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Bite-size portions of the wit and wisdom to which you are accustomed in David's Mental Meanderings
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If you arrived here directly, then don't miss Holford Web Home of David's Mental Meanderings If you just want to find out who this strange bloke is, you'll need to go there as well. Your feedback about anything you read here is always welcome. Other blogs I enjoy reading: Doxos St. Stephen's Musings Robert's Cogitations This is Life Paradosis Natalie Solent Mere Comments Little Geneva Antioch Road The Edge of England's Sword flyingchair.net Samizdata Joshua Claybourn Between Heaven and Hell PC Watch Notes From a Hillside Farm Simeon's Hit and Miss of Filosofical Thought George Grant Lileks a conservative blog for peace You can also find me listed at Blogs4God Currently down from the bookshelf: Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales: The Origins of the Welsh Spiritual Tradition by Oliver Davies Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium by Judith Herrin Recently finished: Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, The New York Eskimo by Kenn Harper John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul C. Nagel Lancaster & York: The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir Most recent acquisitions: John Major: The Autobiography Retreat from New Jerusalem: British Politics 1951-64 by Kevin Jefferys 
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Saturday, March 29, 2003
This week in Parenting 101, the course I am taking for the next couple of decades, we have been learning about praise. Now it�s not like I never knew that people like praise. I have used it in various supervisory roles, from school teaching to retail management. Not enough, but I have used it. In those situations, I have been dealing with people who have been praised before � hopefully anyway. They have the concept of being praised and understanding what it means. For Aidan, however, this is a new concept. Mrs Holford and I have used it since he first began to respond to any sort of external impulse, whether getting him to eat for the first time, sit up, crawl, pick up an object, or whatever. It appears to be the natural instinct for a parent to praise, even when the recipient has no idea what is being said. Some time ago, Aidan began to understand encouragement. He realised that a particular behaviour made us happy and he was motivated to do it again. But that�s not what we have seen over the past couple of weeks. Now he seeks the praise itself. For ages we had been trying to teach him to clap his hands. Occasionally he would mimic our action. Now he claps all the time because he knows it is the response to obedience. When we tell him to do something and he responds we the correct action, without thinking we have clapped our hands and said �Good boy!� The chief of these instructions has been to close the door to the living room, so he wouldn�t wander throughout the flat. Everything we would tell him, �Close the door,� he would push it shut, and we would clap and say, �Good boy!� Then the light came on in his little head. He started shutting doors without being asked. He would then turn around and start clapping, already anticipating the �Good boy!� Now he has move on to the next level. He has started looking for other things about which we praise him. He will even pick up things he is not supposed to touch, just so we can watch him put them down, like he is supposed to do, and then start clapping. I wonder how much this is like out own spiritual behaviour sometimes. Do we do the things we are supposed to be doing and turn around, looking to see if God is clapping for us? Or do we start clapping for ourselves � for our own good behaviour? Actions that are impressive in a toddler are not necessarily so impressive in an adult. Have we put away childish things? Friday, March 28, 2003
I was surfing the Net last night and I came upon George Grant�s blog. George used to pastor a church in Humble, Texas called Believer�s Fellowship. I spoke there once, promoting the now-defunct Texas Grassroots Coalition, which was my first job out of college. That would have been in 1985. The thing that sticks out in my mind about that particular spiel was the embarrassment I suffered when George was at the back of the church motioning for me to wrap it up and I couldn�t understand his sign language. Even then I was verbose. I�ve seen George a few times since then. I think the last time was at one of the annual occurrences of the Appalachian Conference to Rebuild America � must have been in 1996 or 1997. He claimed at that time to remember me. I had heard through the grapevine that he had been visiting an Antiochian Orthodox church sometime after his move to Middle Tennessee, and knowing him to be very firmly in the Reformed camp, I asked him what his impressions were. He enjoyed the Liturgy, but it seems he couldn�t get past the icons. Or, I suppose I should say, he couldn�t get through the icons. He appreciated them on the level of Christian art, but did not embrace them as windows into heaven as the Orthodox do. Oh well, his loss. Knowing the wide range of religious and political views of my Meanderings, not to mention the unknown views of those who stray into the Diversions, I should mention that George is one of the great popular writers of Christian political stewardship and history. I had no idea this is where he was headed in 1985, when I read his book Bringing in the Sheaves. It tells of how that small church made an impact during the bust after the oil boom in Houston in the early 1980s. It is a real story of conservative Biblical compassion. Ironically, perhaps, Believer's Fellowship played a signficant role in my journey to Orthodoxy. In 1987, George had left, and I was there to see Frank Marshall, who had taken over as pastor, about implementing the Bringing in the Sheaves model at the church were I was in West Texas at the time. While I was there, Frank gave me a copy of Fr Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World. Apart from Holy Scripture, this is the most important book I have ever read. It took 14 more years before I was received into Orthodoxy, but it was the book that set me on the path. So how does finding George�s blog affect you, the reader? Well, it inspired me to add a list of links to blogs I read regularly, in case you want to check them out for yourself. (George doesn�t do this, though he recently mentioned some in a recent blog entry. Interestingly, he mentions at least one that I have been reading for a while, which I came across while editing DMOZ.) And if you go to George�s blog, you will find something truly uncanny. We chose the exact same template and the same blogging site. Great minds really do think alike� Thursday, March 27, 2003
Today I got stranded in the city centre. The Holford crate-on-wheels suffered another set-back. The ignition has been dodgy for a while. It sometimes takes five minutes to get the switch turned. When I left the flat, it took about ten minutes to get it started. Hmm, I thought, I should probably get that looked at while I'm out and about. It was inconvenient to do this first thing, so I headed off to the city centre to drop off a bag of clothes and a set of saucepans at a charity shop. Age Concern has gotten most of our stuff � not because we care that much about old people, but rather because they are the shortest journey from the car while carrying heavy bags of clothes. (Okay, we do care about old people, but that�s still the reason.) When I got back in the car, it wouldn�t start. Not just for five minutes. Not just for ten minutes. For an hour. Hmm, I thought, I�d better let Mrs Holford know where I am. She will think that I�ve already been to the old flat, cleaned out the garage, and merely found myself stuck in traffic. Unfortunately, I had left the mobile phone at home. (It doesn�t have any time left on the pay-as-you-go, but I needed to buy a card anyway.) So I had to use a pay phone. I only had a pound coin. Phone boxes don�t give change. And, as I found out, neither do shopkeepers. I went into the City News and asked for change for my pound coin. I was told that they only give change to customers. I shot back that I supposed I wouldn�t become one of those. Well, actually, I thought about saying that, but I didn�t think of it until 15 minutes later. I was, however, just a wee bit irritated. I walked all the way up to my bank at the other end of High Town and got my five 20p coins for a pound. For most of the day, I thought this was just another example of how unhelpful most shop staff are in this country. If you are coming to Britain and expect to find shops where staff are happy to see you and wish you a nice day when you leave, you will be sorely disappointed. Now that Wal-Mart has opened a store in Bristol, I wonder if they have hired old people to stand at the door next to the shopping trolleys just to ignore customers. What I later found out from Mrs Holford (who has experience working in shops) is that the banks here charge for providing change to businesses. That�s right. You need �100 in �20 notes? No problem. That�ll be �100. Need �100 in coins? That�ll be �100 plus something for our trouble. If I was a shopkeeper, that would put me in a bad mood, too. UK banks charge individuals much less than in the US. We don�t have monthly service charges or fees for writing cheques. But banks being banks, they are going to fleece someone. In the UK, they stick it to businesses, charging them even for depositing cheques. That�s right. Deposit money in your business account so the bank can make money by lending it out, and the bank will charge you for the privilege. The more you give them to play with, the more they will charge. Anyhow, if you want to know how the story ends� I rang Mrs Holford. She and the man-child got a taxi and brought the spare set of keys. These keys never worked before. Mrs Holford sat down in the driver�s seat and the key turned perfectly. Just figures, doesn�t it? Wednesday, March 26, 2003
War has always had rules. The Iraqis have completely ignored the rules. They have executed prisoners of war, use civilians as human shields, pretended to surrender and then fired on their �captors�. Now they have given weapons to children to fire at the Coalition forces. This last development places a great strain on your average US Marine, who man be a lean, mean, fighting machine but generally doesn�t like killing school kids. But what can they do when being fired upon? This is a win/win situation for the Saddam�s regime. Children can kill unsuspecting US troops, but if a single child gets killed in the process, you know their body will be shown on every al-Jezeera broadcast from now until the end of the war. The Americans will be branded as child-killers. All I can say is that these Iraqis have a lot of chutzpah. They berate the US for hitting a marketplace and killing a few civilians, and at the same time put their children on the front line. Tuesday, March 25, 2003
War is Hell As General Patton once famously remarked, �The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.� That�s why war is never a good thing. It may be a necessary thing and/or a just thing, but not a good thing. War is about killing people. I was thinking about the casualties today � so few on the Coalition side that they can be individually named. The news crews here in the UK can go to their hometowns and interview family and friends. I thought of the sadness of their parents. Now that I am the father of a son, I shudder at the thought of investing my life into him, seeing him beginning to realise his potential, and then have that taken away in an instant by a bullet fired by someone who just viewed him, and perhaps only for a second, as an obstruction to an objective. Everything gone. That must be how every parent of a son in the Iraqi army must feel. And at least the Coalition soldiers have all volunteered, knowing the risks of the job. The sons of Iraq are taken from their families and forced to bear arms in aid of a regime for which they have no affection, and which they probably despise. Poorly fed and clothed, if they attempt to leave they are shot by death squads. And the thing about dying for your country is that once you�re dead, your country doesn�t matter any more. On the other side of dying, there is only one sovereign entity. Dying for your country doesn�t get you into heaven. I know war is a terrible experience. Fortunately, I only know it second hand, but I do not doubt it. But regardless of the horrors of war, they do not compare to the perdition facing those who die outside Christ. War is Hell. I pray that during Aidan�s early adulthood years, there will be peace and neither of his countries will need him for war. Monday, March 24, 2003
It�s a Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood The house move is almost complete. Moving house is a lot of work. The old flat is devoid of all possessions, save a table my father-in-law is taking, a fan we use on both days of summer, and the radio we listen to while cleaning up and painting. Most of the things have found a place in the new flat, though the lounge is littered with boxes of miscellany. Even though the new flat is somewhat bigger, the layout is different, so the nooks and crannies are different. The other difference is furniture. The old flat came with built-in wardrobes and associated cabinets, bedside tables with three drawers, and two dressers. It is that sort of storage space which is sadly lacking. Since this new place is temporary while we look for a more permanent pad, we don�t want to invest too much in furniture that fits the layout here but not where we end up. We could be here a matter of weeks or it could be a matter of months. It just depends on what sort of suitable houses become available. This afternoon we got more of an idea of the neighbourhood. A group of about 6-8 boys decided to break into an empty first floor (or for Americans, second floor) flat in our building. They moved a dumpster up against the wall and then one boy stood on another boy�s shoulders to reach up and open the window. At least two boys got inside the flat. Another repeatedly kicked a football against the side of the building, reaching the window occasionally. Mrs Holford noted that she wasn�t about to interfere for fear of being stabbed or otherwise violently assaulted. Nor was there any intervention by the many passers by. I considered ringing the police. However, a brave woman also living on the first floor screamed out her window at them. The authority in her voice indicated that she may have been the mother of one of the perpetrators. So the fun was over (and there is no telling what they did on the inside), they climbed out and off the dumpster. The window remained open, so a boy repeatedly threw a beam of lumber up at it until he hit it and it closed. It may have broken the pane of glass, but I wasn�t about to venture over for a look. It is often said that kids don�t play outside enough anymore. In this case, somebody needs to invest in a PlayStation or Nintendo. Sunday, March 23, 2003
History on my Doorstep With all the focus on the war in Iraq, I didn�t realise that Herefordshire was witness to a much more important conflict in the history of the world: the Wars of the Roses. I knew of battles that happened nearby, such as Tewkesbury, in Gloucestershire. A few years ago, Mrs Holford and I did the whole battlefield walk there. Only tonight did I discover that I have many times driven past the scene of another of the decisive clashes between Yorkist and Lancastrian foes. It is an event significant enough to have had a movie made about it in 1987, available on VHS, but probably not in stock at Blockbuster. It was at Mortimer�s Cross that the Yorkists routed Welsh Lancastrian supporters headed to join up with Queen Margaret in her attempt to wrest London from York�s chief ally, the Earl of Warwick. And now finally the marker in the pavement in the middle of High Town here in Hereford made sense. (High Town is the pedestrianized city centre.) It marks the spot where Owen Tudor was executed. I walk past it several times a week. Owen Tudor was the step-father of Henry VI and was one of the leaders of the Lancastrian contingent. He was captured at Mortimer�s Cross and taken to Hereford, where, probably on the orders of Edward, Duke of York (who ten years hence would become Edward IV), he was deprived of his head. It was Tudor�s family who would have the last laugh, because Edward IV�s brother was defeated in battle at Bosworth Field by Owen Tudor�s grandson, who became Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty. The great keeper of ancient monuments, English Heritage runs Mortimer�s Cross Hill and Battle Centre. This seems like an excellent day out. Unfortunately, it is only open Thursday afternoons between April and September, so once we were able to carefully schedule a visit, I will report back on my impressions. Now back to the news network of your choice and continuing coverage of the war in Iraq. |