Party
Month: March 2005
Easter
Easter “vacation” is over. It was pleasant enough, but I was a little sad at the end, knowing it was the last major holiday that Kinga will be in her native country for some time. All things come to an end, I suppose, but that particular end is creeping ever closer.
The surprise of the weekend for me was how Wiktor, Kinga’s two-and-a-half-year-old nephew, was virtually obsessed with me. Every time he saw me, he was asking, “Wujek, co robisz?” (“Uncle, what are you doing?”) I enjoyed spending time with him, and I actually looked after him for quite a while Friday – or was it Saturday? Can’t recall. At any rate, I enjoyed it, but it was difficult understanding him sometimes. Understanding “baby talk” that’s in a foreign language — it’s a nightmare. I felt, once again, like I was new in the country, fresh off the plane.
The second surprise: an evening of bridge with everyone. Jan (my father-in-law) taught Daniel (my brother-in-law) how to play bridge, and we played until after midnight Sunday. Kinga and I were partners, and it turned out that she’s an excellent bridge player – better than I am, for sure. We cleaned up, that’s for sure.
This was the first year I didn’t go to the resurrection service. We changed to summertime that Saturday evening/Sunday morning, and the thought of getting up at four (body time) to be at the church at five (again, body time) just did nothing for me.
I went for the blessing of the food — a Polish tradition that involves going to the church Saturday morning to have a basket of food for Easter breakfast blessed by the priest– and I went for the night watch, but I just decided to pass on the early morning mass.
A Walk
Sympathy for the Devil
Can we forgive someone who hasn’t asked for forgiveness? There seems to be a lot of people who feel that we can’t assume any mercy for Ratzmann because of the enormity of his crime. Not only that, but some are implying that it would be wrong to suggest that mercy would be the right response. It would be the equivalent of sympathy for the devil.
Or would it?
Despite the havoc the 44-year-old Ratzmann wreaked on his congregation, [LCG member Thomas] Geiger said, church members heard a mostly upbeat message of forgiveness and hope.
“We hugged and cried over this, even Terry’s family,” said Geiger. “We’ve made our peace with them.”
Geiger, like some of the others in attendance, had family members killed or wounded in the rampage at the Brookfield Sheraton hotel.
Among them was Bart Oliver, Geiger’s nephew. After attending Ratzmann’s funeral and getting a quick bite for lunch, Geiger and his family moved on to the 15-year-old’s funeral, held at the Country Springs Hotel in Waukesha.
Glenn Diekmeier, who survived last weekend’s shootings and whose father, Harold, was killed, attended the Ratzmann funeral (“JS Online).
I’m strangely moved by the fact that victims’ families were in attendance at Ratzmann’s funeral. I doubt there were many, if any, families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims at his funeral. I doubt very much that there would be victims’ families at the funeral of Atlanta gunman Brian Nichols had he killed himself. Thinking about the nature of these three different crimes clarifies for me why it’s possible to speak of mercy in Ratzmann’s case.
This was not an extended killing spree, as in the Dahmer case. Nor was it the act of a desperate man trying to escape from the police. This was an otherwise “normal” individual that inexplicably went berserk. Recall that when a member addressed Ratzmann by name and asked him, “Why are you doing this?” Ratzmann stopped. Whatever clicked in the first place clicked again, and I would imagine that in that moment he possibly realized what he had done and realized the simplest way out would be to take his own life.
Was it premeditated? It seems so —- he did buy the gun in the summer. Was it planned, as a terrorist attack is planned? I doubt it. He came to church with his Bible, and then returned home to exchange it for a gun.
It all revolves around whether Terry Ratzmann was a victim in this too, and I believe he was. It now appears unlikely that this would have happened if he’d sought professional psychiatric help; if he hadn’t been a member of a legalistic sect that prescribed whom he could date and actively forbade people from dating whomever they chose; if he’d had a better relationship with his father; if his parents hadn’t divorced; if the WCG hadn’t split apart -— all these have been bantered about as causes, which lumped together with whatever other demons that haunted him, pushed an instable man to a point of vicious violence.
Views from the Apartment
Around Centrum
Spring
Spring is arriving on time with the calendar here.
The snow is finally beginning to melt. I saw the ground for the first time in months yesterday. Of course there’s still about three feet of snow in most places, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before there’s more green than white, but it’s a start.
Behind the Scenes: The Wisconsin Shooting Tragedy
This is not the first time that someone associated with the ideology behind the Living Church of God committed such a vile act.
The Living Church of God (LCG) split from the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) in the mid-90’s over doctrinal differences. The founder of the WCG, Herbert Armstrong, died in 1986, and his successor, Joseph Tkach, began dismantling the doctrinal distinctives of the WCG. Those who wanted to remain faithful to Armstrong’s teachings left in droves in 1995, and one of the organizations formed was the Global Church of God (GCG), which eventually transmuted into the LCG, both led by Roderick Meredith.
Before Tkach made the drastic doctrinal changes, the WCG was a cult, pure and simple. Distinctive theological elements included
- Rejection of the Trinity.
- Observance of Jewish, Old Testament holy days.
- Rejection of “worldly holidays,” including Christmas and Easter.
- The teaching that the WCG alone was the true and undeceived church of God, and that all other Christians were merely “professing” Christians, deceived by (and ultimately worshiping) the devil.
- The belief that the United States and England are peopled by the descendants of the original Ten Tribes of Israel.
- The belief that Germany will rise again and defeat America in a nuclear World War Three.
The Living Church of God still holds to all these doctrines.
Precedent
Herbert Armstrong wrote his heretical theology up in many books and smaller booklets.
One of them was 1975 in Prophecy written in the 1950’s and predicting Jesus’ return in 1975.
The book had a violent effect on one Michael Dennis Rohan.
In an effort to hasten the building of the temple and resumption of Jewish cultic sacrifices in Jerusalem, Rohan set fire to the Al Aksa mosque in 1969. No one was killed, but there was significant material damage. The ripples of the attack continued through the years: fourteen years later, Hamas began a series of terrorist attacks scheduled to coincide with the Al Aksa attack.
Trying desperately to distance himself from the bad publicity the act generated, Herbert Armstrong responded by denying any connection between Rohan and his church:
Every effort, it seems, is being made to link us with it in a way to discredit the Work of God. The man, Rohan being held as the arsonist, the dispatches say, claims to be identified with us. This claim is TOTALLY FALSE. The first any of us at Pasadena ever heard of this man was when the press dispatches began coming over the Teletypes in our News Bureau. Checkups revealed that this man had sent in for and received a number of our Correspondence Course lessons. Last December he had sent in a subscription to The PLAIN TRUTH. But any claim to any further connection or association with us is an absolute lie.
Rohan claims he’d been in contact with a WCG minister, and that, combined with the fact that Rohan not only had subscription to the Plain Truth but also had received church literature, makes Rohan a “P.M.” – prospective member.
According to a Wikipedia article, Armstrong stopped claiming that a physical temple would have to be built
because at the time he was trying to establish a relationship with the government of Israel. He had previously developed a relationship with King Hussein of Jordan prior to the Six Day War and had actually signed a contract to go on the AM and shortwave [sic] Jordanian transmitters located in the West Bank with his daily radio program called The World Tomorrow. When Israel gained control of the West Bank it also voided Armstrong’s contract and as a result he then courted the favors of the government of Israel by becoming involved with such projects as the archeological digs in the area of the Temple Mount.
Practicalities won out over “God’s truth!”
Armstrong had a choice, it would seem, and in this case, continuing to preach “God’s truth!” as it had been “cried aloud” before would have been tantamount to Armstrong shooting himself in the theological/fiscal foot.
Unfortunately, Armstrong was not an idiot. He chose to tone it down.
Funny how “God’s truth” can be so self-defeating in some contexts.
A Walk
Living Church of God Tragedy
I’m in a bit of shock. I just found out about the shooting in Wisconsin, and I’m in even more shock about the church in which it happened.
The Living Church of God.
A splinter group of the Worldwide Church of God. The sect I grew up in.
I know many people in this group, though none in the area this deplorable tragedy took place.
A comment at a website about this:
Considering the fact that cults tend to become a magnet for the unstable and knowing the large number of unstable people that I’ve seen come through and still attending church, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened much sooner.
True. David Koresh, Jim Jones — many others. Fringe groups lead to fringe behavior.
To put it lightly.
Answer 165
Tall, slim, metallic – my filing cabinet was one of my prized possessions in the States. I had a drawer for my current semester: materials, handouts, tests, syllabi. I had a draw for all the previous semesters. I had a drawer for financial documents: receipts, bills, bank information. And of course I had a miscellaneous drawer. I could go straight to anything.
Now I dream of having a filing cabinet to organize myself. I think since I’ve been I Poland, I’ve seen a couple, but they don’t seem to be popular. At school, I keep all my papers and documents in a little cubby-hole – literally. At home, I have tons of little binders and folders that I keep tax info in, visa documents, etc. But no filing cabinet.
I used to think of myself as highly organized, but sloth and lack of storage space (not to mention a lack of filing cabinets – I like filing cabinets) has led me to a state of semi-chaos. I don’t lose my keys often, but I often temporarily misplace materials from school, simply because I don’t have a place to store it all neatly and systematically. Which drives me bananas.
Pens are a story in themselves. I have a very nice Cross Townsend black lacquer fountain pen that I bought, by some fluke of mis-pricing or something, for only sixty buck. I’ve had it for ten years now, and never once have I thought I’d lost it. I have a beautiful stainless steel Parker Sonnet fountain pen that Kinga bought for me for Christmas, which, because of its weight (that Cross is heavy) goes with me to school every day. Never lost it. I have another Parker filled with red ink for grading papers – never misplaced it. All told, I have four fountain pens, and I’ve never lost one. Ballpoint pens, though, are a different story. Three. I’ve lost three. Most recently, I lost one that Kinga gave me last Christmas. Yes, it is only March, but the horrid thing is, I lost it before the end of January! How?! I’ve no clue.
Absalomie, Absalomie…
I borrowed the Polish version of Absalom, Absalom! for Kinga, and I was thumbing through the edition and noticed a couple of things immediately.
First of all, none of the extended passages italicized in the original are italicized in the Polish, which is strange, given how Faulkner uses italics.
Second, the famous final line, “I don’t hate the South!” was translated a little differently: “I don’t feel hatred for the South.” I’m not certain, but I think this was for fluid reading. “Nie czuję nienawiści do Południa!” ends this version, whereas a more literal translation would have read, “Nie nienawidzę…” and that double “nie” would have indeed read awkwardly.
In Defense of English Tenses
Nina, at The Other Side of the Ocean, recently complained about necessary tenses in English.
Writing about learning English, she says, “As a new kid on the English-speaking block, I had to come to terms with the fact that English has sixteen verb tenses. You truly are insane.”
Indeed, most Poles when they learn that there are more than three tenses in English have a similar reaction.
The actual number of tenses is a somewhat fluid issue. Nina maintains sixteen. I would argue that there are only three tenses: past, present, and future. Within each of those, though, there are four types:
- simple
- progressive/continuous
- perfect, and
- perfect progressive/continuous.
A total of twelve, for I don’t count conditionals as tenses.
This does seem somewhat excessive but think of the versatility of the English tense system.
With a single verb tense you can:
- Show whether it happened before or after another action;
- Indicate whether or not it is a temporary action;
- Show whether or not it was a completed action; and,
- Indicate whether it was habitual or not.
Think of the enormous difference between these sentences:
- When you called I was eating.
- When you called, I had eaten.
In situation one, you’d better apologize; in situation two, you’re fine.
But some of the tenses do indeed cause problems with Polish learners, none more so than present perfect (i.e., “I have eaten sushi.”). It’s problematic because it sometimes refers to the past (“I’ve been to China. I went last year.”) and sometimes to the present (“I’ve lived in Poland for seven years.”). The first example would be translated to past tense in Polish, while the second would be present tense. Then there’s the difference between “I’ve eaten sushi” and “I ate sushi.”
It’s a nightmare that some students never fully work out.
I, on the other hand, have problems fitting all those possibilities into tense-deprived Polish. Polish does have something sort of like a continuous tense, but instead of being a different tense, it’s a different verb! “Obejrzełem” is “I watched” whereas “ogladałem” is more like “I was watching.”
How’s that for difficulty?!
It’s not often
that I get to make a student’s day, but I think I did just that this morning.
I handed back tests to a class of first year students, by far my favorites. I love teaching beginners because it’s really a kick to end a year talking to a group of kids in English that didn’t know a single word a few months earlier. This group in particular is wonderful. There’s a very positive dynamic in the class: they’re very enthusiastic, but easily controlled.
Grazyna (not her real name) has been having problems since the beginning of the school year, and has to struggle to pass. I think she’s one of those of us who have little talent for languages.
Today, I gave her back her test. She made a “three” on it, the equivalent of a “C” in the States.
It was her highest grade ever for a major test in English.
She literally screamed, and her face glowed with the loveliest smile I’ve seen in a long time.
Those are the moments that make teaching my dream job.
Answer 200
In conversations, do you tend to listen or talk more?
“There’s a reason the good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth,” the saying goes. You learn more from listening than from talking, but that’s not the reason I often find myself sitting silent in groups, listening and not participating. Kinga says I should make more of an effort, but the problem is, I’ve found that many times people are talking about something I know nothing about, or (worse) care nothing about. And so I sit and let them do the work of keeping the conversation going.
One-on-one is a different story, though, and Kinga will tell you I can talk up a storm when I’m inspired (read: irritated).
Question 165 Are you well organized? How often do you have to look for your keys?
Group conversation, though, just baffles me. When I first returned to Poland, I thought it was a language issue, that I just wasn’t following everything. I went back to the States the summer of 2002 and one evening, found myself at a bar with a few friends and their friends and other friends of friends–mostly strangers, in other words. My attention drifted from one conversation to another, and I realized that it wasn’t the language in Poland that was messing me up. I’m just not good at “small talk.” I listened intently to what pairs and trios were talking about, and even then I’d have been hard pressed to nail down a sort of thesis statement for the conversation. I simply had no idea what the hell they were talking about.
Small talk is an oxymoron.
I’m not saying that all conversation needs to be about something “deep” (whatever that might mean), but it does need a grounding for me. What that means in practical terms is that I’m very quiet when I’m with a group of people I don’t know. Once I know that someone shares the same interest as I, I begin opening up a bit.
When I do begin talking, I guess I like talking about something meaningful. I once had a very long conversation with a friend of a friend of Kinga’s about forgiveness, what it means, and whether we can truly forgive another person. It was a Highlanders’ party, and Polish Highlanders are like me, squared: very distant and silent (cautious, even) until they get to know you. In that sense, the two of us had a bit of an impetus to our conversation.
Robbed! Robbed, I say!
I once worked at an internet start-up. A “dot-bomb” as the cliche goes, for it eventually fell flat on its face.
I worked in IT the last six or so months I was there, and so I got email from folks I’d never heard from while working as an editor — including the marketing director.
Almost four years ago, I wrote the following in my journal (names changed):
Nothing particularly interesting happened at work this week. In other words, no one got fired. We were induced with ice cream Friday afternoon to be a focus group for “[TheCompany]’s vision” and mission statement and all that jazz. It was David Gordon’s doing – he’s the new director of marketing (or marketing director – I forget which term he prefers and made me correct all references on the web site to). Even if I didn’t know what he does for a living, if I read a couple of his emails I think I’d fairly quickly guess that he’s in marketing. Everything he writes smacks of it – every other word seems to be from some book that might be called Power Words for Marketing Professionals or Words to Make People Remember You, both of which in fact would be filled with cliche© and ridiculous writing. Concerning the “About Us” page on our web site, he forwarded me an email exchange he had with Susan in which she said something about the existing text not achieving the desired effect, to which he responded, “I’ll wordsmith something better.” As I told Eric, it takes a hell of a writer to use “wordsmith” as a noun (which of course it is) and not sound ridiculous. To use it as a verb is absolutely ridiculous. “I’ll wordsmith something”?!?! I can just hear some guy with a comb-over in a marketing class saying, “Don’t ‘write’ anything – wordsmith.” Perhaps he also added, “Don’t ever ‘crap’ – poopsmith.” He also had me put the following punctuation in the email that professors get after getting a free trial:
The double colons are something, as he put it, he picked up recently. You don’t “pick up” punctuation. You pick up gimmicks; you pick up a gallon of milk on your way home for work; you try to pick up women – but you don’t “pick up” new forms of punctuation. He would probably argue that it makes you stand out. “Wordsmith” also makes you stand out, but certainly not in a positive way. And I don’t think profs are going to be sucked in with “clever” (ab)uses of punctuation. Maybe we could end all our sentences with a dash- That would make us stand out- aND THEN WE COULD REVERSE CASE IN EVERYTHING WE WRITE- lASTLY. WE COULD PUT PERIODS WHERE WE NORMALLY PUT COMAS. AND INTENTINALLY MISS-PELL WERDSS TU HELP PEOPLE REMEMBER US-
Username :: WE3F3KJD
Password :: YIRJ3L2N
To be fair, the double-colon thing is fairly common now. I have even used it — gulp. Guess he was vindicated.
But there’s no vindication for me. The Brothers Chaps stole my idea of poopsmith and are making millions with it. Well, at least a living.
Homestar Runnner, I hate you…
It’s the End of the World as We Know It
In Trinity Broadcast Network’s take on the end of the world, we see at the climax of the film the great battle known as Armageddon. Satan is there in full gargoyle attire, directing the Forces of Evil to destroy all that stands in their way. The bright light of Jesus comes and in a montage we see, among other things, Jews praying at the Wailing Wall.
The Real Video version of the video is available here. If you like B-movies, this one is for you. It’s worth it at least to watch the final minutes, so cue it to 1:29 and make sure you don’t have to urinate…
Huh? A great battle within a few miles and they’re praying instead of running for cover?!
This “oversight” is symptomatic of the general Fundamentalist view of the Book of Revelation and the end of the world. The whole scenario is laughable: the Satan unites the duped world into an alliance with him. Those who resist meet on the plains of Megiddo and fight the greatest battle the world has ever seen, cut short by Jesus’ second coming and the banishing of Satan to a bottomless pit.
It’s Lord of the Rings. But to some people, it’s a sure thing. In fact, you can see the rumblings of it already, with the United Nations or the European Union, depending on which breed of Fundamentalist you’re talking to. Soon, a powerful leader will rise and start working miracles and uniting the world with his…
Wait. Let’s think about it for a moment. It’s the twenty-first century. What’s going to happen if someone starts working “miracles?” Anyone hear of James Randi? What’s going to happen if some world leader starts calling on people to worship him?
As for the apocalyptic battle that rages in the Middle East, the notion that all the armies are going to gather on the plains — when was the last time you saw modern warfare conducted like that?
But that basic logic clashes with what the Bible “clearly” says, and so the True Believers stumble on saying that the end is just around the corner. Yet even Jesus seemed to get his timing wrong. Speaking of the end of the world in Matthew’s gospel, he says,
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. (23.34-36)
Later, he utters the same thing: “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (24.34). So for almost two thousand years folks have been saying, “This generation won’t die without seeing the end of the world!”
But that’s neither here nor there. No man knows the hour and all that, but we do know the signs: rebuilding the temple; resurrected Roman Empire; 666; miracle-working world leader who calls himself a god. Or do we? There’s so much hopeless confusion and contradiction in the various end of the world scenarios that it’s difficult to keep a straight face hearing such nonsense.
No one seems to wonder, “Well, if all the pieces of the puzzle can be put together in such different ways, maybe the puzzle itself is broken. Or our understanding of it.”
I’d say it’s a little of both.
Brain Leak
It was bound to happen, I suppose. I’d heard of it, but never thought I’d experience it myself.
I’m forgetting English. Not the whole language of course, but isolated words here and there.
For instance, the other day a student asked me what “zniżka” is in English. I stood there thinking, “What is that? ‘Lowered price?’ ‘Rebate?’ What the hell do they call that, a lowered price. Student’s price?!” I couldn’t remember “discount” to save my life.
Exhibit two: I was making a test key for a first-year class’s test, and I came upon the word “pralka.” “That thing for washing clothes,” I mumbled to myself. I closed my eyes and I could see my in-laws’ sitting there. Clothes washer? Washing machine.
Now this is not to say that my Polish is so dang good that I’m more comfortable speaking it than English. No — quite the opposite. I am to Polish what clear-cutters are to bonsai. But as the saying goes, if you don’t use it, you lose it. Despite my constant reading and writing, words manage to get wedged in my head and I can’t shake the jumble out.
Of course, I have the same problem in Polish. To an exponential degree.