Resilient Beast

Imagine my surprise this morning when I started out the door for a customary half-hour walk before work when Buddy my dog got up and trotted over to the door ready to go. Yesterday I thought Buddy would never go with me again.

On Sunday, as I read the newspaper on the back porch before work, I heard a commotion in the next yard. A 150-pound Great Dane from across the street made an unprovoked attack on 66-pound Buddy, a blue heeler-keeshond mix. A mauling followed as the massive dog ignored my yelling. Finally the owner came to pull him off.

But not before Buddy had been torn asunder from shoulder to hind legs while pinned on the ground as I stood by helplessly. We took Buddy to an emergency vet. Once he was shaved, his wounds proved even more extensive than we thought, and he required multiple sutures in two different places on his body.

My wife stayed home from work yesterday to keep an eye on Buddy’s stitches and his oozing wounds. Considering Buddy is 13 years old and he could barely move yesterday I didn’t figure he would recover, at least not so much so quickly. Several people said prayers on Buddy’s behalf yesterday and he seemed to turn the corner last night.

We hit the doggy jackpot with Buddy. He is good natured, sensitive and docile (unless he sees a UPS truck). I hope he’ll be my walking partner for a good time longer.

Misplaced Medical Measure

Officials in San Francisco announced Wednesday that activists had collected enough signatures to put a measure on the city ballot in November that will ask city voters if they want to ban circumcision.

Petition ringleader Lloyd Schofield declared that, “nobody has a right to perform unnecessary surgery on another human being.” Schofield is part of a group called the Prohibition of Genital Cutting of Male Minors responsible for this first-in-the-nation type of legislation. If passed, the ordinance would make it illegal to “circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the whole or any part of the foreskin, testicles or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years.”

Should San Franciscans approve the ordinance, doctors who perform circumcision could be fined $1,000 or spend a year in jail.

Of course in Judeo-Christian culture circumcision has a history dating back several millennia. No religious exemptions would be allowed under the proposal. Circumcision has been routine in most of this country’s history. Evidence shows that circumcised males have lower rates of infections and diseases. The numbers of procedures have declined in recent years as health insurance companies stopped covering the supposedly unnecessary medical action.

The argument that parents don’t have the right to make medically decisions for their children is bogus. When my oldest son had hernia surgery at 5 weeks old I didn’t ask him beforehand if he wanted to undergo the operation. When my youngest son at 19 months of age had a temperature of 108 degrees and began having a seizure, I didn’t inquire whether he wanted to be rushed to an emergency room before we jumped in the car.

Most parents do what they think is best for their kids, including circumcision. Schofield is worried about the temporary physical pain that infants endure during the cutting. Perhaps he should be thinking about pain prior to eight days after birth. Preborn babies suffer damage when they are aborted. That dismemberment is permanent.

Weight-Loss Incentive

I’ve started to keep track of everything I eat. My wife is graciously entering the information into our computer every day as part of a wellness-incentive program at work. She is following the plan as well, and has lost 10 pounds in a month.

While label reading and calorie counting may seem burdensome, I needed to do something to lower my weight from the 200 pounds where I’ve hovering for quite some time.

Logging every pat of butter and each dollop of ketchup may seem legalistic, but it really helps keep me accountable, especially when my wife is reviewing everything I put into my mouth. Although I walk every day and pretty much eat healthfully, charting every morsel does help make a conscious effort to keep off the pounds.

For it’s easy to deceive myself if I’m not keeping track: an oatmeal raisin cookie here, a mint chocolate chip frozen custard there. No wonder I’ve leveled off. I hope being a culinary scribe will have life-changing results.

Theophanies

Recently at small group while studying Untamed by Alan and Debra Hirsch we talked about a form of religious experience called “theophanies,” which they describe as a manifestation of God. The authors gave an example of watching a sunset and suddenly the wonder of it all dawns on a person as time seems to stand still and eternity fills the moment.

In polling members of the group about theophanies, several resonated with a story of God’s creation: a magnificent sunrise or majestic mountains. Others described sensing God’s overwhelming presence while on a missions trip in a foreign land and realizing that followers of Christ have much in common wherever they live. Some talked about how God answered prayers in supernatural ways just when they needed it most.

I talked about the awe-inspiring moments of the births of my three sons. Tears of joy streamed down my face as my wife and I suddenly faced the arrival of an amazing new person into this world.

Of course part of experiencing God is to realize that He is everywhere and that it is our responsibility to demonstrate His goodness to others, whether that be the pregnant teenager, the homeless person, the alcoholic, our co-workers or our relatives.

Death of an Unknown Cousin

I found out from my Uncle Harold last week that my 60-year-old first cousin, Diane Kennedy Bulger, died April 1 after a 17-day stay in a hospital intensive care unit. She had entered the hospital for minor surgery, but complications ensued.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know Diane; we never even met. I knew her parents, my Uncle Frank — a retired law professor — and Aunt Patricia, when they were alive. We saw each other several times at family reunions of my dad and his four brothers. But Frank and Patricia’s four children never attended, and I don’t know any of them.

From the obituary it sounds as though we would have enjoyed each other. She worked as a broadcast reporter in Atlanta, Tulsa, Washington, D.C., and Lansing, Mich. She interviewed everyone from Gerald Ford to John Wayne.

“She was very knowledgeable about a wide range of issues and popular culture,” her husband of 34 years, Bill Bulger, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She put people at ease; that was her best talent as a reporter.”

Just today I realized that only two years ago I spent a day reporting an event in Roswell, Ga., the very city in which she lived. I wish I had known.

No Thanks to Baseball

The 162-game baseball season is a week old already. Only 156 more games left on the schedule. I, for one, won’t be watching as many contests on TV this season. And not just because the St. Louis Cardinals won’t be as good as last year, when they were expected to win their division but underwhelmed their followers.

Time is the key factor. Our lives only have so many hours to pursue leisure activities, especially if we work full time, are engaged in church activities and are in school, all of which I do. So it’s hard for me to justify sitting in front of a screen for three hours a night to watch men trying to pitch, hit and catch a ball.

The other reason is that I wrote a paper for seminary on sports addiction last month. I’ve researched how sports can not only consume a fan’s time but also impact his personality. A team’s loss truly can depress a person who has an undue reliance on baseball (or football, basketball, hockey, etc.) as a component of his life.

Another factor is whether I really want to express such devotion to athletes who — for all intents and purposes — are mercenaries. While “love of the game” isn’t going to pay a player’s bills, I’m really turned off by Albert Pujols rejecting a reported seven-year, $20 million contract offer as insufficient. I think I’ll be doing more reading and less baseball watching this summer.

Ignorant Americans?

I found the results of last week’s Newsweek citizenship quiz troubling. The magazine administered the 25-question test to 1,000 Americans and 38 percent failed to get even six responses correct.

I’m a history buff, so I managed to figure out all but one of the answers (I didn’t remember that the United States had 27 constitutional amendments.) But even people such as my wife, who has little interest in the workings of the government, answered nearly every question correctly.

The vague wording of some of the questions left a lot to be desired. For example, “What happened at the Constitutional Convention,” “During the Cold War, what was the main concern of the United States” and “What is the economic system in the United States” should have been more specific.

But the lack of knowledge on some of the basic questions is astounding. Just one in five remembers who was president during World War I. Only 14 percent know how many members are in the U.S. House of Representatives. A mere 12 percent could identify one of the writers of the Federalist Papers.

If you want to test your knowledge, see:
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/20/take-the-quiz-what-we-don-t-know.html