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"I always think I'm right, but I don't think I'm always right."

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"You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have."
Gandalf to Frodo, 
LOTR i.2

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"Oh, miracle -- thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands!"
Diary of a Country Priest

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"This is not pleasant to you, Emma--and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will,--I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now."
Knightly to Emma

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My writing is like Shakespeare's.  At lease in the sense that I use many of the same words.

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These are the ARCHIVES of the OLD Presbyteer Blogsite.  Change your links to
http://www.presbyteer.blogspot.com

I still think there's a cool picture to be taken here, but I'm not sure this is it.  For one thing, next time I'll wipe all the fingerprints off the table's glass top.  (They really show up at full resolution.)  And I wonder if there's an exposure level that will make the window a bit less hot but still show the edges of the pews.

Wow.  I've never done the instant messaging thing before, but I've made contact with daughter Kate through Windows messenger.  You can carry on a keyboard conversation between Nebraska and France in real time.  We even tried the Whiteboard feature, but couldn't get it to work.  And when I tried to send her a photo, her firewall blocked it.  So we'll pretty much stick to text.

Un sample:

presbyteer says:
Hi Kate. This is my first message to you. It's 8:43 am Thursday here. It tells me that kmg168 is "Away." Wonder when you'll get this ....
kmg168 says:
Hey, I'm back!
presbyteer says:
bong joor!
kmg168 says:
tray bee yen
presbyteer says:
Glad to hear you got the adapter that works. Solves "everything?" But not the network thing?
kmg168 says:
No, not the network thing, but I'm doing fine just plugging in to the internet up in my room.
kmg168 says:
Patrice is going to get some different internet stuff going next week, I think.
presbyteer says:
Did you see Sam's blog? I laughed out loud on Bess's comment...

Well, this internet thing may have a future after all.

I was a bit apprehensive about showing Almost Angels to my Joyful Noiz kids.  Would they sit still for that old Disney movie about the Vienna Boys Choir.  

But not to worry.  They sat still and quiet for 15 minutes, evidently absorbed in Tony's efforts to join the choir.

I've been "tagged", so I'll play:

10 years ago: 1995. Last full year attending that other church where we were loved and encouraged for so many good years. But while they got more contemporary and, well, "presentational," I was falling under the influence of Gary Young and Jim Rogers, two guys who were bright, funny, and Reformed. I read their newsletter Common Practice, and by the end of every article it was like, "well, of course. how obvious. doesn't everyone think so?"

Well, no, actually. 

Had not yet picked up adult tennis. Weighed close to 250.

5 years ago: 2000 Kicked off a crazy theater year playing in As You Like It, The Little Prince, and Laughter on the 23rd Floor at LCP; and The King and I at the late Star City Dinner Theater. My wife was a theater widow; my children were theater orphans, while I had a blast, especially working in two of those shows with my all-time favorite director, from whom I always learned much. But that was just about the last hurrah for my theatrical life. Not only are interesting roles for my, er, "type", not all that common, but in 2001 I started on the path towards licensure and ordination in the PCA. Those new commitments reduce my availability for the life theatrical.

1 year ago: 2004. Saw Sam get his Master's degree and devote himself to "making weight" for the Army. Kate and Anne pressing forward with their final year at UNL. Enjoyed re-reading one of my favorite novels, Diary of a Country Priest. Started playing semi-regular tennis with Juan, the new guy at work from Chile. First introduction to Freaks and Geeks.

Yesterday: A normal day at work, including our staff "Monday Meeting" which almost always goes till at least 6:00. I did the pedestrian commute yesterday, so didn't get home till close to 7:00. Finished watching _Almost Angels_. Then did photography things on the computer, cropping and printing some LHS choir picnic photos for Jana, and some Sam and Kate photos for the grandparents in Kentucky.

5 snacks I enjoy: Hershey's chocolate, Frito's and bean dip, Dorito's and salsa, under-baked home-made cookies (oatmeal, chocolate chip, snicker doodles, ginger snaps), popcorn.

5 songs I know all the words to: Psalm 23, Psalm 121, Psalm 131, If I Were a Rich Man, The Very Model of a Modern Major-General. (well, with some review, perhaps).

5 things I'd do with $100 million: Pay bills until the money ran out, buy a cool house in the woods with a mountain view on the water, build a really cool church somewhere (why do the Catholics have all the neat architecture? like that wood and glass thing on the Omaha side of the Platte overlooking I-80...), start an animation studio, ... yeah, well, of course, I mean *after* I started the home for homeless children ... 

5 places I'd run away to: (1) Someplace on the coast in Washington or Oregon; (2) Scotland (3) Albuquerque, (4) Someplace in the mountains. At high altitudes. (5) .. actually I like Lincoln a lot.

5 things I'd never wear: Tattoos, piercings, low-riders that show my boxers, shorts with black socks, leather, except for shoes. 

5 favorite TV shows: Selected episodes of X-files, Whatever's on Turner Classic Movies, Inside the Actor's Studio, A&E Sherlock Holmes, A&E Bertie and Jeeves

5 biggest joys: Jana, Bess, Sam, Kate, Anne, and Joe.

5 favorite toys: my new Pentax, my computer, my Pro Kennex 5g tennis racquet, my iPod, certain multimedia software

5 people I want to pass this on to: Sam, Kate, Anne (if she'd blog again), Bess (if she'd blog to begin with), Joe (if he wanted to get into blogging.)

Daughter Kate in France has emailed and blogged and gives good reports.  We are especially thankful for the kindness of her host family.  They have given Kate her own bedroom and done some doubling up with the other kids.  It is much more than we expected or hoped.

Daughter Anne's Kia died on the curb in front of our house Sunday morning.  Very handy.  Needed a new battery, which I procured and installed Sunday afternoon.  The interesting thing was, the battery wasn't the only dead thing under the hood.  I dropped a tool down into the engine compartment somewhere, and as I stuck my face in close to peer about in the relative gloom, well, I was surprised:

He had been there some time.  I tried to remove him by grabbing the tail, but it ... er ... *separated*.  But I was able to grasp the torso and kind of pop him lose.  Over time, he had sort of conformed to the shape of the engine.  He was not limp, but rather quite stiff, so it took a little maneuvering to get him out past all the parts in the engine compartment.

My ebay copy of Almost Angels arrived in good shape.  I tell ya, they don't make 'em like that any more.  I still intend to show it in 15-minute episodes to my kids choir on Wednesdays.

Richard II has been a hard play to listen to, but I finally got through.  It's not on Shakespeare's "A" list, and the story isn't familiar to me.  Basically, R2 is a terrible king, and when push comes to shove, nobody will stand by him and he is deposed in favor of his cousin who becomes Henry the Fourth.  This particular recording is teeeeeedious to listen to, because the actors take things at such a slow pace.  Every.  Word.  Is. Dwelt. Upon. And. The. Ultra-. Dramatic. Interpretation.  Rules. Thee. Day.  PLEASE JUST TALK LIKE PEOPLE!!!  Who directed this thing and indulged his actors so?

One interesting theme of the play is the loyalty due a king.  Even a bad king.  At what point does traitorous rebellion become patriotic resistance?  Richard is a thoroughly selfish and foolish king, who relies on the fact that he is God's Chosen.  He might have lasted longer if his opposition, David-like, had refused to raise a hand against the Lord's anointed, but all the men of good sense who long for the peace and safety of the land eventually unite against him.  R2 does a lot of the self-pity thing and goes on and on about everyone else being Judas.  ("Our Lord among his twelve found all true but one; I among twelve thousand, none.")  I recognized more direct scriptural allusions in this play than any other Shakespeare I've known.

One observes that the idea of the divine right of kings is not unlimited and it always depends on the good will, or at least the cooperation of the others of rank and power.  No matter what the system, it requires good men in it.  And without good men, it doesn't matter that much what kind of system you have.

There are a couple of memorable dramatic bits.  One is where Richard's queen, not up on affairs at all, hides in the garden to overhear the gardeners talk, in order to get the latest political news.  Many garden/state metaphors ensue.  The other is at Richard's formal deposition.  He is give a list of his crimes to read, which will justify those who depose him.  Richard won't read the list, but instead asks for a mirror and reads his crimes from his reflection, which he finally smashes.

What this play doesn't have is a secondary plot of any kind.  We need some rustics doing a play within a play, or a Falstaff, or even Macbeth's drunken gate keeper.  A second plot line of some kind would have Given. Some. Relief. From. The. High. Richard. Brought. Low.

Its Friday afternoon, almost quittin' time.  As the DVD drive trundles along making the weekly backup, the late afternoon sun shines through the mini-blinds of the office window, drawing stripes on the opposite wall.

If you hold up your reading glasses, the lens catches the sunlight in an interesting way.  You can direct the lens flash for cool effect:

News from daughter Kate in France.  First, an email that she has arrived safely in Cavaillon and has moved in with her host family.  Next, before school here this morning, a phone call to Jana .  There are some problems with Kate's notebook connecting to the internet there (which will get looked at by one of the men in the church), so she's not as free to post, update, and email as she would like.  

Anyway; she's doing well, and we are thankful for the report.

White Balance 101.

Most automatic cameras have settings for "white balance."  See, under different lighting conditions (sunlight, fluorescent, lightbulb, etc,) the color white drifts around.  Pictures taken indoors with normal room lighting tend to look yellow.  But as cameras get smarter, they try to compensate automatically.

The Pentax tries to pick the correct compensation automatically, ... but doesn't always get it right.  This, under Burger King's fluorescent lights:

The Pentax *ist DL performed well enought at the Zion Carnival.  I haven't had time to assimilate the instructions or anything, so much of this is just a point and shoot effort.   There were some problems with exposure that the settings I chose probably caused.

See photos on my Flickr account...

In the automatic mode, the camera tries to stay at ISO 200, which is its finest quality.  The shots before the sun went down are all at 200.  You can do some aperture priority and  shutter priority stuff, but I haven't played with it yet.  I did go with the spot focus and spot exposure settings, but I don't think I was doing it right.

Of course the big deal is that this camera takes pictures in the dark.  The last pictures in the set pushed the thing into the ISO 3200 territory, which has plenty of noise, but hey: it takes the picture that the other camera won't, and that is why I got this thing.  

I have a 512 Mb SD card in it (thanks, Sam) and shot at 4 megapixels with medium JPEG quality, which works out to about a 500 photo capacity.  I came home with fewer than 50 shots left on the card.  I used the continuous shooting mode for some action shots -- this camera does a burst of 5 photos in something under 2 seconds.

Son Joe came over to me during the carnival and pointed out that the DeeJay was playing Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle.  Lissen Joe, back off, OKAY?  If you want more time with yer dad, you're going to have to take up MY hobbies, got that?

I have been very fond of my Minolta DiMage Z3 digital camera, which is an "all in one" type.  However, it's main limitation is what it can shoot with available light.  In equivalent 35mm film terminology, it's fastest "film speed" is ISO 400, which is not bad with its f2.8 lens (zoom level 0), but for many indoor shots, the Z3 has to compensate for lower light with a slow shutter speed.  And with a slow shutter, the camera and subject are likely to move, resulting in a blurry shot.  This came into play last spring when I was collecting pix for the Zion capital campaign: most of my shots inside the church were unusable.  I also noticed it last week with Kate at the airport.

Well, okay, they make better cameras.  After exhaustive research and careful study, I ordered a Pentax *ist DL (where *do* they get these model names?).  It is in the digital SLR category, which means it can use interchangeable lenses.  And in this group, the sensor is larger and more light-sensitive.  In 35mm film terms, it can choose a "film speed" up to ISO 3200.  

Since 80 percent of what I shoot is indoors, this will make shooting with available light less painful.  Maybe even fun.  (I really don't like using a flash.)  

I'll take some pix at the Zion Fall Carnival tonight and try to blog a few tomorrow...

Go-mu-ri

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Son Sam, with the 296th Army Band at Camp Zama Japan, now has a blog and some Flickr pictures.  Enjoy.

I painted house trim on Saturday.  A month or two ago I bought a belt sander.  It does a pretty good job of removing old paint crack and crumble, turning it into grit, and blowing it all over you.  So there were parts of the window and door trim that I got all the way down to bare wood before painting. 

Here are a couple of photos I meant to blog a while back.  First, is Harvest Community Church (PCA) where we had Presbytery in July.  This was built by some Baptists in the 1920's and expanded in the 1950's.  Harvest got the property about a year ago and they are poised to do some ministry in an underserved part of Omaha.  39th and Cuming.  (Click for enlargement.)

In the background you can see the twin towers of St. Cecilia's Catholic church.  It's absolutely stunning.  One of the neatest church buildings I've ever seen.  Just a block from Harvest, which is almost literally in the shadows of those spires.

Wednesday was the first week of Joyful Noiz, a kids choir at Zion.  ("Zion" spelt backwards is "noiz", ain't that clever?).  The first night we had 20 K through 5th graders for an hour and fifteen, which means that this involves more planning than comes easily to me.  During our cookie break I want to use audio and visual resources, to get the kids grooved on the potential of a children's choir.  So one of my goals is to show weekly episodes of Almost Angels, the old Disney movie about the Vienna Boys Choir.  I remember seeing that back when I was a boy soprano, and it made me really want to be in a boys choir.  Trouble is, it's one of the movies currently locked in the Disney vault, and you can't just go out an buy a copy somewhere.  But I did locate a VHS copy on eBay, so we'll see.  That is, I hope we'll see.

My main goal for Joyful Noiz is to learn scripture songs.  My preference is whole Psalms, and I have decent versions of Pss 23, 121, and 131.  If everybody learns all three of those by memory in six Wednesdays, we can declare victory and go home.  We also have some "selected verse" scripture songs that are fun, but those are second best.  These kids have sponge brains.  Why teach them one verse when they're of an age to learn a whole passage?

This is the Sunday I start "Who's Your Grandpa?" in our AFC.  A survey of church creeds, councils and confessions.  Today's evangelical church has little sense of honoring father and mother when it comes to giving the historical church a voice in what's going on.

The Fam is going global.  Sam has been in Japan for a month, Anne is teaching in Auburn Nebraska, and today Kate took off for a year in France.  

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There we are in the food court at the airport, waiting for her flight to Chicago to Paris.  First she's going to do some tourist things with a compatriot and Eurail to Italy, but after a week she'll be back in France.  Her living arrangements have turned out very happily, and she will live with a family in the town of Cavaillon and travel during the week to split her time among the elementary schools in three small villages nearby. 

That's her American flight leaving Omaha.  We came home from the airport and watched Meg Ryan go to France and fall in love with Kevin Kline in French Kiss.  Meg Ryan plays pretty much the same character in all her movies, but she's really got it down, I'm only marginally tired of how cute she is, and her airline takeoff panic scene that opens the movie is pretty much worth the price of the DVD.  (Available at Best Buy -- don't bother stopping at Walmart.)

Newton, Iowa, September 8th, 1919, Mary Emily Campbell was born to Timothy James and Ferne Thompson Campbell, and later baptized at the First United Presbyterian Church.  Happy Birthday, mom.

How to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina?  Douglas Wilson offers the kind of radical suggestion that is so good and right, it brings an immediate smile to my lips ... along with the cynical realization that it will never happen:

... if [the federal government] is really serious about rebuilding this region of the country -- [it should] make a list of the devastated areas by zip code. Once the list is complete, the federal government should grant full and complete federal tax-exemption for five years to all businesses and individuals located in those zip code areas. And just watch what happens.

I was walking home from work listening to the Bible on my iPod, and this is what I heard:  

... And he must needs go through some area. Then cometh he to a city of some area, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.  Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of some area to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of some area unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of some area? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans..

And I wondered, "some area?"  Why couldn't John have been more specific?

Is is possible?  is there more serious talk about a flat tax and the end of the nine-million word federal income tax code?  Please may it be so.  We need statesmen who will lead with courage and do the right thing, even if it upsets people.

The Mere Comemnts blog quotes Deitrich von Hildebrand:

"In wonder (which Plato and Aristotle claimed to be the indispensable presupposition for philosophy), reverence is a constitutive element.  Indeed, lack of reverence is one of the main sources of philosophical errors.  But if reverence is a necessary basis for every true and adequate knowledge of being, it is, above all, indispensable for the grasping and understanding of values.  Only to the reverent man (who is ready to admit the existence of something greater than himself, who is willing to be silent and let the object speak to him, and who opens himself) will the sublime world of values disclose itself.  This already explains why reverence is the mother of all virtues . . . "  (Dietrich von Hildebrand, from "The Role of Reverence in Education," in The New Tower of Babel).

This is one of those ideas that immediately feels right, though it deserves further reflection and examination.  It certainly seems to have the right grounding: man is a created being and must therefore give wonder and adoration to God.  When wonder and adoration are extinguished, man has no prospects for improvement, no way ahead, no prospect for real learning.

My friend Tim read me a piece from Behind the Lines, a book of letters from soldiers from several wars and nations, both winners and losers.  One of the categories is "last words" written on the eve of what the soldier had reason to believe would be the day he would die.  

The letter Tim read me was from a Japanese Kamikaze pilot at the end of WW2; his final letter home to his mother.  The striking thing was that this soldier was a Christian convert, who recalled his baptism and the promise of Christ to be with him always.  

Now there's a story that begs for more information.

(And a book that would make a neat birthday gift for somebody who had a birthday coming in September.)

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