by jphilo | Mar 3, 2010 | Current Events
Man, I was happy last week when GM announced the Hummer brand would soon bite the dust. To me the vehicle was one of our country’s biggest embarrassments. It was so out there, a rolling embodiment of consumerism, me-centeredness of Americans, and lack of respect for creation.
What possessed GM to build this albatross in the first place? And why do people need to drive on paved, safe streets and roads in vehicles designed for the army? Does the ability to impress friends and neighbors justify gas guzzling?
I’m not a rampant environmentalist. I’m not a tree hugger, a member of PETA or of the Sierra Club. But I do recycle, use cloth shopping bags, buy local when possible, and drive a car that gets great gas milage. But every time I see a Hummer on the road, I get spitting mad because the person driving it has just cancelled out all my ecological efforts with one trip to the grocery store.
So the GM announcement about the Chinese business reneging on their bid for the Hummer brand made me smile. Maybe there’s hope, I thought. Twenty-four hours later, that hope dimmed a bit when the car company announced other undisclosed suitors were waiting in the wings.
Apparently the suitors are embarrassed to admit their identity. They should be. Hummer needs to die, and it needs to die soon. Until it does, we’re painted with the brush of excessive consumerism and lack of foresight. I’d like to get rid of that image. Wouldn’t you?
by jphilo | Feb 16, 2010 | Current Events
Nothing makes me feel quite as old as the Super Bowl. No, the sight of players hitting the dirt doesn’t bring back memories of crippling sports injuries that stove me up like an old geezer. Sports injuries aren’t part of my past because sports aren’t either.
Sports injuries aren’t the problem. The Roman numerals are the problem. Now, the first game didn’t start that way. It was called “First World Championship Game: AFL vs. NFL.” The next year they revised history, adding the “Super Bowl I” flourish. By then it was already Super Bowl II, which means they should have had a clue right then of the problems this Roman numeral thing would create. The older the Super Bowl got, the longer the name got, too.
Obviously men made the Roman numeral decision. Women figured out where that number system was leading around the time Rome fell and nixed it in favor or Arabic numerals. See, the gals knew there was no way to hide their age when writing it down in ever-increasing RNs. The older you were, the longer it took, and pretty soon everybody knew you were old, and it was no use touching up your roots with charcoal from the fire and microderm abrasioning your face with sand every three days anymore. Using Arabic numerals, two digits did the trick, unless you reached 100 and then who cared anyway?
That’s why the Super Bowl makes me feel old. I remember how excited my dad was about Super Bowl I before it was Super Bowl I, and I remember Super Bowl II when my brother thought Bart Starr was the greatest man on earth, and I remember how Super Bowl III made Joe Namath a superstar and he posed for Playboy, which my parents only mentioned in hushed whispers, but the seventh grade boys never quit talking about ever.
Back then, the Roman Numerals were so short and easy to read. I was young, and I knew I would never be an old fogey like my parents and neither would Joe Namath. Now the list of Roman Numerals is so long, the young kids need decoders to read them. Old fogies, like me and Joe Namath who remember the first Super Bowl, now need bifocals and decoders along with charcoal to touch up our roots and bucket loads of sand for microdermabrasoning.
The only hope is Super Bowl 50. In the blink of an eye, it’ll be Super Bowl L. I’ll feel young again, and hopefully Joe Namath will, too. Maybe he’ll pose for another centerfold.
Perish the thought.
by jphilo | Feb 15, 2010 | Current Events
I am not and have never been an athlete. Throughout my childhood, I dreaded gym class. I consider team sports cruel and inhumane treatment. Sweat is evil, and no matter how you spell it, I believe “exercise” is a four letter word.
So why am I committed to walking 4 – 5 miles a day, either down our gravel road or in the house during the dead of winter? A recent NPR summed up the reasons quite nicely:
“A new study of 13,535 women finds that women who regularly walked for exercise in their 50s were much healthier in their 70s and beyond….The researchers looked to see whether women had developed chronic conditions, including diabetes, kidney disease, Parkinson’s disease and pulmonary disease. They also looked at cognitive function.
What they found might be surprising, given the level of exercise involved. The brisk walkers — who moved at a clip of about 3 mph — were 90 percent more likely to be free of all these conditions when compared with women who weren’t in the habit of walking beyond a leisurely pace.”
Amazing isn’t it? Worth a sweat now and then, don’t you think
But the NPR story had good news for kids, too, according to a daily program recently implemented at Woodland Elementary School in Kansas City, MO. Gains in academic performance and a reduction in aggressive behavior has already been documented. You can read the whole story by clicking on this link.
By the time you finish reading or listening to it, you’ll want to lace up your sneakers and go for a walk. Give me a call if you do. I’m always ready for a mile or two.
by jphilo | Feb 4, 2010 | Current Events
In this corner of the world, we’re often insulated from major world events. But not last month, when the earthquake hit Haiti. The Wednesday before disaster struck, a woman in our Wednesday night Bible study asked us to pray for her father, brother, and several nieces and nephews who were on their way to Haiti to volunteer at a medical mission and orphanage.
We were familiar with the mission, since three people from our church spent a week there last January. So we prayed for this year’s travelers, asking God to grant them a safe journey and many opportunities to share Christ’s compassion with the people in that desperately poor country.
From the moment the earthquake hit, our church body and many others offered prayers for the people of Haiti, the family members at the mission, and those waiting at home. After four harrowing days, they arrived home safely, but suffering from the trauma they’d endured and concerned about those left behind.
For more of their story, click on the newspaper and TV links below:
- www.kotatv.com Wednesday, January 13, 2010: Sioux Falls KOTA interview on Wednesday, January 12, 2010.www.kcci.com Thursday, January 14, 2010: DES MOINES, Iowa — Some Iowans are already in Haiti helping responding to calls for help after Tuesday’s devastating earthquake. You can see the KCCI Des Moines interview with Taylor and pics of the team on their website now – below. Bryan is in blue wearing a Univ of IA cap and Alissa, seen in several pics is in the green scrubs, blond hair.
- www.kcci.com Skype interview with Taylor on Des Moines KCCI TV channel on Jan 14, 2010
- www.kcautv.com Sunday Jan 17, 2010: Sioux City KCAU TV Channel 9 – Megan Harshbarger’s report titled “Missionaries Return Home” includes interviews with Gene and Rachel from Mission to Haiti team and all six First Reformed Church members [Jeannie Clubine; Gene Den Hartog; Andy Getting; Mark Koerselman; Rachel Rooseboom; and Marwin Vogel] as they worship Sunday morning. (Expect a commercial stream to show first)
- Sioux City Journal article Jan 13, 2010 with photo of Bryan, and Alissa assisting him: By the way, all victims they treated survived the night and were transferred to a makeshift clinic on Wednesday. It is unknown if they continued to survive, but we pray they did. Without infection control stepping in soon, the injuries would be fatal. We hope one day any survivors would let Mission to Haiti know they were someone treated that night on campus. I think the team could use some encouraging news like that.
Of course, the country of Haiti needs our continued prayers and support for months to come, just as they needed it before the earthquake. So pray that the world doesn’t abandon Haiti once the media reports wind down. One family I know won’t forget. They’re already planning next year’s trip.
by jphilo | Jan 28, 2010 | Current Events
Have you seen the February 2010 issue of National Geographic? The front cover is a doozy with the title of the feature article “Polygamy in America” printed below the picture of Joe Jessop, his four wives, two generations of their descendants spreading out behind them.
As a kid, I first encountered the concept of polygamy in Sunday school when we studied the Old Testament. But our teachers assured us that the practice had gone the way of stoning, animal sacrifice, and the ban on bacon and lobster. So when my high school sociology teacher announced that the practice had been alive and well amongst Mormons in the United States until the late 1890s when their leaders banned it, I was shocked. After he said a few renegades were still hanging on to the practice in remote western outposts, I realized the truth and the history taught to kids didn’t always match up.
The recent issue of NG proves the point. According to the article, the polygomy hangers-on are procreating with gusto, regardless of the spotlight shined on them since the big, botched federal raid of their compound in April of 2008. The article details the history of the movement, from Joseph Smith’s original vision to its present day manifestation. It’s quite a story, and you may want to read it for yourself.
It sure got me to thinking, and here’s what I want to know: what other cover ups were perpetrated by Sunday school and elementary teachers, the Weekly Reader writers, and children’s TV advertising mavens if my childhood? Here’s a start:
- Contrary to what the Weekly Reader said, lots of active volcanoes still exist, not just in foreign lands but in the United States.
- Lassie had a double.
- Teachers don’t know everything, but they do go to the bathroom, just like everybody else.
- George Washington lied.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You probably need to debunk your share of historical untruths fed to you as a child. If so, add them to the list. If we do a really good job, maybe National Geographic will do a cover story about us – “Myth-busters Unsanitize History.”
You never know. It could happen.
by jphilo | Jan 18, 2010 | Current Events
I was listening to the radio a few days ago and heard the term “greenwashing” for the first time. As context of the radio story indicated, greenwashing is “the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.” (Wikipedia)
According to Wikipedia, I’m hopelessly behind the times since the term was coined by “NY environmentalist Jay Westerveld in a 1986 essay regarding the hotel industry’s practice of placing green placards in each room, promoting reuse of guest-towels, ostensibly to ‘save the environment.’ Westerveld noted that, in most cases, little or no effort toward waste recycling was being implemented by these institutions, due in part to the lack of cost-cutting affected by such practice. Westerveld opined that the actual objective of this ‘green campaign’ on the part of many hoteliers was, in fact, increased profit. Westerveld hence monitored this and other outwardly environmentally conscientious acts with a greater, underlying purpose of profit increase as greenwashing.”
Well, last week, only days after my awareness of greenwashing was heightened, I experienced the practice firsthand. At Christmas, my sister gave me a Pampered Chef gift certificate, which I used to order a handy-dandy food chopper. The food chopper is about ten inches tall, with a diameter of perhaps four inches and weighs less than a pound. So imagine my surprise when a Pampered Chef box, measuring18 x 24 x 8 inches, arrived. Imagine my further surprise when I opened the box to find it filled with crinkly packing paper and another food chopper-sized box containing, you guessed it, the food chopper.
The company tried to neutralize their wastefulness by stamping the “Recycle” symbol on the box flap. They even included an exclamation mark at the end of the word for emphasis and a pretty leaf design on the R to show their sincerity.
But their wily ways didn’t fool me. I recognize greenwashing when I see it. And though I like Pampered Chef products, I’ll hesitate before buying from the company again. Even though I’ve got a hankering for their ice cream scoop before summer, satisfying my yen can’t justify such blatant waste.
So please, Pampered Chef packaging gurus, quit greenwashing consumers. Prove that you’re in it for the trees, not just the bucks. Recycle for real or you’re going to lose customers. We’re smarter than you think!
