The Worth of a Garden

As I drove home from the garden this morning, I thought I’d write about the different ways gardening benefits me. I’m not sure if my garden has yet been financially profitable, and I guess it hasn’t mattered enough to me to bother keeping track. There are so many ways to profit. Here are a few, in no particular order.

The Harvest: This morning I brought home a bunch of carrots, a bunch of green onions, a handful of cilantro, enough basil to make a fine batch of pesto, and a lovely bundle of lavender to tie with a purple ribbon and take to a friend. And I mustn’t forget the one late pea that I enjoyed while I watered. Every day’s harvest is different, and I am learning to use what God provides when He provides it.

Spiritual Lessons: Well, yeah, learning to enjoy and be satisfied with what God provides, because each day’s provision is enough, and usually more than enough: I still have potatoes from two days ago. There are too many spiritual lessons learned in the garden to list, but you’ll find hints of them sprinkled throughout this small essay.

Gifts to Give: This is one of my favorite things about gardening: there is always something to share. Lavender, lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini, a handful of fresh peas for my pea-loving son. Mmm.... I’m looking forward to making and sharing salsa later this summer. I think even the poorest farmer can’t help sharing a little of his harvest. There is so much joy in it.

Quiet Time: Because my closest garden neighbors don’t always come when I’m there, I often have and hour or so just to quiet my mind. The fence around our garden seems to have the magical power of filtering out the worries of the day, so while I am there I think of little other than pulling weeds, how much water the ground is soaking up, pinching back stems that will rob energy from the fruit, and what needs to be picked that day. I enjoy the bumble bees on the lavender and the honey bees on the thyme and worry that I’ve seen only one lady bug this summer. I wonder at the amazing beauty of a squash blossom or at how the pungent smell of a tomato plant is a built-in defense. Gardening is a restful work.

Fellowship: There are times when my neighbors do show up. And I am glad when they do. We talk plants and pests and plans for next year. We don’t know each other well enough to talk of personal things. One good neighbor is going to water my garden while I’m away in exchange for the harvest. We all share a desire to produce and eat healthy, tasty vegetables. And we all, knowingly or not, share a delight in God’s creation and the first work of our shared ancestors.

Sun: It has been much in the news these past couple of years that many Americans are not getting enough sun. My time in the garden ensures that I get an adequate dose of Vitamin D. I think I am happier and healthier for it.

A Little Exercise: Most of the exercise of gardening happens in the spring: hauling in soil and compost, tilling and hoeing, planting. But weeding and watering and other maintenance tasks do require a little work every other day or so. It’s a pleasant way to burn a few calories.

Is all this worth the time, money, and effort? Yes. I think so.

Why I Haven't Bought Into the Global Warming Theory

Sometimes I joke about global warming, especially on frigid days like today. And I'm sure my friends who agree that the earth is warming find my jokes to be uneducated and insincere. In a sense, they are right about my arguments being uneducated, and that is at the heart of my objection to the theory.

About the time I was first hearing about global warming, Al Gore was saying that the debate was over. Huh? What debate? I didn't hear anyone arguing the issue? At least not until a few of my rhetoric students jumped on the band wagon and decided to write their persuasive speeches in favor of the theory. The wild claims they made were entertaining. At best. I was practically begging them to give me good reasons to believe it; as a Christian, I find myself so often going against the tide of culture. But global warming has nothing to do with religion; it is either happening or not happening. How very nice for me if I could, just this once, go with the flow.

Of course, I wasn't going to base my opinion of the theory on my students' efforts. As Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth was making the rounds, I rented it and watched it with my daughter. It was, like those student speeches, entertaining. At best. The film is mostly a fluffy piece of self promotion; it contains very little actual science. I've seen more videos and read many more articles about why Al Gore is wrong than about why he is right.

Honestly, what I hear from people who support the IPCC findings is that they don't have to support their findings because "the debate is over" and "most scientists agre with us." That's what passes for persuasion these days? And then we had the hacked e-mails which further eroded any expectation that these guys would come forth with some evidence.

I have tried to be educated on this issue. But it is very hard to find articles that bring it down to the layman's level without oversimplifying (leaving out the evidence part) or scaremongering. There is rarely, if ever, even a tiny bit of humility. Humility should come in the form of refutation. A good argument should include both confirmation and refutation. The confirmation is the positive support; the refutation acknowledges and answers the opposing arguments. The global warming advocates don't acknowledge that the opposition might have some good points. They don't answer the questions posed by people like Bjorn Lomborg in his article Chill Out. He says, okay maybe this global warming theory has merit. But does it justify the massive amounts of money being thrown at it? Are the proposed changes enough to make any real impact on the problem? Is warming necessarily bad? Wouldn't it make more sense to take all that money and do such-and-such with it instead? Is this more about politics than science?

Those are great questions. But not only do I not hear answers, I don't hear anyone even acknowledging that the questions have merit. I can only surmise that the advocates of the global warming theory think that we common people have no ability to understand, that we must just trust those who do understand to make wise choices for us. Wow! That sounds kinda like the pre-Reformation church: you can't read the Bible, so let us interpret it for you. Um....no thanks. We all saw how that turned out.

So, enough rambling for now. I just want to explain why I haven't come 'round on this issue. Until the IPCC believers start seeing that the scientific community needs to give an accounting of itself, I'm not buying in. I will continue caring for the planet because I want clean air, clean water, and beauty just as much as the next person. I will support reasonable measures to protect our environment, and maybe someday I'll get to build an environmentally-friendly strawbale house. For now, I'm going with the sunspot theory and trusting that man will adjust to incremental climate changes as they happen.

Wishes are Horses

Wishes are horses. All you have to do is give a few speeches saying you want peace, and you will ride like a king. You don't actually have to do anything to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And when you actually do something to bring about peace--you know, like Ronald Reagan negotiating peace with the Soviet Union at Reykjavik--there is no prize. Thank God Reagan knew that the real prize was actual peace.

All you have to do is run around the world telling people how bad America is and how you are going to make everything better, and someone in Oslo will hand you a check for a cool 1.4 million dollars. You can get a pretty nice horse for that kind of money. That's for sure!

But let's not give peace prizes to people who actually bring peace, people like the men and women working to reconcile the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda. Or like the man who has made it his life's work to build schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is real work, resulting in real peace. And these are people who could actually use 1.4 million dollars.

What is President Obama going to do with his 1.4 million? Is he going to pay back the U.S. government for the money he spent flying around the world in Air Force One? Is he going to spend that money planting trees to offset his growing carbon footprint? How does he use that money to promote the "work" he is doing? Greg Mortenson, of the Central Asia Institute, could build a lot of schools for that kind of money. Christophe Mbonyibango, could do so much toward reconciliation in Rwanda with that kind of cash. It is a testimony to the greatness of these men that they do not pay attention to things like Nobel Peace prizes. They are too busy making the world a better place to live.

The prophet Isaiah said, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" Woe to a world where beggars ride and those who have earned their horses walk.

I say, "Whoa!" to the horses that beggars have mounted. Throw off your wishful riders!

Lessons from the Van Jones Resignation

It strikes me that we all have something to learn from the events that led to Van Jones' resignation. In the heat of our passions, we must exercise great discretion in the words we choose. Our words, for better or worse, will come back to haunt us.

It wasn't that long ago that it made rhetorical sense to tailor speeches to specific audiences. Van Jones was speaking to sympathetic audiences when he made the statements that eventually brought him down. But we no longer have isolated audiences. With modern technology, especially the ubiquitous cell phone, everything we say can be recorded and tucked away for dissemination at a kairotic moment, a moment when either our friends or our enemies can make good use of our words.

In some ways, I feel badly for Jones. He appears to be a man who strongly believes the things he says. He may be completely sincere in his motives. I think he just has no idea how far outside the mainstream his ideas really are.

As I've watched the various clips from speeches and interviews, I wondered what I've said that could come back to bite me. Not much of what I've written or said is published, but what have I said in chat rooms and in the comment sections for various news articles or video clips? I don't use my full name, but my e-mail address is there in cyberspace somewhere. I'm sure that someone has the technology to find my comments.

People should take strong stands on important matters. But taking a strong position doesn't require radical accusations, crude language, or the mocking of others. We should first be well informed, and then we should speak reasonably and articulately.

There isn't much I can do to change what I have said up till now, but I can certainly keep a tighter control on what I say and write in the future.

Straw Men Are Easy to Burn

I'd like to start a running post of straw man arguments and other fallacies made by the proponents of universal health care. If you catch any, please send them along. I'll add them to the list and credit you. If you think I've misidentified a fallacy, let me know that as well.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the straw man fallacy, here is a quick definition: The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. (from the Nizkor Project: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html)

1. Proponents of universal healthcare are discussing how well medicare works, how it doesn't have "death panels", etc. Well, how is that relevant? We are not opposing medicare per say; we are opposing H.R. 3200. Does Medicare have the exact same language in it as H.R. 3200? Why are the Democrats not discussing the actually language of the bill before us? This argument falls under other fallacies as well. Red Herring comes to mind.
2. I'm not sure this is straw man: The many elderly people who are against the healthcare bill don't understand that Medicare is a government funded program. I've heard one anecdote of an elderly person saying, "The government better keep its hands off my medicare." I've heard it repeated twice. The argument says that the people who are against government-run health care not only have it already but really like it. If they only understood this, they would not oppose President Obama's plan. So. How many elderly people actually don't understand that their Medicare benefits are government funded? Can elderly people not understand the differences between Medicare as it stands today and the government-run health option that Obama proposes. I give them a lot more credit than that. Besides the whole argument being a fallacy, it is also a prime example of youthful arrogance.
   

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Why are pundits and politicians still debating the reasons for the President’s failure to sell his healthcare plan? They have all sorts of opinions: he misjudged the people’s estimation of the current healthcare system; he wrongfully construed his popularity as a mandate for a massive overhaul of the system; the Republican party is organizing to destroy the President. But no one is stating the obvious. The reason people are turning out in droves at town hall meetings and T.E.A. Parties is because they are angry. They want and deserve respect, and they aren’t getting it from the White House, Congress or the media.

People get angry for three main reasons: 1) they don’t think they are being respected, 2) they don’t think they are being listened to, and 3) they feel powerless. Look at what’s been going on for the past few months. People were already exasperated before the healthcare discussion began. The President and Congress, and the Bush administration before them, had already rammed through several very costly bills and a takeover of GM, sometimes acting in the dead of night and always with precious little transparency. Citizens responded by holding T.E.A. Parties.

And how did our government and our media respond to a very American show of exasperation? Well, President Obama mocked them. At a town hall meeting in Missouri, he sneered, “When you see, you know, those of you who are watching certain news channels which are not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term.” It was stunning: The President of the United States of America was mocking his own citizens! Not very respectful.

Speaker Pelosi dismissed the T.E.A. Party uprising as “astroturf”. She said, “This initiative is funded by the high end — we call it astroturf. It’s not really a grassroots movement.” She invoked the “astroturf” word again in her dismissal of citizens protesting the healthcare bill. Ironically, she found the voices of “disrupters” to be eloquent and articulate when they were protesting war; but when they protest her own pet project, she finds them “un-American”. Now, she and other members of Congress are calling town hall protesters “angry mobs”, again dismissing rather than listening to them.

As for the media, they ignored the T.E.A. Party protests as long as they could and then, like the President, they mocked them. Someone came up with the idea to apply the derogatory term “teabaggers” to these protesters. They’ve had a good ole time on cable television congratulating themselves for their own cleverness. Not very professional. And certainly not respectful.

The President and members of Congress have much greater access to powerful channels of communication than do average American citizens. The President was given an entire ABC special broadcast to sell his plan. He has hosted town halls and written op-ed pieces published in papers all over the country. Congressmen host and control town hall meetings. I couldn’t help but laugh when Barney Frank complained at his town hall that people weren’t listening to him and weren’t having a fair dialog. How could there be a conversation? He made a rule that audience members could only ask questions. They were not allowed to make comments. Like the President, he was basically saying, “Shut up and listen.” But his constituents get to listen to him all the time. They can listen to his press conferences. On C-Span, they can listen to his committee meetings and house debates. With his franking privileges, he has ample opportunity to express his opinions in newsletters and other mailings. When does he listen to them?

Most people agree that the healthcare system needs reform. But before the system as they know it is gone forever, they want a truly reasonable discussion about it. They don’t want to be condescended to. They want to be heard.

Besides the rallies, they do have one other powerful venue: the voting booth. If the President and Congress don’t start showing some respect and listening to the people, the citizenry will only get angrier. There will be more protests. And people will use that last venue and throw the bums out.