corps couldn’t completely shut off the Atchafalaya, so the structures were built not to hold back the flow completely, but to allow just the right amount through.

The main control structure closer up.

This part of the book is fascinating. McPhee talked about the history of the rivers and the structures, but also about the present, that is the end of the 1980s present. He interviewed people who operated and maintained the structures. He interviewed those who lived nearby and how all of this affected them. And he interviewed those who were planning for the future.

In fact, those interviews give rise to my main criticism of the book. Sure, they were interesting, but they were too many and too long. They made into 90 pages what could have easily been told in 60 with no loss of interest, at least for me. And, as I go through this review, you’ll find that’s my complaint throughout.

But, I’m going to split this review up into three parts and won’t give my overall conclusion or rating until the end of the third part. I will say that, as an engineer whose career was mainly about the flow of water (sometimes sewage) through pipes and channels, this part of the book was fascinating to me. I also think non-engineers will find the book of interest. In fact, perhaps those many interviews will provide much enjoyment to those not so caught up in the engineering of the project.

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3, coming at some point.

Engineering, environment, Politics

Some Environmental Thoughts

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Progress is being made in the USA at reducing greenhouse gases. Is the situation really as dire as the media would have us believe?

Nowadays, when the media mentions “climate change”, the assumption is it’s human-caused. You never hear anthropogenic—i.e. human-caused. It’s just assumed that it is all human caused. No debate is tolerated.

Now, it’s obvious that human activities generate heat. If you rub two plates together or drive a piston up and down through its place in the motor, you will generate heat from friction. Consuming energy to move the plates or piston will also generate heat. Those who say that human activities have no impact on the plant aren’t really thinking clearly.

But I’ m not convinced that natural processes don’t have a bigger share in the changes taking place.

Some years ago, I dug into the data that says the climate is changing. That’s the first step: to verify that a change is taking place. Using only on-line sources, I was able to learn a lot, but I wasn’t able to learn the one thing I felt I needed to know: the placement of the climate measuring stations and the distribution of them around the world. I wanted to assure myself that the measuring stations aren’t placed in such a way that the aggregated data is skewed. Alas, I couldn’t find this information on-line.

Not that I think these stations are purposely placed to guarantee an outcome that someone wants, but the principle of due diligence requires that you determine this.

I then wanted to see what I could learn about any natural causes that might be adding to the climate change. It turned out that it was impossible to find any discussion or links to—or even reference to or citations of—scientific papers about natural causes of climate change. It seems to be a taboo subject.

I must say here that the internet is a vast library, and that maybe those papers are out there and can be found. But I couldn’t find them despite trying. What kind of natural processes? Well, what about decreasing volcanic activity resulting in less ash in the global atmosphere that prevents sunlight from reaching earth’s surface? What about the gradual slowing of the earth’s rotation? What does that do to the climate.

“Now you’re just being silly and disingenuous,” you say. “The slowing  rotation of the earth? Is it happening? And how could that result in climate change?” Well, yes, it is happening. Every now and then the official keepers of the atomic clock announce that a “leap second” will be added. This has been going on for a while. The length of a day has increased by a minute or two over the last 100 years. Before you say this is silly, that is 1/10th of 1 percent added to the length of a day. Small? Perhaps. But that means whatever part of the earth is in sunlight has sunlight 0.1 % longer than it used to, and the same for the part in darkness. What would be the result? Greater extremes, for sure. Longer sunlight means more heating, and longer darkness means more cooling. What is the net result?

And what if it is shown that, though the slowing of the earth’s rotation is small, after a few billion years some kind of point of no return has happened in how this impacts the climate? Let’s be sure of that before we ask people to make drastic changes.

One other thing I never see, and haven’t been able to find online, is life-cycle environmental impacts of different measures proposed. The current administration is really pushing electric vehicles. Sure, they don’t emit the type of greenhouse gases that internal combustion engine vehicles do. But power is being generated somewhere to charge the EVs. New transmission mains, even a whole new electrical grid, is needed to power these cars. What is the environmental cost of the vehicles themselves, the distributed charging infrastructure, and the distribution system upgrades necessary to make it all work with some reasonable similarity to the society we now have? This isn’t discussed.

I bring all this up because those who preach man-caused climate change want us to change our habits so as to reduce or, preferably, reverse these manmade effects. They frequently want to bring about this change by taxation. A carbon tax is most often proposed. In other words, if you can’t get people to change their behavior voluntarily, make it more expensive to maintain the old way of doing things rather than change to the new ways. Taxation is proposed to achieve this end.

Before these massive expenditures of a whole new transportation infrastructure happen, how about we do a lot of study and computer modelling on a macro, world-wide level to rule out every possible natural cause? Volcanic action. Earth’s slowing rotation. Probably some other things. Let’s have that public discussion, laying all the data on the table. Let’s prove through comprehensive studies what the environmental footprint is of those infrastructure changes—cradle-to-grave footprints brought back to an easily stated standard.

I’m going to have a couple more posts about this. They may not be consecutive, however.

Christianity, Engineering, stock market, Writing

Thoughts on Occupations and Leisure

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In my last post, I made some comments on C.S. Lewis’s essay “Christianity and Culture”. I decided to re-read it, finishing it on Saturday. I’m now in the process of reading the train of criticism it provoked and Lewis’s response to the criticism. Last night I went looking for the criticism, and found it on-line. Alas, it was all behind a paywall. In the next few days I may spend a little more time to see if it exists somewhere else on the internet that doesn’t require a financial outlay.

But Lewis got me to thinking, and I journaled about it Saturday night and may journal about it again. Lewis wondered, several years after his conversion, if the cultured, educated life he was living and earning his living from was compatible with Christianity. He said that he had come to the conclusion that the end/goal of the Christian’s life must be to glorify God and see His kingdom increased. Did the cultured life, a.ka. the literary life wherein literature is pursued as an end in itself, contribute to these two aims of the Christian life?

Lewis concluded the cultured life was not incompatible with Christianity. To do so he searched the scriptures, the early Christian writers, and many later Christian writers from Catholic and Protestant sources.

All of which led me to wonder whether my vocation and leisure was compatible with the aims of Christianity. Of course, I left my vocation behind for retirement. For 44 years I spent my time engineering public infrastructure and private developments. I did this in five states and three countries. I earned a good living at it. I think I helped the world, and in some cases changed the world, by practicing that profession. While doing so, I believe I did it as a faithful and devout Christian. When asked to pay a bribe while in Saudi Arabia—a request made by a fellow American expat—I refused. When some Bible extract booklets were shipped to be by mistake, I distributed them in-country, including to a Lebanese Muslim expat.

I could go on blowing my own horn, but that’s not a good thing to do. I only do so to show why I come to the conclusion that the decades I spent in my chosen profession were compatible with Christian discipleship, a conclusion arrived at with considerably less searching than Lewis did.

What about now? I actually have two new professions. One, of course, is writing. My books and stories are a mix of overtly Christian and secular underpinned by a Christian worldview. I don’t have a lot of sales and no notoriety, but it’s difficult to see how that would be incompatible with Christian discipleship.

My other “occupation” in “retirement” is stock trading, or securities trading as defined by the IRS: buying and selling stocks and options for the ake of generating income and building wealth. On the surface that looks a little more iffy. Again, taking a somewhat superficial look at it, securities trading is not inherently evil. It could be looked at the same as buying and selling paintings, or buying and selling baseball cards, hoping to have a gain. With securities, it’s all done in an account, you don’t have an inventory of goods to deal with.

It would seem to be acceptable so long as you do it right. No insider trading (as if I had access to such). No risky speculation. Tithe the gain and give offerings on top of that. Pay taxes on the gain according to the law. It would seem to me that with those stipulations this second retirement vocation is not incompatible to Christian discipleship.

One other thing to consider is if following these retirement occupations is causing me to shirk other responsibilities. My answer to that is no. As I look at the things I do around the house, in the family, in church and community, I think I’m doing okay with what I do.

This little bit of thought has taxed my brain. I’ve given all this a cursory, perhaps shallow, analysis and concluded I’m not wrong in my retirement pursuits. I hope I’m right.

construction, Engineering, home improvements, miscellaneous, The Teachings

Can’t Get In A Rhythm

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Here it is Saturday afternoon. Yesterday was my regular blogging day. I like to post by 7:30 a.m. Obviously I’m not even close. It seems that life is conspiring against me, with task after task that must be done pushing out the tasks that I’d like to do.

The biggest thing coming up, aside from important medical appointments, is the distribution of the physical effects of my mother-in-law’s estate. Just two weeks ago we finished distribution of her remaining financial assets. There weren’t many left, but we had waited to make sure another bill didn’t come in.

The physical estate consists of odds and ends of furniture, linens, books, photos, letters and cards, knickknacks, and decorations. Some of these were hers from her first marriage, some where her second husband’s, and some they acquired together. Her second husband has two daughters by his prior marriage, my wife’s step-sisters who we used to see regularly and had good relationships with. We told them we were finally ready for the physical distribution. So they are going to drive here next Saturday, spend the afternoon going through things, and drive home again—thus minimizing coronavirus exposure.

Getting ready for it has started. Last weekend I did some organizing and took an approximate inventory of the more major items. We also got a letter out about it by e-mail and Messenger to the step-sisters and Lynda’s brother. He lives farther away and won’t be making a trip here. He gave us his desires on the phone.

Meanwhile, Thursday I had a full day of work for my former company, consisting of a final inspection, site visits, luncheon, and former meeting. Some reports were due, and some edits to City drainage standards. That work spilled over to Friday morning. As I worked on that the fact that I had a blog to write escaped me. I was going to do a book review. I’ve finished three books I haven’t yet reviewed but want to. I wasn’t sure which one to do next, so I had some thinking to do before I could write the review. I suppose that will be Monday’s post.

Meanwhile, I continue transcribing letters from our Kuwait years into a Word file. With six to go, I’m up to 77,700 words and 138 pages. When formatted for a book that will be well over 250 pages, especially if illustrated with photos as I would like to do. I will finish those around Tuesday. I say “finish” because I don’t know for certain that I’ve gathered all letters from those years. We have a large gap in correspondence with Lynda’s dad, and a three month period in 1989 with no letters at all. Her dad may not have kept all our letters (accounting for that gap; or they could be in another notebook or box), and the time gap includes some travels during which we wouldn’t have sent letters. Still, I will hunt some to see if I missed any before I declare the transcribing “done”. Lynda said, “This didn’t have to be done now, you know.” Yes, I know. But if not now, when? Will live be any less crazy, less hectic, less busy once the pandemic ends and rioting in our urban areas subsides? I think not.

This week, as of this morning in fact, I’m caught up on yardwork. That’s not to say I don’t have more to do, but both front and back yards are back to a maintainable point with normal effort. Next week I’ll clear away some logs left from other clearing, and begin carrying posts across the street to the fort. But I feel good about the yardwork.

Friday I go to the hospital for an echo-cardiogram (my third), a stress test (my first), and something else cardio related. The will be a whole day gone. Meanwhile, my weight is down (5 lbs. this month), my blood sugar readings are in a good range even after the doc reduced my insulin dose from 25 to 10 units. I’ve been reducing it gradually and will finally hit 10 units tonight. So health is good.

Get the estate distribution behind us, get this transcribing behind us, get these tests behind me, see a reduction in workload for my former company, and then and only then will I be able to concentrate on my novel-in-progress. I read a little for research in it now and then, but not much new writing, and I won’t have any this week. Get these major items behind us, and hope no more come up.

Oh, yeah, our new roof is in and looks good. But the gutter covers they shipped were the wrong size and the worker installed them anyway while I was gone Thursday. They look like you know what. Some of our gutter is damaged. I got on a ladder, took photos, texted them to the superintendent, and said, “Are you proud of this work?” He said he sent them to corporate and will take care of it. My evaluation of the company depends on them making good on that promise.