The Trials of Ted Haggard

For the first couple of months since we've been back, we were given free HBO as part of our dish package. Now it's costing us, so it's time to cut those channels! However, I'm glad I hadn't done that yet, because I was able to DVR a documentary called "The Trials of Ted Haggard." As HBO's website describes it:

"Once upon a time, Ted Haggard had it all: prosperity, a doting wife, five kids and a ministry that reached 30 million followerthe evalution of halloween in americas. The larger-than-life founder and pastor of Colorado's New Life Church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Haggard was one of the most formidable forces in America's Christian evangelical movement. But in 2006, it all fell apart. Pastor Ted admitted to "sexual immorality" and buying methamphetamines from a male prostitute, which abruptly ended his career, sendtravel around mexico on halloween and join the paradeing him and his family into free-fall. The bombshell not only rocked the ministry, but everyone who knew him - especially his wife and five children.

A film by Alexandra Pelosi (HBO's Emmy®-winning "Journeys with George"), THE TRIALS OF TED HAGGARD takes an intimate look at the life and hard times of the ex-minister. "

If the name Pelosi seems familiar, it is: her mother is Nancy Pelosi - speaker of the House.

Anyway, watching this documentary was hard. I grew up in Colorado, just 30 minutes north of where Ted Haggard's former church is in Colorado Springs. I had obviously heard about all the things that happened with Haggard's ministry and had tried to keep up with the story as much as possible, but since moving back to Ohio I hadn't heard much. There were many things about The Trials Of Ted Haggard that made me sad.

First, I feel sad that a man of God has done what he has done. I'm not here to debate homosexuality or drug use or any of that - yet a Christian leader (rightfully so) is held to a higher standard and the phrase "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" is definitely true in church circles.

Second, I feel sad that Christian leaders are isolated and alone in so many ways, and when they do struggle with something, they feel like they can't share it or reveal it out in the open because they will get crucified for doing so. It's like we have such high expectations of our leaders, forgetting that they're human, and because we put them on a pedestal, there is absolutely no room for failure. Several times Haggard in the documentary talked about how he felt so trapped because he knew he had a problem, but because he was a pastor of a church of 14,000 people and because he represented 30 million Christians as the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, he couldn't get out from under the pressure.

Third, I feel sad at how he and his family were treated. They had to leave their church - understandable I guess - but also had to leave the state of Colorado. I don't understand that part. He tried to get another job but couldn't find one. Here's a man who led thousands of people and I'm sure led a huge staff, but couldn't get any kind of regular job. I think the documentary said at the end that he was sellannual north halsted halloween parade in chicagoing life insurance now. Thankfully, he was allowed to move back to Colorado. But still - I grieve that this man who has influenced so many lives is now friendless.

Please understand that I am in no way condoning anything that made Ted Haggard fall. However, I just think that no matter what we have done, whether we are a church leader or we are a church janitor or we are a church attender - we should be treated with dignity, respect, forgiveness and love. You could see the pain on his face when he talked about the way people treated him after the scandal, and how low he and his family felt. I hope that true restoration can take place in his life, and in the rest of his family's lives - and that people can forgive and move on.

Helping others help themselves

My Uncle Chuck has spent most of his life so far working for the steel companies in Detroit. When they started to fall on hard times 5 or so years ago, hechose to retire and begin working for PIME Missionary in Detroit. He has gone to India a couple of times, visiting the poor and the sick through mission activities.He has also helped to set up the Mission Store. Following is an article he wrote to help share the story of the Mission Store and the people behind it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Mission Store continues to explore opportunities for our sponsors to help the people help themselves. Fr. Franco Cagnasso tells ugetting married on halloween and to be another corpse couples of an ambitious group of young ladies from one of our missions in Bangladesh who have handcrafted some of the beautiful jewelry that has been marketed and sold through the Mission Store.


And the leader of this enterprise? Martha...a young woman of about 30 with two beautiful children - an 8 year old girl and 5 year old boy. And a cruel drunkard husband who is in jail.

Fr. Franco shares this story about Martha...

Some time back, Martha appeared at one of the PIME houses in Dhaka. Weak and pale with a high fever, and bleeding from a kidney operation that she had the previous day. The Sisters of Mother Teresa were contacted to address her needs. Having received the care that she needed, she left the Sisters only to return a few weeks later to say "thank you" and to offer some of her handicrafts in gratitude.

Born in the south of Bangladesh to a poor running through corn mazes lost and scared on halloweenlandless family, she came to Dhaka as a child with her parents and three sisters looking for a better life. Her father used to pull a rickshaw, work that killed him in a few years. Her mother collected wastepaper from door to door in an effort to make some kind of living, and the children helped by rummaging here and there along the streets. Martha and her sisters were fortunate to have learned a little bit of reading and writing that would help them along the way.

When her mother died, Martha took the lead, struggling like a tiger for her life and for her sisters, by doing any kind of work. One such job included housekeeping for a British famithe tradition of wearing costumes on halloweenly, where she picked up sufficient English to make herself understood. She read old fashion magazines, providing her with design ideas for handicrafts.

Martha lives with her two children, her younger sister Purnima (meaning 'full moon') and a colorful little group of girls whom she accepts in her small house when they get into trouble for any reason. She teaches them how to use a sewing machine, how to create Christmas decorations, to clean a modern house, to make rosaries and necklaces, and to print cloth for saris.

"With me," she says, "they often starve, but we starve together. I do not exploit them. They learn how to make a living...and they feel accepted."

Martha has a strong. simple faith. "I am a sinner," she says. "I tell lies... But only to survive."

She says that Pope John Paul II smiled at her in a dream. She keeps a photo of him in her house and feels protected by his prayer.

Martha and the girls continue their struggle. They put on the only sari they have or their best "punjabi" and go to sell their products in the rich areas of town, knocking at the doors of clubs, schools, fairs and exhibitions, convents and parishes. They keep cleaning houses, washing clothes, and occasionally being babysitters and cooks. From time to time, Martha is called to teach school children how to decorate their classroom or to prepare gifts for their parents. They starve when there is no money; they feast when they earn some.

PIME World magazine has supported the efforts of these ladies by offering some of their handicrafts in the October 2006 issue and again in this issue. Life is still difficult, but Martha and the girls are more confident and they boast: "We sell our jewels even in America!"

Help us help these hard working ladies help themselves through your support.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can help Martha and other women like her by purchasing handcrafted, fair-trade gifts through the PIME Mission Store Online. They have a nice selection of handmade jewelry, as well as handpainted Christmas cards. All of the proceeds benefit the crafters and PIME Missionaries.

Megan Slankard. Interview. Review.

Megan Slankard | 2009 | Interview |

Megan Slankard is one of my favourite singer/songwriters with a stunningly crystalline vocal delivery and sensitive lyrics. David Knopfler said [Megan has] “Voice and songs to die for – the best thing behind a guitar you’ll see or hear this year.”

I managed to steal some of Megan’s time and also get her very generous permission to share some MP3’s and videos with you- I think you’ll see why we love Megan’s music so much!

TT- Thanks for taking the time to speak to us! I understand you’ve been playing and writing for some time now - your first CD was produced when you were 18 right, how was that experience for you??

MS- Hey Terence! Well, thanks for having me. Much appreciated! Yes, I’ve been playing and writing since I was about 10 years old. I started recording for fun when I was 16, using Digital Performer on my dad’s Mac. Fun stuff, but I wasn’t very good at it at first, that’s for sure. At one point, in the middle of a night of recording carried away, the computer just turned off, “bling.”

Just like that, everything was gone, every session, every song. It had all evaporated into the ether. Of course my parents were awakened by my cries of dismay, pounding on their door, 4:00 am, and dad came out and fixed everything.

It was a great learning experience; and I learned as I went along. By the time I decided it was going to be an album, I had figured most of the program out. I bought a decent large diaphram CAD mic from someone who got it from someone else from eBay, and away I went. It’s definitely not perfect, but I’m still proud of myself for figuring it out!

TT- And now you’re in a studio?

MS- Yes, now my band is in the studio working on our new full length record. We recorded all of the basics live at Hyde Street, Studio A in San Francisco and are continuing to do overdubs and vocals in a cool little metal workshop in Oakland, CA. We’re near completion and plan to release after the holidays in the New Year.

TT- Could you let us in on your writing style and habits? Do they start as melodies or as chords first??

LC- I usually try to allow myself a few hours a day to just sit down and try to be creative. After all, this is a big part of my job, and if I boiled it all down, the first thing that matters to my career. First thing, because without the songs, what can I do? Since I am a morning person, the first thing I do when I wake up is work on all of the business stuff that I’ve let build up the day before. Make myself a good cup of tea and get to work.

I try to work a few hours before noon when I like to stop and pick up my guitar. I don’t try to force out songs if they’re not happening, but had a good bit of advice from a musical mentor who said, “Don’t deny them.” The worst thing I could do is get distracted because I think the idea is “stupid” and stop a “bad” song from turning into a potentially great song. Still, it’s easy to get frustrated, distracted, or even bored if the ideas don’t come at all.

My muse tends to be a flighty little fellow, always dashing about, hiding under everyday dilemmas and distractions. So, as Derek Sivers (of CD Baby fame) said once at a seminar, “You have to meet inspiration half way.” I go and inspire myself. I read, or write freely without form, just whatever pops into my head. Sometimes I draw or take a wtop amazing halloween dog costumes in 2008alk…

When I am feeling inspired to sit down and whomemade cow halloween costumesrite, I go at it. Pencil and paper, or lap top. I usually record speedy scratch ideas and melodies onto my ipod with the extremely handy Belkin Tunetalk and when I’m on the road, sometimes into my cell phone voice mail. Words and music seem to come together. I may start with a “catchy phrase” or a little guitar lick, but they 10 halloween costumes in 2008end up relying a lot on each other to build a solid structure to the songs.

When lyrics or melody come separately, I have a much harder time matching up the other. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the Beatles had so much success: two songwriters (incredible songwriters, might I add,) who could help each other out and build on ideas.

Video Feature

Give Life- Megan Slankard Live

TT- So do you have a set timing you tend to write to?

LC- I don’t really stick to any particular time signature. Whatever comes out I guess. 4/4 usually. 3/4, 6/8, 5/4, and 7/8 also make appearances every once in a while. I love to play around and keep itinteresting while I write.

TT- This is a guitar blog so I’m going to have you what your set up is…

LC- I have a simple set up: two acoustic guitars, Taylor 614ce with factory Fishman pickup, and a Guild D55 with a new and very delicious LR Baggs M1 and iMix combo. Boss tuner, G7th capos, and Martin Strings. I usually like to sing into a Shure Beta 87A.

Links:

Megan Slankard http://www.meganslankard.com/

©2008 Terence Tan.

Pictures courtesy of Megan Slankard 2008 respectively.

Videos copyright original owners.

Any infringement of copyright or errors is entirely unintentional- although we try very hard not to make them. Any issues should be address to: writers@guitarbench.com. We will attempt to resolve these issues quickly.

Reversing the gaze

Despite the stacks of "regular" books on my nightstand, it is rare that I make time to read a book that is not a required text for one of my courses. I made an exception, however, with Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption and the Negotiation of Family Difference by Heather Jacobson.

I was contacted by the publisher and asked if I would read and review the book. I'm so glad I made the time. In light of a lot of the discussions I've been part of (as subject, link, or participant) lately in the blog-o'sphere, especially with the young teen starlet who likes to make "goofy faces," this book is all the more relevant in the whole context of international and transracial adoption discourse.

Although I'm not personally mentioned (she mentions adult adoptee blogs and forums), Jacobson does mention the huge influence that adult Korean adoptees have made on the way in which adoption agencies now think of "culture keeping" and the encouragement they give adoptive parents to engage in incorporating their internationally adopted child's ethnic culture into the family. Jacobson writes,

"These cautionary tales from the past have had a profound effect on how the adoption community (and industry) approaches the ethnic soc10 halloween costumes in 2008ialization of internationally adopted children. Contemporary adoption practices, policy, and international adoption discourse now emphasize the importance of culture keeping."

I thought it was interesting that in this study Jacobson compares the culture-keeping of White adoptive parents who adopt from Russia with those who adopted children from China. The practices and extent of culture keeping vary quite a lot between these two families. A big part of why this is has to do with race; the visible differences for the Chinese adoptive families compared to the Russian adoptive families, who can choose whether or not to disclose the adoption, means that for the Russian adoptive families the lack of racial differences (although the cultural differences are huge) could be a reason to not engage in culture keeping.

I liked that Jacobson ties in the responsibilites of culture keeping as an expectation placed on the mother, and that definitely is what I've seen in my own practice experiences. Whether it is in the contexts of adoption or in parenting in general, there exists a noticeable silence about fatherhood and fathering. Jacobson writes that she did not specify in her call for participants that she was looking only for mothers and in fact, shares that often times adoptive fathers who were contacted "handed over" the project to their wives almost as if there was an acknowledgment that it was their wive's job to do the culture keeping (Jacobson's sample had 46 participants - six were fathers. Single parents and GLBT parents were also in her sample).

One of the findings from this study (and although it is no real surprise to me, it is still somewhat shocking) is how much the adoptive parents of Chinese children did not consider having a racially and ethnically Asian child to be problematic in the same ways as if they had adopted a Black or African child.  Those who chose not to adopt a Black child often did so because of racist family members who would not accept a Black child but didn't object to an Asian child; often the "model minority" stereotype was a factor, and some seemed to encourage that stereotype. To me, this reinforced the perception that there is little or no racism towards Asians, which is false. This is also worrisome to me because it seems to suggest that adoptive parents actively encourage stereotyping and promotes a racial hierarchy.

I was also interested to read Jacobson's critique that although parents of Chinese children often participated in culture and language schools and camps, FCC, and participated in what I call thomemade cow halloween costumeshe "tourist" version of cultures (that which can be purchased), that

"the China-adoptive mothers I interviewed did not look to Chinese or Asian American mothers as role models for how to raise their children, nor did they see themselves as connected to earlier international-adoptive mothers (with children from Korea, for example) or interracial (biological) families. Rather, they...considered themselves "pioneers" when it came to raising their daughters."

Jacobson also finds in her study is that despite the heartfelt attempts to recognize the importachoose halloween mask to make the perfect halloween costumence of keeping their child connected in some way to their ethnic cultures, many of these adoptive parents struggled with how much and in what ways to do so. Some, it seems, felt pressured by other FCC families they know who seemed to be doing "more" in terms of culture keeping. However, as Jacobson recognizes, these attempts towards "authentic" Chinese culture that many of the adoptive parents wanted reflected only a certain kind of "Chinese" culture - that is China as in the country of China (far away) or Chinese immigrant communities. Jacobson found that China-adoptive parents determined that Chinese immigrants practiced a "more genuine Chinese culture" and not a "watered-down version of Chinese-ness" and furthermore, these adoptive parents were disinterested in current modern, Chinese American history or politics.

Overall, I thought this book was definitely thought-provoking and highly recommend it. One thing I was thinking about as I read this, was the idea of "reversing the gaze."* Reversing the gaze here in this context is about how the adoptive parents construct ideas and activities around culture and race rather than looking at how the adopted children construct their identiies in terms of culture and race. Frankly, I'm getting kind of tired reading about how we adoptees are doing; I'm interested in how adoptive parents are doing too.

*thanks to Indi for the information on "reversing the gaze."

* ETA 3/2 - Although this book is based on a research study, I wanted to let people know it's a very accessible and easy to read book!

Kacy’s 11th Birthday… one month ago!

Yes, yes. I am a horrible blogger. Honestly, I think about blogging often… but then life keeps going and I get sidetracked… and then it turns into weeks between blog posts. I just went out and looked at the blog itself and realized that, as bad as the basketball season has turned for the Hogs, I might want to think about a new banner! So sad… But that is another post on its own.

So what have we been doing? Well, I have managed to become addicted to Facebook! I even got Marcus on there and he has found friends that he hasn't heard from in a long time. So if you are out on Facebook, look us up!

So Kacy turned eleven last month! It is hard to imagine that my baby girl is that old. We informed her that since she is older, her parties would start getting smaller and her presents might get a little larger. Thankfully she was receptive to that idea so I didn't have to plan a big shin-dig. But even with a "smaller party," we still ended up celebrating her birthday the entire week! Ha!

It started on Monday when we celebrated with her class. Her class was scheduled to go to the symphony on her actual birthday, so we celebrated the day before. I brought up brownies and cookies to share with the class. Here's a pic of Kacy trying to ignore her mom in the back of thindiana jones back againe room with a camera…

Tuesday was her true birthday… but poor thing ended up with just a normal ole' day… well, except for the fact that she was given an iPod Nano while she worked on her homework! That doesn't happen just any ole' day! We had a deal with her that she had to pay $100 towards the Nano and we would pay the rest as her birthday present. As she received gift cards over the next few days she just handed them over to me until we hit $100. Then she got to keep the rest. Not a bad deal for her, really. Here's a pic of the purple Nano - just the color she wanted…

Wednesday we went out to eat to celebrate her birthday. She chose Carino's. Such a good little girl – and her tastes have truly expanded over the last few months. Thankfully she isn't all about mac'n'cheese or hot dogs (although Abby is). She has added several pasta dishes to her selection, so she was happy to be at Carino's. Of course, I took a pic of her meal – mostly because I was so excited that she didn't order chicken nuggets (although Abby did). Of course, the downside of this is that we have to PAY for her to not eat off of the kiddy menu!

I think Thursday was the only day that we didn't do something specific to celebrating the birthday – outside of preparing the house for the party. Abby had basketball practice, so that had us on the go for the evening.

Friday was the big day of the party. She had asked for a slumber party, and I had asked that we keep it small. We invited just four girls to spend the night, so I had five 11-12 year old girls for the evening. They were a BREEZE! Of course, I was wondering what was going on when we had two neighborhood boys sneak in the house for the pizza and cake. Haha – they are good boys that Kacy plays with all of the time, so it was fine. Once they had their cake, I pushed them on out of the door and back to their houses. The girls went upstairs, made up dances, and did all of those things that girls do at slumber parties… we had10 halloween costumes in 2008 nail polish, singing, hairstyles… you know. Kacy had a lot of fun… although she didn't agree to me taking pictures… UGH. Here is one photo I managed to snap when they weren't paying too much attention to me…

Now – do you see that purple thing there on the front of the table? "What could that be," you are wondering… well, it was the CAKE! My dear friend, Erica, made this iPod cake for Kacy! It was AWESOME! I had asked her to make it and she SOOOO exceeded my expectations! Here are some close-ups (which I did get pictures of because the cake can't roll its eyes and hold its hand up in front of my lens!)…

Seriously – look at the detail! See the charge bar on the bottom? And HEAVENS – LOOK at those ear buds! I couldn't BELIEVE it when I saw this! She even made it purple – just like Kacy's new iPod!

So THANK YOU, Erica! You are fabulous and you totally made Kacy's party! The girls absolutely LOVED the cake! And I can attest to you that this cake was DELICIchoose halloween mask to make the perfect halloween costumeOUS!

That was Kacy's birthday-week. She had fun and she is so happy to be 11. We have been busy doing all kinds of things with her to prepare for the transition to middle school next year. We are so happy with our school and everything they are doing to help us prepare. We have had THREE different events at either the elementary school or the middle school to prepare for the move next year. I feel so good with this move.

Alright – I'm going to update my calendar so that I get REMINDERS to update the blog! Maybe that will keep me focused a bit better…

Until next time! Hugs!!