31 Oct 03 -- It's appropriate to the season to tell you what I'm about to tell you, but allow me to edge this disclaimer in first -- as a follower of Christ I cannot and do not glorify, exalt or otherwise condone the pagan practices that form the basis for Halloween.  Evil exists in this world, we all know that.  The Christian perspective on evil is that its origin can be traced back to Lucifer, the fallen angel.  Lucifer, Satan, Evil...synonymous.  We struggle against a very real, very dangerous foe.
    That said, here's a personal experience shared by myself and five others.  You can call it a ghost story if you like.  It's late Spring, 1978.  I'm on the instructor staff at NTA, a Marine Corp jungle training reserve on the extreme northern end of Okinawa.  My six-man team is teaching a visiting Line Company (grunts) some of the finer points of night ambush techniques, and our exercise for the evening involves heading out into the bush to lay an ambush for a platoon on night march.  These exercises are fairly well-scripted.  We tell the platoon commander the general area where we'll be, give him the route to follow, then head out a few hours in advance of their movement to set up the surprise.  It's a good way to test and strengthen their unit cohesiveness.
    So we follow the script, dig in to one of our favorite ambush sites, set up the flash-bangs, and wait.  Somewhere around 2 a.m. we hear them coming.  We comment softly to ourselves about their noise discipline, or lack thereof, and wait expectantly for their point man to trip the first flare, which will be our signal to open the attack.  They draw closer, still noisy, canteens and cartridge belts rattling, limbs breaking, underbrush sounds of feet in the jungle.  Closer...closer...we're tense....they're almost there...then they freeze.  Dead quiet.  We think they've "made" us somehow, so we wait.  We keep waiting.  We wait nearly thirty minutes, not once hearing a sound out of them, almost impossible for 50 men.  We're thinking they've managed to quietly slip out and around us -- quite a feather in their cap if they pull it off.  At any rate, the ambush is a bust, so we radio the platoon commander to tell him to bring them home.
    He's peeved and wants to know why we didn't hit them.  After a bit of back-and-forth on this, we finally ask his location.  His coordinates put him nearly two thousand yards to our east.  It turns out he had taken the wrong route and never came anywhere near our position.  Whatever it was we heard coming up the trail toward us was definitely not his platoon.  One thing we all agreed on was that we heard troops on the march, at least platoon strength, approach our position then stop in place.  Freaky, but true.

27 Oct 03 -- I'm not sure why exactly, but I need to tell you about Bubba.  Maybe it's because he's getting on in years and I've been contemplating his mortality lately.  It wouldn't be right to call Bubba a dog, even though technically he is a dog, but dogs of the South who live out their natural heritage are usually elevated to a more fitting title.  Bubba, then, is a Dawg.  (If you don't understand the distinction, I'm sorry.  Perhaps you'll meet one someday and see the light.)  Bubba adopted us on Thanksgiving Day, 2000.   We had lived here barely a month and were celebrating the holiday with my in-laws who obligingly supplied the ham.   Bubba apparently has a finely tuned hambone detector somewhere between his ears, and judging by his behavior this day it was pegging out in the red zone.   He sat on the hill above our dining room and watched us through the window as we ate.  Just watched, that's all.  Of course, I gave him the hambone.  Of course, he's been with us ever since.  We learned later that he had been abandoned by some neighbors who up and left him to fend for himself.  He's a Chocolate Lab.  I've never attempted to pick up both ends of him at once, but I'd guess he weighs in at about 140 lbs.  I'm 5'11", and I don't have to bend over to pat the top of his head.  He's a big Dawg.  Sadly, he suffers from hip dysplasia, and it's gradually slowing him down.  We give him aspirin, walk him around the yard, and love on him all we can to make his final years happy.  Being the Dawg he is, I think he understands the issues.  I saw it in his eyes one Christmas when my wife's grandmother came to visit.   Bubba greeted her loudly, with his big, booming, howdy-do bark.  When one of my other dogs came running up to investigate the commotion, Bubba positioned himself squarely between the other dog and the grandmother to protect her from harm.  It was the first time he'd ever met her, but he instinctively became her guardian.  He got a hambone that day too.  

 It was a sad thing to watch.  I have to admit obtaining a certain sense of fulfillment as I "empowered myself" to turn the TV off. 

25 Oct 03 -- Nineteen years ago this month, my wife and I were married in the First Baptist Church of Trussville, just outside of Birmingham, Alabama.  Our honeymoon trip was a meandering, discovery-filled journey along the back roads of the Southern Appalachians, from Northeastern Alabama all the way up into the Shenandoah mountains.  The close of our first day on the road found us in Dahlonega, Georgia, a gold rush town whose history began in the early 1800's.  It was the first place anyone called us "Mr. and Mrs. Smith".  Nineteen years and a whole lot of water have passed under the bridge since then, but we're still Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and today we took our kids back to that town.  It really hasn't changed much.  There may be a few more shops along the square, and I guess the traffic is heavier, but it's basically the same little town.  The Smith House Restaurant, where we ate our first meal as a married couple, is still in the Gather-Round-the-Table-and-Eat-Till-You-Pop business and appears to be doing well.  The panning for gold exhibit (a guaranteed fleck in every scoop) is still scooping in the hopeful.  The fudge shop on the corner and the store with a million candles sporting a million aromas were drawing in the crowds.  The town leadership has done a good job of keeping things simple in Dahlonega, and folks show their appreciation by driving in from all over to spend time and money there.  If you're ever in the area, anywhere from Chattanooga down to Atlanta and over to Spartanburg, you should make it point to drop in and visit.  It's especially nice this time of year when the leaves are changing and the temperatures are cool.   If you eat supper at The Smith House, tell them I said hello, then watch for the puzzled looks on their faces.

18 Oct 03 -- Those Tigers from Ringgold did it again Friday night, with a 28-14 victory over our traditional rivals, the Lakeview/Fort Oglethorpe Warriors.  I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again...I'm really starting to get into this Friday night football fever thing.   There was a HUGE crowd out at LFO's stadium tonight.  Everybody behaved themselves, no fights or whatnot that I'm aware of.  The weather was perfect. Everybody had a a good time, especially on the visitor's side of the stadium.  Tonight's win puts us at six and one, which is way better than where we were last year this time.  We're starting to think in terms of state playoffs!  Our congratulations to the new coaching staff and those students on the field who played their hearts out tonight.  Yo, Tigers, go!

5 Oct 03 -- I'm not a math kind of guy, but I like some of it. Algebraic equations, for instance, are kind of neat. Take this one, from the scribble pad of Aristotle:

     If exists ( A )
       And
   If exists ( B )
       Then
   ( C ) must equal ( A ) + ( B )

That makes sense, in an ancient Greek sort of way.  I learned something new about this recently, however. That formula is the basis for something called the "Hegelian Dialectic", which is a process used today to bring about change.  Okay, it's a mouthful. Let me break it down with an example.

Suppose you have a small group of people in a town who don't like the fact that they can't sit down and drink a glass of beer inside the city limits.  Now, the townspeople have talked about this before, and each time, the majority says, "Nope, we don't want alcohol served in our town.  Case closed." 

Frustrated by their failed efforts to win the majority non-beer-drinking population over to their side, the beer drinkers decide to try another approach. They cleverly point out certain "truths", among them is the revelation that tax revenues are sinking due to fewer shoppers in the downtown area. So they form a committee to study the problem. The committee huddles awhile then comes back with a recommendation.  "We need to raise taxes," they say.

Of course, other concerned citizens react to that and form another committee.  This leads to another recommendation.  "We can get along just fine without a tax increase," they say.

So now we've got two points of view.  Call them point A and point B. It's obviously a crisis, so yet another committee forms to "solve the tax revenue problem." 

That committee brings back a recommendation, which we'll call point C. They say, "We've talked this over and reached a consensus.  We can avoid raising taxes by introducing new business into the downtown area. We recommend a vote to allow the Saturday-only sale of beer in the village square. It's a win/win situation."  Everybody claps and goes home.  The first mug of beer is poured six months later with much fanfare.  Life in the small town goes on, and almost everybody's happy.

That's the Hegelian Dialectic at work. Identify something you want to change. Generate a crisis around it. Dialog your way into compromise. Enact the change. If you don't get everything you want the first time around, be patient. You can repeat the process again and again until you finally reach the desired outcome.

I wonder if Aristotle had this in mind?