The Gift That Keeps on Giving
WordPress provides a prompt question every day and occasionally, I can’t resist. Todays is about the best purchase I ever made.
We were at a transition point in our lives, leaving the military, facing a temporary geographic separation (AdventureMan off to Saudi Arabia) and he said to me something I’ve always loved, that I’ve been a good wife and to buy a house any where I wanted.
I knew where that would be. I had a clever Mom who, every time I visited her, had set up a realtor to show us condominiums. She always said it was so that when they downsize, they would understand the options, but I also believe she had another agenda – to show me the options. Or so I suspected; my Mom often held her cards close to her chest and I would have to guess at her intentions. Whether or not she intended, she did sell me on the location.
AdventureMan drove one of our cars across the country and spent two days looking at options. He came back excited.
Then when he came back, we packed out everything we intended to keep and sent it to storage. Adventureman departed for Saudi Arabia and I kept working until our house sold, then moved temporarily to an apartment. I looked at a slew of places, and bought a house that looked very boring, but in the community I loved .
The house wasn’t as boring as it looked. What made it look boring was the wall-to-wall beige carpeting. Before I moved in, I had it all ripped out and had natural oak wood floors installed. It seemed horrendously expensive but it had a WOW factor – the house looked gorgeous.
I lived in the house for two years, AdventureMan and I having telephone dates and him dropping into town every few months for conjugal visit, LOL. Then, he got permission for me to live with him in Saudi Arabia.
We rented out the house. We’ve rented it out all these years, only one change in renters, never a single vacant month. I love the house still, and it was the best investment we ever made.
Within a few years, rental income had paid off the mortgage. Every year since then is gravy. We visit the renters now and then to check on the house; they are doing a good job at protecting those beautiful floors. They’d like to buy the house, but we have promised it to our son, who loves it too.
By far, the best purchase we ever made.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
New York Times reports Trump Administration is said to have reached a broad nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.
Bab el Mendeb and the Strait of Hormuz
Most people have no idea why these chokepoints are so important until they see it with their own eyes. Here is what they look like on Google Earth.
The Bab el Mendeb is at the tip of Djibouti, on the left. The Strait of Hormuz is between Iran and the northern tip of Oman, on your right. Qatar is that little thumb of land sticking out in the Persian Gulf.
Saudi Arabian oil and Qatari natural gas are blocked if these two chokepoints are no longer open.
Four years ago, during the last World Cup, we were on the Oceania Nautica and went through the Suez Canal, the Bab el Mandeb, and the Strait of Hormuz. We booked this tour especially to see these geographic chokepoints. We were shocked when there was no lecture on these geographic features, their origins, or their importance as shipping lanes – and there was no announcement when we went through the Bab or the Strait. Imagine!
CrisisGroup.Org
Because I follow – or try to follow – piracy in Somalia, I go down rabbit holes. Some rabbit holes lead you to the most amazing places, including a comprehensive update on an upsurge in Somalian piracy and root causes.
The rabbit holes led me to this fascinating group, Crisisgroup.org. I’m always curious who is behind these organizations – this organization, out of Brussels, seems to keep watch on some far-flung and, to U.S. readers, sometimes obscure potential events, which, when they explode, we wonder why we never heard of these fomenting conflicts.
Sad. It’s Not About You.
How will we get through this long hot summer now that the World Cup has ended?
The Limit on TBR (To Be Read)
Pensacola is HOT. We’re hitting 90+ degrees F. every day.
The streets are crowded with tourists, here for a High-T weekend of Blue Angels and their annual airshow. Pensacola is proud, very proud, of the Blue Angels, and, after a while, you just learn to steer clear of Pensacola Beach, any road leading to Pensacola Beach, and the popular restaurants on Blue Angels weekend. Unless you love crowds, fighting for a parking space, roasting in the sun and thirsting for cold drinking water – in which case Blue Angels on the Beach is right for you.
The heat saps my energy. I’m up early, trying to get steps in while I still have a breeze off the Bayou and before we hit our daily high temperature. There are days when you open the door and just gasp when the heat hits you in the face. Today, I am just sluggish. I missed my morning swim, which always cools me off and energizes me.
These are great days for reading. I have lots of choices; I can finish the book (again) that I am leading for Book Club in September (David Howard’s 1066) or I can escape with a hot-off-the-shelf best seller, or I can plunge back into the Hunger Games series from the beginning, which should give me a good week of escapism.
There is a limit – the top of my chair. You’d think that would be enough, but no, I have a backup TBR book-case for just in case I read everything on my TBR chair. 😊
Or I can postpone anything too demanding and write a post to HT&E. 😊
Biases: Believing Our Delusions
This is from a daily reading by Richard Rohr, a theologian I love reading for his broad outlook on belief and spirituality.
None of us is free from biases that skew our thinking. He lists several of the thinking errors below.
Recognizing Our Biases
CAC (Center for Advanced Contemplation – ed.) faculty member Brian McLaren has done thoughtful and helpful research about what makes us see things so differently from one another. He identified thirteen biases that we outline today. Being a former pastor and an excellent communicator, Brian found a way to make these complex ways of seeing simple and memorable. He writes:
People can’t see what they can’t see. Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .
Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.
Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.
Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.
Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.
Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.
Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.
Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.
Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.
Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.
Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).
Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.
Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.
Do Not Fret Yourselves Because of Evildoers
From today’s Lectionary readings:
Psalm 37
Part INoli æmulari
1 Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; *
do not be jealous of those who do wrong.
2 For they shall soon wither like the grass, *
and like the green grass fade away.
3 Put your trust in the Lord and do good; *
dwell in the land and feed on its riches.
4 Take delight in the Lord, *
and he shall give you your heart’s desire.
5 Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him, *
and he will bring it to pass.
6 He will make your righteousness as clear as the light *
and your just dealing as the noonday.
7 Be still before the Lord *
and wait patiently for him.
8 Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers, *
the one who succeeds in evil schemes.
9 Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; *
do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.
10 For evildoers shall be cut off, *
but those who wait upon the Lord shall possess the land.
11 In a little while the wicked shall be no more; *
you shall search out their place, but they will not be there.
12 But the lowly shall possess the land; *
they will delight in abundance of peace.
13 The wicked plot against the righteous *
and gnash at them with their teeth.
14 The Lord laughs at the wicked, *
because he sees that their day will come.
15 The wicked draw their sword and bend their bow
to strike down the poor and needy, *
to slaughter those who are upright in their ways.
16 Their sword shall go through their own heart, *
and their bow shall be broken.
17 The little that the righteous has *
is better than great riches of the wicked.
18 For the power of the wicked shall be broken, *
but the Lord upholds the righteous.
Haunting Verse From Kipling
THE NAULAHKA
Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).
Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
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