Tragedy

John Bomberger, uncle of my friends Sheri & Karen Keller in Lancaster, was killed this morning in a hunting accident.

Jesus, this hurts.

When I get big I'm going to have an ideal life like Jeremy, and be smart and write really far out posts. But for now I'm just little old me.
I'm having a nice day. This morning after getting up way too early and setting up tables for lunch at the schoolhouse, I breazed over to Starbucks and got a Grande Peppermint Mocha. Lovely. I sat down in a big old chair and watched the people for a while, then slipped over to my cabin in the woods, lit a comfy fire, and sat with my back to it reading James Herriot, then studying enchanting things from Microsoft like DNS, namespaces, zone transfers, dhcp, and various other aspects windows active directory domains. I really do enjoy that stuff, as hard as that is to imagine. Had an awesome dinner with the Hershbergers. Lots of H's were there whom I hadn't seen for ages, years, some of them. We had a nice time gorging on the fat of the land, and aftewards waddling around on the vball court. That was OK, but I killed myself playing basketball, and then sprained my ankle to top it off. Lovely. Now I'm hear anticipating another satisfying meal in a few minutes with more of my gregarious cousins.

Ah yes, tomorrow is the big day. Black Friday, when I can join myself with millions of other deal desperate Americans in the most frenzied shopping day of the year. These two days, Thanksgiving and Black Friday, are a little too symbolic of America's two favorite activities, eating and buying things. But what can I say? Not much, I'm afraid.

from This article by J. Hess:
"As early as the latter 1800s, according to Rodney Clapp, national leaders recognized that production-oriented capitalism was too successful—ordinary citizens simply didn’t need all the products being produced. In order to sustain a strong economy, each person should become a ready spender, one who frequently bought unneeded things. Thus a shift from production- to consumer-oriented capitalism began. Following World War II, greatly expanded production capacity and a larger work force—since many women chose not to exit the work force after the war—combined to require more consumption than ever before. The rise of modern marketing and its catalyst, the television, which became readily available to the public about 1948, attempted to work North Americans into a permanent buying frenzy."

A permanent buying frenzy, huh? But how true. No, Americans haven't always been this way. But this is what drives the all-important economy.

Hadassah & Annaliese

FB makes Menno News

Faith Builders (my school) finally gets some attention from The Big Guys. Click Here for an article about the spring worldviews workshop (which was really good, and you need to get the cd's if you weren't there) and here for an editorial based on some of Val Yoder's remarks. The title of the first article "Conservative groups talk about
struggle against worldly allures" is somewhat misleading. The workshop was not about "the struggle against worldly allures" althought that was a small part of the discussion. Why are we always seen as weirdo conservatives who are just stuck on the anti-worldly thing, and have little else worthy of mention?

Here is an interesting and informative article on how software installations are supposed to work on Linux. If you are sick of windows and would like to dabble with something new and fun, I highly recommend Mandriva Linux as a nice, easy to install and use operating system.

I do hope I'm not getting too grown up and boring. Today I was getting seriously worried about that, wondering why in the world I'm not getting more fired up about hunting, because 5 years ago I would be going crazy getting my guns all cleaned up, getting all my gear ready for the Big Day when muzzleloader season opens. This year I'm not even sure when it is. This really worries me. Not only am I getting overly grown up, I'm getting wimpy! Not Good! I am going to have to at least shoot one deer this year to restore my crippled sense of manliness.

But tonight I was a little boy again. My folks took me out for a late birthday dinner, and afterwards we went driving around Waynesboro aimlessly with no real purpose, just looking for trouble like bored teenagers. We were aimlessly bumbling around in the Walmart parking lot when I saw it. Valley Pets! "LET'S GO TO THE PET STORE!" I yelled. Oh, it was great! They were meauring their biggest python when we walked in--nearly 5 ft! Pretty cool! So many wicked awesome little creatures in a pet store, chameleons, WEIRD lizards, snakes, Rats (why anyone would want a stupid rat, I don't know), $.99 white mice, $999 shaggy white dog, really wild fish, and a huge tropical bird named Bishop. Lots of fun in the pet store! Out on the road again, until we spotted our favorite department store--Big Lots! Stuff is really cheap, really tacky, but a great place to wonder around just for fun. They've got some nifty toys. Eric and I were drooling over the RC cars, and he walked out with a Super Cheapo Radio Controlled truck that flips over when you run into things. We brought it home and had the BEST time running it into every wall we could find. GREAT FUN!

I'm supposed to have children's class Sunday night. Any ideas?