Decking the Halls, Part 1: Hokie Dreams

It's that time of year again, and the holiday season means decorations! We got a slightly later start than we'd have liked due to being so busy--I know as a kid that I gave my parents fits pleading to get the tree up earlier and earlier each year, as if somehow that might bring Christmas (and presents) sooner by so doing--but still managed to get the first of our several trees up in line with the family Thanksgiving-weekend tradition.

We started with our "Hokie Tree," a deep maroon tree decorated in orange. Several years ago, Hecht's (and other May's stores) offered a wide variety of funky colors for their Christmas trees. Pink tinsel trees have always been something of a fashionable kitsch, but May's took things to an entirely new level with their lime, lilac, teal, and burgundy lineup. We watched all the local Hecht's for sales (the sticker price of $400+ being more than we could justify), and though our search led us to every mall in northern Virginia, in the end it was my parents who scored the prize at the Kaufmann's in the Charleston Town Center mall. Yes, the normally-priced-$525, seven-and-a-half-foot, pre-lit tree could be had (floor model only) for the Boxing Day bargain of $150.

Our friend Meg Nugent got us a good start on orange ornaments with a selection of "old-world" shapes, and I already had quite a few Virginia Tech ornaments as well. Several years' worth of picking over the post-Christmas deals at Michael's, Target, and every mall department store we could tolerate brought in a bevy of several more orange decorations, and an All Souls' Day (that's November 2) find at Costco added orange LED lights to replace the energy-sucking incandescents on the prelit tree. The orange garland was actually the hardest to track down; eventually, eBay located the stuff as an import from the British Isles and a whopping $7 per 5' strand (ironically, the garland is actually made in the USA).

Putting up artificial trees has gotten significantly easier since the days when as a child I proudly erected my little four foot tree and decorated it with no less than eight strands of lights (I tried to buy a new set to add each year in the Boxing Day closeouts). No more do you have to match the branch colors to the base and assemble, jigsaw-style, the tree from the bottom up. Trees now come in sections with hinged, drop-down branches, and rather than an evening spent looking for that last yellow-tipped branch hastily stowed during take-downs the year before, the tree itself goes up in ten minutes or less.

Still, at seven and a half feet, the Hokie tree is still enough of a beast that it really takes two, and Beth (in her coordinating pink PJs) lent quite a helping hand. Decorating the tree did take several hours as we fit the different orange, VT, and our special ornaments (mostly pet-themed) on and around the many branches.

In-between seasons, the tree stows in a plastic tote (below), another innovating in holiday decorating technology which, for a display model tree which came with no box, is a necessity. But wow, that's one heavy, bulky tote to drag up the stairs each year, inevitably drawing the joke from one of us that there's a body or two stashed inside.

One tree down, several more to go... last year saw us "only" putting up two: the Hokie tree in the living room and my old green tree in the dining room clad in bird-themed ornaments. I've got a beautiful white tree I picked up years ago when I lived alone which we want to finally put up again, it having stayed in storage since 2005 or so.

'Tis the season, eh? Now, if we only have the time and energy to finish our decorations before January...

Should Health Insurers Cover Paying for Prayers?

That's apparently what the Christian Scientists want, and they're pushing to have language added to the health care bills presently being debated in Congress. I hadn't heard about this before today--most of the coverage seems to be on things like "death panels" (de-spun: covering "end of life" counseling services), abortion coverage, and the way the current health care system is really a hunky-dory Candy Land with chocolate waterfalls and fluffy edible cotton candy clouds of goodness where your employer can't yank your choice of plans from you and insurers can't deny you coverage.*

* If you pay attention to any of the flood of rabidly anti-reform US Chamber of Commerce-sponsored ads, you might be fooled into that belief, insisting we'd lose the "guarantees" we already don't have--things like choice of health care plans (which is already limited and can change without notice from your employer and insurer), keeping your current doctors (when your employer changes the plans it offers, or your doctor changes what plans he or she accepts, there's no guarantee you can keep yours as it is--I've had to change before), etc. But this is all fodder for a separate post.

But according to a NY Times blog piece, the same church whose attitudes toward medical care have led to the deaths of children (Google Rita Swan for one infamous example), want the government to lean on private insurers to cover the costs of what boils down to prayer:

The church’s provision says that any insurer offering health insurance on the exchanges that would be created in the health legislation could not discriminate against a health service “on the basis of its religious or spiritual content.” Such content would be defined as medical expenses for which the Internal Revenue Service now allows deductions. The I.R.S. specifically names Christian Science practitioners, who pray for people at a cost of about $20 a day or care for them in nonmedical ways, as deductible expenses.

That's right: apparently, you can currently write off the cost of paying someone to pray for you on your taxes. Now, making a charitable donation to a church is one thing--but writing it off as a medical expense? Why can't I deduct my gym dues, then? After all, a good exercise regimen has proven health benefits, whereas the most thorough study to date found no health benefit to prayer (and was conducted by the religion-oriented Templeton Foundation, which had the guts and honesty to publish the results despite being sorely disappointed in them).

Now, the First Church of Christ, Scientist (aka the Christian Scientists) are pushing to incentivise (read: strong-arm) private insurers into covering the same services. They have tried to dodge the constitutional issue of separation of church and state by excluding any coverage from a potential public insurance option (and that would include any insurance with federal funding, it would seem), as well as offering a broad definition nondiscriminatory "spiritual" care.

Under that definition, perhaps I should be able to write off the cost of admission to national and state parks, my mileage driven to/from nature preserves, and so forth, all as medical expenses (and expect my health insurer to cover them!). Clearly, there are health benefits to getting outside, hiking around, and such--as well as spiritual value; to paraphrase a gentleman Beth encountered in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on a Sunday morning several years ago, "THIS is church for me."

I don't think the Christian Science proposal is going to get much traction in Congress (despite its bipartisan support, which included of all people the late Senator Ted Kennedy). But that IRS deduction already exists, which I do find rather shocking. Seems to me the better way to handle this would be to make a donation to your church if so inclined and write that off as a charitable contribution--though then you're stuck with determining the "less the value of goods/services received in return" component of said donation, I suppose. If you value the "medical" benefits of prayer so highly they're your preferred health care treatment, seems that return value might eat into your donation quickly.

What's next? The Catholic church lobbying for the buying of indulgences to be written off on one's 1040 Schedule A?

Bluebirds Return!

Readers of this blog may recall how free-roaming cats killed the pair of Eastern Bluebirds nesting in our back yard earlier this summer, and how we saved a couple of the babies and got them to a wildlife rehabilitator. As we hadn't seen a sign (nor heard a sound) of a bluebird since--and one of our neighbors remarked how it had been "years" since they'd seen bluebirds in the cul-de-sac--Beth and I both feared we'd be without these adorable members of the thrush family for quite some time ahead.

Today, as part of Cornell University's Project Feederwatch, I was giving the back yard a thorough once-over for bird activity when I spied something out of the corner of my eye, something with an orange and white belly. Could it be a bluebird?

I grabbed my camera and carefully opened the window for a closer look, hoping it wasn't a trick of the light or "just" a robin.

Indeed! We had a male Eastern Bluebird on our feeder, looking at the snow-covered mealworm tray, and after a moment, he flew over to land atop one of the bluebird houses in our yard. I called Beth over, and she thinks she saw a female fly off the house just as the male landed on it, so it's possible we could have another pair this spring, and another set of babies!

The return of the bluebirds was really a wonderful sight that absolutely made our weekend. Perhaps the male is young Harry, the sole hatchling of the first clutch our prior pair Nathaniel and Eloise laid, come back to establish a family of his own?

We can only hope!

Memories from Frequent Flying: My First Flight, and, the Return to 1K

Anyone who knows me well is aware how much I enjoy travel.

So I was pretty jazzed by a couple of things this past week. First, in going through a bunch of old magazines (sent to the recycling bin, thank you; these were 18-20 year old computer magazines!), I came across the boarding pass from my first-ever flight.

In 1991, I flew to Chicago to participate in a two-week science seminar sponsored by the Department of Energy at Argonne National Labs. The government-purchased ticket took me on United Airlines from Charleston, WV, (the "USS Kanawha" f0r the takeoff and landing experience on the relatively short runway and the way that while on the taxiway, your plane's wings hang out over the edge of a cliff...), with a stop in Lexington, KY, then onward to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

This is a keepsake I'd dug around for previously--like many frequent flier junkies, I've got a shoebox full of almost all my boarding passes and old airline program membership cards--and so it was quite a pleasant surprise to find it quite by accident like that.

Check out the retro United color scheme on the ticket jacket. I had seat 6A on an Air Wisconsin-operated BAe 146 jet for my first flight. As an aside, I assume the frequent flier # on the boarding pass is for some government account--it's an American Airlines # to boot--since I had yet to discover the joys of frequent flight at that point in my life. If memory serves, back in the early 90s government employees couldn't earn frequent flier miles personally on taxpayer-funded trips... but that's another story.

Secondly--and more importantly for the present day--I requalified for United's top-tier frequent flier level this week. The "1K" level of the Mileage Plus program is awarded to fliers who accrue over 100,000 miles (or 100 flight segments) in a calendar year, and carries with it higher priority for standby (getting onto a different flight than you booked, usually an earlier one), better upgrades (including six international upgrade certificates, or SWUs), better overall service, some fee waivers, etc. Technically, there's a higher level, Global Services, but it's awarded largely based on spending, and I sure as heck cannot afford the rumored $50,000 in full-fare tickets per year!

I typically have made Premier Executive ("1P") with United by flying 50,000 miles or 60 segments a year since becoming a frequent flier, only landing 1K in 2006 (by segments, no less--you try flying 100 times in a year and tell me your butt isn't tired!). But a generous round of double elite qualifying miles promos put 1K in sight this year, and given I want to go visit my cousin Michael and his wife Sam in Italy this next spring, the international upgrades will be quite appreciated.

I did a couple of insane "mileage runs" to achieve 1K--insane from a flying perspective, not cost (as I obviously found uber-cheap flights!). I capped off the year with a flight from Washington, DC, to Burbank, CA, and back--all in the same day, and for under $200. You may recall some of my other trips aimed primarily at earning miles this year, too: my trip to Montrose, CO, and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, for example, which cost me under $50 after I used a $150-off voucher I'd earned on a previous trip.

Now that I've reached 1K, I'm going to be pulling my hair out in anticipation of the arrival of my new 1K card. Remember that Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin sends off for a propeller-topped beanie, and checks the mail for it eagerly every, all the while daydreaming through school about the grand adventures he'll have with a flying cap?

No?

Maybe you remember Ralphie in A Christmas Story, then, checking the mail repeatedly for his "Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring."

That will be me as I await the spiffy new 1K card for 2010 (got my Premier Executive card yesterday, a day before making 1K). It probably won't be here until January or so, but each afternoon will bring sugarplum fairies dancing through my head in the form of that glittering black Mileage Plus card. I only hope that the return to 1K status and the arrival of said membership kit is somewhat less disappointing than both Calvin's and little Ralphie's much-anticipated deliveries (Calvin can't actually fly with his beanie, and of course we know about the "crummy commercial" Ralphie decodes and its reminder to drink more Ovaltine...).

I already know not to expect much of the membership packet compared to years past; for example, the "Going the Extra Mile" certificates we can hand out to airline employees who perform above their expected jobs are cut to three this year, and are attached to the rest of the mailing (instead of as a separate insert). Gone are the inserts with seat maps for the different sorts of planes United flies. At least the ten drink chits good for a bit of booze to ease the long flights in economy class are still there, and fingers-crossed that I end up with a double allotment due to sloppy work by the envelope-stuffers (I've actually heard several reports of just that).

I do hope that the 1K benefits themselves work well this year; one thing that drove me to really strive for 1K over my usual 1P is the way airline program benefits in general seem to be eroding away. But as of right now, I'm looking forward to boarding from the red carpet (I kid you not), no-fee confirmed changes to get on that earlier flight home ($75 for non-1Ks), the systemwide upgrades for a possible European trip, several "confirmed regional upgrades" for domestic travel... we'll see. But in general, the higher your airline status, the better: I can recall several times as a 1K previously being the only person to be cleared onto a standby flight, and one time as a Premier ("2P"), I got stuck in Chicago and watched plane after plane go out full, with me 40th on the standby list to get back to Washington after snow had cancelled my original flight--as a 1K, I'd have likely made the cut on one of the earlier departures and had a much less-aggravating stay in O'Hare.

Good times are here again.

Sarah Palin's Appeal to Right-Wing Pundits: Sex?

This time of year, I expect Fox News' Bill O'Reilly to be going on about the "War on Christmas," a fiction coined (or at least heavily discussed) by the conservative pundit where the evil "secularists" are out to take away your decorations, holiday music, and ability to have those terrible white elephant gift exchanges and "Secret Santa" at the office.

But now a new cause has found Bill: Sarah Palin.

Yes, if you listen to Bill O'Reilly (and I try not to), he'd have you believe St. Sarah is somehow the victim of an organized campaign and hate mob consisting of the "mainstream media" (for which O'Reilly works, I must point out), "liberals," and God-hating atheists and Christmas-banning secularists.

And let's not even get started on conservative windbags Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and their opinions of the gubernatorial quitter ("El Drugbo" described her rambling book the most substantive political work he's read, if that tells you anything).

The right-ring punditry of hacks like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck seem to have made Sarah Palin their cause celebre, building the short-serving former Alaska Governor into a Christ figure being persecuted by the rest of the terrible, cheese eating, wine sipping, socialist world.

Or maybe a big blow up sex doll.

You'd never get them to admit to that, but much like the most stringently homophobic evangelists and Republican moral police in Congress, you know what's really on their minds. Yes, it's my thought that the blowhards at Fox News and the hypocritical drug-addled windbags of Boca Raton, FL, secretly all all harbor their professed admiration of "Saint Sarah" not for her confusingly-stated populist beliefs or core neoconservative principles but rather out of some almost-Freudian fantasies.

It's not just that she's a pretty face, but that somehow these hacks feel that if she were in power, they as "manly men" would in fact be in charge, for all good ultra-conservatives know that a woman's place is to speak only when spoken to and to be subservient to men in all things. The Bible says so, dontcha know? (I'm serious. Look it up. 1Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-12, among others and along with all the misogyny of the Old Testament, like stoning women who were raped inside the city limits since they "could have called for help" etc.)

It's almost amusing, if in a pitiful sort of way, to see how Fox News' Bill O'Reilly leaps to defend the gubernatorial quitter from imagined slights. Darwin had his bulldog (in T. H. Huxley) and even his rottweiler in modern-day biologist and writer Richard Dawkins; perhaps O'Reilly should be called "Palin's chihuahua" the way he virtually foams at the mouth anytime someone calls Palin on a misstatement, fabrication, exaggeration, demagoguery, and the like.

Not, mind you, that screaming at the top of his lungs about each completely imaginary foes to a straw man "American way of life" is anything new to Bill O'Reilly. As I said in opening this entry, prior to John McCain's great blunder (let's talk strategy vs. tactics, Senator!) in picking Palin as his running mate, Bill's one true bugaboo in life was the "secular war on America," whereby those massive hoards of atheists secretly plotted to take away your right to put up a Christmas tree or hold Easter egg hunts. (If I exaggerate, it is but by the slimmest degree--there's a reason I lost all respect for O'Reilly several years ago.)

I just don't see how the Republican punditry can have such an utter fascination with the woman outside of her sex appeal (and mind you, attendees to otherwise-staid Republican rallies have been sighted wearing pins proclaiming "GILF" about the grandmother and former governor--I'll let you figure out what they mean by that). There are far stronger candidates who have just as strong of conservative principles and who actually stand a chance of winning the moderate vote in the United States. (I'd have put Mike Huckabee on that list previously--as much as I despise what he stands for, he's a likable guy otherwise--but then he went off and pulled a Mike Dukakis with the Seattle copkiller.)

Maybe they just delight in how she gets so under the skin of Democrats (all while fantasizing about how they can get into her... er, I'll leave it at that). But I'm betting on a more carnal attraction being what drives the conservatives to leap to Sarah's every defense, when they should in fact be running as far from her as they can and trying to salvage a party that as an independent I voted for several times. And except as a pin-up, Sarah Palin is not the answer they need.

Preaching Hatred: The Dove Church in Gainesville, FL

This past weekend, Beth and I made a trip to Florida for a wedding. Driving into Beth's mom's neighborhood, we came across the following signs on the grounds of a local church:

Beth's mom gave us the scoop; the local church--which I'd jokingly remarked on previous visits as being a "compound" and likely filled with some radical sect like Branch Davidians--have decided to express their particular brand of fundamentalist hatred by labeling all Muslims as devil-worshipers. This goes back to at least July (the date of this Gainesville Sun article on the original, one-sign display), and subsequently the church supplemented their Burma-Shave-esque trio of signs with an effigy of an Islamic person hanging a Christian. The latter, according to Beth's mom, was burned by outraged vandals (and not by the church itself).

I'm not making excuses for Islamist extremists and their terrorism, nor for the way women are treated in many basically-theocratic Muslim countries (though, to be fair, plenty of fundamentalist Christian sects are pretty misogynistic, too). However, the preaching of hatred by churches of any of the legs of the Abrahamic triangle of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity is equally despicable and indefensible. And for extremist Christians, whatever happened to Matthew 5:44 and Jesus' command to love and do good to one's enemies?

The church had added another sign to the grounds when we visited Gainesville this past weekend: "Fort Hood is only the beginning," it read. I'm not quite sure what to make of that one--what, exactly, do the church's leaders and members seem to think is the appropriate remedy to violence that they equate with an entire religion? Outlawing a religion has never had much success, and I can only imagine that conducting any sort of organized campaign against Muslims is only going to stir up such hatred and violence from extremists so as to leave us playing out all the bad events from bad movie Invasion: USA minus Chuck Norris to save the day--all while punishing countless innocents.

To top things off, according to the Gainesville Sun, the church faces accusations from former members that the pastor used parishioners to make furniture sold by the owners' for-profit business on eBay. If there's any substance to these accusations, it's possible that the owners/pastors could end up facing tax charges--like fellow Florida fundie pastor "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind, currently in the federal pen. Even if no charges are forthcoming or warranted, taking personal profit from a church for one's worldly comfort seems just a tad bit un-Christian, don't you think?

Perhaps though the days of the Dove in the neighborhood are numbered; from the Gainesville Sun articles linked above, the 20 acre compound is up for sale, including the furniture factory, at the relative bargain price of $4 million.

Incidentally, am I the only one to see the irony in a church named for the bird symbolizing peace slandering an entire religion whose name translates as "peace?" The actions of this fundie church do no justice to doves everywhere; perhaps vulture would have been the better mascot for Gainesville's preachers of hate.

Celebrating One Year at Chateau Papillon

This post is a couple of days late, but we celebrated one year as happy homeowners at Chateau Papillon on Tuesday. We closed last November 10th and thus began the first phase of of what we hope to be many years of making the home our own, from the travails of taking out glued-down carpet and installing a slightly too-wide gas range to installing bamboo floors

to building a library with floor-to-ceiling shelves to reworking our back yard to a natural habitat to bringing Jug Boy to the back yard.

We've still got many more renovations planned, including a "wine bistro" in the cellar, painting the guest bedroom (and adding to it a walk-in closet for much-needed storage space), and eventually adding a deck and balconies to overlook our back yard. Everyone says, "You'll still be working on things 30 years later," and given my mom only got her baseboards put in some 30 years after the house had been built, I'm sure they're right.