The female mriordan is in Florida enjoying a well-deserved vacation, and visiting her parents. Since I decided to go on the Diakonos trip (see Ombudsman’s blog), I get to be a bachelor for 2 days. I don’t do so well on my own anymore. I miss Meredith quickly, and I try to stay busy, which usually means shopping for things I think we could use. In slightly over 24 hours, I have managed to buy about $300 worth of DVDs, tools, supplies, etc., all of which we will use, but it is funny how I get these things when Meredith is away.  It is definitely not good that this man be alone…

I’ve been thinking about this poem a lot today. I don’t understand all of it, but I love the idea of the (mathematical) compass, where the two arms are seperate but joined. I wish I could write like this:

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears ;

Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end where I begun.

I tried myheritage one last time and found out I even LOOK like a geek:

Hugh Jackman, 59% (not a geek, but plays an X-man, so included)
Gene Roddenberry, 55% (creator of Star Trek)
Linus Torvalds, 50% (creator of the Linux operating system)

Here was take two, of a picture of me looking cold.
Lothar Matthaus, 58%
Orlando Bloom, 52%
Bob Hope, 51%
Pavel Belyayev, 50%
Mike Myers, 49%
Micheal Keaton, 49%
Joseph Stiglitz, 48%
John Forbes Nash, 48%
Tom Hanks, 47%
David Hasselhoff, 46%

At least this time they were all male…

Using the super-advanced face recognition at myheritage.com, I found out today that the following people resemble me:

Antoni Gaudi, 67%
Carole Lombardi, 59%
Charles, Prince of Wales, 56%
Jackson Browne, 55%
Celine Dion, 54%
Gottlob Frege, 51%
Howard Dean, 50%
Charlie Sheen, 48%
Adrien Brody, 48%
George W. Bush, 45%

In the defense of MyHeritiage.com, the only photo I had of myself was
blurry. Since I am not sure the above combination of people is
appealing even to my wife, I will be resubmitting my photo…

I learned a new term yesterday from the various 17 and 18 year old
members of the Fools – “emo.” I suddenly felt old, or at least
out-of-it, because here was a term I had not heard of. So, being a good
nerd, I looked it up here:

http://www.fourfa.com/styles/index.htm

I was stunned that it started back in 1984, when I was a freshmen in
high school, and it hit its stride in the mid Nineties when I was just
out of college. How on earth was I ignorant of the term? I guess
mid-eighties Maine was not as happening as I thought.

Basically, it looks like emos are full of anger and angst and other
self-involved emotions. I have to say that I do not think too highly of
people being “in” to these things, but it is a free country. I am a
fairly happy-go-lucky kind of guy, not to mention a good Stoic Mainer,
so I have always seen public displays of emotion as kind of awkward. To
embrace fairly negative emotions as a life-style seems odd and strange
to me, and too self-involved.

I also learned that emo has evolved into “screamo” where bands mumble
lyrics and then scream. Again, free country, but I don’t see the point.
Of course, I don’t see the point of MUCH music that is out there, but I
am picky about music.

Anyway, this brought me to the conclusion that if I am going to do
improv with high school students, I may need to make a better effort at
maintaining some form of (current) cultural literacy.

Due to overwhelming demand, I have decided to post something here. So it will be somewhat interesting, I’ll post this:

Technology and Testimony

A technician’s view of Haiti

“Can I check my e-mail?”

I looked up from the computer I was working on.
Standing in the doorway of Institution Univers’ new
computer room was a Haitian boy in his early teens. He
was also one answer to a statement I had made to Jon
Holley earlier – “I don’t know if we’re doing any good
here.”

My part of the recent 5-day trip to Haiti was to work
with my brother Shannon to bring the technology of the
school up to date (as much aspossible). This included
updating the software on about 80 computers, installing
a campus-wide wireless network, and installing a
wireless network that would bridge the school’s
founder’s house and his new medical clinic. The
conditions could be hard by American standards,
with hot rooms to work in, initially spotty internet
(Shannon managed to fix that), four different models of
computers, a language barrier between us and most of
the people we were dealing with, and more. Things did
not always go well. After several days of making slow
progress, out of frustration I told Jon, “I don’t know
if we’re doing any good here.”

Hugues, the school’s founder, is a remarkable man. He
is always upbeat, quick to laugh, eager to help with
anything you need – and he has a colossal faith. During
one meal we were marveling over the lunch program that
the school offers (in many cases, the only food the
students get all day). Jon laughed when he recalled
that he did not think it could be done when he had
first heard about it, but now it was a reality. I
jokingly said that Jon’s God could not do such a thing,
but that Hugues’ God could. What was said as a joke is
too often the case for me. My vision of God is small –
I believe God can do things, but I don’t believe He
will. My God is too small. These trips make me
reevaluate God – He gets stretched bigger and bigger as
I am forced to see how helpless I am in catching
flights, getting through customs, forcing computers to
work, and so on. Going to Haiti makes me pray much
harder than I normally do, and when I see what Hugues
can do as one man sold out for God, I am left in awe of
what God can do. My frustrated outburst to Jon was
originating from the wrong perspective. WE were not
going to do much, if any, good. GOD was going to handle
that end of things. He started doing good with me and
my faith, and he did it daily. Every day things would
be hard, which required me to (at least occasionally)
remember to pray. The days were slow and frustrating,
but by the evening we always had something to show for
it, and by the end of the trip we had done everything
we had set out to do.

Haiti is a very poor country, with few natural
resources. I am convinced that the best (and maybe
only) option for Haiti to start to fight poverty is
with education. Even with international loans and aid,
Haiti still will need an educated population to
administer those funds and to start to build an
economy. That is why Hugues’ school is so important.
It is why it is important to build a wireless network,
and to update 80 computers. Building skills is Haiti’s
future.

“Can I check my e-mail?”

This is a profound question coming from a boy who
almost assuredly has no electricity and no running
water. He may not have much, if any, food at home. His
family may have no steady work. Contained in this
simple question is hope for the future – the knowledge
and skill required tooperate technology, and the
confidence that the infrastructure will allow him to
check his messages.

By the grace of God, slowly and dimly, we ARE doing
good.

“Can I check my e-mail?”

“Sure,” I said, and I got back to work.