bierkergaard

Until I was well into my 30's, did I learn to start to cook. Until then, in my adult life, I had pretty much subsisted on oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the school lunch where I work, and spaghetti, with the occasional eggs over the weekend. I took the obligatory vitamin to cover the bases. Oh yeah, I could make toast also. In preparation for Y2K, I had stocked-piled about 30 canisters of oats, which to my credit, I ate every last bite of, several years past the expiration dates. The Indians saved our bacon regarding Y2K. We were closer to a meltdown than we thought. They still knew the older programming coding and were willing  to work cheap. A transatlantic cable allowing a lot of data to flow between our two countries had been connected a couple of years before. A close call. With the oatmeal, I envisioned myself as some neighborhood Joseph, parceling out the grains to emaciated and grateful neighbors, me becoming mayor of Columbia or something in the end. ...

When I worked with urban youth almost three decades ago, there was a retaliatory retort that the kids used to warn others of impending escalation if the offending party didn't back off: "Get Out Of My Grill."   Translation: Get out of my face...I suppose it comes from getting too close to a car's chassis or something automotive or it could be dental as in teeth (grill is the teeth, particularly if the teeth are adorned with shiny metallic materials). Rappers sometimes have a mouth of precious metals on their front teeth. YEAH, BOY! The last week's tumult arising out of the Charlottesville, Virginia marches by neo-Nazis, Fascist, Confederate lovers to one degree or another, and the counter-protesters, were up in the nation's grill. Social Media sparked outrage on all sides. I have continued to Unfollow people this week. I don't have time to deal with apologists for the Southern Rebellion. Also, if there is one group that is easy to disdain openly, outs...

A few days, I had to take the unusual step of "Unfriending" someone on Facebook. I typically just "Unfollow" someone if their posts become inane, rude, or mildly offensive. Or boundary-crossing, where a person has a proclivity of posting an issue that they have with another person they know in real life repetitively online. I typically let the person know that their posts are making me uncomfortable because it starts to seem like they want people to make a choice and render a decision about innocence and guilt, with them being the offended party. Maybe they are, maybe they are not. Maybe it is too complicated to post on FB  and profoundly unhelpful. Most, not all such conflict, is truly black and white, right vs. wrong. We are all-biased in our favor. It can also be when  a person is overly smarmy about another person and uses FB to communicate the message in a public forum. Save that for non-public communication * i.e. husband  to wife, wife to husband, pa...

About two weeks ago I was feeling the itch to travel. Literally and figuratively. I have written previously about my summer body-itch issue, triggered by the hot and humid Pennsylvania summers. I hate it. It is enough for me to consider moving North after I retire. Up in elevation, where the days are just cooler and less humid. So, I knew I had to vacate Molumbia. When I contemplated my options for travel I considered going to Colorado to hang out with a friend and his fam (scheduling just didn't correspond), Copenhagen (home of Soren Kierkegaard), or Maine (go back again, but further up to Acadia). I was starting to get paralyzed by all of the options. Then, a conversation that I had with my Dad months ago came back to me. The Adirondacks in New York State! My Dad had mentioned that there is a lodge--actually Loj, which is some phonetic spelling instituted by a Dr. Dewey, that is nestled in the mountains. Dr. Dewey might be the same dude who came up with the Dewey Decimal Sys...

Within the last week or two, I have been on the receiving end of some very gracious gifts. A couple of canisters of homemade and well-executed kimchi, a bottle of home-brewed mead, two bags of Costa Rican coffee, and a very kind postcard from a friend who shares my eclectic insider-outsider take on Christianity. Mead and Kimchi are in the pic (I added some pan-fried sausage). For those not raised in the Church, just so you who know who were born and bred into the evangelical culture, we always feel like outsiders in some way even though we may have been years on the inside. That divide is pretty deep in the Church and not a whole lot of people talk and write about it. Maybe analogous to the Jew-Gentile divide in the early Church. Whaddya mean I can't eat lobstah? If I am not mistaken, there is only one verse said by Jesus in the New Testament while he walked and talked in the body not spoken in the telling of the Gospel but then told later (outside of Revelation which is a ...

I have a running gag with some friends that when they pass by my domain in Molumbia (the name for my postage-stamp parcel of land) that they have to get permission to fly through the air space so to speak, so I don't send my Russian Mig jets to intercept interlopers, friend or foe.  I got 'em cheap on Craigslist. Thus, yesterday I received such a call. I am thinking about granting seasonal passes so I don't have to approve each request. But, it would be wise to review peoples' status quarterly to ensure that they are still worthy of such approval. My good friend was riding his bike to the river  in the afternoon and made such a request which I benevolently approved. It is a hard and hefty ride from the city of Lancaster where he was riding from. I decided to escort him through the air space of Molumbia and beyond. We agreed to meet in Mountville (the pet name of Molumia is a mash-up of Mountville and Columbia). After two hard weeks of working on students' sched...

I am getting to the blog early Sunday due to plans of kayaking this afternoon which will then probably transition to supper and beers. And then, no desire to blog at 8:00 PM when I get home and have to get up at 5:00 tomorrow morning. I know myself and how I think. I try not to delay that which can be done now rather than later, unless it is a Sabbath rest issue where it is not essential to work or purchase something today. Do hard things first, though writing this blog is not really a hard thing. If I were dependent on my writing to pay the bills, I think my fingers would hit to keyboard like hammers. The pressure would weigh on me. Maybe it would be good. The pressure, like an espresso pull, would extract a higher level of talent. Right now, I write for fun and the enjoyment of my world-wide audience. Speaking of espresso, last night a buddy who also enjoys the finer things of life went to Cafe Bruges in Carlisle, a mid-state college town sans college students right now becaus...