Rules for the People I Do Life With

Adam McClane is a smart young guy who gets technology and youth ministry.  He also runs his own company to help people get more out of their blogs.  What is not to like, I ask you?

In a recent post (link below) he talks about the rules created by a self governing group of street kids in Kenya have developed to help them all live together.  Doug Fields (the author of the original post Adam was talking about) then asked  what kind of rules define your closest relationships?  He gives his answers in his post but it tickled my fancy so I tried it as well.  Here's what I've come up with:

1: Laugh - I've never, ever had a good relationship that didn't involve lots of laughter.  At ourselves, at the world, at the absurdity of life itself.

2: Think - Some of us are better at this than others but all of us can do it.  Sometimes the best thought is "I think I'll ask someone else for help".  But think about the questions in your life and think about the answers as well.

3: Hope - There are days, too damn many days, when life sucks.  I believe that giving up and abandoning hope is the fastest way to help those days expand.  Hope gets me up the morning, leads me through the day and brings me back to my bed to sleep peacefully.

4: Respect - I have more than a few friends who disagree with me theologically, politically, spiritually, whatever way it can happen.  But they are my friends because we respect one another.  I respect that they have come to their beliefs honestly and sincerely.  I respect the challenge they bring to my life because through I will learn and grow.

5: Believe - in something.  I truly don't care what.  If you can meet the first four steps you probably don't believe in anything that I would find too repellent.  People who claim to believe in "nothing" are usually wrong, they do believe in something.  More importantly I usually find them to be humorless, thoughtless, disrespectful and without hope.  So why would I hang with them anyway?

Those are my five.  They are largely interchangeable and of equal import.  What about you?


Adams 5 Rules for People I Do Life With

On Father's Day

I must admit to ambivalent feelings about Fathe's Day.

My wife and daughter treat me like a king so it's not that.  (Actually they treat me pretty well most days).

No, the problem with Fathers Day has to do with my father.

You see he's gone.  And while I miss him every day this day brings that empty space into sharper relief.  Add in the fact that it was on Fathers Day that he collapsed into what would become his final illness and my feelings for this day are mixed at best.

It's been almost 11 years since he died (I disdain all the polite circumlocutions, he passed on, he left us.  He died, my father is dead.  Adults deal) but I still catch myself thinking "Pop would love this".  For example he would have loved the TV show "Top Gear".  He would have torn into the hosts on a regular basis when he disagreed with their opinions or behavior but he would have been a dedicated viewer.  I'd love to hear his thoughts on the newly re-invigorated American auto industry and their latest offerings.  He would have PLENTY to say on the woeful state of Pirate baseball (he didn't think much of professional athletes in the '70's I can only imagine his thoughts on Chad Ocho Cinco or Terrell Pryor).  He and I would probably still be arguing over the value of colorizing movies (he thought it was a good idea.  Bleah!)

It would have been great to see him getting to know his grown up granddaughter.  They would have sparred and laughed and argued.

This is why I'm ambivalent about Fathers Day.  It brings up all the might have beens and never weres.

I never fully got to work out the issues of being "Little Jay" or "Young Jay" or just JD to his JK.  We were getting there.  What would it have been like to continue the process we had begun of not only being father and son but grown up friends as well?  I'll never know.

I'll cling to memories but I won't live in the past.  He wouldn't have wanted me to.
I'll treasure his memory but I won't make him into (too much of) a legend he would have found the concept ludicrous and uncomfortable.

I will try to be as good a man as he was.  A good man is one who does the best he can, shortcomings and all.  My father wasn't perfect and neither is his son.

But he's still a pretty good standard by which to judge myself.

Happy Father's Day Pop.


I miss you.

And we begin again

Three years ago I decided enough was enough and began my first truly serious attempt to lose weight and get in shape.  It worked.  I dropped 40 pounds and completely changed the way I looked.  It was wonderful.  At that point I was still about 10 pounds shy of my goal weight of 165.

A year later I had back slide just a bit and had put about 10 pounds back on.  I managed to stop the increase and was looking into what I needed to do to get back on track.

Then last year arrived and with it my stroke in October.  I've always eaten when I'm stressed and once I had my strength and appetite back I started to eat.  And 10 more pounds came back.  I did manage to stay in what this year's cast of "The Biggest Loser" referred to as One-derland.  I never pushed back over the 200 pound mark (although it was a VERY near thing).  It was lack of exercise, the post stroke depression or whatever and simply abandoning good eating habits.

Well that changes today.  I got up at what had been my usual time and I went for a walk/jog.  Haven't had the chance to measure the distance but I was out there for a half an hour.  So goal number one was met, at least 30 minutes of exercise five days a week.  Getting back my eating discipline is actually not all that hard.

The most important thing is remembering that I've done this before.  I CAN do this because I HAVE done this.  I need to remember how great it felt to be that skinny me and how unhappy I am being this larger me.

My goals this summer are to get some serious bike riding in and to finally run that 5K.  Along the way I will lose weight and feel better.  Then a good winter's worth of workouts will keep me in shape till we're back to the warm weather again.

My starting weight this morning was 195 pounds.  There are usually some "easy" pounds to lose right up front (water weight often) so let's see if we can't get down to the 180s by July.  Hey, it's a goal.

Peace

View From the Phlipside - Biblion and magazines

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

So here’s the question that we’ve been tap dancing around on this program for a couple years.  What exactly will the next generation of news media look like?  Particularly those that follow in the footsteps of the magazine and newspaper.  While there’s been a lot of conversation and comment (like mine) on the subject there doesn’t seem to be a lot offerings on what it might look like.

Some, like the Daily for iPad, have gotten mixed reviews (I still love the one that called it “fluffy”.  Pretty sure that wasn’t what they were reaching for).  Most are simply translating the old print page to print on a screen.  Pretty dull I have to admit.  It seems like there ought to be more to it than that.  With all the additional options that our computers offer just text on a screen with pictures or the occasional video is that the best we can do?

Well maybe not.  Most fascinating is who just might have hit on the beginnings of that new formula.  The future of the newspaper or magazine just might look like - the New York Public Library.  Or at least like their new Biblion app for the iPad.  Biblion is intended to help bring people into the depth of the fabulous collection of materials that is the New York Public Library.  It is multi-media, text, graphics, photos, video and it is non-linear.  That means it’s not a matter of following the direction set by the author.  Rather you are given a central page that lays out the options and the information available to you.  You then get to pick and choose to explore the story in the manner and order you choose.  Not interested in reading the essay portion?  Skip directly to the video or the photos.  It is news that is given depth and dimension two things that too much of our news these days lack.

Biblion isn’t intended as a magazine.  That’s not what the NYPL was trying to create.  They created a fascinating way to explore the stacks in a digital form.  As someone who loves just wandering the collections of libraries exploring this sounds like a bigger and better way of doing just that.

What the Library has done is create something that is bigger and more profound than they anticipated.  They created the first really meaningful prototype for the next generation of news media.  The final product may or may not look just like Biblion.  But the news moguls would be very foolish not to take a long serious look at what just might be their future.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2011

View From the Phlipside - Your News Decisons

 (My apologies for the sudden disappearance of the scripts to my show.  We've been working out a variety of issues at our new location)

 My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

A couple weeks ago I was commenting on the decision to invest many dollars and man hours into what I didn’t think qualified as a major news event, the Royal Wedding.  A friend of mine disagreed with that assessment and felt that it was worth all the time and money invested.  We’re still friends but we’ll have to agree to disagree.

But that conversation got a chain of thought going that came into full focus over this last weekend.  Your remember all the hoopla over this last weekend right?  This was the weekend that a small time Christian media mogul claimed the Rapture would take place.  At last check there don’t appear to be 200 million people missing from the world (that was his claim for how many would be going).  In fact at the moment I write this the only person who appears to be missing is Harold Camping himself.

The question for me isn’t why the media covered it.  It was worth a quick note and then move on.  No the real problem is that we, the public, didn’t move on.  So it’s our judgement of what’s news that I’ve begun to question.  Why did we, in a time when church attendance is generally down from a generation ago and edging slowly downward in most cases overall, get so hung up on this religious question?

In case you don’t really know much about the church stuff let me note that the Rapture thing is NOT supported by a vast segment of Christianity.  It’s a relatively new concept and has no roots in the original church.  In fact the support in the Bible for concept is seen as scant by most scholars.

And yet for most of last week it was a major topic of conversation and all the rage in the media.  My question is why?

Part of the reason I believe is that there is a great and unsatisfied spiritual yearning in our age.  But that’s a conversation for another place and time.  The other reason is that I think we’ve lost track of what’s really important.  Distracted by too many pieces of eye and brain candy we’re losing our palate for what the real deal tastes like.  There’s great danger in that trend.  So here’s the Phlipside test for future news decisions.  Ask yourself “How much of this is steak and how much is sizzle?”

Then order the steak.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2011

Movies and Books - Reviews

Howl's Moving Castle  (2004) A young girl is placed under a curse that makes her look like an old woman.  She ends up in the walking castle of a self centered young wizard and his very funny fire demon who make a deal with her - get him set free from his deal with the wizard and he will lift her curse.  This is another of those movies that my daughter really wanted me to see because she enjoyed it so much.  My track record has been pretty bad but not this time.  This is a wonderful movie (Japanese original based on an English novel with an English overdub) that is visually enthralling and with an interesting story too.  Impressive list of voice actors (Jean Simmons, Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall, Blythe Danner, and Billy Crystal as, what else, the fire demon).  The movie is a lot of fun and certainly worthy of its Oscar nomination in 2005.  Looking for something a little different that is still fun I'd happily recommend this one!

The Holiday (2006) - Kate Winslett, Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Jack Black, Eli Wallach, Edward Burns and Rufus Sewell.  This is supposedly a movie about TWO women who swap living quarters following love life crash and burns.  In reality it's a star turn attempt for Cameron Diaz.  You spend way more time watching her end of the story than you do Kate Winslett's.  Sadly the story doesn't really hold up to that much attention.  This is a cute concept and a perfect cast to pull it off.  Sadly the script is so badly balanced that it just comes up short.  Not a bad movie for rainy weekend watching but not something I say go out of your way to see.  Too bad really.

Because I Said So (2007) - Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore.  Utterly predictable, one cheap gag after another and I was done after about 15 minutes.  Honestly once the dog started getting frisky with a footstool I had no further desire to watch even another second of the movie.  Hit eject and sent it back to Netflix.

To say NOTHING of the DOG by Connie Willis  Yeah, I'm on a bit of a Willis jag right now.  Having never heard of her a few months ago, then discovering she has racked up an impressive batch of science fiction awards (this one for example won a Hugo and a Locus and was nominated for a Nebula) I'm fascinated by what I might be missing.  This one takes place in the same universe as Fire Watch, Blackout and the Doomsday Book which focus on a group of time traveling historians from Oxford.  This time they are trying to track down missing bits of a cathedral that had been destroyed in World War II plus solve some very tricky problems with paradox in time and space.  I'm enjoying the books by and large (though I still think the historians show an astounding ability to overlook the obvious at times).  The end has a nice hook to it as well.

Lincoln's Dreams by Connie Willis This one at least isn't about the time traveling historians.  An attractive young woman has strange dreams, Robert E. Lee's dreams.  She meets a researcher for a novelist whose favorite subject is the Civil War and who is hung up (the novelist) on the dreams that Abraham Lincoln had all during his presidency.  This story is a little odd (although it racked up more awards and nominations for the author, winning a Joseph Campbell and nominated for a Locus) and Willis never really comes close to explaining HOW the dreams of a man who has been dead for a century suddenly invade the life of a totally unrelated young woman.  The only apparent link is she has the same first name as his beloved daughter.  But given that the name is Annie you wonder how she got chosen.  The novel is relatively short (256 pages in paperback) so I wonder if it might not have been a lot more satisfying if it were a little longer.  An interesting read and as always with Willis fascinating concepts but not quite as satisfying as some of the others.

Stalling For Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator by Gary Noesner  This is a fascinating look into the creation of the Crisis Negotiation Unit of the FBI.  Noesner was there from virtually the beginning and leads you through the process of trying to find a negotiated end to touch situations.  He also touches on two of the three biggest failures of the FBI in modern times - Ruby Ridge (which he was not involved in), and the Branch Davidians in Waco (which he was although his advice was often ignored).  (The third greatest failure was the collapse of professional standards at the legendary FBI labs).  Noesner tells the story well, is pretty even handed with everyone even the folks with whom he had professional disagreement and lays out the concepts of trying for a peaceful end to any situation rather than going in with guns blazing.

The Twelfth Imam by Joel C. Rosenberg.  I'm seriously conflicted on this one.  Rosenberg is a fine writer with a good track record behind him.  He does a fine job here with the plot and characters.  But the book left me cold.   The Twelfth Imam is a messiah figure from Shia Islam.  Rosenberg does a very nice job explaining about the "Hidden Imam" and the place it has taken in some Shia circles.  In the book he posits that the Twelfth Imam does return (with Jesus too) and looks at the events that might take place.  Up to that point he had me hooked.  Rosenberg is an Evangelical Christian and once he starts to exert that aspect of his personality in his writing the book goes down hill.  Basically the Mahdi (another term for the Imam) is put in the role of the Anti-Christ.  He never comes right out and says it but I'm not sure how you avoid it.  At that point all Islam becomes evil and violent and all Christianity is peaceful and puppy loving.  The theology is so simplistic and slanted that it just left an awful taste in my mouth.  Based on the descriptions given in the book I'm afraid Rosenbergs Jesus is going to get his butt whipped by the Mahdi.  I'm assuming that there's a second book coming (although there is no mention anywhere of it) because the book just ends without resolving any issues or at a particularly logical place.  First half to maybe two thirds of the book are quite good.  After that, I'm honestly sorry I wasted my time.


Merchant Kings - When Companies Ruled the World by Stephen Bown  This is a really nice bit of popular history.  Which means it tells the historical story without the pedantic drudgery of "real history".  Bown looks back to the days 1600 - 1900 and the first great corporations - The East India Company, Hudson Bay Company, Dutch East Indies Company, all the great players of the Age of Heroic Commerce.  Heroic in the sense that it was great and sweeping not that they were admirable in almost any sense.  What's really compelling are the parallels with modern corporate situations.  Corporations that operate largely outside the realm of any nation's laws whose interest is no longer linked to any group except their investors.  The results are horrific in the past and show every sign of repeating themselves today.  A well written, enjoyable read.

Theological Thoughts - On the End Times (Coming Soon?)

What follows is from the email newsletter I send out to our young people of the diocese.  People can start to hyperventilate a little when this kind of thing comes up.

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come." (NIV, Mark 13:32-33) You may have heard that the world is coming to an end soon.  In fact one (very small) group of Christians claim that the Rapture (when the believers will be lifted out of this world into Heaven prior to the end) will happen on Saturday.  THIS Saturday, May 21.  I thought I'd share a few thoughts about that this week: Not everyone agrees on the Rapture.  That's right, not all Christians can even agree if there will such a thing as the Rapture.  It's based on some very, very scanty Scripture and it's never referred to directly. The quote at the top is Jesus talking.  And he says that even HE doesn't know when he's coming back.  So how does this guy think he's figured it out?  That always smacks of some incredible ego issues to say you know something that even Jesus didn't know about God's plan.  I can't go there. It's based on a belief that the Bible is a code and only certain people can crack the code and find out the truth.  I can't find any basis to believe this and pretty much all denominations reject the idea.  God isn't hiding the truth. This same guy has already predicted this once before a couple years back.  You may have noticed that it didn't happen.  He claims that he didn't have all the facts last time but does this time.  Make up your own mind.     Think:  The reality is that we DON'T know when Jesus is coming back.  And he was specific in saying he WAS coming back.  So if he arrived at dinner tonight (it could happen) are you ready?  Are you leading the kind of life that you could show to Jesus? Pray:  Ask God to help you be the person you can be, the best possible you.  That's the person that Jesus is looking forward to seeing.  Whether in the Rapture or otherwise. Do:  Remember to live your life so that no matter when Jesus comes, next weekend, next month or in the next century, you'll have lived the life you are meant to live.

 *******************************************************************************

I believe this is the 6th "End of the World" prediction of my adult lifetime (at least the ones of which I've heard).  So far none have been right.  Trying to predict this event has been going on for at least a couple hundred years.  All of them have been wrong.  Yet the urge to show how smart we are rises up again and again.  We've figured out what God's plan is.  I'm astounded that the arrogance of that kind of thinking never dawns on these folks.  But delusion can be blinding.  The additional claims that the number of catastrophes in the world is rising makes me shake my head as well.  Two hundred years ago if a giant storm swept through large portions of the world we simply would never know.  At best the news might reach us months or even years later.  Today we can see every part of the globe simultaneously and the news reaches us instantly.  The news of war and plague and famine seem to be overwhelming.  But even a quick study of history shows that we've been living through times like these for most of recorded history.  We're just more aware of it today. The best "preparation" for the end times is simply to be better people, live better lives, work to make the world a better place.  Then when and if the Rapture comes or the End of Times arrives you'll have made yourself as fully prepared as possible. Beyond that I can only rely on the gift of Grace. Peace