Occupy Living Room

For the past few weeks, I have been among the ranks of the unemployed. It was my first work stoppage, ever. Even during the UAW strike in 1997, I was assigned supervisor duty over a plant complex shut-down for two weeks. This is quite new territory for me.

In spite of my silliness on Twitter, this has provided me an opportunity to take a risk--something I'm usually wont to do. I have been able to try for what amounts to a dream job. I feel extremely fortunate in these economic times to even have the opening to apply for, much less be hired to.

It so happens that I was hired.

So, thus ends my Occupy Living Room "protest". Here is my one and only comment for the rest of the Occupy movement:  You will not be handed a damned thing. To get what you want, you will have to risk much, perhaps everything.

That is my lesson from this fall.  On to Occupy Office.

I am persona non grata. Surprisingly, I'm okay with that.

Back to the Future

With apologies to Spielberg, today represents a return for me to running, and Running On Empty. It has been a long time since I've run at all, and even longer since I've blogged here. At no point, however, has "running on empty" been more true than right now.

I ran 10k on fumes, this morning. No earth-shattering epiphanies, just a nice, long run in the cool morning. Maybe I will run that half this fall.

Back to School

Yesterday I got back to the theme of this blog... running. I ran a nice 5-ish k... the CSM Pi Mile. It was a run at my alma mater, sponsored by the math club. This run was right up my alley, in that, well, pi has had played a huge part in my life.

I ran a mediocre, hilly, and wind-aided 32:16. Maybe I should stick with Engineering.

Especially since cornbread are square.

Opening Day '11

Around where I live, Opening Day of the Baseball Season comes and goes with little fanfare. Perhaps that is because there are few fans. More likely, it’s because the weather here in early April is rarely conducive to baseball. Of course, that’s an oversimplification because, as yesterday showed, the weather in New York wasn’t that great, either.

Interestingly enough, it was an especially intense midwest summer night in 1998 that burned baseball into my soul, transforming it from a slow game to an experience, a drug I cannot live without. Every game that I sit down to watch or attend in person I have have the same experience. No matter who plays or where I see the game, I still hear Ernie Harwell, soothing my troubled heart and talking me down from that cliff in his pastoral way, with every ball and strike call. In a very real way, Ernie and Baseball saved me.

Back to today, it’s a little tough to be here where winter and spring are conflated, where on any given spring day appropriate dress to wear to Coors Field may be a parka or flip flops. The weatherman predicts flip-flops. The Rockies play tomorrow. So, in a way Opening Day here isn’t. It’s tomorrow.

That’s another baseball oddity about living here. So, I have to look elsewhere to celebrate today. Like so many others in the current economic conditions, I was at work, with no radio. I had to follow games on the internet. That brings many silent sighs as I labor away here at the salt mine. But all is not lost. Games will be on TV when I get home.

Tigers at Yankees. The Tigers lost late, as they seem prone to do. It’s good to get that first loss out of the way, to lower the expectations for the year. In the end, the season is too long to hang on every pitch from the first. Plus, that is somewhat antithetical to a pastime. There will be plenty of time for worry and anxiety in October.

Giants at Dodgers. While I’m not a fan of either team, this matchup brings a smile to my face. I am by no means any kind of baseball historian or statistics nut, however the Giants and Dodgers bring to me some distinct stories and memories. Their combined history makes me glad that they moved out of New York to the West coast. If any further history is made, I get to watch.

To me, the Giants are represented by Bobby Thomson, and his homerun to win the 1951 NL Pennant, against the Dodgers. On the other hand, the Dodgers are represented by Kirk Gibson and his pinch hit homer in the 1988 World Series. That at-bat hooked me on baseball forever. I get the chills watching old film of the 1951 tie-breaker. Similarly, it brings tears to my eyes to watch Gibby do it again, for I saw that game live on TV, the same year I met my wife.

Yes, thank you Giants and Dodgers for bringing baseball out west. Tim Lincecum looks twelve, but that age is betrayed by stunning power control. Don Mattingly is a rookie again, as the new Dodgers manager. The Dodgers won in a-- how appropriate for Southern California--a flip-flopped game. Kershaw beat a Cy Young winner in a career game.

Less historically steeped, tomorrow the Arizona Diamondbacks will play the Rockies. Both teams have playoff and division rival history, nonetheless.

Oh, and Kirk Gibson will be in the ball park.

A Tinker's Damn

A Tinker's Damn:

If we must have re­lig­ion, the semi­n­al test as to the value and merit of any re­lig­ion worth its salt has to be not what you be­lieve, but what you do -- that is, how you treat your fel­low man. Yet in the thousands upon thousands of books, and bi­ll­ions upon bi­ll­ions of words that have been writt­en, par­ticular­ly about Chris­tian­ity and the bible, what per­cen­tage of these books do you think are de­voted to the only thing that co­unts -- the Gold­en Rule?

The second rea­l­ity is that if there is a God and a heav­en after our life on earth, no God who de­mands of those whom he created that in order to get to heav­en they do some­th­ing here on earth dif­ferent from lead­ing a life of the Gold­en Rule is worth spend­ing one second in heav­en with, much less etern­ity. If his main re­quire­ment for gett­ing to heav­en is not that we treat our fel­low man fair­ly and de­cent­ly, but we be born-again Chris­tians who ac­cept Jesus as our savior and that we love him more than an­yone else with all of our being, then, as in­dicated ear­li­er, who in the hell would want to spend etern­ity or even one second with some­one who is so un­believab­ly self-centered and vainglori­ous?

That type of God is not worth a tin­ker's damn.
~ from The Sense and Morality of Agnosticism by Vincent Bugliosi ~

I soo agree with the snippet above. For me, I care little what any person believes IF said beliefs don't inform actions. For example, if you tell me that love is your overriding objective, yet you treat others like dirt or worse, who the hell cares what you believe?

This is one of the prime reasons I hammer on Christianity on this blog. For all their lofty words and sentiments, the actions of far too many Christians -- particularly fundamentalist Christians -- are mean-spirited and hateful. If you can't put your love into action everyday, what good is it?

In short, I think the doctrine of universalism has a therapeutic effect. It allows you to say, "I'm not sure how all this is going to shake out after death. But I believe God is love and will be good and fair to everyone." And with that in play... you can get on with the business of the day: Loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself.
Dr. Richard Beck, 3/2/2011, Experimental Theology, emphasis mine.