Here are more pictures including some of Halleigh, a stroll around the ODD before the Durham Rising celebration, and the Olds family trip to Nags Head.

But before we get started, one that we can all appreciate curtesy of an especially poetic D-ville graffiti artist:

One of Brooklynne's grandparents died over the weekend. It was really sad. I feel really bad for her whole family.

She will be in Salt Lake for the next week with Halleigh. I'm home alone with Kona. The blog may get alot of attention in my boredom.

Brooklynne and I have decided we're going to splurge on going out to eat once a week (usually we go out more than once) and we've been trying to enjoy Sunday brunch at a new place each week. We were also busy this weekend, so we ended up getting chinese on Friday night. So I've got some more Durham reviews to share.

Rainbow Chinese

Food: A-
Atmosphere: C-

The food was typical chinese fare--good but nothing special. I had always passed this place on Main Street for years and never went inside, but it had been around so long, I was looking forward to eating there and having a good Durham experience. We thought it was more of a come in and sit down type place, but instead, Rainbow definitely caters to the takeout crowd. You order at the counter and there are no drinks except bottles of cokes in a 7-11-style cooler. I do have to add points for the authenticity though. The Lady and the child who were taking orders were speaking chinese, there was the traditional tank of carp on the counter, and the TV in the dining room was playing what Brooklynne described as the "Chinese Braveheart" with subtitles--not in English as you might expect--but in characters!

Recommendation: Eat here when you want basic chinese takeout, but don't go on a date.

Parker and Otis

Food: A
Atmosphere: A-

Parker and Otis is the new gormet grocery/cafe that took the place of Fowlers by Brightleaf on Duke Street. Right now the place is having a "soft opening" where they do a lowkey opening and get customer feedback before their much-celebrated grand openning. Well, they don't need to change much. The food is great and the prices are pretty cheap. My omlet sandwich was 5.99 and prepared to better-than-average standards. Parker and Otis also carry a neat inventory of microbrews including one called, Brooklyn Pennant Ale 55. Now that's a fun one!

Recommendation: Great place for a Sunday brunch, and it will be even better in the fall when it feels better sitting outside on one of their large decks.

***By the way, I'm not reviewing it here because it has been a while since I've gone, but Pops, next door to Parker and Otis, is perhaps the best dinner place in Durham (15-25.00).***

More reviews to come....

So I was reading the Durham blogs, and I noticed once again that alot of people hate the downtown loop. I don't mind it. I kind of think it works, and even better now that Main Street goes both ways. I posted a comment to this effect and asked why people hated the loop so much and the answer came down to the fact that it is one-way, it's overkill for the size of the area it contains, it's a pedestrian nightmare, and it looks ugly. Perhaps I'm the only one, but I would say that 1) a two-way loop with intersections would be too congested, 2) it's only overkill because downtown hasn't even started to fullfill it's promise and I'd rather have a major artery deflecting through-traffic around the city center where the streets should remain bike/scooter/pedestrian friendly, 3) a few well-placed and attractively designed pedestrian bridges would solve the crossing problem, and 4) I don't think the loop is any uglier than the scenery around it, so let's place the blame where it shoul
d be placed.

What do you think of the loop?

We have a back-log of events to report on and a huge number of pictues that should be posted, so I'm going to skip most of the narrative and just supply the pics. Since there are so many, I'm just going to post one "set" every other day for the next week or so. click "continue reading" to see the first group: Hailey G., Wazzu vet school graduation, and Spokane, WA.

Here is a fun collection of random clips from the past two or three months. The last little bit is from Halleigh's first trip to the beach. She was not a big fan of the cold water. Other highlighs from the video include Halleigh pulling up in her crib and Halleigh's love of Kona. Enjoy!

So I finally took some time to work on my blog and clean it up a little. I hope you guys like the new look, because I might not have time to update it again fo a while. The images I've used here are a couple of classic Durham pieces from my recent show at Broad Street Cafe. I also tried to tweak some files to see if I could fix the comment posting errors that every one has been having problems with. Let me know if you still get errors. I think my favorite part of the update is the edited blogroll with several new additions. Definitely check out the new selections for some good reading.

Cory Cavin recently blogged about Damien Hirst's new art work entitled For the Love of God (you can find the link on the left). I had read a little about the piece, which consists of a diamond encrusted skull, but I didn't really think about it too much since I generally don't like conceptual art. Still, I was struck by the comments on Cory's blog that all expressed a large dose of skepticism about the work, and brought up an interesting question about the meaning of art. Are Hirst's skull, or shark, or dots really high-quality art--or even art at all?

I'll offer my take on art and artists through a sports analogy. Damien Hirst is like an athlete who plays extreme sports. Extreme sports, like base jumping for example, often have no rules, no institutionalized system to govern who is qualified to play or not, very few objective measures of winning or losing, etc. Extreme sports stars base their fame on performance, image-making, intentionally doing what no one else has dared to do, pushing the edges of possibility. Damien Hirst does this with his art.

A base jumper may be very fit and highly trained, but no one would suggest that he could compete on the court with Lebron James or even a UNC walk-on for that matter. In fact, given the time and money, many of us probably could make the same jumps with about as much style as any veteran base jumper. But even if we could do what the base jumper does, we haven't, and we don't. Therefore, it is right to admire that guy for a different set of reasons than we admire stars like Tiger Woods, Lebron James, or Derek Jeter. We should admire that base jumper for daring and creativity, a disregard for the establishment, a constant drive to conquer the next step, and the ability to embody emotions hidden within us (like fear, uncertainty, or our need for excitement).

As for me (and I think most other people too), I prefer the traditional sports and I enjoy following/viewing sports stars who have made it within the sports establishment. Likewise, I prefer traditional art based on somewhat universal ideas of beauty and form. Still, Damien Hirst's work is a worthy form of art as well, and it fills an important role in our culture that we should embrace.

For another interesting angle on the debate about concept art (not unlike the bedazzler comment on Cory's blog), check out this article about a response to Hirst's famous shark installment. Is there a difference between the base jumper and the guy who slips and falls off a cliff?

Sorry for everyone having a hard time with posting to the site lately. I've been having some real trouble with the site, and I think it is related to problems with my hosting service. I've had my site online for over four years now, and my hosting service has since switched to newer servers, but for whatever reason, I'm still on the old hardware and I think its having issues. I'm going to be off from work for a couple days, so I'm going to try to do some much-needed maintenance to the site--updating links and graphics, cleaning up templates, checking scripts, etc.--to ensure that the problem isn't on my end. In the meantime, the error messages you get when you post a comment does not seem to affect the comment's appearance on the site, so post your comments only once, and have faith even if you get an error, and I will try to get the weird errors messages fixed.

Also I'm going to update my blogroll links, so if you are a semi-regular reader and you have a blog, please send me the title and the current URL, and I will include you on my new list.

I don't think Barack Obama was talking about these guys when he referred to the "quiet riot" among poor, inner-city, African American communities. Still, a Google search this morning resulted in 9 page-one hits for the band, and only one hit for Obama's speech. I think that says alot about what Americans would rather think/talk about. But the issue that Obama raises is one of the critical issues facing our society, and I'm glad that someone is recognizing it. Who was it who said that "the measure of a society is the condition of its poor?"

I'm tired of the "Ownership Society," that unjustly asks the poor to bear the heaviest responsibility for economic conditions that are disproportionately beyond their control. In next election cycle, I'll be looking for leaders who can offer an innovative return to Great Society values/ideals without resorting to failed Great Society approaches.

I'm not necessarily sold on all of these, but here are some ideas related to poverty that I'd like someone to explore:

1) extending homeownership-related tax breaks to renters (It's nice to give incentives for home ownership, and nice to make it more affordable, but the truth is that many people who are too poor or credit-deprived to buy are just as deserving of relief). While we're at it, lets freeze residential property taxes at a level based on original purchase price, and raise taxes on appreciated property value at the time of it's re-sale.

2) a graduated sales tax to replace the income tax (Why tax people on earning money? Why not tax people for spending a lot of it? The people who can afford to spend large amounts of money are the ones gaining the greatest benefits from the government anyway.)

3) criminalizing the semi-fraudulent insurance company practice of issuing routine initial denials

4) Developing clean, renewable energy that does not disrupt the food supply.

5) Fixing and effectively policing predatory policies in the credit/banking industries.

6) Count prisoners as population in their home counties, rather than in the county of the prison location, for the purposes of drawing legislative districts.

One note of hope: although Obama could not match the page-one results of the 1980's Quiet Riot glam rockers, he did decisively win a google fight with the band.

Brooklynne and I have decided to get netflix and cancel our cable, since most of the shows we ever watch are on network TV, and we figured that without good cable programing, we could be spending less money on stuff that's worth our time and (since we're prisoners in our own home most nights after 9pm) potentially date-like. So, we've watched a few movies recently and I'm going to give a few quick reviews here as an homage to Possum Holler.

Transformers the Movie: B- (Brooklynne's rating F-)
In anticipation of the new live-action Transformers movie due out on the 4th of July, I talked Brooklynne into watching this one with me. I had heard that several of the main characters bit the dust, but I didn't realize the scale of the house cleaning, apparently aimed at introducing a entire new line of characters that Kids would now have to buy. The movie was lame, but nostalgic. This would have been a C except for one of the best 1980's hair band soundtracks, featuring a a nice surprise in the way of one song by Weird Al.

Babel: B+ (Brooklynne's rating B)

A movie about communication gone awry. The point is well taken, even if most of the communication problems closely follow astounding lapses in good judgement. The movie gets special points for several instances of highly nuanced cultural misunderstanding--like when a confused native of rural Morraco does not immediately drop a knife when told by police to drop his weapon, apparently not understanding that such a tool would be considered threatening. In the end, this film does not as offer as much redemption as Hotel Rwanda or Crash, but is not as bleak as Lord of War, Constant Gardener, Syriana, or other movies in the "artsy-cross-cultural-social-commentary-packaged-as-typical-hollywood-drama" genera.

Happy Feet: F (Brooklynne's rating D... I watched the whole thing and was VERY disappointed!)

Did not get past the first 20 minutes of idiocy.

Cars: B (Brooklynne's rating A)

Mildly entertaining. Not good enough to keep me awake.

Who the *&%#@$* is Jackson Pollock: A- (Brooklynne's rating B)

I enjoyed this movie if for no other reason than I feel like most of America is run like the art world portrayed here. I greatly identified with the lady (can't remember her name), although I wouldn't pay to hang that thing in my house, even if I had the money. The irony is that without a highly exclusive art world to validate him as a master, Pollock's work would be worth little more than paint he used to make it (All art philosophers feel free to comment).

Holiday: B (Brooklynne's rating C+... I needed more closure)

Unlike most males my age, I do not have a natural aversion to chic flicks, as long as they are not overwelmingly emotional and sappy. This is a true feel-good chic flick that reminds me of how we all need good people to pick us up from time to time.

Recently, I had a conversation with my pastor about baptism. Brooklynne and I have started attending a Presbyterian (USA) church, and besides that they practice infant baptism, we knew nothing about what the church taught about that sacrament. Our pastor directed me to an article by Francis Schaeffer that he said mostly outlined his beliefs on the topic. I googled Schaeffer and found the article so you can read it by clicking the link below.

BAPTISM, by Francis A. Schaeffer
Before I tell you what I think about the article, let me give you some background about where I'm coming from.
I've always kind of held that infant baptism and believer's baptism are two different things, both with discrete, equally valid and useful purposes in our faith. Because of their different meanings/purposes, I've always secretly felt open to the idea that a person could experience both without invalidating or discrediting the other, and I'm often annoyed when people tell me either that people who were baptized as infants need to be baptized again (because the first one didn't count) or that people who were baptized as infants should not be baptized as adults (because it degrades the significance of the first one). I was baptized as an infant and I have often debated within myself about being baptized again, but I've resisted because I feel like a vast majority of people would not understand what I was doing due to these widely-held perceptions.

When I expressed this to my pastor, he quoted the line that "there is one baptism," and concluded that you have to have it one way or the other. I KNOW this was not what he meant and that he would NEVER even imply this, but my gut reaction was to think that comment was vaguely akin to saying there's only one faith, so a person shouldn't see the validity and enjoy worshiping through several different theological/church traditions. So still not convinced, I've determined to think and pray open-mindedly about baptism during the next month or so, and see if I find any reason why I should change my take on this practice.

So after reading the Schaeffer article, here's my take:
1) I'm glad someone is making a good, strong argument in favor of infant baptism (not to mention offering a much welcome rebuttal to the argument that immersion is the only proper method).

2) Still, the article fails to connect infant baptism with what is often called John's baptism (with water), which is explicitly intended for repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

3) I hate the idea of separate dispensations of signs, and I must have missed the memo stating that circumcision is no longer a sign of God's special relationship with Israel.

4) If circumcision of the heart is emphasized throughout the Bible as superseding literal circumcision, then wouldn't this reinforce the argument in favor of believer's baptism (Schaeffer incredibly seems to think otherwise)?

5) Is there any reason to believe that infants were not baptized in the early church (as Schaeffer argues that they were)? If they were, then it seems very convincing that the topic would have been addressed in the epistles, unless it was indeed a reasonable and expected extension of God's grace to the children in the Church.

Conclusion: my position remains unchanged for now, but I have a fresh set of questions to consider in the next couple of weeks.

I welcome any thoughts and comments, although please only post and read the comments if you can be kind and mature, and thick-skinned about people disagreeing with your ideas.