29 August 2008

Real Men...The Series?

For some reason lately, anything written about gender roles has caught my attention.

Ever since I blasted through Wild at Heart, I have been pondering what it means to be a "Man of God".

A recent article in USA Today, for me at least, confirms what Eldredge was saying in Wild. Another article in the same paper, just a few days ago, again demonstrates the basic premise, and an article in this months Esquire again demonstrates a great problem facing all men today:

We don't know what the hell we're supposed to be. We don't know how to be men.

The world will tell us that a man is violent, aggressive, and needs taming.

The Church tells us much the same thing. We are called to be men of God, but not very many of us are sure what exactly that means.

These articles weren't much help either. It seems that collectively, we are aware of this problem, but we don't have anything remotely resembling an answer.

The USA Today article basically asked the question, "Do we be nice, or do we be men?" As if there were no possibility of being a Nice Man. As if all Nice Men are emasculated wussies incapable of generating any spine whatsoever, and any Real Man has not the remotest possibility of every being "nice".

The article in Esquire was more just a sarcastic look at the rising trend of violence in society today, and a discussion on how it's only bad because it's pointless violence. It touched, ever so slightly, on the fact that men are perceived as the violent perpetrators responsible for this decline in sensitivity. This argument is well known, and though the article doesn't say as much, one can read into it the belief that violence is in the masculine character and therefore, men must be restrained, tamed, civilized if our civilization is to continue. Blame the men was implied, but in a way that almost dared someone to blame the men for societal violence: Bring it on, we don't need to explain it. That's how men are.

It got me to thinking about Wild at Heart again. In it, Eldgredge argues that aggression is built into the masculine soul. Not in order to to harm or oppress, but because in order to survive, humans need to be forceful. We were created that way in order to fully experience and appreciate the Creation and Life that God has given us.

Sometimes, that does mean that we must physically stop oppression. We sometimes must stand in between innocents and those who wish to do them harm. In today's world, that often means deploying the army, or at least the threat of military action. And we need the strength of humanity's masculine heart in order to do it.

But when that God-given fierceness, that aggression is misguided and misused, it results in horribly violent videogames, television shows, movies, and other media. We then seem to revel in it, to worship the violence. We then accept that the violence is inside men. But it's not. Violence is not part of our nature. Aggression, forcefulness, those qualities are. And yes, those qualities do perhaps lend themselves to a more violent nature.

But what we must understand is that God gave us this forcefulness, this aggression, as a tool for us to live and thrive with.

We are the ones who have perverted it into creating video games and movies and television shows that glorify and worship blood and guts and killing.

So I'm thinking that there is a bunch of stuff I could write about Wild at Heart, so perhaps a series? I don't know.


wingnut

21 August 2008

Dispatches From the Line Mk.IV

The Little Mermaid

We have a client of ours who rents space in our hangar for his own personal airplane. Up until recently, he owned a Cessna Grand Caravan on amphibious floats. It was really cool, but he only used it for flying his family back and forth from their second home up on Lake Charlevoix. He decided that with fuel prices going the way they were, he couldn't justify using such a large airplane just as a back and forth type thing. So he purchased a converted deHavalind Beaver with floats to replace his Caravan. The Beaver is slightly smaller, less passenger and cargo space, but with a larger wing and the same engine as the Caravan. That means it has about the same characteristics that the Caravan has, as far as speed and useful weight go. The fact that it is a smaller aircraft means that it uses about half as much fuel as the Caravan, so it is much cheaper to operate.

Anyway, he took delivery of his new baby, and to our surprise, when it showed up on our ramp for the first time, it had art drawn on it.

Back in World War Two, aircrews would decorate their bombers and fighters with pictures of pretty much anything they thought of. Naturally, with so many young men away from hearth and home and lacking female companionship, most of the aircraft were adorned with pictures of girlfriends back home, or Hollywood starlets, or girls from the "gentlemen's" magazines in various states of undress. Say what you want about indecency, this "Nose Art" brought a tiny bit of much-needed personal identity and security to the unflinchingly violent and brutal world of military aviation.

Apparently, the tradition of personalizing aircraft in this manner is still alive and well today, for although it was painted on the tail, our client's old deHavalind had a mermaid on it that would rival the most intricate Nose Art from WWII. Except that the artist apparently forgot seashells or starfish or coconut halves or pasties. The mermaid sits proudly on the tail of the floatplane, displaying what humanity she has for all to see.

When our shock had faded into disbelief, we began making wisecracks about Walt Disney and mermaids and floatplanes until one of our number (I swear it wasn't me!) ended the conversation, and all lingering hope of decency, when he said, "We should name this plane Areola!"


wingnut

19 August 2008

We're Back!

What we did do: We cooked over a campfire. We sat by a campfire. We swam in the pool. Shan swam in the lake (62 degrees). We sat on the beach. We got sunburned. We talked. We went for bikerides. We went for walks. We stayed up late. We woke up early. We ate nachos at Snug Harbor. We went geocaching. I picked blackberries. We saw turkeys. We woke up in the middle of the night because Sasquatch was walking around behind our tent. We watched sunsets. I went fishing.

What we didn't do: We didn't catch any fish to fry. We didn't read our books. We didn't expect all the visitors we had. We didn't get run over by kids on Razor scooters. We didn't run over any kids on Razor scooters. We didn't dare venture down to the playground as much as we thought. We didn't get jealous of the massive RV's and trailers we saw. We didn't bleach our hair blonde to fit in. We didn't get rained on. We didn't get swarmed with mosquitos. We didn't miss work at all.

Though it was busier than we thought it would be, a good time was had by all, even Eli, whose teeth did make an appearance.


wingnut

07 August 2008

The Great Outdoors

We won't be around much next week.

My Bride and I are taking our child, vehicles, and a small mountain of our worldly possessions and striking out into the great unknown.

Except that we're only an hour away from home. We though it better that way, just in case the Mini-Wingnut doesn't like sleeping in a tent.

And it won't be the great unknown, technically speaking. There are showers and toilets. And a camp store with ice cream and sports equipment rental. And I grew up camping at this campground.

We will be tenting it at the Christian Reformed Conference Grounds, on Lake Michigan, just south of Grand Haven. We will be up at the top of the dune, because that's the last place on the grounds that almost resembles the camp ground that I remember. When I used to camp there, it was all sand. There were maybe four cement pads, for those whose trailers or RVs were so ponderously massive that they needed cement to not get stuck in the sand. The pavement extended from the entrance to the store, and that was it. The rest was gravel. The actual camp sites were misshapen due to the massive oak and maple trees that shaded the entire camp ground, and the playground in the center was huge, and filled with all the "perhaps" safe tetanus-inducing equipment so common twenty years ago.

I remember that the kids that were camping there learned real quick that they had to pour sand down the twisty slide before going down themselves. There were two reasons for this: One, the slide was about 5 MPH faster with a slight coating of dust on it, and two, the metal got so hot that kids would get burned on the way down if any bare skin touched the metal. Good times.

Now, the playground is larger, and more safe and modern. There is a laundromat right across the road from the camp store. Everything is pavement, and most of the old oaks and maples that I remember were cut down to make more room for more cement pads and more campsites. It looks almost like a subdivision now. The campsites have sod, for crying out loud! Not ours at the top of the dune, though. That section was always a bit more rustic than the rest of the campground, and I like that it's stayed that way. So that's where we'll be, probably the only tent in the entire campground.

But, we will be camping there, eating ice cream, cooking over a fire, roasting marshmallows and hot dogs, fishing, reading, swimming in the lake and pool, and generally just enjoying the lake shore. We'll probably head into Grand Haven to walk the pier and boardwalk, and if we do that we'll have to get some chicken nachos at Snug Harbor. We'll bring our bikes and a trailer for Mini-Wingnut, and see where we end up going. I may take my bike on a solo trip, to see if I can either break my bike beyond repair, or embed large amounts of gravel into various appendages. Not that I want to smash my bike into a million pieces, I really don't. But I tend to find the more difficult trails, and have been known to get in a bit over my head from time to time.

We might even have a fish fry, if I can convince any perch or bluegill or bass to eat my lures-and if I can coax my Bride to try some fresh seafood.

It should be a good time. The camping, not the coaxing. Call us if you want to come hang out for a night!


wingnut

05 August 2008

Books Books Books!!

I was commenting on a friend's blog a while back, and it seemed as though everyone else commenting was reading multiple books at one time, something which I have never really been able to do with that much success. I even tried it for a time afterwards, and re-discovered what I already knew: I get hooked on one book, and forsake all others until the final page.

So I have book marks in three different...four different books now. I'm only reading one of them. I just can't seem to pick up any of the others.

I am about halfway through Karen Armstrong's A History of God. It's a brutal, academic read. It's not that Armstrong is a poor writer, quite the contrary actually, it's just that there is no easy way to compress three major monotheistic religions, as well as various Eastern mystical ideas, and track all of these distinctly different yet similar thought processes and ideas through four thousand years of history in only 400 pages. For an academically honest and thorough treatment of the subject, the narrative would have to run several volumes at least of that length. The writing is concise and brilliant, but I have yet to read more than two pages at a time without stopping to take notes.

I am also currently pounding through Ernest Gann's Fate is the Hunter. It is amazing, and the idea behind it is very interesting too. One would think that an adventurous aviator such as Gann would believe not in Fate, but in Man as the Master of His Own Fate. But alas, those who subscribe to that belief are shown to be dishonest buffoons. One cannot fly for very long before coming to the same conclusion as Gann, that the question of Fate is not a question of either or, it is a with-and. Pilots are skilled, calculating men of discipline who are very much capable of managing every circumstance they encounter, yet as part of their chosen profession, they willingly give over control of their very lives to forces much larger than they could ever imagine. This book should be required reading for anyone remotely interested in aviation, and I have been kicking myself regularly for not discovering it sooner.

When I finish with Gann, I will pick up where I left off in Eldredge's Wild at Heart, which still has a bookmark in it, to remind me to stop and take notes next time I read it. I blasted through it too quickly the first time around.

The fourth book I have a bookmark in is one that I haven't really spent much time with yet. I have glanced through it briefly, but not focused on it much. It is a copy of Ernie Pyle's Brave Men. Ernie Pyle was one of the most honest, entertaining, thoughtful, and colorful war correspondents to come out of WWII. A great portion of his time was actually spent with the troops, eating their rations, sleeping in their foxholes, sometimes not much farther than a mortar shell away from the front lines. As a matter of fact, Pyle was killed in combat on Ie Shima, a Japanese-held island during it's invasion by the U.S. in April of 1945. Brave Men is the third book of four in the collection of his wartime correspondence. It is a collection of his dispatches detailing the Allied effort in the Mediterranean and up through Italy. Interestingly, the copy I received was given to my by my Dad, who found it in the dollar bin at a local used book store. It turns out it is part of the eighth printing of the first edition, and was printed in 1945, and is nearly in mint condition. Not bad for a dollar!

Another recent addition to my library is Paths of Destruction, a local book published by the Grand Rapids Historical Society. It is a collection of eyewitness accounts and historical examinations of the tornadoes that ripped through West Michigan in April of 1953. The book has special meaning for me and my family, because my dad, my aunt, and my uncle lived through it, along with my grandparents. As a matter of fact, the tornado came through within spitting distance from where they lived at the time. It also came through very close to the house that I grew up in, and the tornado's path came about half a mile or so from where I now live. It is definitely a part of our family story, and we were very excited and interested in this project.

Anyway, that's my bookshelf at present. I have a few books in my "on-deck circle", so I hope to get to them on our camping trip next week. I'm really excited to read them.




wingnut

04 August 2008

Hairy Babies, Creepy-Crawlies, and Teeth.

And what a weekend it was! My sister Chris and her husband had their third child, Caleb Allen, on Friday. He's got more hair than I do, and it's all long and jet-black. Lugging around Eli for the past six and a half months, we've really gotten used to him. When we held Caleb on Saturday, we couldn't believe how little he was. He actually weighs more than Eli did at birth. Here's a picture. There's more on Facebook, but I can't give a link unless you're a member. Sorry.

Other baby news, Eli has almost figured out that if he moves his arms and legs one at a time, he'll move to a different spot. Right now it's more of a drag-my-bent-legs-and-butt-along-behind-me-as-I-pull-myself-around-with-my-arms thing. But Thursday afternoon he crawled a bit for Mommy, and then repeated the performance for Daddy on Saturday. Gone are the days that we could stick him on his blanket and walk away for a bit. He doesn't stay on his blanket anymore. He's got some rad rug burn on his knees though...

The hand-foot-mouth disease thing disappeared, almost as quickly as it showed up. On Tuesday, the doc said that it would take about a week for it to clear up. Wednesday morning, Eli woke up and was kinda groggy and glassy-eyed and still a bit sick. But the fever never came back, and the sores on his throat were gone by Thursday. Take that, Coxsackie Group A virus! You're the Syndrome to Eli's Mr. Incredible. Which is Eli's second favorite movie, right behind Veggietales Jonah.

Now that Eli's not sick, he figured it would be the perfect time to grow a wicked bump on his lower gum, right up front. It looks really painful, but should be a tooth in a few days or so. Mommy and Daddy are going to have to be careful now when we stick our fingers in his mouth. But so will Eli, so it's all good.

Raising children is all about change. Just when we get used to the routine, something like a viral infection happens, or crawling happens, or teeth happen, and Mommy and Daddy are left simply trying to catch up. It's stressful, grating, hard, and the most fun thing we've ever done.

Next week, we're going to go camping. That will be even more fun, especially with a new crawler with new teeth! Impeccable timing, as usual.


wingnut