James at The Daily Brouhaha has a good post on "the rule of silence" that governs train commuters, and why breaking it is a bad idea. I’ve experienced this too.
bearing blog
bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
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Taking off his Pope Hat.
Pope Benedict is about to publish a scholarly book on Jesus:
"Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration" is scheduled for a March release in Italian by the Rizzoli publishing house and in German by Herder Verlag.
Announcing the publication Nov. 21, Rizzoli and the Vatican gave reporters copies of the book’s preface and a portion of its introduction.
In the preface, signed "Joseph Ratzinger — Benedict XVI," the pope wrote that for decades he had noticed a growing scholarly distinction between the "historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith," a distinction that many Christians now accept as accurate.
But, he wrote, if the human Jesus was totally different from the Jesus depicted in the Gospels and proclaimed by the church, what does it mean to have faith in him?
Jimmy Akin notices something important:
But the book is not an act of the papal magisterium, despite its author’s election to the papal see:
In a Nov. 21 statement, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said, "The pope says clearly, with his usual simplicity and humility, that this is not a ‘magisterial act,’ but a fruit of his personal research and, as such, can be freely discussed and critiqued.
"It is not a long encyclical on Jesus, but a personal presentation of the figure of Jesus by the theologian Joseph Ratzinger," who was elected pope after beginning the work, Father Lombardi said.
This says volumes about the personal humility of the man who is now pope. To have the spiritual authority to mandate that every sentence in the book be believed by Catholics and to refuse to use it–to refuse to put forward one’s own ideas authoritatively–and to instead openly say that people are free to discuss those ideas and critique them–knowing even that they will meet hostility in many scholarly circles–is the mark of an extraordinarily humble man.
How cool is that? I’m looking forward to seeing it in English. Correctly or not, I am imagining it as a more scholarly, less for-popular-reading, Life of Christ a la Bishop Sheen. (Which, if you haven’t read, you might select while you are waiting for Benedict’s, I mean Ratzinger’s, book to come out.)
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Safe, thank goodness…
Abandoned baby found by the roadside in Stearns County:
The baby — believed to be 3 to 14 days old — was left near the intersection with another gravel road, Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Bruce Bechtold said today.
She was found by Bob Klaverkamp, a dairy farmer who was on his way home. She was in a car seat propped against an oak tree, about 7 feet off a gravel road, covered by a pink blanket with a small duffel bag nearby.
"I was thinking somebody got rid of a car seat for some dumb reason," he said. " I got out to check, and I heard a little whimper.
"I lifted the blanket and there was a baby."
He said he went to his truck and called 911, then picked up the baby and took it into his vehicle to keep it warm. "I touched its fingers, and it wasn’t very cold," he said. "She was holding my finger as I talked to her. She was very sweet, a very nice little baby. She was very quiet, with once in a while a little whimper. A very good baby."
As I was reading this story, the thought came to me, as natural as anything, "Huh! I should call and ask if they need anyone to take care of that baby, because I could take care of her." For an instant, it seemed like a very good idea. And then, of course, I remembered that I already have a fairly newly born baby to take care of, three-month-old MJ (in fact I was nursing her at that moment), so—I guess it’s not such a good idea!
Those maternal instincts can be weird sometimes. Bravo, Mr. Klaverkamp, who had this to say, too:
"I told the 911 operator I wanted to keep her," Klaverkamp said, smiling.
How could you not?
She’s a lucky girl. This is Minnesota, and it’s November.
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Still hope for skiing?
The last time Mark visited the sports medicine doctor, in May of 2000, his visit started off like this:
SPORTS MEDICINE DOC (making small talk): Got any kids?
MARK (beaming with pride, at least in my imagination): My wife is pregnant with our first.
SPORTS MEDICINE DOC: I do vasectomies too.
So it is a testament to the sports medicine doctor’s generally good sports-medicine advice that Mark went back to him this week, not for a vasectomy, but for help with his hamstrings.
Sports Medicine Doc told Mark to slowly ramp up his general activity, i.e., walking. For this I bought Mark a pedometer yesterday, because why bother unless you’ve got data? Also he is to go to the gym three times a week and perform a specific set of exercises. There is hope that the ski season can be salvaged, which is good, because he’s supposed to make several business trips to Colorado this year.
I told him not to walk too much at work, because I need him to start ramping up his activity at home first. The laundry is piling up.
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Game time.
I’m trying a new school-day schedule this month. Instead of doing lessons with Oscar in the morning, and giving him independent work (worksheets, in other words) in the afternoon, I’m having his independent work ready for him in the morning, right after I read aloud to the boys, and putting the lessons later.
With this change, right after we finish our read-aloud couch cuddle, I can sit down at the table with 3-year-old Milo for ten or twenty minutes of some kind of work or play.
It’s practice for school.
What we’re doing right now is playing board games. The favorite is Go Away Monster. We play a couple of rounds while Oscar gets started on his schoolwork. Oscar wasn’t happy to begin with —"Milo’s having more fun than me!" he complained —but I explained what I was trying to do, and once he grasped that I was (sort of) tricking Milo into doing schoolwork, he seemed satisfied. He still spends more time interrupting us than doing his math sheet, but with time I think he’ll settle down.
I’m hoping that if I do this for a year, not only will Milo and I have had the chance to play some great games together (yes, I do hope to expand beyond Go Away Monster), but he’ll be used to sitting down at the table with me and doing something together. Then maybe I can start introducing some preschool type stuff. My plan, it is working.
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Yet another car ride in which I betray my inner geek.
OSCAR: Do you like robots, Dad?
MARK: Robots are pretty cool.
OSCAR: If I invented a robot, I would invent a robot that would write messages.
MARK: There are already robots that can write.
OSCAR: Really?
ME: Yes, they’re called "plotters." (Sighing, as my memory takes me back to freshman year.) I love plotters. They’re so much fun to watch.
MARK: Of course, they don’t use plotters anymore.
ME: Really? So engineering diagrams are just drawn on big, you know, printers now?
MARK: Yes, you know, the print head just moves across, and the feeder just moves the paper along. Big roll printers. That’s what they use now.
ME: Like a big inkjet?
MARK: Yup. No more watching the carriage come over to change pens.
ME: Well, that kind of takes all the romance out of it, don’t you think?
OSCAR: Are we home yet?
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Usually, we’re perfectly happy living TV-free.
"Too bad we already used up the three babysitting dates that Chris and Melissa gave us. We could’ve gone out to a sports bar."
"Eric and Kim have a TV. A nice big one. Maybe we could offer to babysit for them on Saturday afternoon."
"I could dig through the attic and see if I can find the antenna. It’s up there somewhere. I think."
"Are you sure we can’t get it streaming over the Internet? Somehow?"
(No.2 Michigan at No.1 Ohio State, 3:30 PM, Saturday. Go Bucks!)
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Red and blue.
Betsy linked to the 2006 red/blue map of congressional districts. Check it out here. Also some neat cartograms, with technical details at the bottom.
I was struck by the appearance of Minnesota, my home state. Minnesota is kind of interesting, as it has exactly one large urban area made of two neighboring midsized cities, one of which I occupy. Look at that: blue city, blue "outstate" (there are some small cities like Duluth, but otherwise it’s a lot of rural) — red suburbs.
Is this pattern as obvious anywhere else in the country? Western Indiana is the only other place I see it.
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Bags.
Ready to go spend the day at Melissa’s.
Left to right: one melon, one and a half bags of tuna sandwiches, a green mesh bag with a couple of recorders in it, my blue diaper bag, Oscar’s green bag with his schoolwork and change of clothes in it, and Milo’s orange bag with his change of clothes in it. The food went into the mesh bag before we left.
It was a gorgeous day. Some of the kids built a structure out of yard items. They said it was an airplane.
The oldest child cut up some pears for everyone to share at snack time, while most of the moms were busy nursing (or taking photos). -
Ham. Blame ham.
For my being so behind in the blog.
In May, Mark ran his first 5K, and did pretty well. The very next day he went skiing. (Before you ask, I forget where — someplace that still has snow in May.) He had pain in both sets of hamstring muscles after that, and as far as I can remember rested, iced, compressed, and elevated them as directed. They’ve been sore ever since, but he didn’t complain about them again until last month, when he somehow re-injured them after a day of helping a friend move. Now he’s unable to walk without pain.
This has changed the structure of our evenings, as you can imagine.
First he went to see a physical therapist, who prescribed some exercises and told him he’d feel better in two weeks. Two weeks later he is in even more pain. Yesterday and the day before he telecommuted from bed, to see if total bedrest helped. He’s scheduled to see a sports medicine specialist MD on Monday.
What we have figured out via Google is not very helpful. Almost all the information about hamstring strains instructs the reader what to do for them in the first 48 hours after injury. Very little goes on to say what an athlete can do if he’s still in intense pain six months later. NSAIDs are controversial—healing may be faster but re-injury is more common with their use. Corticosteroid shots get you back on the field to finish the season but don’t help longterm.
Mark’s not too happy about having to go back to the same specialist who offered him a vasectomy when he showed up to be evaluated for back pain six years ago, but since he’s the only doc who’s ever given him musculoskeletal advice that actually worked, back he goes. And don’t tell me he should see a chiropractor, because I’ve been suggesting it to him for years.
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