Strolling Through Old Jerusalem

Tourism is booming in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. Yet the threat of annihilation from Iran is real. A flare-up of hostilities would quickly halt the flow of visitors.

Israel is a small country where two-thirds of the terrain is desert. It’s a nation where girls and boys must join the military immediately after high school. A land where soldiers armed with machine guns routinely congregate at the confluence of Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods.

As I entered the Jewish Quarter in Old Jerusalem and descended to the temple area, an orthodox rabbi approached me as though I was a long-lost comrade. He spotted my Hebrew-inscribed St. Louis Cardinals T-shirt, which I had bought nearby to cope with the 90-degree heat on an unseasonably hot March day.
“I love Missouri!” my new friend in black assured me. “Let me pray for you.”

He proceeded to ask my name, my wife’s name, the name of my children and the name of my parents, muttering a short heaven-sent prayer for each in between.
What a sweet guy, I thought. Then came the pitch.

“We’re building the temple here,” he told me. “I need a donation of $160.” I thought this kind of fund raising was confined to televangelists. I gave him a few bucks, which left the impression that I was a chintzy American tourist. Maybe he did better with somebody from Oklahoma or Alabama.

I had an interesting buying experience in the Muslim Quarter. Hospitable shopkeepers greet you as though they have all the time in the world. I sat down for a cup of tea before haggling over the price of a pair of fur-lined goat-skinned gloves. Negotiating is an expected part of the process. The prospective buyer starts bidding seriously low while the store owner begins artificially high. In this case, that meant $5 and $67. We met at $18, without me feeling as though I had been ripped off and he realized at least some profit.

In a stall across the walkway I found an opal piece of jewelry for my wife for $30, down from the $140 starting price. When I walked away without paying another $15 for a chain, the seller called me “cheap.” That didn’t encourage me to reconsider.

The peddling doesn’t cease at “holy” sites. Outside the Garden of Gethsemane in the Muslim Quarter, hawkers incessantly shill postcards, palm fronds, hats, bookmarks, and even donkey and camel rides.

Technology Vacation

I took a technology vacation on my trip to Israel last week. No computer, no cell phone.

The schedule looked packed, and I didn’t want to miss anything either because I was too busy catching up with daily contacts back in the States.

Actually, I traded in my laptop for a larger desktop computer last year. At this stage in my life (and my eyesight), visibility is more important than portability. I don’t take that many trips anymore, and whatever writing or correspondence I need to do usually can wait.

I’ve never felt the need to have an iPod in my pocket. I’m not an executive who needs to constantly be in touch with what’s going on. I think a lot overdo it. I see co-workers at weekly chapel services seemingly unable to not answer an e-mail when they’re supposed to be singing a worship song or praying.

So, in Israel, I took a break from all the work deadlines, checking the news and staying in touch with friends. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I didn’t want to miss it because I was too busy with the routine of keeping everyone else informed of my status in life.

Some other journalists on the trip posted reports and photos on Facebook and Twitter every day. I decided to wait until I returned. I don’t imagine anyone will be too disappointed that I didn’t give an hour-by-hour report at the time.

Pornography’s Poison

Feminism has enabled American females to accomplish a great deal in my lifetime. Women now earn higher salaries than before. Husbands view their wives more as partners rather than servants. And the law no longer allows a man to batter a woman he deems his property.

But women’s liberation also has come at a cost, the highest price being paid in matters of sexuality. Left-wingers argue that even pornography has allowed women to be emancipated because they can earn a living by having men ogle their bodies. What a lie!

Recently in doing some research for an article, I read Pamela Paul’s Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families. The book is four years old and the situation has grown much worse, but it points out how devalued and objectified women are now because of the sex industry.

The media exploits women everywhere: in fashion magazines, television programs, billboards, social networking sites, motion pictures, music videos. But the chief factor in accelerating the lusts of males has been the pornography industry.

Subsequently, how men and women relate — or fail to relate — has fundamentally changed. Girls and women are involved in a never-ending effort to try to please males, who by repeated exposure to porn have unrealistic expectations of what females should be and do. So women dress provocatively, buy breast implants, consent to participate in “sex tapes” and have abortions, all to no avail. Porn is the reason behind unbridled lust and sex trafficking exploding around the world.

Paul’s book points out how pornography has convinced males that anal sex and more bizarre behavior should be expected from a female, even on a first date. Pornified shows how many males can no longer function in a normal sexual state because they’ve been so warped by images of group sex and other sinful activities. And I’ve aware of women who have been treated so rough by porn addicts that they can no longer bear children.

“Many men don’t even realize that what they’re asking for is degrading or unpleasant to women,” Paul writes. “But the costs to our relationships, our families and our culture are great, and will continue to mount.”

The book left me sad at how debased we have become, and how harmful and corrosive pornography is. I apologize to women for buying into this dysfunctional view of sexuality and my role in exploiting you.

Forgiving Mark McGwire

With Major League Baseball season just around the corner, it remains to be seen whether Mark McGwire will survive media scrutiny as the new hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals.

The team named their retired first baseman slugging champion as new coach last October, promising he would be available to the media. For most of the past decade, McGwire has dodged accusations that he used steroids, even refusing to answer questions before Congress in 2005.

But in January, in a tearful interview with Bob Costas on the MLB Network, McGwire admitted what nearly everyone has suspected: he used steroids throughout most of the 1990s, including the 1998 season when he broke the single-season home run record of Roger Maris.

In a round of sorrowful phone calls, McGwire expressed sorrow to Maris’s widow, his parents, baseball commissioner Bud Selig and Tony LaRussa, Cardinals manager then and now. All offered forgiveness.

But unlike movie stars and politicians who confess to wrongdoing and then are quickly absolved by the general public, McGwire’s apology only stoked the flames of controversy. Vitriolic responses from those who played in the era before show that the controversy won’t die soon.

Jack Clark, a Cardinals first baseman in the 1980s and now a Fox baseball analyst in St. Louis, said McGwire and other steroid users — those who haven’t come forward — are “liars” and “creeps” who should be banned from baseball. Former Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog concurred with Clark, saying “they’re all lying” about steroid use. Ferguson Jenkins, a Chicago Cubs pitcher in the 1960s and 1970s now in the Hall of Fame, said McGwire needs to apologize to all the pitchers he tagged for home runs.

Cynics complained that McGwire is only taking the step now because he wants to earn an income off the game which he betrayed.

Certainly McGwire’s confession should have happened years ago. Whatever the offense, from sexual abuse to murder, it’s better for the perpetrator to fess up sooner rather than later. That conveys a genuineness to the action that somehow is missing when a person is more or less forced to own up to the bad behavior.

Yet I know how difficult it is to come to grips with long-covert sins, especially if in denial for years. It’s obvious watching the Costas interview that McGwire’s penance was real — and difficult. Carrying around the open secret has been a burden to him. He has taken the necessary first steps to begin healing. Nobody can be in right relationship with anyone else — co-workers, friends, spouse or pastor — until bringing an end to covering up the shameful deeds of the past.

McGwire will be dogged by detractors all season. I hope he can be even more honest and forthright in his responses, and that his presence on the team doesn’t become a distraction. With a thick enough skin, he’ll be able to move on, regardless of those who judge him.

Moving the Office

After a decade in the same office, my department has moved to a different floor, where everyone on staff has less space.

For weeks, I’ve been the only one excited about the transition. Finally, after 17 years at various jobs in a windowless room, I am able to gaze outside. It won’t be quite like the last time I had a window — when I looked out at fountains and a reflective skyscraper in Sacramento — but it will be a morale booster nonetheless. I enjoyed watching the blowing snow on Monday as I moved into my new digs.

Still, the downsizing has been laborious. In recent weeks I’ve tossed out many files and dragged home dozens of books. Providentially, for my recent 10th anniversary service award — before I knew of the office move — I picked out an oak double-wide bookcase for the home. It’s full now with all the materials I’ve brought home. My wife is thrilled with all the extra tomes.

The whole experience has shown me that I’ve collected way too many newspaper and magazine clippings, memos, letters and even books over the years. While my streamlined office is a bit cozier, I’ve only surrounded myself with the “most important” stuff. That’s probably a good lesson for any Christian on the topic of consumption. I’ve traded in many books for future credit at the local used Christian bookstore, and given others away for the upcoming Friends of the Library sale.

Letting the Paper Go

I’ve just made a radical decision. For the first time since childhood, I’m no longer going to read the local daily newspaper in my home. Of course it’s a decision that 20 million other Americans have made in the past two decades, which is why the newspaper industry is in jeopardy.

In some ways I feel like a traitor, having worked at daily newspapers for 11 years myself. But it makes sense, not just because I’ll be saving $16.31 a month.

The catalyst for my decision was customer service and delivery problems. Some days the paper isn’t there by the time I leave for work. Other days it blows away because it’s so thin, and the delivery guy didn’t bother to put a rubber band around it. Complaints haven't helped with the delivery.

What pushed me over the edge, however, was the content of the paper, or the lack of it. When I first moved to Springfield, the paper had interesting local stories and a vibrant editorial page with opinions expressed by local editors and an array of columnists. The editorial page has devolved into a feud between the rabid right and the loony left.

I’ve enjoyed sitting down to breakfast with the morning paper for years, but I can wait an hour until I get to the office. Everything on the printed page is available online — for free. I’ll be checking the obituaries and box scores, but not much else. Most everything in the paper I’ve read online somewhere the day before. I’ll continue to read USA Today and The Wall Street Journal at work. Those national papers haven’t appreciably cut back on their content.

I called to cancel the paper a couple of weeks ago. Only problem is the company keeps bringing it every day. Maybe I should have canceled long ago. I get better service.

Road Trip

My wife and l last month completed an 1,800-mile road trip to Texas to visit my brother and his wife in Corpus Christi. We drove down through eastern Oklahoma and central Texas, and returned via eastern Texas, northwestern Louisiana and Arkansas.

We stayed off the beaten paths going down, hitting places such as Hugo, Okla., and Paris, Palestine and Victoria, Texas. While the back roads are a great way to see the country, they aren’t conducive to eating well. Every little town had doughnut shops and fast-food joints, but no place to find a nutritious meal. On the return trip we hit larger cities, but you still could tell a lot about the economics of a place by its restaurants. Lufkin, Texas, had a good proportion of nice chain sit-down restaurants. Up the road in Nacogdoches, it’s nothing but burgers and chicken.

My wife drove the entire trip, including through Houston, Shreveport and Little Rock on the 16½-hour trip home in one day. Mile after mile in Louisiana we were struck by mansions only yards from shacks.

Another observation: Texas and Arkansas do a poor job of letting drivers know the speed limit and give little warning to highway junctions that are approaching. Most disturbing was the drivers we saw in every state texting, some of them while going 70 mph.

Despite all the driving, we did enjoy several days on the beach in Corpus Christi, hearing the crashing waves, watching the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and escaping the frigid winter weather.