Beginning Anew

I like vacation. More later.

Jeremiah 2: ²⁶"Like a thief, Israel feels shame only when she gets caught. Kings, officials, priests, and prophets--all are alike in this. ²⁷To an image carved from a piece of wood they say, `You are my father.' To an idol chiseled out of stone they say, `You are my mother.' They turn their backs on me, but in times of trouble they cry out for me to save them! ²⁸Why don't you call on these gods you have made? When danger comes, let them save you if they can! For you have as many gods as there are cities and towns in Judah.

I read this passage the other night when I had to go sit at a remote tower site to let the tower guys re-lamp the beacons. I'm sure I had read it before, but it kind of struck me this time. Maybe it's the NLT version that made it clear up.

How many of us are like this? We go out an do our own thing and manage to get ourselves in trouble, and suddenly we are the most God fearing person on the planet! Only because we got caught do we feel the need to apologize or ask forgiveness... not because we know it greives the Father.

Our lessons in youth have been centered on identity lately. This is a great subject for Middle-School folks. Last night we talked about "Inside-out" Christians versus "Outside-In" Chrisitans. "Inside out" means that we let Jesus into our heart and he works from the inside out and crucifies our sinful nature (See Galatians 5:16-17 and 24-25). An "outside-in" christian trys to make themselves good by making external changes that don't start by changing their heart (i'm going to quit *insert bad thing here*).

Where do you fall in this? Am I way off base? Let me know what you think!

Yes friends, it's that time of year again... it's still hot, but the beginnings of fall are coming around and all over the world people are gathering to celebrate.

Magical season, it be mateys... Avast ye! This be one of the most important holidays each year... International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Aye, it be no Christmas or Easter, but coming in first isn't all life is about! ARR!

So if you read this too late to celebrate this year, smartly mark next September 19th... for TLAPD will continue!

What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor.. or was that the Sunken Trailer. :-)

Inside joke for my guys from Fastbreak. :-)

I had a great time with you crazy guys this weekend.

Sorry for the time between posts, I could continue my previous rants but it's just not worth it any more. I'm so tired of this stinking mess that our politicians have become. I don't know if it's gotten worse or if i'm just more aware.

But enough about that. Got a chance to make it out to Fastbreak with the youth this weekend. I didn't get to stay as much as I would have liked because i'm a dodo and didn't ask to be off-call. I ended up working 'til about 1:00 AM on Friday night/Saturday morning. Made it out for most of the day saturday. Had great fun and some great discussions with our guys. I'm hereby calling for the middle school boys to talk more. I'm not gonna eat you alive for expressing yourself. Let us know what's going on in there.... we know you are noodling something.

I went canoeing for the first time. That was a blast... of course there is the beginning of a bad joke that could be made... "A preachers kid and a pregnant woman in a canoe". I am contemplating the purchase of a canoe when I get some $$$. That won't be this week.

Other than that, we've been busy but in a slow kinda way. It's been the usual busy, nothing special. I really hope I don't get a phone call at 5am about a remote on the news/talk station. We are doing a food/clothing/neccessities drive at War Memorial Stadium here in LR.

Looking very much forward to our vacation in a few days. May have found a new (much smaller) puppy... wait and see at this point.

Before I go on this rant, I want it to be noted that I in no way want to discount the tragedy and horrible loss of human life and property on the Gulf Coast. I understand first hand from my own life experiences the desperation and suffering that goes with a natural disaster.

Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans went on an extended and emotional rant on radio station WWL a few evenings ago. In this rant he blamed the state and federal government for not doing enough to help them. This is my response to that broadcast. It is posted here, as well as on a Broadcasting forum as a part of a discussion. It is slightly edited for context here.

BEGIN RANT

It's about time that someone stood up and took some responsiblity and quit pointing their fingers at everyone else. Local government is the first line of response, and that is where the failures began. Having lived through, or been involved in several natural disasters in the past, I can tell you that LOCAL response is the short term, with state and federal coming in for the long term.

People were warned for days that this thing was coming. The federal government provides NOAA, which has the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather service. We have sattelites, RADAR, planes, ships and other detection and forecast implements... all provided by the government. Broadcast media is licensed with a condition of PUBLIC SERVICE to disseminate this kind of information. What more can the federal government do? If they had come before the storm with military helicopters and forced people to leave their homes, the outcry would have been unreal! "How dare you force someone to leave their home"... yet now they act like George W. Bush himself should have been there holding each person's hand guiding them individually to safety.

Was the Federal response sufficient and timely? No... but with this scale disaster, how could it have been? Days before Katrina hit land the resources began to move. One person this week said it quite well.. "turning around federal resources is like turning around the titanic. It doesn't happen quickly"

But really, New Orleans should have been more prepared. They didn't learn of this tragedy just a few days ago... they learned of this many years ago. It has been known fact for decades that if NOLA took a direct hit from a big hurricane that this would happen. They may not have had a date circled on a calendar, but no one can deny that this was predictable.

Again, I don't want to be insensitive, rather I want people to snap out of it and start taking some PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY! Having an evacuation plan for the poor and handicapped of a city with the circumstances of NOLA should be a given. There should have been hundreds of busses (now all sitting underwater, ruined.. another thing my tax dollars will have to pay for) bringing people out of there starting on Friday or Saturday.

If I walk out in the street and stand in front of a fast moving 18-wheeler it's not the truck driver's fault, much less the contractor who built the road!

We have become a nation of finger pointers. No one wants to stand up and take responsibilty for their own actions or incompetence. I for one am sick and tired of hearing the talking heads on both sides screaming at one another over things that are clearly their own fault, or even worse neither side's fault!

I could go on a totally different rant inside of this rant about how it all starts because parents won't tell their children that they are not always right and teachers have stopped telling children that they failed at something, but I digress.

When will people learn that failure is a part of growth? If we would use this opportunity to learn from what went wrong on all levels, next time it might not be so bad.

END RANT

Sorry for the length between posts. I haven't been on call now for quite a few days, probably 2 weeks. This is the longest i've been off call in months.

It isn't that simple.

I have arrived at that point in my career in general, and this job in particular, where even off call doesn't mean I won't get called back into work. Last night I had 2 seperate calls in the period of an hour, and about 5:30 this morning I had to get up and help with a Codec problem at our Hurricane Katrina relief drive. I have been going ever since.

Our big news-talk FM is on generator because the junction box that supplies commercial power had a meltdown. We are down to about 38 hours of fuel left, and what great timing with the fuel price increases.

So even though i'm not "on call"... don't let that fool you. I still have to go whenever the phone rings. But also don't think i'm tore up about it. This is the most fun job on the planet 99.9% of the time.