Debate or Entertainment?

 
 

   The networks get high ratings.

   The audience gets to see the candidates and can cheer for their own.

   The TV viewers get some form of entertainment.

   But I do not think that the political process is furthered in a meaningful way when there is no civil or tempered discussion of the important problems facing the country.

   And I do not think that we get much idea of a particular candidate's thoughts on the major questions of the day…

   When all I remember about a "debate" is one candidate talking over another and breaking in on another's answers to the questions from the moderator. Bombastic rhetoric or cute one liners makes men seem like kindergartners.

   I say it is showmanship, a sop to the base of a candidate's support, with no meaningful give and take, and a lot of the time no one listening to another. What is civil about any of that?

   I have a suggestion to the networks who provide the medium for all of this. Let's put each candidate in a soundproof booth where they can hear what the others are saying without being able to interrupt and talk over the other. Let's have a switch on each mike, controlled by the moderator that cuts the candidate off when the bell rings and does not make that mike active until the moderator asks him a question or recognizes him.

   Maybe then we, the audience, could actually hear if the men on the stage could give a coherent answer to a question or relate to the others with some sort of consideration. We might actually learn something and make a judgment on the value of an argument.

   Gov. Kasich and Dr. Carson conducted themselves as men, but the others were closer to kids on a playground. I say kudos to those two, while I notice that they are 4th and 5th in the ranking of the Republican candidates.

   Perhaps our political process is past the point of civility and all we want is a show.

   Our country is the loser in all of this.

   And I remember someone saying once that a country will get the kind of leadership it deserves, and that scares me to no end.

   And I am disappointed and sad.

Simple Pleasures...

   It does not matter if the cruise ship is in a busy port of call or sailing along from one port to another, you can see folks all over the ship, in any small spot that sports a chair or two, relaxing with a book or a puzzle or a game of some kind.

   Go to any lobby of a venue, go out on the deck around the pool in the sunshine, ride the elevator down and look into the Library as you pass Deck 9, or go into a bar or eating spot at a time when that place is not busy with customers, and you will find these masters of the relaxed class of passengers doing their thing.

   The veranda of our stateroom was our favorite place to chill out. With plenty of sunshine and always an ocean breeze, it was perfect for all of these personal activities or just for a quick nap in a chair.

   The Daily Sudoku and the Daily Crossword were available near the Guest Relations Desk on Deck 3, and you needed to get them quick, because they ran out a lot of the time. I usually managed to pick these up right after breakfast. You could always tell which day of the cruise you were on by the number of the puzzle. You could also use these to remember just where you were on that day. It seems that we were on Day 9 which meant Georgetown in the Cayman Islands, a day where the sea was pretty rough, and we stayed on board because the smaller boats that took people to the Island were bumping along to the shore. The ship's captain had also informed us that no wheelchairs or scooters would be allowed on the tenders, and that people with difficulty walking and with balance probably should not try the Island excursion that day.

   There are a couple of other things on our veranda table.

   The first, Alexander McCall Smith's book The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon,  is a book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series. I believe this is book 14, and Mayre and I were reading it together during the trip. When I say "reading together" that translates into "Don is reading the book aloud", and we are both enjoying the story. I believe there are now 16 books in the series, and they really define "light reading".

   The other reading material is found on my Kindle. I mentioned in a previous post that I was in the process of reading David McCullough's book, Path Between the Oceans, the story of the Panama Canal. I did not finish that book until we arrived back at home, but it was enjoyable from the point of anticipation in seeing the actual canal, the comparison of the descriptions in the book with the reality that we experienced, and the pictures in my mind (and on my camera) as we finished out trip toward home.

   The other book on my Kindle that we read was The Moravian Daily Text, a devotional Bible Reading plan put out by the Moravian Church. This we tried to use as our days began.

   Books and puzzles, simple things that made the trip.

   And kept us from spending all our time in the Cafe…(at the dessert bar)

Creations, Man's & God's

   When my son heard that we were going cruising and what ports we would visit on our 11 night time on the ocean, he told me there was one book I needed to read. It was:

   David McCullough's book Path Between the Oceans, the story of the Panama Canal.

   It is a long book, and by the time we had reached Panama I was only through the French phase and about to begin reading about the American one.

   The story of the Canal begins with the French and de Lesseps, the French engineer who had already built the Suez Canal in the Middle East. That European country spent many francs and much manpower to begin the work, only to have to give it up in the late 19th century. Their efforts were thwarted by the jungle, the fevers and their insistence on building a sea level canal without any locks.

   Then came the Americas, building on what the French had begun, deciding to focus on sanitation first  to eliminate yellow fever and reduce the malaria problem, then eventually building a lock system to raise boats from one ocean to a man-made lake, and then lock the boats down to the other ocean.

   That is a simplified version of the whole story, but, through the leadership of Teddy Roosevelt and his men on the ground there in Panama, the Canal was built and is still in operation today.

   It was the one place on our itinerary that I most wanted to see.

   And it was great to be able to view it first hand, especially after reading the book and realizing all that had gone into it. Its creation was indeed a wonder especially considering the machinery used and the obstacles overcome.

One of the mechanical "mules" taking a ship through the locks

Gates between locks two and three on the Atlantic end

The Canal has parallel locks. A ship beginning the descent to the Atlantic.

   But I came to realize as I looked back over our time at sea and the things we had seen, that I had been a party to more than that one man-made creation in Panama, as great as that was.

   Most every day on that boat, getting up early in the dark and waiting on deck for some light in the east, I got to experience God's creative powers, and they were always new and always different in some way.

   Those times on the top deck, alone most of the time, were fantastic.

   They are in the process of building new locks on the Canal, so as to be able to handle the larger ships that need the passage. As times change, so does the need.

   A new sunrise, one that has not been before, and one that gives rise to a new day, one that has not been lived in before…

   Now that is a Creation (with a capital C)

 
 

Why Pictures?

   Whenever I think about going somewhere, I think about taking my camera, and when I think about why, I come up with two distinct reasons.

   When we go on a trip, I want to take shots of what I want to remember about the places, the people and the situations.

   Then there are times that I might just know of a place or time that would possibly give me some good shots, or I might look at the sky in the late afternoon and think that there might possibly be a stunning sunset coming up that I can capture.

   So when we went on our cruise I tried to do some of both.

   As I look at what I came up with in my files, I find that I have 317 shots saved from that trip. Note that I don't know how many I deleted from the original number, but the total taken was fairly high.

   What do I see when I look at the ones saved on my computer? What did I want to remember and what caught my eye to stop and photograph?

   There was our ship:

Our ship, the Celebrity Equinox on the left in port with a Carnival ship on the right

The water/light show at night by the indoor pool

The Lawn Club on the top deck with real grass

   There are the places we visited:

The Panama Canal

Colon, Panama

Mayan Guard at the ruins on Cozumel, Mexico

The Spanish Fort at Cartagena, Colombia

   There are the people that we saw:

Friends for 50 years

A happy Selfie person

Teddy, our guide at the Canal

Whoever she is, she looks comfortable

   There were the situations we encountered:

Wildlife at a park in Cartagena

   And, of course, there were the special shots:

Sunrise on the way to Cozumel

Sunset leaving Cartagena

   The preservation of memories of a wonderful 11 days on the "big boat"…

   We are grateful for the opportunity to have enjoyed all of this...

Do Words Have Meaning?

   This morning in the Moravian Daily Reading, a reference was made to the words coming out of our mouths.

   There was an incident on the boat last week that seemed to illustrate that for me, but it did not have to do with words coming directly from anyone's lips. Let's see if I can put that into perspective.

   First of all, there are two main places to eat breakfast when you are cruising (at least on our ship).

   1. There is the all day buffet up on Deck 14 where the choices are spread out all over the middle of the Oceanview Cafe. People just grab a plate, some silverware, and get to filling the platter with any and every goodie they crave. And they can return to get more anytime.

   2. Then there is the main dining room down on Deck 3 where you are ushered to a table, seated with menu in hand, and just order and wait for delivery. There are waiters that come by with various rolls and muffins, and a juice waiter along with a coffee one. It is a relaxing spot.

   The main problem with going on a cruise is the amount of food that is available for consumption, and so we usually opt for the dining room option which helps with quantity control and gives the food the proper respect it deserves.

   All that to say this:

   We were at breakfast one morning early in the cruise itinerary, sitting at our table for 2, when a fellow passenger, one that we did not know for sure, appeared by the side of our table with a question. First he stated that he had noticed my shirt, one that read Bowdoin Track and Field, one my grandson got for me at his school, and he told me that he too was a runner.

   I immediately told him that it was my grandson who was the runner in the family, and then this gentlemen proceeded to ask me a question. He was trying to remember the name of the Bowdoin female runner who had won the Olympic marathon back in 1984.

   Amazingly, the name surfaced in my brain, and I said "Joan Benoit", and he affirmed the answer, saying that he just could not remember, but now knew it was a correct answer.

   He proceeded to talk about running, when I remembered that Joan Benoit was married and her last name was Samuelson. He was impressed with that, but then I had to confess that Ms. Samuelson had a son that ran on our grandson's cross country team, and that was my clue to remembering.

   A few days later, again at breakfast, this same man and his wife passed by our table. As they stopped to greet us, the wife asked if I was a minister. When I answered in the negative, she pointed to my shirt which read St. Simons Community Church, and commented that she thought I might be the pastor there.

   I responded that I was just a plain old "lay person", and was wearing the shirt from our church at home.

   Her response, "Well, I guess we are all supposed to be ministers anyway, aren't we?"

   I thought, you are right we are, and maybe even the words on our clothing have meaning.

   Kinda like the Capitol One credit card commercial "What's in your wallet?"

   I guess I should really be careful what kind of message my shirt is putting out.

   As an aside, this same couple stopped us again a few days later and remarked that I was not wearing a shirt that had lettering on it. She said they had begun to look forward to seeing what my shirt might be saying when they saw us.

   Alas, I only had two shirts with messages on that trip, but I'll consider the implication if and when we ever go again.

The Value of Worry

   Someone, somewhere has said "If you are not worried, you just don't know all the things that are going on all around you", or something like that.

   Yet the Psalmist stated in the very beginning of this well-known verse from a popular psalm, one in my reading this morning:

   "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

   The other evening, Thursday it was, as I lay down to sleep on our last night of our 11 night cruise into the warm waters of the Caribbean, I began to think of all the things that could go wrong on the next day, Friday, the day that we were to leave the big boat and drive home to St. Simons.

   Now I am not a worrier by nature, and I don't think that I was all that worried, after all I managed to drop right off to sleep and did sleep soundly till morning came, but my thoughts were definitely on what might happen on that next day.

   We might not get the pre-arranged wake up call so that we could be in place at the right time to get off the ship.

   Our bags, which had been placed out in the hall before going to bed, might just not get to the right place so that we could get them as we exited the ship.

   The wheelchair that I had arranged for Mayre so that she would not have to make the long walk from the ship to the port, and on through the maze of the custom's authority, and on to the curb where we were to see our transportation back to the motel where we had left our car, just might not materialize.

   How would I manage a wheelchair, three large bags of stuff, a book bag with all our valuables, and my camera case, all through customs?

   The transportation may not have been there for us.

   Our car might be missing and then we had a real problem.

   But you know what?

   We woke up before the wake up call could ring.

   Our bags were sitting right in space 53, where they were supposed to be.

   The wheelchair was ready and even was handled by a ship's crewman, and he even took us all the way around all the lines of people, into an area of the port, where he handed us off to a port authority person, who took us to the baggage claim area, where we found our three bags in the right spot, and then also bypassed the next longer line through customs, on out to the front of the building.

   Not only that but he also secured a porter for the three bags who followed us through customs and out the front door and across the street where…

   The van from the transportation company was waiting, where the driver loaded our bags and took us to the motel where our car was sitting in the same parking spot, ready to go.

   So, I sit here, on a cool Saturday morning, in my own home, in my own room, on my own couch, and I wonder:

   "What is the value of worry anyway?"

   And I read again:

   "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

   Why in the world did my mind want to dwell on all those negative thoughts?

   I should have gone straight back to my well-known saying:

   "It will all work out"

   As it was supposed to…

   And Did