More on my hideaway

The woodworking is done! I am so pleased to be past that huge milestone.

The final piece of the puzzle was the 16 1/3 foot long table I installed a week ago. I am now in the process of finishing it and the rest of the space - starting with shelves and doors.

Here are a series of pictures I took today.

The top one is a look down the office from the door. The big table on the right has consumed way too much time getting built, but there it is, with its second coat of finish drying on it. The book shelves on the floor down the middle are drying as well, having gotten a first coat on their second side.

I got a sprayer for the water-based poly I am using on all the pine. The table is getting oil-based stuff, which is a little more difficult to apply, but gives a better finish in my opinion.

The next one looks down on the table and shows how the wood just glows with an inner beauty. This is the reason I love woodworking -- polishing up a little of God's creation and realizing that the real artist is not me at all!

The next one shows the far end of the table, and the last one is looking down the length of it, and still only captures about three fourths of the whole thing.

I am really looking forward to getting the finish up and moving on to putting up lighting and getting carpet installed. Then I can move in!

I'll post some more pics when we get there.

Web 2.0 - what is it?

This is an amazing video on Web 2.0 and its implications.

The Home Stretch

We are finishing up our Lenten activity over the next couple days. Kim Marie threw her hat in the ring on Fat Tuesday. The election is on Tuesday, April 10 - just over 40 days (not including feast days) later. Lent. So I will be out holding a sign for several hours tomorrow (Monday) and then out all day on Election Day. This will be tiring, lonely work, but that is part of what Lent is about -- waiting.

But it is the home stretch. Win or lose, after the dust clears on Tuesday we'll be able to go back to semi-normal life. The laundry will get folded. The taxes can get done. Finally. So, while Easter has happened (Hallelujah!) in the Liturgical year, we are still waiting for that burst of new life that comes after the 40 days in the desert.

The sins of the fathers

I am not political. But my wife is running for School Committee and some of my best friends are very political. So it's rubbing off.

One of my friends basically ordered me to show up at this 'Beer & Budget' gathering for (primarily) fathers to talk with the School Superintendent and a School Committee member about money. I was glad I went. It was a very informative discussion. At many levels. Politically. Financially. Historically.

It got me to thinking about a book I was given by another friend of mine, who is convinced that the financial world as we know it is going to end in the next 10 years. The book, entitled Prophecy of Rich Dad, (there's a whole series of Rich Dad, Poor Dad books by Robert T. Kiyosaki) discusses the fact that the WW II generation has passed on the problem of funding the health care and welfare of the elderly on to the baby boom generation by looting the entire Social Security Trust Fund in order to pay the operating budget of the US government. (This is a massive oversimplification, but it gets to the point.)

It's similar to what has happened in our town. Twenty seven years ago, our 'fathers' in Massachusetts passed a really restrictive law on how much money each town can raise in taxes, so the towns all responded by selling off unused properties and buildings to meet their operating budgets, and then ignoring the decay of the town's schools and other buildings until there was simply no choice but to act. These short-sighted policies have put us in a real bind. Our school enrollments are growing and there's no schools big enough to house them. Starting a little more than 10 years ago, the town has had to go into a massive rebuilding program that will take at least ten more years to complete. When we have finished, I suspect that we will have renovated every school in the district, added two more, and renovated or replaced the Library, Senior Center, Town Hall and various other office buildings at a cost of, oh, somewhere between one and two thirds of a billion dollars. So I get to help pay off the deferred debts of my predecessors. All I can say is that I am glad that I live on the cheap side of town - those $1M+ homeowners on the other side of town are gonna feel it.

Kiyosaki suggests that the problem with government is that it is too easy to push off tough problems to the next generation. I agree. And I don't see this as a liberal vs. conservative issue, either. Liberals are too busy trying to save the world to fix the plumbing, and conservatives are too busy cutting taxes to bother with bridges.

There's a story circulating that we are, as a species, wired only to look out for short-term trouble. Whatever the reason, we'd better get our act together. Global warming, the impending bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare, etc. are now our sins, too, unless we choose to repent of the pattern of pushing off the big problems and face the music.

Busy, busy, busy

So it's been quite a while since I wrote anything. This has largely been due to the fact that I have been writing, umm, HTML, PHP, Java.

See, I had the perfect storm this winter/spring. I rolled into the year with two projects at work both demanding something like 30-40 hours of work (per week). So I was kinda busy. I managed to wrap one of them up and was looking forward to a little peace and quiet and our public school system's key support organization raised the flag, "We need a secret weapon! We simply have to get this prop 2 1/2 override through this year or our children will be reduced to the educational level of the frogs they currently dissect!" So, since I helped write the last 'secret weapon', actually a pretty cool marketing database and application, I had to improve it for this round. [For the uninitiated, prop 2 1/2 is a law in MA that restricts town taxation unless the town has a vote.]

In this case, 'improve' is defined as renovating the UI, adding 20 new features (they were just the 'high priority ones'), and then getting it through the 'test organization' (my friend Michael), a guy whose ADD translates into massive bursts of defects and new requirements.

We were in the throes of that little bit of work, when this same friend (good friend!) convinced my wife that it was time to run for School Committee. So, another Web Site was born (in 10 days flat). I'm pretty proud of the work. She loves it, and we're getting positive feedback from people we have directed to it.

Very exciting, but I'm a little tired - especially since I am moving into another big project at work! Wheeee!

Poetry that makes you say, "Hmmm", part 3

This is the third and last in my series of wonderful and mind-bending poems that were selected by Andrew Imbrie for his Cantata, Adam. This music was performed by the Cantata Singers on November 10 of this year.

This is the fifth and final piece in Part I, and is the most direct about being intentionally confusing.

A God and Yet a Man?
A god and yet a man?
A maid and yet a mother?
Wit wonders what wit can
Conceive this or the other.
A god and can he die?
A dead man, can he live?
What wit can well reply?
That reason reason give?
God, truth itself, doth teach it.
Man's wit sinks too far under
By reason's power to reach it.
Believe and leave to wonder.

I love this stuff! For some reason, I find the fact that my mind is not capable of grasping the full nature and work of God to be delightful. I gave a talk at church about this early this year. It was basically a riff on how God's infinity trumps our ability to get to the bottom/top/end of things he as created. I had a ball giving it – it felt more like worship than much of anything else I have ever done.

Every once in a while, I wonder why I have such a visceral reaction to this sort of thing. I seriously get ga-ga over it! Something about my wanting a frontier that cannot be conquered. Similarly, I get really rebellious when faced with a systematic theology – any claim that the Church fully understands how we are to think about God and about ourselves in relation to God. I guess I was born to be a postmodernist, even though I was a little early. Or maybe a mystic, just a little late.

"Believe and leave to wonder"

Poetry that makes you say, "Hmmm", part 2

This is my second in the series on poetry my wife and I listened at a Cantata Singers concert in early November.

This is the third poem in the Andrew Imbrie's work, Adam. Like the first poem, this one is also by an unknown author, noted, for reasons beyond my ken, as Anon.

A Baby is Born
A baby is born us bliss to bring;
A maiden I heard lullay sing:
“Dear son, now leave thy weeping,
Thy father is the king of bliss.”
“Nay, dear mother, for you weep I not,
But for thinges that shall be wrought
Or that I have mankind i-bought:
Was there never pain like it iwis.”
“Peace, dear son, say thou me not so.
Alas! That I should see this woe:
It were to me great heaviness.”
“My handes, mother that ye now see,
They shall be nailed on a tree;
My feet, also, fastened shall be:
Full many shall weep that it shall see.”
“Alas! Dear son, sorrow now is my hap;
To see my child that sucks my pap
So ruthfully taken out of my lap:
It were to me great heaviness.”
“Also, mother, there shall a spear
My tendere heart all to-tear;
The blood shall cover my body there:
Great ruthe it shall be to see.”
“Ah! Dear son, that is a heavy case.
When Gabriel kneeled before my face
And said, 'Hail! Lady, full of grace.'
He never told me nothing of this.”
“Dear mother, peace, now I you pray,
And take no sorrow for that I say,
But sing this song, 'By, by, lullay,'
To drive away all heaviness.

My wife and I both had that “Oh!” reaction to Mary's lines:

“Ah! Dear son, that is a heavy case.
When Gabriel kneeled before my face
And said, 'Hail! Lady, full of grace.'
He never told me nothing of this.”

The juxtaposition of the crucifixion with the annunciation is powerful and true. Like when my sister gave me a copy of Elie Wiesel's Night for Christmas with the inscription “This is why Christmas was necessary.”