Things of Beauty, and a Joy Forever

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Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

Rose-Colored Glasses and Job Training

About the time God was creating dirt, I enrolled in a church college, and commuted to school, where the President--a man of no uncertain opinions--often spoke in daily chapel, molding our young minds as the Creator himself had once molded Adam from clay. There was too much organic matter in the dirt that I was, so I failed creative pottery. The chapel was new during those years, and we heard often about the rose window at the east end, behind us, up in the balcony where dutiful student monitors noted which assigned seats were empty, and reported us to somebody. Nobody reported which assigned seats were occupied. It was the sinners who were important. The College alumni magazine recently reported that the rose window has been refurbished; hauled off to California, and back again, to reclaim its glory. The article did not note that I had gone to California, too, years earlier, without achieving glory. Nowhere in the article does it s...

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