Easter

Last year I missed Easter because I was at a palace garden hotel in Rajasthan celebrating a friend's 50th birthday. Understandable trade-off. But Easter is a fun time for us. It is a completely befuddled combination of chocolates, yet another mythical Santa like creature and the concomitant lying to children, eggs, the lord rising, and the joyous rout of spring. We attend Nicolle's church's sunrise service outdoors - on the banks of a stream in the Hill Country, followed by an easter egg hunt and breakfast served by church volunteers. We return to Lariat Ridge and take photos of the turds in blue bonnets. Then we eat ourselves into a stupor. We've done this for a few years and it's as close as I'll get to a religious family tradition since the Durga Pujas of my youth.

But this Easter we got screwed. No church service. Yes. - you are hearing me grumbling about the lack of a sermon. The church changed things up and the egg hunt got combined with butterflies being released somewhere else or something or the other. So we sat at Grandmas and the kids hunted all their eggs in about 30 seconds. Then we ate store bought bbq while the weather and Carol's new lawn mowing device conspired against the blooming of the blue bonnets.

So I have no breathtakingly cute pictures of the kids at Easter for this year. But the evening before Easter I took Evan and Cade to the Cunningham ranch west of Dripping Springs for a fundraiser and I have some photos from there.

And I have a photo of the framing for the deck at the new Clark-Perry home that I helped with on Friday and Saturday. Here's a complicated corner - a piece of deck-making magic. Unfortunately can't take credit for it - Nicolle's friend's husband who is a professional carpenter did that.

Happy Easter, y'all.

Volleyball

Volleyball is a social sport for Vivian. She enjoys hanging out with her friends multiple times each week. And may be playing here and there for a bit. She's the newcomer to the team, so in terms of skills she has a way to go. She also doesn't think of herself as super athletic and doesn't not relish pain in sport - though it strangely does not dissuade her from being a total risk-aholic with other things like sledding down an icy slope.

But sport teaches so much more than motor skills and she is the happy or unhappy recipient of all of that and it's nice to see her grow into it.

Evan on the other hand was stuck with a volleyball team full of girls the other evening while waiting for and then eating a slow long dinner at Maudie's. So he took it upon himself to be a paragon of his gender.

Better than Dicks?

As popes go, this one is enlightened. Except for his religious beliefs he seems like a reasonable dude. So I was surprised to see headlines in about a dozen papers report that the Pope thought that it's better to be an atheist than a bad christian. In his defence, he never said that. Instead, he said, speaking about scandalous christians, that "...How many times have we heard – all of us, around the neighbourhood and elsewhere – ‘but to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist.’"

Here's a portion of His Holiness' sermon taken from the official Radio Vaticana's website:

“But what is scandal? Scandal is saying one thing and doing another; it is a double life, a double life. A totally double life: ‘I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this association and that one; but my life is not Christian, I don’t pay my workers a just wage, I exploit people, I am dirty in my business, I launder money…’ A double life. And so many Christians are like this, and these people scandalize others. How many times have we heard – all of us, around the neighbourhood and elsewhere – ‘but to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist.’ It is that, scandal. You destroy. You beat down. And this happens every day, it’s enough to see the news on TV, or to read the papers. In the papers there are so many scandals, and there is also the great publicity of the scandals. And with the scandals there is destruction.”

He's saying that if you don't live your life according to what you say are your guiding principles, you are a dick. It doesn't matter that you're Catholic. You're still a dick.

The bigger purpose of the homily is reasonable and very praiseworthy, like a lot of things the pope has said. But then. HH has that throw-away comment. Jeez - y'know what we say in the hood. Even atheists are better than dicks like that.

Really?

Dear Mr. P - I know you have to speak a lot. I know that to dissect one sentence - to be sure one that you used to only support your argument and that you attributed to others, is being super nit picky. If you are unsure, replace the word "atheist" in that line with Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim - your pick - and call a rabbi, lama, guru, or imam and run that by him (haha - not her). "It's better to be Buddhist than a scandalous Catholic". Did that offend you, Mr. Lama? You know everyone says that.

Religions preach not to do certain things because it's god's word. Don't follow the rules and bad things will happen to you - in this life, the next, eternity - the details vary. But there is goodness outside religion. That goodness isn't driven by fear or blind faith. It's thoughtful and considered and imperfect and work in progress but it is the ultimate basis for personal responsibility. Aspire to be a good human even if your god isn't looking.

ps. HH said this back in February. I saw a link to the CNN version of this story on Easter. Someone posted it on FB with clearly the opposite intent. Look how understanding this dude is. I ran my thoughts by a few people seated around the table. They didn't fly. If you think that my argument is flawed I'd like to know. But don't just say "that's not what he meant", unless you are the Man Himself. 

Rosedale Ride

On April Fool's Day we successfully put away Ride #23. The Mayor, Superintendent of AISD, Archer, and David Borden were guest speakers. Thanks to all my friends and the community who got together and helped us raise more money than every before.

David is Savannah's father, a Rosedale student who died a couple of years ago. We had a cake after the ride to celebrate her birthday - Savannah would have been 18. David has written a graphic novel called "And Yet We Rise" about the life and death of his daughter. I bought a copy of the book from David and he signed it to Vivian. The book is written as a note to his younger daughter, Ruby. It starts with the amazing line "the truth is horrific and beautiful".

Ask Evan and he'll explain that he was doing cartwheels and somersaults inside Jo before he was born. He ended up having his umbilical cord wrapped around him. Two days short of exactly seven years ago, in the delivery room at St. David's they noticed that when Jo pushed Evan's heart slowed down. Her doctor made a decision to deliver the baby by c-section. While Evan came out healthy and with his brain intact (though that's not what we tell him :-) it could have gone either way. The line between him and Savannah is a fine one. I would encourage everyone who is a parent or a child to read David's book.

Up Side Down

It's spring! The time of year to be alive in Austin. Evan and I went for a bike ride yesterday after dinner. We stopped at Rosedale School and he ended up hanging from the monkey bars.

"Daddy - the world looks upside down. It's amazing"

He stayed like that for several minutes, savoring the strange perspective. I remembered doing that when I was a kid. If you haven't tried it recently, stand up, bend over, tuck your head between your knees and look around. Normal Everyday World looks like Amazing Upside Down World.

A couple of nights ago, I told Evan to brush his teeth in preparation for bed. He returned very quickly and said he was done.

"Let's smell your breath"
"Oh - I forgot to brush my teeth"

And he ran back upstairs and returned two minutes later with minty breath and sparkling teeth. He had lied, but then had the grace to look guilty and confused. Once discovered, he took care of business. When I was his age I was the recipient of a glass of steaming Bournvita milk once in the morning and then again in the evening (we were a Bournvita or a Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate family. Many friends were Horlicks people. Some outliers were Complan folks). When no one was looking I poured the whole glass down the sink. Every time. I could have given a starving child the gift of nourishment and changed his life. But instead I just lied and poured. I told my mother this when I was an adult. She was horrified.

Catching Evan and Vivian lie about their dental hygiene habits forced me to reflect on myself. I mostly lie when it is convenient. Or to stay within the bounds of acceptable behavior. I usually don't lie if it actively gets someone into trouble. Not as a matter of principle, but because such situations rarely arise. If push comes to shove I probably will. But, like Evan, I have the grace to feel guilty about it when caught.

My friend is a good human being and a police officer. Yesterday he reposted a story that was making it's rounds on Blue Lives Matter. A gun store owner had stated that he would never sell Glocks again because the Glock rep said “I have found that most cops lie.” A discussion raged online about whether cops lie, if the Glock rep had actually said that (Glock denied this happened and people that know him vouched that the rep would never say something like that), and if the store owner had made this up. Most people however just read that Glock thinks cops lie.

Which inevitably brings us to Trump. The Atlantic, NYT, Time magazine, LA Times and hundreds of media companies have recently had long stories on Trump's lying nature. Why does his lie so often? To confuse opponents? To gain advantage? Because he truly doesn't know the difference between truth and lies? Theories abound. We'll never know. But interestingly enough, cops, who overwhelmingly voted for him are still concerned whether the Glock rep lied to a store owner about cops who lie.

Is Evan going to try to emulate Honest Abe. Or George Washington's famous (mythical) "I cannot tell a lie". Or have Trump and his voters ushered in an era of openly dishonest discourse? Three decades ago when I proverbially landed on the shores of this country for the very first time, I felt that Americans, more than anyone else I knew, placed a great deal of importance on the truth. Almost naively so. Over time it became one of the things I love about this nation.

But now, it's like Evan's upside down world from the monkey bars. When nothing is based on fact everything is up for grabs.

Even pussies :-)