I'M NOT DEAD, I SWEAR

Melissa emailed me today asking me why I've been so quiet on the blog...eh, I don't know. Don't really have any big news, but then again, I didn't before, right? Don't have much time, but then again, I don't have kids and I didn't have time before. So the real answer is just...I suck. Sorry.

Memorial Day was lots of fun. Dan and I went back to my hometown for a camping trip with a good friend of mine from high school. We all got a slow start on Saturday and about 12 people total took a nice slow canoe trip down the James River. We took Colonel Mustard, who, for the record, is NOT a good swimmer. If you throw him in the water, he sounds a bit like a bowling ball being thrown in a lake. He swam, but only to keep himself from drowning. He did NOT like that. Guess I'll have to introduce him to the water again soon so he's not so scared of it, or at least buy him a life jacket. We camped out at an island in Appomattox County (where, you might have heard, is "where our nation became whole again" - the surrender of the Civil War...and yes, it really hasn't changed much since then) and then got another WAY slow start and canoed another 10 miles or so to the edge of the James River State Park. I'm glad we didn't go any further down the river - Dan got a sunburn, we were out of non-alcoholic drinks, and east of Appomattox county, the trash starts to pile up in the river. I had a lot of fun, but I was struck by the fact that I never really did things like that too much when I lived in Lynchburg. I went camping once or twice, went rock-climbing a few times, went to camps in the boondocks, and played at Panther Falls once or twice in high school, but I don't really think I appreciated it as much as I should have. I definitely think that moving to bigger cities on rivers (Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia) have made me SO aware of how disgusting they can get when people don't treat them properly. Everyone on the trip was saying how beautiful the James was, but that when you get even a little bit further downriver, it's just gross. Anyway, we had a lot of fun, and hopefully I'll get some pictures sent to me to post. I took my camera, but chickened out from bringing it on board the canoe - now I want one of those water-proof point-and-shoots.

In other news, I've been reading a really interesting book. If you'd like to know about the place I grew up, pick it up. I heard about this a little while back and thought (like a lot of native Lynchburgers) "why didn't I think of THAT?!?" - an average guy decided to transfer to Liberty University for a semester and write about the experience in one of the world's - admittedly - most DIFFERENT universities. I often tell people about Liberty and my hometown and people are almost disbelieving at how crazy that place is - a 45 page code of moral conduct, reprimands for not making your bed in your dorm, being able to be kicked out of school for drinking LEGALLY - this backs it up. It really has made me think about growing up there and how happy I am that I never bought into it in lockstep the way a lot of people have. Don't get me wrong - I don't think for one second that people who go to Liberty don't know what they're getting into, but it scares me to read some of the stuff in the book. Things like the fact that Liberty steadfastly demands teaching a Young-Earth model of Creation, which is adament in the assumption of the world being less than ten thousand years old. I don't mean to stir up evolution vs creation here - I believe both of the theories have room for each other. But to say that dinosaurs roamed the Earth with man, that carbon-dating was made up by atheist scientists? Yeah. It also bothered me to see women still regarded as all-but second-class citizens, who are taught to recoil at the sight of the word 'feminist' and to consider their first job in this world as submission to their husband. If you want to use that model for your marriage, by all means, do so. But I consider it a completely different matter when it is taught as the only correct school of thought in a University (sic) that receives federal funds. At any rate, I happened to pick the book up in Lynchburg across the street from LU, and even though it wasn't on Liberty property, the fact that I could only buy it by requesting it from behind the counter was not lost on me - especially on the weekend LU announced that their chapter of the Young Democrats was thrown off campus because they lent support to pro-choice candidates. It made me think a lot about what they've done to my hometown, and quite frankly, I'm running out of good things to say about them. You know when you've gotten to the end of your rope with an old friend? The one who has never made you feel like you've known them all that well, the one who continually hurts you when you stick up for them? Yeah, that's about how I feel. I'm continually saddened to see that the Liberty / Thomas Road Baptist Church / Old Time Gospel Hour / whatever sideshow has hijacked the meaning and name of institutions and ideas that I used to actually enjoy - namely, the Republican Party, Lynchburg, and for that matter, Christianity in general. I hate that they've invoked the name of God to parade their moral high horse and have imposed the idea that if someone doesn't agree with them, they're against God. I've got news for you, Jerry Falwell Jr: Martin Luther's 95 theses still stand. It's not between a person and a Church, a person and a Megachurch, a person and a University, or even a person and a Moral (sic) Majority (sic). It's between a person and God. And by the way: Church. State. Separate. Get it?

OK. Off my soapbox now. This is the book - The Unlikely Disciple, by Kevin Roose. For a guy of all of maybe 22, he's a great writer and seems to have accomplished a task that not many native Lyncburgers ever could - writing a fair and balanced (um, not in the FoxNews way, though) account of the nation's Holiest-than-Thouest school.

Hope you all had a great weekend, and nope, sorry...no word on the job yet.