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I was reading the MSN Political Cartoons this week, and went through the cartoons on Rev. Falwell's passing. Most were snide remarks about his politics, about how when he gets to heaven all the people that he didn't like would be there. How he would get shown his in the end.
Bitter remarks from people who never have understood this guy.
And then there was the one from Gary Varvel, of the Indianapolis Star-News. A smiling, pudgy Falwell is at the gates of heaven, holding his Bible. In the background, in the gate, are bunches of smiling representatives of the Bible stories waving at him. St. Peter looks at him and says, "You're going to enjoy this more than the book!"
It's what I think is more likely to have happened when he got there. In the end, Falwell's love of the Bible and strict interpretations of it from a particular theological understanding. Like anyone else who lived for the Bible, he will get a big surprise when he see the Increate. No matter what we think, we think too small. We get it wrong. Some, perhaps, more so than others.
Falwell erred in wanting to be the center of things. I think that his ego often got in his way, as it does for so many leaders. He couldn't let the movement move on, a movement that was never his anyway. He was always more of a lightning rod for the press and the left than the real leader of the movement. Evangelical Christians were already in politics when Viguerie, Wyrich and what's his name decided to form an organization to capture them for the Republican Party, settling on Falwell as their man to lead it. The issues were already there, too: abortion as a result of the atrocious Roe v. Wade decision (what a gross overstepping of the federal limits, and it set back the left since), homosexuality, evolution in schools, teaching standards. It was all about the children and it has remained so wherever it has had power.
All Falwell did was step in front of a movement that was already there and give it a national face. Ronald Reagan, in his famous "You can't endorse me, so I endorse you" speech in Dallas, showed them a way to associate with a national figure. The guys in the background tied economic conservatism to Christians, and did so very successfully.
Falwell in many ways was just along for the ride.
Attempting to load a largish entry on grid installs makes my server keel over. That's irritating.
So it's time to move to a different server. There is talk that I should just move to WordPress, which is supported by my other vendors. Well, time to leave the host, then.
The problem with WordPress is that you can't export out of it: once you get in, you can never get back out. There is rumour of an export plugin from UFla, but it's never worked for me.
Oh well.
Yesterday I attempted to install the OSG Client 0.6 on a linux server. I've attempted to install it several times on other machines, but it really wants a RedHat Linux. Which I think is nuts, since I would prefer Solaris or Debian.
It failed after a few minutes saying that this was Rocks 4 and it wants only Rocks 3. I found that irritating.
A friend tells me that I can run it successfully on that machine with
pacman -pretend-platform:RHEL-3 -get OSG:client
But this morning I tried it on a remote server running Scientific Linux 4, which should be a supported platform. Initially, I sourced setup.sh in bash, because I prefer bash. I got the following error:
Package [/home/USERID/osg:OSG:client] not [installed]:
Package [/home/USERID/osg:http://vdt.cs.wisc.edu/vdt_161_cache:VDT-Client] not [installed]:
Package [/home/USERID/osg:http://vdt.cs.wisc.edu/vdt_161_cache:Condor] not [installed]:
None of the following alternatives succeeded:
Environment variable [VDTSETUP_CONDOR_LOCATION] has not been set.
vdt-untar failed to install files from 'condor-6.8.3.x86_rhas_3.tar.gz':
Failed to unzip 'condor-6.8.3.x86_rhas_3.tar.gz': No such file or directory
Pacman install failed
Which is entirely unhelpful.
Everything was going so well until yesterday.
Nothing like a real hello after vacation.
After what was really a grueling 24 hours, L and I were napping on the couch, feeling Spooky Girl move around. She got up too fast, stumbled, and "spill": her OJ went straight into this MacBook.
Well, I shouldn't have had it over there without closing it.
The keys have all been "washed" but they're sticking and hard to press. I pulled the machine apart (that's a lot harder than you would think since Apple doesn't believe in service manuals available to the public) and got the keyboard/top pulled off after it had afew hours to dry. The real sticker is the space bar, but I may have removed something there.
It looks like it will be ~$250 to get anew keyboard/top part. Its all one piece. Sigh. I'll need to find an authorized Apple repair shop over in Lisle or Batavia on Monday.
It's a capper to a rotten week after a glorious vacation.
Still nice to see the laptop survive a direct hit like that. I figured I was just out a grand. Hard drive, motherboard and screen are all good. The keyboard is hosed. That's fixable.
It comes to this, Yule: PowerPoint Church is closing on 20 May. It apparently came down to some intense and probably ridiculous meetings: in January, we had a "you gotta tithe!" series and now it's all over.
Well, it's not like that wasn't telegraphed from more than a year ago. Still, rather disappointing.
The head pastor, parent church and denomination are saying "adios" and packing up their stuff and moving on. So it's no more 501.3(c) corporation that I called the PowerPoint Church.
It's probably for the best for the people who made up the PowerPoint Church to part with the church that was the parent church. And for the parent church to part with the people who made up the PowerPoint Church.
It's probably true that there are bad feelings enough to go around, but I think that it was generally less rancor than the other church endings that I've been through.
I suppose that the folks who decided all this didn't decide to this while L and I would be gone, but then again maybe they did. Nothing like putting a couple of troublemakers into another continent, enjoying the company of great friends and good food (and Belgian beer and gaufres chaudes), to really get a church problem done the way you want.
The usual folks are the victims here, regardless of what the victim pretenders would wish.
But sometimes folks need to know that it's time to part. "When in the course of human events...." and all.
It's odd: L and I had just reestablished some ties with our old church in Chicago. And I have been invited to apply for a position at a local research university. Maybe times are changing.
Still, awfully sad. I wonder how the kids will weather this. I know we never did it very well back in the day. It took a toll, although it was long in seeing.
I'm sure that in a year, our head pastor will be in a stable posting and very happy, the parent church will have started a successful child church, and the congregation called PowerPoint Church will be busting out of their digs with growth. It will work out, but sometimes people can do stupid things, say stupid things. Maybe no one did, but I'd not bet on it.
Prayers for all around, Yule. I'm sure that you have these things over there.