Archive for January, 2010
The mention of NASCAR has always brought images to my mind of overweight wearing jeans and cut-off flannel shirts over white wife-beater shirts, and bleached-blonde chicks in cut-off shorts and cut-off shirts. And they are all wearing beer-hats. And drinking beer with a wad of chewing tobacco between their lower lip and gums while discussing what to eat for dinner at “mom’n ‘em’s” tonight.
However, Mr. Man is a big fanboy of cars – especially the shiny fast ones. Hey, he owns a hot red Lotus, what can I say? He definitely isn’t the beer-swigging red-neck I associate with NASCAR, so when he mentioned he was watching a race and invited me to watch it on his big screen, I thought maybe it would be something akin to the Formula One race in Monaco. Nope. It was NASCAR.
I gave it a fair shot though, and soon found myself rooting for the adorable Joey Logano, 19-year old racer from North Carolina. I was thrilled that at such a young age, he found himself living out his dream and competing with the likes of the Petty and Busch families.
But back to Target.
Watching a NASCAR race became a bit of a routine for us and we’d get together, turn the volume up loud so we could hear the revving of the engines, and we’d hope for a good crash – one in which nobody was hurt of course.
Eventually I got my kids in on the action and, much to my surprise, my 10-year old daughter was an instant fan. She picked Jimmy Johnson to be the winner in the race we were watching and sure enough: Johnson won. He won every race she watched as a matter-of-fact. (Next season I may have her watch again while we place bets online for her winning pics.)(If you want insider information contact me and we’ll work out a little $$ deal.)
But disaster struck and some sort of drama started up between the driver of the Target car, Juan Pablo Montoya. Now, I didn’t follow it closely enough to know, but according to Miss NASCAR herself, Montoya ran several drivers off the road including my precious Joey and her precious Jimmy.
So we’re driving to school this morning, talking about what to do in the summertime when vacation hits. We thought it would be fun to see a NASCAR race. Our conversation took a quick turn and went something like this:
Mom (that’s me): Oh, hey, I need to stop and get you a tri-fold board for your science fair project. I tried Wal-Mart but they didn’t have it, so I’ll try another store today.
Miss NASCAR (10-year old daugther): Oh thank you mommy! You can find one anywhere. Try Office Depot or Office Max (apparently she has insider information on office supplies, too). Oh, just DO NOT SHOP AT TARGET! NO! NOT AT ALL!
Mom: No Target? Why? I like Target! What is wrong with Target?
Miss NASCAR: (hissing dramatically) Montoya!
I pondered telling her the evils of Wal-Mart that lots of people use as their reasoning to boycott the store, but we shop there often for some things we just know are much cheaper. Surely those reasons are way more legit than someone bumping the back of your car while going 200+ MPH on a tight-cornered racetrack.
Miss NASCAR: (hissing again with much more dramatic flair, even better than Shatner’s performance in Star Trek when shouting “KAHN!!”: MONTOYAAAAAAH!
Mom: I’ll skip Target, but just for today. That’ll show them.
She seemed satisfied and started chatting about some boy in her class that she has a crush on. Funny girl.
I’m sitting at work right now, trying so hard to get this task completed, but I can’t stop thinking about Haiti. I’m haunted by the images of the dead, the dying, the trapped. My heart aches as I see the looks on the children’s faces: those terrified faces. They’ve seen what no child should have to see. Experienced what no child should experience.
I’m sitting in a nice comfortable chair, waterbottle close at hand, a fresh apple too. I have heat to warm me from the cold outside, a roof to protect me from the elements. The air I’m breathing is fresh and clean. My clothes are clean, my body is bathed. My stomach is full. I slept in a warm bed last night.
But the people in Haiti: there’s dead bodies piling up. There’s no water to drink. AT ALL. No breakfast. No phone to call someone – anyone – for help. The air is full of the smell of death and destruction and dust. Dust from the ground, dust from the collapsing buildings. Their clothes are dirty, torn, bloodied. They haven’t eaten. The prison building was compromised and who knows who escaped.
Children are missing. Trapped. Parents dead. Loved ones dead. Lost. Missing. God, please help them.
I can’t stand it. Just sitting here working on this mindless task that really doesn’t help anyone or do any good for anyone. And with each moment I sit here working, someone is buried in the rubble, hope of rescue fading, fading. Ugh. God, you need to help them.
We all are doing what we can: praying. Sending money. Doing what we can to spread the word to get help to Haiti.
But I can barely stand the ache in my heart for this tiny, poorer-than-poor country. I have the urge to go as if it were
From cnn.com
my own family caught, trapped. I see the video of a child sitting on a pile of rubble, shocked, confused, trying to make sense of what is happening. No adult is with him. Suddenly he looks like my own son, the same age and I think, My God help that little baby.
It’s just too much. I’ll turn off the TV for now, stop checking the news sites. Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away, but I’ve done all I can do and watching just ads to my own misery. Which is still nothing compared to theirs.
So I’ll do the only thing that I can do now. Pray. Please God. Just… please.
I’m doing it again. I’m jumping on the bandwagon of the latest trending topic on Twitter: Pat Robertson. I should know better than to talk politics or religion, but I’m impacted by this story in two ways: one, I’ve been to Haiti and found the people there lovely and enchanting although living in extreme poverty. Two, I’m a Christian.
Let me stop there to say I am embarrassed by Robertson’s comments regarding Haiti. You know, if he’d been giving a history lesson and telling the story of this dude who wanted to save Haiti from Napoleon so he sold his soul to the devil and just left it at that, I’d be okay. I thought it was a rather interesting story, one akin to Icharus wanting wings or Zeus sleeping around on Hera. Well, wrong era wrong continent but go with me here. While he didn’t right out say it, it appears he’s intimating that Haiti is cursed (by God I’m guessing) and that this earthquake is a result of said curse.
Having been to Haiti, I can say that it would indeed be easy to say the country is “cursed” (and by that I do not mean on God’s list of countries to smite in 2010). The people are incredibly poor there. Poor isn’t even a good word to use! The country is brown and dusty – animals roam the streets, dirty water puddles on the corners tainted by urine and feces, and children play right.there. There’s no topsoil in Haiti, no system for water (it’s caught in cisterns when (if) it rains) and when we were there, electricity only existed for about two hours a day, IF you were lucky.
And, sure enough, an hour crossing the Haitian border to the Dominican Republic is like stepping through the looking-glass: suddenly there’s lush green foliage, plants, flowers, grass, waterfalls, it’s a veritable land of plenty.
But back to Robertson.
I’m a Christian. Have been my whole life. I remember my mom watching Robertson when I was younger. I never minded him much until my adult life when many Christian leaders had their own failings as humans: affairs, homosexual relationships, embezzelment, etc. Wow, these are people just like me, making mistakes. These same people who represented Christianity to the world because of their far reaching programs and television shows.
Here’s what it comes down to for ME, in my OWN personal opinion.
Pat Robertson should have used his airtime to encourage Christians, Bhuddists, Muslims, Athiests humans to pray for, help, donate, send aid to Haiti.
If Pat Robertson wants this earthquake to truly be a “blessing in disguise” then he needs to not make harsh comments.
Cause hey, I’m just SURE that the people of Haiti will be LINING UP and coming in DROVES to turn Christian and follow this God who smited them, killing men women and little babies. After all, who doesn’t want to follow THAT God?
*hem*
Dear Haitians et. al:
I’m sorry that Pat Robertson made comments that make the rest of us Christians appear to be simple-minded, hateful witch hunters. Apparently he forgot the words “God is loving, gracious, kind, slow to anger, patient, forgiving…” I’ll stop there cause you get the point. Please don’t judge the rest of us based on his personal opinions. I’m pretty sure this earthquake was caused by this thing called a fault line.
So tired of people using religion to make other people feel bad about themselves, to scare others into believing in God. I get that we Christians beleive if you don’t believe in Jesus then you’re condemned to eternal damnation in hell (insert warm fuzzy feelings here) but for the love of God – really – knock it the hell off. If we’d spend half the time helping others, showing true love and concern for our fellow humans then maybe people would think “Hey, Christians are pretty cool. They aren’t stuffy at all!”
I’m hoping to go on a mission trip to Haiti this summer, returning to the city I visited back in ‘95 or ‘96. I’m not going to do dramas in the street or preach to thousands hoping they will turn or burn.
Instead, I’m going to really do what Jesus would likely have done: get in with the people, the outcasts, the downtrodden, the hurting, the homeless, the orphaned, and I’m going to love them. Yep. Love love. Like, ooh here’s a hug. Or, hey, let me make dinner for this displaced family. How ’bout that?
And I’m not going to mention that these souls that they are cursed. I’m instead going to look at them like the people who were wonderfully and fearfully made. By God.
Now, make a comment, but BE NICE! If ya’ll start hatin then I’ma delete your comment. Or put a curse on you.
If you noticed that my blog title is a line from 2001: A Space Odyssey, chances are you’re probably a sci-fi fan, movie trivia buff, or a space fan. Or maybe you just have a really good memory. Anyhoo, it doesn’t really matter since I’m not talking about movies or 2001 or if you can recall what you had for lunch on Tuesday six weeks ago.
I’m talking about outer space today. After a few weeks of following @flyingjenny on Twitter, I’ve become reacquainted with that bigger-than-life world that is outer space and the magic that was “maybe one day I can go to space” that all children seem to have at one point in life.
I know I did. I don’t know when it started, but I’d guess it was when I was about 5 and used to stare up at the night sky while driving home in the evening. I loved to look at the moon and the stars and was frequently disappointed when we arrived home and it was time to go in to bed. I wished on stars ALL THE TIME, and one wish (for a dog) was actually granted. I used to imagine the twinkling of those stars was really a message to me, blinking and flashing in a secret code, whispering to me how great my life could be and all of the wonderful things that were in store for me.
My mother was very imaginative and when my brother and I were younger, we were often treated to a game of make-believe play acting. We loved pretending and sometimes our acting seemed real enough that if we lived in CS Lewis’ books, we definitely would have made it through the wardrobe.
My mom read to us for hours on end, introducing us to The Hobbit and classics by Austen when we were still not of school age. She’d give us little buttons or other trinkets to leave on the windowsill for a magical princess who rode on the back of birds. In exchange for our little gifts, she’d leave a nickel or dime. It was wondrous!
Now toss in some good churching: the kind that makes God seem as big as eternity and just as wonderful and bright as those tiny twinkling stars, send us off to school to learn about the world around us, and you have two kids who believe anything is possible in the great big world!
But back to outer space. I mentioned following @flyingjenny. (If you don’t, you should!) She posed the question: “What “engages” you and keeps you interested in space?” I knew what it was for me: it was the magic of kinderhood that keeps me interested in space: it’s still a great big old mystery, filled with all the exciting possibilities one could ever imagine. My reply to her: “The magic that was space as a child! Wondering if someday *I* could look down at earth from the stars! Still feel that way. =)”
Why that is was her response, and what got me thinking today. Why is it some of us grown-ups are still enchanted by space and others could care less? When I heard NASA would be stopping the shuttle program, I felt incredibly sad! It was my parent’s generation who experienced the first shuttle missions, the first landing on the moon, the first tragedies of space travel. It was my generation that experienced more shuttle missions, the heartache that was the Challenger and Columbia. I remember the space station news and all of the launches into space for more exploration, and that pesky Hubble telescope that cost SO MUCH money.
When I was about 10 or 11, I saw the movie Space Camp. Oh, how I wanted to go to space and look down upon my planet! I wanted to fly to the moon and back, and zoom to stars and distant galaxies. When I was 20, I spent my evenings in Haiti gazing up at the sky, a sky so clear that ’shooting stars’ flew overhead like ducks on a cold winter day and you could see satellites cross the sky.
But wait! I can’t forget the space movies and television shows! The encounters had by Kirk and Spock! The evil empire of Darth Vader and the dashing Han Solo! What about space is there for a girl not to love!?
I don’t know what the future holds for space exploration (heavens, many will say it isn’t important enough because we can’t take care of our issues here on our own planet, much less outer space). I don’t know if the economy will bounce back and there will yet again be money for NASA to blast off into the undiscovered vastness of space. I doubt I’ll ever be in a space shuttle or on a space mission, or be a space tourist before I die. Heck, the one time I wanted to see the shuttle take off when we lived in Florida it was canceled. Some hurricane or rain storm or something. So I may not even hear the thunder that is the rocket booster thingamajigs, and feel the powerful shaking of the land as the shuttle takes off.
But I can tell my children about space, the planets, the possibilities of places far beyond human knowledge. I can tell them that Pluto is still a planet in my book, and maybe someday there will be hundreds more planets found and named. Maybe one day they will fly up to the stars and gaze down upon planet Earth.
One thing has to be certain: there isn’t a human who was or is or will be alive who hasn’t at some point stopped and stared up, wondering what is up there, what is out there, what kind of greatness would it be to *be* there.
Oh, for all my love of space and fantasy, I still can’t figure out the constellations. They NEVER look to me like the shapes they’re supposed to be. =)
What about you? What makes you a space lover either as a kid or an adult!?