There and back
Mar. 13th, 2004 01:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayI'm still a bit jetlagged and worn down from the past couple of days... I had a nice unplanned visit Wednesday to Sunset and Port, then went back to work, then got 2 hours of sleep before getting up at 4am to go to the airport for an overnight in Washington, DC.
Wednesday, it was 83F here. Leaving early Thursday morning, by the time I arrived at noon in Minneapolis, it was 5F there (with 20-knot winds!), a 78-degree shift. That's worse than going to the Arctic in July! Still... I had three cuddly hours there with Nancy... and she decided to alter my hair to try to cover some of the gray in the temples. It now matches my beard, which was left untouched. Well, left uncolored. ;-).
Going on to Washington, the hotel had my coffeemaker and snack waiting in my room again. :-). Sometimes it feels like a shame that I don't have company on these trips... I rarely have enough time to appreciate the settings.
However, I went over togeekchick's place and helped her bring down various toys and stuffed animals from upstairs for packing. Then got so-so takeout Chinese (heavily breaded prawns soggily in a brown sauce) which we ate amidst the boxes and materials. I left after C. arrived home, then chatted online with dawnd about overseas insurance strategies.
I was supposedly in Washington to give a 5-minute briefing on middleware development for air traffic and flight surveillance. In reality, I was there to show my NASA center's (Ames) figurative flag, to prevent the folks at a different center (Glenn, in Ohio) from gently trashing our work and jockeying for position, and to assess the inter-Agency politics and report back. Those required being in the room... lots of nonverbal communication going on, plus offline hall consultations. Hence my employer's willingness to spend $800 to send me there, rather than using WebEx. My actual briefing went seven minutes and was OK, I was complimented afterward... ad-hoc, I wove in material from the other organization's speakers, earlier in the day. Then I headed to the airport again...
I stood by for an earlier flight, so I could have another 3-hour layover in Minneapolis (dinner, and getting clothes for James at the Land's End outlet on Lyndale)... fine... but this time I was placed in the next-to-last row in a middle seat, behind an elderly disheveled woman with a horrible cough (she was wearing a surgical mask). Sigh.
That was still better than the flight to San Francisco. Seated in first class, I was relaxing. Then a bright, chirpy, tall young guy, about 23-24, sat down in the aisle seat next to mine. No computer... his only reading material was an annotated New King James version study bible. He was a graduate student at a small bible college in Wisconsin, going on spring break with his professor to do recruiting in Bay Area private Christian schools. His advisor had swapped seats with him. I noticed thatdawnd's copy of "Kushiel's Dart" raised his eyebrows a bit, reading over my shoulder (smile). He read a bit of scripture... then after takeoff, started peppering me with questions... leading to discussions about inerrancy of scripture, whether Jews, Muslims, et al were condemned in God's sight, whether there was a physical hell, creationism ("intelligent direction") vs. scientific evidence and rationality, and family structures. The nature of sin... Leviticus... gay marriages (he was duly horrified)... shrimp and cotton-poly blends... whether the Song of Solomon is allegory for God's love of his people, or a literal love song (to a poly wife or concubine ;).
I was happy to discuss my own faith, and the basis for my own belief structure, not holding back or shrinking from debate. Years spent as a student or teaching bible study classes was invaluable -- I was able to give as good as I got, sometimes finishing his quoted passages before he'd gotten started -- and then adding my own interpretation. He was unable to paint me into a corner. Nor was I able to open his perspective, much, although he was clearly disturbed that I'd started out in an inerrantist, fundie church environment and gradually shifted away with more study over 20 years. Or was given pause by the thought that he might see new insights in the same text, if he read it again in a few years.
I could have simply told him up front that I wasn't interested in discussion... but I'm not going to back down or yield the initiative to fervent black-and-white-seeing fundamentalists. If nothing else, for that soon-to-be-pastor I'm putting a human face, one with credentials, on liberal Christian positions. Which may give him pause in demonizing those with different faith and belief structures, in the future.
We parted with smiles and a handshake. I was slightly hoarse.
Wednesday, it was 83F here. Leaving early Thursday morning, by the time I arrived at noon in Minneapolis, it was 5F there (with 20-knot winds!), a 78-degree shift. That's worse than going to the Arctic in July! Still... I had three cuddly hours there with Nancy... and she decided to alter my hair to try to cover some of the gray in the temples. It now matches my beard, which was left untouched. Well, left uncolored. ;-).
Going on to Washington, the hotel had my coffeemaker and snack waiting in my room again. :-). Sometimes it feels like a shame that I don't have company on these trips... I rarely have enough time to appreciate the settings.
However, I went over to
geekchick's place and helped her bring down various toys and stuffed animals from upstairs for packing. Then got so-so takeout Chinese (heavily breaded prawns soggily in a brown sauce) which we ate amidst the boxes and materials. I left after C. arrived home, then chatted online with dawnd about overseas insurance strategies.I was supposedly in Washington to give a 5-minute briefing on middleware development for air traffic and flight surveillance. In reality, I was there to show my NASA center's (Ames) figurative flag, to prevent the folks at a different center (Glenn, in Ohio) from gently trashing our work and jockeying for position, and to assess the inter-Agency politics and report back. Those required being in the room... lots of nonverbal communication going on, plus offline hall consultations. Hence my employer's willingness to spend $800 to send me there, rather than using WebEx. My actual briefing went seven minutes and was OK, I was complimented afterward... ad-hoc, I wove in material from the other organization's speakers, earlier in the day. Then I headed to the airport again...
I stood by for an earlier flight, so I could have another 3-hour layover in Minneapolis (dinner, and getting clothes for James at the Land's End outlet on Lyndale)... fine... but this time I was placed in the next-to-last row in a middle seat, behind an elderly disheveled woman with a horrible cough (she was wearing a surgical mask). Sigh.
That was still better than the flight to San Francisco. Seated in first class, I was relaxing. Then a bright, chirpy, tall young guy, about 23-24, sat down in the aisle seat next to mine. No computer... his only reading material was an annotated New King James version study bible. He was a graduate student at a small bible college in Wisconsin, going on spring break with his professor to do recruiting in Bay Area private Christian schools. His advisor had swapped seats with him. I noticed that
dawnd's copy of "Kushiel's Dart" raised his eyebrows a bit, reading over my shoulder (smile). He read a bit of scripture... then after takeoff, started peppering me with questions... leading to discussions about inerrancy of scripture, whether Jews, Muslims, et al were condemned in God's sight, whether there was a physical hell, creationism ("intelligent direction") vs. scientific evidence and rationality, and family structures. The nature of sin... Leviticus... gay marriages (he was duly horrified)... shrimp and cotton-poly blends... whether the Song of Solomon is allegory for God's love of his people, or a literal love song (to a poly wife or concubine ;). I was happy to discuss my own faith, and the basis for my own belief structure, not holding back or shrinking from debate. Years spent as a student or teaching bible study classes was invaluable -- I was able to give as good as I got, sometimes finishing his quoted passages before he'd gotten started -- and then adding my own interpretation. He was unable to paint me into a corner. Nor was I able to open his perspective, much, although he was clearly disturbed that I'd started out in an inerrantist, fundie church environment and gradually shifted away with more study over 20 years. Or was given pause by the thought that he might see new insights in the same text, if he read it again in a few years.
I could have simply told him up front that I wasn't interested in discussion... but I'm not going to back down or yield the initiative to fervent black-and-white-seeing fundamentalists. If nothing else, for that soon-to-be-pastor I'm putting a human face, one with credentials, on liberal Christian positions. Which may give him pause in demonizing those with different faith and belief structures, in the future.
We parted with smiles and a handshake. I was slightly hoarse.
