Proselytizing and Women

Whenever a woman tries to tell me about God and Jesus Christ, I am reminded of Paul's first letter to Timothy, Chapter 2, verses 11-12.

A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

Under the strict interpretation, this only applies to religious teachings, as this chapter of the letter to Timothy is only about religious matters. Under a more broad interpretation, such as the interpretation of a dream Peter had leading to Christians abandoning dietary laws, this applies to all matters... a woman is to submit to men.

The real question is whether I will ever have the guts to remind a proselytizing woman of this.

What are Soldiers Fighting For?

Here is the oath of enlistment for members of the United States military:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Here is the oath of commissioned officers in the United States military:

I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.

Here is the presidential oath, as prescribed by the Constitution:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

One does not need to be a scholar to see that nowhere in any of these oaths does it say defend the people of the United States of America. Why is that? That is because defending the citizens of the United States is not the military's concern. It hasn't been since the 9th state signed on to the Constitution.

Why does this matter at all? It matters because our military's role is to defend the ideal, not the people. Our military's role is to defend the methods by which this land is governed, the ideals by which this land is governed and the freedoms believed to be so important that they were either in the original document (habeas) or were later added (Bill of Rights, suffrage, freedom from slavery) within this piece of land.

The military is not fighting for the tribe. The United States military is NOT fighting in an "us against them" battle. It is fighting to defend the values, not the people. If it were about the people, then rules of engagement would not matter. Treaties signed in accordance with the Constitution would not matter. All that would matter is the defense of the people.

This is why the argument about "they cut our heads off, and we just dunk their heads in water" doesn't hold. Our military is not about just proving we are the dominant tribe. Our military is supposed to be about the ideal, and you cannot defend an ideal by going against that ideal. When you do, you are truly no better than those whom you fight.

The End Has Come

My time in North Georgia will be ending quickly.

I was RIF'd.

Need Someone to Explain

For the second year, I need some help with this...

Why, here in the bible belt where Catholicism is treated as if it is worse than ignorance (since, you know, Mary was just a vessel for Jesus, since women have no use other than childbirth, so why celebrate a woman for doing her duty?) is the most celebrated of Catholic saints being glorified so colorfully?

Of course, I did see one person wearing an orange shirt, which is either a sign of naivete or a direct slam against the Irish Catholics that love this day.

Last Night For Boskey Radio West

March 24th, 2005, I proved to myself that I could indeed learn how to set up an internet audio stream, and Boskey Radio West was born. I had hoped that it would help me keep a connection with Chicago,as I had just moved to Seattle 9 weeks prior.

It was Boskey Radio West because my father, like myself, was using an FM transmittor in Mokena so that he and others could hear his music from anywhere, and also for awhile was streaming on Pirate Radio. So being west of him, I decided to go with Boskey Radio West.

There have been some great times on the stream.

• The Ask Fig Show, which started November 10, 2005
• The Jeff Daniels interview with Fig and Pivoney
• Being asked to syndicate The Directors Cut
• The 2nd Jeff Daniels interview, solo
• Filming Hunter Weeks' 10 Yards, a spot I got in no small part due to the 1/2 hour recap I would do each week
• Transmitting the 2007 Junior National Curling Championships
• The Iwanski/Winter show, which started January 29, 2007

I had a fabulous time doing it. I like to think I learned a lot about what radio producers, station managers, and talent really have to do in order to make a station or a show run smoothly.

What I never really got though was listenership. Boskey Radio West is a relic from a time long ago when people listened to all kinds of music. That's not what people do anymore. I was competing against mp3 players and other more specific streams, like Pandora. Those streams cater to a specific genre, or in the case of some streams, they actually try to figure out what you might like and play that for you. That was never what I wanted. I wanted to expose listeners to music across the board, and with requests, be able to expose people to the music other people liked. Unfortunately, that idea never really caught on. The number of people listening never really grew.

The costs did though. I spent thousands of dollars on equipment, so that I could handle the radio shows. 4 computers, 1 for the feed in from the cohosts, 1 to take calls from regular phones, 1 to aggregate the sound from each computer and to record, and 1 to take all that and stream out. I bought a mixing board so that I could take all the feeds in. I bought a smaller mixing board, wireless microphones, wireless headsets, a laptop, and wireless broadband so I could handle remote broadcasts.

The cost of music is something else. Luckily, I already owned a majority of the music I play, but I was dedicated to getting any music that someone requested. Then throw on the royalties. Unlike regular radio, that pays only the composers, streaming music also pays the artist that recorded it.

In the end, I have to pull the plug. There is no light at the end of the tunnel that I can see, where people will suddenly say "yeah, I want 70s radio again" where you can hear Jive Bunny and the Master Mixers followed by Louis Jordan followed by a Christmas song followed by the Beatles. If people don't listen, I can't even attract enough advertising or sponsorship to pay just the royalties.

So tonight will be the end. I will be live on the stream, audio only, until just after midnight Eastern. I'll do for 5 hours tonight what I never really did while I had the station going. I'm going to be the DJ. I'll take requests via email, via the website, or you can call in to 877-BRW-TUNE and make a request or just chat for a minute or two.

Thank you to everyone who supported Boskey Radio West during its time.

Closeness and Connection

As many of you might know, my cousin (1st cousin to be specific) Kevin passed away suddenly last Friday, from as of yet unknown causes. The autopsy was inconclusive, which I hope means that foul play, drugs, and meningitis (I assume they would test for this immediately because of how contagious it is) were all eliminated. Toxicology results will be back in 4-6 weeks.

When I would tell people my cousin died suddenly, the first two questions were stock.

"How old was he?" He was 21.

"Was he ill?" As far as I know, he did not have any condition that is associated with killing young people.

The third question is the one that would always trip me up.

"Were you close?"

It's such a relative question, how do you answer it? What are the criteria for determining whether two people are close? Is it how often you talk to the person? Is it how comfortable you are in their presence? Is it the bond you feel with them?

Most of the time, I would avoid the question, or I would say "close enough" because it's such a hard question to answer. I'm 14 years older than Kevin, and for 99% of the time we were over 240 miles apart. We could talk sports, of which Kevin was very knowledgeable for as long as we had conversations. We talked colleges when he told me he was going to Grand Valley State, and then going to Michigan St. We talked fantasy football, and he was my team's general manager the first year I won the championship in 2005. However, there's no way I could say I was a mentor to him, or some kind of guiding light for him. He didn't look to me for advice or anything that some would define as being close when you have one person being an adult and another being a child then teen in a familial relationship.

That said, just on a feeling basis, I felt a connection to Kevin. When I got married in 1998, I broke my own "no kid" (kid defined as under 13) rule by inviting Kevin at age 11. The official reason was that his sister and brother, both older than 13, were invited and it would be difficult on his family if they couldn't bring Kevin. That was political BS. I wanted Kevin there. My Christmas season was always defined by when Kevin's family was coming in to visit their paternal family for the holidays. I like to see everyone in my family, but I always felt it was very important to see their family, because when they came to town, a year disappeared from the time since I last saw my cousins. We all grew a year older, but my brothers and I and Billy, Kristie, and Kevin all fell right in, as if we saw each other every week. When they would come in for the Bears-Lions game, the emotion put forth by Kevin and Billy for those games reminded me of my own emotion in sporting events.

When he was younger, Kevin had the hyperactivity and immaturity that you might find in any child. He was exceedingly polite, but he was a bundle of energy. He grew out of that obviously, he finally stopped biting my coat during Bears games, but it warmed my heart to see him deal with the exact same hyperactivity from our cousin Olivia that he gave to Derek and me. There was no animosity towards Olivia at all about it. A little eye-rolling because he wanted a break, but nothing mean. That kind of playing though builds a bond, whether it was Kevin building the bond with Derek and me, or in reversed roles, him building the bond with Olivia.

From what I've been told, Kevin passed that bond on too to the next generation, by always being willing to play with the kids that would visit up at their family vacation home "up north" near Alpena, much the same way as I unknowingly try to do with my brother's children and my cousins' children.

So like I said, I don't think that my relationship with Kevin would meet all definitions of close, because there was much we did not share. I felt a bond though that I hope he felt as well. I still feel the bond, and probably will until my last days. We would spend 24 hours as being close, then drift apart for a year, then be just as close again. To me, that's having a connection, and in the context of how something like this affects me, is just as important.

Quote from Leon Panetta

During his confirmation hearing for head of the CIA.

"But very frankly, you have to make waves. When you're not asking questions, when you're not challenging, that's when we make mistakes."