JFM Journey

Some State Employees found that they just could not make it through the month with 24 hours of pay hacked out of the checks. To balance the California State Budget, the governor, as chief executive, furloughed most state employees for 3 Fridays each month. Today while volunteering for my church, I got an e-mail the food bank we support talking about a new trend of state employees asking for food aid. There is also an article in the Sacramento Bee about the situation.

I frankly think the state should be embarrassed that it is balancing the budget by sending its employees to food banks. This does not mean I thing cuts in staffing don't need to be made. The fact that the government has not fallen apart is proof that like most governmental agencies there is not a lot of slack in the system. On the other hand, this is effectively an unnegotiated pay cut of 14 percent. From personal experience, I know how hard it is to change lifestyles that dramatically and that quickly. We were lucky in that we had a financial cushion, and that a car was paid off a month ofter our 10% cut. Not everyone will be that lucky.

Sacramento is the western end of the transcontinental rails road. The Union Pacific blasted and climbed its way up almost 6000ft to cross the Sierras at Donner Pass. This is the same pass through which Interstate 80 winds on its way to Reno. There is a less well known way over the Sierras. Less well known unless you are a Railroad buff that is.

The Feather River Route was built by the Western Pacific Railroad to compete with the UP over Donner Pass. It follows a beautiful canyon up from Oroville to Portola climbing at a constant 1.5% grade and never exceeding 5000 feet. It is the iconic view out the window for the Historic California Zephyr.

This Labor Day, my wife and I took advantage of our third day off to visit the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola. It is one of the best train museums I have been to. While it lacks the polish of the California Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento, it has something that most other lack -- tangibility. Their collection, mostly from the early diesel era, is displayed in part of the old WP yard. You can touch and even step on to most of the collection, looking in windows and seeing how the equipment moves and functions.

Homeless campers in a vacant lot owned by lawyer Mark Merin, a homeless advocate, were cited and removed by Sacramento police on Thursday. (Sacramento Bee Story) This action was in accord with the city's 24-hour limit on camping, and in response to repeated complaints by neighbors. This is not the first time that homeless campers have been removed from an impromptu camp ground. The story started in April when more then 100 were removed from land by the American river that is owned by the local power cooperative, SMUD. Since then, homeless advocates have been lobbying the city for "Safe Ground" where homeless could set up tents and camp long term.

Among those advocating for Safe Ground is Brian Baker, dean of Sacramento's Trinity Cathedral. There has been talk that Trinity has recruited a classmate of mine to advocate for the homeless on their behalf. (As nothing is official, I'm not publishing names at the moment)

In response to all this I did something slightly foolish and read first the numerous comments on my classmate's Facebook page, then a large sample of the 137 and rising comments that accompanied the Sac Bee story. The contrast is striking, and shows why homeless advocacy is so difficult here at the top of the central valley. What follows are some of my thoughts on the matter:

Some of you who know me in real life may remember the times in 2001-2 that I worked for the county. I have started a series of posts at my technical blog with things I learned while working there. If you would like to read it here is the first part

Dr. Stanley Fish has found his way into my feed reader, and has also found a place a a foil for my thoughts on writing. This week he rebuts a number of attacks on his last column. The ad hominem attacks are nicely rebuffed, it is his views on writing verses writing in the real world that I would like to discuss.

Warning rant ahead:

Why, yes I do have more spare time then a lot of people right now. Every day about 5 minutes of that time is spent reading the on-line comic space opera Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler. Usually this would not be blog worthy, but today is a special day. You see up until last November Schlock Mercenary had a very linear story line. All the main characters stayed together and the comic followed the place with the most plot action. Starting in November the team broke up into four pieces and went in separate directions for 30 days of plot time. There is a big cliff hanger at the end of the 30 days, but every time one group gets close to being told what it is, the clock rewinds back and we start following another group.

Today, September 3rd, 2009, the clock rewound for the third time. This is the strip in question.

I write this because I had to go searching for the last time this happened and it took more then the 5 minutes of free time I allot for such things as fluffy space comics, giant amorphous blobs and such. My hope is that I can turn back to this page in my blog about Christmastime and know what the other half of Thurl's conversation looks like.

My wife and I are looking at getting out of the Apartment we have lived in for the last four years. For a long time we kept thinking that we might be moving once I got ordained. Now that I am changing processes, we can be fairly certain that we will stay in the area for a while and it looks like it might be cheaper to own then rent, along with all the advantages of owning your furnace, fridge, dishwasher etc...

There are just the two of us so we started looking at Condos. Some of them in nice complexes are going for under $70,000. Then we met with the loan officer to get our Good Faith Estimates. She reminded us about all the difficulties with Condos. Constantly rising association fees, difficulties selling, renters and absentee land lords, all make Condos much less appealing then single family homes.

Last Thursday, I ended up out at the barn to meet Beth for dinner, and being out there, ended up playing with Zephyr, Beth's horse. I didn't grow up with horses, but I am really starting to enjoy this old guy.

Thursday's activity was to get Zephyr to run in the round pen. Being 26, he doesn't get going as fast as some, and without some real incentive doesn't get much above a slow stiff trot. After several minutes of watching Beth work at moving Zephyr around in slow circles, I took a turn.

As it turns out Zephyr likes to race, especially when he thinks he can win. I obliged by starting out next to him at the edge of the ring and, as he got faster, moving into a smaller circle. Pretty soon the horse is doing a spirited canter, and I'm at a dead run. The end result was that we both had fun, and I nearly lost my dinner, while the silly horse was just getting warm. This is the difference between a poorly build predatory species that had to resort to tools to survive, and a superbly adapted prey species with a stubborn streak.

The morals to the story, I need more exercise, Zephyr is much faster then he pretends to be, and finally:

Those that run after food should not run after food, while those who are run after as food can still run but would rather be after food.

How do you describe your church to someone? My "job" as the Office Volunteer at All Saints puts me in touch with all varieties of people. This week the start of Sac City with its accompanying parking lot implications, and a dramatic up-tick in the number of people dropping by for an emergency lunch has put me in touch with a lot more people who are not up on church jargon.

One question I've been asked several times this week is "What kind of church is this?" "We're and Episcopal Church," I would reply, confident that everyone would know of my old well established denomination. "Episcopal, what kind of church is that?" came the inevitable reply. Uhm...

Drop Caps have made me a better blogger. The large initial letter you see at the front of each post in this blog are called Drop Caps. They are one of the many things one can do with just a little work in designing web pages. They serve to quickly directly the eye to the start of the first line of text and have been used in manuscripts since the middle ages.

Having drop caps on the sight has encouraged me to think about what the first word of the first paragraph will be. A capital "I" is not a very pretty letter (in my opinion anyway), and I did not like how the page looked when it was filled with lots of large I's all over the place. I had to think about a different way to start a sentence then with "I am" or "I was."

Remarkably, this has improved my writing. The maxim "In late, out early." applies strongly to blogs where a one page post is getting on the long side. Newspapers have known this for a while and work hard to put as much of the story as possible in the first paragraph, first sentence, and even the first word. Thinking about how to start has helped me get to the point and stay there.

Now I bet you wish my sermons had drop caps don't you? Too bad theology textbooks don't either.