Santa comes on Two Horses

In the past century or so, there has been a rumor around that Santa comes on eight reindeer. The rumor got hyped up so that now there is a ninth reindeer named Rudolph whose nose shines bright red like a red Christmas tree light string bulb, and maybe even another reindeer named Olive.

Well recently I found something that completely debunked that theory. Santa does not come on a sleigh with nine reindeer; he comes on a horse and carriage with two horses:

I found this in a road with no cars on it in Chester, Virginia. And I got to see him before Christmas. So Santa is not going to come down your chimney, and he is not going to be driving reindeer; if he did, they'd be in danger of being shot by Sarah Palin. He is going to do things the old-fashioned way, in a team of horses with a carriage. So when you hear neighing, Santa is there.

SUUSI 2008 Part 1

It is 2008 July 21 2116 and I am in a room in a Radford dorm, at SUUSI. I presented the story of Tuscobuk with his adventures with the Elk - the elk skin is the Quileute version of Cassiopeia. It's a story of our time. For me it is how I find that with my father's passing and with it my belief in our institutions, I am not trustful of too many institutions, and it seems I have no one to turn to. The elk skin is a symbol of the complex and enormous task of finding the truth about everything. It is so huge that Tuscobuk could not hold on to it - he gave it up to the sky.

I attended Greg Greenway's music and social change workshop. He directed us through some social change tunes, and he wants us to select the two most influential tunes in our lives. This reminds me of SUUSI 2000 when I attended Jennifer Bosveld's The Flag, Mom, and Rock and Roll workshop, in which we all came up with a medley of tunes of our lives.

We were going to go to stargazing tonight but it got postponed because of an incoming cloud deck. Try again later in the week.

Rev. Rebecca Parker says the idea of Jesus saving us for our sins came not just after the death of Jesus but instead about AD 1000, and this led Christianity from non-violence to the Crusades.

No-Hit Loss

On 2008 June 28, Los Angeles defeated Los Angeles in a baseball game. This is the sort of thing that inter-league ball will do - it will make a strange headline like that one. The Dodgers beat the Angels 1-0. But the strangest thing is how they did it.

The Angels did not score a single run during the entire game. The Dodgers did not have any hits anywhere in the game. Therefore the two Angels pitchers, Weaver and Arredondo, tossed a no-hitter. However, the Dodgers won because they scored a run in the fifth inning. Kemp got on base on an error, then while the next batter was batting, he stole second. The throw to put him out at second went wild, and so Kemp got all the way to third. He then scored on DeWitt's sacrifice fly.

Major League Baseball does not consider this a no-hitter. That's because the two pitchers pitched only 8 innings, because the 9th inning wasn't played because the home team was ahead (the Angels were visitors). Maybe this is to keep the records unbiased, but it still seems a little strange to me to say that a no-hitter was not pitched because the game was so long. That has nothing to do with the number of hits.

If there is that much concern about nine innings for a no-hitter, then let's change the rules a bit. After 8 1/2 innings are played, if the home team is ahead, the bottom of the 9th is not played. This is because there is no chance for the visitors to win - only the home teams bats. It seems pointless to continue. But not if the visitors have a no-hitter going and they need 9 innings for a no-hitter.

So change the rules to say that if the home team is ahead after 8 1/2 innings but have not made any hits, the bottom of the ninth is played anyway. Balls, strikes, walks, running on the base paths, and putouts are the same as in previous innings. Runs do score. But as soon as the home team scores a hit, the game ends immediately, as the no-hitter is broken. If three outs occur before this happens, the visiting pitcher(s) will have a no-hitter, and it will be official. So continue the game if the home team has no hits. This will allow a moment of glory for some pitcher, even though he loses the game.

The Spider Theory

Today I attended my Unitarian Universalist church's service. The minister for this service authors the Auspicious Jots blog, covering a wide range of interesting anecdotal material. She gave a sermon entitled, "Why Should We Even Care?" about an incident that she had as an instructor for a World Religions class.

Today, as she was beginning her service, she said there was a spider on the pulpit. She interrupted her reading to try to get rid of the presumptuous arachnid. She flicked her hand holding a piece of paper, and then said, "Beat It!" She gave her sermon, on caring and concern for the things that greet us in life; in her case, being questioned as to whether she accepted Jesus Christ to be her Savior.

I am not sure if she was pleased when I told her that I thought the highlight of her service was the spider. But that's what I feel. When you do the best you can to do something worth doing, your plans can be disrupted by an itsy bitsy spider crawling all over your sermon. Well, that's life, AC. Das is das Leben, und Arbeit macht das Leben nicht süss. C'est la vie. Spiders are a part of life.

That, in fact, is a central part of my beliefs. In particular, I believe in the Beyond theory, which says that there is always something beyond anything you mention. If there is a Theory of "Everything" describing the four forces of nature, that's when we discover a fifth force. When the Unitarian Universalist Association draws up a list of 7 principles for its denomination, that's when an eighth principle becomes evident. When the polls predict that Obama will win New Hampshire, that's when Clinton wins it. It implies that there is an afterlife, a supernatural, but no God, because you can always go Beyond God.

This theory can be reformulated as the "spider" theory. When you think you have the answer to life, the universe and everything, that's when the 42 spots on a pair of dice gyrate and land, and that's when a spider comes up to your answer and ruins it. To me what that spider means in AC's service is that no matter how well you prepare your sermon, the spider can come and ad lib your service, and you can't always say, "Beat It!" She knows this very well as a UU minister, as she believes in the 7 principles, the fourth of which calls for a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. To me, the spider is a symbol of the Fourth Principle.

NOTE: I have gotten a commenter, Robin Edgar, who has told me that the spider is more of a symbol of the Seventh Principle. That it is, since spiders spin webs, like the Interdependent Web of All Existence. So this means now the Spider symbolizes two of the UU Principles - numbers 4 and 7. It symbolizes the Fourth, as the Spider that gets in the way of your sermon. It symbolizes the Seventh, as the Weaver of the Interdependent Web. Who knows? Maybe the Spider will some day symbolize all seven principles, and so the symbol of UUism will be the Spider.

By the way, I have to type this in this way. I have enabled this blog to print comments, but it doesn't do it. It does it with my other blogs. This is a serious problem with Blogger.

Robin Fight

I ran near my house about 2 miles at about 2008 February 20 2:30 pm. I saw a robin fight on the way back on the run. Two robins were pecking at each other and fluffing up their wings near a fence surrounding my development's swimming pool. This shows that even birds which we think of in cute terms sometimes fight with each other. Fighting is by no means unique to the human species. I ran towards them but they still fought. When I got within about 2 feet of them, they flew away. I then continued my run into a path in the woods near a creek, and saw about 10 more robins. It seems there is a flock of robins that is hanging out by the creek near my house.

I have also been seeing many other birds recently, including downy, red-bellied, and even pileated woodpeckers and a fox sparrow. Further the cherry tree in my yard is in full bloom, already now, in February. Last year, it was not until March 11 that the tree achieved this much bloom. Our winter has been warm this year, without any major snowstorms, and has been punctuated by spells of 60s and even 70s days. Is this global warming? One thing's for sure. If things occur too early, then animals that rely on things happening at a certain time are going to be hurt.