High Seas - Soothing Videos

There is something about this video that I find so calming. I hope that you do too. I've been on a deep sea fishing boat in waves that were 1/10th of these and I hurled for four hours, and yet, even with that experience, I still can't stop watching this video and the one below it.


If you watch this entire video, you will see some beautiful cliffs as they near land, towards the end of the video. I also like the sounds in this one. I think that one of the reasons I like these videos so much is because I can't stop thinking about the big ol' bowl of chowder waiting for these boys back home. You sail seas like that and you have earned a big warm steaming bowl of clam chowder with butter soaked corn bread alongside it.

Blue: Storm over the Pacific

Sunshine and Haze - Charles Courtney Curran

I am so grateful to my mother for filling the home we grew up in with paintings. I can remember sitting at the dining room table, in the living room, or (in the case of the above painting) in the bathroom, staring at and absorbing all these wonderful pictures. There was no modern art, all the paintings that my mom had were the sort that set fire to the imagination, made you ask all sorts of questions. Mostly natural scenes, they were full of life and light. They were of places that I just had to see. As a teenager I was half in love with the woman in this painting (the sweep of her hair, her flushed cheeks, and that dress!) but more than that, I was desperate to sit on that cliff, or one just like it. And since that time, I have; and I appreciated it all the more because of the desire that was born in me so many years ago by this painting.

Indian Call Centers

In a perfect world, my family would live in a tiny, self-contained little town in the mountains. We would buy meat at the butcher shop, our shoes at the cobbler, our cobbler at the bakers', and singing chimney sweeps with English accents would periodically clean our fireplace. Julie Andrews would visit from the local nunnery to home school the kids and if we ever got lost in the mountains on one of our many day trips, we would just hunker down and sing songs about our favorite things until we were rescued by a group of St. Bernards wearing giant flasks filled with Irish Coffee. For reasons unbeknownst to me, this is not the world I find myself in. The world that I do find myself in, however, although far from perfect does have some neat little perks. One such perk is that I can have a problem with a product that I bought at a local store here in Texas and in my quest to solve the problem with said product, end up having a conversation with a gentleman in India. Apparently, I am one of the few Americans who enjoy this neat little facet of globalism.

Exhibit A: from the April 18th edition of the Wall Street Journal,

"Delta Air Lines Inc. said Friday it has stopped using Indian-based call centers to handle sales and reservations, making it the latest U.S. company to decide the cost benefits of directing calls offshore are outweighed by the backlash from customers.

Delta said it stopped routing calls to India-based call centers over the first three months of the year. Customers had complained they had trouble communicating with Indian agents, the airline said. Last month, Chrysler LLC said it would move its customer-service center back from India."

Now I am as opposed to globalism as the next guy but it does have several positive side effects: 1) cargo ships (the coolest things besides trains) 2) the growing Indian and Chinese middle class (both nonexistent 20 years ago) and 3) the fact that I, Johnny Six-Pack can have a conversation with a guy in India. Why does this not blow our minds? "Honey, you'll never believe it - I talked to a guy from Bangalore today!" I was pretty excited to end up talking to a lady out of Vegas when we were having problems with our Internet so I can only imagine how cool that it would be to get to talk to a guy from India. The main thing I would want to know is what he had for breakfast. The likelihood that I will ever get to make one of these calls is pretty slim as I tend to avoid the phone as if it were the source of the swine flu. But if I did, I think I would imagine my global counterpart taking a break for tea and a cigarette shortly after our call. I imagine him out on the terrace of a shiny new building overlooking the lights of the city under a waxing moon. As a dog barks in the distance, there is the sound of a horn honking and a man shouting (without anger). The heavy air is occasionally cooled by a breeze freighted with the scent of hundreds of wood burning fires, diesel, feces and spices. In the foreground an in ground sprinkler pops up and begins to water the manicured lawn of the business complex. He smiles as he drinks his tea, it is his favorite time of the day, quiet... He tilts his head back and exhales, stubs out his cigarette and prepares himself to go in and talk to more rude Americans. "That last guy was funny, wanted to know what I had for breakfast", he thinks. He laughs and shakes his head, "Americans..." he mumbles as he walks back into the air conditioned complex.

This is why I love Indian call centers.

Simple Pleasures: Redbird

It comes as grace, this flit of red amongst the green. An undeserved moment of beauty that reminds me of the One who sees me. No matter what is going on in my life, how down I am, the gift of the redbird never fails to lift my spirit. Everything falls away, and for those brief moments, it is just me, the bird, and the Maker.

Drawing by Heather Ward

Crunchy Cons

While trying to find some Sowell or Helprin in the bookstore today I ran across a book called Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher. The book jacket caught my attention so I looked him up when I got home and found the following on Mr. Drehers' blog at National Review Online. Some of these I really agree with and some not so much. I have put my thoughts in parenthesis after his.

A Crunchy Con Manifesto
By Rod Dreher
(hijacked by the Ditchdigger)

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly. (I'm automatically suspicious of anyone who can see more clearly than others so this one rubs me the wrong way. How bout: 1. We are conservatives who believe in the freedoms and responsibilities espoused by the founding fathers well over two hundred years ago; therefore, we would like to peel back the manifold layers of "progress" that have buried the simple beauty of their original vision.)

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character. (If he had said Modern Americans (accumulation of stuff) or Modern Republicans (power.) instead of Modern conservatism then I would have to agree. However modern conservatism to me consists of a pretty small group who is far more concerned with the content of our character than either power or money. I'm thinking specifically of the Big 3 that I listen to, Bill Bennett, Dennis Prager (especially Prager), and Glenn Beck. Or of the greatest living mind on the right, Thomas Sowell who has taught me that economic and human liberty go hand in hand.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government. (Nine months ago it would have been a lot easier to instantly agree with this one. The slight pause I now feel is probably just a reaction to the current hostilities (French Revolution Part Deux). Yes, I do agree that big business deserves as much skepticism as big government, however the one thing that big business has that big government will never have is - competition. I believe in competition because in the long run it keeps you, me, and them honest. Having said that, I'll never forget what the old farmer said to me, "more money has been stolen at the end of the pen than at the end of the sword." True for both big business and big government, although as we are witnessing now with the differing response to the AIG and Fannie and Freddie bonuses - only the private sector ends up paying for their sins (which again proves the point that ultimately big business, although deserving of skepticism, is still far superior to big government). Might I add one sentence to #3? - And may the unions meet the fate of pirates.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics. (Sounds sweet but I disagree. Just ask the dude in Bamiyan, Afghanistan who watched the Taliban blow up a couple of 1,500 year old statues back in March of 2001, or the nature loving Chinese guy who used to love paddling his boat along the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges area before the government destroyed it with the Three Gorges Dam. No, culture is elevated by sound politics and economics and destroyed by the lack of. The principles of personal, political, and economic freedom that this country were founded on explain the difference today between the United States and Russia, or Haiti, Cuba, Somalia, North Korea, Venezuela, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan et cetera, et cetera...) Switch the politics and economics for the last two hundred fifty years or so and we not they would be the ones living in fear, poverty, corruption, and repression. Ideas matter and ideas have consequences, something that we have had the luxury of being able to forget. I would amend this one to say 4. Sound politics and economic principles based on individual liberty will create a common culture of excellence that binds many diverse people together in a harmony seen nowhere else.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative. (Finally, I agree 100%.) (p.s. - global warming is still a hoax.)

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract. (I am not alone, I am not alone! Oh, I just want to read this one over and over again. Perfect. And the inclusion of the words "almost always" covers me on the apparent conflict with this statement and my upcoming blog post about my love of Indian call centers.)

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency. (Yes, yes, yes!!! A thousand times yes!)

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom. (You had me at #6 and yet, they keep coming! I was actually thinking about this yesterday morning; Jennifer Aniston could kill Angelina Jolie with a roadside IED and then kidnap all of her adopted children and run off to Mexico and live in the desert like a bandito with her clan of kidnapped children, get caught by Dog the Bounty Hunter and sentenced to die in the electric chair, request a last meal of chicken fried steak, rhubarb pie and Dr. Pepper and then get fried herself in a Texas state prison as Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins lay chained together weeping and shouting in protest at the prison gates before they immolated themselves and I still wouldn't care anymore than I do that this is the mother of all run on sentences.)

9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.” (Yessiree, small and local, uh huh.)

10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives. (I am going to ignore the first five words because technically they are correct and the rest of this is wonderful.)

And although Rod Dreher ducks down and hides everytime I say it; "I'm a Crunchy Con! I'm a Crunchy Con!"