Meanderings, 27 July 2024

Good morning from the gentle climes of Chicagoland where we have shifted from high temps and nasty storms to early mornings in the low 60s and rising into the mid to upper 70s. Yes, of course, we know: “wait til’ tomorrow.”

We will. While we wait, we keep our ears out for the hum of hummers.

Source

What a shot in the arm Kamala Harris has given to the Democrats, and it looks to this outsider that it will be a race to the end. A good image during the Summer Olympics in Paris. I just wish our TV made it easier for us to know which sport was on at what time.

(SMcK: my favorite is Track and Field.)

Yay!

Saxophonist Joey Berkley was living his dream: he was playing jazz in New York City. But about 20 years ago, he noticed his left hand wasn’t cooperating. It got worse and worse.

“As soon as I picked my horn up and touched - literally just touched my horn - my hands would twist into pretzel shapes,” Berkley recalled in a conversation with Morning Edition host A Martinez.

Berkley was experiencing focal dystonia, a movement disorder marked by involuntary muscle contractions.

He said he “muscled through it” as best he could. But that meant he wasn’t just pressing down on the keys of his sax – he was crushing them. “My fingers would literally be bleeding afterwards,” he said. “I had to quit playing.”

Joey Berkley learned of an experimental procedure at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, that involved placing an electrode directly into his brain.

The principal investigator of the study into the treatment of focal hand dystonia was Dr. Debra Ehrlich, a neurologist specializing in movement disorders.

“Even though it manifests in the muscles and looks like a posture of the hand, it's actually an abnormality in the brain that's causing that,” said Ehrlich. “And deep brain stimulation itself is actually using an implanted device. It consists of a battery that goes in the chest, and the battery is attached to wires. At the end of the wires are electrodes, and the tip of the electrode is put in a particular region of the brain.”

Despite how invasive and potentially dangerous that sounded, Joey Berkley said he had no second thoughts. “None at all. Music is all I've ever done. The feeling of not ever being able to play again was 100 times worse,” said Berkley.

Berkley had his surgery in March of 2021. After a lot of rehab, he regained enough control over his left hand to begin to record again. On July 26, 2024, he released a new suite he wrote about his experiences called A Suite Life. “I just wanted to write some songs when I got home that expressed what this whole journey has been like,” Berkley said.

The work is presented in three sections. The first – titled “Today After Tomorrow” – Berkley described as “my way of saying what the future looked like back then.”

The second section – “Wired” – is a frenetic piece inspired by the surgery itself. “I wrote that immediately after I got back,” he recalled.

The suite closes with “All Will Be Well,” which Berkley said was inspired by a poem that a chaplain gave him the night before his surgery. “That became a life preserver for me. I just kept repeating it over and over,” explained Berkley.

Yay again!

ONE DAY IN 1988, a woman approached the counter of a Wendy's fast food restaurant in South Milwaukee. "Here's your food," a tall man said, pushing a tray toward her. Puzzled, she peered up at the man, whom she recognized as an NBA player, then down at her food, then back at him. Later that week, the woman called into a local radio station.

As the woman spoke, Junior Bridgeman was driving to his downtown Milwaukee office.

"I just think it's a shame," Bridgeman recalled her saying.

"What are you talking about?" one of the hosts responded.

"I stopped at a Wendy's the other day," she continued, "and these NBA basketball players make all this money and, when their career is over, they still have to work at Wendy's."

Bridgeman looked at his car's speakers. "Oh my god," he told himself. He was the ex-player who had served her. She was talking about him.

Bridgeman, who played for the Milwaukee Bucks from 1975 to 1984, laughed. What the woman didn't know was that the recently retired Bridgeman wasn't merely working at that Wendy's location. The 6-foot-5 former wing owned it -- and others across the city.

But Bridgeman understood her point. Salaries for players then weren't that high by today's standards. In Bridgeman's 12-season career, which included a stint with the LA Clippers, he made about $2.95 million and never more than $350,000 in a season.

After his career, he built a fast-food empire that, at its peak, totaled more than 450 restaurants nationwide. He became a Coca-Cola bottling distributor with territory across three states and into Canada. He bought Ebony and Jet magazines. His estimated net worth soared to nearly $600 million, behind just Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and LeBron James, among NBA players.

But unlike those household names, Bridgeman was never an NBA star; his post-NBA fortune came without rich endorsement deals or the ability to cash in on global fame.

Readers and non-readers:

I take being a reader for granted; so do you, I suspect. Not reading seems like not breathing, though of the two I'm aware it ranks (a close) second. On the other hand, I know many non-readers, or, to be more specific, non-book readers: friends, family, casual acquaintances, etc. Most of them seem to get along in the world just fine, and have long been as puzzled by my bookish nature as I am by their booklessness. …

As a book reader and a writer who focuses on other bookish folk, I sometimes feel like I live under a kind of sci-fi dome-world, a global village in which we all, readers and non-readers alike, move among each other freely, yet the book reading villagers have this secret power. 

On the other hand, non-readers intrigue me. Maybe that's why as I read through a couple of recent reading studies, I was drawn to stats about the people who don't read and why they live that life.

Earlier this week, a new Reading Agency survey, The State of the Nation's Adult Reading, reported that half of U.K. adults do not regularly read and 15% have never read regularly for pleasure, while 35% used to read but have stopped. Attention is an issue overall, with 28% of U.K. adults saying they have difficulty focusing on reading for more than a few minutes.

Comparing this data with a study conducted in 2015, the Reading Agency's research found that these figures mark not just a notable decrease in the number of U.K. adults reading regularly, but also a stark increase in the number of non-readers. With only 50% of the nation now saying they read regularly, down from 58% in 2015, the decline has gathered momentum in recent years, with 15% of the nation now saying they do not currently read for pleasure and have never done so regularly. That's a rise of 88% since 2015, when just 8% of U.K. adults were non-readers." 

The research also indicates a potential for this trend to continue growing, with younger adults being less likely to read than all other age groups. One-quarter of young people across the U.K. (aged 16-24) say they've never been regular readers, while an additional 44% already identify as "lapsed readers." 

Lack of free time was often cited as a barrier, but non-readers said they haven't picked up a reading habit because they struggle with reading (13%), can't focus on it (49%), don't enjoy it (25%), or can't find things that interest them (16%), while 57% said they only read when they have to. …

In a 2017 Guardian piece headlined "This Christmas, don't give books to non-readers," David Barnett observed that living inside our readers' echo chamber "can lull a person into a false sense that the world is full of happy bibliophiles. And that perhaps makes it harder for us to understand why people don’t read books, and even mistrust them.

"Which is a very curious thing. Books expand our minds and give us a greater understanding of the world around us; yet, a lot of readers persist in looking down on those who don’t read. And there might be many, many reasons for why they don’t.... But some people just don’t need books."

Andrea Turpin:

This summer three theologically conservative Protestant denominations held their annual conventions. All three made news for their decisions regarding women. But the three have radically different polity, which is to say they govern themselves differently. I’m fascinated by how polity seems to affect deliberations on the role of women in the church, even among churches that share a similar belief in the veracity of the Bible.

All three denominations believe the Bible to be accurate according to what they understand to be a plain reading. And all three believe that the Bible teaches that some church roles are reserved for men. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, the statement of faith with which SBC member churches must be in substantial agreement, limits the role of “pastor” to men. The PCA limits the role of “elder” to men, and specifies that it entails both teaching elders (all pastors) and governing elders (the elder board). The ACNA limits the role of bishop to men.

But this summer, all three denominations faced attempts to push their stance on women in a more conservative direction. Their polity affected the outcome. Let me explain. …

Here’s how these different systems get fun when it comes to women’s roles in the church. A local Southern Baptist church can do whatever it wants. But it can get kicked out of the SBC if enough messengers decide its stance is not in substantial agreement with the SBC’s take on the issue. PCA churches have to toe the PCA line and there is accountability at every step of the hierarchy. ACNA churches have to keep in step with their diocesan bishop’s policies, but other bishops in the province can maintain different policies.

The extent to which women speak into denominational politics also differs by polity. SBC messengers and ACNA lay delegates are not ordained. They therefore consist of both women and men regardless of the churches’ stances on women’s ordination. The PCA by contrast is governed solely by elders at every level. Because the denomination does not ordain women, all denominational business is therefore conducted by men. …

All three denominations exhibited some nuance around the question of women’s roles in the church. But the grace and space around the question was larger in the Anglican and Baptist denominations than in the Presbyterian one. This fact suggests that when lay women have an official channel for speaking into the denomination, their perspectives change the perspective of the denomination as a whole. By contrast, when there is no official channel for lay women to voice their experiences, denominations seem more likely to double down on restricting them.

The story of the Story. I hope you Subscribe to Tommy’s Substack.

John wants the seven churches to hear the story of the gospel of Jesus again, but this time through the story of the Woman and the Dragon. He wants to remind them of the gospel story that they are a part of. They are suffering at the moment, but these are the labor pains of the world that God is birthing through his people as they follow his Spirit. The dragons of Babylon will try to kill the baby in the cradle and attempt to put a stop to God’s new work, as Pharaoh did to Moses and Herod did to Jesus. References to floods, serpents, and the wilderness remind them of all of the ways the enemy has tried to thwart God’s work. But this time, the dragon does not succeed.

Revelation 12:13-17
When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

For me, the important thing to see in Revelation 12 is that John always brings them back to the story of Jesus as their source of strength and hope. The Gospel writers didn’t give us a book of rules to obey, they gave us a story.

It is the story of Jesus.

When the story is told, it changes people. Something happens in the heart of the person who hears it. Some seed is planted and begins to grow. The story is powerful because it doesn’t belong to any one person or group; it belongs to everyone. There is no elite version of it; it meets all of us right where we are. It shows us things that we all know to be true and invites us beyond a self-serving life.

The story of Jesus gives hope to the poor, comfort to the miserable, humility to the powerful, and encouragement to those seeking goodness in the world.

It is a story to tell and a story to hear. Telling the story is the most important work in God's plan because it lays before us all of life — both human depravity and human flourishing — and shows us the path to the Kingdom that God has for us. It is the story of the body of Christ, broken and poured out in an act of love for the world. In this way, salvation, resurrection, and eternal life are given.