Oct

31

GOP Rally

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Last Monday, Oct. 27, Mel and I went to a GOP rally in Salem, VA where Governor Sarah Palin was scheduled to speak as part of her one-day barnstorming of Virginia. It was cold, the lines were long, and we ended up standing for over 4 hours. Nonetheless, it was fun. If nothing else, it was a privilege to see someone who may well be the next vice president.

I have some pictures from the event. Hopefully they turned out ok. We were just behind the media section (a good spot), but it was still pretty far away, and my camera isn’t nearly as nice as the ones the media use.

Oct

30

Did anyone find this insulting?

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I didn’t watch Senator Obama’s infomercial last night. I get the impression that I didn’t miss much. I also don’t feel like trying to refute all of the absurd things he said. But after seeing the video below, I feel compelled to comment briefly.

I don’t want to bash the family at the beginning, and I wouldn’t wish economic hardship on them. But if their difficulty is limited to fewer snacks (or rationing them out over a week), I confess that I’m less sympathetic. In fact, the suggestion that this is the kind of economic hardship going on is insulting. It insults both the viewers’ intelligence and those who really are getting hurt by the downturn. Sure, things aren’t as smooth-going as they were, but at least the family in the video is frankly a long way from starvation.

I think the average person out there knows full well that this family isn’t getting hurt too badly. Are all these plans Senator Obama suggests intended to help out these kind of people at the expense of those of us who are little closer to subsistence living? I fear so. But the pretense of the video is spectacular. The remainder of the infomercial doesn’t get much better.

Part 2 of the infomercial

Part 3

Part 4

Is it just me, or was the live portion of this video kind of odd? He returned to the “hope and change” lines from early in the campaign. If he had clearly discussed policy in the previous 25 minutes, that might have been one thing. But instead we got a list of sob stories that seemed a little contrived and some vague promises to fix their problems. We want to know how he’s going to fix the problems — but once we know, we might not like it. I guess the question is whether the hope and change mantra will survive until Tuesday.

Oct

24

Zucchini Bread

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I had a package of zucchini in my freezer from Grandma Erickson, so Monday I decided to make some bread. I found a recipe on the Internet that used the amount I had.

I should have quit when I was almost 1/4 cup short of oil (I melted some butter to make up for it), because also didn’t have enough zucchini or cinnamon. But, I made do without.

The result…two very yummy and moist loaves of bread.

Here’s the recipe:

Zucchini Bread

INGREDIENTS
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F ( 165 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8×4 inch loaf pans.
In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and frothy. Mix in oil and sugar. Stir in zucchini and vanilla. Combine flour, cinnamon, soda, baking powder, salt and nuts; stir into the egg mixture. Divide batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until done.

Oct

21

Highlander Festival

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My family came to visit during the second week of October. That weekend was also the annual Highlander Festival at Radford University. There are annual “highlander games,” which seem to center around throwing heavy,  unwieldy objects as far as possible. See the picture below for a guy trying to throw a 20′ pole.

There are dozens of vendors and exhibitors. The best two, in my opinion, were the falconer and the sheepherder. The sheep dogs were amazing. With slight commands they could manuver sheep through obstacles and control them, even with a crowd of people around.

Oct

8

Weekend Fun

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This past weekend Andrew and I took a day trip down to Hillsville and Poplar Camp, VA.  I really wanted some apples (for a decent price) and a cooking pumpkin. Hillsville has a large, great farmers market, so we stopped there first.  Then it was off to the park!

We planned to go to Shot Tower State Park, but it was closed, so we headed on to the New River Trail State Park (NRTSP). The NRTSP is Virginia’s longest park — 57 miles. The park follows an abandoned railroad right-of-way. The trail is for walking, biking, and horse-riding. Our entrance to the park was in Foster Falls, VA.

Foster Falls used to be a center of iron industry. Now all that is left are some deserted buildings near the river, a Methodist church, a post office, and several homes. A hotel, built in 1887 is still standing, though it fell into disrepair in the 50’s. After it was a hotel it became a girl’s industrial school and a children’s home.

While in the park we walked along the trail a few miles in each direction (North and South). The scenery was beautiful. Some sections had rocks on both sides of the trail. We had a picnic lunch and wandered past the deserted buildings by the river. Andrew enjoyed taking some pictures.

It was a beautiful day to spend outside enjoying God’s creation. We would enjoy going back and renting bikes for half a day in order to go further along the trail.

Oct

2

The Experience Canard

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There has been a lot of talk in the last few days about Gov. Sarah Palin’s experience–whether she has enough to be vice president or not. Even some conservative writers suggest that she just doesn’t have what it takes.

The whole discussion is silly. Experience is important, but we need to understand what experience we’re talking about. Usually people compare her to Biden or McCain and point out her relative youth and provincial attitudes. In reality, if she should be counted out for not measuring up to their tenure, then the top of the opposite ticket is out of luck too.

But what about this whole “experience” thing in politics anyway? Is experience really necessary? Gov. Palin’s critics seem to be equating experience with knowledge. She supposedly hasn’t been around long enough and therefore doesn’t know enough. But does experience always lead to knowledge?

I say no. And here are three arguments:

First, the kind of experience matters. It’s one thing to get to sit in on a board meeting of a major corporation. You might learn a lot. But it’s quite another thing to run the meeting. No amount of watching can fully prepare you to actually run the thing. Likewise, many Americans have the “experience” of watching politics (filtered by their televisions). But relatively few could actually do what politicians do (or ought to do). Teachers know that teaching a subject requires far greater understanding than just soaking it up in a chair. We can over-emphasize the value of “hands-on” experience, but we cannot deny that doing is not the same as watching. Governor Palin is the only candidate with actual political executive experience. Does that make her qualified? Not necessarily, but her experience of running things is somewhat different than the others.

Second, the content of the experience matters. We could find some aged musician with lots of frequent flier miles, but he wouldn’t necessarily be a reliable source on foreign policy. (Then again, he might be.) If a crime boss ran for political office, he might be able to claim lots of executive experience, but it isn’t quite the executive experience that most people are looking for in a leader.

Third, and most important, experience doesn’t necessarily produce knowledge. We could take a behaviorist tack and claim that, after a while, everyone can be trained to do certain things. But this is not the kind of knowledge we want in a leader. We want someone who will learn from mistakes (both theirs and others’). Moreover, we want someone who can learn without experience–i.e. by direct instruction1 . When someone persists for years in foolishness, they probably aren’t qualified for public office. This would be a problem for Senator Biden. His weath of “experience,” particularly in foreign policy, has managed to land him on the wrong side of nearly every major foreign policy issue in the last decade. Further, he doesn’t seem to have learned that when he doesn’t know what to say, he shouldn’t say anything at all. For all his “experience,” his knowledge, judgment, and wisdom are certainly in question.

Governor Palin needs more knowledge, as we should expect. (She is, after all the governor of one of the states furthest from Washington D.C., and governors aren’t always in the “need-to-know” loop of national security and foreign policy.) But as I anticipate tonight’s debate, I hope Gov. Palin will have an opportunity to demonstrate that she learns quickly and that she can draw on the wealth of knowledge among her advisors. If she does so, she will further convince me that the media doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about. She can’t attack “experience” per se, since her running mate is running on that very thing (in an earlier post I suggested that this might not be all good). But she can attack Biden’s knowledge and judgment, and I hope she does.

It would be great to have someone with real experience in the White House again.


  1. Consider how often the book of Proverbs connects wisdom, understanding, and instruction with “hearing.” back↩