I stopped at Watters on my way home today...
A very helpful young lady at Watters Garden Center in Prescott by the name of Ella helped me pick the first of several planting projects for this spring. Living at 6,200 feet in Groom Creek I need plants suited to Zone 6 or 7 that are also willing to live in the shadows of my Ponderosa pines. Being a member of the Groom Creek Water Users Association I need plants that once established will not need much water in order to thrive.
My property is surrounded by a chain link fence. I like having the fence I suppose, but I don't like looking at the fence. Solution! Trumpet Vine, Campus tagliabuana "Madame Galen." I'm told it will grow like a weed once it takes root and cover the fence between my house and the road with green leaves and orange-red blooms.
To the east of the property is a four way stop. Solution! I'll plant "Gold Spot Euonymus" Euonymus japonicas 'Aureovaiegatus' (five to ten feet tall and three to six feet wide) along the inside of the fence to form a hedge that will afford me some privacy and keep the headlights from shining into my bedroom window at night. In the middle ground I'm going to plant Pipa's Red Chinese Fringe Flower, Loropetalum chinense "Pipa's Red" (five feet tall). I've yet to select the planting for the foreground but Ella has given me some nice ideas.
The gentle slope to the west of the house will have to wait for now.
Son Erik is coming home this weekend so we should get everything in its proper place by Sunday afternoon...
Yes, I know, a Volvo S70 isn't much of a gardening vehicle. I'm working on that too...
Our very own F-104N...
Folks who don't work with me here at Embry-Riddle - Prescott may not know we have our very own F-104N on static display. Specially rebuilt to serve as NASA chase planes, only three were so typed. One them was lost in the midair collision that also destroyed an XB-70 Valkyrie 8 June 1966. The other is on display at the Lockheed-Martin "Skunkworks" in Palmdale, California. Neil Armstrong flew ours.
What did he see out there in the desert for 40 days?
Hadn't heard of this 2015 film until just now, but "Last Days in the Desert" by Rodrigo Garcia looks like a winner. His participation in S**r W**s I-III notwithstanding, I've always admired Ewan McGregor as an actor. His dual role in this meditation on the story of John the Baptist's most successful follower should be at least as intriguing as my favorite gospel, Martin Scorsese's 1988 interpretation of Nikos Kazantzakis' 1953 novel, "The Last Temptation of Christ".
The stories of the life and death of the man, Yeshua from Nazareth, contain many mythic elements and myths need to be unpacked in order to understand what the storytellers were trying to convey.
UPDATE: There's a premier event Thursday, May 12, in Phoenix. I plan to attend so I purchased my ticket online. I don't Facebook much, but for those who do, here's that link.
UPDATE 2: Son Erik is going to join me for the movie and dinner afterwards...
UPDATE 3: "Last Days in the Desert" was quite good, every bit as much as I'd hoped. It will probably be too nuanced for the literalist crowd but that's to be expected, unfortunately.
Not sure what the Deconstructionists are about...
...but their enthusiasm is infectious.
The Deconstructionists Podcast is hosted by John Williamson and Adam Narloch, who appear to be sincere seeker who just may be hobbled by their presupposition that the form of Christianity they profess is self-evidentially true. Still, their giggling, "Yeah, man!" and "Oh, wow!" exclamations are so true I can't not listen.
I've asked them - but have yet to hear their reply - the following questions...
Still working through what you mean by deconstructionism. I do wonder a little if everything is on the table as you deconstruct your religiosity. Your method - post modernism, maybe? - seems to allow a certain credulity when it comes to what moves you. You referred to John 7:53-8:11, the story of The Woman Taken In Adultery as though it features Jesus' own words. It's one of my favorite bible stories too but it was not in the original manuscripts and is first found in the form we recognize in Codex Bezae (~400-500 CE) and is widely accepted to be an interpolation. Further, the discussion of Dr. Masuru Emoto was enthusiastically accepted at face value, when his work is widely regarded as pseudoscience derived from poor technique. [See] https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4433 I so hope your definition of deconstructionism means more than simply discarding ideas you don't like and keeping your favorites. I'm not a Christian but I have no interest in being an angry atheist either. Ironically, I've been studying the history of religion, the science of mystical experience, and the nature of the religious impulse for some time now. There are those, myself among them, who found no there there when they took it all apart.
And...
Unless and until you face the possibility that some of the story didn't happen at all, or at least not in the way traditionally expressed, have you honestly dug deeply enough? If you are genuinely serious about your deconstruction/reconstruction project read everything L. Michael White, , Elaine Pagels, Candida Moss, Paula Fredriksen, Pamela Eisenbaum, Bart Ehrman, A.N. Wilson, [and] Reza Aslan have written. If you don't have time for all that at least read Ehrman's "Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium," "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament," and "How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee." You may scream and chuck these books across the room but at least you'll have stuck your hand into "The Box."
Not quite sure these young fellas can escape the core presuppositions but I'm going to listen all the way through. They are worth a try.
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