Month: May 2019

Pretty Pike

May 28, 2019 / / 0 Comments

In the fishing store on the north end of Red Deer, Alberta is a photo of a 3 pound pike on the line that has been reeled up to the side of the boat.  No big deal, but the photo shows a 50-plus pounder hitting the smaller fish like it was bait.  This picture is awesome.  And it perfectly illustrates my impressions of the Great Northern Pike.

The Great Northern Pike, or just plain Pike has a head like an alligator and it’s got a lot of teeth.  This is where the similarities end, because compared to the pike, an alligator is affectionate and cuddly.

In that same tackle shop you can by flies for any kind of fly fishing for any season.  They have a “fly” for the pick too–a mouse.  On the wall, you can get a lure that, as it moves through the water, imitates the movement of little cute baby ducklings.  Yes, pike will eat mice and ducklings.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they at the feet off of geese just to be mean.

Pike are Mean

One time, I was fighting a rambunctious pike for a few minutes.   Given the bend of my rod, he was a big one.  Horsing him to the boat with 50lb. test line with a 3″ yellow Five of Diamonds treble-hooked spoon.  I pulled him right to the edge of the boat and we looked into each others eyes.  His eyes held malevolence.  Mine astonishment.  He had the spoon in his mouth sideways.  He isn’t hooked at all.  The hook dangles uselessly beyond its left cheek.  He’s holding onto the tackle, just because he doesn’t want me to have it.  Sensing the net coming under him, he just let go of the lure and, obviously miffed,  swam off.

Another time, after fishing an area for a while, we decided to try another area of the lake.  My buddy Keith set down his rod and went to drive the boat to the other side of the lake.  As we get up to cruising speed, I get this silly idea of casting  in my spoon.  We might have been going 20 km/hr.  My rod is bent by the drag on the large spoon and hook.  All of a sudden, my rod bends double.  “Fish on,” I yell.  Keith is surprised, and kills the engine.  I have a large pike on the line.  What’s going on in this fishes head, when he attacks a lure travelling at 20km/hr?  Nothing but loathing for anything that moves, is all I can figure.

I caught a 5 pound pike while fishing from a canoe.  I strung a leader though it’s gills and paddled home.  Perhaps it was primal instinct that caused me to occasionally I looked back to look at the fish.  Never turn your back to the enemy.  It’s eyes were filled with malice and as he trailed behind the canoe, I began to feel more like prey than predator.  I swear I heard raspy whispers of threatened revenge bubbling up from behind me.  I got safely to shore and prepared the fish for the barbecue.  When I through the head into the woods, one of the razor sharp teeth hooked my finger and left a nasty wound.  Was this carelessness on my part, or was it a posthumous act of revenge?  The latter is consistent with my experience.

Poet Stevie Smith is familiar with the pike.  Here poem “Pretty” contain these lines:

And in the pretty pool the pike stalks
He stalks his prey, and this is pretty too,
The prey escapes with an underwater flash
But not for long, the great fish has him now
The pike is a fish who always has his prey
And this is pretty.

The pike is not pretty.  Smith knows this.

Here’s her poem, “Pretty.”

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Shark Week? BORING!! Pike Week! Fishing stories about one of the most dangerous denizens of the lake. Pike are mean. #PikeAndPoetry #Fishing ” quote=”Shark Week? BORING!! Pike Week! Fishing stories about one of the most dangerous denizens of the lake. Pike are mean. “]

This is Us, in Space–Star Trek Discovery

May 19, 2019 / / 0 Comments

xusenru / Pixabay

I know I would hate This is Us.  The trailers show a bunch of face actors disgorging feelings onto each other.  The plot elements exist only to generate intense emotional communication opportunities for pairs of characters.  Barf.

This may be unfair to This is Us; I haven’t seen it, but I have seen Star Trek Discovery and this is exactly what it’s like.

It’s so bad, I can’t bring myself to rewatch the final episode so as to support my assertions.  It would be too much to bear a second viewing.

I seem to remember hearing that Star Trek: The Next Generation had a team of super-nerd, Star Trek geeks fact functioning as a sort of a quality control committee.  Well, there is no such committee on Discovery.

The writers of this latest Star Trek installment are not governed by precedents established by previous Star Treks.  It’s not even governed by the universal principles of good writing or those of common sense.

Should the Admiral or the Captain sacrifice their life for the good of the ship?  Hmmm–obviously there is no Star Fleet protocol to help make this decision–the only thing we can do is have a discussion in which we set out our emotional appeals in the hopes of the other seeing the power of our emotional position.  This all while the ship is in imminent peril.

Oh, let’s not forget the context of this conversation.  The ship is in the middle of a fight for its life.  Why are the admiral and the captain the only two people who can work on the little problem of an unexploded photon torpedo stuck in the hull?  Aren’t their thousands of guys in red shirts that can do this?  At least have some engineer there to work on the door.  Barf.

Oh, and where do faulty photon torpedos come from?  Does that make sense?  This plot element is great for a WWI movie, or Gilligan’s Island, but not the Star Trek Universe.  The whole plot is like this. Contrived, contrived, contrived.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”There are all sorts of peril in Star Trek Discovery, but despite the urgency of the situation, there’s always time to stand face to face and explore feelings. #StarTrek #Discovery #StarTrekDiscovery” quote=”There are all sorts of peril in Star Trek Discovery, but despite the urgency of the situation, there’s always time to stand face to face and explore feelings.”]

I remember when Star Trek was about a five-year mission to “explore strange new worlds/To seek out new life/And new civilizations/To boldly go where no man has gone before.”  Not so with Discovery.

They have no time to explore the universe, they are too busy standing about with watery eyes and quivering lips, yapping about their feelings.  Even Spock.   Barf.  With this show, any new life and new civilization we encounter is just a catalyst for a long self-indulgent simpering, and exposition.

When they aren’t standing face-to-face talking about their feelings, they are standing face-to-face explaining things.

“We can’t do this and this because of that and that, so we have no alternative but to do this and this makes me feel deeply, so deeply that I must unpack my feelings onto you, and the viewing audience, before I do what needs to be done.”

Barf.

But I really like Captain Pike (Anson Mount).

I suppose it’s too much to hope that all the shows current writers and controllers followed Michael Burnham and Discovery into the time-space wormhole leaving Captain Pike and the Enterprise to be the subject of a New Star Trek series.

And then we can follow Spock’s advice and “never to speak of Discovery, its Spore Drive, or her crew again, under penalty of treason.”

 

Driving and Character

May 14, 2019 / / 0 Comments

A few days ago, I was driving down the highway.  I was in the right lane where I was supposed to be.  I came up behind a slower moving vehicle, who was driving where he was supposed to be.  I put on my signal, checked my blind spots, and merged left.  There was a  guy in that lane who saw what I was doing and sped up to close the gap so I couldn’t get in front of him.  I wasn’t having any of that.  Neither was he.  He laid on the horn as if to inform me of his presence.  This was unnecessary; I already knew he was there.  Perhaps he was angry that I would presume to move in front of him.  I was angry that he had claimed the left lane as his own.  I gave him the universal, “Give me a break and quit being a jerk” sign.

I’m not saying I behaved generously in this situation.  I am saying that the other guy didn’t.

I contend that North American roads and traffic rules create competitors.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”North American roads and traffic rules create mindless competitors. I am farthest from Heaven when I am driving. In Cornwall, I experienced liturgical driving.” quote=”North American roads and traffic rules create mindless competitors. I am farthest from Heaven when I am driving. In Cornwall, I experienced liturgical driving.”]

I was driving in Cornwall last summer and there is no space for this approach.  Cornwall roads promote collaborators.

The roads are intended for traffic in two directions, but it is only wide enough to accommodate a single car–a very little one.  And there is no shoulder, only stone wall covered in spiny vegetation–these are called hedges.

The speed limit is 60 km/hr. and I found myself, on day one, sitting on the right side of the car, shifting with my left hand (manual transmission of course–automatics were almost twice the money).  Theoretically, I was supposed to be driving on the right side of the road, but there was no right side of the road, or left side, in Cornwall.

The way you passed another vehicle was with the use of pull-outs.  a pull-out is about 11 inches longer than the car you are driving.  If a car came up from behind, you simply used the next pull out to let them pass.  I used them regardless of what side they were on.  I think this was appropriate.

When you encounter an oncoming vehicle someone needs to use a pull-out.

    • You advance to the next pull-out and let him by.
    • He advances to the next pull-out and lets you by.
    • You back to the next pull-put and let him by.
    • He backs to the next pull-out and lets you by.

The relative positions of each car to the closest pull-out is often the determiner.  But with experienced Cornwall drivers, it all happens very quickly with some flashing of headlights as a means of communication.  They can often get past each other with hardly a reduction of speed.  But if backing up is required, it’s somehow clear who is doing it, again with a flash of the headlight, and it’s sorted in no time.

The key to the whole system is cooperation.  The guy refuses to accommodate, or back up, will snag the whole system and nobody will get anywhere.

The system demands cooperation.

I can’t help but wonder if this sort of daily cooperation begins to change a person.  Every day they must work with others to achieve mutual benefit.

I wonder if the daily competitive, “me first” refusal to accommodate shapes a persons view of the world, even to the level of his identity.

Why no honour cords?

May 7, 2019 / / 0 Comments

McElspeth / Pixabay

Not too long ago at my school, the graduates who had a GPA higher than a 3.6 wore gold chords around their necks at the graduation ceremony.

Ridiculous idea, I know, but we’ve remedied that now.

Some students continue to ask why we discontinued the practice.  They, and sometimes their parents, feel they have worked very hard to earn a good GPA and ought to be recognized as a reward for their effort and persistence.  They think it’s stupid that to abandoned honour cords just to spare the feelings of those who did not earn them.

Here’s what I tell them:

We got rid of the honour cords because they go against the philosophy of our Christian school.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Some people worked very hard to get above a 3.6 GPA, others hardly worked for it at all.   And we did not get rid of honour cords to spare anybody’s feelings. #honorchords #graduation” quote=”Some people worked very hard to get above a 3.6 GPA, others hardly worked for it at all.   And we did not get rid of honour cords to spare anybody’s feelings.”]

Essential Skills and Unique Gifts

One of the purposes of every school is to develop important skills and abilities.  We want students to have acquired the essential skills by the time they graduate, whether they are naturally gifted with them or not.

But just as important, perhaps more, is we want to help students discover and develop the unique gifts that God has given them.

Some receive a few gifts, others, many.  The number of gifts or their quality has nothing to do with merit.  It’s all grace.  All gifts are free and all gifts are valuable.

Our Father in Heaven gives his children many gifts. Some receive gifts that make them good with people, others make them creative or athletic.  The list is very long.  Some of God’s gifts help students to be very successful academically.

If all gifts come from God why would we honour just the few that help a student to get high marks?

Honour cords do exactly this.

All of the Student

The school is also interested in the growth and development of the whole student.   not just their minds.  Human beings are multifaceted–one whole, many parts.  Jesus names the parts in Mark 12:30-31 (NKJV): heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

The whole student matters to God.  The whole student matters to the parents who send these kids to our school.  The whole student, then, is what the school seeks to nurture and challenge.

If the school’s focus is the whole student, why would we celebrate just one aspect of a students at the graduation ceremony?

Honour cords do exactly this.

All of the Students

We seek to nurture every student.

This is why we offer such a wide variety of programs and extra-curricular activities: Textiles and Mechanics, Art and Music, Sports teams and Drama productions, and this is just the beginning. Yes, and we offer a wide variety of traditionally academic classes, every student is challenged in a lot of different directions.  Students work very hard in all of these areas.

Does it make sense to celebrate just the hard work of some?

We celebrate the hard work of all students, regularly and in many ways.

But we don’t do it at the graduation ceremony.

The graduation ceremony is not about individual recognition.  It is, rather, the celebration of the class as a whole.  The graduation ceremony is a community celebration.  The community gathers, not just to see “their grad” cross the stage, but to celebrate “Our Grads” as we mark this important moment in their lives.

The uniform of caps and gowns appropriately balances the attention on the individuals and the Class of 20– as a whole.

It doesn’t make much sense to add an accessory to the graduation uniform that draws attention to the hard work of just some of the students, honouring just one narrow set of gifts, relating to only one part of the student.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”It doesn’t make much sense to add an accessory (#honorcords) to the graduation uniform that draws attention to the hard work of just some of the students, honouring just one gift, relating to only one aspect of the student. #graduation ” quote=”It doesn’t make much sense to add an accessory to the graduation uniform that draws attention to the hard work of just some of the students, honouring just one gift, relating to only one aspect of the student.    “]

This is why we’ve done away with honour cords.

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