2021/08 Ship's Log

Who knew the human blood-suckers only account for 3% of the mosquito genus?

Royal has been putting random stuff off the ground for months now. We figured he’d outgrow the habit, but it’s not looking promising. Now it’s part of his mode of independent resistance. But I got him today, he he.

He popped a dry pinto bean in his mouth and looked over at me with gleeful defiance. Usually, I’d tell him to take it out. But this time he chomped down on it and split the bean in two. So I told him to eat it.

At first he must have misheard, so he popped the pieces out and handed them to me. But I pushed them back and said, “nope, if you’re going to put them in your mouth, you eat them.” This seemed to puzzle him, bit I kept at it. After a few tries he was making faces (it must not have tasted good), but he kept popping it back in when I said, “finish it up.”

Here’s hoping he’ll think twice before popping another bean!

Royal may be starting the terrible twos. Sickness only explains part of his immense and random resistance to all parental suggestion. He’s INTENSE. It’ll serve him well in the future, but we bear the brunt of it today. Oye.

I have never read poetry translated from Chinese nor any from factory-workers but, thanks to Matt Webb I’ve been introduced to dagong shige. It appears to be translatable to either “battler’s poetry” or “labor poetry.”

I Swallowed an Iron Moon

    I swallowed an iron moon
    they called it a screw
    I swallowed industrial wastewater and unemployment forms
    bent over machines, our youth died young
    I swallowed labour, I swallowed poverty
    swallowed pedestrian bridges, swallowed this rusted-out life
    I can’t swallow any more
    everything I’ve swallowed roils up in my throat
    I spread across my country
    a poem of shame

Sundress

The packing area is flooded with light
the iron I’m holding
collects all the warmth of my hands
I want to press the straps flat
so they won’t dig into your shoulders when you wear it
and then press up from the waist
a lovely waist
where someone can lay a fine hand
and on the tree-shaded lane
caress a quiet kind of love...

Why am I only now hearing about these poems? Poetry like Wu Xia’s is ten-thousand times more effective at communicating the lives of those who produce most of the world’s goods (or at least the United States).

Another week past. Work took half the week to calm down from last week’s fiasco, but all has finally normalized.

I’m grateful for the time spent with others this week. We’ve had numerous conversations about seeing a movement in Chicago and several chances to encourage and exhort others. It’s likely that we’ll host a DBS group this Fall with some we’ve met, which is an exciting prospect.

The question, “how can I help?” has been so useful to learn how I might get involved in other’s needs. It’s a keeper.

Sometimes there’s just so much going on it’s hard to keep up. I end up with 50+ tabs on my phone’s browser from all the articles I hope to read in greater depth. Only that never happens. Here’s a few thoughts I wanted to get down so I can close some tabs!

My eyes perk up whenever I see articles like this because I keep trying to make sense of my own experience. Amie and I have no debt, I make a high salary, and we have an affordable 15-year mortgage, yet it seems to be just enough for us to live the dream of a single-income household. Our friends and neighbors lack many or all of these benefits and often have additional obstacles. If we’re exceedingly privileged and well-positioned and it’s just enough for our little family, how is the rest of America faring?

When I pulled the Guardian’s data apart it was too general to make any concrete statement, but it does reflect a trend.

A resource that’s fun to page through. It’s amazing that the Internet has managed to stay organized enough to remain generally interoperable across the world.

There’s some controversy in tech privacy/freedom circles about Apple’s decision to scan photos on our iPhones. That sounds bad, and it would be, but they’re doing a few more things to minimize the invasive nature of their scanning and the data that might be gathered from a scan. My personal opinion is that Apple has done all I could imagine possible to solve a horrifying problem without creating worse privacy concerns and, in this specific case, I’d rather they take action than remain passively involved.

Comparison of Vaccine Effectiveness With SARS-CoV-2 Variants && SARS-CoV-2 Breakthrough Cases

I’m still learning the underlying material to understand this research paper, but it’s my aim to learn enough about genetics, vaccines, and the human immune system to make sense of this research and others like it. Stay tuned for a full-size article!

This was an encouraging story about the regeneration of farmland back to a woodland habitat. We don’t know enough about how the Earth will heal from our involvement, but it’s wonderful to read about the astounding resilience and self-repairing nature of creation. Most repair will require more human involvement to set right where we’ve made mistakes, but it’s encouraging nonetheless.

I’ve been complaining about bank systems for a long time. I’d have jumped ship to another bank if I really thought there was a better option. I’m surprised, and yet not so surprised, that other parts of the world aren’t locked up with crappy standards. Might be time to move to a Swiss bank 😎.

Royal and I look alike in these photos don’tcha think?

I think that there is a shared belief that the world is a lot fairer and more complex than it is because it’s easier to see it that way. We want to perceive the world and the people that live in it as a machine that can be tuned, improved on and fixed, that is predictable and malleable, because the alternative - that it is uncaring and chaotic - runs contrary to our educational system and the supposed “hard work gets you success” mentality we have drilled into us as kids. - The World Is More Obvious Than We Want It To Be

This resonates.

This week has been insane.

Since Tuesday I’ve worked nine or more hours a day, releasing new code almost every night to resolve critical issues with our software. Today I was indirectly threatened with being laid off if any other problems arose. Mayhem.

If it were my boss making those kind of threats, it’d be time to start looking for another company. But it’s not. It’s a firm partner, and the IT department has little recourse. My boss and his boss have been exceedingly reasonable; stressing the criticality of these issues without making threats or falling into the blame game. I’m grateful to work with them.

It’s tempting to stage a walk-out. If our team continues to receive this treatment, I might succumb to the temptation. How many developers have to leave before someone realizes that it’s not okay to treat people this way?

Anyways, don’t make any decisions at the end of a grueling week. That’s my motto.

It’s been so great to have Val in town for a few days! She stopped by on Monday to hang out with Amie while I worked, then we visited Dick Ryan’s place for a party in her honor. The boys happily played chase all over the living room, filling his house with laughter.

Amie connected with Christine and we’re both ecstatic to discover that she’s hooked on DBS! It seems like trips to Mafraq, Jordan and Dorren’s influence has borne unsuspected fruit across the Evanston Vineyard. May it continue to bear fruit according to its kind for an expansive harvest!

Graham watched the Tokyo 2020 Olympic BMX qualifiers (first year at the Olympics!) and afterward was like, “meh”.

There’s so many cool cinematography tricks going on with Matthew’s “Day 222 of the Pandemic.” Check it out!

My first unoffice hours today was so joyful. My mom scheduled our call today literally minutes after the invite had been sent. It’s a sunny day and there’s not much traffic, so I walked around the neighborhood while we spoke on the phone.

You won’t find a more tenacious woman than my mom. I may get my great hair from my dad (thanks Dad ;) ), but my endurance and my children’s endurance is her gift to us. My gratitude for her grows with every year I raise my boys as I reflect how impossible a task it’d be to raise them without Amie.

What’s it like to hear the voice of God? This is a life-long question that’s so helpful to have the wisdom of those who’ve been listening long. Brother Vryhof has many insights; these are the most helpful to me today.

It is as if God speaks a word to us in the deepest place of our heart, and that word is gently but persistently repeated over and over again until we finally wake up to its full meaning and impact­­.

It seems to me that God’s words are expansive words, leading us beyond ourselves, beyond the safe spaces we have created for ourselves, beyond the cautious boundaries we have so carefully marked out for our lives;

It’s been my experience that, the longer I follow Jesus, the more partnership we have together. In the beginning I treated God primarily as an authority figure. I listened for my orders and moved when I got them. He has weaned me from this reliance on certain direction in the prevailing years, instead pushing me to a regular practice of listening and planning that blurs the lines between what parts are my contribution and what are the Lord’s. Instead of a dramatic event, followed by a change in direction, He’s slowly molding my heart towards a direction that’s still wreathed in mist. Perhaps because, were the mist to dissipate, I would be frozen in my fear and uncertainty. For it does seem that the Lord’s plans far exceed what I believe myself to be capable of.