The Toys of Summer (Winter Edition), PART 4: "Crayola Digital Light Designer"

Click here for intro and PART 1.
Click here for PART 2.
Click here for PART 3.

PRODUCT:

Crayola Digital Light Designer

VISUAL PROOF OF THIS PRODUCT’S EXISTENCE:

[The Hungry Preacher and his family have been working hard to expunge the memory of this product from our brains.  Thus, we have destroyed all visual records of this product.  Sorry.] 

WHAT THEY SAY:

"Grab the digital stylus and get ready to draw in an amazing way—with colored, spinning lights! Drawing, special effects, animation, games, activities, and so much more—it’s hours and hours of creative fun! You can even sit back and replay your favorite creations as they appear to float in mid-air on the 360° surface. You won’t believe your eyes!"

(from Crayola Website)

THE GIST:

It’s like drawing, but your canvas is shaped like a cone and your medium is light.

PROS:

I am grateful for the CDLD, because it has given me a new appreciation for things like coal and Etch-a-Sketches that can also be used for drawing.

Buying the CDLD has also taught me that returning a product to a third-party seller through Amazon can be difficult and full of hurdles.

CONS:

On the Crayola website, this product has 71 user reviews, and the average rating is 1.9 stars out of 5.  That’s actually a little misleading, because 1 star is the lowest rating you can give.

Accompanying the ratings are user comments, and I agree with most of the concerns expressed:

-It’s loud.  Probably not quite hair-dryer loud, but close.

-It’s pretty crappy that, unless you pay extra for the cord, you need 4 size-D batteries to use the thing (plus 2 size-AAA batteries in the stylus).

-It’s annoying that the dome needs to be almost completely level to be used.

-It’s cumbersome.

-It’s expensive.

-It’s hard to figure out how to use.

All of this is potentially able to be overcome, except for the small detail that

-It’s not very much fun.

No, really.  The pictures that you can draw are no more precise than something you could do on a Light Bright 30 years ago.  They are so pixelated that even using the word "pixelated" to describe them is misleading because it implies that they are still on the "spectrum of pixelation."  But to achieve even this level of precision, you have to be very exact with the stylus.  Of course, it is difficult to get the stylus to illuminate the exact spot you are going for.  It’s like when you’re at an ATM and you realize that you need to touch the screen about a centimeter above the icon you’re trying to highlight.  Now imagine that in the middle of your transaction, the touch-screen suddenly begins to accurately respond to the location of your finger.  Then it doesn't.  Then it does.  Then you realize that how the screen responds to your touch seems to be related to some combination of the angle of your finger, the duration you leave your finger on the screen, the suddenness with which your finger touches the screen, and the precision with which your finger touches the spot you are going for.  Now imagine you are six years old.  That's how much fun this product was.

The descriptions of this product on both Amazon and Crayola.com read like those of a realtor spinning a house that no one wants.

From Amazon:

“The Crayola Digital Light Designer lets children express their artistic side, without the mess of traditional pens.”

Traditional, like with ink wells?  OK, I guess I can see that.  But clicky pens with a little adult supervision aren’t that messy, are they?  Especially for a 6 year old (the minimum suggested age for this product), right?

“The round dome responds to the touch of a stylus to display up to seven colors, providing unlimited imaginative fun.”

Up to seven colors?  As in, “One less than the number of colors included in Crayola’s most basic box of crayons”?  Is that the seven you’re talking about?  If seven colors provides unlimited imaginative fun, why do you make a box of crayons that has 120 colors?

To be fair, a thorough study of the Crayola website reveals that boxes of crayons come in seven different sizes.  This can't be a coincidence, and it stands to reason that the type and degree of fun that can be experienced with seven colors of light is the same as that which can be experienced with 120 colors of crayons.  This handy table should help you convert how many colors of light you will need to match what you experience with crayons:

# of Crayon Colors	# of Light Colors	Predicted Experience
120	7	Unlimited, imaginative fun
96	6	Slightly limited, imaginative fun
64	5	Moderately limited, imaginative gladness
48	4	Severely limited, rote gladness
32	3	Structured, uninspired ambivalence
16	2	Highly structured, disillusioned melancholy
8	1	Mundane, bitter hopelessness

“Kids can make their drawings move with animation options or even create short movies by combining drawings.”

A few paragraphs later, Amazon tells us just how short those movies are:

"They can also create six-frame movies with the Movie Maker activity on the light dome."

Six frames?  Six?  Forget for a second that the first movie ever made (of a horse galloping, in 1878) was 16 frames.  Forget that for a second.  Is there anyone in the world who would chose the word “movie” to describe what it is you’re saying my kid can do with the Crayola Digital Light Designer?  Words have meanings.  If you want to use a word (like “movie”) to describe something that it has never before described, shouldn’t you blaze that trail in something other than an official description of a product you are trying to sell?  Is that asking a lot?

"The dome also features eight engaging activities and games to keep kids entertained."

I can’t really address this, because we didn’t make it to all eight.  After about three, we realized we were neither engaged nor entertained.  We were mostly bored and confused.  I don’t want to think about what would have happened if we’d tried all eight.

In summary, if my kid had been born in the 1910’s and time-traveled to the present, maybe she would be completely engaged with this product.  Maybe then she would “sit back and replay her favorite creations as they appear to float in mid-air on the 360° surface.”  Maybe then she “wouldn’t believe her eyes.”  But for non-time-traveling 6-year-olds and 39-year-olds living in 2013, the messages our eyes sent to our brains regarding this product were very, very believable.  On the other hand, that a 6-year-old kid living in 2013 with $60 to spend (or have spent on his behalf) would be intelligent and patient enough to learn how to use this product, but still be inexperienced enough in his use of electronics to be fascinated for hours and hours with all that this product can do?  If I saw that, it’s fair to say “I wouldn’t believe my eyes.”

RATING:

1 star out of 5

Thus we conclude "The Toys of Summer, (WINTER EDITION)."  Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back in a few days when I will arrange letters and words in an entirely new way, thereby communicating thoughts that have never before been communicated by another human being.

-THP

The Toys of Summer (Winter Edition), PART 3: "Blobimals"

Click here for intro and PART 1.
Click here for PART 2.

PRODUCT:

Blobimals

VISUAL PROOF OF THIS PRODUCT’S EXISTENCE:
[see below]

WHAT OTHERS SAY:

Very few people are saying anything about Blobimals.  Even the Blobimals website doesn’t offer an entry-level description of the product.  Instead, the website invites you to enter the world of the Blobimals, and I can’t find any place where they “break character” for Blobimal novices (“Blobimalices”?) and say, “OK, so here’s what a Blobimal is…”  Same for the Blobimal Facebook page.

While it’s hardly an official product description, a writer at squidoo has this to say:

"Blobimals; my guess is that they'll be this year's hot playground toy this autumn/fall term… Blobimals are really easy to make.
1. Simply pop open the tub, and take out all the bits.
2. Start shaping your monster's body in the squishy putty and when it's done, place it on a clean, flat surface.
3. Stick your monster's feet, arms, horns, eyes, and mouth into the putty body - wherever they look cool!
4. Admire your monster creation, and take a photo for your friends.
5. Pull off those monster limbs and face, squash that monster body, and start all over again, to create a brand new monster every time!
6. Or, leave your Blobimal overnight to melt into a pool of monster slime - yucky!
Blobimals are available in three varieties: a one-eyed toothy green monster, a two eyed fanged monster, and a three eyed spikey red version."

THE GIST:

You get a ball of clay that seems like a cross between Play-doh and Silly Putty.  Shape it into a monster.  Add the accessories.  Check back later and find your monster melted into a puddle.

PROS:

I’m a sucker for things that do what they’re supposed to do.  Once, Beth and I saw some ad that was bragging about how this fancy new vacuum cleaner sucked up dirt.  And I said to Beth, “Sucking up things is what makes something a vacuum!  If it doesn’t do that, it’s not a vacuum!  By definition!”  She told me I was so cute.

And while I have lived long enough not to be shocked when a product doesn’t work exactly as advertised, at the same time I am especially satisfied when it does.  Would Blominals provide that level of satisfaction?  Could a putty really be firm enough to mold but soft enough to melt into a puddle?

Even though we bought it as last-minute stocking stuffer and didn’t have a lot riding on its functionality, we still hoped.  At first, the clay was a little firm.  We softened it up.  The girls sculpted their monsters, then accessorized.

These pics are recent—not taken from that first day—but they are a fair representation of “take one”.

Yes, they melt.  We were all pretty delirious, though none of us fully understood it.  But they didn’t promise we'd understand it.  They promised “mold and melt,” and on that basis, I offer my highest compliment: “The functionality of Blobimals exceeds even my greatest hopes for a product making these particular claims.”

CONS:

With the passing of time (and half-lifes?), the Blominal clay has become more liquidy and harder to shape.  The re-uses may be finite in number.

It would have been nice to get just a little bit more clay to work with.  I suspect that in the very near future, we will combine the blobs of clay and make large monster sculptors a few times before we dispose of the Blobimal clay.

I think we paid $6, which seems a little bit high.  I don’t know what the ingredients are, so maybe $6 is a bargain.  And, like I’ve said, the product does what it’s supposed to do, so I can’t fault them too much for trying to make some cash off of their invention.

RATING:

5 stars out of 5

To borrow an old slogan from the Army, this product is all that it can be.  I respect that.  The PROS are significant, and the CONS are nitpicky.  Consider it stamped with The Hungry Preacher’s seal of approval.

Next up:
Crayola Digital Light Designer

-THP

The Toys of Summer (Winter Edition), PART 2: "4D Cityscape Time Puzzle"

Click here for intro and PART 1.

PRODUCT:
4D Cityscape Time Puzzle: USA

VISUAL PROOF OF THIS PRODUCT'S EXISTENCE:

WHAT OTHERS SAY:
"4D Cityscape allows you to build the history of the USA over the 4th Dimension of Time. Starting with the base layer, our unique jigsaw play showcases the evolution of the USA - based on territorial expansion from the year 1783 to 1900's. You then assemble the 2nd layer 'modern' jigsaw map - which showcases the formation all 50 states in a time sequence based on each State's date of established statehood. The third layer is constructed using the 4D Time Poster where 93 of the most famous US monuments & buildings are placed into the puzzle in the order that they were constructed.

The puzzle includes 93 plastic building replicas that depict the Country as far back as 1450 to modern day. The puzzle includes such iconic structures as Arches National Park, Mount Rushmore, and the St. Louis Arch. The buildings fit into pre-cut holes in a traditional 2D jigsaw puzzle that form the country's layout and Rocky Mountains. The product includes a Time Poster that directs you through time as you rebuild America’s famous history. Ages 8+."
(from 4D Puzzle Website)

THE GIST:
It's part puzzle, part timeline--and all learning.

PROS:
The good things about this product are very good.  The first layer is a visually engaging map, with each land acquisition of the United States distinguished by its own color and faux-texture.  The map is loaded with names and dates, and includes natural and man-made borders.  The second layer—pieces made of foam—lays on top of the original layer and depicts the US as it exists today.  Then you fit tokens representing landmarks (mostly man-made) into their appropriate pre-carved spots in the foam layer.

Each layer conveys loads of information about the geography and history of the United States.  This is one of those great “you can’t help but learn” toys that I’m a big fan of; if kids are going to do puzzles, why not make them do puzzles that will trick them into learning cool stuff?

CONS:
The painful thing about this toy is that the “CONS,” though minor seeming, were actually pretty annoying.  Furthermore, they seem like they could be easily fixed. We’ll start small, and work our way up.

First off, the Gateway Arch does not straddle the Mississippi River.  Yes, we all wish it did.  That would be way cool.  But it doesn’t.

Next, the puzzle pieces on the bottom layer are small and very uniform.  Do puzzle enthusiasts consider uniformity of pieces to be just another element of a puzzle’s degree of difficulty?  To me, it was annoying.  When 4 people spend 5 minutes studying the connection of 2 puzzle pieces and still can’t come to a consensus as to whether they actually fit together—it just seems like overkill.

Do they or don't they?

Next, the tokens: I thought they’d be akin to “Monopoly game pieces.”  Not quite.  They weren’t metal.  They were plastic, and came connected to frames.  Breaking each token away from its frame was tricky.  And after the pieces were broken free, most retained pokey, plastic nubs at the points they were attached to the frame.  These pokey nubs had to be sanded off in order to fit the token into its spot on the foam layer of the puzzle.  And I think we can all agree that when you’re reading a description of a toy, the phrase, “These pokey nubs had to be sanded off,” should be a red flag.  Forget metal Monopoly pieces—in my daughters’ room there are literally hundreds of plastic toys, tokens, and chips that won’t cut you.  I’m pretty sure the information on the map is public domain; is cardboard (level 1) and foam (level 2) that expensive that the monument tokens have to be the same quality as the bottom-shelf prizes at Chuck E Cheese?  With a price tag near $40, this toy is like one of those big-budget Hollywood movies with no special effects or car chases.  Where did the money go?

Full disclosure: My giant thumbs probably didn't make the sanding process any easier

Anyway, as you can imagine, a lot of questions go through a man’s mind when he’s sanding the nubs off plastic replicas of 93 American landmarks.  Do puzzle enthusiasts consider sanding plastic nubs to be just another element of a puzzle’s degree of difficulty?  How can we as a nation have the vision and skill to construct the Golden Gate Bridge, but struggle to create a 1-inch plastic replica of the Bridge that doesn’t cut your finger if you don’t sand it closely enough?  Wouldn’t it be quicker for me just to build full-sized replicas of all these landmarks?  Why does America have so many landmarks in the first place?  What’s wrong with us?  And so on.

Speaking of the landmarks, I can’t fault 4D Puzzle too much for going all “MLB All-Star Game” on us and including representatives from every state.  Kids want to cheer for their home-state landmark.  I get that.  That said, when you have 43 “extra” landmarks to work with after you've handed out the “participation trophies”, should something like this really happen?

Hint: Count the spots for landmarks

I’m not saying Mississippi isn’t an awesome state or anything.  But even Mississippi apologists would admit that their love for the state is not landmark-based.  It seems like this conversation should have taken place before the puzzle went to print:
4D CEO:  Did you develop a criteria for deciding how many landmark tokens go to each state.
PUZZLE MAKER:  You bet we did.
4D CEO:  Do California and Mississippi have the same number of notable landmarks?
PUZZLE MAKER:  Yep.  So says the criteria.
4D CEO:  Destroy the criteria and start over.  And never speak of this again.

The most disappointing component of this toy, though, was the informational poster included with the puzzle.  It had pictures and dates of each landmark, but it was surprisingly short on, well, information.

Here's proof.  It's a sample section of the information poster regarding the landmarks:

For comparison's sake, a few years ago, we bought the monkeys a National Park Memory game.  This memory game also included an informational poster.  Here is a sample from that poster:

I realize the print looks a little small, so here's the entry for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial ("the Arch" to you and me) in readable form:
"Jefferson National Expansion Memorial consists of the Gateway Arch, the Museum of Westward Expansion, and St. Louis' Old Courthouse.  The 630' stainless-steel Gateway Arch gives St. Louis, Missouri one of the world's most unique skylines.  Designed by architect Eero Saarinen in 1947, the Arch was built between 1963 and 1965.  It is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, a unit of the National Park Service established to re-tell the story of America's century of westward expansion."

It's not the most thorough description ever, but at least it's something.  On the other hand, here's what we know about landmarks from the 4D info poster:
1) their names
2) their home states
3) the dates they were either started or finished
4)

The blank space after 4) is on purpose, for dramatic effect. Pretty powerful, right?

Of course, even this sparse information is more than kids will learn putting together a puzzle of, say, Sponge Bob. But how much effort would it have taken to include even 2 sentences about each landmark? Is “additional knowledge” seen as the 5th dimension?

Ideally, this additional information could tie together the layers of the puzzle. For example, the description of the Gateway Arch could mention the Louisiana Purchase (which is clearly designated on layer 1 of the puzzle).  Nope. Instead, we learn that the Arch was built in 1963. That’s all you need to know (oh, and that it straddles the Mississippi River).

RATING:
4 stars out of 5
A 4-star rating may seem inconsistent with how down on the puzzle I seem to be.  I am torn, for sure.  It’s a 5-star concept with a 2-star execution.  It’s like they invented pizza, but settled on St. Louis style thin crust pizza as though that was the end-all, be-all of pizza.  Why settle?  Why not tease this out to see where it goes?

Like pizza, the idea of the 4D puzzle is nearly impossible to screw up, no matter how hard it seems like they’re trying to.  And at the end of the day, hey, they invented pizza!  With much ambivalence, I give them their props.  If they had metal pieces and a paragraph description of each monument, I’d probably give them another 40 bucks for any of their other 4D puzzles.  Until that day, I just need some time to sort out my feelings.

Next up:
Blobimals

-THP

The Toys of Summer (Winter Edition), PART 1: "Squishy Baff"

The household of The Hungry Preacher has experienced an influx of toys and games over the past couple of months.  We partook in Christmas celebrations well into January; and in early February, Monkey 2 commemorated turning 7 years old by fluttering her maternally-inherited eyelashes and coaxing scores of loved ones to shower gifts upon her.  (If this didn’t work, she was prepared to flex her paternally-inherited biceps.  Booyah!)

For the next week or so, on this very website, I will post my first-ever product reviews of some of the more notable toys.  I’ll begin with perhaps the most notable of all.

PRODUCT:

Squishy Baff

VISUAL PROOF OF THIS PRODUCT'S EXISTENCE:

Level of joy conveyed in this image is not typical.  Your experience may vary.

WHAT OTHERS SAY:

"Turn ordinary water into glorious colorful goo and then back again. Create fun goo adventures, while feeling it squishing between your fingers and toes! It's safe, fun, and doesn't leave stains or residue. When you are done playing, simply add the dissolving powder and watch it go down the drain!" (from Squishy Baff website)

THE GIST:

Pour pink crystals into your bath to make the water turn gooey.  Play accordingly.

PROS:

The goo-dissolving solution did, in fact, dissolve the goo.  Whew!

CONS:

I was raised to believe that if want to bathe the way God intended, you need at least a foot of water.  And if you’re splashing around in less than eight inches?  Goodness, don’t even call it a bath!  Biased as such, I cringed when I read that the recommended water depth for using Squishy Baff is 3.5 inches.  Never mind that the bathtub on the Squishy Baff website is filled to the overflow drain, and that the goo is mounding.  Emboldened with what I now realize was false hope, I filled our wider-than-average tub with about 4 inches of water, and poured in the powder.

My test subjects were ready and excited.  We all hovered over the edge of the tub and waited.  And waited.  And stirred.  And waited.  Once I realized the gooiness of the water was probably maxing out, I instructed the monkeys to climb on in and play with the goo as best they could.

The clearest way I can describe the substance in the bathtub is to tell you to imagine about a half-inch layer of Osetra Karat Amber Russian Caviar mixed with 4 inches of water.  Each bit of goo (like each piece of caviar) was its own entity, but the goo particles did not bond in any useful way with each other.  About three minutes into the Baff, my girls were asking, “Is that it?”  I assessed, then somberly admitted, “Yes.  That is it.”

Fortunately, our pack of Squishy Baff came with 2 packages of goo particles.  I should have just added the second pack to the first bath.  Instead, I told the girls, “Next time, we’ll use less water.”  “Next time” ended up being last night.  I used about a third less water and—whaddaya know?—the goo was substantially more viscous.  This time it was like caviar mixed up in Malt-o-Meal (AKA, "the breakfast of Saudi polo champions").

Apparently, the consistency of the goo makes all the difference in the world for bath time enjoyment, as my girls did indeed “Create fun goo adventures.”

I should note that a key plot-element of these “goo adventures” involved blobs of goo being splattered on the wall and on all the edges and ledges of the tub.  Clean-up was neither “a breeze” nor “a snap”.  It was more like “payback,” if you’re familiar with the corresponding phrase.  Finally, for the record, there is nothing about a Squishy Baff that remotely serves the purpose of an actual bath, which 9 out of 10 fuddy duddies agree is “to get clean”.

All in all, Squishy Baff overpromised and was nowhere near worth the trouble to me, but did provide moderate enjoyment for the participants once the proper consistency was established.

RATING:
2 stars out of 5

Next up:
4D Cityscape Time Puzzle

-THP

Jubilee and Me

NOTE: I wrote the bulk of this post a year ago, but didn't post it.  It's been in blogatory since then, until I dusted it off, made a few revisions, then decided to go ahead and post it.  Enjoy.

My first post on willpreachforfood.com included a list of my best guesses of the tags that would be attached to subsequent posts.   This list was both to prepare you, the reader, and to provide myself with some direction.  Some of the tags have been more used than others, which I expected.  But some have been strikingly (to me) unused.  Here are two of the unused tags and their initial descriptions from that post:

7. God & the Bible. At the time of this writing, I’m not a pastor anymore, but am still a Christian. It’s fair to say I’ve been struggling with God for a few years now. Maybe my relationship with God mirrors my relationship with writing in some ways; both connecting with God and writing take time, focus, and are easy to put off for another day.

8. Church & Ministry. Not sure what I’ll be saying about this yet.

Many of the readers of WPFF know that I was an associate pastor for 4 years at a fairly new, gen-X-ish church in my hometown.  It took me about 2 years to get the hang of the job, and another 2 years to dramatically burn out and quit under the weight of escalating, poorly-understood, poorly-communicated, and poorly-addressed conflicts between me and some of the leaders at my church.  This weight was in addition to typical ministry stress, and I felt that my walk with God was being overwhelmed by conflict-born waves of frustration and disillusionment.

The church—comprised of my closest friends—was also suffering.  So was my family.  With the goal of preserving most of the things that mattered most to me, I walked away.

Initially, things were OK.  I could breathe again, and I could spend time with my wife and daughters without feeling like half my heart was battered beyond repair, and that the half that was still alive was looking over my shoulder, bracing for the next round of conflict.

While I was waiting for my walk with God and my passion for ministry to resurrect, I instead found myself looking back at how everything related to my departure transpired, and I grew sadder and more confused.

I also felt more and more “set up” by God.  An old friend of mine was once backing out of his garage on his way to school.  The problem was that he forgot to open the garage door before doing so.  And the jaw-dropping aspect of the event was that his sister was in the car with him, and knew that the garage was still closed—and didn’t say anything!

As I looked back, I increasingly felt like I had spent 4 years backing out of a garage with the garage door still closed, and that God was in the car the whole time and didn’t say anything.  Or at least not loud and clear enough for me to hear Him.

Without trying, I have retrospectively come to view most of the characteristics of myself (e.g., easy-going nature, desiring to connect with the marginalized, giftedness at writing)—that I had once valued as uniquely God-given strengths—instead as flaws that kept me from seeing the garage door.  Disillusionment and embarrassment have grown.  My walk with God has not.

Starting this blog was a huge step for me to tread into the waters of making use of my strengths again.  And when I wrote the first post, I thought that within a month, I would have fresh and exciting things to say related to the tags that I copied and pasted above.

I’m not there yet.  I still don’t know what I would, could, or should say.

Today, as I was thinking about underused tags in the WPFF archive, I thought about forcing the issue a little bit.  What could I possibly write about that could be tagged either “God & the Bible” or “Church & Ministry”?

I thought about our new church, Jubilee Church.  I still feel funny calling it “our church.”  I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable calling a church that again.  But it’s the church that we’ve been attending for 2 1/2 years.

I thought that a safe, harmless, and edifying post—but one that could move me towards more individually substantial posts in the future—could be “things I like about our new church.”  So, without further ado, here’s some things I like:

1)  The Pastor.  Bryan is down-to-earth, conversational in his messages, and funny.  He actually carries himself a lot like I do, which is a trait I usually find pretty annoying in people, but Bryan pulls it off.  He once even wore a shirt identical to one that I own, and I am nothing if not world-renowned for my fashion sense.

He values people and the grace of God.  He really pushes the grace stuff, which is good.  He has experienced it, and he is eager to share it with others.  He comes across like a drifter who happened to get picked up by God and who is very thankful for it.

2)  The Sunday Morning “Schedule.”  I haven’t checked this lately, but when we started coming to Jubilee, the website gave the ending-time of the Sunday service in the form of a time-range.  When I first met Bryan, I asked him why this was.  His explanation was matter-of-fact and dripping with common sense:  No one at the church knew exactly what the Holy Spirit would be doing any given Sunday, and they figured they should at least give Him some time flexibility on finishing His work.  I loved it.

3)  The Approach to Money.  Money is a huge topic in the Bible.  It’s also a topic that scares a lot of people away from church, never to return.  So what’s a church to do?  At Jubilee, the approach is to talk about money with roughly the same frequency that it is talked about in the Bible, while at the same time making it clear that Jubilee as an organization couldn’t care less about YOUR money.  For example, Jubilee is footing the bill for anyone at the church to attend a regional church conference at the start of June.  Registration is around $100 per person, but Jubilee actually printed a code on their program for anyone to use on the registration website that completely waves the fee.  Jubilee is covering thousands of dollars of fees, trusting that God will take care of the church’s finances as He sees fit.

4)  The Facilities.  A few years ago, Jubilee moved into a building that had been a funeral home.  Turns out, funeral homes make great church buildings.  Big foyer, lots of kids rooms, large meeting room, plenty of parking.

The interior design is contemporary but not showy.  The signage and layout are functional but not sterile.  All very nice.

5)  Worship.  Full band, regularly including a favorite instrument of mine that is surprisingly neglected in some newer churches: the keyboard.  The worship leading is solid across the board.  Songs continue long enough to build momentum, but not so long to seem manipulative.  Typos and technical glitches are rare, and are quickly fixed.

6)  Diversity.  In most churches, anything more than token diversity is fairly difficult to achieve, especially in mid-west cities and towns that are generally fairly segregated.  But several different ethnicities, nationalities, ages, and socio-economic groups are represented at Jubilee, and the level of diversity is one I have seldom experienced in a church.

7)  Prayer.  After service on Sunday morning, attendees are invited to walk down to the front and pray with any of the team of pray-ers that gathers for that purpose.  It’s nothing dramatic or showy.  They’re just there, ready and willing to pray with and for you for whatever reason you’d like.

All in all, Jubilee Church has been a blessing to me and my family for the past many months.  I am grateful, and I am glad to share some of its strengths with you while I continue to sort out and make use of my own.

Blessings.

-THP

Catching the Moon: a Goodbye to Poozle

Two days ago, on April 4, 2012, we said goodbye to our loyal friend, Sir Poozalot--or "Poozle" as his friends called him.

Beth and I adopted Poozle from a pound in Kirksville, Missouri, shortly after we were married.  When we showed up at this rural shelter, the scene was chaotic.  People and puppies were walking around the gravelly parking lot and weedy grounds, while some groups of dogs were caged up in freestanding cylinders of chicken wire about 3 feet tall.  The permanent cages were being cleaned, but we were welcome to walk around and browse the dogs.

I wanted a dog with a distinct coat, so I grabbed a puppy with a brown and white pattern and tried to get it to play.  He seemed bored and lethargic, despite my prodding.  Then I heard Beth call, "Rob, check this out!"  She was standing next to one of the chicken wire cylinders, pointing at one of the six or so puppies flopping around like fish in a shallow pan of water.  "He can climb!"

I watched.  This little guy with hopeful eyes looked at us.  He stood up on his back feet and put his front paws on the fence.  Pretty normal so far.  But then he stuck one of his back paws in the fence.  Then his other back paw.  Then he moved his front paws to a higher link in the fence, one at a time.  Then he pulled with his front paws, pushed with his back, and started the whole process over again.  My eyes got buggy.  This crazy dog can climb fences!

He got to the top, but couldn't pull himself over the edge.  He teetered for a moment with his front elbows over the top of the fence, but the weight of his body was pulling him back into the cylinder.  His eyes looked at ours, desperate for help.  Not to be heartless, but I wanted to see how this would end apart from outside intervention.  He rocked, then wobbled, then flopped backwards, five squirming puppies cushioning his fall back into captivity.

It was darned near the cutest thing I'd ever seen.  Beth was already in love, and I was certainly impressed, but not quite sold.  I told Beth, "How about if he makes it to the top again, we'll grab him and he'll be the one?"  She agreed.

It wasn't long before we realized there were drawbacks to owning a dog that could climb fences.  Beth was in class and I was at the off-campus house for the college ministry I was working at.  The office phone rang.  "Hey, Rob.  This is Jim.  I'm in the office at Baldwin Hall, and I've got Poozle.  He was running around inside the building when I recognized him and grabbed him."

So much for our fenced-in yard being a perfect place to keep Poozle while we weren't home.  Baldwin Hall was the fine arts building.  Maybe Poozle was just looking for an adventure (probably) and maybe he was looking for me or Beth (doubtful).  But I like to pretend that he was drawn to a place where eccentricities were commonplace.  Artists and dancers and singers--often regarded as "weird" or "different"--they fit right in at Baldwin Hall.  And yes, Poozle was a little odd.  Quirky, if you prefer.

There was the climbing fences thing.  There was his insistence that he was a lap-dog, even after growing to 45 pounds.  There was his desire to "walk himself"--holding his leash in his mouth sometimes for the duration of a walk.  Of course, one end was hooked to him, and the other end was held by me or Beth.  But he'd just grab the middle, in his mouth, and casually trot along the sidewalk.

As an aside: On one of his first walks, I hoped to wear him out so he'd be less inclined to get in to trouble when I had to leave him alone.  My plan worked a little too well.  I didn't realize that tiny little puppies had a limited supply of strength and energy, especially on hot and humid summer days in the midwest.  Maybe his feet hurt, or maybe his head was too close to the hot sidewalk.  But after walking him a couple of miles, and nearly dragging him a hundred yards, he just sat down in the shade of a small tree.  He wasn't being stubborn.  He even looked pretty happy.  He just couldn't go on.  I, however, needed to go on.  Since at the time he didn't weigh much more than a gallon of milk, I scooped him up and cradled him like a baby the last few blocks to our air conditioned abode.

But Poozle's quirkiest quirk and favorite pastime was chasing lights.  Shine a flashlight on the floor in front of him, and he would go ballistic trying to catch that little circle of light.  If Beth and I ever used a flashlight, we couldn't just put it back on a shelf--Poozle would sit there, staring at the flashlight, whining.  Eventually, we figured out that one of us needed to distract him while the other one stealthily put the flashlight away.

Poozle eventually discovered that CD's also reflect light, and every time I reached for the CD stand Poozle would jump into "ready position", anxious to pounce at any fleeting reflection.

Once, we were walking him at night, when he looked up in the sky, stopped suddenly, and started whining.  It took us a few seconds to realize that he was whining at the full moon.  No, not howling.  Whining.  Longing to catch it like any old flashlight beam.  Our crazy dog wanted to catch the moon.

Poozle was soft and fluffy and affectionate.  He was big enough to wrestle with but small enough to cuddle.  He made two cross-country moves with us, once riding shotgun in a moving truck as my sole companion for more than 30 hours.  He never seemed to mind losing his yard to move to a 600 square foot townhouse.  He was just happy to be with us.  A half-a-dozen or so different residences also didn't faze him.

When he was 7 years old, Beth and I had our first daughter and 18 months later, our second.  He seemed to understand that there was a new order in the pack.  And he stayed loyal and mellow.  Even when his personal space got violated by our rambunctious little crumbsnatchers--and even when he got stepped on or tripped over more times to count--he kept his cool.

A little over a year ago, we brought another dog into pack, one that nearly doubled Poozle in size.  Loblaw was always eager to play with his new friend.  Poozle tried his best, even when Loblaw got a little rough for him.  Poozle wavered between welcoming and tolerant, but was never hostile.

This past year was tough for Poozle.  His feet didn't get very good traction on our hardwood floors.  It became harder and harder for him to make it up stairs.  His body couldn't quite do what his spirit wanted it to.  In his eyes, though, there was life and desire.  Whether he was looking up at us from the bottom of an insurmountable staircase, or eagerly hovering while I was taking a meatloaf from the oven, his eyes revealed a spirit more hopeful than his arthritic body warranted.

We always teased him about the meatloaf.  Every time one of us made a meatloaf, he'd dutifully sit watching our every move, not just hoping but actually expecting that we'd just set it on the floor for him to devour.  "Poozle," we'd ask.  "When have we EVER made a meatloaf, taken it out of the oven, and given it to you?"  He was always undeterred, and always seemed a little surprised and confused when we'd slice it up and eat it as though we had made it not for him, but for us.

A couple of years ago, Beth and I half-jokingly decided that when Poozle was on his last leg, we'd make a meatloaf just for him.  It seemed like it would be a long time before we'd have to worry about it.

But Monday of this past week, I looked in his eyes, and I knew.  Yes, standing was a nearly impossible task.  More significantly, though, his eyes showed that he was ready.

I made the appointment for Wednesday morning.  Tuesday morning, I thawed some ground beef and tried to make his last full day as pleasant as possible.  I spent some time snuggling with him on the couch and carried him outside for potty breaks.  He had eaten almost nothing but treats since the weekend, and was pretty worn down, but could still--with great care--put one foot in front of the other and walk to his water bowl.  I decided to take him out for a last walk, figuring it would do him good to get his legs moving.  I helped him off his bed then waved a treat in front of him to lure him to the door.  He surged towards the treat, but when his nose touched it, he turned his head away.  He didn't want a treat.

He still wagged his tail ever-so-slightly when I hooked him to his leash.  He even waved his mouth at it, like he remembered when he used to walk himself.  I got him down the steps to the sidewalk, barely holding it together.  We walked for two houses.  Then he sat down on the sidewalk.  He couldn't go anymore.  And I saw in his eyes that he didn't want to.  I told him it was OK, and then started sobbing.  I sat down next to him, legs out in front of me.  My left hand covered my slumped-over face while my right hand scratched his scruffy but still-soft neck.  We were both broken, in different ways.

He didn't seem sad, though.  Eventually, I looked over at him and saw a satisfied and reassuring expression.  I really, really believe that he knew what was going on, and wanted me to know that he was OK with it.  He seemed to be enjoying the moment, just sitting on the sidewalk together, and he wanted me to, as well.

We sat there, like two old men on a porch, and appreciated the times we'd shared.  After a few minutes, for the second time ever, I carried him home at the end of walk.

I laid him on his bed and got working on the meatloaf.  I used a square, 4-inch pan, and just a pound of ground beef.  I added enough ingredients that I could, in good conscience, actually call what I was making a "meatloaf" and not just "a baked hunk of ground beef."

A couple of hours later, after the dish was baked and cooled, I cut it into slices and put it in a bowl.  From his bed, Poozle perked up.  There was that familiar look of, "Oh, you a made a meatloaf?  For ME?"  Only this time, I had.  I put it in front of him.  He aggressively leaned his head in, sniffed it, then nothing.  He didn't want it.  I lost it again.  Why didn't I just make it for him a few days ago when he would have enjoyed it?  Then I thought about telling Beth when she got home from work.  When she got home, and I told her, she broke down just as I had.  "Did we wait too long?" she asked.  I shrugged, with tears of my own rolling down my face. "He did seem to enjoy smelling it," was the only answer I had.

I am very glad that later that night, Poozle did eat most of the meatloaf.  We rented a mindless movie and lifted Poozle up on the couch, his head in Beth's lap.  She held the meatloaf like a bowl of popcorn and, throughout the movie, broke off pieces to feed to Poozle, which he happily chewed and swallowed.

The next morning, we all loaded up in the car.  Beth and I dropped the girls off at school, then drove to the vet.

Every time we'd ever taken him to the vet, or the kennel, or to get his nails clipped, he was always scared.  Sometimes he would just tremble as though we were leaving him to be tortured.  But on Wednesday, not once did he seem scared.  He never trembled or squirmed.  He "climbed out of his cage."  He was very peaceful.

Honestly, I don't know what to make of the sadness I'm feeling.  Dogs--and this I am sure of--are not people.  They are dogs.  They are animals.  Some animals I step on and squish.  Other animals I make hamburgers out of.  But this animal...  He was my friend.  He had a consciousness.  He would try to cheer me up when I was sad.  Maybe more significantly to me, I knew that I could always, always make him happy.  It was easy.  I just had to scratch his ears or rub his belly or give him a treat.  He would purr if you scratched his ears just right.  It was nice to be able to always have that effect on someone, even if that someone is an animal.

It was nice to walk out the front door, look back at the house, and see someone looking out the window at me.

Once, I put a pancake on Poozle's nose and made him hold it there until I said he could eat it.  To my surprise, he flipped it off his nose into his mouth faster than I could even tell what happened.  I kept meaning to try to get him to do it again so I could film it.  Tuesday of this past week, I tried it.  To my surprise, he pulled it off.  Honestly, he probably hadn't moved that fast in nearly a year.  And shortly after I filmed this, he wasn't even able to walk, let alone sit upright with a pancake on his nose.  But he pulled it off.  It was a nice favor.  I'm glad I won't have to tell people about it and say, "I always meant to film him doing it, but never got around to it."  He was a good friend.

The Bible doesn't say if dogs go to heaven.  Most of the teaching in the Bible is about God and Jesus and people.  People have souls, and need salvation, and are invited to follow Jesus as an assurance that they, like him, will some day be resurrected.  Dogs?  Well, they don't need salvation, per se, in the same way that people do.  My opinion, though, is that dogs--at least as a rule--do go to heaven, or at least some place close enough to heaven that they can't tell the difference.

Romans 8:20-21 reads, "Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse.  But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay."  In the absence of specific teaching on the eternal destiny of dogs, this verse provides some non-specific hope--but hope nonetheless.  "Creation" in this verse does NOT appear to be another word for "people."  And this death and decay that Paul mentions certainly fit as a description of what animals in general and Poozle in particular go through as they age, fighting through disease and peril.

Nothing in the Bible or my faith would be scandalized if dogs do, indeed, go to heaven.  And there are suggestions, both biblical and experiential, that they do.  Christian scholars more revered than I--R.C. Sproul and C.S. Lewis, to name a couple--have taken a similar stance.

I am comforted by this.  I do believe that my friend is in a better place.  But if heaven is as full of light as the Bible indicates, I'm not sure Poozle will be able to control himself.  I'm sure his creator will figure out something.  Maybe, just maybe, heaven will be a place where Poozle can finally catch the moon, and all the joy, life, and wholeness that comes with it.

-THP

Fifty Percent Is Half the Battle

Actually, most of the time, when I FEEL like I'm fifty percent done with something, I'm actually not quite fifty percent done, so maybe it's more accurate to say, "Fifty percent is about two-fifths of the battle."

I'm referring to tasks.  Or, in this case, goals.  Six of them that I shared with readers of WPFF a few months ago, written out on actual e-paper.  These were those goals:

1.  Blog at least 2x a week.
2.  Finish landscaping and lawn-tending that needs to take place in the fall.
3.  Sort through the boxes of art that my children have created the last couple of years.
4.  Become social again, scheduling at least one lunch or coffee a week.
5.  Visit the girls' school at least 3x.
6.  Burn at least 3 DVD's of video from our computer so as to erase the data and free up disk space.

Since a list of goals isn't any good if you don't go back and see where you came up short, let's review:

1.  Blog at least 2x a week.
I was probably about 2x a week until the Christmas holidays blindsided me--they should totally put those things on a calendar or something so people know when they're coming.  I ended up taking about 4 weeks between posts, but it was the worst kind of time off--the kind that you don't give yourself until afterwords, so instead of relaxing about taking a break, you stress about not being more diligent until you're finally like, "I guess I took a break."  I think the goal was good, and I think 2 posts a week is reasonable for the foreseeable future.  I THINK I'm learning how to do this better, though who can know these things for sure?
Level of Completion: Close

2.  Finish landscaping and lawn-tending that needs to take place in the fall.
There's one bag of mulch that I keep hoping that I have already spread around our lone, backyard tree, then forgot that I did it.  Unfortunately, my lack of any memory of doing this task has proven to be completely accurate.  Still, each morning I look out the back window and hope.

Aside from that, fall landscaping was very successful-ish.  I did some mulching, some spreading of grass seed, some fertilizing, and some mowing-in-lieu-of-raking.  I even remembered to completely drain our rain barrel so that it wouldn't crack from freezing water inside.
Level of Completion: Very close

3.  Sort through the boxes of art that my children have created the last couple of years.
My daughters are more prolific artists than I am a writer--or really than I am anything.  I made it through quite a bit of their art, and I've got a "keeper pile".  But they keep making more.  I can't stop them.

What I have learned with this goal (and number 6) is that it's pretty hard for me to make time to do projects that take a little bit time each day, with the fruit of any given daily efforts being virtually negligible.  I don't think I'm special in that way.  I just need to redouble my efforts; or, what's it called after you've already redoubled your efforts once, then need to redouble them again?  Is that retripling?  Or is it exponential, so as to become requadrupling?
Level of Completion: Not very close.

4.  Become social again, scheduling at least one lunch or coffee a week.
It probably helped that I had initially thought I had written down TWO lunches a week, so I got off a pretty fast start.  Even though I slowed down a little, I still ended the semester having averaged even more than 1 meeting a week.  Mission accomplished: I am fully social.
Level of Completion: Full

5.  Visit the girls' school at least 3x.
I adjusted "what counted" with this one, and included chaperoning field trips as well as being "the heavy" at the girls' after-school Lego club.  Plus I had one full-fledged, sit-in-on-the-classroom visit.  All told, there were about 6 experiences of participation with the girls' school.
Level of Completion: Full

6.  Burn at least 3 DVD's of video from our computer so as to erase the data and free up disk space.
As with number 3 above, this "little at a time" task proved difficult to make time for.  A couple of funny things about this goal, though:
-I actually enjoy doing it
-I don't think it's going to take THAT much time
I did an hour's worth of editing today, and made a decent dent.  I think doing 3 hours a week could put me on course to finish within a month or two at most.  It would be VERY nice to have all of our video edited and cataloged.  I just need to make it happen.
Level of Completion: Not very close, but maybe closer than I think

So, this concludes the looking back segment of my fall, 2011 goals, and the results are mixed.  Maybe I came in at a little over 50%, which amounts to half the battle (since finishing the battle always takes a little more time than I think it will).  Good for a batting average, not so good for an ACT score.  In a week or so, I'll look forward again and lay out a new set of spring semester goals (which will include some rehashed fall semester goals as well as some new ones).

Thanks for reading.

-THP