The Emmy Awards has placed Glee in the comedy category. They have also placed Man Men in the drama category. Would they mind sharing what they are smoking with the rest of us?
Ah, Tribbles. I knew them well.
Glee does use comedy. So does Star Trek. Does that mean Star Trek is a comedy?
It is not unusual for drama to use comedy, or at least as comedic relief. This is the inclusion of a humorous character, scene, or witty dialog in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension. Often comedic relief delivers important content to move the plot along. Often Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, is there to tell us things the Lone Ranger cannot say. Since tonto is the Spanish word for silly, this character’s purpose in the series is very clear.
This practice goes back a long way. An example is what could be the earliest of “Knock, Knock” jokes. The grave digger in William Shakespeare”s Macbeth is a perfect example of comedic relief.
Glee is about teenage angst. The show uses the medium and music familiar to high school students.
So, how is Glee a comedy?
Oh, wait. There is that Madonna episode of Glee. No one could be serious about the pedestal that Madonna was placed on in that episode. I take it all back. Glee must be a comedy.
The way psychiatrists are most accustomed to understand human beings is in terms of health and disease. This viewpoint is known as the medical model. It is a very useful and effective way of looking at people. (M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie, “Toward a Psychology of Evil” )
Scott Peck tries to lay the basis the treatment of evil in a person’s life through the medical model in People of the Lie. Published in 1983, Peck takes a look how evil affects our lives as individuals and our common life together. The chapter “Mylai: An Examination of Group Evil” should be required reading to make sense of some events in the last 10 to 20 years of American life.
I’m not sure what event triggered my thoughts about this book, long gathering dust on my shelf.
My thoughts started with Peck wanting to treat evil in a person’s life as a mental disorder. Borderline personality. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Paranoia. Possession by evil.
Peck describes evil he has dealt with in his psychological practice (which was far from common). He tells of a person who has been through an exorcism needing care from a psychologist. But, evil as something that should be in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual?
Read the book if you want his take on it.
My thoughts is that it does not work to treat matters of the spirit are not the same as, say, depression. Depression is not the same as a physical ailment, such as a cancer. A person with cancer can be depressed, but both require integrated by separate treatment.
Peck was drawn to this subject because of how evil affected his psychological practice. His problem was that, as a mental health professional, he saw the solution of spiritual problems in terms of a person’s mental health.
Pathologists do not compile the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by mental health professionals. Why should psychiatrists compile a manual to define spiritual disease? The experts in each domain take responsibility for their own domain.
We need a manual to define spiritual disease. But who is competent to do it?
Some may think that I am thinking about group evil done by some in the name of religion. There is some of that, true. I am thinking about something else, though.
Could a way be devised to diagnose spiritual illness and trauma in your life? Could specific treatments be targeted to specific spiritual ailments?
Scott Peck was interested in diagnosing evil with a medical model in a mental health environment. I think would be better to develop a separate spiritual domain of practice, one that could and should be coordinated with the medical and mental health practices. That would be the truly useful tool.
Just don’t tell me to say three Hail Mary’s and to call my priest in the morning.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. —H. L. Mencken, US editor (1880–1956)
To listen to some reactionary types in the United States, the government cannot do anything. Never mind who had to clean up the mess after Wall Street was given the deregulation it wanted in the 1990s and early 2000s. For that matter, this does not mention what lack of regulation of Wall Street in the 1920s caused.
These people are also afraid of government taking over health care in the United States through reform efforts. Who cares if we pay twice what any other country pays for health care, we have a significant portion of uninsured people, and someone living in Cuba has a longer life expectancy than someone in the United States (Health Care Statistics in the United States).
There is the clarion call that the federal government is not authorized by the Constitution to establish some sort of universal health care system in the United States. Who cares if Article I, Section 8 states, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States….” What else is health care, but “general welfare”?
It is funny how these people ignore the Constitutions lack of specific authorization for federal government to establish an Air Force. What else is the Air Force, but part of “common Defence”? (Let us not talk about where the CIA enters into this, please.)
We gather together
to ask the Lord’s blessing;
he chastens and hastens
his will to make known.
The wicked oppressing
now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to his name,
he forgets not his own.
These words from the Nederlandtsch Gedencklanck, as translated by Theodore Baker, are associated most frequently with the Puritans and Thanksgiving in the United States. Even though we sing (which is praying twice) for “the wicked oppressing now cease from distressing,” we have reactionary people who distress us through an entirely irrational fear that government will do worse than what private enterprise is already doing in the United States.
I am not calling for a totally socialist state, just as I am not calling for a totally capitalist state. Replacing one extreme will not solve anything. That would provide a mirror image of what we now experience, and would be just as ineffective. Maybe we need to remember the reforms introduced by former US president Teddy Roosevelt?
Could we have some balance? Was private business able to prevent the Gulf Oil Spill, given the lack regulatory environment there?
Why do the reactionary among us have that haunting fear that government somewhere, somehow may hold the solution?
For many years, Cycle Barn in Lynnwood, Washington, was open to 7:00 p.m. weekday evenings in the summer. You could get there after work.
They now open at 10:00 a.m. and close at 6:00 p.m. during the week.
So, how do you leave your bike for service if you have a job? How do you stroll through the sales floor when you have a job?
The last time I was in the store during the week the store was mostly empty. I was there when I was “between contracts” getting service through my service contract. In other words, I was out of work and able to get service because I had a pre-paid contract.
I understand times are rough. But, if you owned a business, do you think it would be a good idea to be open when people have money to buy your product?
If the powers that be at Cycle Barn cannot figure this out, here is a suggestion.
Open the Service Department open for 8 to 9 hours during earlier in the day. You could try hours like 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Open the Retail Department open from about 11:00 am or noon to 8:00 p.m.
For those people with service appointments, figure out a way for someone to leave and pick-up their bike through the Retail Department when the Service Department is closed.
My last suggestion to the owners of Cycle Barn is to note that Everett Powersports is open to 7:00 p.m. during the week. It is also less than half the distance from my house.
Those are the traditional Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives of the Cognitive Domain. While there has been refinements since its introduction in the 1950s, this is one thing that those involved education and learning know about. I am not saying there is universal acclaim for Bloom’s Taxonomy. Actually, I have run across those that hate it. But, we all know about it.
When I was a high school math and science teacher in a 45 student high school in rural South Dakota, my goals in the classroom were not to have students repeat facts back to me. A computer can do that. Humans are more than databases of facts.
Since I wanted my students to be more than a programmed computer, I encouraged application, analysis, and creating new ideas (synthesis). When teaching Physics, I had behavioral objectives for the labs in class. But, I wanted my students to make the experience their own. I wanted them to think about it. I wanted them to try to come up with something new.
I did have to nix their idea of using the town’s water tower in the experiment.
We settled for from the platform above the stage in the city auditorium and school gym.
It was fun for everyone recording dropping baseballs, rubber playground balls, eggs, and other objects with the schools video cassette recorder. It was fun for me watching the face of each student when each realized the obvious thesis was proven wrong. That lesson went farther than teaching about acceleration due to gravity.
(Physics was taught every other year, alternating with Chemistry. If I had stayed in that school long enough to teach Physics again, I probably would have talked to the city in advance over summer vacation to see if the city would have been willing to supply someone to climb the tower. That is, just in case my new class of students had come up with the same idea. Well, do you think another group of high school students would have wanted to drop things off the tower?)
Do you think my students would have learned this and other lessons as well from a book? Would each have internalized the lesson as well from a book? Would each have formed a way to answer questions that involved questioning and proving?
If using a book, all I would have been able to do is create puppets, programmed with what I and some text author knew. It took guidance and personal involvement on my part to have my students internalize their lessons.
Today, much of what was in text books is found online. How much better is hypertext than regular text? As a instructional designer who has created web-based courses, I know I can catch and grab with web graphics. The trick is doing more than teaching knowledge, comprehension, and application.
What does this have to do with spirituality and faith?
Let me ask the question another way.
What type of spirituality and faith will you get from someone who gets it from a book or website?
Comprehension, knowledge, and application are an important start. Without it, you will never get to analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. But, when you pass such a course, where are you? Can you think critically on something of critical importance? Is that all there is?
How do you change lives and attitudes, not just teach facts?
Then there was what the congregation at the Hervormde kerk (Reformed Church) of Godlinze, Groningen, Netherlands did on June 25, 2010. They sang “Wij houden van oranje” (“We love Orange”), the Dutch Football Anthem.
Considering what the Orange has done at the World Cup Games in South Africa, I do not think we can argue with success.
For those of you with an interest in pipe organs and church tower bells, following Dennis Wubs on You Tube can be fun.
Meanwhile, I will be practicing het Wilhelmus. The Netherlands may declare war on the United States. After all, they did beat Brazil at soccer.
William Billings wrote what is considered my many to be what is the de facto first national anthem of these United States. Chester is a song that combines religious praise and civic pride.
Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav’ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England’s God forever reigns.
There is one verse in the song that gives me pause.
The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet’rans flee before our Youth,
And Gen’rals yield to beardless Boys.
The thought of veterans fleeing before youth and generals yielding to beardless boys does not comfort me. Did the Continental Army use child soldiers? I have not seen this mentioned in high school or college texts. That does not mean it did not happen, though.
I could see this verse being primarily boastful and not literal. What bothers me is the specific reference to “beardless boys.” It is like William Billings went out of his way to make his point.
If the liberty of these several states was won, in part, by beardless boys, I think that this changes the moral standing of the United States when condemning those movements that do the same thing today.
It was only a third of the population of the colonies that wanted the revolution. Should we also consider that the leaders in the United Colonies also used children as warriors?
Image of the original copy of the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives of the United States of America.
On Friday, July 2, 2010, NPR’s Morning Edition continued a 22 year tradition. Various NPR personalities read the Declaration of Independence in a segment of the program. The total time to do this takes less than 10 minutes. I find listening to the Declaration carries a power that only reading it does not carry.
Thomas Jefferson could turn a memorable phrase. He invoked vision through words. Each year I particularly like hearing, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
Each year something new sticks out when I hear it. This year that something new was immigration reform. Apparently not having the laws needed in place to govern the nationalization of immigrants in a nation of immigrants is not new. Here are some bullet points from the Declaration:
[King George III] has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
We have reminded [the Westminster Parliament of the United Kingdom] of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
Those bullet points stood out in a news broadcast that had these stories:
The more things change, the more they stay the same?
Considering the Declaration is 234 years old, it is the conservative point of view to be against “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.” To not welcome the immigrant is to forget that everyone here is an immigrant or the child of immigrants. Even the Native Americans came across the land bridge from Asia into what is Alaska today.
Here is a video describing of some current trends in church worship.
There is this video taken from the end of Tommy.
Describe the connection between these two videos. Extra credit for describing the connection through another video. (No fair making any reference to the Sally Simpson scene from Tommy.)
Fremont Solstice Parade nude bicyclists in Ballard on June 19, 2010.
People that associate flamboyant behavior and parades with your standard gay pride parade have not been to Seattle in June.
The Fremont Solstice Parade in Seattle proves that you do not need to go to your favorite gay pride parade to see outlandish things being celebrated in a parade. Quite by accident I introduced my father to the pre-parade ride through Ballard. He enjoyed it. Don’t tell my mother, who is receiving physical therapy in a home in St. Louis County, Missouri.
There is one thing missing from this parade, though. It is the Church.
You see the Church in gay pride parades. You do not see the church in the Fremont Solstice Parade.
I have a modest proposal.
We need a float in the Fremont Solstice Parade that depicts the baptismal techniques of the Early Church.
At the hour in which the cock crows, they shall first pray over the water. When they come to the water, the water shall be pure and flowing, that is, the water of a spring or a flowing body of water. Then they shall take off all their clothes. The children shall be baptized first. All of the children who can answer for themselves, let them answer. If there are any children who cannot answer for themselves, let their parents answer for them, or someone else from their family. After this, the men will be baptized. Finally, the women, after they have unbound their hair, and removed their jewelry. No one shall take any foreign object with themselves down into the water. (The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome 21:1-5)
At the end of the parade, we could offer baptism to all who wanted it. Since the Episcopal Bookstore is close to the parade, maybe we could set up at the store. This would provide walk-in traffic for books on living the faith.
If you read the rest of the description of early baptismal practices, there would be plenty of opportunity to showcase the ministry of deacons in the church. I call this a win-win situation.
So, who has the mobile baptismal font to push in the parade?
Brilliant and spiritual! You are a Mystic Theurge!
Score! You have a prestige class. A prestige class can only be taken after you've fulfilled certain requirements. This may mean that you're an exceptionally talented person, but it probably doesn't.
The Mystic Theurge is a combination of a cleric and a mage. They can cast both arcane and divine spells, and are good at both, making them pretty terrifying on the battlefield. They have more raw spellpower than just about any other class.
You're both intelligent and faithful, but not violent or deceitful. I guess that makes you a pretty good person.
