I'm not offended

UNC-TV host D. G. Martin has an interesting book review in the Southern Pines Pilot today.

Forget about your "race" as the main thing that sets you apart from other Southerners. Down here we are all "creoles" of one sort of another. It is your ethnic background even more than your race that distinguishes you from others.

In the past we have usually defined Southern people in terms of black and white, but a new volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture shows that race has been overemphasized and ethnicity underemphasized as keys to understanding who we Southerners are.

He sketches out how this academic volume builds the case that twenty generations of cultural exchange - "creolization" - have created a regional identity that transcends skin color. It's an intriguing and potentially unifying idea, if it's valid -- or we work to make it so.

His one criticism is for the editors' desire to reform the traditional term "Scotch-Irish" to reflect the more correct identifier "Scots". Scots Irish? "Let's put that petty criticism aside," he says.

I for one appreciate the nuances of language, to the point that I pronounce "Celtic" with the properly hardened Gaelic "c" (i.e. /keltic/) ... but I will freely admit to continuing the traditional pronunciation of Boston's pro basketball team, the "/seltics/".

Agreed that "Scotch" refers to whiskey and "Scots" to people, but really, as one of their descendents, I'm not bothered by the label "Scotch-Irish". It flows pretty well.

HT: Carolina Journal

A House NOT Divided: Promoting Unity in the Homeschool Family Notes & Resources

A House NOT Divided: Promoting Unity in the Homeschool Family
Notes from Hal and Melanie Young's presentation
North Carolinians for Home Education Conference

I. Introduction

II. Family Vision/Mission

Practical Ways to Impart a Sense of Unity in the Family

III. A Family That Desires Unity Tears Down Obstacles

A. Our evil habits destroy our regard and love for one another.
1. Don't allow pesting or bullying
2. Don't tolerate name calling
3. Punish provocation as well as reaction
4. Stop sarcasm and smartmouthing
5. Make competition healthy
6. Encourage peacemaking
7. Encourage shared emotions Romans 12:15-16

B. How can we change?
1. Recognize that bickering and discord is sin Proverbs 6:16-19
2. Deal with it as seriously as we do other sin

IV. A Family That Desires Unity Builds Memories

A. Form family traditions
1. Holiday means "holy day"
2. Feasting is approved by Scripture
3. Form traditions around other holidays
4. Let anticipation build
5. Be unique and don't be afraid to be alone

B. Share interests and accomplishments
1. Develop family hobbies and shared interests
2. Share adversity
3. Seek out a challenge

C. Be sure your children know you value them
1. Children pick up your attitude toward them.
2. Children will also pick up your attitude toward more babies. Psalm 127:3
3. Your parenting is impacted if you believe your children are a gift from the Lord

V. A Family That Desires Unity Reminds Themselves of It Everyday in Little Ways

A. They identify with their family
1. Matching clothes or dress code
2. Fellowship as families
3. Have a healthy sense of pride in your family
4. Have special family code language and code words

B. They guard each other's hearts and feelings
1. Criticism stops at the threshold
2. This starts with the parents
3. He's my brother...
4. Wash your dirty laundry privately

C. They spend time together
1. Quantity trumps quality
2. Bring a child on errands
3. Take the family on business
4. Read or play together as a family
5. Remind yourself of why you are doing this Deuteronomy 32:46-47

VI. Conclusion
A. Summary
B. Glorify God in your family
C. Oswald Chambers quote:

"Our family life in Perth was a very united one; each evening, after the home-lessons were done, was given up to games of various kinds. We found our enjoyment and entertainment in our home; no outside amusements could possibly compare with the fun and happiness to be found there. We never had any desire to be out playing or walking with chums... "I feel traits in my character which I knew not of before, and it causes me to bow in deeper gratitude for that home training which I have now left, for the training and disciplines of life. Oh! What a mighty influence home life has on us! Indeed, we do not know how deep a debt we owe to our mothers and fathers and their training."

D. Theodore Kuyler quote (see more of this fantastic quote in another blog entry here)

"Everything that attracts our children to their homes is very apt to be, in the end, an attraction towards heaven. "

Resource: Doorposts Brother-offended Checklist

Q&A Time

Melanie answers individual questions from audience members

following her session on early homeschooling Thursday

A Meeting in the Concourse

Keynote Speaker Chris Klicka of Home School Legal Defense Association

chats with my wife Melanie between sessions.

In Conference

My wife and I will be blogging and speaking at the 23rd annual North Carolinians for Home Education Conference in Winston-Salem the next few days. The "NCHE ConferBlog" is located here.

Where Do You Begin?

WRAL is reporting that the suspect in an armed robbery in Duplin County was shot and killed following a 130-mph chase through four counties, ending when he emerged from his disabled vehicle with a weapon at the intersection of I-40 and the Beltline in Raleigh.

There will be enough said in the next few days about the chase and its conclusion, but I was struck by the sequence of events at its beginning:

1. Stage daring gun-in-the-face daylight gas station hold-up
2. Walk outside and fill up gas tank
3. Flee

God takes no delight in the death of the wicked so I'm not rejoicing in this guy's end. However, it boggles the mind that the bandit would casually top off the petrol while the clerk he just threatened calls the constabulary. It reminds me of one of Dorothy Sayers' novels, Unnatural Death, where Lord Peter asks his Scotland Yard friend Charles Parker just where we'd be if criminals were not so stupid in the end.

Or could this have been a suicide by law enforcement?

A Mark of Distinction

My children and I attended a "Friday Favorites" concert of the North Carolina Symphony last week, and I read in the program notes that the tuba player, David G. Lewis, occupies the Governor and Mrs. James G. Martin Jr., Chair with the orchestra.

Well, you learn something new every day. I had never heard that our most recent Republican governor is an accomplished tuba player.

That ought to be high on anybody's resume.

For what it's worth, here's another politician who played tuba -- Trent Lott.

You Run Your Business, I'll Run Mine

Recent events:

• Major Big Box Office Supply Place: I needed manila envelopes for a business mailing. The box of 100 standard, house brand 9x13 envelopes was priced thirty cents less than the box of 50. That's right -- we'll pay you thirty cents to carry out the second box. If I get a thousand, can I have them free?

• Major Big Box Pharmacy: I was buying an over the counter medicine on Wednesday, and the clerk asked if I'd like the M&M's at three for a dollar. Okay, I said, and bought a bag full for my host's kids. (He's got seven and Mom needs some too) Next day, I pass by the same store on my trip home and thought I'd get some to provision the lonely miles ahead. The clerk rang them up at $1.60. I told her they were three for a dollar (as she had just sold to an elderly lady ahead of me). She told me that was with tax. No, I said, three for a dollar plus tax is about one dollar and seven cents. She gamely cancelled the transaction and rang them up again. They're still coming up $1.60, she told me. Never mind ...

So back to my own business now ...

A question for fathers

Which is more indicative that one is a parent:

(1) Entering the conference room at work and finding a couple of Legos in your pocket
(2) Finding a blue crayon between slices of bread inside the bag
(3) Deciding you like finding Legos in your pocket, or not being surprised at all to find the crayon (only being curious whether it was a Crayola or one of the cheap ones they give out at restaurants)
(4) All of the above

Answer: Having experienced (1) through (3) myself, I have to say the answer is (4)

But, Sir

A man came down to the front desk at the hotel to complain.

"I turned the handle marked 'C' and got scalding hot water," he said.

"But, monsieur," said the clerk, "this is Montreal! To us, 'C' means chaud. It is French for 'hot'."

"I know that," said the guest, "but the other handle was marked 'C', too."

"Ah. But, monsieur," said the clerk, "you see, in Montreal, we are bilingual."

[Not original to me, but I was reminded of it in the shower this morning.]

A visit to great-great-great-great-grandpa

It's not often you have the opportunity to visit the grave of your great-great-great-great-grandfather. In my North Carolina family, a lot of the graves were marked with uncut slabs of rock, if at all. From the small bit of information I've uncovered, this grave had even less marking other than the tradition that he was buried next to his four-month-old son Webb in the old Nashville City Cemetery, Nashville, Tennessee.

Susannah is sitting on the child's marker, and just to the right is the new (2005) headstone for Samuel Chester Godshall, Captain, Co. G, 11th Tennessee Infantry, the great grandfather of her great grandmother.


The smaller marker has the names of three Godshall children who died in the same year, 1860, presumably of some illness or disaster. What the marker doesn't show is one of the more interesting names to appear in the family tree -- "A.H." is Captain Godshall's wife, Aramathea Helon Webb (listed as Aramathea in the 1860 census and Helon in the 1880, when she was living with her bachelor brother John C. Webb and her widowed sister).

Okay, I know it's stupid

... but I'll admit to it anyway.

While working on a month-long project out of town (and, not incidentally, on an expense account), I took advantage of a small storefront Chinese restaurant a few blocks from the hotel.* Just for fun, I always make it a point to eat Chinese food with chopsticks, as it was intended, and try to ask for them in Mandarin (Duì bù qì -- gěi wo kuài zi?). I'll confess, I'm not much good with rice, so I'll cheat and use the fork for that.

Unfortunately, eating Chinese four or five times in two weeks wore a groove in the cultural processor in my brain. One evening, I ran across a Greek restaurant** and settled in for another exotic meal ... and all the time, my brain was saying, "Chopsticks ... need chopsticks ..."

Apparently it couldn't deal with "Greek" and settled for "foreign".

=====

* If you're interested, it's the Shuang Xi Kitchen in North Charleston, SC, just off Montague Avenue and near the airport ... it's good, too.

** This was the Zeus Grill and Seafood in Mount Pleasant; it is tucked in behind some crepe myrtles so it's hard to see from the highway, US 17, but it adjoins the parking lot for the Outback Steakhouse. It was really good, and I highly recommend the lemon chicken soup.

Is it Gestalt? Or word association?

My first car was a 1960 Volkswagen, but my first "new" car was a used 1981 Ford Escort.  I had a lot of fun with it in college, driving it all over the mountains around Clemson and off to court my future wife in Charleston.

 

At 45,000 it threw the timing belt, a design flaw of the '81 model, and wrecked several valves, forecasting the future for the little two-door.  It did this twice more and finally stalled the last time at 83,000 miles.  I pushed it home, worked on it for a while, and got a trade-in valuation of $250 when we towed it to the dealership at nine years old.

 

Though we had decided never to buy another Escort, we were expecting our first child and had one dead car in the driveway and a Datsun/Nissan Sentra starting to show its age as well.  It was definitely time to get a more realiable vehicle.  As it happened in God's Providence, the best buy was a new, last-year's-overstock 1989 Escort station wagon.  Our first brand new vehicle, then, was the second Escort, which was the family Conestoga to California and back.  It was our main vehicle until 1996; I installed an after-market seat belt in the back to make it a "five" passenger arrangement.  When our first son's feet extended between the front seats, with him in the back and a baby seat on either side of him, we bought our first van.

 

That Escort developed inexplicable electrical problems the next year, and while waiting at our mechanic's for repair, was swallowed up by Hurricane Floyd's floodwaters.  Scrap value at ten years:  $36.

 

Recently my work vehicle, a well-seasoned Chevy Blazer, developed a very disturbing rattle which was diagnosed as a failing piston bearing.  Since we have three vehicles at the moment, the Blazer has been sidelined for the time being.

 

The peculiar thing is that more than once when I've mentioned the Blazer in casual conversation, I said "Escort".  Obviously my subconscious mind has permanently associated "defective vehicle" with "Ford Escort"; I suppose that's enevitable when you spent the better part of ten years visiting repair shops in several states.  And I can't say it's a Chevrolet mindset, since I'm currently driving a Jeep and have very happy memories of my VW and the Nissan along the way.

Never answered

Working on her masters degree from Florida State early in our marriage, my wife had to take a class at the main campus in Tallahassee, a good two hour drive from our home at Tyndall AFB.  It was a Saturday morning class, once a week, so we decided it was manageable.  On the other hand, the class met at 8:30 a.m. and the drive involved crossing from Central to Eastern time zone, which pushed the start time back an hour more.  We had to leave our home near Panama City well before sunup and frankly, some mornings we weren't at our sharpest driving past Wewahitchka and Blountstown in "the howling wilderness of northwest Florida".

 

I was driving one morning while my wife napped in the other seat, and passing the exit for the town of Quincy, I recalled a short story called, "The Quince Tree".  Musing along the two-lane road, I wondered about that tree, which apparently was symbolic and familiar to the (British?) author but a mystery to me.  Knowing my wife's bachelors degree was in biology with a good amount of plant taxonomy in the curriculum, I asked, without introduction and bit too loudly, "WHAT IS QUINCE?"

 

It was a bit startling, I guess.  I don't recall her answer, either.

 

To this day, now eighteen years later, whenever one of us erupts into comment or explodes a question into a still room while reading, the other will typically answer in kind, "WHAT IS QUINCE?"  And like the question in Atlas Shrugged, it generally goes unanswered. 

Back to the graphics shop, please

Wal-Mart usually does much better than this. Seen in the Smithfield/Selma, NC, Walmartgatory, over the photography studio:

"Bubbles -n- Giggles Passport Photos While You Wait".

It comes from trying to use the extra square foot of the banner advertising a new baby picture setup. I'm not going to spend any time trying to picture exactly what a "Bubbles -n- Giggles Passport Photo" might look like.

Just what is an inundated Calvinist?

I've never taken the space to explain the title of this weblog, The Inundated Calvinist.  I hit on this name long before blogging was a force, in fact, several years before we had Internet service.  There are several facets to it, so when I set up my Blogger account, I decided to finally use the name. 

 

The Calvinist label refers to my doctrinal beliefs, which are conservative, evangelical, and thoroughly in line with the tradition of the Reformation. 

 

The "inundation" refers to a particular expression of that Calvinism;  although raised in the Presbyterian church, after a thorough study of the matter in college I became convinced of the "credobaptist" position, that is, baptism administered only to believers, and that by immersion rather than sprinkling.  An "inundated Calvinist", then, is a tongue-in-cheek name for a Reformed Baptist believer.

 

Finally, the "inundation" also refers to my general mode of life; between work, family, and several ministries, I find my days are very, very full.  It's not uncommon to sense the water lapping at the gunwhales as I row.  Of course, a well-laden boat tends to ride low in the water, so I'm not sure I'm ready to lighten the ship yet.

 

 

Article in Carolina Journal Online

My article on the impact of rising energy costs on school systems and an interview with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools facilities director Phil Berman, was the lead in the July 3 Carolina Journal Online. Travel, work, and family commitments - not to mention writing for CJ - have kept me from posting recently, but that's the latest on the web.

The thing itself

I've tried to post on at least a weekly basis for the past few months, and it's a reflection of the rush of other responsibilities and commitments that I haven't for the past two. Sorry about that.

I did run across this item the other day and thought I might as well put it up. An article in The Tennessean described a debate on Calvinism during last week's annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. I was struck by the Christian tone of both men who honestly wanted to discuss theology, not aim for personal destruction of their opponent. The most regrettable comment, though, came from a Tennessee pastor who will remain nameless:

"I don't get caught up in Calvinism or some of the other issues," said [Nameless], pastor of [Deleted] Baptist Church in [Deleted], Tenn., attending with his wife, [Mrs. Nameless]. "I think our denomination needs to just focus on evangelism, on reaching the world through Christ."

Interesting twist there, reaching the world through Christ, not for Him. What's the purpose here?

But what bothers me is the highlighted comment. Occasionally I hear statements along the lines of, "At our church, we don't care about doctrine, we just love Jesus" -- begging the question what to do about Acts 2:42, for example -- but I expect better reasoning from a pastor. And if Calvinism as defined in the current debate isn't about evangelism, then it's not a debate at all.

I'd have to agree -- Pastor Nameless apparently isn't involved in the issue.

An Automotive Thought

This afternoon I'm dealing with the realization that for every hundred miles we drive in the van, we'll spend $24.45 on the gas, $1.35 on the tires, 42 cents on the oil, and three bucks on the air conditioner.

Anyway, that's about the cost of cool air in our eleven-year-old 15-passenger van, if our mechanic is right.

I'm reminding myself that as long as we're spending less than $400 a month on repairs, we're coming out ahead in the near term.

Worms, I Tell You

Some years ago I read several books on English and American hymnody.  It was interesting reading, but it was plain that like so many other areas of American Christianity, there was a definite slide in the content of the hymnbooks during the last century.  One writer quoted, humorously he thought, a clergyman colleague's complaint about "vermicular hymns", that is, "hymns with worms in 'em!"  We sang one this past Sunday -- in the sanitized version, alas, but remembering Isaac Watts' original --

Alas! And did my Saviour bleed?
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

More modern hymnbooks pull the "worm" reference and substitute "sinner", which it still Biblical and no doubt still offends some.  Still worse, though, is the bouncing chorus that some cheerful soul added long after Watts reached his reward:

At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light
And the burden of my heart rolled away (rolled away)
It was there by faith I received my sight
And now I am happy all the day

It's a catchy chorus, though you could debate whether modern notions of "happy" still mesh with the synonym "blessed" when the chorus was added.  It even has good harmony and an interesting bass line, I'll admit, but it's totally inappropriate for the original hymn.  Watts concludes his portion with simple pathos:

… dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
and melt mine eyes in tears.

But drops of grief can ne'er repay
The debt of love I owe
Here, Lord, I give myself away
'Tis all that I can do

Look at Watts' vocabulary --

Alas, grieve, bleed, die, worm …
dissolve, melt, tears …
drops of grief, debt, owe, and give myself away.

And the chorus responds:

And now I am happy all the day

I tried singing "blessed" but it just wouldn't fly.

Keep the chorus, if you like, attach to another hymn or develop the idea to stand in its own framework.  But as for me, I need to be reminded of my vermicular state, and my helpless dependence on a gracious Savior, and the awful price He paid, daily.  Or to borrow the chorus, all the day.