Jack the Ripper: Case Solved

Well, maybe.

I recently DVR'd a show on the National Geographic Channel called Finding Jack the Ripper, where a retired British police detective investigates the case and attempts to see if he can discover anything new.  His name was Trevor Marriott, and apparently this show was actually based on a book he published in 2005 outlining his theories.

I didn't expect to be particularly impressed - it was just a reality docudrama, after all.  As it turns out, he made an incredibly well-reasoned and convincing argument for a suspect that - as far as I know - has never been involved in any Jack the Ripper investigations in the past.

BACKGROUND

Most people, of course, are at least vaguely familiar with the story of Jack the Ripper.  To give a brief overview, the story begins on balmy London night in late August, 1888, when a prostitute named Mary Ann Nichols was brutally murdered with a knife.  A week later, another prostitute - Annie Chapman - was killed, and her uterus was removed by the murderer.  

About three weeks after that, by now the end of September, two more prostitutes were killed on the same night - Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes.  Virtually since the night it happened, there has been disagreement as to whether Elizabeth Stride was actually murdered by Jack the Ripper.  Unlike his other victims, she had no mutilations to her body - only her throat was cut.  Those who believe she was indeed Jack the Ripper's victim argue that he was interrupted as he went about his deed, and therefore had to find another victim - Catharine Eddowes - whom he killed about 45 minutes later.  Others, however, doubt that the murderer could have pulled both murders off in the period of time necessary.  Together with the lack of mutilation or other telltale Ripper signs, this leads them to the conclusion that Stride, in fact, was the victim of some other person.

Jack the Ripper's murder spree ended about a month after the double murder of Stride and Eddowes.  In the first week of November, 1888, a fifth prostitute - Mary Kelly - was murdered, and her body was mutilated to such a degree as to be hardly recognizable as human.  The black and white photograph of her body is, to say the least, highly disturbing.

Following the murder of Mary Kelly, Jack the Ripper disappeared, apparently never to be heard from again.  Theories have abounded as to why the murders suddenly stopped, with the most obvious being that the Ripper himself died before he was able to kill again (the Whitechapel district of London, where the murders took place, was NOT a place you wanted to be in the late 1800's - people died there every day from murders and fights and all manner of violent causes).

Over the years, there have been literally hundreds of suspects identified, mostly by amateur enthusiasts and the occasional independent investigator.  None has ever garnered widespread support, and I doubt this latest suspect will either.  But the argument is an interesting one.    

THE NEW THEORY

Trevor Marriott, the police detective who has put forth this new suspect, has always believed that Jack the Ripper was most likely a merchant seaman - that is, someone who was frequently coming and going from the nearby shipyards.  This would help explain the sudden start to the crimes, the periods of time between murders, and the subsequent abrupt ending to the killing spree.  It is also true that many of Whitechapel's prostitutes made their living largely by serving sailors who were temporarily in port.  It's not a stretch to imagine that the murderer might have been a sailor, and this has been a popular theory almost since the time of the original investigation.   

Starting from this point, Marriott began investigating possible suspects.  He eventually centered on a German sailor named Carl Feigenbaum.     

Who is Carl Feigenbaum?  

Well, nobody, really.  He was executed in 1896 for murdering a woman in New York City, and while his lawyer claimed in an interview on the day of the execution that he believed Feigenbaum was Jack the Ripper, no one took him seriously and Feigenbaum was more or less forgotten as a suspect.  Until Trevor Marriott came along, anyway.

Marriott discovered that Feigenbaum had, in fact, worked for a German merchant shipping company in the 1880's, ending his stint there in the early 1890's before settling in the U.S.A.  

Combing through the records of this shipping company, Marriott was able to determine the exact dates in which Feigenbaum had been employed - and the dates included the late summer and early autumn of 1888.  

He was further able to comb the shipping records of the port in London where he believes the Ripper would have been based.  His first goal was to find out if any one ship - of any nationality - was in port on each of the days the Ripper struck.  He found only one ship that met this criteria, but it was only in port on 3 of the 4 murder days (recall that two murders took place on the same day, resulting in 5 victims killed on 4 different days).  

This ship, as it turns out, was a ship owned and operated by the company Feigenbaum was employed by, and it was a ship that he was known to have worked on.  

Furthermore, on the 4th day in question - the day in which the first ship was not in port - there was ANOTHER ship of the same company that was in port.  

This means that the shipping company which Feigenbaum worked for in late 1888 had ships in port on each of the days of the Ripper murders.  Furthermore, there were other Ripper-like murders around Europe and North America in the few years following the Whitechapel murders, and in each of those cases, Marriott was able to confirm that a ship of this German merchant company had been in port at the time.  Ultimately, he identified something like 20 different Ripper-like murders (including the 5 in London) that occurred in large cities around the world, beginning in 1888 with the Ripper murders and going up through 1892, in which ships of this German shipping line were in dock at the time of the murder.  

I don't know about you, but that's a pretty amazing discovery, particularly considering that it seems to be exactly this period - about 1888 to 1892 - that Feigenbaum was working for the shipping company in question. 

Marriott's next step was to see if he could actually confirm that Feigenbaum was on these ships when they were in port.  Finding those records could conceivably prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Feigenbaum was, in fact, Jack the Ripper.  The coincidence would be too great.

Fortunately, the company in question kept very detailed records of the men who worked on their London-bound ships.  However, the company's records from the three months in which the Ripper murders took place in London were mysteriously absent from the archives.  This was true despite the fact that, apparently, the records before and after that stretch were relatively complete.  Marriott has theorized that perhaps Feigenbaum's lawyer got possession of them, although that's purely speculation.  What is not speculation is that the records which could conclusively confirm or deny whether Feigenbaum was in London on the days of the murders have been lost.  

After Feigenbaum's stint as a merchant seaman, he seems to have settled in the U.S. and worked as a florist in Wisconsin before ultimately moving, about 1894, to New York City.  It was there that he eventually murdered a woman and was sentenced to death for it.  The murder was very much "Ripper style," with a long-bladed knife used to slit the woman's throat with a double slash.  The long-bladed knife and the double slash throat cut are two of the hallmarks of the Ripper murders.  The woman's body was not mutilated, but that could be because Feigenbaum was caught in the act by her son and forced to run.  He was later caught by police.  

As noted above, Feigenbaum's lawyers told newspapers on the day of Feigenbaum's execution that he believed Feigenbaum could be connected to Jack the Ripper.  He went on to say that he would "stake [his] professional reputation" that a proper investigation would tie Feigenbaum to London and Whitechapel in late 1888. 

He also told the press that Feigenbaum had confided to him that he had "suffered for years" from an "all absorbing passion" that caused him to want to brutally murder and mutilate women.  When this "passion" came on him, Feigenbaum apparently said, he was "unable to control" himself.  

This, of course, is perfectly consistent with what criminal psychologists would now recognize as the hallmark of a serial killer - the uncontrollable urge to kill.

Feigenbaum's lawyer went on to say that he had looked up some of the dates of the Ripper murders, and then asked Feigenbaum about where he was on those dates, without telling him why he wanted to know.  Feigenbaum, said his lawyer, confirmed that he was in London on the days in question.

This story apparently made a minor sensation at the time, and was reported in many newspapers around the country, but the theory never caught on, and within a few years, Carl Feigenbaum had basically passed out of the consciousness of Ripper investigators and enthusiasts.  

CONCLUSION

Marriott finalized his theory by asserting that the Ripper-like murders which had been taking place in various places around the world during the late 1880's and early 1890's pretty much ended after the arrest and execution of Carl Feigenbaum.  As a final piece to the puzzle, that certainly seems to seal the deal.

However, as one can imagine, many experts are still not convinced.  I found a website devoted to the case where the author analyzed Marriott's conclusions extensively and ultimately stated that he thought Marriott was wrong.  

Without those all important records that actually show Feigenbaum's name as part of the crew of a ship that was actually in port during these various murders, it is difficult to say that the "case is closed."  

I personally have always found it odd that so many Ripper enthusiasts seem to assume that the murderer must have moved on to some other place and kept on murdering.  Invariably, this "other place" always ends up being America, and it's not an accident that the enthusiasts who tend to support these theories are American.  The case is so fascinating to so many people that it almost seems as though American enthusiasts resent that the murders happened in London and want desperately to be able to claim Jack the Ripper as their own.

In all likelihood, Jack the Ripper was some tramp who lived on the streets of Whitechapel, snapped one day and started murdering, then ended up dead himself in a bar fight or a mugging, or was perhaps arrested and put in jail for some other unrelated crime, and thus passed out of history without anyone ever knowing any better.  That's the simplest answer, anyway, and the simplest answer is usually the right one.  

Still, this newest theory about Carl Feigenbaum is noteworthy simply because it seems, on the surface anyway, to have some solid evidence behind it, even if that evidence is only circumstantial.  

Notes from the Cave

After working 9 days straight, I finally had a day off today.  But I'm right back tomorrow for a ten hour shift, followed by a 12-hour third shift on Saturday night.  Working a lot of days in a row is bad enough, but the switching back and forth between 1st and 3rd shift really, really sucks.  In short, I'm too old for this shit.

On Sunday afternoon (after I got up from sleeping after working all night), I got all my stuff together to mow the lawn for the first time this year.  As many of you know, we sold our last house in June of 2009, and had been in an apartment since then, up until February of this year.  So this was not only the first mow of the year for me, but also the first in about two years.  The lawn equipment had been in storage all that time.

I went out and got new gas cans (the old ones were gone - probably thrown away when we moved), filled them up with gas, then mixed oil into the second container (the weed eater requires a gasoline/oil mix).  Got my mowing outfit on and got prepared to set about mowing for the first time the largest yard that I've ever owned.  I started on the weed eater, and it fired up like normal and all was good.

Then I put the gasoline into the lawn mower.

Almost immediately I saw liquid begin to drip from the filter.  I kept pouring for a few more seconds before I realized that the gasoline was leaking back out.  My first thought was that it was a bad fuel line - maybe dry rot from sitting idle for two years.  But upon closer investigation, I saw that it was actually leaking out of an iron tube connecting from the filter to the engine itself.  Obviously some O-ring or gasket inside the engine has broken and is leaking gasoline.  So not only did I not get my lawn mowed - which was badly in need of it - but I also have to get the damn mower fixed - and it's a relatively new mower.  I think I bought it in 2008, which means I only used it for one season and maybe two months of another.  And, of course, this is the busy season for lawn mower repair.  My father-in-law has his in the shop right now and they told him it would be three weeks.

Tonight I borrowed a neighbor's mower and mowed the front, but the back is still basically a jungle.

Earlier this week, I began working out a new idea for a collection of short fiction.  It's been a while since I've written any fiction, and I've always tended to struggle somewhat with short stories because in many ways they are harder to write than long fiction.  But my idea is based on all the genealogical research I have done on ancestry.com.  There are so many interesting vignettes about ancestors and their life events that they fairly beg to be fictionalized.   So I am going to start a series of short stories - maybe 12 to 16 total - and put them into a collection, yet to be titled, about real people and events from American history.  Rather than writing about famous people and events - which is what informs most historical fiction - these stories will be about average, every day Americans from across 400 years of American history.  Of course I will include a lot of stories about my own ancestors, but I don't want it to be top-heavy with my own family, so I have asked a number of friends and co-workers if I can research their families on ancestry.com to find interesting tidbits to write stories about.  Already I have found several stories from among my friends' family lines that would make for good short stories.  Ultimately, it will be interesting to see if this pans out or if it fizzles into that nebulous world of artistic plans and ideas that never come to fruition.

On the reading front, I finished James Rollins' Altar of Eden - it was typical pop thriller fare, predictable and formulaic as all get out, but entertaining enough for a week's read.  I've now moved on to the second book of Sharon Kay Penman's 12th century trilogy, called Time and Chance.  It picks up pretty much where the first book left off, in the mid 1150's, a few years into the reign of Henry II and his queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.  It will apparently focus mostly on Henry's relationship, and ultimate falling out, with his chancellor and later Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket.  (Click that link for a short 2006 post I made about Becket's murder.)

I've simultaneously started reading a very thick collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling.  For those who don't know, Kipling is one of England's most famous writers, easily the most famous British writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  He was born and lived much of his life in British-controlled India, and as such became a prominent voice for the waning days of British imperialism there.  He only wrote a few novels, focusing instead on short stories and poetry - of which he wrote literally hundreds of each.  His most famous collection of short stories, in America anyway, is The Jungle Book.

The very first story in this collection I'm reading is a story from 1885 called The Dream of Duncan Parrenness, and in it is a quote that immediately stood out to me as one of those "great quotes" from literature.  It immediately struck a chord with my own experiences, and I must have read it over five or six times:

Yet there be certain times in a young man's life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood.

It sort of gives me chills even reading it now again.  He managed, in this one sentence from a relatively obscure story from his early life, to sum up beautifully the universal experience of men reaching adulthood.  It doesn't necessarily happen when you turn 18, or 21, or 25.  But it happens, and once it does, there's no going back.

Have any of you heard of this New York Times bestseller called Heaven is for Real?  I've read about it recently. I guess this kid had a near-death experience at age 4, and now he and his parents (and no doubt a ghost writer) have written a book to give people encouragement about what awaits them after death.  Not surprisingly, the boy's father is an evangelical minister, and the boy's trip to heaven included visits from Jesus and John the Baptist.

What I want to know is this: How come people who have near death experiences always have them within the bounds of their own spiritual heritage?  In other words, how come Christians don't ever experience Muslim or Buddhist heaven, and vice versa, and how come Hindus never see Jesus during their near death experiences?  I might be inclined to believe a near-death experience if it happened to a Christian, but they saw Mohammed, or it happened to a Buddhist, but they saw Jesus, or it happened to a Jew, but they saw Osiris, and then converted to the new religion on the spot.  THAT would be impressive.  A Christian seeing John the Baptist, or a Buddhist seeing Buddha, however, is not so interesting.

Of course, I suppose the reason this book is such a hit is because it happened to this 4-year old who wouldn't have had the same sort of religious knowledge that the rest of us have.  Yet magically he saw Jesus and John the Baptist - figures he undoubtedly would have heard talked about by his minister father and in Sunday School.  Isn't it amazing that he didn't run into Shiva or Mohammed or Zoroaster or Zeus - figures he almost certainly had never heard of?  Again, had this 4-year-old seen Shiva, ultimately leading to the mass conversion from Christianity to Hinduism of his entire family, including his evangelical minster father, THEN I would be mightily impressed.

He also, apparently, met up with a sister he didn't know he had, learning only later that his mother had miscarried a girl (how she could have known it was a girl, so early in a pregnancy, is anyone's guess, I suppose).  Of course, even though he may not have been consciously aware, at age 4, of his mother's past miscarriage, it's a virtual certainty that he had heard his parents talk about it and had stored it away subconsciously.

But then I suppose I'm just a jaded old skeptic who likes to pee on people's parades.

Perhaps I should read the book before criticizing it - I'm sort of breaking one of my own rules here - but I simply have never seen or read anything to make me suppose that near-death experiences are likely to be anything other than a function of neural activity in a dying and oxygen-starved brain, which causes people to see familiar things.  These stories are interesting, even amazing, but I haven't ever been persuaded to suppose there is anything supernatural going on.

Notes from the Cave

Not much to talk about this week.  I know I said something to that effect on my last Cave entry, but it's really true this time.

WORK:
We started a new schedule at work this week, and it's taking some getting used to.  I was supposed to work 6 to 2:30 today, and showed up at 8 a.m. because I'm not used to that earlier shift.  Tomorrow (which is really today, since it is past two in the morning) I work second shift.  Then I work a swing shift on Friday, followed by the night shift on Saturday.  Then I'm back to an 8 a.m. shift next Monday.  It's no wonder I got confused.

In the last few weeks, I passed my 1-year anniversary with my employer.  In the past, a 1-year anniversary would have seemed significant, but I guess as you get older and move from career to career, as I have done, it's not that big of a deal anymore.  This is particularly true since there are so many people I work with who have been with the hospital for 20 and 30 and even 40 years.  One year doesn't seem like much up against that.  And I'm still the low man on the totem pole for seniority.  I am literally dead last.

STOMACH ISSUES:
My stomach issues, which I have mentioned in the past, seem to be settling down a bit.  I hesitate to say they are "resolved," but for now, I've been doing okay for the last few weeks.  I did have to take some Advil a few days ago, but it was just that one day.

THE FREE CANDY VAN:
I had to get some work done on my car last week (my car is not REALLY a van, that's just my Twitter joke), as my check engine light had been on for almost two months.  I was worried it was going to be something major - I guess you always worry about that when you aren't sure what it is.  It turned out to just be some kind of "sensor crank" or something, and it only cost a few hundred bucks.  That's a few hundred more than I had, but at least it didn't need a whole new transmission or anything, which is what I had feared.

ROCK BAND:
My oldest daughter and I have been on one of our Rock Band II streaks this week.  We will get on streaks like this where we play every day for a week or two, then won't play for several months.  She's the drummer,, and her favorite songs to play include Eye of the Tiger, Hungry Like the Wolf, We Got the Beat, and, strangely enough, Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads.  That was a song I'd never even heard until I got Rock Band.  She also likes Round and Round, Spoonman, and Man in the Box.  I think my favorite one to play is The Middle, by Jimmy Eat World.  (They were on Conan a few weeks ago, and I loved the spot he did as a commercial that night before the show.  He said something to the effect of: "We're going to have Jimmy Eat World tonight.  Don't worry, Jimmy no really eat world.")  That probably doesn't sound as funny written out in my blog post as it did when Conan delivered it.

READING:
I finally finished the book I've been reading since January - When Christ and His Saints Slept, by Sharon Kay Penman.  It was historical fiction, set during "The Anarchy" - the 12th century English civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Maude.  If you love historical sagas set in the Middle Ages, this one is for you.  It's actually the first in a trilogy, with the second two books continuing with the reign of Henry II and his queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.  These books are right up my alley because they are set during the 12th century - my absolutely favoritest period of English history.  The second and third books are on my shelf to be read.  The only downside, of course, is that this book took me two months to read.  It's a virtual encyclopedia.  I'm now onto some lighter fare in James Rollins' most recent thriller, Altar of Eden.

I'm not sure how I feel about the category headings.  Not sure if I'll keep doing that.  In any case, that is all.

Rush in Louisville: A Review

On Tuesday evening, I saw my 7^th Rush concert since 2004, this time in Louisville, Kentucky.  This show, at the new KFC/YUM Center, marks the 6^th different venue I’ve seen them in.  Seven shows in six years may seem like a lot to some, but it’s painfully few compared to the hardcore fans among which I count myself.  I know people who have seen twice that many just on this tour alone. 

I always like getting to these shows early, to avoid parking woes and to find out where my seat is without fighting enormous crowds of people.  It also allows me to find close parking, and thus get out quicker when the show is over and avoid the heavy exit traffic. 

The new KFC/YUM Center sits right on the Ohio River in downtown Louisville

I arrived about two hours before the show and was able to park for $10 in a parking garage that was across the street from the venue.  It was a nice, newer garage, with a covered walkway leading virtually right up to the arena.  Considering I passed public lots two or three blocks down that were also $10, I thought this was a pretty nice find.  Of course, being two hours early helps.

The venue itself is very nice.  The acoustics inside were fantastic, and I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about going to a concert there.  The sound was very crisp and clear, with little to no distortion.  I think this is the reason why my ears were only ringing very mildly at show’s end – in the past, I’ve sometimes had ringing ears for several days after an indoor concert.  The area around the venue is clean and new and well-lit, and I didn’t feel uncomfortable, even walking out to my car at 11 pm.

Prior to the show, I hung around outside, and there was a cover band playing Rush and Ozzy songs in front of a bar.  Turns out, the drummer was 11, the guitarist 12, and the bassist/keyboardist a 17-year-old girl wearing fishnet stockings and blue hair.  Considering their age, they were quite good.  During their cover of Tom Sawyer, the girl played keyboards with one hand while playing bass with the other – simply “hammering” the open strings at the right time.  They did a fine rendition of The Spirit of Radio, as well as a cover of Ozzy’s Crazy Train. 

As for the real Rush show, it was excellent, as always.  I try not to be one of those fans who claims every show I go to is the “best I’ve seen yet!”, but I have to say that they did seem to be more “into it” – for lack of a better phrase – than in some other shows I’ve seen.  This was probably due to the fact that the crowd was more “into it” than most.  One of my biggest complaints about Rush concerts is that the fans usually don’t move around much – they do stand throughout the show, and certainly cheer the songs, but there is never a lot of dancing and or jumping or fist-pumping or other various gyrations that you expect to see at a rock concert.  I’ve always chalked this up to the fact that most shows are populated by older people (Rush has been around since the mid-70’s), and 50-year-old fat guys aren’t as prone to head-banging and other forms of physical expression as, say, a 20-year-old would be. 

My standard for this has always been the crowd at Rush’s performance in 2002 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  This was Rush’s first trip to Brazil, and the final stop there was filmed for a DVD called Rush in Rio.  This DVD, by the way, is actually Rush’s best-selling “album” of all time, certified seven times platinum by the RIAA last September. 

In any case, on the Rush in Rio DVD, the crowd of 40,000 was absolutely unbelievable.  You can see them throughout the show cheering and whooping and yelling and dancing and jumping and raising their hands and singing along and generally acting like a Brazilian soccer crowd.  They even “sang along” to one of Rush’s instrumentals, a song called YYZ, humming in unison to the familiar melody.  At one point, during the instrumental part of the song Freewill, the crowd spontaneously started bowing in rhythm with hands outstretched, like subjects making obeisance to a god (in this case, three gods). 

Compared to this crowd, American crowds are dead on their feet. 

In any case, the crowd for the Louisville show on Tuesday was a lot more “into it” than I have seen in the past (maybe this is why Rush seemed more “into it” too).  Nothing like the Brazilians, of course, but not exactly zombies either.  This always makes the show more enjoyable and makes you feel more free, yourself, to whoop and cheer and jump without looking stupid (of course, it’s that self-conscious feeling, so common among Americans, that causes no one to do it in the first place). 

As always, there were humorous videos before and after the performance, as well as themed lighting and pyrotechnics.  They actually are using more pyrotechnics on this tour than I remember them using in the past.  Lots of flame cannons and explosions, and even some minor fireworks.  

One unexpected explosion, during the line “like a lucky shot in the dark” from the song Marathon, nearly gave me a heart attack.

During one song early on (unfortunately, I can’t remember which one), guitarist Alex Lifeson played a very prominent and noticeable wrong note during one of his riffs.  He made a funny face and then humorously “scolded” his left hand. 

Someone actually managed to catch a photo of this and posted it online.

Neil Peart’s drum solo was unbelievable.  It’s always unbelievable, of course.  Anyone who knows a Rush fan probably is familiar with exclamations of how incredible Neil Peart is.  If you go to a concert and watch his drum solo, you’ll know why.  And you almost have to see it, because it’s somewhat indescribable.  During one part, he plays a song on his electric marimba and accompanies himself on drums. 

The same person who took the picture above also took this one, and the next one.

 To borrow a phrase I once read from an interview with Geddy Lee, Neil’s ability for complete “limb independence” is just staggering.  Most people’s brains can’t allow them to do what Neil Peart does.  Try patting your head with one hand, rubbing circles on your stomach with another, drawing an X in the dirt with one foot, and drawing a square in the dirt with the other foot.  All at the same time.  That’s the sort of thing Neil Peart does on the drums.

As for Geddy Lee’s bass playing, he seemed to be more “in the zone” and doing a bit more improvisation than I’ve seen in the past.  

With as good as Neil Peart is on drums, sometimes Geddy and Alex get overlooked for their own superior playing.  But make no mistake, they are both among the best on their own instruments.  That’s what makes Rush so incredible – it’s three virtuosos all coming together in the same band and making music that just blows you away. 

Geddy’s voice sounded pretty good.  It’s a fact that he is nearing 60 years old, so obviously he’s not the wailer he was in his youth.  But considering his age, not to mention the mileage, he still does a remarkably good job night after night.  He seems to struggle more noticeably on the run-of-the-mill parts than on the really high, difficult sections.  I suppose that is the result of focusing.  He “relaxes” somewhat during the easy parts, so sometimes his voice quavers a bit, but he gets mentally ready for the tough parts, and manages to hit the notes squarely.  During Freewill, which includes some of his highest vocal ranges (“Each of us, a cell of awareness,” and so on), he absolutely nailed it, belting it out like he was still 30.  It was so good it gave me goose bumps, and the crowd cheered mid-song – something you don’t often hear (although it happened a lot at this show). 

They finished with a nice encore that included old favorites La Villa Strangiato and Working Man.  They played the opening of Working Man slowed down, like you might expect from an “unplugged” version of a song.  Before Geddy started singing, I wasn’t even sure what they were playing.  They played it like that for about one verse, then suddenly ripped back into the normal, chest-thumping, ear-jarring version, and it totally blew me and the rest of the crowd away.  One of the best parts of the whole concert.

When the show was over, I bolted straight for the door while the ending video played.  I could still see and hear it as I walked out, so I didn’t miss anything, and as soon as it ended I was out the arena door, into the entry hall and back outside.  This allowed me to get to my car quickly and experience not one iota of exit traffic.  I was on the Interstate within about 10 minutes of walking out of the arena, if even that. 

All in all, it was another great Rush experience, made even better by the great Louisville crowd, the nice, concert-friendly arena, the clean, safe, well-lit area of downtown Louisville where the venue sits, and, of course, the boys themselves, the Trinity, the greatest band on earth, RUSH!!   

Follow Me On Twitter

@SykoVanCreeper

I've tried Twitter in the past and quit, but I'm going to start a new Twitter account (actually, it's the same one I always had, but it's been renamed).  It's based  on a post from Lisa LeBon's blog about some creepy dude in a van who stopped randomly in front of her house and asked her if he could buy her car (which is not for sale).  She hilariously referred to him as the Psycho Van Creeper, and I've decided to take on the name in Twitter (I briefly flirted with the idea of changing the name of my blog to this).  It was too long for Twitter, however, so I had to change "psycho" to "syko."

Anyway, you can follow me @SykoVanCreeper on Twitter now, if you want.  I can't promise I will keep up with it, though.  

Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys?

So a group of us were talking about Target the other day.  I don't recall exactly how it got brought up, but one of  the more opinionated people piped in to say she never shops at Target because it is owned by "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."  By this, she meant it was a French-owned corporation, which is why she refuses to shop there.

There are a lot of things wrong with this statement, but I want to focus on two: 1) the notion that Target is French-owned, and 2) the notion that the French are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."  

To begin with, and to put it simply, Target is an American corporation founded in the 1960's in Minnesota.  It is about as French as I am - which is to say,  not at all.  It is based in Minneapolis.  It is not now, nor has it ever been, a French company.

I'm not sure where the notion comes from that Target is French, but it is apparently a common one because there is a brief article about it on snopes.com - a website that specializes in confirming or debunking rumors and urban legends.  I wonder if it's not based on something as silly as the fact that a lot of folks colloquially refer to Target with a French accent: "Tar-zhay."

Regardless of its origins, it is totally and irrefutably false.  

Secondly, and in my opinion much more importantly, is it appropriate to refer to French people as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys?"  More to the point, did the French surrender impotently to the Germans in World War II?  

I googled this phrase and discovered that it was apparently first used on an episode of The Simpson's back in the mid-1990's, and was revived during the period of anti-French sentiment that preceded the start of the 2003 Iraq War.  Although it's been a while, I've heard it used before.

In any case, like any derogatory word or phrase, I find it highly offensive.  Unlike other offensive terms, which are frequently just based on linguistics (consider the N-word, for instance, which is a bastardization of "negro," which itself comes from the Latin word for "black"), this derogatory phrase about the French is based on a completely false notion about something that happened 70 years ago, before most of us were born.  Even if it were historically justified (which it is not), it would still be ridiculous to use it as a way of characterizing, and thus negatively stereotyping, an entire nation of people, most of whom, like us, weren't even alive when the event in question took place.  

It would be a little like calling every modern person from the American South a slave-beating racist, and thus refusing to shop at stores based out of southern states.

For those of you who might be historically impaired (that's a little joke, by the way), let me give you a little background on what, exactly, this phrase is referring to, and why it is insidiously false. 

In World War I, France suffered 1.6 million deaths, including 300,000 civilian deaths.  Those may just be sterile numbers on a page, but think about them for a moment.  1.3 million military deaths is more than all the military deaths in all the wars that the U.S. has ever fought in its entire history, including both sides of the Civil War.  300,000 civilian deaths would be like the entire city of Cincinnati, Ohio, being wiped out.  

There were also over 4 million French soldiers wounded.  

This was just one war, from 1914-1918.  And without going into an analysis of World War I, let me just say that these people all died for nothing.  World War I gained nothing for anyone.  It was a family quarrel between monarch cousins in Britain, Germany, and Russia.  

Just 20 years later - the very next generation - it all happened again, coming right on the heels of a major worldwide depression.  How "in the mood" would you have been for another war? 

In any case, Germany, under Hitler, invaded France in 1940.  Despite the claims of phrases like "surrender monkey," France did not lay down its weapons and surrender.  Countries like Austria surrendered.  Austria opened its capital city and let the Germans in without shedding a drop of blood.  

In France's case, they fought the Germans and got beat, plain and simple.  They were beaten by a superior military, and a superior military plan.  There may be no glory in defeat, but being defeated militarily, and just turning tail and surrendering, are two different things.  Furthermore, France was not alone in the Battle of France.  Britain was there too, and they fled in a mass retreat from Normandy, leaving the majority of their military equipment behind to be requisitioned by the Nazis.  But I don't ever hear anyone calling the British "surrender monkeys."  

From mid-May to mid-June, 1940, the French military lost about 85,000 soldiers.  That's significantly more than the U.S. lost in all of World War I.  I'd like for some mouthy American to stand face-to-face with one of the descendants of those 85,000 French soldiers killed in the Battle of France, and call them "surrender monkeys."  85,000 soldiers don't die surrendering.  

After the French were defeated by the Germans, they did indeed sign an armistice and Germany became their virtual overlords.  So they stopped fighting, right?  And old Uncle Sam had to bail them out, correct?  

Wrong.

If not for the French Resistance, which operated underground for the next five years, the Normandy Invasion in 1944 - America's crowning achievement - would never have happened.  Brave and heroic French men and women made it possible for thousands of brave and heroic Americans and British to invade Europe and defeat Hitler.  As many as 20,000 men and women of the French Resistance died fighting to undermine the Germans during the war.  Cheese-eating surrender monkeys?  Maybe the cheese part.  

Furthermore, French soldiers continued fighting in many areas for the remainder of the war, with another 50-60,000 being killed in action.  Cheese-eating surrender monkeys?

Maybe the cheese part.

Finally, another 270,000 French civilians perished during the duration of the war.  Cheese-eating surren...you get the point.

All told, France lost over 500,000 men and women in World War II, about 1.3% of its entire population.  Neither the U.S., nor the U.K., lost that many, and both those countries had larger populations, meaning their percentage of population losses were even less (about 0.9% for the U.K., and roughly 0.3% for the U.S.).

What that means, of course, is that France paid a much bigger price for World War II than either of the other western Allies.    

These facts hardly justify calling them "surrender monkeys," even in jest.

Unfortunately, the stereotype persists and will no doubt continue to persist.  In an odd turn of events, I took a break this evening from writing this post to eat dinner with my family.  A commercial came on for the upcoming film Arthur, starring Russell Brand.  In the commercial, a scene is shown where a woman kisses him roughly.  He says something like, "What was that?"  "A French kiss," the woman replies.  Brand's character then jokes, "The French surrendered.  That was more German."  

The French fought and died against the Germans.  They didn't lay down their weapons and invite the Germans to tea.  They were defeated by a superior military, who struck unexpectedly in a style of warfare that led Germany to victory after victory early in the war, over a lot more countries than just France.  By 1942, Germany held virtually all of western Europe and half of Russia.  It wasn't only France who got beaten.  Britain survived only because they were not connected by land, and even then they just barely avoided defeat by the German blitzkrieg.   

If not for French underground resistance fighters, who died in the tens of thousands, Normandy would never have happened, and Europe may never have been freed from the Nazis.   

It's time to put this insidious and ignorant stereotype about the French people and their actions in World War II to rest.  

Is Coach Cal a Cheater?

John Calipari, head coach of the UK Wildcats, is perhaps the most hated coach in all of men's college basketball.  Go onto virtually any article about the Wildcats on espn.com or cbssports.com, and there will always be "Calipari haters" mouthing off about what a dirty cheater he is.

These two comments, for instance, were made recently by posters in the Sports forum on a messageboard I frequent:

John Calipari is as crooked as a college coach can be. The last two colleges he's coached have had serious violations and sanctions. Somehow the NCAA lets him continue to coach and punishes the team after he conveniently leaves.

Agreed. The worst kind - a cheater who weasels his way out.

For those who don't know, this is based on the fact that the two previous teams he took to the Final Four - UMASS in 1996, and Memphis in 2008, had their tournament victories that year vacated (that is, stricken from the official record) by the NCAA because of infractions by star players - Marcus Camby for UMASS, and Derrick Rose for Memphis.  Camby turned out to have received gifts from an agent - a big NCAA no-no - and Rose had falsified his college entrance scores.

In both of these cases, Calipari was cleared by the NCAA of any wrongdoing.  In fact, he was never even suspected of wrongdoing by the NCAA, because there was absolutely no evidence to suggest he had anything to do with it.  In the case of Derrick Rose, the NCAA had actually investigated his test scores and cleared him to play, only to change their minds later.

I've said before that if Calipari was guilty of anything, it was only in not being aware of what was going on.  But that hardly makes him the most crooked coach in college sports.


The fact is, it is simply fashionable to hate Calipari.  Why Calipari?  Well, I'm not sure, other than he's been extremely successful and is hands down the best recruiter in the nation.  When you have that kind of success - particularly on the recruiting front - people just make assumptions.  I actually had a negative impression of him myself before he came to UK - but after he arrived, I did a little investigating for myself, and was forced to change my opinion because I realized it was neither fair nor consistent.


The fact is, there have been no less than 38 NCAA Division I coaches who have had tournament appearances vacated.  Calipari has had two.  But well-regarded coaches like Jim Calhoun and the beloved Jim Valvano are on that list too.  Valvano, in fact, had not one, but three tournament appearances vacated during his career.  But he won a heart-warming championship as an underdog in 1983, and later heroically fought cancer and established a prominent cancer research foundation, so no one ever mentions his vacated tournaments.  Jim Calhoun not only has had a tournament vacated, but was also sanctioned this year by the NCAA and will have to serve a 3-game suspension next season for not fostering an "atmosphere of compliance" with NCAA regulations.  


Another figure on the list who has had 3 tournaments vacated is Steve Fisher - who won a championship with Michigan in 1989.  This year, he got a lot of positive press for taking San Diego State into prominence and a deep tournament run.  But he's not a "big name" coach, so no one pays any attention.  Certainly no one is calling him the most crooked coach in America.  


Other prominent coaches on the list are Steve Lavin, currently of St. John's, the highly-respected Lute Olsen of Arizona, and Eddie Sutton.

The point here should be clear.  A lot of coaches over the years have had tournaments vacated, including several current coaches.  Steve Fisher of San Diego State has the most of any current NCAA Division I coach - and the tournaments (including two Final Fours) he vacated with Michigan in the mid-1990's involved not just one player, but 4, and he ultimately was fired for his own involvement.  Joey Meyer, formerly of DePaul, has the most vacated tournaments, with four straight from 1986 to 1989.    

I said it already, but it bears repeating: it is simply fashionable to dump on Calipari.  He's prominent, he's highly successful both in coaching and recruiting, and his 2008 Memphis program is the most recent one to have a tournament vacated.

For people who don't know any better, or who just need a reason to hate the Wildcats (hey, when you're the best, a lot of people aren't going to like you), the facts of the matter don't really matter much at all.

Notes from the Cave

I don't really have much in me tonight, but I feel like I need to put something out there on the airwaves to appease my multitudinous reading audience.

It's hard to believe it's been nearly 6 months since I last wrote a legitimate essay on religious scholarship.  What the heck has happened to me?  I started a book on Paul about 2 months ago and I don't even remember where I was.  I've only read about 15 pages, and haven't touched it in probably 6 weeks.  Obviously I've burned myself out; the question is, will I ever get interested again?  And what about the 4 or 5 unread books I still have on my shelf?  Will they ever be read?

Guess it's a good thing I never went to graduate school in this field - there was a time when I seriously considered it.

I suppose if this apathy keeps up, I'll have to redesign my blog, since it's hardly a "resource for fellow travelers on the Way" anymore.

In sporting news, unless you are a UK basketball fan, or maybe possibly a Green Bay Packers fan (because they're the only other sports fans I can think of that are like UK fans), you can't possibly understand the pleasure I have derived from UK's success this past weekend in the NCAA tournament.  As I wrote in my last post, I didn't have high hopes of UK beating Ohio State, but I said they could do it if they brought their A-game.  And bring it they did, particularly on defense.  It was without question their best defensive outing of the year.  And it was really, really exciting to see them put down the tournament favorite and the team that was basically on top of the standings all year.  

And then to have UK turn around and beat the old blueblood nemesis UNC on Sunday was just a huge cherry on top.  I was so emotionally spent from Friday's game against Ohio State that I only DVR'd the UNC game on Sunday, and watched it only after finding out the score.  I know that may sound like poor fan behavior, but it's an indication of how emotionally connected I get to big games like this.  I simply couldn't take doing it again 36 hours after the heart attack I had over the OSU game.

You may recall this post I made prior to the start of the post-season.  In it, I listed five reasons not to discount UK in the NCAA tournament.  Even though I was arguing for UK being poised to make a deep run, I even admitted that I didn't hold out much hope for a championship.  That, of course, has all changed now, and now I feel like they have a very legitimate shot.  I pretty much regard the upcoming Final Four game against UCONN as I did the games against OSU and UNC - with guarded optimism.  They can let Kemba Walker get his points; it is the rest of the team they need to shut down.  If they do that, I think they will succeed.  If not, then UCONN probably moves on.

Win or lose, a Final Four year is always a successful year, and it is nice to have that monkey off our collective backs.  Prior to this, UK was on it's longest streak ever without a Final Four appearance - 12 seasons.  It's even more special this year because it was somewhat unexpected - certainly by the mainstream media - and particularly after last year's team should have made it and did not.  

And let me do a little shameless bragging: ESPN offers a huge NCAA Tournament bracket challenge each year.  It's all free and all you win is bragging rights - so I'm bragging.  I did 5 brackets, and one of them is in the 99.2 percentile - meaning it's better than 99.2% of the entries.  That's out of about 6 million.  Naturally I didn't pick Butler and VCU in the Final Four, but I did get Kentucky and Connecticut.  Unfortunately I picked Pittsburgh to win it all.

On the medical front, I am still having off and on stomach problems.  I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I have found, oddly enough, that Advil eases the pain.  This came as quite a surprise to me, because who would think to take Advil for a stomach ache?  The only reason I even tried it is because I was desperate in the middle of the night one night and was willing to try anything to ease the discomfort.  I've been wondering about this, of course, and today a patient said something to me that clicked: she was telling me about her medical history, and mentioned that ibuprofen (which is what Advil is made of) helps her "stomach issue," which she went on to say was a hiatal hernia.  A hiatal hernia is when the top of your stomach protrudes through your diaphragm - the muscle that separates your chest from your abdomen.  The hole there is for the esophagus to connect to the stomach, but sometimes the stomach will push through it.

I've wondered all along if this issue of mine could be a hiatal hernia, but I kind of forgot about it after the doctor didn't act like she thought that sounded likely.  Now I'm wondering again if that's what it is after all.

In any case, I haven't been able to get back to see the doctor because I've been so busy.  The stress of work and everything else in my life certainly doesn't help stomach problems.

This post has gone on way too long, particularly considering I said at the outset that I didn't have much in me tonight.  Guess I was wrong about that.

Notes from the Cave

The kids finally have a bunch of other kids in the neighborhood to play with.  This is a first for them.  We didn't live in our first house long enough for our older daughter to ever reach the point of playing outside, and in our second house, there were no other kids on our end of the street for her and our younger daughter to play with.

That's all changed now.

Across the street are two boys and a girl.  Next to them are two girls who are the same ages as my two girls.  And next door to us is another girl and boy.  There are a few others a bit farther down the street as well.  It's been sunny and warm this week, and the adults all stand around outside talking while the kids run rampant across the yards of four houses.  We've been getting all the good neighborhood gossip and finding out about the people who lived here before us.  Turns out, the original owners are people M knows from the school where she teaches (which is just around the corner from us).  That's a bit weird for her, as you can imagine.  

Someone - I think it was a commenter right here on my blog - suggested jumping rope to get some exercise, and I've taken their advice.  I've been keeping a log each day ("not that I have a log") of how many jumps I do - 50 has been the minimum I've started with.  It's a heck of a lot harder than you might think - especially if you are 50 pounds overweight like I am.  I can feel fat and tissue in my body jiggling that I didn't even know I had. 

I've had to start taking Prilosec for a stomach problem that has cropped up over the last few weeks.  Basically, I've been having frequent - sometimes constant - upper abdominal pain.  No nausea or vomiting or anything like that, just a stomach ache that comes and goes.  I got an Ultrasound of my gallbladder, to rule out an infection there (the exam was negative).  The Prilosec seems to be helping so far, but we'll have to give it a little more time to make sure the symptoms don't come back (they went away originally for about a week before coming back again, and it was after that second bout that I started the Prilosec).  

My house will be infested with 3rd graders this weekend.  My oldest is having a belated birthday party.  Her birthday is in early January, and that was a really bad time for us (we were still in the apartment, and getting ready to move), so we had to postpone her sleepover with friends until now.  The Cave is going to be Romper Room for a night, and M is bugging me to get the Wii set up downstairs for them.  

Saw a Motley Crue concert on TV the other day (sorry, I ain't searching the keyboard to figure out how to put the little umlauts over the o and u).  It was from 2005, and they are all wasted old ex-addicts, but they still sound really, really good.  Nikki Sixx somehow manages to make bedhead look cool.  I don't know how he does it.

Most former heroin addicts don't look this good.  Believe me, I see them at the hospital all the time.

In the world of college basketball, I was happy to see UK get past West Virginia - whom they lost to in the Elite Eight last year - and move on to this year's Sweet Sixteen.  I'd love to say I think they have a good shot at beating OSU in the Sweet Sixteen, but I don't see it happening.  If UK brings their A-game, then it might happen, but anything less than their best is not going to cut it, and even their best may not cut it, if OSU is also on their own A-game.  

A recent Facebook post that eleventy billion people "liked" said something about a spur-of-the-moment standing ovation that a group of people in an airport gave to a group of soldiers getting off a plane.  First of all, I suspect the whole story was probably made up for the purpose of giving people a warm fuzzy.  Secondly, can you gag me a little bit deeper, please?  Sheesh.  Just because a few hippies spit on a few Vietnam vets and called them baby killers 40 years ago doesn't mean the rest of us should have to spend our lives making up for it.  I'm all behind our troops, hope no harm comes their way.  But I ain't gonna applaud them when they walk by, for cripe's sakes.

Federal taxpayer money spent each year on NPR: About $7 million.  

Federal taxpayer money spent each year on Congressional salaries: About $105 million.  

How about instead of de-funding NPR, we cut Congressional salaries by 7%?  

Conversation on the Japan Tragedy

The following is a fairly close recounting of a conversation I overheard today while in the waiting room at the doctor's office.  The two people having this conversation were pharmaceutical reps in suits and ties.

Man 1: So was it an earthquake and then tsunami, or did the tsunami happen first?

Man 2: I thought the earthquake was first.

Man 1: No, I'm pretty sure the tsunami hit, and then the earthquake happened after that.

Man 2: Well, what caused the tsunami then?

Man 1: Hmm.  I don't know.

Brief pause.

Man 1: All I know is that as soon as I heard about it, I thought: "Man, what did YOU do to piss off God."

haha aha haha chuckle chuckle hmmph hmmph hardy har har

Man 2: I couldn't help but think of a Godzilla movie.  You know...everybody running around saying "aaaghh!"

hahaha  haha chuckle chuckle hardy har har tee hee hee

They're Sending the Old Man Home

He's afraid he's talking too much.

"I don't have anybody to talk to at home," he explains.  

It's okay, I assure him.  No problem at all.  

He fought in World War II, he says.  An infantryman in the Army.  He went to Italy and fought the Germans there.  The Nazis were fortified up in the hills and mountains; his platoon was below, hiding in the valley.

Another soldier wanted to get up and run.  He told him to stay in the hole, that moving now would reveal their position, put the whole platoon at risk.

"Says who?" the soldier demanded.

"Says this bullet in this rifle," he replied.  

The soldier stayed put, but later reported him to the senior officer.  The major took his side, told him he'd done the right thing.  

"I wanted to keep my boys safe," he says.  "All of them."  

Some of his friends from boot camp died in Normandy, he says.  Omaha Beach.  They were hillbillies, loved playing guitar and singing bluegrass music.  He took a liking to them, because his mother was from Appalachia.  He sings me a line from one of the songs they used to sing.  

They both died getting off the transports.  Never even made it to shore, as far as he knows.  

"Put your hands together and bring your elbows up," I tell him.  "Like you're saying a prayer."

He does that a lot, he says.  Talks to Him all the time.  

He's married and his wife is still living, but she's in a home now.  They're going to put him in a home now too, because he can't take care of himself anymore.  He's sure they'll take good care of him there.  It'll be a nice place.    

He loves our hospital.  Says it's where he always likes to come.  We take good care of him.  We're good people.  

He's still talking as the transporter wheels him away.  

I finish my paperwork, but I'm still thinking about a kid in Italy under German fire, and an old man in a hospital on his way to a nursing home, and I feel small.  

5 Reasons Not to Ignore the Wildcats

Only in Kentucky can a 22-8 regular season, finishing up with a top 15 ranking, be considered a “down” year for a college basketball team.  But that’s the stark reality of the thing.  We have high expectations, and for most of us, anything less than at least a Final Four will be a letdown.

“Down” years aside, I think it is a bit premature to dismiss Kentucky as a potential NCAA tournament threat.  Am I going to place money on a Kentucky championship this year?  Well, probably not.  But I think it would be a mistake to assume they are a non-issue.  Consider these five points:

1.  John Calipari.  Look: we all know that Calipari is one of those coaches that people love to hate.  I couldn’t stand the guy before he came to Kentucky, but I was thrilled when he got here.  Love him or hate him, he’s taken his previous two teams to the Final Four and made them programs of national prominence.  We can argue all day over how much involvement he has had in any underhanded recruiting issues (the NCAA has said none), but none of that changes the fact that his teams have been contenders because of good coaching.  He’s got what it takes to get his team ready for a deep run in the tournament. 

2. Points + Rebounds per Game.  Kentucky is in the top 30 in both points and rebounds per game – 24^th in points, and 26^th in rebounds.  That’s better than Ohio State, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh, just to name a few. 

3. Record Against Ranked Teams.  Kentucky is 5-2 against teams ranked in the top 25 this year, with the two losses coming on the road to Vanderbilt and Florida.  They beat a good Louisville team at Louisville by 15 points.

4. Home Crowd Advantage.  Kentucky plays phenomenally at home.  In fact, they haven’t lost there in over two years.  Their Achilles heel this year has been road games in the SEC.  They were embarrassed several times, including at Arkansas in late February.  In the NCAA tournament, they won’t be playing any SEC road games.  Of course, they also won’t be playing any home games at Rupp Arena.  But anyone familiar with Kentucky basketball knows that when Kentucky plays neutral site games – particularly in the NCAA tournament – the crowd is almost always predominantly blue.  This is one of the benefits of having a devoted fan base like Kentucky has.  They follow you wherever you go.  This season, in non-SEC road games and neutral site games, Kentucky is 5-2, with three of those wins against top 25 teams. 

5. Overall Record.  Kentucky’s overall record this season was 22-8, good enough to put them 15^th in the final regular season AP poll.  It doesn’t seem nearly as impressive, however, as Ohio State or Kansas’ 29-2.  But consider this: of Kentucky’s eight losses, five of them were by 2 points or less.  That means Kentucky is literally a mere 10 points away from being 27-3.  Ten points.  A few made free throws here, a few stops there, and Kentucky is probably ranked in the top 5, maybe even the top 3.  All five of those close losses, by the way, were true road games – 4 in the SEC and one at UNC (who, by the way, is currently ranked 6^th in the country). 

All in all, I think that Kentucky’s performance this year, and their subsequent record, is deceptive.  It only seems like they aren’t a legitimate NCAA threat this year.  In fact, they are only 10 points away from being a top 3 or 4 team!  For those of you who like the numbers games, their RPI this year is 12^th best in the country, and their all important Strength of Schedule is also 12^th – higher than Ohio State, Duke, Pittsburgh, and Notre Dame – all of whom are in the discussion for number 1 seeds in the tournament. 

Christianity and Paganism: A Casual Discussion

After being asked a few months back about my views on how paganism may have influenced Christianity, I have spent quite a bit of time attempting to write out a nice essay explaining my opinions.  Unfortunately, I have found it next to impossible to "get it on paper," as the saying goes.  After several valiant efforts, I have abandoned the originally essay.  Instead, I want to just talk briefly and casually about my thoughts on this subject.

In recent years - thanks in large part to the Internet - there has been a lot of talk and discussion about the influence of pagan ideas and beliefs on the rise of Christianity.  A few years back, there was an Internet movie called Zeitgeist that caused quite a sensation in this regard.  It was ultimately a film about how 9/11 was an inside job, but the first segment of the film discussed some incredibly provocative theories about the origins of Christianity and its connection to pagan beliefs - particularly the religion of ancient Egypt.

I wrote a long and scathing critique of the movie's religion segment a few years back, so I won't repeat myself here, other than to say that virtually the entire thing, from beginning to end, was balderdash of the most insidious kind.  Be that as it may, the movie has helped to spark some healthy debate on the subject.  There have also been some books out recently discussing these topics, though I have not personally read them.

To put it simply, I think the question of pagan influence on Christianity turns first on what aspect of Christianity one is talking about.  In terms of Christian theology and doctrine, there can be no doubt that paganism had a profound effect.  Beginning in the 2nd century, Christianity had become almost exclusively "Gentile" - that is, non-Jewish.  A a full-blooded Jewish sect in the 1st century, Christianity went through a painful separation in the last few decades of that century and by the year 100 or so, it had essentially become a whole new religion.  

As a Gentile religion, it sought converts from among the pagan religions of the Roman empire.  Like any religion, most of its adherents eventually came from within - that is, they were born to Christian parents.  But in the first few centuries of Christian history, many, many former pagans converted to the new religion, particularly in the 300's C.E., after it became the official religion of the empire.  It was during this same time, of course, that much of the theology and many of the doctrines Christians still follow today were developed and put into practice.  As such, pagan beliefs that converts brought with them deeply and greatly influenced the development of Christian theology and doctrine.  

Consider, for instance, the doctrine of the Trinity, which could easily be viewed (particularly by an outsider) as watered-down polytheism: three gods in one, separate but equal.  This doctrine was formulated during those early centuries when pagan (i.e. polytheistic) beliefs were still common.  

Related to that issue is the question of the divinity of Jesus.  This was a huge issue in the early church, particularly during the 2nd century.  Was Jesus God or man?  Divine or human?  The Trinity, of course, ultimately answered that question for Christians, but the very nature of the debate was the result of non-Jews attempting to understand the distinctly Jewish stories about Jesus.  I am firmly convinced that no self-respecting Jew - even a Jewish Christian - would ever have considered Jesus to be one and the same with God.  Such a notion would have been so fundamentally contrary to all that it means to be Jewish that only non-Jews could have considered it.  Jesus-as-God is a notion that did not arise in Christianity until it became a Gentile religion.  Among pagan religions, the belief that humans could be gods was commonplace, so common, in fact, that it's one of the defining characteristics of many ancient religions.  It is not surprising, then, that the Gentile-dominated early Christian church was amenable to the notion of Jesus being one and the same with God - a notion that would likely have left Jesus's earliest followers, not to mention Jesus himself, in the stunned silence of a major blasphemy. 

So on that subject - pagan influences on Christian doctrine and theology - there is no doubt that it played a major role.  

This, however, is not particularly controversial.  What is far more provocative is the idea that paganism influenced the very telling of the Jesus story itself.  Forget 2nd and 3rd century institutional doctrine; these theories suggest that Jesus may never have existed at all, and whether he existed or not, the stories about his life were developed from pre-existing themes in ancient religion and don't really represent anything historical.

These theories and arguments make for good fiction - and if you ask the producers of Zeitgeist, probably a lot of money too - but in my opinion there is very little of substance to them.  Zeitgeist, as I said, is a pack of lies from beginning to end, but even among the more "mainstream" theories of pagan influences on Christianity, most of it is unfounded speculation.

One thing that any reputable historian of early Christian history will tell you is that the stories of Jesus, and the entire gospel tradition, is a deeply and profoundly Jewish one.  Indeed, the inability (or unwillingness) over the ages of institutional Christianity to recognize the distinctly Jewish nature of Jesus and the stories about his life is, in my opinion, one of its biggest failures.  There is virtually nothing in the gospel tradition about Jesus that cannot be traced to some aspect of Judaism and Jewish history and tradition.  

Consider, for instance, the story of Jesus' birth.  This is one of the more popular stories that the revisionists like to link to paganism.  There's no question that Jesus wasn't the first person in history to have a virgin birth story connected to him.  Therefore, Luke and Matthew must have drawn it from pagan sources, right?  Not necessarily.  All the themes from these accounts of Jesus' birth can actually be traced right back to the Old Testament - the Jewish scriptures.  For crying out loud, Matthew even quotes Isaiah to back up his claim that Jesus was conceived by a virgin.  This idea doesn't come from pagan influence - it comes right out of the sacred scripture of the Jews!   

The same is true for many of the other stories about Jesus's life.  Consider the 12 disciples of Jesus.  I tend to think that the notion of an inner group of exactly 12 men is a creation of the primitive Christian community.  I think the truth is that Jesus probably had a lot of followers, some of whom came and went.  There was probably a core group that was with him the longest, but it wasn't necessarily exactly 12, and later there was a lot of controversy over who, precisely, had been part of this inner circle.  If this is correct, then we need to explain where the notion of "12" came from.  The pagan-influence theories suggest the 12 signs of the Zodiac (I think this is an argument made in Zeitgeist, in fact).  But this, of course, is silly.  Clearly the 12 Tribes of Israel would be the logical conclusion about where the notion of 12 disciples may have originated.  There is even a quote attributed to Jesus making this explicit comparison, when he tells his disciples that they will sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.  Furthermore, it is a perfect literary creation: just as the original 12 sons of Jacob became the patriarchs of the Jewish people, so the 12 disciples would become the patriarchs of the new Christian community, with their converts becoming the new 12 "tribes" - the new people of God. 

Ultimately, whether the existence of exactly 12 disciples is history or legend, it is distinctly Jewish, not pagan.  

In the end, I think it goes without saying that pagan beliefs had a lot of influence on later Church doctrine and theology.  I do not, however, think that pagan traditions had much influence on the telling of the stories about Jesus.  In fact, I'm not sure there is any reason to suppose that any of what we find in the gospels comes primarily from pagan tradition.  Now it's true, of course, that Judaism itself, by the time of Jesus and the gospels, was greatly Hellenized.  But only inasmuch as Judaism itself had been influenced by Greek culture and philosophy did any pagan thought, myth, or tradition play a role in the development of the gospels about Jesus.   

Notes from the Cave

After being scheduled off 6 days out of 9, I'm now in the middle of 7 days straight at work, with only one day down so far.  This is one of the downsides to hospital work - a rotating schedule.  The string of off days are great, but you pay for it in spades.

I think I've managed to avert a sinus infection by starting up a regimen of Zyrtec, allergy nose spray, and Breathe Right strips.  The nose spray and the Breathe Right are both new things for me, although the nose spray was actually prescribed last summer (no, the bottle is not expired yet).

I had a definite sinus infection coming on earlier this week, and the meds have basically stopped it in its tracks.  That's a good thing, considering my 7-days-in-a-row at work.  The thing that has been amazing are those Breathe Right strips.  I never actually knew how they worked.  Turns out, they are just like really stiff band-aids with an exceptionally sticky adhesive.  You stick them across the bridge of your nose, and the strip pulls the exterior of your nose outwards, which in turns widens your airway.  You feel sort of like your nose is a balloon full of air - but that's a good thing for someone like me who hasn't breathed clearly through my nose in, I dunno, about 10 years.  The widened airway not only helps you to breathe in more air, but it also clears congestion, because it allows your nasal passages to drain better (at least, I'm assuming that's how it works).  So not only do you suddenly feel like you could vacuum with your nose, but the congestion also goes away.  I've only used them two nights so far, but already I'm addicted.  I've literally been looking forward to bed time all day so I could put another one on.

Yes, this is the sort of shit that happens when you get old.  You start looking forward to applying Breathe Right strips to your nose.  Next thing you know, it'll be excitement over your daily glass of Ensure.  And before long, anticipation of Wheel of Fortune and the nurse coming in to change your diaper.

My sister, Lisa LeBon, is all a-tingle because a movie is being filmed at the university where she works.  Her husband, Simon LeBon, is out on tour right now with his band, Duran Duran, and she is biding her time by stalking Ryan Gosling and George Clooney.  Come to find out, Ryan Gosling and John Gosselin are not the same people, although I've always equated them together up until today.  You probably know Ryan Gosling from his guest appearance on Canada's Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, during season four's "Dragons' Lair" episode.

There was an article today on USATODAY.com about how scientists have recently pointed out that the big snowstorms in the northeast this year are consistent with the model of global warming.  As soon as I saw the headline, I knew the Comments section would make for some entertaining reading.  Here are a few tidbits:

From 411Patriot: Science used to be a widely respected field...... until the global warming lies were uncovered. It has made the entire scientific community hard to trust anymore..... nice job @ss wipes.

From libsrcrazy: These so-called scientists will blame every weather change on their global warming hoax!!! Give it up already! The jig is up.


From RockmanForte: Laugh while you can according to the bible. This world is going to get worse. Be warn just like in Noah's time. Stop laughing and starting study the bible (No, I dont mean go to church and listen to liars priests and nuns at all). WOKE UP!


From 6burgh: Unfortunately moonbat libs will believe it or actually dont believe it but think its cool to believe cause so hollyweird kook will say they believe in it. if that make sense.


There was at least one perceptive comment, from a person named soul68: I love all the inane comments from people on this board who probably couldn't pass a basic high school science class.


RANDOM PHOTO:


This is my grandfather, Oscar Kirby.  He died when I was 13.  The name of the horse escapes me (although I'm sure Lisa LeBon will remember it), but the picture was taken on the gravel entrance to his farm - probably circa 1982 or so - in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, where both sides of my family have connections going back over 200 years.  His grandfather on his father's side was a Civil War veteran of the Confederacy, while his great-grandfather on his mother's side was a Civil War veteran of the Union.


You have NO IDEA how much I wish I could jump into this picture.    

Notes from the Cave

Now that we have gotten moved into our new house, and I finally have a man-cave for the first time in my life, I'm going to start a series called Notes From the Cave.  Of course, for all I know, this may be the only entry in the series, but we'll see.  In any case, these "Cave" posts won't be anything special - just random musings.

My parents drove up from Texas this past weekend with a U-haul load of furniture for our new house - hand-me-downs, mind you, not brand new stuff - and then we had movers come on Monday to move the big pieces from our old place to our new place.  There are still a lot of odds and ends and knick-knacks - most notably most of our hanging clothes - to bring over to the new house, but otherwise we are settling into the new digs.

I've been off the past two days, and am off again tomorrow, so I've had a little bit of time to work on the house, unboxing stuff and setting up furniture.  Unfortunately I had to keep one of my daughters home sick with me today, and will have to keep her home tomorrow too, so that has hampered the amount of work I've been able to get done.  Still, I got the entertainment center put together today, and the long-awaited man-cave is basically done.  I'm sitting at my full and complete desk for the first time in a long time - it's a large, L-shaped writing desk, but the "L" part of it has been in storage for all but a year or two of the last 6 years.  Behind me is the "library" - a series of bookshelves lined with all the books I have hoarded and collected and read over my adulthood.  I'm not sure how many there are, but it's several hundred - they took up about 30 boxes.

There is also a television and a couch, as well as my guitars, which I haven't been able to play much over the last few years since we've been living in an apartment.  The only bad thing about the man-cave is that a portion of it is a play area for the girls, with a bunch of their toys and books and such.  I don't mind sharing it - they need a place to spread out and play outside of their rooms - but that corner would also make a GREAT spot for a La-Z-Boy :)

When I can afford it, I'm going to get a small dorm-sized refrigerator and fill it with beer, and stick at the end of my desk where I can reach it without even having to get out of my chair :)  Getting up to get beer is SUCH a chore.

We like the new neighborhood we are in, but we haven't met any neighbors yet.  The backyard is fenced and backs up to a horse farm.  We haven't seen any horses, but I know they must roam around back there because I can see their calling cards all over the place (that's a nice way of saying there is shit everywhere).  I'm a little bit farther from work now, but only about 5 minutes.

RANDOM PHOTO:

This is me in college playing softball.  It's hard to believe I was ever this skinny.

I suck

To all my readers: I'm sorry I suck.

I think I'm depressed or something, because I just can't get motivated to write.  I haven't even been reading that much - I've only finished two books so far this year, and they were both short books.  Granted, my wife and I are REALLY busy right now, both of us working full time and simultaneously trying to pack and get moved into a new house, but that's only been going on for the last few weeks - I have no real excuse for before that, other than laziness and lack of interest.  I've tried for the last month to write a new essay on paganism and its influence on Christianity, but it simply will. not. come. out.  I've started it, trashed it, and started it again about five times now.  It's just not there.

The living situation, and general life situation, over the last year or so has really started weighing me down, I think, and even though we are finally moving, I still feel like I am out of sorts.  I think I'll feel better and more motivated in general once we finally get this move over with.  Right now, all the packing and all the actual moving, followed by all the unpacking - all while both of us are working full time - is looming over me like an enormous thunderhead.

I'm also fat now (I didn't used to be), and that doesn't help either.  Being fat sucks big time.  I don't sleep well, I'm tired all the time, my clothes don't fit, I can't move around as easily as I used to be able to, and my general self-image is in tatters.

Let's see...what else can I whine about?  There's a ton of laundry to do, the house is a wreck because we're moving, I've got an upset stomach, and I'm thirsty and there's nothing to drink.

I think I should start smoking again.  I was fat before I quit, but I've gotten even fatter since I quit, and the loss of motivation and interest in things I used to enjoy has only started since I quit smoking (i.e., the lack of motivation to write, losing interest in reading and scholarship, even [gasp!] a strange decrease in my libido).  That's something my quit smoking literature didn't warn me about.  I thought you were supposed to feel BETTER after you quit.  My lungs DO feel better, and I can breathe better now and don't cough constantly, but emotionally I think I feel a lot worse.

Okay fine, I'll stop.  The problem with a personal blog is that sometimes you let people see sides of you that would probably be best kept hidden - like the fact that I'm a hopeless whiner and self-absorbed baby who likes to throw pity parties :)

At least I have a good job and health insurance - two things I haven't always had in the last few years - and we are getting ready to move and get settled into a nice house in a nice neighborhood and finally get out of this hellish apartment  life we've been living for two years.

I'm still fat though.

Throwing Away the Alarm Clock

This is one of those poems I wish I had written.  Charles Bukowski was a big influence on my own little 2-year stint as a poet, and this is probably my favorite of his poems.  Enjoy.

Throwing Away the Alarm Clock


my father always said, "early to bed and
early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy
and wise."

it was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house
and we were up at dawn to the smell of
coffee, frying bacon and scrambled
eggs.

my father followed this general routine
for a lifetime and died young, broke,
and, I think, not too
wise.

taking note, I rejected his advice and it
became, for me, late to bed and late
to rise.

now, I'm not saying that I've conquered
the world but I've avoided
numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some
common pitfalls
and have met some strange, wonderful
people

one of whom
was
myself—someone my father
never
knew.