A Selection of Varied Topics

Perspective [maybe]

2011-07-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

Today I came across this article about child brides in India and Middle Eastern countries. Besides being shocked at a practice I knew existed but have never thought much about, I was of course reminded of patriocentricity.

At first I was struck by how good we have it in the US, even most girls in patriocentric households, in comparison to girls in other parts of the world. And that's a valuable reminder.

At the same time...that article reeks of patriocentricity. Every description of the mindset, if not the customs, in those cultures exactly matches that of patriocentricity.

Forced early marriage thrives to this day in many regions of the world—arranged by parents for their own children, often in defiance of national laws, and understood by whole communities as an appropriate way for a young woman to grow up when the alternatives, especially if they carry a risk of her losing her virginity to someone besides her husband, are unacceptable.

The husbands may be...abductors who rape first and claim their victims as wives afterward, as is the practice in certain regions of Ethiopia.

Well this doesn't sound at ALL like the Old Testament laws, does it!

Deut. 22: ²⁸ If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, ²⁹ he shall pay her father fifty shekels^[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

Remember this too: The very idea that young women have a right to select their own partners—that choosing whom to marry and where to live ought to be personal decisions, based on love and individual will—is still regarded in some parts of the world as misguided foolishness.

Some parts of the world. I take a sarcastic amusement in the shock that the author of this article would display at some of the patriocentric nonsense available right here in the US.

He regarded me dubiously. "You have children?" he asked.

Two, I said, and the sheikh looked dismayed. "Only two!" He tipped his head toward a young woman nursing a baby in one arm while fending off two small children with the other. "This young lady is 26," he said. "She has had ten."

The sheikh made various pronouncements concerning marriage. He said no father ever forces his daughter to marry against her will. He said the medical dangers of early childbirth were greatly exaggerated.

I am reminded of Debi Pearl's claim that the supposed dangers of multiple and too-frequent childbirths are negligible, compared to the more important 'eternal' consequences of not being quiverfull.

"If there were any danger in early marriage, Allah would have forbidden it," a Yemeni member of parliament named Mohammed Al-Hamzi told me in the capital city of Sanaa one day. "Something that Allah himself did not forbid, we cannot forbid."Al-Hamzi, a religious conservative, is vigorously opposed to the legislative efforts in Yemen to prohibit marriage for girls below a certain age (17, in a recent version), and so far those efforts have met with failure.

This last statement leaves me completely confused. At one time, I wish patriocentrists would take this approach: if God did not forbid women to work outside the home, go to college, or limit the number of children they have...why should we forbid it? On the other hand, the negative effects of this sort of thinking are evident in the above example: if we think that we can only make decisions on topics the Bible specifically speaks to, we will perpetually ignore real problems.

Anyways, in conclusion...it's horrible to think that girls are undergoing real abuse in this way. [That is where a patriocentrist would leave it, probably with a subtle or not-so-subtle insinuation that the daughters of patriocentricity never undergo real abuse.]

It is also horrible to remember that patriocentrists often share the same harmful values that drive families in India or Yemen to deny their daughters education, worth and freedom.

My most inflammatory post yet

2011-06-27T00:17:00.000-07:00

Recent exploits include... [oh those famous words]

-An assortment of graduation festivities including my own rather small grad party, which was followed by a roof-raising barn dance attended with dear buddy Eva and spent alternately catching up with old friends and dancing with Joseph of Road to Freedom and other fame.

-Summer vacation in Southern California. We decided to leave on very very short notice, in the midst of homeschool book sales, robotics events, and other fun things. The first night was spent in Willows CA, a Northern California town of the rice-farms-and-train-tracks variety. A column of flying bugs formed in the streetlight, we went for a walk and were shrieked at twice by the occupants of cars passing in the night, and I swam in the hotel pool [unfathomably warm to this sun-starved child of the PNW]. The next day dawned predictably warm and sunny but by evening we were shivering in the coastal fog of San Luis Obispo [and, in my case, sitting dejectedly in the hotel room in a patriarchy-induced gloom]. Next day, after an exciting incident during my [brief] stint as driver, an undisclosed number of bottles of coconut juice, and a lot of Tom Petty enthusiasm, we reached our destination at my grandparents' assisted-living residence near the beach. Ensconced in the hotel down the hill, we spent the next few days making forays to various posh areas of the county for shopping, food, and swimming. I notably managed to avoid getting a sunburn.
On the way back home, armed with nectarines, sandy flipflops, and still more coconut juice, I spent my time alternately between driving and brooding over an imposing to-do list in my notebook.
Some of this immensely productive time closeted in close proximity to a notebook resulted in the start of a few unpolished thoughts regarding the patriarchy movement.

One of the homeschool book sales boasted about six copies of Debi Pearl's Created to Be His Helpmeet, thankfully the work of only one seller [who probably invested in them all to dispense to her friends...one can only hope she changed her mind later]. Never having read the infamous work, I skimmed through a copy. The chapter I read was on chastity, which the author appears to think revolves solely around modesty, in the case of women.
Note: potentially offensive material below. Offensive to any thinking person who isn't used to hearing women compared to animals, that is.

Claim: the verse that says a man who lusts after a woman has committed adultery with her in his heart, means that the woman is complicit [complicit: adj. or noun, depending on whether you are talking to Bethany or my dictionary, meaning to blame, in league, culpable, guilty with another party]. The woman is consenting and complicit in the adultery because the phrase is 'adultery WITH her', not 'adultery AGAINST her'.

My response:
Your reasoning is only valid if there are other uses of the two phrases, to mean different things. There aren't. Can you give me even one example of 'adultery against' being used? So therefore, if it doesn't exist, you can't argue that the other phrase means anything out of the ordinary.
Second point: if Jesus was truly saying that the woman was also to blame....he would have said that right out, SURELY, especially if it was such a vital point.
[Note from the devil's advocate: this begs the question, if the woman truly isn't to blame, then why isn't it called rape and not adultery? A disturbing question, except that punishments for adultery were more severe than for rape, I believe.]

Claim: actually this isn't a claim, this is an out-and-out lie. This amazing chapter on chastity attempts to scare and insult women into 'modesty'. There are various excerpts from readers' letters, mostly men. They twice refer to women as pigs [and as a 'cow']. Why? Just why, do the worst insults towards women always revolve around characterizing them as animals? The first instance was a letter from a man who was enraged at an immodestly dressed woman: he called her 'cow' and 'pig' in his mind. Dear Debi Pearl somehow thought this worthy of publishing and impressing on the minds of young women. Thank you for adding one more voice to the thousands that scream at women, from inside and out of their heads. Now she has another 'biblically' sanctioned name to call herself.
The second reference came from a man who just hates to see women let their belly fat show. He goes on to say that it reminds him of the gold ring in the sow's snout analogy. [I believe he compares the women themselves to the sows, but even if he doesn't the image is clear enough.] This reader states that he 'doesn't mind the fact that they're fat so much, but that they flaunt it like they think it's hot' [paraphrased]. These fat-flaunting women [does such a thing exist?] remind him of 'biscuits with the uncooked dough popping out the middle' [paraphrased].
Does this even need refuting? Probably not, but I can't resist.
1) How about overweight men who let their belly fat show, also with apparent pride? By his standard, women should be telling them that THEY certainly aren't hot, and remind them of their own resemblance to biscuit dough.
2) Thank you for yet another condemnation of women judged to be overweight. Rest assured that your sense of duty has also served to attack women who consider themselves fat, often with no cause. Like the first reader, you've just thrown one more stone.
3) This is an arguable point, but...who gets to decide what is 'hot'? Hasn't the American media been doing a darn good job of that for years, without your chiming in? Wouldn't it be revolutionary if the people themselves were allowed to decide if they were 'hot'? Of course, it may not be semantically possible for a person to judge themselves attractive or not, assuming that means 'attractive to other people', but even so: attractive is entirely a matter of personal taste. And that may just mean that that roll of belly fat that reminds you of biscuit dough and swine could be hugely attractive to the next man.

One of my little projects on the trip to Cal was to attempt to show that the God of the Bible doesn't hate and detest women. It's still a work in progress. [Not sure how much of a joke that is supposed to be.] But here is a point: women are never referred to as animals in the Bible. That mention of rings and pig's noses? 'Like a gold ring in a swine's snout, is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion' [Proverbs]. The comparison is actually gold ring == woman, pig's snout == lack of discretion. Now it is difficult to tell where to draw the line between just being a gold ring, and being defined by being in a pig's snout, but I think it is pushing it far to say that the Bible calls women pigs [which neither Pearl nor the readers ever claimed: they just assumed it].

[Another note from the devil's advocate: the Israelites would detest the very thought of swine, which were so unclean in their culture: along with menstruating women, of course. See why I said the whole proving-the-Bible-loves-women project was a work in progress?]

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Advertisement break! The notebook here has a page that reads:
Every child is an engineer. Somewhere along the way they learn that STEM is 1) hard 2) needs math 3) is not cool.
We need to make engineering: not easy, you can't just ignore math, but it can be cool AND needs to be shown to be relevant, fun; whatever it is to young kids.

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Back to the patriarchy war:

The next installment came after I'd gotten my unfortunate paws on Nancy Leigh DeMoss's book, 'Lies Women Believe', which, I must add, our college pastor mentioned favorably in his address today. I always get worried whenever any pastor besides our regular one stands up in the pulpit and it's usually with good cause.

DeMoss says that what we really need to do is not love ourselves in order to love others, but love ourselves less. She claims that it is impossible for a person to hate themselves [and makes the requisite disdainful mention of 'modern psychology'], because 'no man ever hated his own body, but loves and cares for it'. Thus, low self esteem is nonsense, we never need to love ourselves more, etc etc.

I'm not sure I can argue that in all senses it is possible to hate yourself. However, how do you deal with suicide and self-injury? Would anyone injure or kill someone they really loved? I can't imagine it. How can you argue that someone who committed suicide really loved and thought too highly of themselves?
Oh, and if I wanted to parse words in the same way that patriocentrists do...I could claim that because that verse talks to MEN, it refers only to the male gender and not to women. [So women are able to hate themselves, just not men.] Just like the pastoral books of the New Testament were written only to men [and don't apply to women] because they're addressed to 'brothers'. Makes no sense..but it does in their heads.

While I'm at it, collecting incoherent random bits of thoughts...here is a shameless plug for Hillary McFarland's book Quivering Daughters, just because I saw a post from the patrio lady who wrote to rather viciously attack said book back in the fall. She [patrio lady] says that she doesn't even want to mention that book's name because no publicity is worse than bad publicity.

With that.....I depart.

Epic times in St Louis!

2011-05-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

INSTA-POST! Just add water! It will be short..

In the last few months I have:

-received a full scholarship from LeTourneau University, which pretty much sealed my decision to go there. I've since gotten a few more scholarships to help with room and board. I'm shipping out at the end of August.

-been to FIRST International Championships, with Team 1510 from Portland area, where I had a FABULOUS time chatting up VIPs, attending Dean's List events, going to team-social shindigs, cheering myself hoarse even though I didn't have a team there, collecting a cadre of male teenage hangers-on, staying up all night talking aided by 5-Hour Energy, getting my picture taken with Woodie Flowers [FIRST fans, please squeal], and generally raising the roof in St. Looey, as I stubbornly keep mispronouncing it.

-been on the verge of A Serious Relationship/ Courtship / Intentional Dating / SOMETHING. Okay, I actually still am on the verge, it's just being postponed slightly...by like three years....whatever. I'm babbling now, but it's been quite the epic few weeks. Okay, no, make that 'quite the epic YEAR'. Ladies, you may now squeal, the lad is really rather awesome. And I'm not saying more because I object to emoting about relationships on my blog ;)

-in lighter news, I've been asked to prom [by one of the more favored hangers-on collected in St. Looey] and am in a delirious girly frenzy of DRESS and TRESS and STRESS, aided and abetted by the occasional call to stalwart buddy Eva ['Squee! Hair! Robots! I hate shopping! Purty dress! Eee!' ad nauseum]

-Roboshock, the big off-season event, approaches swiftly. Now, only two of our team members have committed to coming...alas....it will be a busy day. May 21st is going to be QUITE the EVENT, let me tell you. On that day, we have ROBOSHOCK, ROBOTS ALL DAY LOOONG, and then in the evening it's up to Portland for prom.

I think I have hit on all the high points...believe me, there have been low points, but the highs are really more entertaining, aren't they now?

To steal and kill and destroy

2011-04-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

I am more angry at patriocentricity than I have ever been, triggered by what might seem like a small thing. Tonight I stupidly, at the end of a long and stressful day, took a look at a few patriocentric websites that I hadn't been around in a while. As a result, I missed being able to really talk to my best friend [who I've been almost too busy to talk to the last few days]. I was engaged in becoming rapidly more upset and depressed by the sanctimonious blather of people who recommend a recent anti-feminist film ['The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women', by the Brothers Gunn] as excellent material to show to girls in pregnancy crisis centers, who are so hard up for something to criticize that they lambast the recent film about that gal who lost her arm to a shark a few years ago [and happens to share my name] as not being distinctively Christian and promoting personal fulfillment [and even manage to get in a knock against long-haired guys in the same post! What depth! What virtuosity!], who say that girls who declare they 'don't like pink' and 'aren't girly' are actually insecure, competitive for boys' affections, intent on covering up their own social awkwardness or lack of beauty, and generally feel superior *, who ......you get the idea.

* For the record, I have often declared that I don't like pink, am not a 'girly girl', don't like feminine High Drama, detest sewing, am proudly willing to shoot and clean a wild rabbit with my bare hands, and otherwise done my best to distance myself from my perception of the fluffy-headed female. Apparently half the rest of the female population of the world is bent on doing the same thing. And it is no longer socially acceptable [in patrio circles] to be proud of who you are, just as in less conservative circles it is ONLY socially acceptable to be proud of who you are.

So I'm no longer original, just feministic. And bitter. And insecure. And proud. And to heck with it, because I will not change for the anti-feminists. They can just TAKE my quirks and geekiness [they'd say they don't give a hoot, I'M the one who will have to deal with people disliking my contrived unoriginality!]
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To conclude this little anecdote, I wound up so rattled by the anti-feminists that my distant-time-zone friend was forced to retire by the lateness of the hour and my steadfastly terse responses. Ah, small thing, but it shocked me to my senses, a bit......I became first miserable that I'd missed talking with someone I deeply care for and hadn't been able to talk with in longer than I'd like, and then enraged.

Enraged because this is only the latest small event to convince me that patriocentricity, legalism, and faithless 'religion' will steal everything I have. Friends, college, happiness, love, enthusiasm, peace. And Jesus. [On that note, just about all of Galatians is applicable....]

Friends, rather stereotypically, because you can't trust someone if you are convinced they are bent on leading you astray.

College [self explanatory].

Happiness [also self explanatory].

Enthusiasm and peace, ditto.

And love. Patriocentricity, for all its grand words, is NOT about loving your husband or anyone else, least of all God. I had rather a shocking, though not unexpected, thing said to me recently. In essence, that the worst thing this person could imagine was that his future wife might someday succumb to patriocentricity in its most extreme form. And that he wouldn't WANT her to.

Surprising, no? [Or maybe not.] Isn't the stereotype of conservative homeschooled Christian men that they [secretly or not] want a wife who is bent on 'generational faithfulness' and Submission to Men in General [including the woman's own younger brothers] and being a 'keeper at home' [to the exclusion of all else] and fulfilling her 'dominion calling' and remaining silent in the churches and being MEEK AND QUIET and steadfastly refusing to be an equal.

Stereotype or no, accurate or no, I think I've encountered a specimen of that rare species, the Non Patriocentric Man.

---------------

But I got a bit off topic. I am angry at patriocentricity and its associated cadre of legalism. Remember that passage in John about how 'The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy'? * That's patriocentricity for you.......to steal joy, kill love, and destroy hearts.

* Remember too the rest of the verse, spoken by Jesus Christ: 'but I am come that they might have life, and have it to the full'.

Really, all this ferocious rhetoric is partly a cover for the fact that I am still a very scared person. And sometimes being angry is a good way to shake off despair.

And as a reminder, down in print, that patriocentricity holds nothing good for me.

Time for a rant!! [AKA, I forgot to publish this..]

2011-04-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

Edit April 2011: apparently I neglected to publish this post when I wrote it back at Christmas time. For your enjoyment, may I present:

Step right up folks! I am reading a nice selection of books this Christmas break and several of them demand attention.
So Much More, by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin
Quivering Daughters, by Hillary McFarland
Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller
Perelandra, by C. S. Lewis [again]
The Science of God, by Gerald Schroeder

[Admittedly the last few are kinda waiting to be read....]

The first two books demand to be read and talked about. So Much More, by the by-this-time infamous Botkin sisters, has been both strongly recommended and strongly denounced. Quivering Daughters, which really isn't an argument to So Much More so much as it is an attempt to heal those hurt by patriocentricity, has also been rejoicingly and critically received.
Supporters of So Much More always preface their recommendation with a variation on 'if you are a feminist, or afraid to have your views challenged, or unwilling to submit entirely to God's plan for your life, don't read this book because you won't like it'. This is a method which I have encountered numerous times and it is beginning to anger me rather a lot. There appears to be NO way to argue with it. It is the single most effective way of stifling criticism that I've seen......feel free to disagree with us, but if you do we will know that you're a rebellious feminist.

I am swiftly working my way through Quivering Daughters. I think I'd recommend it to ANY young women raised to believe that patriocentricity is correct...also any men out there who either are incensed at patriocentricity's influence, or are whole-hearted supporters of it.
Hopefully a more thorough review of QD later; right now I am up in arms over So Much More.

I haven't read the whole thing yet, really couldn't stand to....have been taking dips out of it here and there with my customary lightning-speed reading.

Just a few things that stood out to me....

In the first chapter:

'Don't read this book at all (I would rephrase: "You won't like this book....") if you have a bad attitude toward your father and if you are trying to keep your distance from him. Many girls enjoy having "space" away from their fathers. That space is dangerous.'

[-So Much More, page 6, emphasis mine]
It goes on with the same sort of warnings I mentioned earlier.

They do say to check what they say against Scripture.

I become irked at the constant assumption that women in earlier times were happier because they were unfeministed [word, hehe]. The first mention of this recurring theme occurs here.... 'The lifestyle and worldview we present ... was lived before, when women were much happier.' Really? I fail to see how anyone can judge whether a whole set of people in another time is more or less happy than now.

There's an interesting comment about 'extreme measures' which I'd like to contrast with one in Quivering Daughters.

We believe that in a day of extreme apostasy and judgement, extreme measures are exactly what's called for, and that a drastic step in the opposite direction is exactly what we need to take.

[page 8, emphasis in original]

From QD, talking about moving away from patriocentricity:

'...it feels like you are going towards another extreme. Consider, however, that you are on a line, with patriarchalism on one end and, as an example, secular feminism on the other. Because your starting point is an extreme, to move toward balance initially appears like rushing to another extreme.'

[Quivering Daughters, page 159]

So Much More utilizes a number of testimonies from young women who are introduced in the beginning of the book. Almost all of them started out as feminists; most of them started out sincerely wanting to serve God [but in what they later came to believe was the wrong way: by going to college, becoming a lawyer, or conducting business]. This gives me great hope that someday I, too, may be like these young women and realize that I am trying to serve God in the wrong way.

Fathers
The entire book is geared exclusively towards daughters and their fathers [which has been used as a criticism, because mothers are rarely if ever mentioned]. Every chapter is headed 'Daughters, Fathers and ___'. There is very, very brief mention made of the plentitude of difficult circumstances that could prevent this relationship....what about a father not having a job that his daughter can help with? [Geoffrey Botkin, in a special appendix, says that fathers should consider getting a new job or risk losing their daughters. I'm sure my dad would be happy to hear that.]

Good grief:

'Our fathers...are even supposed to represent God to us. This means that are dads have the tremendous responsibility of being accurate reflections of God's authority, as well as providers of the security and love that God created us, as women, to need.'

[page 17, emphasis mine]
There's a lot of concern that a daughter who grows up equating her father with God will have deeply twisted perceptions of God if her earthly father was abusive [EMOTIONALLY and spiritually, not just physically].

Men's and women's roles
Oh now we get to the good stuff, the stuff that will keep you up at night.

'Every woman's life is built around men and men's role and leadership in some way.'

[page 11] [They go on to say that, for instance, feminist Betty Friedan spent her life furthering a man's agenda: Karl Marx.]

'As we stated before, every woman is, by nature, a man's helper. You are a helper, no matter your age or marital status.'

[page 42]
That's funny, isn't it? I thought a woman was her HUSBAND's helper.

Courtship
Their take on purity/etc was predictable, and less strident than I envisioned [included all of a page and a half telling girls to not beat themselves up if they have previous sins in their past].

Courtship, on the other hand, proved a truly unpleasant subject.

I've read several opinions on courtship and this one has the heaviest emphasis on extensive input from all involved parents and other adults.....no mention made of when this heavy-handed approach might give way to the two people actually doing it THEMSELVES....one would presume that two 30-year-olds interested in marriage would still have to be under the leadership of their parents. That looks like this:

First stage: friendship [sure].
Then, if the young man thinks the young woman may be his intended bride, he discusses it with his parents [paraphrasing here, from page 241].

He then approaches the girl's father without informing the girl about it.

Lovely, isn't it?

The father then finds out all about the young man. If the young man obtains the approval of the father to begin courting, the daughter is consulted as to her wishes [finally!].
Then they go off courting, with marriage being the expected outcome. Theoretically any party can bow out at any time, but......

We still find our emotions entangled and disheveled under the most protective, sensible scenarios, and some people who court let themselves become just as emotionally devastated as people who date, if the courtship is called off.

[page 242, emphasis mine]

Splendid....glad to hear that if I court someone and then become attached to them and then they DUMP me [as an example]....that if I am upset, it is MY FAULT.....my fault for letting myself become emotionally devastated. This is carrying it a bit far, but I'd like to take it to the conclusion of.....if a wife loses her husband of thirty years in a car accident, she LETS herself become emotionally devastated?

No, they don't explain that comment away. It is right there, boldly discounting any person's pain. I know how to take things in context.

In the interview with Geoffrey Botkin, he talks about the 'bride price', which we are to assume he intends to require for his daughters. He states that without the bride price, daughters were financial liabilities to families. [The bride price, apparently, involves the son-in-law giving money or estates to the father-in-law, who then passes the money along to his daughter, the bride.] Since the girl's family would then never get the money, I fail to see how that makes daughters any less of a financial liability. Mr. Botkin then states that he would hate to see this made into a formula 'with dollars and cents attached to it'.

College
This is perhaps their most revolutionary concept. I think they fall short of saying that going to college is a sin.....they just attack every possible motive for attending college.

'A mature young Christian friend of ours...feels like she has won, because she exited with a degree and what she thinks is an intact soul. What she doesn't know is that the college is laughing at her, because it knows it is the real winner.'

[page 144]

There is much mention made of parents sending their daughter off to college...packing her away to a university...sending her out into the storm....etc. There is no mention at all made of what to do with a daughter who WANTS to go to college.

[Edit, April 2011: the manuscript ends here :P I think I remember getting extremely frustrated and depressed over the whole thing right about when I started to tackle the college question, and abandoned it. ]

We Are the Champions is my team's soundtrack

2011-03-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

I am back from the most epic regional competition in the history of our team. The Autodesk Oregon Regional ran Thursday through Saturday of this week. Team 956, with 9 students and 4 mentors [in a world of 30+ student teams] and a working budget of $600 [when many teams work on budgets of several $k] was one of the semi-finalists at competition, with our alliance ranking 4th out of of the 58 teams in attendance. One of our students was one of the two Dean's List finalists at our competition [the highest award given to an individual student in FIRST]. Our 8th-ranked alliance in the final rounds upset the 1st-ranked alliance, in two out of three intense matches.

In short, it has been an epic week all round and recapping it is a challenge. Things started off on Monday evening when I dyed my hair its competition-standard flaming red-orange [leading to nickname of Flaming Comet of Doom]. Tuesday evening myself, my dad, and two of our mentors rendezvoused at school to pack our three cars with the robot and all its accoutrements, for subsequent delivery to Portland. We had previously piled every single item in the hall outside of our shop: batteries, battery chargers, half a dozen large totes full of tools and spare parts, whiteboards, a sizable workbench, the robot, etc etc etc.
Wednesday we left for Portland amid a flurry of activity: in the morning my family went to Powell's Books [largest bookstore in the country, or something like that] and Ikea [Swedish house-goods warehouse]. At 5 that afternoon we rendezvoused with our mentor and loaded the carloads of stuff into the Autodesk pits [huge conference room in the bottom of Memorial Coliseum] in a swift targeted operation executed with military precision and FIRST-like enthusiasm.

From there we drove the 1.5 hours home, and picked up a team member who was going to spend the night at my house so we could give her a ride up to Portland on the morrow.

We were up bright and early [4:45 AM] on Thursday, and rendezvoused for carpooling [are you catching the trend here?] at 6. We arrived with time to spare in Portland, and distributed t-shirts and safty glasses with abandon.

Our robot was in three pieces, plus some odd aluminum that had to be machined, and we missed our first practice match because the robot was not finished yet. We passed inspection with flying colors. We had a tough time on the first day, with our untested autonomous mode giving me and our programming mentor a large amount of grief.

Nevertheless, by the end of Thursday we were pretty happy. We had Subways packed into the pits for us for dinner, and got back to the hotel where I rendezvoused with the rookie team we'd been mentoring all season.

The girls' room [hilarious and sleep-deprived] got to sleep around 1 that night. I for one did not sleep well. The light-rail car [or Max, or Metro] ran right by our hotel room about every 10 minutes. I was up bright and early Friday morning.

I and my beloved scout/Chairman's teammate ran across the street to grab a coffee, and thence we proceeded to the Coliseum.

Friday went AMAZINGLY. We won most of our matches, despite some very tough opponents, and got autonomous working. Lisa and I were over the MOON about that: we kept high-fiving each other at about ten-minute intervals all day, each time declaring 'High five! And another! And once more!'
By the end we had one of the best autonomous modes at the event, in the top 6 or 8 I would say. Autonomous is well-known for being difficult to program and I am still in awe that we got it working.

We were ranked 13 out of 58 by the end of the day. Our scouts came back to the hotel after dinner and started entering the data into the laptop, and making our pick list for Saturday morning. We had most of the team in my room talking strategy, and then the scouts [Charlene, Sarah and myself] holed up with the data. We let our driver, Michelle, get to sleep early [c. 1 AM] but we scouts hit it hard until 3:30 AM. I got about two hours of sleep that night. Fun times.

It is a well-known fact that Bethany never eats at robotics. To be fair, I did eat, just not in the daytime. I ate dinner, and then Friday night I ate yogurt and energy bars over the scouting sheets. Saturday I just powered through on adrenaline, it was amazing.

Saturday things went with a swing. We did pretty well in our last qualifying matches, and then it was on to alliance picks before lunch. My scouts and I had made a pretty comprehensive pick list, but while I was down on the floor waiting for selection to start I was told no electronics were allowed on the field: ie, no laptop which had all of our crucial data in it. I frantically scribbled down the key data.

A note here: despite all my years of dedicated scouting, we have never used scouting data for its original purpose of choosing the best alliance partner in the finals.

We were chosen by the 8th-ranked team [which meant we'd compete first against the top-ranked alliance]. I [after enthusedly accepting] immediately started comparing data with their team captain, and advised that we select one of my top-ranked teams to be our third alliance partner. They eagerly took the suggestion and there we were, a beautifully solid and definitely imposing alliance. This is the first year in my memory that we have been completely happy with our alliance partners. Individually we all had really strong records: together we caused a member of another top-ranked team to declare, 'I'm very afraid of you guys!' which absolutely thrilled the heck out of me ;)

During lunch we strategized intensively with our alliance partners. We then went up against the top-ranked alliance for best two out of three matches.

I have never been on the field during an event: I am usually rushing with scouting data from stands to pit. However, for the finals I and Lisa our programming mentor were part of pit crew, because drive teams and robots just stay on the field, no rushing back to the pit for repairs. We were changing batteries, fixing slipped cables, and generally getting the most intense experience that FIRST has to offer.

Our alliance lost our first match against the top-ranked alliance by two points. OH THE SUSPENSE. Then we had a not-long-enough break while other elimination rounds took place, during which we fixed things and ran batteries the quarter-mile from the pits.
We won our next two matches against the top-ranked alliance [I will keep repeating that until everyone chants after me 'We beat the top-ranked alliance!']. I have never been so excited in my life, I think. We were jumping up and down and screaming and hugging and high-fiving and hand-shaking and yelling.
We upset the top-ranked team in 2006: this is the best year we've had since then. Wild enthusiasm.

We lost our next two matches, against the alliance which went on to win the event, but I was beyond thrilled. I went up in the stands and then down to the standing-room-only mosh pit [have you ever seen a few hundred teens in brightly-colored team t-shirts, with a sizable selection of mascots, dancing to the Chicken Dance? it is an inspiring sight]. The winning alliance included a rookie team, which I was rather excited about.

There are so many hundreds of stories at an FRC competition, it would take all day to tell. I hear it's about to happen though: the new book about FIRST, The New Cool, came out this spring and apparently the makers of the documentary film Social Network bought the rights to it and were at some regionals this spring with notebooks, video cameras and enthusiasm for FIRST.

Here are some teams whose stories really made me happy this weekend:

Team 1432: this was the team who I think I wrote about in the fall, whose school kicked them out and took most of their funding. They rallied and participated in the regional, overcoming a tough start and being able to score several times. I was so excited to see them there [I remember being down front standing with a couple of their team members, and being so excited when their robot scored].

Team 753: they had a great showing at the Seattle regional, but were plagued with communication problems all day Thursday and Friday. There is nothing more heartbreaking than a robot which can score beautifully but which won't even move because of comm errors. I talked to their team captain on Saturday morning, who I've known all four years I've been in FIRST, and commiserated. They swapped their router for a new one, and did very well in their matches on Saturday. Cue enthused congratulations on my part :) Despite their poor performance on Thursday and Friday [which made their ranking go down and could have prevented them from being selected] they were selected to play in the elimination rounds, which I was thrilled about.

Team 3472: a rookie team, the first Mexican team we've had at our regional. Their pit was right across from ours. They had a tough competition and didn't make it to the finals, but what enthusiasm! What excitement to be there! During the awards ceremony on Saturday they received the Rookie All-Star award, the highest award given to a rookie team as well as a free pass to Championships. The crowd cheered louder and longer for that award than for any other, I think. We were nowhere near as happy as the team was though, hehehe.

Team 3712: another rookie team who had a tough event, I mentored them by email during build season and popped into their pit throughout the event to help them out and encourage them. A great group of kids. They finally got their robot to drive, always a hurdle for first-year teams, and were so excited about that :) Good times rendezvousing with their team in our hotel lobby. I adore swapping stories with other teams. Today their programmer sent me an email to say thanks and congrats, and said that they are excited and inspired for next year. That makes me so happy: another team has been started on the road to success in FIRST.

On Saturday, I received one of the two Dean's List Finalist awards presented at our regional. The Dean's List award is the only award for individual students in FIRST, for people who, like the Chairman's team, best create respect for science and technology and demonstrate technical excellence as well. While I don't know about the technical expertise bit, I certainly have the enthusiasm bit down pat :) Even better than getting the award was seeing the teams cheering for me as I went down on the field: people I have known for four years, most of them, who I've emailed and worked with and commiserated with and high-fived. And not just the people I know, but every team there, who in some way I've supported whenever I talk about FIRST. This was the highest honor I could possibly have received, but honestly I was rather more excited about how well our team did, because it means our school will hear about how well we did, and the new students who were on the team will be excited to continue next year.

This started out as a year when we might not have been able to afford to do anything more than tinker with a robot and go to the local scrimmage, and ended as our best year ever. So much thanks is due to our mentors, who worked for us and with us all season; our sponsors, without whom we would not have just gotten back from Portland; and our students, who built a robot. Thank you: you've changed my world.

LeTourneau adventures etc

2011-02-28T22:28:00.000-08:00

So! LeTourneau was awesome, for lack of a better word. My various exploits included NOT missing any flights despite Texas being hit by a freak snowstorm ['0.5 inches! Let's close all the schools!'], arriving at the arranged time to find that my poor roommates had not been informed that I was arriving WEDNESDAY not THURSDAY [they were wonderful about it], scuttling along the frozen campus in what must have been a 10° windchill [very very cold, for me], all on the first day.

The scholarship competition spanned three days and ~75 high school seniors from around the country. It was all fabulously fun and occasionally nerve-wracking. I met some rather amazing people, Heritage kids, LeTU students, professors, they were all great.

My days consisted of such things as orientations, meals in the cafeteria [students alleged it actually tasted that good regularly!] with the faculty, hobnobbing with a couple of LeTU students in the sunshine playing frisbee and listening to a kid play guitar, going out to a movie on the last night with the one other Heritage gal staying in my dorm and a bunch of college students who we'd met, group interviews, and essay-writing. We learn about the scholarship in about two weeks.....

And yes, for a number of reasons I do think LeTourneau is the right college for me.

If I go to college, that is.

Because patriocentricity reappeared on the scene with the aplomb of, say, Saruman or any other classic villain. [Except around here, patriocentricity wears a black trenchcoat and a Stetson. Bonus points to anyone who gets that reference.]

I do so enjoy this. I pendulum regularly from

1) Can't go on
to
2) Can't give up

and that's really all there is to it.
When I was a little kid, I think I used to be just insanely happy all the time [okay not all the time, but compared to now, yes]. Most teenagers become a lot less happy.....I became a lot less happy, in SPOTS. At intervals.
I manage to cram Bethie-enthusiasm into half as much time, it seems like, and Teenaged Angst into the other half. [The percentages are a little off.]

----------
We packed up the robot last Tuesday, at 30 seconds to midnight. It was extremely epic. I was writing autonomous mode at 9 PM and testing out the line-following code and shrieking when it WORKED and getting cut on duct tape [don't ask me how] and running back to the computer to tweak the program [the laptop DIED on the last day and we were trotting the robot back and forth every half hour] and ingesting more caffeine and etc etc. It was a really thrilling day fraught with watchdog errors in the code and tension in the shop.

We bagged up the robot at 11:56, tagged it, and then realized that the router was still outside...we could add it to the 30-lb allowance of stuff we can work on after the deadline, but we didn't. Mentor got a brilliant idea and bagged it right on TOP of the robot....just tucked it down on top of the first tag, and tagged the router with a second tag....perfectly legal and very amusing....

Now I'm beginning to obsess about scouting and jot to-do lists on my physics notes.

Bought about 20 books at the library used-book sale this weekend! On the last day I was running around stuffing books into a cardboard box at $5 a box, rather exciting.

Quote from my physics teacher, showing us an applet [ == little application] that demonstrates the concept of pressure on an atomic level:
'An applet a day keeps the engineer away!'

Patriocentricity, Take Two
Hey, if anybody reading feels like praying for me, please do. I don't usually beg for prayer, for some reason [probably a silly one], but I sure need it. I'm always saying that I don't know how much longer I can go on; every time the fight takes a little more out of me.

Thanks guys.

My disappointing multi-generational vision, AND Texas

2011-02-02T20:51:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing the phrase 'multi-generational vision' or 'multi-generational faithfulness'. I guess I really should READ the books [addressed to men] that explain in detail what exactly multi-generational vision is...

Vision Forum is, naturally, very big on vision.

I am not.

My disappointing version of 'vision' does not involve 'taking dominion' over the earth and everything and everybody in it. If I may paraphrase one of my friends: I see value in changing the culture, but only one person at a time, simply by being a Christian. Showing Christ's love to others, that is.

We are never told in the New Testament [and I think not in the Old either] to take dominion over the culture.

Heh, my vision would probably tend towards wanting any offspring to do FIRST and go into computer science and maths and other things like that, but I hope I wouldn't ever force them to do that. Because other people are not me.

My vision includes ensuring that any children I have, particularly girls, do not read or hear about patriocentricity until they have a solid faith based on love and grace, and they are old enough to discern the good from the bad. Sheltering, I suppose. Meh.

Most likely I'll eschew any Vision Forum products, if only so that Mum does not have a meltdown upon seeing the catalog she used to fume over a teenager, hehehe.

Okay, I really do have more uplifting goals than that. I just don't have the time or energy to expound to an eagerly waiting public [heh heh] about them.

In other news, I'm back to considering LeTourneau University. So much so, in fact, that I'm actually flying out there next week, to compete for a scholarship and also tour the place. Of course the Dallas airport WOULD be closed currently, due to the worst storm of this year's Texas winter, but hopefully things will be cleared up by next week. I leave next Wednesday, at the cheery hour of 8 AM, and return late Sunday night.
So! A solo trip to a college on foreign soil! Great fun! Also a little frightening, but I am quite enthused. And beginning to pack baggage [the college doesn't have room for the influx of its 100 top students of the freshman class, so we are kipping on dorm room floors in sleeping bags].

I AM A PROGRAMMER AND I LOVE IT

2011-01-21T21:37:00.000-08:00

Gooooood times around here :)

Our team started the season with a timeline [don't we always]. We wanted to have a working prototype by the end of Week 2 [tomorrow] and it actually looks like we are on schedule. This is fabulous and so on and so forth.

The software sub-team [myself and our programming mentor, a splendid gal who graduated from the team in '06] is doing nicely. After a floundering experience yesterday when Lisa was sick and not able to attend the meeting, I rallied today and went on to write some passable code. I got a motor working with a joystick [to raise and lower our gripper/elevator system], and got the pneumatic cylinder gamepiece gripper hooked up to switches on the driver station, wrote a little function to adjust the sensitivity of that joystick for the motor [to allow for fine-tuned control of the elevator], and found information on the third joystick we need to buy.

The classic sight of the day was the team captain [me] racing down the hall, mug in hand, to grab some more tea, check in on the t-shirt/Chairman's subteam, then return to the lab to work on the code whilst interfacing with the hardware team.

We also encountered some watchdog errors: the watchdog is a software critter which will shut off the robot if it does not get 'fed' with its little data packet every second or so....safty feature and it is REALLY annoying, but a useful debugging feature. We think the on-board camera may be giving us the problem.

And now for a link: from Quivering Daughters, here. I don't know anyone who does better than Hillary at both perfectly describing the grief that many QDs feel, and providing the remedy for that sorrow.

Oookay, off to take another peek at the watchdog errors, then head to bed before the 9-hour day in the robotics lab tomorrow....ehehhe.

Week 1 of robotics!

2011-01-16T22:18:00.000-08:00

Okay it looks like I never posted a follow-up to the Baylyblog discussion: Tim Bayly's last direct comment to me included this:

Rather, it's that souls will die because men and women like you will lead them astray and their rebellion against God will lead to their souls being cast into Hell.

Strong words eh?

In other news, the 2011 FIRST Robotics kickoff was last Saturday and we have embarked on another season of frantic enthusiasm, late nights and troubleshooting. The game is unique and we have made good progress this week. At the beginning of the week we made what may be the best discovery of the season: there is a working coffee maker in the robotics lab. I have a perpetual pot of hot tea going during meetings: my motto is 'Powered by Chai'.

Programming has proved insanely fun. We are immensely fortunate to have a programming mentor this year, a team alumni who was interning at Intel this year, hehe. To quote her, after we successfully loaded some code: Actually programming stuff is much more fun than just sitting here pondering: "Hmm....WindRiver.....did we install all the updates? ...Hmm.."

I've been writing scholarship applications and trying to keep up with school. Finals week is coming up this week [Santiam] and next [CHS].....good times.

Time for a couple of blog shout-outs: here is a great post on Three in One Makes Five, about legalism [that much-used word which nevertheless never fails to elicit a response].

One of my favorite blogs: Coffee-stained Clarity, always lyrical or amusing prose.

Gypsa's blog Anything of Nothing: post about film-making.

Here is an all-time favorite post about the ever-expanding topic of 'gender roles' [how I hate the words]. I know this lady in real life and she is an inspiration. If I ever come round here twenty years from now saying I'm married and I am a horrible wife and not being who I need to be: slap me upside the keyboard and make me go read this again, 'kay?

And here is a very interesting new blog, with a striking quote: Are we arrogant enough to believe that our interpretations of scripture and understanding of God is all correct and complete? If not, at what point does God label us as heretics rather than Christians?

As usual, I attempt to maintain the image of the eclectic free-thinking modern individual refraining from passing a judgement on anything, with a tinge of cryptic melancholy thrown in for good measure.

Third Day has some rather epic music: I was just struck that their song Slow Down starts out with the exact same style of chord progression as Tom Petty's classic, Mary Jane's Last Dance.

With a flourish and an insistence that you at once go forth and watch The Village and then listen to the soundtrack until you scream,
I sign off.

2010: a year in review

2010-12-31T20:33:00.000-08:00

A while back, I wrote a lengthy, reflective and [I fancy myself] humorous post to be trotted out before New Year's. Tonight though, I am doing absolutely nothing except try to write a rebuttal for the Bayly brothers' blog which I mentioned earlier, while all the time stifling down my fears that I will one day turn coat and become a full-blown patriocentrist like Kamilla.

2010 in review

January of last year I had a small part in the local high school's production of Romeo and Juliet, which was all kinds of fun. Performance in February, which coincided nicely with ship deadline for our robot....

January through March I worked with the Santiam robotics team to build a robot for the 2010 FRC game, Breakaway.

In February I joined the College Algebra class at local high school and adored it. The teacher, the infamously amusing math ninja Kimes, produced scads of hilarious quotes and I actually MISS that class.

March saw Team 956 in Memorial Coliseum in Portland at regionals. We had a really fabulous competition: made it into quarterfinals [ranked around 16th out of 62 teams] and received the Xerox Creativity Award. Bethany was epically enthused during the whole proceedings.

In April I went to FIRST International Championships in Atlanta GA, as team videographer for the local team that took first place in Oregon.

Lots of festivities in May, off-season events. Our team was placed first at the local event spearheaded by the OSU Robotics Club.

The summer was less eventful. Trip to California, camping in the mountains, and a summer filmmaking camp conspired to while away the summer. In the grips of an acute case of FIRSTaholism, I started FIRST LEGO League teams willy-nilly throughout the Mid-valley, including five at Santiam.

The first in a long line of chronic crises occurred in summer [documented here]. Much angst ensued, centering around the role of women in Christianity and particularly in regards to the question of college or no-college. The issue is not resolved.

College decisions also came to the forefront. Since summer, I've considered DigiPen Institute of Technology, Olin College of Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, LeTourneau University, and Oregon State. No-one can say I haven't diversified.

September's highlights of course included the start of school, and a splendiferous 18th birthday on my part. I am taking classes at CHS and Santiam this year and enjoying it no end.

I really buckled down to work on fundraising for our robotics team in October, in between coaching two FLL teams of 4th-6th grade kids [aka 'future engineers']

Nevertheless, the middle of November saw frantic panic on our parts, when the NASA grant which we'd been pinning our hopes on seemed now to be out of reach. I made dozens of articulate and pleading calls to local corporations and netted us a nice sum. The balance was, in an astonishing [to us] act of generosity, made up by a blogger dedicated to helping the next generation of engineers [or just keeping me from crying, hehe :) ]
The NASA grant amazingly came through after all as well, and our team is fully funded for the 2011 season.

This year I'm also looking forward to [or cringing in terror at] being Team 956's lead programmer.

Classic Epic Times: All-nighters working on robotics stuff, taking first place at Roboshock, masterminding the potted shrubbery during Romeo and Juliet, toting a camera and gear to Atlanta with Team 997, jumping into East Lake in the middle of a thunderstorm, traveling to the Christian Game Developer's Conference, Kimes being an awesome math ninja
First: A in a math class, energy drink, part in a high school play, trip across the country on my own, time meeting an 'online buddy'

Most nostalgic songs: Sandstorm, You've Got the Music in You, But Tonight We Dance, The Final Countdown, The Blood of Cu Chulainn, Hello Monday, Through the Fire and Flames [AKA The Song]
Favorite memory: Nationals, singing We Will Rock You with the gang at regionals, yelling myself hoarse at regionals, fraternizing at regionals, our team winning the Xerox Creativity Award at regionals, okay basically ANYTHING from all three days of regionals, seeing an authentic rendition of Another One Bites the Dust on a lute, pretty much any example of syncro, meeting Mark Leon at Nationals, offering help and enthusiasm to down-on-their-luck robotics teams, coaching my FLL teams

Major Hits: xkcd, chai, lattes, Sherlock Holmes, The Village, Facebook, VLC Media Player, henna, Converse, Apple, Seattle Chocolates, DigiPen Institute of Technology, Market of Choice

Best Books: One Second After, Thr3e, Adam, To Kill a Mockingbird, Travels with Charley, Cold Sassy Tree, Love,Stargirl, Captivating, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [because I forgot it last year], Celebration of Discipline

Best Music: Nightwish, Third Day, techno, anything from regionals, Rise Against, selected AC/dC~Red Hot Chili Peppers~Europe~2 Unlimited~Jimmy Eat World, Halo soundtrack, Nichole Nordeman

Keywords: Kickoff, geek, Breakaway, caffeine, squirrel, patriocentricity, grace, cold, Oregon

Keywords [inside joke edition]: Snrk, Perl, Rabbit, PUDD!!, syncro, whosy-whatsit, HENCE!, BAND!, composed, twitch, Minion, Overlord

Favorite teacher: a two-way tie between Kimes and Mrs Eberle

Best quotes: I need to write a special post with all of the epic quotes but...

Do the Math, Save the World
-Mark Leon

Bethany, you remind me of a rabbit!

Did our Jaguar swallow a chipmunk, or is something else going on?

We'll defenestrate our programmer, and I'll report back our solution if we get anything working.

Muskegs are kinda overbearing like that...

This is not a press conference!

Hardcore Penguins are VERY applicable...

It's never good when you see your cat get beat up by a bunch of leprechauns

[note that some of these are second- or third-hand from Chief Delphi and elsewhere....]

Most epic IM exchange ever:
[discussion of intimidating refrigerator contents over the centuries]

Einar:

1867- "Hey maw, th' ice box is gettin low again, think mebbe it needs mo ice in it, that coleslaw is startin to look downright PATE-RE-OT-ICK!"

Bethany:

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

oh LOL

Einar:

Here comes th' Pogo referance...

Bethany:

1901: 'Mother dear! Have the maid attend to the icebox, will you? That head of beef is wearing a 'Votes for Women' banner!'

Einar:

1960- "DUUUUUDE......that jello looks just like George Washington, man....."

"Far out...."

Bethany:

1929: 'Mama, can we go through the fridge while the nice photographer lady takes photos of us looking harrowed in the dust? The potato is singing 'Brother, can you spare a dime?''

Bethany:

LOLOLOL

Bethany:

1951: 'Edna, will you just see that the cabbage doesn't vote for Roosevelt? While you're cleaning the floor in heels and pearls...'

Einar:

1985- "YO! Th' meatloaf is rockin out again man!"

"RIGHTEOUS!"

1999- "Dear, I thought we agreed, no more internet access for the cabbage!"

2006- "Wait, is that DYNAMITE next to that camel steak?"

"ALLAH ACKBAR!"

Bethany:

AHAHAHAHHHAHAHHAHHAA

I KNEW ye'd have a doozy for those...

I was going to have a bottle of mayonaise chanting 'Four More Years!' for 2004...

Einar:

2237- "Mom, is this broccoli supposed to have eyes? Couldn't you get any FRESH?"

Bethany:

this WHOLE conversation is one long quote...

Einar:

"That IS fresh dear, right from the superstore!"

"See? I even got the brand marked "Minimal pesticides"!

Bethany:

[psst! thought is was supposed to be VOTING! not growing eyes! ]

Not really going to bother to make any New Year's resolutions this year, I think. Mostly they'd be for stuff I do anyway. Last year I had a bunch of predictions for 2010 and some of them came true, others didn't. [Actually I just hunted out the file and almost NONE of them did, heh.]

I don't really have a lot to say right now. Happy New Year, let's hope 2011 is better.

I've been banned!! Great joy!

2010-12-29T21:48:00.000-08:00

My latest trawlings through the internets have resulted in my joining the infamous band of brothers [and sisters] who have been banned from commenting on the blog of the Bayly Brothers. I saw their blog mentioned as being an easy place to get banned from [I've been there before] and wondered how many questions I could raise before the hand of authority was lifted against me.

I found this toothsome little post and was more interested in the comment section than anything. My comments are away at the end of the comment page....
When previously reading the Bayly's blog, I've been struck at how almost all of the comments are from 'preach it, brother!' male-types. The dissenting opinions come about equally from men and women, and it seems the women are usually banned pretty promptly. I am actually going to repost my comments and those of the blog owner:

[I had chimed in about a woman who spoke about against patriarchy, and another commenter promptly said it was nothing more than could be expected from someone who had lived in sin]

"My husband and I have been together since we were 20, were married at 22..."

"....I would, however, agree that the lifestyle Nyka describes--living in sin with marriage maybe following, "

I see no reason, from her words, to assume that Nyka was 'living in sin' before her marriage. Shame for assuming that someone whom you disagree with on one point is guilty on another.

Bravo, Rachel, for being willing to testify that patriarchy is not the conclusion that all who seek God finally come to.

Posted by: Bethany | WEDNESDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2010 AT 05:02 PM

>>...patriarchy is not the conclusion that all who seek God finally come to.

Actually, it is. Or rather, patriarchy is The Order God established in the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall, and all who believe in the Triune God and submit to His Holy Word reject anarchy and feminism, instead embracing patriarchy with love and joy as an act of worship of our Lord Jesus Christ.

All the church throughout all time has affirmed God's order of patriarchy. Also, all the church throughout all history has found it hard to be obedient to this order, as they also found it difficult to be obedient to it in New Testament times. This is the reason for the commands of Scripture that wives must submit to their husbands and the commands also forbidding woman to teach or exercise authority over man.

Love,

Posted by: TIM BAYLY

>> Actually, it is.

Really? I'm not sure I know ONE person [in my daily contact with other people] who embraces patriarchy, much less the style you and your supporters claim is God-ordained. But I do know many people who I believe really are seeking God: most of them are equally repulsed by feminism and patriarchy/patriocentricity.

>> All the church throughout all time has affirmed God's order of patriarchy.

The fact or statement that something has been affirmed throughout 'all time' [~2000 years] does not make it valid [or invalid].

I've had several conversations with other Christians about whether the command to submit and not lead is given to wives about their husbands, or to women about all men. [I actually have usually taken the view that where the translation says 'in authority over a man', it does mean MAN and not just husband. People try to tell me that is a wrong translation, and it really means 'man' in the sense of husband. ]

Posted by: Bethany | WEDNESDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2010 AT 10:07 PM

>>Really? I'm not sure I know ONE person [in my daily contact with other people] who embraces patriarchy...

Actually, most people still do embrace patriarchy. You're fooled by their embarrassment to admit it in our wicked day.

As to the "kind" of patriarchy this or that man embraces, there are no kinds at all. Only questions of implementation. And the implementations we at Baylyblog recommend are quite soft and gentle and effeminate compared to those of all of history in all cultures and all religions before our time. Baylyblog is a kinder, gentler patriarchy for our rebellious day.

>>The fact or statement that something has been affirmed throughout 'all time' [~2000 years] does not make it valid [or invalid].

Yes, this is the way modern rebels see it, but it's the very opposite of Christian faith which commands pastors who are always men to "Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you" (Timothy 1:13, 14).

Please do not oppose patriarchy again, here, or I will be forced to guard this command and truth of God by denying you future commenting privileges.

Love,

Posted by: TIM BAYLY | WEDNESDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2010 AT 10:34 PM

If the command and truth of God is really in danger from my comments, then God is a lot weaker than I've always thought.

I'd love to reply to your other statements, but I think that would lead to this comment not being allowed to remain at all.

[Incidentally, you don't need to worry about denying me commenting privileges, I won't be back. Thank you for allowing me to make the comments that I have.]

Posted by: BETHANY | WEDNESDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2010 AT 11:37 PM

Good grief. Let me just sum up some of the amazing conclusions that Tim Bayly comes to:

1) All people who seek God eventually become patriarchalists

2) All the church, all the time [except NOW...NOW doesn't count] affirms patriarchy

3) This makes patriarchy right

4) Most people still do embrace patriarchy, they just won't admit it, because of our rebellious generation. This because it is impossible for Mr. Bayly to countenance the idea that people might love God and NOT be patriarchalists!

5) Different types of patriarchy differ only in implementation. This actually seems like kind of a key point to me, because it seems to deny that there could be any 'wrong' implementation of patriarchy. This idea is bolstered by the next point:

6) The Bayly brothers hold views on patriarchy that are 'soft, gentle and effeminate' compared to those of past days. This is truly amusing, if you've ever read the Baylys' blog...

7) My questioning of established tradition within the Church is described as the action of a 'modern-day rebel'. [I stated that the mere fact something is a 'tradition' does not validate it.] Martin Luther, anyone?

8) The most encouraging part of the whole discussion: patriarchy, 'this command and truth of God', is in danger from MY comments. Please do not oppose patriarchy again, here, or I will be forced to guard this command and truth of God by denying you future commenting privileges.

I am a significant threat to something, apparently....probably, they think they are preventing innocent sheep from reading my incendiary comments and getting pulled into questioning their own beliefs.....or maybe they actually think I'm blaspheming or something. Note, I'm not trying to make light of blasphemy.....I just find it amusing that I, this small weak thing that is plagued with all sorts of doubts and fears, am actually considered a danger.

Mr. Bayly's comment about church tradition being backed up by Scripture seems true until one looks at the verse....yes, I am going to set myself up as an expert. The verse in its entirety is, 2 Timothy 1:13-14

¹³ What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. ¹⁴ Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

Paul is talking about keeping true to the teaching that he himself gave [about GRACE, incidentally]. He is NOT talking about holding on to traditions JUST because they are time-honored. Galatians 1:8 says:

⁸ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!

This isn't perhaps speaking directly to the issue at hand, because the Church hadn't been established long enough at that point to really bring 'following Church traditions' into question, but I think it's appropriate.

Something else: 'Baylyblog is a kinder, gentler patriarchy for our rebellious day'. If the patriarchy of the olden days was the right thing, why are we going gentle all of a sudden? Surely anything less would be wrong. If it wasn't the right thing, why are we- WHOOPS, SORRY.

As I mentioned, I was a bit surprised by how few dissenting opinions are found on BaylyBlog. Now we know why: they all got banned.

And remember: YOU can single-handedly threaten patriocentricity! They are afraid of ....YOU.

Just to remind myself one more time what actually matters: 'Why' by Nichole Nordeman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPCbzz5pJzQ

Let's be angsty, shall we?

2010-12-24T16:49:00.000-08:00

I've got a simply gigantic doozy of a post being worked upon, the obligatory end-of-year post, and it would have been the 200th post too, but I feel the waves of irony, sarcasm and angst [oh and humor] washing over me today.

.......
Naturally I've all but forgotten what I was going to be angsty about! Oh well here's for a quick recap.

Patriocentricity update:
Stacy McDonald replied to my comment....well actually she didn't publish it, but sent me an email.
[I had mercifully all but forgotten about it until right now, heh.] Suffice it to say that I angsted about the whole thing for a week or two. I am still irked at what seems to me to be a refusal to discuss things honestly. I believe that it is possible for someone to be entirely well-intentioned in their views, but at the same time close themselves off to considering any other viewpoint as valid. They are honest in their intentions, but their protection of their views is not honest. And THAT, my friends, is what I call disingenuous.

FIRST news:

Remember the NASA grant that we were so sure we wouldn't get? Well it came through.....$5000 registration paid and now we have a tidy sum laid by for next year/buying parts for this year. Awesomeness all round.

The FRC team in New Jersey whose team captain I'd been bugging to not give up hope: they are fully funded, the money came through in the pinch.

The FRC team in Eugene [whose captain I had also been bugging], is ALSO fully funded: last night, to my frantic enthusiasm, their team captain told me that FIRST actually came through [via our Regional Director] and worked things out. This is wonderful news, it would have been very disappointing to see Eugene not be able to participate.

The other day several members of the robotics team gathered at my place to learn programming [in the lack of anyone who actually is already proficient in C++.....] under the tutelage of a former FRC team member and current computer sci. student. I became quite enthused and have spent the last few days tooling around in Wind River Workbench [where code compile properly] and Xcode [where perfectly legitimate code can't find its libraries and hands me a bunch of error messages].

Today I undertook to copy the WPI libraries [written by Worcester Polytechnic Institute specially for use in FRC] to my Mac [Eddie, running Xcode]. This proved tortuous.....some of the errors have gone, but others have popped up in their place, nevertheless in a way which gives me hope I might some day be able to compile FRC code on a Mac. Because I REFUSE to dual-boot Eddie into Windows or anything like that.

Just for kicks, let's post a sample of code: this, linked against the WPI libraries, should theoretically be enough to run a 120-lb. robot....it even includes a snazzy little user-defined class called, stunningly enough, 'kicker', in attempts to recreate the idea behind last year's soccer-ball-kicking robot.

#include "WPILib.h"

#include "kicker.h"

/**

* This is a demo program showing the use of the RobotBase class.

* The SimpleRobot class is the base of a robot application that will automatically call your

* Autonomous and OperatorControl methods at the right time as controlled by the switches on

* the driver station or the field controls.

* Includes kicker.h, Bethany's user-defined class.

class RobotDemo : public SimpleRobot

{

RobotDrive myRobot; // robot drive system, can be controlled by two victors

Joystick stick; // only joystick

Solenoid sol1; //solenoid 1

Victor vic1; //victor 1

Victor vic2; //victor 2

Kicker kick; //kicker defined in kicker.h

public:

RobotDemo(void):

// these must be initialized in the same order

stick(1), // as they are declared above.

sol1(1),

vic1(1),

vic2(2),

myRobot(&vic1, &vic2) //pointers to locations of victors

//Kick needs no perameters

{

GetWatchdog().SetExpiration(100); //0.1 seconds

}

/**

* Drive left & right motors for 2 seconds then stop

void Autonomous(void)

{

GetWatchdog().SetEnabled(false);

vic1.Set(0.5); // drive both motors forward, half speed

vic2.Set(0.5);

Wait(2000); // for 2 seconds

vic1.Set(0.0); // stop robot

vic2.Set(0.0);

}

/*Runs the motors with arcade steering. */

void OperatorControl(void) //does this need void parameter? implied with mere ()?

{

GetWatchdog().SetEnabled(false); //disable Watchdog

while (IsOperatorControl())

{

myRobot.ArcadeDrive(&stick); // drive with arcade style (use right stick [?])

Wait(5); // wait for a motor update time, .005 seconds

//joystick trigger for solenoid

if (stick.GetTrigger()==true) //can also use stick.GetTrigger() [without ==true]

{

sol1.Set(true);

}

else {

sol1.Set(false);

}

if (stick.GetTrigger()==true) //or stick.GetTriggger()

{

kick.Release(); //variable.function.....kick [does] release

kick.Kick(true); //if want long kick....kick [does] kicks

}

else {

kick.Retract(); //retract at all other times

}

};

START_ROBOT_CLASS(RobotDemo); //why a macro? I thought macros were bad policy?

Note the copious use of comments [like this: //this is a comment]......I suspect that my fully-commented code will be a wonder, and a thing of beauty and sarcasm. As we know: as a programmer, my job is to write documentation that happen to compile. [Devil's advocate says: never document. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.] Also: if the robot hasn't burst into flames, the problem is the programmer's fault. Another Chief Delphi quote to round out the evening: We'll defenestrate our programmer, and I'll report back our solution if we get anything working.

First game hint is out! It has resulted in speculation that the game will
a) involve columnar game pieces
b) take place on stairs
c) be a mash-up of all previous games [FIRST's 20-year anniversary]
d) be related to a 'conjunction' of some sort [planetary or otherwise]
e) incorporate trains, train-tracks, or 'engines' [towed behind robots...but we did that in 2009]
f) loco-motion, the name of the singer in that game hint's major hit, will come into play: crazy == loco....some form of new and terrifying-to-program motion....
g) the game will definitely be called LocoMotion [or perhaps Back on Track]

and...
h) this hint, of course, means water game.

I think the angst I mentioned in the title [admittedly just to get people to read this post..] stemmed from my unwisely trawling through a website the other day which touted a comprehensive 'modesty checklist'....which listed high heels and the hose classically worn with them as immodest. Several commenters mentioned they didn't see why that would be a problem, as they never wear skirts shorter than ankle-length anyway.
Why do I hang out with these people?

On another note, allow me to link to a blog by an amazing young woman who I can, perhaps, agree to disagree with. Bailey's blog, Big House in the Little Woods.
[One of her latest posts mentions me so I thought it appropriate to link....note that there is at least one other Bethany who comments on her blog, look for the profile pic :) ]

I finally rallied myself to comment on said post.....comment moderation in effect tho, so possibly delayed. It's quite unusual to find someone who holds a lot of patriocentric views, but is still willing to discuss things honestly.

Annnnnd.....it's Christmas Eve. I'd come out with a homily of some sort but if you're anything like me, you've been bombarded with such for the past few days.

...oh DEAR......my mom and I were just talking about gifts, she mentioned the shortfall of gifts for me [hah, shortfall, not really, I am amazingly fortunate :) ] and I piped up 'The iPod...' [iPod Shuffle, which we arose at an unearthly hour to buy at an early sale]....and then she says 'Oh yes! Except I don't know where that is....'
There is a running joke of gifts and so on getting mislaid in the wrapping-up process. One year it was a flash drive, rubber bands, AND a packet of garden seeds [I was specially keen on those rubber-bands...] and some of them didn't show up for months.
There's also this great herbal lip balm [a Key Point in cold wet weather] that I picked out for myself recently but which ought now to be packed up into my stocking....I came very close to EATING the darned thing after I bought it....yummy rose flavor.....NOM. The label actually says 'Don't eat' with a mention of how nommy it is....hehe.

Fun Fact of the Day: a package carrying goodies [cookies, a cement-like block of homemade fruitcake, and assorted fruit, all packed with care in real Oregon fir branches doubtless harboring horrible foreign bug-pests] can wing its way to the East Coast in.....drum-roll please.....one weekend before Christmas. I shipped it out in a flat-rate box on Saturday and it arrived by Monday....we were all in awe of the superlative US Postal Service. A book-rate package did the same journey in three days I think, irregardless [teehoo] of foul snowstorms and patented 'wintry mix' currently dispersing itself over the continental US!

We are sitting around being happy that we didn't go to California for Christmas [to see my grandparents...we were considering it two weeks ago]......mudslides and evacuations and torrential rain are such fun ways to spend one's Christmas holiday. Earlier in the month, we also had a near escape from heading to Seattle by train for a programming workshop on the same day that Amtrak was shut down due to flooding.

-Dropbox is very, very nifty.
-Dance/electronica/techno music is very fun and Basshunter is a prime specimen of this.
-Pointers are a unique concept in programming which causes me to brood for prolonged periods of time and then burst out with obscure technical references whilst batting the air.
-Full moon causes bad dreams.
-The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was a very good movie and a rather bad book-adaptation. I want screenshots from it though, that was a PRETTY movie in parts.
-I don't really like live-action 3D films.

And now I think I shall adjourn. More posts soon, hopefully.

A Steadfast response to charges of legalism

2010-11-29T22:44:00.000-08:00

Stacy McDonald has responded to charges of legalism, both at Steadfast Daughters and her personal blog Your Sacred Calling. Classically, I felt the need to compose a lengthy [and probably inarticulate] reply, which I posted on YSC.

I am very irked at the steadfast refusal to address specific concerns, and the equally steadfast assumption that 'quivering daughters' are by and large still the guilty parties.

The Romans 14 quote is one which ought to be at the forefront of any movement which claims to combat legalism [all too often, it isn't].

However, I see a gap between what that verse prescribes and the application that I think you would extend it to.

It is, I think, fair to assume that the person who 'eats everything' could be compared to 'Quivering Daughters' and their allies.

Hence, we can also assume that the person who 'does not eat everything', because he feels it wrong, is represented by 'Steadfast Daughters'.

In my experience, those who hold to the Steadfast Daughters view are 1) 'not eating everything' which we are told we must NOT treat with contempt [Romans 14:3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them.] but also, 2), they are judging those who do not believe as they do.

This is the key point. I hope that none of those who battle against legalism would object to an individual's opinions on whether it is right for them to do anything from only wear skirts, to decline to attend college. The line becomes blurred when one individual would seek to impose that idea on their entire family, and it is crossed entirely when an individual or an organization teaches an entire community that it is wrong for all of them to attend college or leave home. [Usual disclaimer applies: those are examples, I would prefer not to debate whether or not you or your followers have actually taught those exact things.]

The examples you gave of the four people who might be called legalists, did not fit my definition of legalism. However, had there been any suggestion that, for instance, Jennifer imposed her dietary restrictions on her sister-in-law, or indicated that following Mosaic dietary laws is the only 'correct' action, then I would have indeed cried 'Legalism!'.

--------

You talk about false accusations of legalism rather a lot in this post. Do you 1) believe that false accusations are being made about the actions of those in the patriarchy movement? or 2) the actions they have committed are not legalistic? or 3) a combination of the above?

I agree with your view, that those of us who say we have left legalism are still prone to it.

I also agree with your reader's comment: 'Calling others legalistic based on outward appearance is itself legalistic and hypocritical.'

However, it is not legalistic to state that a person's beliefs as imposed upon or suggested to others are legalistic. One could not call the Pharisees legalists solely based on the fact that they tithed: one could, however, call them legalistic based upon what they taught to others as God-ordained fact.

I think it is fair to state that your writings on Your Sacred Calling are mostly read by those who could find themselves being accused of legalism [whether true or false]. You rightly devote a lengthy section to how to respond to incorrect accusations of legalism, based on their appearances. You do not, however, speak much to how to avoid actual legalism.

The readers of Steadfast Daughters, however, also include many who are leveling charges of legalism against others. You speak of the abuses of power that you have seen, but fail to mention the key points that these readers are likely to be objecting to. Throughout the history of Steadfast Daughters, and indeed everything I have seen written from a patriarchal perspective in recent months, there has been a distinct unwillingness to come to terms with the tangible protests of 'quivering daughters'. I think this is because you know that many WILL disagree with your presuppositional views, and you are trying to smooth things over. I can understand this, but it is doing a really bad job of 'reconciling' those who disagree with you. To be fair, most of those who disagree with Steadfast Daughters already know they disagree with your views, and many are familiar with years of 'reconciliation' as suggested by those in the patriocentric movement who [supposedly] were in fact their abusers. It is all too familiar for most 'quivering daughters' to buy into. Many have already received [they believe] healing and freedom, and NOT at your hands. They are not going to be happy when you produce 'a biblical response' to something [namely Hillary McFarland's work] that they already believe to be helpful, Christ-honoring and in fact BIBLICAL.

My apologies if I have worded any of this confusingly. I am rather prone to do that. And yes, feel free to pick apart my arguments in any way, I have certainly done so to yours.

In which we receive a check in the mail, witness the effect of a snowstorm on our community, and discuss college

2010-11-23T17:02:00.000-08:00

Yeah the title sums it up :P

Since I last posted, we have had no END of developments.

Our financially-struggling robotics team received a check in the mail last Tuesday: this allows our team to participate in FIRST this year. Team thrilled, Bethany awed and ecstatic. The donor, someone I have never met, who somehow got enough of an idea about robotics from my many and passionate posts about the joys of FIRST. Thank you.

And the weather.
Let me explain first that our corner of the PNW [Pacific North-west] gets snow on average twice a year. The fall of more than an inch is a signal for 'MASSIVE PARTAAYY TIME!!!'
More than half an inch, and all the local school districts can be counted on to panic and cancel school. Last night there was a Facebook event started [by someone in the PNW, I think] and it now has over 3000 guests: titled 'No school Tuesday'.

A few years ago we actually had a snowfall around Thanksgiving [we still talk about that]. This is rare however, usually we only get a snow in December or sometimes as late as March.

Anyway, this summer the fearless weathermen forecasted that we would have a 'cold wet winter' [ie, snow]. The entire town has been talking about that since August, I think.

Starting early last week, the weathermen talked eagerly and portentously of snow coming [last] weekend. Despite the ongoing warm wet weather, our town was simply a-buzz. Remembering the big ice storm last year [roads were out for a whole 18 hours], the all-team bonfire organized by the local robotics teams was cancelled. No snow materialized, and it was only chilly over the weekend. The weathermen, undaunted, commenced pushing back the snow forecast to Monday night.

Monday at school, amidst pouring cold rain, teachers and students alike gazed longingly out the window at non-snow. I was amused to see reports beginning to come in, of snow in the northern part of the state, Washington state, and the mountains to the east [which don't count, because you can snowboard year-round there].
Yesterday evening, in between preparing for a calculus test scheduled for today, I glanced out the door. It was dark by 5 PM, but no snow....the weathermen, now beside themselves, were detailing to-the-minute movements of 'this big Arctic air-mass' which was supposed to produce snow after 11 PM.

Right around 10:30 last night I was killin' time on Facebook, and noticed that every. single. person's. status for the last half hour was some variation on 'snow!', 'SNOW!' or 'SNOWWW!!!!!!!!!' Mom looked out the door, and behold, it was in fact snowing. It was starting to pile up by the time I went to bed.
Was woken in the small hours of the morning by my mom, who had listened to the bus-route reports and announced that school was cancelled. I went back to sleep and slept until nearly noon :P

Okay, so the grand total of snow was less than an inch. But it is supposed to get well below freezing tonight, so the meltage will likely refreeze into really scary patches of black ice. We are counting on a delay, at the least, tomorrow.

And now for the witty and introspective detailed social analysis of snow upon our town. After a late and luxurious breakfast, dad and I headed into town to buy meal fixings for Thanksgiving, in case the roads should be bad and the crowds worse, tomorrow.
Brushed snow off the car with much jollity and wearing of gloves and knee-socks.

Quick digression here! We have been on a years-long search for Really Good Knee-socks. There are several criteria which must be met: mostly wool, soft, cannot fall down in a puddle around one's ankles. We made a foray to 'the Scottish store' in a city to the north of here, specially to buy socks. They were PERFECT...dad and I each got several pairs. Soft, woolly, don't fall down. SO WARM.

Town was BUSTLING. The stores probably did a FAR better business today because of the snow, hehehe. Got food at every fancy-food market in town....Co-op, Trader Joe's, Market of Choice. Oranges, potatoes, ginger ale, cranberries, milk, etc etc. It's kept snowing a bit all day too. Great fun. Got home and made hot chocolate, cranberry-orange sauce, sampled the ginger ale, and so on.
Oh yeah, social analysis! I don't know if this is true in other parts of the country, but it seems bad weather [or even the threat thereof] causes people here to be a little more chipper and so on. Also they are thrilled to have the excuse to wear their real cold-weather clothes: jackets, woolly hats, gloves, scarves. They would never admit that they are probably a little overheated in these clothes, because it never gets very cold here....

Our town simply shuts down, as previously stated, if there's even the hint of an ice-storm. The newspaper will be busily talking about the snowstorm for days. Kids can grow up, practically, between really good snowstorms. Bethany is quite inexperienced in brushing snow off the car satisfactorily, as we learned today when we started driving and were blinded by a little flurry of snow blowing up in front of the windshield.

---------
This weekend we also had a lot of college discussion, and the upshot is that I am seriously considering relocating to Texas for college at Le Tourneau U. It's a Christian college with a large engineering focus, something that is very hard to find. We've kinda gone back and forth [every day a different decision], because of some issues to do with vaccinations, the Gulf oil spill, vacation plans, and so on.

I really do hope it works out. I've wanted to have 'the full college experience', cliché as that sounds, complete with dorms and roommates and so on and so forth. Apparently the food is pretty good too, which I hear is quite unusual, lol. So! Looking at Computer Sci. and starting to make packing lists. I am like kinda REALLY excited at the thought of setting up camp on my own, I must say. As I emoted the other day, 'one big long camping trip!'. I'd plan to come home for Christmas and summers, I am NOT thrilled about summers in East Texas, hehe.

Needless to say I have a few reservations. One, Oregon State [where I'd been planning to attend] has a reputation as a good computer school. On the other hand, I will probably wind up living at home if I stay here, and I have a feeling that will lead to having a very hard time finding 'my own little niche' so to speak. I hear it's hard enough the first year at college, without living four miles away from campus.
Two, parents will miss me a lot.
Three, I will miss parents and friends and Oregon.
Four....um...that's it actually. I am ready to go, should it work out. But I really really hate indecision, so let's hope we can make up our minds -.-

Should I go, look forward with glee to posts of all sorts from the college freshman living away from home for the first time. Wouldn't the patriocentrists have a conniption.

And now, off to take a walk, then a shower, then prepare some form of dinner. I love snow.

Dear, you just growled....

2010-11-10T17:59:00.000-08:00

And now, for a swift change of subject. Yesterday I got swallowed whole by a morass of fundraising for my FIRST Robotics team. Things got fast and furious....our fundraising is not going well, let's just say that.

We have three weeks in which to raise the remaining $1600..otherwise our team won't be able to participate in FIRST. Any of you who've followed this blog for a while know what a heavy blow that would be to me.

Hence, mayhem.

Yesterday, with bad news on the fundraising front [as in, we majorly screwed up the NASA grant application....], Bethany's survival instincts kicked into overdrive. I spent much of the day brainstorming money-making schemes. Held a lengthy discussion over on Chief Delphi [the robotics forum where I spend most of my life] with a member of another FRC team that's in the same financial position as we are. Enthusiasm built until I went to bed at midnight: sleepless, I pondered fundraising ideas and jotted frantically on the bedside clipboard.

This morning, after my sole class of the day [went in to get some calculus help from last year's awesome teacher] I came home and tackled the fundraising again. Unfortunately, I have almost entirely lost my voice, because of the cold I caught over the weekend. It is MOST regrettable that 'the voice of the team' is thus incapacitated!

Erh and we're looking at marketing HexBugs [cool little toys that are perfect for a robotics team to market].
And a bake sale. And a team-members-do-odd-jobs-for-pay event. And a local restaurant fundraiser. And- I could go on, but I need to get back to organizing.


You could, in a way, say we've declared war.

2010-11-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

*sigh* I was planning a really nice, inspiring, semi-chipper sort of blog post for this time. Then along came the tragic teen suicide at one of the high schools where I take classes. I was going to do a sober reflection on that, a cautionary tale inspiring y'all to take the time to get to know people [because the single most common thing people have said on the Facebook page honoring this kid is, 'I wish I'd gotten to know you better.']

And then along came another blog post, and I'm too wrapped up in my own irritation to do anything except talk about that.
[You'll notice I've started using sub-section headings..hehe....I figured it might make plowing through lengthy works like this a little easier. Plus chapter titles are fun.]

Steadfast in the face of rebellion

This website right here, Steadfast Daughters, is 'a biblical response to “Quivering Daughters,” the book and blog written by Hillary McFarland.' This is a new blog apparently intended to counter and explore the growing advances of Hillary's book. Steadfast Daughters is co-authored by Stacy McDonald, the author of various likewise-controversial books such as Raising Maidens of Virtue, and Passionate Housewives Desperate for God.

There was quite a firestorm surrounding the opening of Steadfast Daughters. I understand that it may have accidently been opened before the authors were ready for it to go public. Most comments [all, so far, of an irate and exasperated character] have been removed. Mine was up for a time: I'm not going to publish it here right now, because it's mostly stuff you've already heard several times.

My sister, channeling Satan

Stacy McDonald has stated [I regret I can't find the quote] that she does not view Hillary as an enemy, but as a sister. This nicely complements her assessment of part of Hillary's book. 'Here is another list of questions to daughters that Hillary posted on her blog. When reading this, for some reason, I get a mental picture of a grainy black-and-white movie featuring a scene where Satan is whispering into the ear of a struggling sinner.'

Does that look to anyone else as though Stacy is equating Hillary's words with Satan's? Of course, Jesus said the famous 'Get behind me, Satan!' to none other than his disciple Peter. Maybe Stacy sees Satan working through Hillary.

Stacy [and most other patriocentrist writers] seems to mostly be concerned that reading Quivering Daughters will incite young women to rebellion and discontent.

Would young girls who are struggling with laziness or sin, or who have a difficult time submitting to godly authority, read Quivering Daughters or articles like Hillary’s “Letter to a Patriarchal Daughter” and be seduced into self-pity or rebellion?

While Hillary claims to write only to “adult daughters” from Christian patriarchal families, her writing seems to be especially attractive to any older teen struggling with sin. Notice the baiting nature of her address: '- It is not okay when your feelings and individuality are not respected.'

Who gets to define what this means? Anyone in a close relationship will at times feel the sting of disrespect or offense—real or imagined.

The final message, after Stacy says that certain church leaders or parents might benefit from reading Quivering Daughters, is this:
'Still, I cannot recommend Quivering Daughters to Hillary’s intended audience, even to the ones who have suffered from real abuse.'

A sinful desire for approval....but wait, this time it's approval from PARENTS

There are other authors on Steadfast Daughters. The most recent article [comments still aren't open, which I am irked by] is here. The only thing I take away from this article is, 'Rise above it. Others have had to suffer too. You only got what you deserved.' I was reading along, not getting terribly involved in anything the author was saying because I've heard it all before, and then this quote leapt out at me. There was a quote from Hillary, telling her pain at her parents' apparent rejection of her poetry. She obviously wanted their approval. And now, the reply from [this is 'a biblical response', remember] ~ 'Perhaps the best parental treatment for a sinful, inordinate desire for approval is a loving hug together with a gentle, loving rebuke.'

It took my breath away, it really did. And that is hard to do, after lengthy trawling on patriocentric websites.

This was clearly connected with the incident Hillary had related. The sin Hillary had committed was being upset that her parents discounted and didn't know what to make of her poetry. This sin, like all sin, calls for 'a gentle, loving rebuke'. [We also hear all SORTS of discipline described as loving. Anything which is good for someone is loving. There rarely seems to be any further advice on how to be gentle or loving: it's taken for granted that if something is good for someone, that automatically makes it the right thing to do, and who cares how you do it.]

Okay, well, at least they said a loving hug and gentle rebuke. We would hope that is how one would reply to sin in one's offspring. That is NOT how one should reply to something that is NOT sin. Let's say for a minute that this desire for approval is not actually sin. Now, the parent just replied in an inappropriate way and has just stepped over a serious line: calling something sin, which isn't.

It is very, very easy to convince a child that something is wrong. If you convince them something is a sin, it darn well better be.

Let's argue now that I have never been a parent and have never tried to raise a child. I'll admit myself that I have only rarely experienced children younger than myself [woeful inadequately prepared for marriage, according to patriocentrists]. However, only a few years ago I WAS a child, and I know that very often, the slightest rebuke was enough to send me into tears. That may only mean that I cried easily.

Back to desire for approval from parents. This viewing of this as a sin is a TOTAL departure from everything I have ever heard from patriocentrists. Supposedly, children are all to ready to look for approval from the world, their friends, whatever, when they really should be seeking to please their parents. God is in there too, but seek first your parents' will.

Now, we find that trying to please parents may be THE WRONG THING TO DO. Let's take this to its logical conclusion, shall we?

It is VERY likely that an adult or half-grown child may believe that they are actually called by God to do something of which their parents don't approve. This could be anything from foreign missions to a career [for women] to college [for women]. Or maybe they just believe they have some special calling from God to be a writer, or an artist, or a teacher [fill in job of your choice which doesn't pay well].

Now, if we are going along with the idea that approval from parents is less important than approval from God, wouldn't we say that these children should go ahead and DO whatever that is?

Patriocentrists don't think so, as evidenced in nearly every patriocentric writing.

This is a rather shocking example of....what? Double-speak? Double standard? Something rather dishonest and irksome, whatever it is.

A shining example

[against whom Bethany is bitterly sarcastic, against her principles]

I found another, little, not-much-known blog, this one from a 20-something woman who has been raised in the patriocentric paradigm. It would be all too easy for me to launch into a full-blown flame war on this girl. An old post touches on that same article from Michael Pearl which I referenced here.

Here is her view on the article, completely opposite to mine. [Note, even if you are upset by her blog, I wouldn't recommend commenting. The two comments I've written, all with my signature politeness :P have not been published. Whatever her moderator says about 'bitter comments' being the only ones censored, it is clear that no-one who holds any opposing view is allowed to comment. Leave the blog, back away from the flame war, control your inner troll.]

She comes out with this little gem: 'So when have the Pearls bought into this thing that everyone is a seperate individual?'

Yes, that is the quote, and no I didn't take it out of context.

Now see if you can wade through the following quotes and counter-quotes. [Michael Pearl compiled this testimony from a child of a patriocentric home.]

I am from a Patriarchal Dysfunctional Family, as you put it. At 25 years of age, I left my father’s home along with two of my younger sisters. We praise the Lord for providing wise counselors and pastoral support as we made the decision to leave the home. My father was the head of his own church, so we had to find counsel and pastors to help us realize the error of these teachings. I know that without them, I would have probably turned my back on Christ.

[Here is the blog author's thoughts on this:] WOW. So when did it become an applauded thing to leave the home? Those children are in rebellion, if you ask me. The pastor who “counseled them” is going to have to answer to God for undermining their parent’s authority. Yet the article is filled almost two pages with similar examples, applauding the “wise” individuals who “were shown by the Lord” that they needed to “use their wings and fly away”. This grieves me deeply to see these misguided individuals.

[Now Bethany.] OH GOODNESS. This almost escaped me the first time I read it, but you will notice that the child left home at the age of TWENTY-FIVE. You see that?
She uses the obligatory phrase 'in rebellion'. Let's summarize, shall we? A twenty-five year old person [woman, I assume] leaves home with support of several apparently Christian mature adult counselors. In rebellion and misguided.

Here's one last nice quote to make you grit your teeth at one of us, me or her. 'Let your child pursue its dreams? That sounds right out of the world.'
She isn't being sarcastic, folks! She really isn't! Nor does she go on to qualify or explain that statement.
I'm not sure why I'm picking on this one girl, not much older than me. Except perhaps because she is a perfect example of what a patriocentrist young woman should be. The Botkins, Doug Phillips, Stacy McDonald, they're the ones to thank. They've succeeded. She's really happy and she really believes what she's saying. Now, they wouldn't agree with her on all points, most likely. Nor would the Botkins, masters of the written word themselves, much enjoy her writing style. [Ever notice how easy it is to pick on someone's misspellings and flabby prose when you disagree with them?]

You'll meet her again

Nevertheless, girls like her are the face of the patriocentric movement of the future. They are the ones I will be confronting in ten years or twenty [assuming I don't go over to the patriocentrists: always a cheerful and engaging prospect]. If you are a homeschooler, get used to patriocentricity: it's not going away. If patriocentricity gains ground to the point where when people hear 'homeschooler' they really think 'patriocentrist', we're goin' down. You think liberals and moderates and free-thinkers and even libertarian Christians are going to allow homeschooling to be legal if they see what appears to be such shocking abuse going on in it?
Many Christians are repelled by patriocentricity; can you imagine what a liberal must think when they see a patriocentric homeschooler? Good grief. They have, in their opinion, every right to be horrified and want to outlaw it.

So, patriocentricity seems to me to be a threat to more than the children and parents involved. I think that it could significantly threaten the future of homeschooling.
I'm told, by women who were around at the time ;) that homeschooling started out as a loose coalition of free-thinkers [such as we see in the unschooling movement today]. These free-thinkers ran the gamut from hippies to Old Testament literalists.

Now, we have large homeschool summits led by 'leaders of the homeschooling community', and so on. Since when did the 'loose coalition' get leaders? Let me make this clear, these are leaders who want to define what homeschooling is. Homeschooling started out as the counter-counter-culture [I'm borrowing that phrase from someone..]. Now, it has settled into an INSTITUTION, as far as I can see.

Something I have always heard is that rebellions inevitably submit to leaders. Then the leader becomes the institution which needs to be rebelled against, and away you go again. The pendulum-swing is another favorite point, and let me state that we probably are now seeing the pendulum-swing against the excesses of the 1900s. Ever notice how a pendulum goes really fast at the bottom of its swing, and spends the most time at either extreme? Likewise, cultures seem to be terribly fond of getting out of that comfy 'happy medium' zone as soon as they can.

There's nothing like the old tradition of disclaimers, and here's mine. I'm only 18, I'm really not very experienced in stuff like this, I haven't seen the rise and fall of dictators and movements and ideologies. So take what I'm saying with a grain of salt [if you're an adult, you're probably already doing that].

War?

The title of this post talks about war. Stacy McDonald 'does not view Hillary as an enemy'. Patriocentrists do talk about 'the culture war' as being one which will be won in part by sheer numbers [out-breeding the liberals]. China's always been pretty good at that too.

Ephesians 6:12 says something that we hear quoted a lot, but that I think most people tend to forget.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

You see this? Anyone reading this who isn't a Christian, please take note. We aren't supposed to be fighting you. [In a bunch of other places, it's made clear that we're supposed to be LOVING you.]

Patriocentrists are really really good about making war on the rulers of this world [or at least they think they are]. They are also really bad about remembering that our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood. And what do we encounter every day? It's flesh and blood. It's human beings.

I'm also really bad at remembering this, only I tend to think it's all about making war on the oppressors and legalists [patriocentrists]. That's just as bad, though.

War!

So! Here's your inspiring phrase and/or choice quotable quote for the evening. STEP right UP, folks!

We are at war against what is commonly termed 'the world'. This does not mean that we are at war against the PEOPLE of the world.
We are also at war against Pharasaical legalism and the harmful teachings of patriocentricity.
Nor does this mean that we are at war against patriocentrists [hear that, Bethany? Hear that? Sit up and pay attention, young lady. You aren't fighting the Botkin sisters or Doug Phillips or that girl that you got so irritated with an hour ago.]

But it's definitely a war, I think, if you prefer to think of it in those terms. And occasionally we have traitors within the ranks [like Bethany, when she totters on the knife edge of falling over the cliff into patriocentricity].
No matter the inspiring speeches given by leaders in the movement [oh gosh, didn't I just say leadership of movements was bad?] like Karen or Lewis, there will be a lot of dark moments for all of us. And the battle is lost, not just when we all become patriocentrists, but whenever one person succumbs to legalism and leaves Christ. Because it really is the same thing.
Also despite my perhaps-inspiring speeches over here on A Selection of Varied Topics, I'm as close to losing the battle as any of us. And I have a feeling it may stay that way.

Peace

Yeah, you know how last summer I posted about how I'd 'found peace"? I thought I had, but it didn't last. A truce, maybe. Then I found the opposing armies were still on the move. You can't stand by and let Germany overrun Poland [instead, you start a world-wide war that kills millions].
Oh and the fun part is, you really don't know who is going to win the war. Remember I'm not talking about patriocentrists. The war has to be won or lost for and by EACH PERSON, and you really can't tell how it'll turn out [there's a Lord of the Rings quote for that]. That means that I really don't know what's going to happen to ME. I could turn to legalism. I could lose the war.
Not sure whether to be scared or not.

Oh, and YOU can lose or win the war too.

October update

2010-10-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Hullo all! I have not, actually, fallen off the face of the earth.

.....I really haven't written about stuff in a LONG time.....pardon me for a minute while I make a quick to-do list with bullet points and sub-headers to sum up what's been going on!
[Facebook statuses below, in the weird font: ]

Hm, physics studied, sinus infection pwned, LEGO Robotics teams organized, calculus understood, pumpkin pie nommed, Team 956 registered for AOR, Nat'l Merit essay written, grant applications being worked on. Not bad.....

1) The patriocentricity debate has not gone away, it has just gone underground for the time being. I have a presentiment that it is going to come back with a vengeance eventually. When it does, it will probably create angst and horror on a level of what-all went on last month.

2) School is going very well. I am taking physics, tech support, French 3, and AP calculus this semester [after January, I'll add in a pre-calculus/trigonometry class to the mix]. Calculus is going surprisingly well...no dear, I am not a geek....so is physics, actually. This is a really fun surprise, because I have never liked science very much. I guess physics has enough math that I'm happy, hehe.

Bethany just looked up from calc homework and proclaimed in an accusatory tone, 'It's a POLYNOMIAL!'

3) FIRST Robotics still dominates my life. Efforts on that front progress in several areas. I've been working a LOT on grants...writing and phoning big technology corporations and so on, in hopes of getting sponsorship. We need $5000 to participate in FIRST.....so far we have over 2K in school-supplied funding [saved from last year]. Just two days ago the first of the grants came through. Platt Electrical supply will be funding our team to the tune of $1000. Very enthusing :) Also, we have got a 25% discount on supplies from 80/20 [aluminum supplier].
That sum of 5K hangs, like the fabled Oliphaunt of old, like a doomsome and mythical phœnix, on the horizon of my every THOUGHT! [In layman's terms, I eat breathe and sleep $5000.]

Recruitment is also going with a swing. So far, we have got 5 girls and 4 boys on the team. This is UNHEARD of, most FRC teams struggle to make 30% girls....THINK OF THE GRANTS!! Think of the under-represented population being outreached to!! Anyways, we've got a really ENTHUSED girl who just joined the team, she could have been hand-picked to be my much-desired successor in Public Relations and organization and so on....YAY FOR AWESOME LEADERSHIP GEEKS!!

Hmm, on a side note, here's a link to that haven of geek-jokes, XKCD.....this comic right here sums up why engineering is cool, y'know? [Actually, that is probably far from the most epic of their webcomics, but I just had to share it...tee hee...because I am in a link-to-websites mood].

I am also [in addition for being to blame for starting 5 other FLL teams] in charge of coaching two FIRST LEGO League robotics teams for kids in 4th-6th grade. There are 15 kids there on a good day. It is INSANE. Things are starting to go better tho, at our last meeting I successfully taught them all some programming techniques [which entailed making a projector work, no small feat]. By the end of the meeting both teams had done some programming and had a LEGO robot that drove according to their enthusiastically programmed instructions.
The kids on the teams are AWESOME, they really are. I get all sentimental when I look at this little human geeks and see ....well my Facebook status can speak for me....

me, in chat, about 4th-6th grade kids in my LEGO teams: I look at 'em, and I see ENGINEERS....WORLD CHANGERS..LEADERS....
Michael: Where's the like button on chat?

4) Work has been rather intense....every weekday, right after school, my dad and I go to work until 9 PM, at a local phone bank. The pay is good, and it's only until the election, but whew, I am WHACKED after a long day [often starting at 5:30 AM] of school, robotics and work. It's actually rather cool tho, people always read at work [while waiting for the victim to pick up the phone] and I can often get homework and reading done.

Monday night I had one of the classic semi-yearly all-nighters. [Usually they don't start until build season, or at least NaNoWriMo, but I wanted to get into practice....] At work that night I realized that I really needed to have this video project by the NEXT DAY's first meeting of our high school robotics team. Whilst at work, I took advantage of the lulls between calls to scratch down ideas [including where to find the desired footage on my various computers and hard drives].
Home and settled by 10 PM and prepared the coffee.....an enthused post on Facebook when I actually managed to find the coffee stash [we thought we didn't have any]. I got a minimal amount of sleep [ <45 minutes] but was nevertheless able to finish the video project. By 6 AM I was out at the bus stop to get to school, fresh as a daisy [sort of]. Fun times :P .....especially since we wound up not actually using the video at all.

5) The usual seasonal festivities are well under way here in the Pacific North-west. The trees are turning, fog is common, and we are inches away from our first frost. [Incidentally, the cosmoses and Mexican sunflowers are blooming at last, no doubt just in time to be nipped by a good freeze!]

Pumpkin pie has figured largely in the events of the past few weeks, as well.

Today we had a pleasant Saturday in and out of the homestead. I awoke at the leisurely hour of 9:30 AM, and we forthwith headed out to the farmers' market. Amidst much mirth, we then proceeded to Rice 'N' Spice to stock up on essentials such as natto [fermented soybeans] and chocolate-hazelnut paste.
Then it was off to the Co-op, where we actually bought some coffee. This is unprecedented, usually we rely for our caffeine upon the little packets of cheap and nasty coffee stashed in hotel rooms for hard-up decaffeinated guests.

After a brief stint doing stuff at home, I left again, this time with my mom, who patiently carted me off to the local shopping mall [in one town], and then off in the other direction into C-town to the library and so on. I spent a happy half-hour running around the library getting books to take off to work this week.

Hopefully I shall post more soon! There have been a lot of interesting and amusing events lately.

Letter to the Botkin sisters

2010-09-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

[Edit Oct. 2:] Well, it appears this post may be staying up a bit longer after all. No response yet, and indeed I almost hope they don't write back, because I've had a bit too much experience already with their very convincing rhetoric.

Here is an email I wrote tonight, to the Botkin sisters. I do not expect a reply: I hope merely that they will be given doubt about the pain they inflict.
Feel free to copy, link, and so on.

To the Botkin Sisters;

I wrote to you several years ago, about your film Return of the Daughters. I received no response: now I write again, in hopes of giving you pause to consider the effects of your ministry. It is not my intent to hurt or discourage you. However, I write at least in part out of concern for others who may be struggling with similar issues. I do not want you to continue hurting young women.

For the years between age 12 and 16, I read several books subscribing to ideals similar to yours. When I was 16, I watched RotD as above mentioned. It is fair to say it changed my life. I was in turmoil for several weeks, and came very near abandoning what I then considered must be a 'selfish personal interest' (film-making: I was about to embark on a 6-month historical film project with a crew of friends).

What I have now come to term patriocentricity (your views, and those of many others) then had very little effect on me til this summer (before I turned 18). I struggled with knowing I could never achieve the standard of perfection espoused in your works. Patriocentricity and related movements are in part responsible for the fact that I came very near abandoning Christianity, for which I am inexpressibly regretful.

This summer I reexamined the issue at length, and finally came to the decision that I had no call to follow your views. I planned to go to college (majoring in computer science).

Also, I forgave you and all related 'homeschooling authorities'. I had already dwelt enough on what I perceive the wrongs done by your views, and forgave you and felt no bitterness, at least in part because those views no longer affected me.

How can I express the freedom I felt. Not just that which came from forgiveness, but also the freedom from legalism, the freedom to view God as loving, first and foremost. I would do anything to be back there again.

This lasted for about a week. My journey back from freedom has been painful. Now, a month later, I am struggling with self-hatred, self-injury, and depression. You will say that these are the results of realization of sin in my own life: I have no argument to give.

My plans to go to college have also come into serious doubt. I struggle with doubt, because I know almost for a certainty that I will regret whichever choice I make, whether to go to college or not.

My family and a few friends (all devoted Christians) are convinced that I have fallen afoul of a cult and am laboring under spiritual oppression. In my more lucid moments, sadly far between now, I agree with them. They think that there is no sin in gaining an education by means of attending college, nor in working outside the home. My parents, in particular, are angered because they do not see in your work much, if any, suggestion of how a young woman is to provide income for her family if she is not able to work for her father. Some Christians do live below the poverty line.

The biggest blow struck against patriocentricity (and you may laugh in private at the name its victims have given this movement), came when it was suggested to me that I look for FRUIT. I did so: in the lives of many of those espousing patriocentricity, I see no love, no compassion for those not 'in God's plan', and none of the forbearance with other believers which we are so clearly called to in the New Testament.

On the other hand, those people who have rejected patriocentricity, but still embrace Christianity, are some of the most polite, welcoming, and in fact loving people I have come across. They love God deeply. They know that they are helpless without His grace. They are, in fact, desperate for God.

Reading over this, I almost cannot see why I would reject the freedom and joy that God gave me, in order to follow the laws: Col. 2: 20:

²⁰Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: ²¹"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? ²²These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. ²³Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Those 'basic principles' are not the principles of the unbelievers, but of those following 'The Law'. The Law which we are told is not removed, but is also no longer in judgement over us.

No, indeed I cannot see why I would leave God's freedom. If writing this has brought me any closer to no longer being in bondage to this horror, I thank you. (And lest you think I am being melodramatic by my use of the word horror, let me explain. Both my father and my best friend think that if I embrace patriocentricity, by which I mean the entire paradigm of your views, I will after a time grow to hate it and leave Christianity as well. I am afraid to my soul's depth of leaving Jesus. So, then, horror.)

My impression has been that you characterize all opposition to your views as 'angry or tearful'. You may feel free to call me both. 'In rebellion' is another term with which I am familiar. (In other words, please don't think that I am unaware of your opinion of me.)

You may not, however, state that I am merely a rebellious teenager who is displeased with her parents and enjoys feeling 'oppressed'. My parents are in no way to blame for this.

In conclusion:

-You may congratulate yourselves (or thank God) for being part of a worldview which has so shaped my life that I am unable to pull myself away from it, and which I also find almost impossible to separate from the Bible.

-You may also take credit for being the single most disturbing influence in my life for the past several years. Or, you may say that I am blaming my sin on you. Fair enough: but consider that no other view, when convicting me of sin, has brought me to this terror.

-If this has taught me one thing, it is that I never want my children to experience this. I will not teach your views to my children until they are old enough to distinguish the commandments of men from the commandments (two of them, love God and love your neighbor) of God.

-Please take pause and consider how many other women you have discounted, as objecting to your views because of their sin.

I do not doubt that some of your mission is, in fact, serving to honor God. If I have hindered anything which God would have you accomplish, I humbly apologize. Likewise if I have misrepresented your views, I regret the mistake. However I sincerely believe I have correctly interpreted and taken to its logical conclusion, the teachings in your work.

The previous post...

2010-09-25T20:29:00.001-07:00

...no longer applies.
Peace for about a week, and then no more.

And, finally, peace

2010-08-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

I think I may have finally found peace. Not that I was ever particularly lacking it, in any but this one area: the struggle against patriocentricity. The few friends who I trust with issues like these, and rather a lot of blog-followers, have patiently listened to and read reams of my discussions about patriocentricity. Some don't really understand why it matters, but some of those people care anyway :) My hapless dear friend Eva talked about it with me for a solid couple of hours in the small hours of the morning one time. Other friends are willing to talk about it, and nothing else, when needed. Otherwise-unknown people from cyberspace have commented and encouraged and offered hope.

I wrote the following to Hillary McFarland, author of the just-out book Quivering Daughters, and of the blog of the same name. It does a wee bit of a summing-up of today.

And this is for all of you, thank you :)

Thank you so, so much for everything you do. Today a dear friend, who has patiently undergone hours of discussion about patriocentricity, mentioned fruit....and 'how shall we know Christ's followers'. Showing love to others...that is something I have never, in years of absorbing patriocentric views, seen or felt. In the last month, I found your blog, and others, supporting a far more moderate and loving stance, which I'd never seen before. I had always thought that one was either a feminist/whitewashed version thereof, or a daughter of the patriarchy.
Immediately I was welcomed [by Karen Campbell :)] and reassured. Even then I struggled with doubts, that perhaps this 'acceptance' was merely the acceptance of sin in my own life.

I have asked God so many times to show me the truth in these matters, but so far with no more success than could be explained away by 'my own emotions'.
My friend's comment about knowing Christ's followers by their love changed that.
I realized that I do not want to join the patriocentrists, do not want to show the fruits that I see in their views, of legalism and a painful lack of love.
I have, on the other hand, seen so much compassion and understanding and love of the Lord in you and others like you. Finally I am accepting that perhaps the struggle I've always felt against patriocentric views was NOT wrong.
Thank you, for showing us that those who disagree with the patriocentric viewpoint need not be 'in rebellion' or any of the other things that we get called, but instead can be loving, conservative, and relying on God's strength.
Blessings on you for your work, and thank you again. :)

I do feel free, now. Finally. The truth shall set you free....can I get an amen, anyone? Probably these issues will continue to affect me, but just the one fact is different now....'Bethany, do you WANT to be like them?' and the answer, this time, is no.

Please pray that I will in future always look to God's Word, and that alone, for knowledge of right and wrong. In other words......

And please pray that other young women will be spared needless pain and shame.

I'm getting baptized in a few weeks, on my birthday as a matter of fact. Perhaps it is appropriate that in the past few months I have begun to actively search the Bible and God's will, and at the same time, to weigh the 'biblical' teachings about patriocentricity which have lurked in the background of my life for years.

Oh, and I'm happy.

Yet another epic blog post

2010-08-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

Going to be two posts in short succession here, I think...First, I found this really good article here on the rather sketchily-named blog, White Washed Feminists. [White-washed feminist is a name invariably used against almost anyone who disagrees with patriocentric views.] The entire article can be found here, on Michael and Debi Pearl's website, No Greater Joy. I know the Pearls have some rather controversial teachings, I have not read enough of their works to comment at this point :) However, the mere fact that they are willing to address the politically-charged topic of patriocentricity is hugely in their favor, to my mind. The following excerpt does not mention patriocentricity, I don't think the term was even in use when this was written [2008] but it goes right to the heart of the problem....
Without further ado, here are the Pearls of great controversy [:)], on an issue that I, and my mother, and her friends, have seen at large in the homeschooling community.

I am thankful for the testimony of the Foger family as well as other families that have come into our lives. They are a prototype to help us understand the problems that are arising among some older homeschooling families. We call it by different names. Today it is the Cloistered Homeschooled Syndrome. Briefly, it is the failure of the parents to understand, appreciate, and respect the individuality of their adult children. They sacrifice the individual identities of their children on the altar of their own emotional needs, making them nurse when they should be killing and dressing their own food, making them obey when they should be learning to command. They seem to think that grown children are God’s gift to them rather than their gift to God. Through letters and personal contact, we see more and more of this cult-like isolationism, parents demanding absolute allegiance to the family group, and fearing outside contact might break up their “fellowship.” Adult kids who want to launch out on their own are told that they are rebellious and disloyal and are causing grief to those who have nurtured them. Emotionally needy parents manipulate their grown children into remaining loyal to the unit. Thirty-year-old daughters sit at home acting as surrogate mothers, watching their prospects to ever be a mother dwindle…

There was a vacuum, a need for leaders to arise and define what had become a movement, to clarify our journey and give us direction through uncharted waters. First, curriculum was written, then seminars. Sub-movements arose to flesh out the new culture, specialists addressing every conceivable issue—head coverings, dress, doctrine, spanking, scheduled nursing, Kosher foods and Jewish practices, and the list goes on. Books were written, some good, some not so good. Then someone pulled from ancient Chaldean and Sumerian culture, also practiced by Jews of that day as reflected in Scripture, a system of Patriarchal rule. It was the way nomadic clans were held together, a necessity of the times, but never taught by Moses, the prophets, or Christ as God’s divine plan…

It is now become a disease of epic proportions. We call them PDFs, Patriarchal Dysfunctional Families. The children are treated as permanent property of the parents. If they don’t marry, and many of them never have the opportunity, they remain at home as a sort of indentured servant, never rising to the status of an adult, always under authority of the head of the clan, the Patriarch Daddy. Don’t snicker. A lot of kids are hurting. And if you want to see something scary, try to conduct a betrothal with two patriarchal mothers involved. It is uggggly. Daughter sits at home serving the younger children and doing Mama’s chores—waiting for God’s choice. Daddy and Mama hold their merchandise guardedly, waiting for a buyer who never comes.

What is pitiful is the whole process is done in hopes of getting the perfect will of God, but one vital ingredient is missing—encouraging your children to become responsible, autonomous, well educated, and experienced adults as soon as possible. You should have trained your sons to be men by the time they are fifteen, independent by the time they are eighteen. Your daughters should be capable of living apart from the family by the time they are eighteen and should be allowed to make their own life’s decisions somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Unmarried, grown (18 years old) children may remain at home; it is good if they do; but the parent-child relationship should evolve into an adult-adult relationship by the time they are sixteen to eighteen years old. Parents should have earned the right to give advice, and kids should have grown in wisdom enough to ask for it. But a parent should never invoke his parental authority on a grown kid. It is demeaning to both and akin to not being potty trained.

To teach a student to drive or fly a plane and then always make him be in the company of his parents is degrading. You teach them so they can become independent of you. Whose need is being met when a Father treats a 22-year-old girl like a child, dictating the parameters of her choices?

The glory of a parent is to work himself out of a job, to stand back and see his kids fly solo.

Things of note, Take 3

2010-08-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

Wellwell. I have, since I last posted, gone on holiday, started work, stayed up til four in the morning at a sleepover, and taken [am taking] a week-long film class. Epic times all round :)

First a quick catch-up on those things, then to the Serious Topic of today's post, heh heh. Camping was awesome....mountains in Eastern Oregon. Swimming in the lake, a day-trip south to Crack in the Ground, talking about dealing with bears, relaxing around the campfire, smoking oneself over the campfire in attempts to keep the mosquitoes off, smoking one's tortillas in the campfire in attempts to melt the cheese, smoking the cheese drippings in the fire in attempts to Baffle the Bears, and other merriments passed the time. On the last day, we were waffling to and fro about whether the incoming thunderstorm actually posed a threat of raining on us. The first big drops convinced us...they also convinced me that I needed to swim in the lake one more time. After packing up the tent, a massive and enthused undertaking. I could not be bothered to change into my swimming stuff, but just sorta RAN for the water.....and LEPPED....I came out just as the lightning started...fun times :)

Two days later we headed off to the Oregon Coast for more adventures. My dad and I were not keen on the trip from the get-go. This was enhanced by the cold foggy weather with which the Oregon Coast loves to welcome visitors in summer. We headed up to southern Washington as well, narrowly avoiding driving up to Redmond to check out DigiPen's open house. The second night we spent in a vastly over-crowded, over-priced, under-resourced campground which was also infested with rabbits [near the quaint town of Cannon Beach, for all y'all Oregonians out there]. My parents said that it had been infested with said rabbits for years....we later discovered one in the town as well, they were INCROACHING.....well. That night, instead of being merely damp, we were rained upon. We were awakened at 3 by what I immediately took to be 'the creek rising', a harkening-back to the innate human [specifically pioneer] fear of things that go swish in the night. [We were, it is helpful to note, encamped on a gravelly patch in the middle of a swamp.] The noise proved not to be the creek rising to sweep us all into oblivion [one might almost wish it had] but instead the noise of rain hitting the tree leaves above us. Then, of rain hitting the tent.

This would have been all very well had the rain-fly been working properly. As it was, the rain fly had 'popped off down the street for a sandwich half-way through its term of duty' [Muskeg Novel, B.Carlson, 2009]. My feet, bunched against the bottom of the tent, could feel the impact of some of the rain drops on the lower part of the tent....they'd hit the tent and the impact would go through my sleeping bag to my non-sleeping toes...

THEN we heard the ghost. My dad suggested that it might in fact have been a ghost, because it certainly wasn't a person and sounded too big for an animal [at 4 in the morning, at least]. It sounded for all the world as if someone was crunching gravel.....although we had put the tent on the only gravelly spot, in hopes of finding a flat spot. I am convinced it was, in fact, the rain making noise on the tent. Dad joked that it must have been the ghost of Sacagawea [tales of Lewis and Clark infest this part of the North-west...a marker on every stump and overlook. 'Dismal Nitch' was the most memorable name we saw on this trip.]

Come morning, we decided to abandon the tent, which, with its rain-fly sagging because the poles had broken, was sodden and also sandy. In the early hours, rain still misting determinedly, my dad and I rolled up the tent and bundled it down to the trash dumpster. We did not actually put it inside, just sort of left it in a discreet bundle behind said dumpster, should anyone down-on-their-luck find it before the rabbits did.

Once thankfully ensconced in our own house again, I proceeded to the County Fair [where I snarled a lot, and came home remarkably at peace with my world, people and choices].
Other merriments included starting work [a week and a half now, 5 hours every day, delivering surveys via the telephone. Good pay and the best part is, I can READ whilst waiting.].

This week, in addition to working 4-9 PM, I have a filmmaking camp for teens, 9-2. Advanced camera stuff and editing and so on. Very good times [I am the only girl, four geeky guys, but I prefer to think of it more as 'a geek among geeks'. Amusingly, they are all homeschooled and were involved or know of Road to Freedom in some way. Good times.] Yesterday at lunch break we pottered round the dumpster back of the school, had some merriment involving a large branch, then wandered off to Fred Meyer's in search of comestibles. We musta looked like gangstas :) I adore hanging out with geeky homeschoolers, I haven't actually done that for MONTHS.

Okays on to the forementioned Serious Topic. First let me link to this post on Darcy's excellent blog. Actually I am just going to link to it and leave ye to draw your own conclusions. A lot of what she mentions, I also went through, to a much lesser extent.

Post # 2 on serious topics

2010-08-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

Wellwell. I got a sizable turnout of opinions on my last post, both here on the blog and on Facebook, where my blog posts to as well. On to the next [related] topic. Below is a comment I posted on another blog, which was reviewing the book Before You Meet Prince Charming, by Sarah Mally. What I wrote below is really more in regards to some other, similar books.
Again, if you haven't read the books mentioned this may not make a lot of sense....I'll try to provide links and so on. And I know this topic could create a bit of conflict, and people disagreeing with me, I'll take that as it comes.
The comment below was posted on this blog article here:

I was required to read this book, as well as Beautiful Girlhood [by Karen Andreola, I believe? Or edited by her?] and Raising Maidens of Virtue [Stacy McDonald] in my early teens. If anything, these books alienated me somewhat from Christianity, and from the courtship movement, something I deeply regret. Only in the past two years or so have I more fully embraced God and the idea of a courtship-based approach to marriage [and I still consider that the last needs to be carefully handled, a la Josh Harris].

I found myself continually taking issue with the points raised, probably because I felt convicted of my own failings [and of their truth? I'm still not sure]. For a girl who has often been over-fond of the company of boys, almost everything that I read in these books felt as though it was aimed at me.

My mom realized that I would probably never fully embrace all the philosophies in Before You Meet Prince Charming, and sold the book at a homeschool book sale last year, so I unfortunately do not have it to refer to here. But I remember arguing [in my own head] with the idea that if girls live outside of the home [i.e. college], they will become used to independence and feel stifled when it comes time for them to marry. The idea was that this would be prevented by a girl's living under her father's roof until marriage.
My arguments were 1) that if a girl feels [and probably knows she will feel] 'stifled' by marriage, it is not yet TIME to get married! There comes a time when a woman [or anyone, IMO] becomes lonely with a solitary life, and I think that maybe one cannot appreciate the companionship of marriage without a previous time of 'freedom'. What would be more submissive than a woman entering into a marriage contract when both she and her husband know she is giving up what the world calls freedom FOR this one man?

and 2) that if one is afraid that a girl will become used to feeling independent and enjoy it, how fragile must be the 'benefits' of eschewing that independence! 'The truth needs no strength to sustain it' [probably a mis-quote on my part...]

There is, in all three of the books I mentioned, a concern with girls guarding the hearts of the young men around them, something I heartily endorse. [I personally am enraged at some girls' careless and selfish behavior with young Christian men.] However there is always mention of some behaviors as incorrect or even sinful, which I have indulged in and hope to be innocent.
The most hurtful thing I ever remember one of my girl friends saying to me was at the age of 12 or so, in a tone of disgust at what she must have thought to be my purposeful attention-getting: 'Bethany, why do you always make such a show of yourself?' It so happened that at the time I had NO idea I was 'making a show of myself', but it certainly looked that way, I will admit. I was also once nicknamed 'Peacock' for a [short] while. All of this going on in a small Christian homeschool co-op group... Anyways, my point is that some girls feel horribly offended and hurt if they are told they are trying to get attention. Books [Beautiful Girlhood, which I know is not the topic of this post] often mention girls who 'do their hair in new and daring styles' [that IS a quote, at the time I read that I was about 11 and enjoyed braiding my hair in new styles and so on...I memorized that darn phrase] or are fond of being in town, in negative lights [usually the harlot's-feet-abiding-not-in-her-house comes up].

My other major concern is with the concept of courtship, only as portrayed by Sarah Mally in this book.
Please correct me if I am wrong on this though! :)

At least in the allegorical story which is woven through the book, the Princess finally marries a Prince who approaches her [or rather her FATHER] in the appropriate way, and who is also a courageous and caring young man. BUT BUT BUT...I can recall little or no time with the young couple shown getting to know each other! Did I just miss this? It certainly was not harped upon in the accompanying text. How did they know that they shared the same interests? Ideals? Did they at least know where the other stood on important issues, even if they didn't agree? Just because a person is 'good', even just because they are a strong Christian, does not mean that they will automatically make YOU a good marriage partner.

I do not consider that dating is a good choice for most people, certainly not in any form of 'dating around' just for fun. But on the other hand, surely getting to know members of the opposite gender, however little dating actually performs that task, is preferable to being close friends with NO ONE! I recall now another book [Emotional Purity, by Heather Paulsen I believe] which made the case that it is dangerous to be close friends with anyone of the opposite gender. It referred to 'emotional fornication' which, if I recall correctly, was not lust as we would think of it, but instead the sharing of one's MIND with another person. Having in-depth talks about one's faith were to be avoided. There was something to the effect of, you only want to share your spiritual life with your spouse, isn't it emotional fornication to do anything else?

My main concern is that young people may wind up marrying each other without knowing each other very well. Sure, they may get better acquainted during courtship and engagement, but isn't it a little late to be finding out important stuff about your significant other at that point?

I am amazed and thankful to find that this view of courtship is not the only one. Josh Harris' is, I think, much better. One of my very close Christian friends ascribes to a courtship ideal which I consider extremely sensible. It involves being very clear with people on where your relationship with them stands, and not dating just for fun. The plan is to be allowed to get to know lots of people very well, but be open and honest with all of them. When you know who the best choice for marriage is, you hopefully already know a LOT about them...and one would hope that one of the first criteria is being compatible in faith, interests, and personality.

It seems that girls who follow some of BYMPC's guidelines will miss out on many good and innocent relationships. Friendships that is. [for me personally at least. Some girls do connect well with other girls, I tend to have trouble doing so with all but a few. In addition, my scholastic/career interests put me in contact with chiefly guys. While I would hate to appear to undervalue female companionship, I also frequently find it easier to give and receive help in spiritual and faith-based areas with young men.]
I know this is getting long, so I will wind up after just one more [heh heh] personal testimony. Had I followed some of BYMPC and Emotional Purity's guidelines, I am pretty sure I would have missed out on one of my deepest friendships: more importantly, I very well might still be in the fairly lukewarm Christianity that I was a few months ago. Conversing with a young man who deeply loves God helped me in so many ways that I hate to think of the sort of person I was even a few months ago. That provided a sort of springboard to pursuing God more strongly than I have in all my years of being a Christian. While God might very well have opened my heart in other or better ways, the fact remains that whenever purity has been a focus of my friendships with young men, nothing but good has resulted.

Hum. Almost done now. I would like to say that I highly support many of the principles outlined in Sarah Mally's book. Purity before marriage is a very important topic but I feel that this book has some worrying ideas and perhaps fallacies in it.

Things which have bothered the Bethie for a while

2010-08-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to think of a catchy first sentence so that people who only see a snippet of this blog somewhere will maybe want to read this post.....

There've been some situations which have arisen in the past few years, as I thought, only because of my on sins and failings. The worst happened the fall I turned 16, which has been almost two years. The questions it raised have been brooding under the surface for a long while.

In the last week I've become deeply interested in the subject again and have written quantities of comments on other peoples' blogs. I thought it was time to share this stuff with my followers :)

A few notes:
1) you will probably not understand a lot of this if you're not familiar with the conservative Christian culture that I grew up with. It's a good culture, I want to make that clear. There are elements in it, however, which I am still trying to decide about.

2) These elements lie in the patriarchy, or as I now term parts of it the patriocentric, movement. This is fairly common among Christian homeschoolers.

The opinions below deal with a trend which I tend to sum up as 'The Botkin sisters', only because it was the teaching of those same young women [Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin] which finally pushed me over the edge. The edge of-what, I don't know.
This movement says that the ONLY way to be a godly woman is to follow their ideal of women living in their parents' home until marriage, not pursuing a 'career' outside of the home, and in almost ALL cases not going to college: at least not in a traditional on-campus way.
The best way I can describe their philosophy is to refer you to their website: Visionary Daughters Their film, Return of the Daughters, created a fair bit of controversy. I watched it in the fall of '08.

Here is a comment I posted on a lengthy discussion at this website:

I'm almost 18. Two years ago I watched Return of the Daughters as per my mom's desire and it was the most hurtful and disturbing message I can remember hearing [which may only say that I've been sheltered, but oh well].
At the time I had just spent the summer directing, filming and editing a movie with some homeschool friends. I was also in the early stages of planning another, more ambitious film project to be made over the course of the next year with my [at the time] homeschool co-op group.

There were a few phrases which I remember still [after one viewing]. Voddie Baucham's daughter's testimony for one. I recall that she said she had previously planned to be a film-maker. After being convicted, she decided to stay home. It was not obvious, and I believe not the case, that this was after she became a Christian: it did not seem to imply that she was aspiring to be a secular film-maker and thus it was her Christianity that convicted her...rather that she, like me, was already a Christian but then found that it was wrong to do so. [Erh, is this making sense? anyways...]

The other thing was [I think] one of the Botkin sisters stating that 'we are not all at home pursuing our own selfish interests'. I was able to make 'selfish interests' into anything that I enjoyed. This may not have been what was meant, but for an over-emotional teen, it was painful. In someone a little more zealous and with a little less sense of humor, I can easily imagine it leading to self-destructive behaviors.

A little background here. I've been homeschooled all my life until last year, when I took a few classes at a local high school. I am an only child and a perfectionist. Until I became more comfortable with who I am [ergh. That does sound like secular psychology doesn't it...] I struggled with extreme perfectionism in all aspects of my life, especially scholastically.

Some books which my mom also required that I read influenced me in a similar way [Raising Maidens of Virtue, Beautiful Girlhood and to a lesser degree Before You Meet Prince Charming.....the first is also by Stacy McDonald] but RotD hit me hard where I felt it...I was feeling pretty good about myself after finishing making that film, excited about the possibilities of the next one, and happy about my life in general. Probably self-satisfied.

I cried harder after watching RotD than I ever remember doing before or since. And the thing was, it wouldn't have affected me if I hadn't felt in some way convicted by it. Convicted enough to hate myself, not convicted enough to change......which is right there an unpleasant place to be.

For a while that fall, I seriously considered scratching the idea of making my next film. In the end I went forward with it, because 'I hated to back out on my friends'...it was really because I still wanted to continue with it. A year and a half later, my film Road to Freedom was shown at a local film festival after favorable reviews on the festival's blog. [It was a historical fiction work, set in the American Revolution.] I cannot say that anyone has come to Christ because of that film. On the other hand, a lot of homeschool teenagers were involved in various ways and made friendships and had experiences that have lasted up til now.

I did send an email to the Botkin sisters soon after watching their film, with a lot of questions and concerns. They never replied, I don't know if it was because of sheer volume of responses or just them getting the feeling that despite my polite phrasing I was angry and maybe not wanting to hear the truth as they saw it.

I haven't read Passionate Housewives. I fear that it would cause further self-criticism on my part...
In perhaps the unusual place of being extremely self motivated, fairly hard-working, and so on, I often feel upset by calls by Christians to do more, harder things in all areas. I am the sort of person who will work tirelessly for something she believes in...the same thing happens with school...top grades, and yet my parents keep pressing for MORE. [Incidentally, this is becoming a rant....I'm sorry.] That sort of thing hurts.

Also the college issue! I am grateful that I no longer am very much affected by the no-college movement, because if I were the decisions would wrack my world [not to get too dramatic :P ] Actually when I watched RotD I was not really planning on collegebecause I just didn't want to do [I wanted to be an organic farmer and housewife at the time...] but there is a difference between not wanting to do something, and being told that you shouldn't. Sin nature I guess. Well that riled me...I know the Botkin sisters have publicly stated that they do not say that all women who go to college are harlots. In the very next sentence [somewhere on visionarydaughters.com] they turn around and bring out a Bible verse about a harlot's feet 'abiding not in her house'. This seems to me like making the Bible say what they believe...except for the fact that the Bible is talking about a harlot there! Not someone who leaves her house! All harlots leave the house --> all women who leave the house must be harlots. Classic fallacy there...wish I could remember the name of that one! :P
Yes well college. Now I am planning on majoring in Computer Science in college. I am even considering attending a very exclusive game design and computer engineering college [funding being the issue]. There is no way they could condone that...if I believed they were right, I would be in even greater distress.

I think the biggest danger from this movement is actually to the 'good' people. The girls [there are a FEW. Our culture is mostly rather apathetic. As you know.] who really care about doing the right thing, and hear constant reminders to not conform to the world's standards of 'good enough', will be affected. The pendulum argument, that our culture has swung far enough away from truth that an equal or greater effort in the opposite direction is needed, is very true I think. However it is very hard on the people who ARE trying. Even as I'm typing this I find myself thinking that maybe they are right, maybe I should be doing more and trying harder, and taking less 'me time'. If it weren't for my sense of humor, and some rather large blessings God has given me, I could slide back into self-hate [which I am told is really self-centeredness. So I am selfish...and I hate the thought of being selfish...and that means I hate myself which means...okay, finishing now.]

I'm going to wind up this insanely long post which will probably never be read. Thank you, to those of you who discoursed reasonably and in a Christ-seeking way, on this issue. If I hadn't found this and related sites, I might never have known that there are not-feminists and not-Botkins.
And in excuse or explanation for this post which is horribly much about me, thank you for listening to that too. This is an issue which has bubbled under the surface in life-shaping ways for the past three or four years and I may have finally gotten it out of my system.

And can I just say as a word of encouragement to any young women out there who are having difficulty being the 'Proverbs 31 woman', you may be closer than you think, despite the Botkin sisters' recent post on how unpleasant many unmarried women are [...I guess I still feel hurt and angered by them...rats. http://visionarydaughters.com/2010/07/why-am-i-not-married ]
No matter how much you fault yourself, or feel convicted by others, chances are other people look up to you. We are all our own worse villain. Don't stop striving...but don't kill yourself in the process.

Thanks all, and blessings.

There's more, a LOT more, but I won't post it now. Just got back from a camping trip which was AWESOME. Take care y'all, I'll be around in a few days.

mid-summer crazy times

2010-07-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

Our last week has been filled with trademarked insanity!

Last Thursday we left at an early hour of the morning for two days in Portland. By 9 AM, when we were supposed to be at the seminar in a northern part of the city, we were well and thoroughly lost in a warren of streets that tended to turn into other streets, change their names, or disappear entirely.

We kept a harassed eye peeled for a coffee-shop in hopes of wifi, to attempt to further complicate our directions with Google Maps accessed via the trusty laptop. We finally got hold of the conference director who proved to not be from the area, and said he’d call us back.

The coffee-shop materializes in the guise of the Three Friends, on the corner of 12th Avenue. We eagerly trot inside, toting the laptop [in a discreet bag]. It is a sunny morning, there are patrons sitting outside on the sidewalk and more queueing up inside. I size up the situation and make my way with the unerring female homing-instinct to the restroom at the back of the building. This proves seedy in the extreme: the cloth-towel dispenser is covered with graffiti, but it is artsy Portland graffiti. “Read Days of War, Nights of Love”; “natural pear oil soap” and corresponding website; a lot of similar material.

I come out and find that Dad is only just now succeeding in gaining the upper hand at the cash register. There is in fact wifi and we set up shop at a table.

There is a nice collection of velvet-paintings on the wall opposite the bar, including the obligatory likeness of Elvis. The furnishings are done in bright colors and there is just as colorful a selection of patrons: tattoos, former hippy-type greying hair, leather, and so on.

I am looking up the directions: almost immediately my friend Levi observes that I [unwittingly] came online, and sends me a chat message: I respond with a panicked and indecipherable indication that ‘we’re lostin P-TOWN ack!’

Then the conference director calls back and confirms our now remedied directions. We head off back the way we came, towards the infamous Sandy Blvd. Sandy turns into another street at a critical point.

We got to the conference without further incident. We were not even late...we headed into the building [on a small Christian college campus] and encountered half a dozen persons of the male persuasion. The gaming community is overwhelmingly male: the game developers’ community, even more so.

The conference was small, maybe 30 people at any one time. But awesome. The CGDC [Christian Game Developers’ Conference] is going into ten years and there were attendees from all over. Colorado [‘you should seen all the empty bags of pork rinds! It was a long drive!’], Florida, and England. A homeschooling mom who has been working on a game for seven years with a volunteer team. A graduate from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Washington State [I really perked up when I heard that].

The conference addressed some issues I/my parents have had with game design as a career choice. Although I would have liked to hear further thoughts on video game addiction.

But the consensus, which I had also previously come to, was that Christians should respond by becoming involved in the industry, not putting up walls around one area or another. Similar to the film industry. It is not going away, so there is nothing to do but take the chance to change it for the better. And this may not mean making ‘specifically Christian’ video games [or films], but rather games that honor God in the way that the rest of creation does, without a specific message being forced through.

It seems also that the game design industry is not hostile to Christians. My amazing ESP skills [:P] had already come to this conclusion. Someone said that Hollywood tends towards license, while the game dev. community tends towards anarchy. Something I’d already thought subconsciously.

The keynote speech finished up with a memorable call to action: ‘We’re giving them the love of Jesus, but it doesn’t look like love, it’s Gears of War and meatcubes....’

There were a lot of technical workshops too. In between those, lunch, and retailing every detail to a long-distance friend, I made contact with the DigiPen graduate. That night in the dorm lobby, whilst there was a large contingent gaming by the monitors, he and I and my dad talked for at least an hour, as recorded in the previous post. Finally Dad and I migrated back to the rooms: I was in hot pursuit of a shower. [This was after we got back from the FLL mentoring workshop, by the way.] Dad left saying he was going up to the lobby: ‘There’s this game I want to try out...’ This coming from my distinctly non-gaming dad. When I meandered back upstairs [hair wet, laptop bag over shoulder, clad in signature black] he was still at it...I collapsed on a couch and updated the ole blog. Conversed with peopleses. Dad was still gaming at 1 AM...he was horrified when I told him what time it was :P

Next day we had more workshops [kicked things off with a talk on getting started in iPhone app programming] and headed for home so as to be back in time for me to make my 5 PM meeting at the daVinci Days grounds, to collect my media pass and so on.

Saturday was more good times. First thing in the morning I headed off for a meeting of the crew to be filming daVinci Days, our town’s celebration of science, art and innovation. It is a cool place. Well this year in addition to participating in the FIRST Robotics demonstration and scrimmage, I was on the crew from the local community-access TV station, filming the event. It actually worked out so that I was able to film the robotics event myself.

After that I headed off to the park where the 6 local teams participating in the event were having a barbeque. Hung out with awesome-peoples! Including a New Recruit for our team [courtesy of me] who declared himself remarkably enthused for robotics after the day was over.

Discussed the glaring lack of any YouTube presence for the epic conga line at regionals: this was declared a shocking omission by all who had been present :D

Someone had brought some foam and PVC pipe swords and a lot of the lads degenerated into swordplay after lunch...from thence we carpooled over to the competition area. Unloaded my dad's car, which was carrying all the baggage, robot, tools, etc. I was laboring under a few pieces of luggage when two lads from Team 997 came up and toted it all over for us.

Our team has attended daVInci Days for quite a few years but we've never been this prepared and organized. We forgot to bring a tent for shade, but were able to use a spare one that another team had ^.^ We trotted forth our awards, a table to display said awards on, and our NASA/team banner, among other things. In addition I had a sizable video camera and massive tripod. There was much use of duct tape, both for setting up our team flag, and for building the competition field [a mammoth undertaking].

We played a few rounds of friendly scrimmage more than competition, and our bot was gratifyingly unscathed despite the regional competition and another off-season event. The general public was present and there was an endless line of kids waiting for a turn to drive the robots. Fortunately they did not manage to slam ours too hard into the sides of the field, hehe.

There was this one epic kid, looked like he was about eleven or twelve, wearing a baseball cap with a tiny solar panel mounted on the top, and a hole cut in the brim with a little fan going through it..he had designed it himself, soldered a few wires together and stuff...he said it didn't work very well...when does it ever work the first time :P I tell ye, that enthused me no end...

Also I got to rendezvous with some friends from other teams that I don't get to see very often. Good times all round. At one point I was filming from one side of the field, and looked round at the six or so teams behind the drivers' stations and doing MC and watching from the sidelines, and felt an overwhelming affection for these people, half of whom I barely knew. My people....I've said that before...

Various of the students gave their personal FIRST testimonies. Scott, team captain for 997 [the team I went to Championships with: we're really good friends] was talking about the stress and fun of regional competitions. He sez,

'We get to bed at midnight, and get up at 5 AM,' [he remembers] 'And some of us don't sleep at all.' [Three things happens at once: he catches my eye, I give an enthused thumbs-up, and Dean [a member of another team, who's doing most of the MC stuff, sees me grinning, remembers how I'd been talking earlier today about no sleep, and pumps his fist in the air in my direction.] As a friend summed up: 'So, basically, he mentions that SOME people don't sleep, and everyone looks meaningfully at you...'

After the competition most of our team [all three of us...] meandered around daVinci Days. I more or less subsisted on the best BLTs I have ever had in my life, as provided by a local and organic food seller.

Sunday I worked with CCAT Channel 29 to film some of the music and other events on stage at the festival. That went very well indeed...working a long and intense day with constant attention on a heavy camera but it was good.

Tuesday my dad and I attended a training session for a part-time job doing phone work before the election. We'll be doing that every day of the week for 3 weeks starting August 9th, and then for 5 weeks in October. The pay is good and I've done the work before, but it is going to be hard to juggle that with school....yeee.

I have also dealt in grant-request forms, meetings with Important People, and so on and so forth. And college decisions. I'm still wavering between DigiPen and Oregon State U.
Happy news! We got one of the grants we applied for to go to our FIRST LEGO League teams [for 4th-8th grade students]. Was very enthused to hear that.
And got to visit/chat/catch up/do the girly squee thing [LOL] with one of my friends who I hadn't seen in WAY too long :)

AND tonight some friends from North Carolina are arriving, passing through on their road trip :D Yesterday we prepared heroic quantities of foodstuffs for the oncoming hordes [all 6 of them...hehe] and I raced around frantically. Was 'in meetings' all day. Including one with our collaborating partner for the Junior FLL program.

At one point Mom was on the phone with Grandma, who must have asked what Daddy-o and I were doing: Mum said, 'No, they're scurrying around....' which pretty much summed up our past week.

Also I am not sure why I feel the compulsion to document each and every incident of my life on this blog. I guess it's the only journal I keep up with at this point. I'm not even going to read over this post for typos, hehe.

CGDC update #1

2010-07-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

We've been having some epic techie times here. Wednesday prep for filming at daVinci Days, with top-of-the-line video equipment, today up to CGDC in Portland [Christian Game Developers' Conference]: AWESOME stuff! Tonight the FLL workshop on the other side of Portland, I got ENTHUSED.....tomorrow more CGDC conference, then Saturday and Sunday home to Corvallis for the best science and innovation festival in Oregon: daVinci Days, where I'll be filming with CCAT TV studio all weekend, and Saturday I'll be with Eagle Cybertechnology and Spartan Robotics FIRST robotics teams at the local-team demo. Hope to see y'all there!!

And I am pretty much convinced that DigiPen Institute of Technology is the place for me. There have been some amazing opportunities lining up in the last few weeks: starting out with a new FLL recruit mentioning that his dad is the leader of the CGDC and is heading to the workshop this weekend, then us getting to attend the workshop, then the speaker on 'Women in Game Design', then the awesome contact we made with a graduate from DigiPen whose WIFE is the admissions officer at DigiPen.....

Spent a few hours this evening talking with this DigiPen graduate. He is enthused about the town [safe, a bit outside of Seattle WA], the school [TOP professors, lots of core classes], and the general education [I was worried about game programming being too specialized: it now appears that anyone who graduates from DigiPen will be overqualified to do just about anything else: they 'get lazy' and go to work for Microsoft developing big-name programs and all. In short, four years of pure insanity and then--you're MADE. [Oh and still mad, but that's collateral.]

Not sure at this point which degree to go for. The contact [Joseph Vasquez] is massively enthused [......] that I could become the first woman to get the degree [recently added] in Computer Engineering....still wavering between that and RTIS [more programming-oriented].

We also got the very interesting story behind DigiPen: a Lebanese man got snuck onto a college campus, got caught, said he was there to apply, passed the test and went on to take 19 years of college. DoD work in 3d [hush-hush, blowing things up..] then got ties with Nintendo....DigiPen shares a building with Nintendo....anyways companies were going round to all the big engineering colleges who pooh-poohed their efforts to find game developers. And DigiPen was born.... ;)
First a Lebanese immigrant....Now it might have someone who is failing to get her high school diploma from Lebanon High School, Oregon, in order to complement her insane test scores and mad skillz.....not to pitch myself too high. But I have to sell my skills or no-one will believe I can do anything....

I blame FIRST for all of this, just for the record :)

inner city

2010-07-12T15:27:00.000-07:00

I'm in a coffeehouse downtown...as close as it's possible to get to inner-city, around here. I came into town about three hours ago to ride the free wifi at The Beanery...our wifi was predicting '40 hours' for a software download [CAD program 3ds Max]. Got ensconced in a window seat at The Beanery and it said 1 hour :) I also took advantage of the fast connection for some file-sharing with a buddy, and sent a video which would have taken HOURS at home....now I'm uploading the same video to Facebook. This really is a blistering fast connection...

I am finding it remarkably easy to concentrate here, despite the continuous hustle and bustle and coffee-shop noises. Good place to hang out. I was even able to study my alloted two chapters per day of biology. And joked about 'wobbling DNA' with a friend. And offered said friend's sister help with video editing [actually I wasn't much help, but my suggestion worked at least :) ]

I just migrated over to a wall plug....laptop battery was getting low. This has the added advantage that my back is to the wall and I can overlook the whole place in a suitably imposing manner.

Love my town :)

Yoyos, fireworks, laptops, nerds, and other strange critters

2010-07-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

Hoo boy have I ever been having good times! Busy....very busy.
Before returning the laptop to the studio yesterday, I spent quite a few hours editing the footage from Nationals. Robotics people, and robotics competitions, are so very photogenic! Hours of footage and it is all beautiful. The video is FINALLY getting close to finished.

Friday after returning the laptop we hustled out to school to collect the robot and batteries and so on. That evening I scooted off to spend the evening at Eva's and go to the Philomath Frolic and Rodeo with her family. That was epic good times. I felt like I really hadn't seen any friends in way too long. Eva has a large and chaotic family and we all [minus two boys, and plus her sister's boyfriend, and the dog] were in the kitchen cooking dinner :D Good times. Then it was off to the rodeo, which was also great fun. I convinced Eva that she should to to Wyoming and get herself a cowboy :D And a really nice fireworks show. I was told it was much better than the 4th of July show in C-town...glad I went to this instead.

Got home late and woke in less than six hours this morning, to head off to the Philomath Frolic parade. Our robotics team was there, and 997 [the team I traveled to Atlanta with] and 847 [the epically enthused team from Philomath]. We had a float, from which the robots were driven. Lots of waiting around and joking and talkin' nerd-talk. At one point there was a circle of guys standing around talking bout bacon-wrapped bacon...and then I looked over and saw one of the guys [code monkey AKA programmer] having a little spaz attack: and said, 'Eehee! I look over and Paul's randomly spazzing!' which another team member met with 'That's just Paul...he randomly spazzes...'.

Then another group of awesome-people was discussing yo-yos. One of the students, 847's driver in fact, took out a rather awesome yo-yo and then told us about a prank rather well-known in the yo-yo community ['Where does the yo-yo community and the FIRST community intersect?' 'Um right here I think...'] about a fellow that got a bit of publicity...Zim-Zam yo-yo company or sommat...and just totally pranked the media...was 'displaying a nice yo-yo trick, but if you know anything about yo-yos you'd know he was faking it....he had about 8 yo-yos on his fingers and started waving them around in circles...' [he waves his hands around to demonstrate] 'and finally just starts flailing, the strings are all twisted up, he called it the Flaming Angel or something like that....' as the audience of five or so students busts up laughing. There was a break for donuts...there was flag-waving.....I had pounced upon a hapless 8th-grader who wants to be on the lego team next year and so he came and we stuck a shirt on him and so on...
I sure am happy to be part of the FIRST community. It is like nothing else. My people. :)

Anyways the parade started quite a few hours after we started but fortunately we were moving away from the sun :P Then we learned that the dad of the very 8th grader we'd recruited is the head of a Christian video game organization and is hosting a conference next weekend which I am signed up to take. DigiPen is the big gam design school, you will remember. So I'll be in P-town for two days, and on Thursday I'll also be attending a seminar on how to start an FLL team...then Saturday it's back in town to film at daVinci Days with the TV station.....AND robotics scrimmage/demo on Saturday. Can't wait to hang with the robotics crew again :)

Oh and my laptop came! I just installed an upgrade to the operating system: PerfectCritter, as the comp. is named, running Windows 7 Pro, Trend Micro security, with Autodesk 3ds Max about to be installed! And of course dear Macbook Eddie for everything else, because Macs still rule the universe.

Peace all.

Lost within my own mind

2010-07-05T00:41:00.000-07:00

and that's the best place to be, I guess.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

I've started writing again, a lot. JulNoWriMo. You'll remember that last November I did NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month] and came up just short of the 50 thousand words in one month. But for those of us who are truly crazy, there is NaNo in July. I'm actually almost on top of my word count, but it's just a few days in. On the other hand I have way more time in summer. Or I like to think so. July is gonna be killer.

Last night I went to a rather splendid performance by the local AAA Theatre....you may remember my posts about their awesome amateur shows last summer, and at Christmas.

Today we had lunch with my grandmother, and then tooled around home until evening. Then my dad and I went into town to Red White and Blues festival....lots of good rock, blues, and etc music and other fun times downtown.

I am angry and feeling sorry for myself. I am trying to accept the fact that there is not really anyone in this town who cared enough about me to want to spend the 4th of July with me. And that's not entirely true, a few people were already busy.

The best thing to do is obviously make peace with this fact and even...embrace it. I can be the lone wolf when I need to. In fact, I tend to work better alone. If I have a job to do, no matter what it is, I am usually happy. And useful. I can do that again. Get through the summer and come September, there will be something to occupy every minute. Make the good grades, keep the FLL teams enthused, get the funding for our FRC team, get the scholarships, get admitted to DigiPen Institute of Technology.

And-
I was all depressed and now I'm not. Yeah, I definitely just talked about God to one of my friends for about two hours. I can only say I'm thankful....that God can use me. That I can still help. That He makes things work out all right in the end.

It's a new day now, early on the morning of July 5th.

Raw

2010-06-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

Well this post is the result of a few comments, and then also the fact that I ate a--nevermind.

So yeah, raw food. I haven't really done much with a raw-food diet, but I adore eating raw stuff. Milk for instance. I don't feel like going into a detailed discussion of the raw-milk question. Suffice it to say that I drank raw milk at every opportunity when I was in California. LEGAL there....the government has no right to regulate whether or not people can sell raw milk. Nor does it have any right to regulate what milk producers can say: if it's true, they should be allowed to say it.

This issue is to do with artificial bovine growth hormone. rBGH has been shown to be harmful to cows [causing mastitis and other problems] and humans. Linked with cancer, in fact, because of its mimicking of human growth hormone. As a result of people wanting milk from cows not treated with rBGH, many producers label their milk as 'rBGH-free'. The government, lobbied by the big-milk industry, wants to outlaw this.

Why?

It would 'cast doubt in consumers' minds on the safety of milk NOT labeled'. Cast doubt.
Would be unfair to producers using rBGH.

The same thing happened with a beef producer who wanted to test all their cows for BSE [mad cow disease]. ALL their cows...and label the meat as tested...and the industry wouldn't let them, because it would cast doubt on the safety of meat NOT labeled. Only a tiny percentage of cattle are tested for BSE.

And then this evening I randomly decided to eat a raw egg yolk. In my defense the egg was JUST in from the henhouse and still a bit warm. It was sitting on the counter waiting to be made into esoteric pasta sauce....it looked yummy....well I took and cracked it, and picked the yolk out in my hand....and SCHLOOP. :D I was kinda nervous bout the taste, I am not keen on underdone eggs....and I sorta cheated, I mostly just gulped it down. :D Then proceeded to gross out my friends with the tale...hehe.

I can expound on why the danger of salmonella from my hens' eggs is negligible. Way I hear it, [and I practically have my doctorate in this sort of stuff...] hens that are raised in confinement, as in commercial egg production, are too much protected from bacteria. The salmonella bacterium, according to my Culinary Arts teacher, is very weak: it dies out when it competes with the Mostly Harmless bacteria found in farmyards. This is why it's more dangerous to eat store-bought eggs than home-grown, for the most part.

Oh, and stuff like what I just said may be illegal in a few years, enjoy it while you can.

Footing the Bill

2010-06-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

I am quite batty, I think...I am footing the bill for the registration of our FIRST Lego League robotics team...which is a SIZABLE fee. Let us hope the team pays their dues and the grants materialize. I am also buying a laptop for CAD work [likewise for robotics]. There is a class in Autodesk 3ds Max given by one of the local FRC teams, and 3ds Max requires a Windows operating system -.- Spent a few days trawling frantically through newegg.com and pages of robotics forum discussion on what makes a good CAD computer [good graphics card, mostly]. Then this morning one of my friends did some hunting for me and came up with this rather awesome critter. All the specifications, for $800.

Hrm, I have also kept busy chasing rabbits with feral roars [as witnessed by a friend on Skype >:D ], cutting and drying small amounts of hay, catching escaped goats, running around the homestead with a knife stashed down my shirt [in pursuit of the rabbits], hunting down a pie-cherry tree, subsequently pitting [by hand] a lot of cherries [solo] with music playing in the background [my FIRST robotics competition playlist :D ]

back in town

2010-06-24T07:29:00.000-07:00

Our vacation to Southern California was very awesome.....got sunburnt, listened to Nightwish, failed epically to do any writing, smelled an insane amount of jasmine flowers, ate avocados, swam way too far out in the ocean, met a very dear fellow blogger :) and was on the road for 17 hours straight on the way home.

Yes, I kept a detailed account for the first couple of days....reprinted below.

"We left for California, to visit grandparents near LA, Sunday morning at the unheard-of hour of 8:45 AM. Usually we are lucky if we are out of the house by 10....

Started getting ready for the trip Friday, to some extent. Friday was also my last day of class at CHS, owing to the fact that I would be far away this week :D

Well Thursday night, in addition to preparing for the second trig final exam, I typed up The Quotes. In addition to taking notes in math class each day, I jotted down the frequent amusing quotes by the class, or teacher. I fully intend to post these soon. Anyways there was a page, front and back, of 8-point font quotes.

Friday morning I was up early. Printed up The Quotes [all 15 copies thereof]. I also was struck with a sudden enthusiasm to wear Appropriate Attire on my last day of school. This proved to be medieval Scottish garb...pictures hopefully to come. Lots of green plaid, to say the least, hehe. No sooner had I got well in to the school library, and the end-of-class bell rung, than I hears THA PIPES going at it. Bagpipes. There is this one lad at CHS that plays the bagpipes, and is let run around loose :P Today, I suppose graduating the next day, he was kitted out in full Highland garb and had a small entourage of drummers. They paced round the halls above the library. It was all quite exciting. [The rest of that day, we had 10 minute breaks between classes, and as soon as the bell rang UP would start the pipes.]

My quotes page, a Parting Gift for the class, was met with mass hysteria by the class :)

The test went pretty well. QUITE well in fact. Right at the end I got hung up on the EXACT SAME SORT of problem that had fouled us up the day before. Nevertheless, I GOT the problem just as the class ended.....another sprint to victory ;)

Then it was out to me dad's school, to help him tidy his classroom before the summer break. We did this rather faster than usual, but still did not get home until late, due to little excursions to shop for food and other things.

We had by this point laid out a plan of action, to prepare for The Trip. In fact, we'd already established the fact that we would NOT be planting seedlings the morning we left. Plants were going to be safely in the ground LONG in advance. [That has occurred rather infamously before big trips...it goes along with the paradigm that encourages waiting until JUST before dark to begin mowing the lawn.]

Is it even necessary to mention the fact that dad was out at dawn Sunday, putting tomatoes in the garden?

We made a heroic effort, all right. I believe I may have even done a little work on that front Friday after school. I certainly did not PACK UP on Friday. I saved that til Saturday :P We ran around rather frantically, to farmers' market, and more stocking-up in town, and back home to rendezvous with the folks taking care of our critters, and so on. Spent the afternoon washing produce to take with us, and packing, and yelling out the window, and so on. And planting tomatoes......in the morning I had the revolutionary idea of using the carrot-bed for tomatoes. This revolutionary idea was cemented by first attempting to dig holes in the cement-like garden clay, and by noticing that the lovely raised-bed full of Sandy Loam was full of carrots that had monumentally failed to sprout. Dad hailed this idea with a look of awe [I think] and we went at it. First of course we had to go at the WEEDS and encountered rather a lot of slugs. But anyways we got a lot of them planted...not ALL though.

Sunday I got up at 6:15....was awakened at 4:45 by birds making a racket in the yard. They do that....tweeting, chirping, and so on. The swallows are particularly bad. Well dad went out and started feverishly planting the rest of the seedlings. By a heroic effort [aided by me working backstage on food-packing], he got them all in the ground....there must have been 50 or so tomatoes and assorted seedlings.

Then we dealt in hoses and chicken-waterers and signs for the gal taking care of Tha Critters.

We were going to try to leave at 8 AM. At 8 AM, therefore, we were racing from one end of the house to the other, and back out to the car, all with the Tascam audio recorder sitting on the kitchen table, recording every NUANCE. Such as this gem:

Dad [seriously]: This could set us back. Where are the chia seeds? I am going to eat only chia seeds on this trip: I am going to be like the Aztecs.

We eventually got on the road, minus the chia seeds. It is highly ironic that Oregon simply POURS rain for TWO MONTHS SOLID, when the rain is supposed to stop around April [or at least let up], and then, two days before we leave for California, clears up to beautiful sunshine.

It is a good two-day drive to get from our place to my grandparents', south of Los Angeles. The first day was rather brutal....about half an hour down the road Dad commented that he was getting sore....it also turned out, half-hour down the road, that we [or rather I....] had neglected to pack enough towels. especially the big fluffy ones that are nice to sit on. We went through the Willamette Valley [lots of trees], Southern Oregon [different kind of trees], and Northern California [no trees]. Well that is an overstatement, there ARE trees. In spots. Palm trees, too! And oleander, lots and lots of oleander. Ordinarily we make camp about Williams [Sacramento-area] but we got such an early start that we made it all the way through to Monterey.

I like California farm country, if there's little farm houses mixed in with the acres of crops. A California farm-house follows a certain and invariable patter. Smallish, usually white wood house [or mobile home], with willows around it for shade. A small plot of vegetables. Variations include farm animals, wild sunflowers, oleander hedges, wash hanging on the line, and rosebushes. All in all a very pastoral, Steinbeck-ish image, and one that I would far rather see than unbroken miles of crops.

Near Sacramento I waxed nostalgic: 'Ahh, dear old Davis!'...Davis, where, I may say, I have only been once in my life. Several years ago we traveled with the robotics team to the Sacramento regional, which was held at a stadium in Davis. That was what we might term the beginning of the robotics saga, so I naturally have fond memories, hehe.

The Northern Cali rice fields always make interesting window-watching. At this season the rice is just poking above water....acres of water with green fuzz on top.

It was nice and warm all through the middle part of Cali, much nicer than cold Oregon...even though it was about 95-100 the whole way. When we started through the mountains to the coast, the fog came up as promised. By night it was chilly and damp.

We checked into our favorite hotel in Monterey, the Padre Oaks, after a 12-hour day of driving. I was all ready for bed when the parents decided to go out for a walk. I had just finished getting into my very disreputable nightshirt and declined to get back into more suitable togs. A solution presented itself in the form of my wrinkled and sketchy trenchcoat, which I proceeded to throw on. "

Anyways, the rest of the trip was very satisfactory. There was some discomfort in the way of sleeping, including a terrifying moment in SoCal when I, at 4 AM, heard a distressing loud crash sort of noise outside....I immediately thought it was a bomb, and thereupon resolved never to live in a city.....then there was the small earthquake that happened a few minutes after we got ensconced in my grandparents' house.....but yes, all in all it was fabulous :) And awesome to finally meet a fellow blogger that I've gotten really close to in the last few months especially.
You-all folks on the East Coast, we must have a REUNION at some point! :)

Enthusiasm is just another word for 'working your tail off'

2010-06-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

Guess I made up for those three posts in one day by not posting all week! School is wrapping up, for which YAY. But I'm going to miss my math class....

Our plans to start a FIRST Lego League [FLL] team at our school are progressing epically. All week I've been sending emails and plotting and talking with faculty and running around school with a clipboard.
Sarah [another robotics geek] and myself have been meeting at school, hashing through fundraising and other plans. It goeth well.

Tuesday we had a particularly productive day. We talked to several principals [high school and elementary] and obtained permission to officially have homeschoolers on the robotics teams...all the teams...and we now have a Robotics Department at Santiam [school], pretty much. We'll be starting a Jr.FLL team, and at least one FLL team. This means students will have a robotics program available to them from 1st grade all the way through high school.

We were also the happy recipients of a generous donation by one of the elementary teachers, of a sizeable quantity of legos, and several RCX lego kits. Nowadays FLL uses NXT systems, but these will be useful for us mentor-types to learn on....

At one point we [we being my dad the robotics and art teacher, Sarah, and myself] were striding determinedly through the school, three abreast. In the middle, me, armed with clipboard and feeling like we were out to save the world. In a way, we are.

FIRST is not about robots. It is about inspiration. If our young people want to be engineers, if they have a burning desire to succeed at something other than sports [to take a common example], we will have succeeded.
When I was at Championships in Atlanta, I had the feeling a few times that if everyone in the Georgia Dome felt the way I did, we would change the world. Thing is, feeling a certain way doesn't do much. Even enthusiasm [much as I hate to admit it] can't do everything. Maybe the difference is, for me enthusiasm is a code word for dedication, hard work, obsessive research, and a certain willingness to scream your lungs out at Regionals.

I know how FIRST has influenced me, I was thinking about this in assembly at school yesterday. In how far I will go to support people, my team or whatever. This was my third year at regionals and things are so different than the first year. Now, I cheer at every full stop. The reason I had a sore throat for days afterwards was because whenever our team was on the field, I was yelling. At our end-of-season team party we watched a video that one of our mentors took at regionals: at one point the audio is completely distorted, the volume levels are maxed out because I was shouting a few seats over. I don't even scream like a girl, it's a YELL. When the first round of awards was being given out on Friday evening, I wound up standing and clapping and cheering for each team that received an award. Our team was sitting at the top of the stadium, no-one stands up at the top of the stadium. I did....this coerced part of my team to do the same. I meant it: I was happy for those teams.

When our team was called down for the Xerox Creativity Award....that was one of the best moments in my life. Running down to the floor of the stadium, past dozens of teams....down at the bottom, where the enthused teams stand, people had their hands out giving us high fives. You have to experience it, to know what I'm talking about. That was success. Of course writing an essay at midnight was also success, but a different kind.

This sounds self-centered, but the best way I can describe FIRST is to tell what it's done to me. Now I care about what other people have accomplished...it carries over into other things. I start a standing ovation for my friends' play, I cheer at ballet concerts [ballet concerts are very QUIET usually], I started the audience clapping in rhythm during the can-can piece [which the dancers like], I cheer at tiny robotics scrimmages. FIRST hasn't been responsible for all this: it's just made me think more about how much effort people put into things, and want to recognize that effort.

I took the SAT again last Saturday. I did a shameless promotion of FIRST in the essay.

Trigonometry final exam today: first part of two-part final, this with a partner. Tomorrow it's by ourselves, no calculator. That went very well. In fact things went along swimmingly until we got to the last problem, which involved working through two nasty trigonometric equations to prove that they are equal. Always requires oodles of work and sometimes one will pop up and kick your tail.

This one kicked our collective tails. My partner and I spent a good 45 minutes, and 3 pages of scratch paper, working out that one problem. We went down a lot of rabbit trails: as partner complained to the teacher, we had 45 minutes in which to go down as many rabbit trails.

The class period ended. Break passed, still we scribbled frantically. The next class period started, the teacher approached us to say 'The time has come...' but just a moment before that I had gotten off down the right path at LAST and scrabbled down the last box round the answer just at that moment. ADRENALINE. High-five with my partner, who mentioned the fact that I dominate at math, and out the door, shaking from a combination of caffeine and adrenaline. Another WIN moment :)

midnight madness

2010-06-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

Yes I am posting three times in one day. I promise, they're all worth reading.

I just finished my math [at 11:45 PM, very late for me]. I've got a trig quiz tomorrow...various bits of homework and extra credit stuff finished up. I got home from the book sale [in the RAIN...it started to mist gently..@ Tragedy, what have you done...it drizzled gently all right.
ANYWAYS, I got home and dealt in a couple of emails. Then had to deal with the grant-writing situation. I'm applying for a grant for our robotics team from these folks and the dratted thing is due tomorrow. I got most of it done but we need a 'collaborating partner'. I hunted up three different local organizations....finally had success on the LAST one, at the eleventh hour. Hallelujah!
All evening I was making phone calls and writing emails and hunting down contacts. Also chatting, which was VERY distracting. When a CERTAIN SOMEONE keeps mentioning the tick they found on their knee, and subsequently LOST somewhere in the room ['he is LURKING!'] it is hard to focus on grant-applications.

But finally success!! At 10:30 I had an enthused conversation with the head of something-or-other outreach at OSU's program: we worked out a DEAL [she at first thought I was one of the parents, not a student. WINNAGE.] There are BIG PLANS afoot. This could be a huge opportunity for our team to start a FIRST LEGO-league team, which I had really wanted to do but doubted I had the leadership to do. EXCITING TIMES. I selected our collaborating program, edited a few more things, and submitted the grant app :D :D It being due TOMORROW. Classic stuff.

a non-tornado, denim skirts, and trigonometry

2010-06-03T18:59:00.000-07:00

Am currently encamped at a homeschoolers’ hold-out in Oregon: i.e., homeschool book sale in the state capitol of Salem.

Why do all homeschoolers dress alike? Heh...we conform just as much as public schoolers are supposed to. Just to different standards.....

There’s always a few mothers in denim skirts...I can see a girl now who could have been me a few years ago, in denim tiered skirt [pale blue, slightly grubby] and oversized t-shirt with a horse graphic...did I mention that a majority of homeschooled girls are horse-crazy? I used to be. And long braid down the back.

This is horrible, I sound exactly like anybody making a stereotypical statement about homeschoolers, smug in my own public-schooled psyche.

Then there are the other homeschoolers, the ones that dress ‘hip’ in skinny jeans or black or whatever. Ergh, I used to despise them too, and now I’ve become them.

Another van just pulled up opposite me...I am sitting in the car [mini-van], because I already browsed the books and there isn’t really anything. Workers at the sale got early access...hehe, I WORKED....brought our own books in and placed them round at the appropriate sale tables, trying to get out of much work because my wrist is almighty screwed up from The Dalles.

Stupidity....at last week’s robotics event in The Dalles, we were setting up the field and all. There was a plethora of strong burly lads, I could very well have slacked off and said ‘Phsh, let them handle the heavy stuff’. I even had a very valid excuse: I was filming the whole thing. But NO, I must needs get in there and show off the fact that even though I probably can only lift about a third of what any lad can, I nevertheless will work just as hard as them. This resulted in my getting aforementioned wicked cuts on wrists, and in my right wrist becoming rather badly screwed up. I don’t think its sprained, it just hurts a lot when I move it from side to side. That happens a lot in my daily life.

Or it MAY have been the wrench-turning, which I also did a lot of [on my side on the gym floor, when our robot broke]. I can usually figure out a way to injure myself pretty badly using nothing but an allen-wrench and some lock-tite [glue that is put in screws before the final installation].

I have a feeling that I am going to seriously injure myself some day, merely for the admirable purpose of showing off. The ironic part is that it will almost certainly be when there is no-one else around, and I am just showing myself that ‘Oh yes I can! Watch me heft this plywood!’ and then....*crunch* *agony* *Stoicism*

Well yes. The wrist situation. It’s happened before [namely the first week of build season, when we cannibalized last year’s robot. I was eager to show my dedication and really went at those screws. They’d been lock-tited of course...] but never for this long, it’s going on two weeks...you’d be amazed how much a right-handed person puts sideways pressure on her right wrist. Yesterday I tried to become ambidextrous in math class. The writing-with-left-hand part didn’t go so well.

Oh! Today in math class I was told I resemble a rabbit. This sounds awful, but it really isn’t. It’s the wide-eyed bounding enthusiasm I usually have in math class. A sandy-haired rabbit. You ever read Stargirl? Well one time I got called Stargirl, too. By my French teacher...I was walking past, in bright red robotics team shirt, with an immense bag over my shoulder, hair in two long braids, and trademaked jaunty walk....I was hailed with ‘Bonjour, Stargirl!’. It seriously made my day.

Also, trigonometry is officially awesome. Law of Cosines allows you to find the measures of all the angles and sides in a triangle, given only two sides and an angle....

Hmm. Seems to me I was talking about this-here book sale. And the mini-vans pouring into the parking lot. We had a tough time getting here, ran into a load of traffic on I-5 coming up but we wound up ahead of schedule, even.

Last year we attended this same book sale. It is an episode that has gone down in our family folklore so to speak. The weather had been threatening for days...the day before it had been unusually warm, and a thunderstorm came up in the evening and drenched the place. By morning it had blown over but the atmosphere was still oppressive. We drove to Salem [about an hour] and attended the book sale. By 4 that afternoon we were packing up our unsold books when it got dark very fast. The sale is held in a church gym; I made a trip to the car with a load of books and I have never seen a cloud make the sky dark that fast. I think I remember a sickly sort of look to the light. When it started hailing, very suddenly and very hard, most of the kids helping pack up raced to the gym doors....in a few minutes we went back to the tables, sorting through the unsold books.

Then came a moment of terror. A man, one of the dads I suppose, announced [over the pounding rain and hail] that there was a tornado coming down the street and we all needed to evacuate the building [which had a metal roof]. I have been terrified of tornadoes for as long as I can remember. As I like to state, there is a reason I do not live in the Midwest. Well we evacuated that building all right, across the street to the main church building. The street was covered with flowing water, still bucketing down rain. There was no sign of the tornado, I’m not sure if it ever actually touched down in Salem. We huddled inside away from the windows, very damp but not too cold because it was still far warmer than it ought to be in Oregon in June...

We were worried the power might go out [we later learned it did, in my hometown]...I had dreadful visions of being stranded in Salem with the grid down...it was not a happy thought. But soon enough the storm passed and we were let back into the gym. It was still raining a bit.

We got home and found out next day that in fact a tornado had touched down near my hometown. In a field a few miles from our house they found a spiral pattern in the grass...although as one of my friends said, if they have to ascertain it was actually a tornado from prints in the grass, it does not really count. It is still a local legend however...or at least I like to think so, I doubt anyone in my town remembers weather events as well as I do.