Deus, Yes; Ex Machina, No

I went to the mall with my sister to buy stuff for Christmas and my dad’s birthday. If you think God doesn’t work miracles, the fact that we manage to shop together without bloodshed is proof that you’re wrong.

Like most men, I go to stores mainly when I realize I need something. Usually I know which store has it, and which aisle it’s in, and I can often tell you which shelf it’s on. I walk in, I grab it, I pay, and I leave. Once in a while I walk around and look at stuff I want but will not buy, but that takes five minutes, tops. My sister, on the other hand, enjoys being in stores and needs no other reason to enter one. I have to keep telling her, “There will still be stuff here next week.”

We accomplished our mission, and my old man has some good stuff headed his way. Now I am exhausted, and I have missed my bedtime for the third day in a row.

I got a call from Mike today. He wants to collaborate on The Armageddon Cookbook. He figures the US is tanking, much as I do, and he is really enjoying maxing out the power of his food dollars by shopping at Costco. His new thing is baking bread. Everyone should be doing this. It’s ridiculously easy, and you get a great loaf of bread for something like fifty cents. He just bought a fifty-pound bag of flour. He already gave a lecture to some lady he knows, who has to buy bread for five kids every week.

I honestly think I could feed myself very well for ten bucks a day, without even growing food. Maybe five bucks. I might get bored after a while, though. You can only cook beans and rice so many ways, and even pizza gets monotonous after about three months.

Okay, six.

Mike is really glad I’ve become more religious, and he wanted to talk about it. That’s fantastic. No one ever listens when I try to share what I’ve found. No one who hasn’t already found the same thing. Mike is a Christian, but he doesn’t go to church, and he wants to get more serious. I suggested he tag along to church the next time he’s here, and he was all for it.

When we were kids, he lived on the southwest corner of a busy intersection, and I lived on the northeast corner. Our neighborhood was full of successful professional people with extremely messed-up families. No one we knew attended church seriously. My mother dragged me and my sister to church sometimes, but you need a father to get that job done consistently. And she could never settle on a denomination. Depending on the month, we might be Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Catholic. My mother was always drawn to Catholicism by the pageantry, and like a lot of women, she was mesmerized by the Pope, as if he had all the answers.

Mike says his family attended church on Easter.

Most people think God is smart. That’s obvious, but what I see in God’s work is more like talent than intelligence. When a talented person starts a creative project, it may not be clear what his plan is. He himself may not be sure. But something inside him remembers where all the loose ends are, and somehow, they wrap themselves up. I believe God always knows what he’s doing, but other than that, watching him work is very like watching a person engaged in the creative process.

Mike disappeared from my life. I thought he was gone. Now he’s back, and he has an interest in God, and it just so happens that I’m a few steps ahead of him in the same direction. When we got back together, I think we were both surprised how much we had in common. I had written a cookbook. Mike had become an amazing cook, and he fixed the same kinds of things I did. When we were kids, Mike got me interested in motorcycles, including Moto Guzzis. When we got back in touch, I had a Harley and a Moto Guzzi in my garage. Mike missed shooting. I had guns. Mike lived in New Hampshire, but he happened to have a new company with an office an hour away from me, guaranteeing he would get to come down and visit fairly often. On a couple of his visits, we talked about God, and each of us learned that the other had had supernatural experiences. Now we’re probably going to go to church together.

My sister and I were estranged. There was no way we could ever hope to get along. It just could not happen. It was not a possibility. That’s what I thought. But one day she saw a copy of God’s Smuggler on my table, and we started talking, and I found she had gone to a church two years earlier for baptism, and she was earnestly seeking God. Now we visit churches together and talk about our faith. And we pray our father will eventually join in.

There has to be a reason for all this. For the way the loose ends are coming together. I have to wonder. How many other people from my past will be brought back into my life, and what will the reasons be?

I guess before I go to bed I should share an experience I had today. I was trying to find more stuff to give my sister for Christmas, and I remembered that she said she really liked a Christian band called Third Day. While we were at a bookstore, the proprietor recommended their Christmas CD to her. I got on the web today to see if they had any more stuff she might like. Was I surprised! These guys are shockingly good. They’re not just good by Christian standards; they’re good by any standard. I can’t think of any country or Southern rock group currently working, which approaches their level. While I was checking out their music, I came across Brooke Fraser. Have you heard this woman? She’s so good, people who have no interest in God whatsoever buy her music.

It made me wish I could master Sibelius. I would give my eye teeth to write and publish really excellent Christian music. What better thing could you do with your life? Isn’t that better than being a lawyer or teaching people to overeat? Even with the dramatic improvement we’ve seen in Christian music, a lot of the stuff they play during worship is just not good. And it could be sublime.

In the past, I’ve always been able to write musical variations at will, but I’ve always had a hard time writing original melodies. I don’t know why; it’s really the same skill. Recently, though, I’ve been hearing the most wonderful tunes in my head, and I know I need to transcribe them. Maybe some of them have value. I shouldn’t let them disappear. I’ve always had a tough time writing lyrics, but maybe that will change, too.

I try to remember that I am now part of a plan, and that my life is being guided. I am sure I’m going to begin harvesting things God has been waiting for me to be ready to accept. Things are going to work out. That is what I believe. And the seemingly random or pointless or wasted events and experiences in my life will turn out to be meaningful and useful. God knows where all the bodies are buried, and he also knows how to bring them back to life.

I think that is true, and I try to keep it in my mind when things don’t seem to make sense. To me, more than a far-off promise of eternal life, this is the real magic of belief in God.

No One but me Touches the Remote

I think I may have developed the Dad Trunk Talent.

You have seen this gift in action. Your family gets ready to go on vacation. Mom and the kids have too much luggage. They put it in the trunk haphazardly, so it sticks out in all directions. Dad comes out with his one bag, and steam shoots out of his ears. Everyone hides behind shrubbery while he takes everything out of the trunk and puts it back in. Suddenly, it fits, with room to spare.

Everyone gets in the car, and you drive in silence, and Dad won’t stop to let anyone pee for 500 miles.

I rearranged my tools today, and now the garage looks almost empty.

Shopping is Unavoidable

I read the most disturbing thing in my comments today. Someone said I was “setting up a shop.” Is that what I’m doing?

What a way to look at it. It’s distressing. Here is how I saw it: I was “buying a reasonable variety of tools in order to be able to handle fairly routine jobs.” Now it’s a shop? Only freaks have shops! Ack. I’m in trouble.

I wanted to do stuff with tools. I used to go in the garage, get ready to work, and realize I was doomed, because I didn’t have the right equipment. I figured I could buy a few things and reach a point where most tasks would be within reach. But it doesn’t work that way.

You know how it starts. You get a bunch of wrenches and a small welder and a miter saw and some drills and drivers, and you think you’re set. Then you try to build something, and you find out you can’t do it without a grinder/dry cut saw/router/table saw/vise/whatever. Or you can do it, but it’s so hard without the required tool, the tools you already have are about as helpful as your former tools, the butter knife screwdriver and the scissors with one broken tip. Which you kept in your former shop, the funny drawer in the kitchen, which also contains old rubber bands, twist ties, and the short pieces of phone cable which come with cordless phones, which are too lame to use and too good to throw out.

I was tired of dealing with people who did not return phone calls, ran off during jobs, did incredibly bad work, overcharged, and/or had a bad attitude. I also wanted to have a way of implementing my whims and creative ideas, in 3-D. I thought tools were the answer. I was right, but I didn’t realize how much junk you have to have in order to get these people out of your life. You probably need to spend five thousand dollars to get a reasonable degree of tool independence. You probably have to spend ten to approach having a realistic hope of limiting outside hires to one or less per year. Maybe I overestimate. But you can’t do it with one trip to Sears.

I probably made some stupid buys. A drill press might have been smarter than a giant sliding miter saw, for example. It’s tough to know what you need, when you’re as clueless about tools as I am. And a great buy will always warp your judgment. I got that saw for a third off. The price made my palms sweat. And I’m trying not to drive to Pompano Beach and buy a Steel City drill press while they have their hundred-dollar-rebate going. I may fail.

Temptation is everywhere. Every time I go to get bird seed and toys, I grouse about the bird toy selection and the hideous prices. A good bird toy costs a minimum of eleven dollars, and some sell for 25. Some last for months. Some last an hour. In five minutes, with a drill press and miter saw, you can create something as good or superior, from scrap. But I continue to resist the drill press bug.

Tools are going to win. I can see that. They already have. I have a beautiful stainless tool chest, three sets of sockets, a welder, a compressor, two miter saws, an impact driver, a very nice router, a table saw, and a bunch of other junk. I am not going to stop. I just felt like whining about it. You can understand that. Surely.

My sister and I didn’t get to shop yesterday, so it’s happening today. I am steeling myself in preparation for braving the mall. Wish me luck.

I Had a Cunning Plan to Solve the Problem

I tried my clever idea for using a router to plane a board to use as a router fence. The results were…interesting.

I know this works, but you have to have some stuff I don’t have. You have to have clamps that are way lighter and shorter than mine, to hold the whole mess together while you run it over the router bit. And you really need some means of making a true edge on a board. I hate to say the “J” word, but I think you know what I mean.

I can make a true edge on a board, using a table saw. IF I already have a straight board equipped with toggle clamps, to attach the first board to while I run it through the saw. I can make a true edge with a router, IF I can clamp a straightedge to the work and use a bearing. I can make a true edge on a board using a circular saw, IF I have something to guide it and I can get the saw set up at a perfect 90 degrees to the wood.

Then I still have to plane it.

The only jig I know of that allows you to plane (“thickness,” really) a board with a router requires you to have some pretty precisely cut wood to begin with. The upshot of all this is, if I already had a lot of this stuff, I could probably make some of this stuff.

Perhaps the time has come to buy a piece of straight hardwood.

Woodworking for Dwarves

I’ve been watching my box-making video, with Doug Stowe. If you’re a tool person, you have to get this disk.

Doug Stowe is an old guy who lives in Arkansas, and he moves and talks slowly, and he has such a soothing voice, the DVD would be worth it purely as a relaxation video. He makes furniture, but between big jobs, he builds weird boxes. He has a workshop with a Shopsmith, a 1948 Atlas table saw, and a jointer, plus a few other unremarkable tools.

One wall of the shop is obscured behind shelves of lumber. He finds bits of it here and there, and he buys pieces he finds interesting, and he stores it up for later use.

It’s really neat. For decades, I have fantasized about making furniture, but that is not likely to happen. But you can have the same kind of creative experience–cheaper, faster, and easier–making small stuff like boxes. Stowe says he likes it because he can try out new ideas on a small scale, before applying them to big projects.

I think I may try this. It might be tremendous fun.

Take a look at this guy’s website. The furniture is wonderful.

It makes me regret selling off the land my relatives and I inherited, up in Kentucky. If I lived up there and I wanted a nice piece of maple or oak, I could walk outside, apply the chainsaw, maul, and wedges, and get what I needed. It would be wonderful to have some wood from that land. Too late now, though.

We still own the main barn on my grandfather’s Powell County farm. Maybe I could manage to get a few boards. They make barns up there out of white oak.

I had a swell time at the dentist’s office. I’m not totally positive the anaesthetic worked; I felt some pretty unpleasant sensations while he was reaming out my vintage filling. I told him I’d kill for a chair like his. He said it was possible to buy a dentist’s chair all by itself, without the other stuff. “Let me guess,” I said, “seven thousand dollars.” He said, “Eight, actually.” He said he didn’t understand why they were so expensive, and I said maybe the manufacturer figured insurance was paying for most of it. And my dentist said that was incorrect. He said the money came from ME. Apparently, most dental work is not covered by insurance. I feel like I ought to be able to go over there and sleep in that chair whenever I want.

I asked him whether the filling would be a big job, because it had been so long since I had had a filling done, I did not remember. He said, “You’ve never HAD a big job.” I guess that’s true, although I did suffer for four years with braces.

Once again, my phone went off during the visit and informed me I had to go to the dentist.

I don’t know where my sister got off to.

Witness the Depravity

My good friend Elisson has outdone himself. He has a recipe for turkey legs floating in fat. I am not kidding. Go to his blog, where you will see the meat in question, swimming in a big container of pure duck and goose schmaltz. Where he got that much bird fat is beyond me.

One of my favorite lazy-day dishes is roasted turkey leg with stuffing. I take a crappy turkey leg, season it, put it on a pan, surround it with stuffing, and bake. I don’t know why I make that so rarely. I think it’s because the price of turkey legs went up. I resent having to pay big money for dark meat, even though it’s the best part of the bird.

I Love a Nice Hypodermic in the Gums

Today I go back to the dentist. What a lucky, lucky man I am. He is going to pry out one of my Nixon-era fillings and replace it with something which, hopefully, contains a little less mercury and arsenic and plutonium. I can’t complain. Thirty-plus years on a filling is a good long run. And the mercury vapor has been most enjoyable.

After that, I suspect I will be shopping with my sister. My dad’s birthday is practically on Christmas Day, so every year, I have to come up with two bang-up gifts at once, and this year, it has been hard. I came up with one idea: pricey German waterproof panniers for his bike. But it looks like he may be getting clothes to make up the deficit.

In the past, buying for him was not hard. Cigars and expensive liquor. But I feel a little funny buying booze for him these days, and cigars, while appreciated, are in a moral grey area for me.

I also have to come up with his gift for my sister. I sort of wonder if he has ever bought a gift in his life. He always asks someone else to do it. Actually, that’s not totally correct. When we were small, and he went on business trips, he always brought each of us a gift when he came back. We got so we felt entitled to that stuff. That was a long time ago. Things have certainly changed. It has probably been three years since my sister has been involved in our Christmas.

I can write about his Christmas and birthday gifts all day without worrying that I’m spoiling the surprise. I am positive he couldn’t tell me the name of my blog if I asked.

I can’t help being full of hope these days. There has been a miraculous transformation in my relationship with my sister. It wasn’t just a matter of being touchy-feely and having a California-style group hug and making a decision to try to get along. It didn’t come from Oprah or Dr. Phil. It came from God, as an answer to prayer. It was impossible–not hard, but impossible–for us to get along in the past. You would have to have seen it to understand. You may not believe it, but I have always been an easy person to get along with, and I just could not make it work, and I eventually gave up, except for prayer. We got along so badly, family members didn’t want to be around us. Sometimes they visited Miami and didn’t tell my sister.

Fast-forward to today, when I look forward to hearing from her, and I enjoy spending time with her. We sit in church together. We talk about how God is repairing the family. We exchange thoughts on religion. We do things for each other.

It’s so strange, how different things are when you make peace with a person. Before you make peace, that person is a source of misery. They drain your strength. They fill you with dread. You wish they would disappear from your life. If you lack maturity and character, you may seek to harm them. After the change, that person becomes a source of strength. An asset. Someone you value. It’s like turning rat poison into penicillin.

I’ve reconciled with people before, but never with someone for whom I had so little hope. It gives me faith that there is almost no one I can’t make peace with.

I suppose shlepping around a mall while my sister looks at Christmas ornaments and overpriced dog toys is a small price to pay.

Oh the Glamour

Just when you thought my life could not get more exciting, the thrills increase. Today I received three new woodworking videos!

I know you’re all aflame with envy.

I already have two woodworking books. But there is something about a video that a book can’t match. It may take an entire tedious page to explain something that can be demonstrated in seconds in a video. And besides, it’s just wonderful, watching people who can make their tools do what they’re supposed to do.

I got a video on hand planes. I watched that one first. It features a woodworking instructor named Mario Rodriguez. It was a little upsetting. Tools are almost always more complicated than you expect; you can’t just grab them out of the box and do your thing. You would think hand planes would be exceptions to the rule, but they’re not. For example, they’re usually not flat on the bottom when you buy them. You have to flatten them yourself. And the blades are worthless until you sharpen and square them up, and you pretty much have to have a jig to do this.

I don’t remember all the planes he used. Or maybe I do. Let’s see. One was called a smooth plane, which is also a Stanley #4. You use this to smooth out the sides of boards. In the video, some guy pretending to be his clueless beginner buddy came in, complaining that his smooth plane was giving him tearout. Mario explained what a fool he was, taking his plane apart, flattening the bottom, and fixing the blade. Then Mario had the guy try to use it, and he gave him hell over his stance and technique. But by the time the guy left, his plane was in dandy shape. All it took was a 10″ grinder, a sheet of glass, some spray-on glue, some emery cloth, a strange little pocket square, and some expensive jigs. For $3000, you can have a nice hand plane, too!

He brought out a 24″ long plane, which, I think, was called a jointing plane. You can guess what it’s used for. In addition to jointing, it flattens things. Pretty cool.

One of the things I really liked was the shoulder plane. They’re small and narrow. You can use them to fix the shoulders on tenons. I can see how this would be really useful when you screw something up using a power tool, and you need to take like four thousandths off of your work.

He also used a block plane, which has the blade at the very front. You can use it in confined spaces. Neat.

He had some old planes which are no longer made. One of them cuts dadoes. In case you don’t know, a dado is a slot that goes across a piece of wood. For example, you might have two parallel pieces of wood with horizontal dadoes, and you slide shelves into the dadoes. With the dado plane, you clamp a straightedge to the work, and you run the plane back and forth beside it, and it sinks into the work, making a dado. It’s surprisingly fast. I can understand how a skilled worker might prefer it to a router some of the time. He also had a set of planes that made tongues and grooves. Wild. These are fantastic tools, so of course they quit making them.

I guess he was wrong when he said they didn’t make them any more. I’ve found them online. I guess he meant the big companies quit.

I also got a Pat Warner router video. This guy appears to be kind of a nut. Routers are his whole life. His garage is a workshop, and he has 20 routers in it. He has a magical router table he made himself, with a fence that has a dial scale on it that reads in thousands of an inch. I don’t know if he actually makes anything except for templates and dust, but he’s ready if he ever gets an idea.

He did a bunch of stuff with his routers. He taught about templates and bearings and dovetails and so on. And he said he probably uses his drill press more than his routers. Everyone seems to love the drill press, and of course, I do not have one.

He has his own router website, and he makes and sells doodads to make your router work better. I guess it’s a pretty cool life, for a guy who likes routing that much. And he has written at least one very popular router book.

One thing I notice from watching these videos is that guys who are experts with one particular tool like to talk about how versatile it is, and how you can use it to do stuff you would otherwise need other tools to do. This must be what they mean, when they say, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Pat Warner did some jointing with his router; that was cool.

The plane guy surprised me by using a really crappy benchtop jointer in his video. He had a 10″ grinder, and he used a jointer he probably bought at KMart. Do you have any idea what a 1750-rpm 10″ grinder costs? Neither do I, but I’ll bet it’s at least $500. Let me check.

Okay, it looks like they start at over $700. I have to wonder if he bought the right tool. You can get a jim-dandy wet grinder kit from Grizzly for $160, and I’ll bet it works just as well.

I don’t think I’ll ever need a jointer. The table saw and router seem capable of fixing problems with the edges of boards. But a planer would be hard to simulate.

I don’t want to get out of control. I just want to be able to do basic woodworking, so when I finally get ready to fix my stupid outdoor BBQ cabinet, I won’t have to do it the way I did last time, with a circular saw, a drill, and Og’s favorite tool, the Workmate. It amazes me, though, how many tools you need to do anything beyond monkey-grade work.

I think it might be fun to make a humidor. I don’t need one, but my dad can always use one. I’m not totally satisfied with the expensive one I got him a few years ago. As a Christian, I’m not totally sure I want to encourage anyone to use tobacco, but it’s not like I’m buying him cigarettes. It’s an interesting question. Cigarettes and snuff and chewing tobacco are unquestionably evil, because they’re addictive and they give people cancer. Cigars and pipes, on the other hand, rarely addict anyone, and you have to be really dedicated to give yourself cancer with either. The risk is about ten percent of the risk cigarette smokers face.

Coincidentally, I also have a video on making boxes. Yes, there is a guy who does this as a profession, and he makes videos. He probably lives next door to Pat Warner. I can’t wait to check it out.

I wrote about the book of Job earlier this week, and got a few comments from readers. I have always had a hard time figuring this book out, because it makes it seem like God was incredibly harsh with Job, and the reason was not clear. After all, the beginning of the book calls Job righteous, so you would think he would have a fairly blessed life. I think I finally understand the story.

The first part of the book seems to show that God approved of Job. He called him blameless and upright. But when catastrophe befell him, Job became somewhat self-righteous. He said he wanted God to appear, so he could make his case to him. He felt sure he could convince God that it was wrong to afflict him.

When God appeared and Job encountered him in person for the first time, Job realized how paltry his own virtue was compared to God’s. He realized he was unfit to question God, and he repented of the notion that he could justify himself.

I suspect that the lesson of the book is that life may contain great pain, and you will not always know why, and you are never right to question God for allowing it to happen. The answer is to search your heart and mind for anything you could have done to cause your problems, and if you can’t figure it out, thank God for the suffering, on the assumption that there is good in it which you can’t perceive.

I believe that on the whole, good people have better lives than bad people, and their lives definitely tend to end better, because bad behavior generally leads to a life that deteriorates sharply in quality as that behavior bears fruit. But Corrie ten Boom and her family were imprisoned by the Nazis. Eleven of the disciples were martyred, as was Paul. I think that’s correct, anyway. We will not be completely free from the threat of disaster until we leave this world. That’s just how it is. Corrie ten Boom’s sister Betsie taught her she had to thank God for every misfortune. She learned that lesson in a filthy barracks full of fleas. If you’ve never been attacked by fleas, believe me, it’s no fun. It’s like being jabbed with dozens of needles. If you read The Hiding Place, you know the fleas turned out to be a great blessing.

I think this is part of the magic of faith. You may experience unpleasant things, but you become capable of finding the good in them. It’s a bizarre kind of alchemy. It can make you treasure the memories of some of your worst experiences. You can actually learn to be grateful during a time of suffering.

Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But Job seems to make more sense to me now.

I don’t know all the answers. Just because I have a couple of saws and a router doesn’t mean I know as much as a certain famous carpenter.

Possible Solution to Router Fence Problem

I failed utterly in Saturday’s quest to put together a router fence. My father needed help with his anchor, so I ended up working on that instead.

Here’s the big problem with the fence. I need something very straight and fair, with sides that are absolutely perpendicular. I managed to use my table saw as a jointer, putting nice short sides on a two-by-six, but I couldn’t get it to work as a planer.

Today I read that it’s possible to plane wood with a router. Seriously. You support the router on two straight pieces of wood and put the workpiece between them. The end of the bit reaches down to the workpiece. You move the router around until it has ground all the irregularities off the work.

The obvious obstacle is that you can’t make the guides–the pieces that support the router–until you have two straight, fair pieces of wood! But I don’t think that’s fatal. You can make them on a table saw.

Now, is this possible, when your router is in a table, with no fence? I think so. You put the board between the guides and clamp the whole thing together. You turn it over and run it over the router bit, with a flush bearing on it. Then you flip it again and do it over. You make sure the planed sides are parallel by resting the first planed side on something you know to be level and flat before you apply the clamps.

Does this actually work? I do not know. But I may try it, just for the fun. The bit I used to put the router in the lift has a flush bearing, and it cuts from the bottom as well as the side, so it should be capable of planing.

Unexpected Gift

A week or so back, I received an unexpected package. It was from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and it contained a plate. In the center of the plate was the text “My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”

I didn’t know about these plates. They put a new one out every year. They always feature quotations from the Old Testament. And unlike a lot of religious decorations, they look very nice.

I am not a collector-plate kind of guy. Not many men are. But this one touched my heart, and I plan to put it on the wall. I have a surprising number of reasons.

For one thing, it reminds me that I was chosen to be included in something wonderful: a history-making, prophecy-fulfilling organization that is forming a remarkable bond between religious Jews and Christians. We used to be brought together by things like disputations and pogroms. Now we are confounding unbelievers by working together to build and protect the nation of Israel. Many Christians are actively seeking religious instruction from Jews, in order to understand our own faith better. American Christian support of Jewry has grown to the point where it angers some people, especially those who want to slice Israel up and feed her to her enemies as a futile peace offering. It’s exciting to be part of that. How can you not be excited, when you see yourself mentioned in the book of Isaiah?

It also reminds me that God has helped me to look outside myself and consider the needs of others. I will never publicly say what I have done for ministries and charities; I believe that is wrong. But I can tell you that the small amount of giving I have done has blessed me more than anyone who received any of it. I am not referring to God’s promises to look out for the generous; I mean that giving brings emotional healing to the giver and helps him feel a closer bond with God. It helps clear away the hard layers of cynicism which, in this modern world, can accumulate so quickly on a person’s heart. To a great degree, innocence and faith can be restored, and giving is a powerful tool to achieve that end.

Another nice thing about the plate is that it opened my eyes to the importance of surrounding yourself with reminders of your faith. I’m going to put it over my monitor. It’s easy to get away from God while you sit at a computer; the ways are too numerous to name. It can’t be anything but helpful to have an object by your screen that constantly reminds you what you are and how you are supposed to behave.

Incidentally, I have been reading about poverty in Israel, and it’s very bad. I knew it existed, but I didn’t understand the extent of it. One statistic cited by the IFCJ: 29 percent of Israeli families live in poverty, and the figures for children are worse. Capable, industrious Israelis are making the desert bloom, but it hasn’t been a picnic. And Jews in the former USSR and Ethiopia are in dire straits.

Israel’s population keeps exploding. It must be very crowded compared to the time when I was there. I guess it’s a challenge, trying to find jobs for the constant flow of immigrants.

I might pick up one or two other items to remind me of my faith. It’s surprising, how few choices there are. I just assumed there would be an endless variety, but the list isn’t that long, and a lot of the things I’ve seen aren’t very tempting. Someone should make a line of unobtrusive and tasteful plates, plaques, and dishes with Bible verses on them.

Some of the things I’ve seen aren’t too bad. One small plaque quotes Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord… plans to give you hope and a future.” Another quotes Joshua 24:15: “Choose this day whom you will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

I’m glad they sent that plate. On my own, I would never have realized how helpful items like that can be.

Plus Random Ruminations

My sister and I attended Calvary Chapel of Kendall today. She heard about it from a friend. I got on the web and looked it up. Evidently, there is a body of something like a thousand churches under the Calvary Chapel umbrella. They are charismatics, but they are a bit fed up with charismatic excesses, such as barking and holy-rolling. They don’t permit speakers to speak in tongues while teaching. They also deny the authenticity of the phenomenon of being “slain in the spirit.” This is something believers claim happens when the Holy Spirit is present in such intensity that it causes their knees to buckle. I’m inclined to believe it happens. I think the Bible mentions people feeling weak in the presence of God, but I’m too lazy to look it up. As I have written before, I have had unexpected moments of mild dizziness in church.

I don’t think it’s a big enough deal to drive your church of choice. I’m always surprised to see Christians fall out over things that seem fairly trivial. Is the Rapture before the Tribulation or after? Do the dead go to heaven or merely sleep until the Resurrection? Who cares? I don’t think the little things matter.

The musicians were spectacular today. In particular, a singer/guitarist and a man who played the electric guitar. I’m not fond of high-distortion rock-and-roll-style guitar in church, but whether or not it’s a good idea, he did it extremely well.

The pastor was very good. He told about the birth of Christ.

They didn’t harp about money. They don’t take a collection. They have boxes at the rear of the church, and you can also donate online. I liked that. I get tired of hearing preachers pray over offerings, asking that they be “multiplied back” over and over. It’s as if they’re trying to assure the congregation that donating isn’t a stupid thing to do, because the money comes back. I think it does come back, in one form or another, but you should give because it’s right, not because you’re counting on God to make you rich.

I can’t say I felt much of that familiar “God’s presence” sensation, except at the end, when the pastor made an altar call. That was when he really shined. Or shone.

According to web sources, some people have criticized the Calvary Chapel bunch for insisting that members feel more joyful than they really do, and for being somewhat fanatical. I don’t know if these things are true. They seemed fairly tame compared to the other two churches I’ve been to recently.

I got home and felt like watching Perry Stone. He’s unbelievable. I am not endorsing him; he talks so fast, it’s impossible (for a lazy person like me) to keep up and check his scriptural references and make sure everything is kosher. But my instincts tell me he’s the real thing.

Charismatics believe in something called “the word of knowledge,” which simply means they believe God tells people things. I have gotten into it with my sister for saying God had never told me anything. When I say that, I don’t mean I don’t get urgings and so on. I mean I have never had an explicit message from God, delivered supernaturally. I have never heard a voice giving me news. I have never seen letters floating in the air, spelling out a message. To me, that’s the kind of thing you should hold out for before you confidently state “God told me something.” If you haven’t had an experience like that, you should say, “I THINK God is telling me…” This could save the church a lot of embarrassment. Didn’t some big-name preacher claim God told him McCain was going to win? I’m not sure, but I think that’s correct. God didn’t tell him that.

Perry Stone says he got a word of knowledge once, and it was in April of 1998. He awoke from sleep, and as he was waking, a voice told him the governor of Texas was going to be the next President. He told a few friends, and later that year, he happened to be leading a tour at the Western Wall when he ran into George Bush, and he encouraged Bush to run. Stone claims he has this chance meeting on video. Supposedly, Bush has said he decided to run a few days later.

I found that interesting, because he said he heard the voice as he was waking up. I have had a couple of very strange experiences as I was waking. One was unquestionably supernatural. The other, I have never been sure about. I always figured that if you were a prophet and you had a vision, you would probably have it while you were wide awake, because that would distinguish it from a dream. However Aaron recently told me that the vast majority of prophets received their information in dreams. And that information has turned out to be sound. I suppose I was wrong. I know of a lot of prophetic dreams in the Bible, but I didn’t realize they represented the standard method.

I’ve written about the first experience. I was trying to sleep, and I kept feeling a beam of energy playing over my body, like an invisible spotlight. Wherever it touched me, I felt loved and optimistic and at peace. Seriously. When it touched my foot, my foot felt these things. I was convinced it was the presence of Jesus. Sounds crazy. I was completely awake, but I fell asleep while this was going on. You would think I would have been too freaked out to fall asleep, but I was used to having supernatural experiences, and I didn’t know what to make of this one, and I guess I was sleepy. I awoke with both hands in the air, and I heard a crackling sound, and I felt energy arcing into my palms. Eventually it stopped.

I assume it was a supernatural experience, because the things that preceded it happened while I was still awake, and because it seemed to continue even after it woke me up.

I have never figured out what it meant.

The experience that made the deepest impression on me–this is not the second experience I mentioned above–took place while I was awake and the sun was shining. I was sitting on the couch, and I happened to look at the wall. And up near the corner of the room, I saw a creature. I’d say it was about five inches long. It seemed similar to a cockroach in its general shape. It was a long oval shape, with a line across it near one end. The line appeared to define a head. That was the only feature it had. You could draw it perfectly in ten seconds with a pencil. It had no color. It was clear. I can’t describe it well; it didn’t look like glass, because it was not in this world and it didn’t look like things that belong to this world. The outlines were not clearly focused. It was as though I were seeing it through the distorting effect of the physical universe. You might think of the creature in the movie Predator, or maybe one of those clear network logos at the bottom of a TV screen.

This thing was about four inches from the ceiling, clinging to the wall. Its head faced away from the corner. Its body was parallel to the ceiling. It was just sitting there. I had no trouble seeing it. It was as obvious as a table lamp, and I got a good, long look at it.

I kept staring at it, because…well, who wouldn’t? Eventually, it appeared to realize I could see it. I don’t think it liked this. It detached from the wall and floated away from it, and as it did, a line appeared down its back, defining two wings which parted and peeled up toward the head. The wings then began spinning around the head like a propeller, except that they seemed to merge into a smooth disk perpendicular to the axis of the body. As this happened, it began to rise, and it rose toward the ceiling. When it reached the ceiling, it passed through it and disappeared.

The smoothness of the motion was beyond anything I have ever seen in the physical realm. It had an idealized quality to it, as though its spiritual nature permitted it to be simpler and more elegant than a physical object.

This was a spirit. That much, I’m sure of. But was it a good spirit or a bad one? My guess: bad. It took off when I spotted it, which is not what you would expect a benign spirit serving God to do. It acted guilty.

It made me think of phrases like “lord of the flies” and “prince of the air.” Some people say there are foul spirits that are like flies, flying around from place to place to cause trouble. And I also thought about Christians who claim foul spirits inhabit houses and have to be commanded to leave. Truthfully, though, I am not sure of its exact nature. Sometimes I wonder if it was here to bring a specific type of trouble to the house, like bugs, which it resembled.

I used to keep the story to myself. I’m not sure why. These days, I don’t care who knows it. So here it is. Maybe someone else out there has seen something like it, and they’ll be relieved to know they’re not alone.

Today the pastor mentioned something remarkable, and I also heard it on a Perry Stone video. They talked about the 400 years the Jews spent without hearing from a prophet. The pastor called it “radio silence” and compared it to hearing a favorite station go off the air. I thought it was kind of scary. Imagine having prophet after prophet and then four hundred years of silence. How did the Jews cope? And how did they find the strength to continue trusting in God?

People make fun of Christians for believing Jesus will return after 2000 years. But the Jews have been waiting…what year is it? I believe it’s 5769 to them. They don’t believe Jesus was a prophet, so to them, the prophetic dry spell has been running since Malachi. It has been going on for 2400 years. I don’t know when they began believing a messiah was coming, but it was at least that long ago. So they’ve been waiting considerably longer than we have. Talk about perseverance. It’s amazing that they’ve held out this long. No temple, no state until 1948, no priests, no king, no sacrifices, and still, there are observant Jews.

Maybe I’m getting this wrong. I know they believe there were miracles after Malachi. Anyway, it is remarkable that any of them still believe. That is a special kind of faith.

I have heard that Perry Stone thinks God is shaking up America right now, trying to drive us to repent. I hope that’s true, because my own take is that we are finished as the preeminent nation on earth. He believes the prophesied outpouring of the Holy Spirit is upon us, and that after it reaches its fullness, Jesus will return. He certainly knows more than I do.

Interesting stuff. But at the end of the day, the thing that really matters is trying to lead a life that pleases God. All this other business will become clear eventually.

Optimistic

Is this a beautiful morning, or what? It’s 56 degrees outside, dry as a bone, the sun is shining, and McDonald’s got my breakfast order right. There is order in the universe. Things make sense.

I guess dry weather isn’t exciting to most people, but when you live in Miami, you look forward to it. And since I’ve started taking better care of the property and working with tools, I realize that cool, non-sweaty weather is a godsend. When you spend the whole day indoors, it’s 75 degrees all the time. When you start working outside, you develop a new appreciation for temperature and humidity.

This was my first McDonald’s breakfast in two or three weeks. I could not indulge after Thanksgiving. I can’t remember what got in the way last week. My Saturday Mickey D’s feast is a sacred tradition, so I am glad to get back to it.

Yesterday I wrote about the Big Three mess, and I referred to figures various sources have quoted as the effective hourly rate paid to UAW workers. You can find it all over the place. It’s on the web. It’s on TV. It’s in newspapers and magazines. It’s on the radio. I cited the Heritage Foundation, but that’s not the only source. And it varies. I have seen figures varying from 69 to 75 dollars per hour.

A reader took issue, claiming that figure included money going to workers who had already retired. The UAW has an obscene pension and insurance package, and it’s very expensive. The Heritage Foundation claims the figure includes money for the retirement of current workers, but not people who are retired at present.

I took a few minutes last night and looked around some more, and I found some fairly credible claims that the figures DO include money for people who are currently retired. On the other hand, some sites claiming to “debunk” the high figures are clearly left-wing nut sites.

Now I don’t know what to think. One thing is for certain: Big Three labor costs are completely out of line with costs incurred by employers using people of similar skill. And we should all be angry that the UAW expects the rest of us to subsidize failure while refusing to accept a fair and realistic wage. We should be angry that they want a bailout, period, but expecting us to pay for their unjustifiable lifestyle is beyond the pale. The effective hourly figure is a rabbit trail; regardless of what it turns out to be, there is no doubt that it’s way too high. And even if it were not, subsidizing incompetence is socialism, and we should not be doing it. Those jobs will not disappear if the Big Three go bankrupt. They will be preserved; we will still need and buy cars, and someone will have to make them. The big difference will be that the companies will be under new and presumably better management, which will be better for everyone concerned.

Maybe it will be Japanese management. If that makes you feel bad, buy stock in the companies that buy the factories. Japanese companies are owned in large part by Americans. We say the Big Three are American, but who owns their stock?

If the high figures are right, we have auto workers bringing home $150,000 per year in one form or another. If they are wrong, it’s more like $80,000, which is still ridiculous, in a country where you can get a master’s degree and expect to earn $40,000 per year, including benefits. An average nurse makes less than an auto worker. Don’t even try to tell me that’s acceptable. Uneducated people with limited skills are not supposed to be affluent. That’s a simple fact of life.

I should be fair and criticize management as much as I criticize labor. Management agreed to the collective bargaining agreements that have crippled the Big Three, and management failed to put together design teams that produced credible products. Some American vehicles are great, but on the whole, they are stodgy and cheap-looking and not fun to drive. Let’s face it; generally, they look like crap. And the engineering, while much closer to foreign standards than it used to be, is still second-rate. As is the quality control.

I bought an American car because the model I chose was enjoyable to drive and had a unique style. I didn’t need to be practical. But if I were looking for something practical to put a wife and kids in, I would have a hard time justifying an American offering. The full-size pickups seem pretty good. Maybe that’s because the basic designs are ancient.

In other news, I am absolutely determined to get a fence put on the router table today. I don’t care if it’s a yardstick held on by rubber bands. It has to be done. And I want some kind of dust collection design.

I used the huge sliding miter saw yesterday, and dust went everywhere, even with a vacuum attached to the port. The throat plate is not even close to zero-clearance, and a pile of dust accumulates under it every time the saw is used. How am I supposed to fix that? I’m thinking maybe I should rout out a hole under the saw, put some mesh over it, and attach a vacuum hose under it.

The impression I get is that effective dust collection is not possible, unless you spend five or six thousand dollars. If I put a hose on the saw and a hose in the table, dust will still go everywhere. I don’t know how the professional tool guys who make videos and write books keep their shops so clean. They probably cheat. They probably make lackeys sanitize their shops before they turn on the cameras. I guess I will always have dust in the garage, no matter what I do.

I wish I had a better respirator. I don’t know what to get. I’ve tried various masks, but I always find that I end up breathing heavily after a while, because of the air resistance.

As for the fence, I think the best possible solution is cast iron, milled flat. You can put magnetic accessories on it, and it shouldn’t warp. Problem: it cannot be had. I can’t get a piece of cast iron that big without cutting up a piano frame, and I can’t mill it, and I am not willing to pay to have it milled. Maybe I could cannibalize an old jointer. Which I don’t have and can’t get.

Back to wood, I guess. Maybe I’ll give up and head for the lumber yard and make them plane down a piece of hardwood for me. I’m not sure which wood is best. Something relatively cheap to start. Then when I get to be a big router expert, I can make myself a fence from ipe! It’s supposed to be like cement.

It would be nice to have a ferrous front surface on it, because then I could use magnetic featherboards. I am sorry to say, I am not all that impressed by the Grr-ripper, which is supposed to be a featherboard substitute. I don’t like running my hands directly over a table saw blade, and these things don’t grip and hold workpieces the way featherboards do. And they’re a pain to set up. While I was trying to resaw my two-by-six, I had to cut a piece of scrap, drill holes in it, and screw it to the Grr-ripper to make it work. A featherboard would have taken ten seconds to set up, and it would have been safer and more effective.

I wonder if I could put a steel surface on the router table. This is a terrible thing for a former physics student to admit, but I have no idea whether magnetic attraction increases in proportion to the depth of a metal. I assume it doesn’t; magnets hold onto thin pieces of metal very well. I’m thinking I could put a sheet of thin steel over the table, screw it down, and use magnetic featherboards from there on out. They wouldn’t work past the edge of the aluminum router plate, but I don’t think they’d need to.

I will make this stuff work if it kills me. And then maybe some day I will make something with it.

Fricking Technology

I have found yet another reason to fantasize about visiting AT&T headquarters with a flamethrower.

The other day I bitched about my clock radio making irritating noises which rendered it unusable. A reader explained that the sound I was hearing was “GSM buzz,” which is caused by RF interference generated by cell phones as they synchronize with their towers.

Bear in mind, I have no idea what GSM or synchronization is.

Here’s a video that features the noise:

I found that video while trying to Google up a recording of GSM buzz, but in the process, I came across an ad for the solution to the problem. The video advertises little bags that kill the buzz. They’re anti-static bags. Stick your phone in there, and you don’t get the buzz. Does that mean it blocks the phone’s signal? Damned if I know.

The unfortunate thing about the product in the ad is that you can get it for nothing, all over the place. Good to have the information, however.

There are other solutions, which I am sure people more industrious than I will mention in comments.

Today I had to call AT&T and make them lock my phone’s Internet access. Why? Because the phone rang twice today and told me it was getting me THE LATEST NEWS FROM CNN!!! Which I did not want and did not intend to pay for.

I have referred to the phone as my Korean wife. I think we may need Dr. Phil.

Good Food is Still Cheap

I finally did the math. Shopping at Costco, buying their wonderful shredded mozzarella, I am paying about one dollar for a pizza’s worth of cheese. Two dollars, if I feel like heavy cheese.

I finally did a fairly accurate sauce-cost calculation. There are about 109 ounces of sauce in a can, by weight, and a pizza takes around 2 ounces. A can costs five bucks, roughly. So the sauce cost is somewhere in the vicinity of a dime.

Flour? Can’t say. But it’s cheap. I would guess a pie costs less than two dollars, including all ingredients except toppings.

I just took a bag of Costco cheese and broke it up and froze it in 6-ounce portions, vacuum-sealed. The phone made me do it. I programmed it in there yesterday, and today it beeped and made me get to work. I already had frozen sauce packets. I have thirteen pie setups, ready to bake, at my convenience! I just hope the cheese freezes well.

Now, if I could just find a way to make cheese pizza as colon-friendly as oatmeal…

Even Karl Marx Did Not go This Far

I am looking at the carmaker bailout story. Money quote:

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit’s beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.

Here’s what’s interesting about this. The pundits all say that bankruptcy is the only alternative to a bailout, and that bankruptcy will nullify the collective bargaining agreements currently in place. So when bankruptcy is declared, auto workers will no longer have contracts, and when the companies are reorganized, presumably, the unions are going to get new contracts with much lower wages. How do they benefit from rejecting the bailout?

I suppose the answer must be that they hope their new contracts will be better than what the bailout offered. In the meantime, they may suffer unemployment and plant closings.

I am not sympathetic. They earn something like five times what comparable workers (not limited to auto workers) earn without insane union contracts. If they were paid what the Japanese companies pay, they would still be highly, highly overpaid. When you bring home $145,000 worth of wages and benefits every year, from a job for which you ought to be thrilled to get $30,000, you can’t really expect taxpayers who earn realistic wages to let the government take their money and give it to you, to preserve your wildly unrealistic and unsustainable situation.

Here’s something no one ever seems to ask the auto executives. Let’s take the amount of money you overpaid your workers over the last twenty years. Let’s compare it to the $14 billion you expect the public to give you, so you can continue to overpay them and make overpriced products and lose market share.

Which figure is bigger?

I don’t know the answer, but I would be utterly shocked if the overpayment were not considerably larger.