Laying Down the Law

Earlier this morning my brother and I taught a Biblical Greek class. We have been doing this regularly on Thursdays, and sometimes Mondays, for about four months. We are actually more like TAs; we teach so that the primary teacher, our Pastor, can continue the teaching of the students while still having flexibility with his schedule. We are competent readers of Greek but much less competent teachers. But we do our best and the students are learning Greek slowly but surely.

Today, we had a "Law Moment" Recently the students had been falling behind on their homework; not doing translations, laboring over some of the more basic grammar concepts and they were falling behind on vocabulary. Today we assigned them a vocab quiz. All vocab, about an hundred and some words; they were given thirty-five minutes to fill it out and afterwards we walked through it and marked anything that they got wrong or missed in red crayon, crayon 'cause we're cool like that, and between now and next class, they need to have their parents sign every page of the test to show that they know how much they need to work on it. Pastor hated to have to assign this, but it's the best way to get them to work. He knows from experience...

How about a little story, hmm? Once upon a time, there was a homeschool Greek class taught by a generous Pastor. The Pastor was a good teacher and well loved by all his students. Time passed and the class grew smaller, people moved, people decided they would rather spend their time doing other things; some just wanted to learn Latin instead. And eventually there were only two students. These two students, despite the fact that they were the only ones left, were not the most studious pair. They had always had bad study habits, not memorizing their vocab and not learning their grammar.
One day, the Pastor decided to give his two remaining students a full comprehensive test; including a large vocab test, grammar, and direct translations. The two students did terribly. In less than an hour the Pastor learned that they retained very little of what he had taught them. He decided that he had to lay down the law. Starting from the beginning of the book, he walked the students through everything again, sending assignments with them every week that they would have to do and then have signed by their parents.
The Pastor's plan worked! It was not long before the students were back up to speed and studying new concepts. In fact, they did so well that a couple years after these events, the Pastor had them start assisting with the teaching of a new crop of students...

And so, by the grace of God and the dedicated perseverance of his servant, I have a greater appreciation not only for Ancient Greek, but also for the written word.
I look forward to my continued study of the language as my brother and I slowly move towards almost complete independence from lexicons.

Could you please occupy a shower next?

In case it was not understood from the title, this post is going to be about "Occupy Wallstreet" and its constituent protests. Fun!

I was riding in the car with my mother as we went through downtown on our way home. We drove past the courthouse on our way and, sure enough, there was the Ft. Wayne contingent of the 'occupy' movement....

All twenty of them.

They had held a big organized protest in One Summit Square; the local newspaper was only too eager to report that, "About 300 demonstrators showed up Saturday morning at One Summit Square plaza, for a rally inspired by the grass-roots Occupy Wall Street movement that began four weeks ago in New York City."

"Marchers were invited to take the mic and express their opinions, as passing motorists honking in support nearly drowned them out. By 1:30 p.m. the number of demonstrators had grown to what organizer Lambert thought was about 400. Earlier in the week, organizers had predicted 600 people would turn out."

I don't know about that. From what I have heard from people present during that time period there were about a hundred protesters, and those driving past were not in fact honking in support, but beseeching the participants to, 'get a job and take a shower.' Which are both, I am sure, valid requests.

I'm afraid that I often have the strong urge to ruthlessly mock the protesters. I can't help it, I have absolutely no empathy for the people demanding such things as amnesty from debt; free higher education, or the beheading of responsible businessmen.

What strikes me as the most poignant, is this: the protesters are so proud that they have been having these week long constant camping protests. And what is the reason they can do so? They don't have jobs of their own; they probably aren't even paying taxes. They are out protesting in the public square, while the very people they are protesting are working full work days in order to make a living, which includes all the taxes they have to pay so that these protesters get their unemployment checks. If these are the 99%.... I'd rather stand by the bourgeois capitalist pigs, at least they earn their bacon.

And this is all just talking about the local protesters......

New York.
What else need I say? If you have followed any of this you will know what things are like in the area of the protest. I don't feel the need to list some of things that are happening there. But let me ask you a question. In all of the hundreds of gigantic Tea party events across the nation, were there ever any mass-arrests? Or video and audio recordings of *extreme* antisemitism?

I cannot help but hope that those who have done so continue to compare these protests to the Tea parties. The difference is night and day, and people see that.

Thank you for reading.

DND.... It's Dynamite.

It strikes me as exceeding ironic that this should be my first blog post in a long time. There are so many things happening right now that annoy and bother me to no end; but nevertheless, I am not posting about raucous protests or obnoxious policy debates; I am posting about Dungeons & Dragons.

Last week my little brother and I went to a local game place and attended a DnD for beginners class. We got there early so that we could introduce ourselves and begin creating our characters, which was an hour and thirty minute process.

The game itself, once we finally got to playing it, is not thought intensive; it's based on a simple skill and counter skill system that I find very appealing. I won't go into details of gameplay, I won't be *that* boring.

My brother and I had fun. It was a fairly large group, by DnD standards, and they sadly fell into almost every Nerd stereotype that I have. They were nice guys though and a lot of them tried hard to help us understand the game better. I rather enjoyed the whole experience, even if it did help to reaffirm all the DnD stereotypes in my head.

And so, now the question I ask myself is this: Should I make the effort of learning how to Dungeon Master so that I can form my own DnD group with my friends?

Right about now you're brain is saying, "Nerdnerdnerdnerdnerdnerd!"

Which I would not deny, it is nerdy; but it is also fun. I have several friends who play, and a few more who have expressed interest in learning how. It would take some work, a little organizing and a relatively small monetary investment on my part.

So what do you think? Oh much respected and valued reader? To DM? Or, to not DM? That is the question.

P.S. I am going to make an effort to blog more often.