Second Coming

I've been reading Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's a great book in which he outlines how four different meals (categorized as "industrial," "industrial organic," organic, and hunter-gatherer) go from ground to plate. He's a great writer and teaches journalism at UC Berkely, which means he includes a tremendous amount of background for every little detail.

Anyway, Joel Salatin, a "beyond organic" farmer in VA, hosts him in one of the many adventures to really experience the local food movement. Salatin is a third generation farmer, whose Christian worldview informs every detail of his farming. Seeing his farm through Pollan's words reminded me of something I'd thought before I started my program here at Vanderbilt- my very reason for coming to study economic development in the first place.

Spending my early life as a Christian in a somewhat fluffy evangelicalism instilled the notion in me that one day Christ would return, put the bad guys in their place, then whisk the repentant righteous away to an other-worldly heaven. Not so. This isn't the promise of the Bible at all.

Heaven is the location of God's throne, and the promise of Revelation is not that we will we translated from this realm to some other, but that we will be transformed. Jesus isn't coming to take us away. He's coming back to stay and make his blessings known as far as the curse is found, i.e. where the land bears thorns and briars. Where we are is where we will be.

A few years ago I re-read the parable of the Master who leaves his servants in charge of his estate while he is away- to one he gives ten, to another five, and to the last he gives one. I had always interpreted "talents" (which is actually a large weight of precious metal) to mean skills, abilities, and opportunities. The parable was purely spiritual and relational. My hermeneutic was only a little different, but the ramifications were universal.

If this earth is Jesus estate, to which He is indeed returning, the parable must mean that Christ has expectations of a physical, tangible, visible, and meaningful increase on what he has given us to steward.

I'm still working out what this means to us in terms of how we deal with the physical world. How do I make an increase Christ will appreciate on my stuff- or to my stuff- or with my stuff?
Socially, it also makes me question whether Christ will judge us by the terrible soil erosion we have caused to his beautiful estate.

Crumbling

I have ranted thousands of times about the subtle numbing effect of technology. For all of you who've suffered my harangueing, now is your time to gloat...

Today I joined Facebook.

A few days ago my brother gave me a call with a bit of shocking news. Two German friends of mine, with whom I've had little to no contact in the last five years, messaged him on facebook to ask if he was my brother (There were until today, only two other Kramedjians on Facebook.) and if he could get into contact with me for them.

So, he gave me an e-mail address and I got back into contact with one of these friends. Here's the catch- she said that I'd have to join facebook if I wanted to get in touch with Jo. Stinkin' dirty.

I crumbled. Please no one tell Wendell Berry.

powerless

I haven't hid in a closet since I was a little kid. Closets seemed so much bigger back then. Big enough for two even, and a dog. That's not the case any more.

Della, Georgia and I had to squeeze into our hall closet last night during a tornado warning. While we were crouched/squished in there the power went out and has been out since. I'm writing this from school.

All in all, though, I enjoyed having the power out. It gave us a chance to notice the green lightning after the storm passed by. I felt so stress free. No tv. No internet. No outside world. Just me my wife and my dog.

Strangely, that made me feel more connected to the outside world. The physical world felt more real once I was disconnected to the electronic one. Maybe Marshall McLuhan would say that this was the passing of the numbness brought on by the illusion of the world in media.

Oh the games we play

Hola Peoples,

Della and I just had some friends over for dinner and a movie, which turned into dinner and a game. We made Pesto pizza, with homemade pesto, feta spinach chicken sausage, chunks of feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and artechoke hearts. Nice eats. Our friends brought over a bottle of wine, too. Yes....

After dinner, we played some Phase 10. It's a decent game. You should try it. 

That's all for tonight,

Krammy

A little bit softer now...

Here's a what a typical day in our lives looks like:

7:30AM Della wakes up and starts getting ready for her day. She might watch the news, or if she's really feeling good get rid of some of the stuff on her to do list whilst Krammy slumbers.

9... or 10... Krammy crawls from his badger hole and prepares for consciousness, just before Della heads to her job at the Merrell store down the street.

11:00AM Krammy achieves consciousness, or something like it. Krammy heads to campus.

Noon Della and Krammy eat lunch separately. :(

4:00PM Krammy heads home just before Della to play with the dog, etc.

6:00PM After our brief chill session, we eat dinner, watch a movie, and/or play a game.

11:00PM Della sleeps. These are Krammy's most productive hours of the day. He gets a solid two hours of work in before going to bed.

1:00AM Krammy slumbers.

That's a sort of typical day.

-Krammy and Della

I'm an ideas man, Michael!

So, after writing a few posts, I'm noticing a pattern. The subtitle to our blog is "kramily life behind the bluebird cafe," but I don't write too much about our life here. I don't have any desire to change that either. Were this blog devoted to keeping up communication my streak of inquiries would be intolerable. Much to the contrary, I've decided to roll with John Stewart's advice and write about what pleases me... with a little daily life thrown in. 

Many of my thoughts begin with, "Wouldn't it be great if...?" Lacking any direction of utter and total conviction that one might call a "career path," these notions are often followed by "I could do that." Oh, if only that were so. Let me give an example.

Nashville is pleasantly separated into lots of little neighborhoods much like San Francisco, but not so distinctly. There is 12th South, Hillsboro Village, Five Points, Nipper's Corner, Sylvan Park, etc. etc.  North Nashville, which is more like a huge chunk of the city is one of these "neighborhoods." Ghetto is probably more like it. Edgehill, Lafayette, and parts of East Nashville fall in the same category. 

Several days ago Della and I got curious about house prices in Nashville. A real estate agent friend of ours told us we could probably still find a really great deal. So it was. Dozens of houses between $60k and $100k popped up in the first search. After filing through the obvious dumps, we noticed a fair number of decent looking houses gathered together in clumps. North Nashville. 

You travel through just about every part of a town when you work in delivery, especially delivery of medical equipment. You get to know places. I've been to North Nashville more times than I cared to. It's the area immediately north and west of Downtown, extending almost all the way to 440 north of West end, stopping shy of the delightful Sylvan Park. It's a memorial to white flight, a testament to urban decay, and a rundown part of town. Not the safest place to live or work. 

This place's houses are so cheap because no one wants to live there. There are no grocery stores, no banks, no shopping centers, poor schools, hard drugs, and rough gangs. So much of this has to do with the people's poverty, and the financial institutions with the know-how of increasing wealth are going to be the last ones to head into that part of town.

"Wouldn't it be great if someone started a bank and financial service center at ridiculously low cost to patrons just to lift areas like this out of poverty?" It would have to be in the midst of it. It would have to offer financial planning to an entirely new demographic. It would have to be run terribly well... I could do that!

That's what I spend most of my time doing around here, folks. I get visions of how to help, but don't have the patience or know-how to follow through. Are any of you financial planners or bankers with a heart for the urban poor? 

I'll come up with some more ideas soon. 

Grace and Peace,

Krammy

That Uncreative?

I don't know how many people actually read this thing. I don't track hits on this page or any other page for that matter. Not that I feign any grand philosophical argument against such things, but, for those of you (if you, the reader, do indeed exist and I am not writing to no one) who don't know me so well, my participation in the electronica nation has been lower than a snake's belly in a rut. Which is to say that the blogosphere is quite foreign to me. So, dear imagined reader, let me ask you a few questions.
Does one ask non-rhetorical questions in a post?
Do people post to be read or to foster community? Why do we post?
Should I aim for getting people to comment on this thing? And if so, what usually makes people comment?
Just wondering. I've never asked and who better to tell me than you?