The People and The New People.

Early in our marriage, we were friends with a really lovely couple who among other things did a little couples marriage counseling with us. During that counseling, they taught us one thing which has really stuck with us--something which has been useful multiple times over the past ten years.

As often happens, this couple sort of drifted out of our lives. We've not seen either of them in several years, and although we are still vaguely in touch with them on facebook and such, we don't really know them anymore.

A funny thing happened at some point. One of use, in a conversation, found ourselves temporarily unable to remember their names, and instead referred to them as "The People". The first time this happened, of course, it took some explaining for the other of us to understand to whom we were referring. Strangely, this name stuck, and gradually over the years we stopped using their names altogether when we were referring to them in conversation, instead simply calling them "The People", or when referring to one of them "The Husband of The People" and other variations on this theme.

Tonite The People came up in our conversation, and I realized I could no longer access their names. I have a sense that I could probably find them in my list of facebook friends and thus be reminded, but as it stands, I honestly can't remember their first nor last names. They have permanently become "The People".

Perhaps even more interestingly, since we moved to Australia a new couple has begun to vie for the name "The People". I can, of course, still totally remember *their* names. However "The New People" also works now, in conversation--Megs and I both know about whom we are talking. =)

Your turn--tell us about a bit of private jargon which you use.

First they came for the ...

terrorism suspects.

So my guess is something along these lines: In light of developments (or lack thereof) with Guantanamo Bay, and in light of the fact that Obama is pretty much the least bow-to-the-military-establishment guy we are going to see elected president in the next 20 years and he has done pretty much zilch re: Patriot Act, Extraordinary Powers, etc. etc., the ACLU may as well close it's doors, and basically it's sayonara the U.S. ever again being the world's bastion of civil liberties, freedom, etc. etc (if we ever were). Only 39 months until I'm eligible for Aussie citizenship. Wooooot!

Gun Safety

When I went to my father's house in rural Washington state 2 weeks ago, one thing I noticed was that leaned up against the piano was a 22 caliber rifle, and sitting next to it on the piano was a small box with about 30 live rounds in it. I naturally picked up the rifle and checked to see if there were any rounds loaded, opening the bolt action chamber and removing the small clip. Then I naturally pointed it out the window and took sights on the well house out in the paddock. It took me a while to notice this as anything other than completely normal. I remain a product of my upbringing. Perhaps it's not so strange, in the end, that I accidentally shot myself in the hand with a BB gun at the age of 17.

I found myself in a discussion, later in the day, with my amazing lovely dad and my very kewl brother in law, both of whom thought it would be totally fine, in terms of safety were I to bring my 8 year old daughter to the property to visit, to simply place the guns (yes, the perhaps as many as 2 dozen guns in the house) under my dad's bed. In the end they agreed to get them out of the house altogether before she visited, but they still thought my boundary was unnecessarily stiff.

Just as an FYI, even the National Rifle Association, which is more or less the biggest group of civilian gun crazies in the world, recommends that gun owners keep their guns and ammunition physically/mechanically inaccessible to children and other unauthorized persons.

I find it wonderful that here in Australia we as parents don't so much have to inquire, with new friends, about guns in the house before we can bring our children or let them visit. It's just not an issue. In Australia gun owners are legally required to store their guns in a safe, bolted down, and locked, and to store the ammunition in a separate bolted down locked safe. Furthermore, there just aren't anything like as many guns in general circulation as there are in the U.S. Woooohooooot!!!!!

Benjamin's wants for September

list of wants for september.

1. to find out I'm going with Shelley Hackett to Max Impact in October
2. to walk 50 miles
3. organize a SonRise info night for parents in melbourne
4. to be bigger and more loving than I am now
5. to read "younger next year"
6. to go for a family bicycle ride down the coast
7. to turn toward and fully embrace my fears about money
8. to do at least 4 option process dialogues
9. to write a poem
10. to do 2000 pushups.
11. to go on a yacht ride with my friend John.
12. to find out someone's amazing secret.
13. to compose a new song.

What are your wants for September?

Darleks

My children backward engineer language. So ... they have figured out that in Aus, many words that have an "r" sound in them have the "r" sound more or less dropped. Hence for instance here, for the word "here", people say "heeuh" rather than the Seattle pronunciation "heer". The backward engineering sometimes misfires for them, such as, for instance, with the Daleks from Doctor Who, who have now become "Darleks"--because they haven't seen the spelling--they're working from what they hear. How kewl is that?

Hooray!

bits of my time in Tacoma.

I used to live in this little house, for about 1 year, with my mum and my sister, while my dad was away fixing angels of death for the U.S. air force in Turkey. The people in the house just to the left, which you can't really see here, used to have loud drunken parties on weekends, which my mum found quite scary. I went up to the Cub Scout day camp at Wapato park, a few blocks from here, where I learned this song.


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While we lived there, we started attending this church, Bethesda Baptist, where one Sunday I went into a little room with a Sunday School worker and confessed my sins to Jesus and asked him to forgive me and come live inside my heart. 17 Years later, when I was raising funds to spend two years as a missionary on LOGOS II, I called the pastor of this church to ask if I could come tell them about what I was doing--I thought it would be nice for them since I "got saved" at that church. But the pastor at that time was hypercalvinist and a bit sectarian, and he told me on the phone that I certainly wouldn't be allowed to come speak to anyone at the church unless I believed certain very specific things, which of course I didn't believe =).


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Also while there, I attended this school, McCarver Elementary. It was 1984. There was a classroom full of truly ancient personal computers which we went into once a week to do stuff on them. My homeroom teacher read aloud to us. She read "Sounder" and "Pippi Longstocking" and "The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. The whole school got together occasionally to watch a movie in the auditorium. The only one I remember was the animated version of the Hobbit. My awesome cousin Kelly went with me to this school, and we got off at the same school bus stop on the way home, after nearly an hour's ride. She would often have to remind me to get off the bus because I would be so engrossed in a book. After school I'd go home and watch Nickelodeon on TV, and dukes of hazard and Fall Guy and A Team and Greatest American Hero. It was the last year of my whole life that I ever lived in a house which received broadcast television.


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