And I have chopped some wood this week…

Still haven’t shaved!  No Shave November has become something bigger!  Tomorrow (Dec. 17th) will be 49 days since I’ve shaved.  (Okay, I’ve trimmed my neck and cheeks a little bit…)  After making it through the valley of evil scratchiness, it’s difficult to break down and shave now.  It’s kind of like growing your hair out…wait…I mean….whatever.

Can’t decide if I’ll keep the ’stache the whole week so as to not freak out students or to shave it off before school on Friday.  (Holly will not be pleased either way….)

Today, a student asked:

“Mr. Shacklett, when are your ever going to shave?”

Me:  ”I don’t know.  Why?  Is it buggin’ you?”

T: “No, I was just askin’.  You just kind of look like a young Santa Claus or something.  But you’ve got more white hairs coming in on your face so….”

Me:  ”T, you know you’re the reason for more white hairs, right?”

T: “Yes!”

Last Shave: 10/29. It is now 11/29
4 Weeks=One Month

Responses:  Holly hasn’t complained about it too much lately.  She says that between the facial hair and the hair on top grown out, she “can’t see” me.  Ivy doesn’t seem to notice, but I think she might be a little freaked out if/when the face goes.  My sister (at t-giving) thinks I should let it keep going till I need to comb it.  Don’t think that’s going to happen.
Current condition:  Mostly, I just hate the feel of the mustache and want to lose it, but everybody seems to hate the “Abe Lincoln” except me.  Don’t know how much longer it’s going to last. Now the “super-itchy” is over, it seems a shame to just get rid of it.

Pomplamoose

I think Holly is sorry that she showed me this video.  I’ve never been a fan of this song until now….

Check out their youtube channel, but be prepared to stay awhile.    It almost makes me want to get busy recording…

http://burnsidewriters.com/2009/11/20/jesus-wants-your-vajayjay/

Just go read the article. It’s great and I had to share.

I first heard about this Bible verse being used as a “prayer for Obama” last night.  It makes me sick.

If you are embracing or promoting this mentality, you are embracing evil.   You are bowing at the altar of the same twisted idea of a god that would justify flying jet airplanes into skyscrapers or parking a moving truck full of explosives outside of a daycare.

You don’t have to agree with our President or his party.  You don’t have to be excited about a new health care plan.  You don’t have to like the fact that he is currently our President and you can throw all your efforts and prayers into voting him out of office when these 4 years are done.

But for Christ’s sake:  let go of ignorance and choose good over evil.

Please.  Before evil has opportunity to take over.

Last Shave: 10/29
3 Weeks

Responses: Holly still hates it. With my uncut hair and beard, an older lady told me last night that I reminded her of Russell Crowe.  My favorite response that I saw from Brian H was “Shaving is for girls!”
Current condition:  Finally moving out of  face-so-itchy-I’m-going-to-go-insane phase.  Just about didn’t make it through last weekend.    The ’stache’s days are numbered, though….

Ugh.   I hate that facebook has the ability to ruin my day.  It seems that at least once a week, somebody posts some warning or story or update or call-to-ban-something-else that ends up in my news feed that lacks critical thinking and common sense.  The interior argument gets stuck in my head and I have a hard time functioning the rest of the day because I’m so irritated with the absurdity.  Here’s my attempt at exorcising my “demons of frustration”.

Halloween: opportunity to celebrate and encourage community, fellowship, dressing up, make believe, playing silly games, free candy, joyful childhood?  Or too literally dancing with the devil?

Let’s see, if we’re truly worried about the taint of its roots in pagan rituals and celebrations, than you need to get rid of Christmas and Easter, too.  And Valentine’s Day.  And you better not be teaching your kids to say “God Bless You” when somebody sneezes.  Because that’s basically practicing voodoo by trying to ward off the demons and spirits that are out to get you and have an opening when you sneeze.

If you’re trying to get your message out to people who don’t share your belief system,  you sound like a kook and you’re not convincing anybody.  There. I said it.  You want some truth? There it is.   We’re talking about candy, costumes, games and visiting your neighbors’ for Pete’s sake!  Nobody cares or even knows about the pagan symbolism of traditional Halloween decorations until you start talking about it.  It was all about fun until you started trying to make it scary.

And while we’re on the topic of fear:  let me suggest that getting yourself (and trying to get others) into all a tizzy about all this could very well be an indication of weakness of faith.  If nothing else, it’s coming from a position of fear.   You’re giving Satan and his minions way more credit than he’s due and not exhibiting a belief that God is bigger and stronger than anything the bad guy’s  got.  Consider:

1 John 4:16-18

16And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

No fear in love.  Perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.   If you’re afraid of the devil and ghouls and ghosts and witches, you’re not trusting that God can protect you and your kids (who just want candy).  If you’re afraid God’s not going to be happy that dressed your kid up and went out and talked to your neighbors and got your kids free candy and/or welcomed little neighbor kids into your home and put a smile on their faces with treats, then not only are you just being loony, you’re fearing punishment.  ”The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Finally, consider as well: Romans 12:21 “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Which scenario sounds more like overcoming evil with good?:

-Dressing up, eating candy, playing make believe,  laughing at spooky decorations or costumes that startle us, ringing the doorbell of a neighbor and taking “trick or treat” as an opportunity to introduce yourself, extend a hand of friendship, build community, take opportunity that happens once a year when people expect and welcome the doorbell ringing and strangers smiling at their door…

or

-Researching all the pagan symbolism of traditional Halloween decorations and customs, telling friends, neighbors, (facebook), to watch out for the devil and explaining all the symbolism they didn’t know or care, turning off your porch light and prohibiting your kids from costumes and trick or treating because of demonic forces they’ll be” implicitly celebrating”…

Now that we have that settled, we need to focus our efforts on burning all the books about that Satan worshipping 4-eyed spawn of hell warlock, Harry Potter….

The idea of blogging hasn’t even crossed my mind lately.  I feel really busy, but when I think about it, I can’t really say that I am overly so.  That doesn’t mean I’m not more busy than I prefer.  (I am in no danger of ever being a workaholic…) Mostly,  I think that I’ve realized and accepted that I can’t multi-task to save my life.   Hence,  random bulleted list of stuff as I can think of them:

• Been reading lots of Young Adult Fiction so as to model for my students.  Recently finished World War Z which is written as a bunch of interviews of people from all over the world and their experience surviving the Zombie outbreak, epidemic, and ensuing War with the undead.  I thought it was pretty interesting even though I would never characterize myself as a zombie fan.  I also think it would fly over the head of most of my 8th graders.  Currently about half way through Catching Fire which is the sequel to the book, The Hunger Games.  HG was easily the best new YA novel I’ve read in a long time and Catching Fire seems to be just as engrossing.  My two beefs with it are the adolescent internal dialog of the main character as she tries to figure out who she’s really in love with (gag me with a twilight novel) and secondly that it’s a trilogy with the 3rd novel coming out in a year.  I don’t know why this annoys me so much.  Somehow I feel like all these YA novels have so many sequels just to try to make more money even though I know that HG was conceived as a trilogy.  Maybe I just hate having to wait.  Oh yea: that’s it.
• I’ve done next to nothing musically as of late, although I’ve found myself having some lyric ideas and thinking that I should sit down and work on something.
• Was asked to play piano on a singer/songwriter’s recording a few weeks ago.  Ending up spending way more time at the studio than expected, but helped edit the guys song into a much stronger piece.  Artist was open and appreciative and felt like  we made it stronger too.  I felt good feeling like I could still make valuable contribution.
• I’ve been particularly frustrated at school for a couple of reasons.  Although I may have the best behaved, friendliest group of students yet, I am frustrated at their refusal to use their own brains to think for any reason whatsoever.   I find myself at a loss.  I can do everything I possibly can to teach them, but if they don’t try or think, I can’t make them.  I’ve threatened their grades, I’ve talked to parents, I’ve tried to encourage, I’ve even pleaded a little.  Not interested.  They’re sweet kids, they just don’t care at all.  We just took our 2nd big test of the 9 weeks.  I’m more depressed than ever.   Secondly, I am crazy overwhelmed with all the team building/strategy/edu-speak/documentation that’s being asked of us by upper administration.   I don’t know how many times it’s been recognized that all the things they’re wanting us to talk about are things that we already do and our school’s test scores show it.  So, everything we’ve been doing has been simply codifying, naming, initializing, and documenting the success we’ve already had.  So, how/when do we have time to actually do the things we were already doing to keep being successful?  I appreciate my principals so much because I feel like they’ve been standing up for us a lot.  I just feel like the pressure is mounting everywhere.  It’s just odd that I have great students, great faculty, great principals, AWESOME schedule this year, and feel more overwhelmed and frustrated than I have ever felt before.
• Mostly, I just find myself wanting to hang out with Ivy.  She’s getting so big and I just hate missing time with her everyday when I’m at school.   At the same time, I’m so thankful for the job I find myself in, it sure would be nice if the paycheck went a little farther.
• I’ve been trying (rather unsuccessfully) to stay away from topics of politics and religion.  Both just seem to get me frustrated and I can’t do anything about them.
• My good friend, Kevin and his son came this weekend for the AR vs. Auburn game and spent the night with us Saturday night.  He’d had a long week and was pretty tuckered out, but it was a lot of fun to see them.
• With all the meetings/deadlines/documentation/etc. being asked, I was just thinking on Friday on my way home from school that I really need some kind of PDA to help me with calendar issues.  I have an old pda, but I really like using my google calendar for everything and I wanted something that I could sync with google directly. Lo and behold, Tyler (Kevin’s son), and I start talking about his itouch.  I’d been rolling the idea around in my mind for awhile.  I really liked the idea of some kind of hand-held web portal, but I’m too cheap to think about the iphone and the $30/mo data fee.  However, I knew that the itouch was basically the iphone without the phone (and fee) and that it still had wifi.  Most everywhere I am at has wifi (they keep promising us that our campus is supposed to be completely wifi soon.)  Then, Tyler started telling me about the google sync that he uses with his itouch….game over.   I still consider it spending a dark force point for buying anything apple, but I found somebody on Craigslist that gave me a really good deal.  I picked it up on Sunday afternoon and have had fun playing ever since.

“Christians, sadly, tend to believe more in the negative power of sin than they do in the redemptive power of Christ in the lives of His people.”

This quote perfectly reflects my frustration with the way I feel most Christians live their lives.   If what you are doing (or not doing) is motivated by fear, you’ve got it wrong.  period.

I found it in an article on Home Schooling at Burnside Writers Collective here…

I have many friends (some close and some not as close and some not as close as once were) who are going to be shocked and appalled that I would put up this link.

The 9/12 Marchers and the Far Right Subversives

Again, I don’t believe that I am anywhere near a position or vantage point where I feel like I could accurately comment on national policy most of the time.  I have heard others argue that  Frank Schaeffer has proven himself to be an untrustworthy narrator of his experience and commentator of current events.   However,  I am convinced that Frank Schaeffer has a much better vantage point from which to accurately perceive and understand and comment on what’s going on with the wackos from the far right that I am hearing about constantly.

And yes; I said wackos.   And I am getting more and more freaked out by them every day.

Please understand:  although I’ve never stated affiliation with any political party, I would have considered myself VERY conservative as recently as 10 years ago.  I voted for GWB…twice! (albeit with great reservations the 2nd time…)  The idea of big government does not excite me.  Ginormous national debt is very troubling to me.

But willful belief in disinformation, proclamation and belligerant support, whether in words or actions, of that disinformation scares me much more.

I don’t think, or at least I don’t know that I know any of these far-right nutjobs that would one day walk into a church on Sunday morning and shoot a man because he provided women with abortions.  But, I am bombarded, it seems like daily, with msgs from friends and acquaintances all around me who are on different altitudes of that same slippery slope.

Birthers in my inbox, various/numerous chain emails about Obama’s “secret muslim faith” or whatever, calls to ban this or that corporation because they support “the gay agenda”, buying up ammo as soon as Obama was elected because they were afraid he was going to take away their guns, warnings of the “death panels” in the health care plan, pulling children from public school because of the fear of indoctrination (when really it’s that they want the children at home so they can be indoctrinated properly),  saying “I just don’t trust the guy…” with no reasoning (other than subliminal racism), hearing statements like: “I’m just surprised he’s even made it this long.  I didn’t think he’d make it a year…”,   ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME???!!!!   (I am so thankful my school didn’t have class the day of the President’s school address and I didn’t have to deal with that BS…)

Just so you know, I am a Christian.  I am a very imperfect follower of Jesus.  But I also believe that all of the things that I just listed (and numerous other things) are NOT Christian and are NOT Godly and are NOT patriotic.  So, quit assuming that I agree with you.

It was one thing when fellow Christians assumed I agreed with them on whether or not it’s ok to read Harry Potter.  This is way scarier.