Jonathan's blog

Here are some pictures from Elliot's second soccer game. We don't know that they lost again 4 to 3, but Elliot scored and did a good job both offensively and defensively. From the photos you can see that Elliot has the post-goal-scoring celebration down-pat. There's also a picture from the hot air balloon festival where we met the Sitter and Wanous families tonight.

The other night I watched most of PBS' Frontline episode from 2002 titled "Faith and Doubt At Ground Zero." A common theme was people either barely clinging to or losing their faith because, to paraphrase, "how could God let something like that happen." Not that it's a surprising reaction, but I couldn't help thinking, "Do these people think this is the first time ever that something terrible happened to a believer?" The other really weird thing was hearing the Jewish rabbi (Irwin Kula) chanting (singing) the last words (as heard from cell phone calls or voice mail recordings) of people who died on 9/11. Speaking of last words, an admonition from a recent blog post from Mike Cope:

For the past few days, as we've remember the tragedy of 9/11 five years later, I've been moved again by all the calls made to loved ones - some from jets and some from the twin towers. They were good-bye calls to make sure that people knew they were loved. And again it makes me ask myself: Am I holding anything back? Is there something I'd say if I had just a couple minutes to live that I'm not saying now? Why would we hold back? There are no guarantees in life. I might live another three decades; I might not live through 9-14-06. How about you? Are there words you need to speak to your parents? kids? spouse? friends? enemies? Maybe this is the time to say them.

Tonight the boys and I went to a local high school football game. It was kind of boring because there was so few completed passes...mostly just grinding it out with the run. We left after the third quarter with Dow up 14-0. As we were leaving, we saw fire works in the distance and drove around until we found them. They were significant and professional...like from 4th of July of something. Who knows what the ocassion was. They were coming from a fenced in area with a man-made grassy mound all around it that I would guess was a landfill except it doesn't stink and doesn't have plastic bags blown up against the fence. Maybe it's water treatment or something. I'll have to find out. I pulled out the camera and filmed a bit of video right at the finale:

Church of Christ minister Joe Beam is getting national media attention for his frank discussion of sexuality. See the article by Brian Alexander on MSNBC.com titled "One preacher's message: Have hotter sex".

From a post of the same title by Bill Maher on The Huffington Post:

Afghanistan is a mess. The Taliban is back and has mounted serious offenses in recent weeks. NATO says they need more troops. And why is the Taliban back? Well, one of the reasons people are pointing to is our government's plan to eradicate opium. We've hired a corporation to go through the fields of the poorest farmers in Afghanistan and destroy their opium crop. And it's really worked too - opium production is at its highest levels ever. But the rural farmers who grow the opium have turned on the Americans and Brits for destroying their crop, and this is where the Taliban is re-gaining control. Coincidence? Who's to say? But I noticed in the recent drug survey - the same one that said baby boomers were getting high while their children say "no" - about 6 percent of people said they had used marijuana in the past month. About 4 percent of people surveyed said they had used methamphetamine. 2.6 percent said they had abused prescription drugs. Just about 1 percent said they had used cocaine. Heroin? Only 0.1 percent used heroin. So why worry so much about the opium crop in Afghanistan when Americans don't really have a heroin problem? We're sacrificing the war on terror in the vain hope of one day helping Courtney Love kick her smack habit?