Meanderings, 8 October 2022
Good morning! Fall is here because the MLB playoffs have begun. Go Guardians! But even more, the colors are glowing.
Photo by olena ivanova on Unsplash
Sleep-centric hotels and tourism:
(CNN) — Going on a vacation might seem like a rather unconventional way to try to improve your sleep habits.
But sleep tourism has been growing in popularity for a number of years, with an increasing amount of sleep-focused stays popping up in hotels and resorts across the world.
Interest has skyrocketed since the pandemic, with a number of high profile establishments focusing their attention on those suffering from sleep-deprivation.
Over the past 12 months, Park Hyatt New York has opened the Bryte Restorative Sleep Suite, a 900-square-foot suite filled with sleep-enhancing amenities, while Rosewood Hotels & Resorts recently launched a collection of retreats called the Alchemy of Sleep, which are designed to "promote rest."
Zedwell, London's first sleep-centric hotel, which features rooms equipped with innovative soundproofing, opened in early 2020, and Swedish bed manufacturer Hastens established the world's first Hästens Sleep Spa Hotel, a 15-room boutique hotel, in the Portuguese city of Coimbra a year later.
A team of medical specialists from the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstruction Surgery made a pact to make a difference overseas. Now, the team has just returned from a medical mission in Ukraine, where they were treating soldiers and civilians who have had facial injuries as a result of war.
Dr. Manoj Abraham, the facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon who serves as the chair of Face-to-Face, joined “Morning in America” to discuss the team’s mission and work in Ukraine.
“In Ukraine, there are so many patients who are injured from the conflict. And we really felt that this was an opportunity where we share expertise and help these patients, you know, with devastating facial injuries,” Abraham said.
He explained that many injuries were the result of shrapnel, bullet wounds, burns and atrocities committed in the war. Their skill set was able to bring complex reconstructive techniques to Ukraine.
“The patients there have incredible courage. You know, they want to return to the war effort. And so being able to put them back together so that they can help, you know, again, fight for their country, was incredibly gratifying,” Abraham said. “A lot of the stories are heartbreaking. A woman was shot through the face trying to help her son when they were stopped by Russian soldiers, and so being able to reconstruct her jaw, for instance, was incredibly gratifying.”
I can’t help but think that Judith Bennett’s words in her A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader and the World of English Peasants Before the Plague might be a good place to leave this post today (for those of you interested in medieval history, it is a great staring place). She writes that Cecilia Penifader, a successfully single woman who lived on a medieval English manor in the early fourteenth-century, was “born into a world where daughters were less valued than sons. She supported herself in an economy where women earned lower wages than men, got less training for skilled work, and received smaller endowments from their parents. She cooperated within a community that proscribed her from participating in its tithings, its pledging networks, and its offices. She relied on a social network that was smaller, narrower, and more focused on nearby neighbors and kin than those of many men. As the daughter of well-off parents, Cecilia forged a prosperous and comfortable life for herself, but she was, all things considered, an exceptionally lucky woman.”
Cecilia Penifader flourished in a patriarchal world just as evangelical women flourish in complementarian spaces. But the fact that they are flourishing doesn’t mean that patriarchy, complementarianism is good for women.
It just means that they might, “all things considered,” be lucky.
BABCOCK RANCH, Fla. — Like many others in Southwest Florida, Mark Wilkerson seemingly gambled his life by choosing to shelter at home rather than evacuate when Hurricane Ian crashed ashore last week as a Category 4 storm.
But it wasn't just luck that saved Wilkerson and his wife, Rhonda, or prevented damage to their well-appointed one-story house. You might say that it was all by design.
In 2018, Wilkerson became one of the first 100 residents of Babcock Ranch — an innovative community north of Fort Myers where homes are built to withstand the worst that Mother Nature can throw at them without being flooded out or losing electricity, water or the internet.
The community is located 30 miles inland to avoid coastal storm surges. Power lines to homes are all run underground, where they are shielded from high winds. Giant retaining ponds surround the development to protect houses from flooding. As a backup, streets are designed to absorb floodwaters and spare the houses. …
Wilkerson has worked in the solar industry since the 1980s, and one of the things that drew him to Babcock Ranch is its innovative use of solar energy: 870 acres of land owned by the development sport 650,000 photovoltaic panels, operated by Florida Power & Light.
The solar array powers the whole community — and then some. It can supply 30,000 homes. Babcock Ranch has only about 5,000 residents, though. The excess goes back into the grid and is used to power surrounding communities. At night and on cloudy days, a natural gas generator kicks in to fill the gap.
Politics and eschatology, all over again:
If you peruse the list of recent releases in Christian publishing, you’ll get the sense that “the end times” are upon us. This summer saw the release of survival guides, books about current events, and prayer manuals all oriented around a rapture, a second coming of Christ, or an otherwise cataclysmic event at the hands of God. …
According to Publishers Weekly, this spate of end-times books is being printed to meet demand. It’s what the readers want. (At least some of them; editors at the imprint Harvest Prophecy, which was founded last year, told Publishers Weekly they had seen “a strong surge of interest because there is so much happening in today’s world that parallels End-Times signs given in the Bible.”)
There’s no denying that the apocalypse is currently having a moment, culturally and politically. It could be driven partly by the pandemic and fears of climate change. Those are actual, frightening apocalyptic scourges. Russia’s war has also set off alarm bells for certain evangelicals, as there was a Cold War tradition of identifying the country, variably, with Gog or Magog.
But it seems an odd time for doomsday fervor, given the ascendancy of the religious right in American politics and the current makeup of the Supreme Court. Why, at this moment, when the Christian right should be feeling more empowered, would the end of the world be so trendy? …
“The reason it’s happening is the totalitarianism in the United States,” [Tommy Ice] said of the rising interest in end times. “It’s because of the seemingly overnight decline of America, from our perspective. It’s a huge shift, the stealing of an election. When has that ever happened in the United States?”
SMcK: two myths do not history make.
Russell Moore on liberation theology, Malcolm Foley on Russell Moore:
That conditioning was profoundly unfortunate, but most damningly, it was ethically constricting. To see this, one must understand what the phrase, “Christian nationalism is a liberation theology for white people” means in the context of Moore’s talk. First, Moore is saying that it is a Christian heresy. Second, he is saying that Christian nationalism is “political” in a way that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not. Third, he is saying that liberation theology is not for white people. Contrary to each of these points, I maintain that liberation theology is political in precisely the way that the Gospel of Christ is and that as such, Black and Latin American liberation theologies are actually liberation theology for white people too. The good news of Christ’s solidarity with the oppressed is good news for all…except the oppressor.