A Giant, Melodramatic Sucking Sound

If you can get past the feel good message and heart-warming moments of Mr. Holland’s Opus, you can hear a tiny voice screaming at you from the darkness.  This voice, although nearly stifled by the hopes of lives changed and countless students inspired, is reminiscent of the Charon who rows across the river Styx in the Inferno:”All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”  Although we may shed a tear at Dreyfuss’s portrayal of an inspiring teacher, we must never ignore that message: you may not be born a teacher, but if you choose to do it, you probably will never be able to escape.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that film.  It’s a nice pick-me-up after a long day of being threatened, sworn at, and scrawled about on restroom walls, and it does remind me that teaching can indeed be a worthwhile profession.  And please don’t miisunderstand, teaching is something that I have and do indeed love–at times.  After five years of it, though, I guess the reality of my career is starting to sink in; I may never get out.

I became a school teacher because I had little other option.  For one reason or another, I didn’t have the guts to pursue what I still imagine myself to be.  If I had gone down another career path, perhaps I would’ve gotten my act together eventually, but school keeps you in such a stupor with all the vacation time that you look up five years down the road and hardly realize all the ambition and ego you once had has been drained by the vampires sitting in your classroom each day.

So, I find myself at a crossroads:  Do I embrace this thing that I’ve become; draw a paycheck and retire after a pretty stable thirty years? or Do I take a leap of faith, and in so doing, risk the welfare of a wife who trusts me implicitly?  Hard questions, even harder to think about during another intoxicating summer break.   

Maybe Haley and I should just start having babies; they seem kinda fun, and I could always live vicariously through them. 

Even tireless optimists like to whine.  Sorry, guys.  I’d delete this post, but I spent half an hour getting these words down, so I don’t have the heart to erase it.

This I Believe–I think…

In the 1950s, noted journalist Edward R. Murrow hosted a radio program called “This I Believe.” This program gave its listeners a voice and an insight into other’s voices by asking each of its contributers to write a 500 word essay that identified their core beliefs and ideals.

NPR has brought this program back in the form of a short segment that airs as a part of “All Things Considered”, NPR’s daily news show.  Currently, “This I Believe” has issued a call to its listeners to write their own 500 word essays and submit them to the show for consideration to be heard on the program.  Several times I have sat down and tried to clearly accomplish this challenge, and each time I have failed miserably.  So I present the challenge to you.

If you had to tell someone what you believe in with only 500 words, what would you say?  How would you explain yourself?  What would be the important thing that you would want to communicate to the world, the thing that really guides and shapes your life? Try it, you might find it harder than you think.

Here’s a list of topics that I’m guessing you would write about:

1.Andy believes in music.
2.Bethy believes in children, or true love; not sure which one, yet.
3.Marlo probably believes in some variation of the Apostles Creed.
4.Chris believes in the power of the human spirit.
5.Cooper believes in the power of satire, or John Piper; jury’s still out.
6.Kelly Coop believes in the magnificience of nature, or white cats named Spooky.
7.Jill believes in her relationships.
8.Dan believes in being a yellow head in a city of “yellow” people.
9.Ang believes in herself.
10.Kinsey believes in the power of the Groovy Green Dress.
11.Meghan believes in Betty Davis.
12.Honour is going to fistfight Justin over the “power of satire” belief.
13.Jesse believes in technology. (Kip: “I love technology…”)
14.Steve R believes in abandoning Xanga (praise you!).
15.Gallo believes in objectivity.
16.Ren believes in education.
17.Ironically enough, Karen believes in dreaming.
18.My wife believes in me.

That’s not at all a comprehensive list, so if I forgot you please don’t get mad. 

Click here for some previous essays.Š

“It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon…”

There is one person on this planet whose job I would give nearly anything to have…I don’t want to swap with Bill Gates, or Tom Cruise, or Martha Stewart, but the one man’s shoes that I would love to walk 100 miles in belong to Garrison Keillor.  He is the last of the old time radio variety show hosts, and his A Prairie Home Companion has been a staple of my Saturday evenings since my college years. 

Keillor gets to do it all.  His show draws in some of the best musicians in the business, and he gets the opportunity to tell jokes and stories that really speak to me in a very casual but powerful way.  I have often been moved to tears during this show–specifically during the episode the day after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans (the band played Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927″).

You can imagine my excitement when I heard that the show had inspired a film.  Then when I found out that the film was directed by Robert Altman and had Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline in it (among other greats), I knew that I must see it opening day.  So I did…

Or, I almost did.  About an hour into the movie, the power went out in the theater and we were given vouchers to come see the film another time.  (I think I heard someone swear in Norwegien in the back of the room.)  Dang.

So my review will have to wait until I see the film in its entirety.  Based upon what I saw, though, let me highly recommend you see this movie.

Saved

For a few moments during our college years, Dan Murray had me convinced that my songs were worth listening to.  He has that knack; he can bring the best out of the mediocre.  I have to say that I miss those recording sessions in dorm rooms, at the pier, and anywhere else Dan could get enough power to support his rack of equipment.

It will be great to see Dan in a few days, even if only for the sake of those wonderful Saved memories. 

Did you know you can listen to some of our music online?  Check it out.  Click here…

An Observation on Immigration

I don’t consider myself especially patriotic.  As a matter of fact, I would consider myself more of a globalist than a nationalist.  I don’t see a girth of Biblical support for loyalty to one nation above all others, for Christ’s kingdom will be founded on the four corners of the earth.  God created the world, but not necessarily national boundaries. 

In light of this thinking, here’s why I think that weakening the current U.S. posture on immigration is a phenominally bad idea globally (I felt like Eagon from the Ghostbusters as I typed that last line).  While allowing more immigrants to come into the country does benefit the lives of those who come here, how is this advancing the countries from which they come?  Mexico is a “developing” country, with major world power potential, but I can’t help wondering if the country will grow into what it could become if a significant portion of its population abandon ship in search for the quick fix for their financial problems.  These immigrants are typically hard workers; what if they put their efforts into creating a Mexico with unlimited potential, maybe not for them, but for their children to enjoy?

Think of the origins of the United States.  There were hundreds of years of struggling, impoverished conditions that have eventually given us the blessings that we enjoy today, but our American ancestors didn’t just jump ship and go back to Europe for the easy solution.  Rather, they (for the most part) struggled and worked to make our propserity possible. 

Over at XpressionCCRs blog, he tells a story of a Romanian immigrant who is having difficulty obtaining a worker’s visa to remain in the United States.  This man is apparently a computer programmer of some sort, and if he returns to Romania, he will only have a chance to make about 500 dollars a month, as opposed to the 40k+ he could be earning here. Let’s consider this situation in light of my argument.

Until 1989, Romania had been under barbaric Communist leadership.  Ceauşescu, the Romanian president, was overthrown in a revolution, and since then, Romanians have been taking baby steps in establishing a democracy in which everyone can succeed.  This process has proven slow and hard, with many Romanians being so conditioned to rely on the government for everything that they do not know how to survive in the private sector. 

If all of Romania’s gifted professionals (I’m not neccesarily speaking about Chris’ friend here–there are probably other circumstances that I am not aware of) jumped ship and headed to America, or Japan, or anywhere else for that matter, how will Romania ever become what it should be?  The country has huge mining and export capacity; it could be very successful in the world economy, but this won’t happen if people consider only themselves in their decisions about where to live and work.

In many ways, capitalism is the greatest economic system in the world, but it has dulled our sensibilities in regard to what success means.  In the Capitalist’s world view, success is determined by what best benefits me, rather than what might best benefit my children, or my nation, or my world.  For the world to be successful, people of all nations must make sacrifices, not for today, but for the future.