I talked to someone yesterday who asked me why I haven’t blogged in a while. Huh? I thought. Then I realized they were coming to this page only. I wasn’t clear enough with the fact that I’m back blogging at UrbanOnramps.com. So, hey, come back to Urban Onramps dot com, that’s where I’m at, hey.

in case you didn’t know

meanwhile, here’s Micah

I’m back. No more hiatus. I’m now over here. Bonus: I saw Talladega Nights anoche. Funny stuff.

If you came to urban onramps looking for, uh, urban onramps, I’ll be back in September. If you choose, check out these blogs while I am away:

Domestic: Jeremy Del Rio • DJ Chuang
Foreign: Jordon Cooper • Andrew Jones
The Left Wing Nutroots: Daily Kos • Huffington Post
The Right Wing Wingnuts: Lucianne • The Corner
Tech Blog: Jason Johnson
Guilty Pleasures: I can’t give away everything…
What Really Matters: Box Office Daily
You didn’t think I’d totally stop blogging: My son Samuel’s blog on his road to full recovery

See you in September.

Waitress Checks ID, Is Shown Her Own:

A bar waitress checking to see if a woman was legally old enough to drink was handed her own stolen driver’s license, which was reported missing weeks earlier, police said.

“The odds of this waitress recovering her own license defy calculation,” police Capt. Guy Turner said Monday.

d.allen: Don is on my heart. I pray that God affirmatively answers his every prayer. I’m proud to know him and I value his military service.

Wilson says his skill helps save American troops and Iraqi civilians.

“It doesn’t bother me. Obviously, me being a devout Catholic, it’s a conflict of interest. Then again, God supported David when he killed Goliath,” Wilson said. “I believe God supports what we do and I’ve never killed anyone who wasn’t carrying a weapon.”

From this very interesting article. Call it “inside the head of a U.S. military sniper.”

No, sir, I don’t. Tonight at 6pm it’s a birthday bbq here at my house with us’s and some friends. Last night, well, I felt like bbq’ing, so I did. Buncha carne. So grilling two nights straight, hot diggity. I’m tired, tho. I slept with no blanket or nothing, on the couch (Sam was taking up space in my bed; he wanted to be close to his mommy; the medicines make him like that sometimes). It went to a low of 72 overnight, maybe 70, so I was fine, but still a bit cold. So I got up and went swimming at the gym. That was basically the best part of my birthday - going to the gym early and swimming a little bit. Peace. You can’t take your cell phone into the pool. So tonight it’s a gang of food, more movie-watching, kids hollering. Bonus: Our friends Elizabeth and Lalo from Mexico City are staying with us for a week. They have a 7-month old baby boy, Josue, who’s a cute one. I switched my urbanonramps host from fatcow to bluehost. Fatcow was just giving me a bunch of low performance issues, and bluehost is about the same price (a tad less) and yet I get 15 gigs of disk space instead of just 1, among other improvements. Plus I’m a geek, and doing something like switching web hosts is really really interesting. Right now I’m transferring via FTP the files from the old account to the new one, while watching The Best Man on USA. I’m about to head out the door to Vons to get my own birthday cake - but no cake this year, I get (drum roll) cupcakes. Kafi allowed Sam to choose my cake, and he chose cupcakes. Oh well. I think I’ll treat myself to some beer. So it’s beer and cupcakes for this birthday boy. Men, don’t act like you never thought of this yourself. Plus tonight I’m going to eat grilled steak with my hands. Watch. It’s my birthday.

90 minutes in the life of a Christian summer camp director

My birthday is tomorrow. I will be 39.

I was walking on the sidewalk from the Harambee Prep School side to my office on the corner. A woman was driving by in a van. She screeched a greeting out the window, pulled over the van, jumped out of the vehicle, and hurried over to me. She hugged me, said it’s been a long time, then pulled out her checkbook and started writing. She stopped and said, “The Lord told me to come up here, but he didn’t say who I should write the check to,” she confessed. “I’ll write it wherever you say, Rudy. Do you and Kafi have a need?” I checked myself. “Write it to Harambee,” I said. “I’ll show my staff the check and tell them what happened here right now.” Ok, she said. And that’s what happened.

Oh, it was a thousand bucks.

I’ve moved my son’s blog to a new location. The old one is just slow slow slow. Here’s the place to keep up with my son as he undergoes cancer treatment:

samueljob.wordpress.com

I’m getting closer. But it’s usually a bad sign if you like a section of what you’ve written a lot, yet you are nowhere close to done writing. What you like may impede your progress, cuz you will work around it, trying to preserve that piece you like, and suffocate the “story.” THAT, my friends, is the best piece of advice I got from undergrad. There’s another great piece of advice I got during college, but I can’t remember it right now.

Bruce Hansen. Just gotta say your name. Keep up the good work, bro.

Yes, I like HBO’s Entourage. Yes, DJ, I downloaded Hell’s Bells. What an opening riff! I wish old Martin Luther had taken THAT music and slapped some Christian lyrics on it. Can you imagine that?

Some heds:

• Global Trade Talks Collapse Over Farm Aid: Not good… keep an eye on this.
• Believing in Blair High School: Working hard to develop one Pasadena’s public schools
• Is SETI Barking up the Wrong Tree?: This is the project where they’ve been searching for signs of life, radio signals, from space. In 46 years they’ve found… jack squat. Ain’t nuthin out there, friends, even if the Vatican’s astronomer thus speculates. This guy thinks so, too: Alone in the Universe.
• August 16 - this is gonna be good: HBO Presents: When the Levees Broke, A Spike Lee Film

I dig the International Music Feed. It’s what I wish MTV would have become, instead of what it is.

Max Torres is the new program director at Bayshore Christian Ministries in East Palo Alto. Good for them. Max, among other things, will preach a great sermon at your church that appeals to all ages, if you invite him. Years back, Max was the one who told me I was late to my sit-down with Dubya, and got me there on time. Glad you are so close, bro.

This just in: French scouring country for someone sick enough to win Tour (de France): Mark-in-Mexico sez, “Lance Armstrong is a brain cancer survivor once given only a 5-10 percent chance to survive. Floyd Landis cannot walk without severe pain and must undergo hip replacement surgery before riding in another race. Neither has ever failed a drug test and they have been subjected to hundreds, if not thousands. Armstrong won 7 straight tours and, upon his retirement after last year’s victory, Landis limped in on his bum hip to keep the 2006 yellow jersey on American soil, or soiled by Americans, depending on your point of view. The French and the other Europeans must find some people sick enough to compete with the Americans.”

More Gaming The System: How I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal for free: I had some airline miles on some other airline (not American or United). I used some of those miles to get a free subscription to the Wall Street Journal wherein they deliver the paper to my house. Anyone who ever visits my house knows these papers tend to stack up in my driveway. But I digress. So because of airline miles, I’m getting Adventures-in-Capitalism for free. But wait! There’s more! I go online and look at the online subscription requirement. Basically, you just need to punch in your newspaper subscription ID and you get FREE ACCESS TO THE WSJ ONLINE, since I’m already a print subscriber. Bonus! So, look, even if you only fly once in a while, on different airlines, go on and sign up for their frequent flyer program. I started flying with John Perkins back in October 1990, so it takes years for things to accrue. But accrue they will. Sign up, even if it’s San Gabriel Valley Airlines or Trashcanistan Express. Who knows, they may merge, like TWA and American, or USAirways and America West, and then you’ll be sitting on… on… on enough miles to subscribe to Rolling Stone or something.

I’m trying to hammer out a thought. It’s tough to put together, cuz it’s (drumroll)

nuanced

Nuance doesn’t play well in today’s world. You are either for or against someone. A side is good and the other side, evil. But some things take nuance to explain.

For example, when it comes to solutions to poverty coming from the political right or the political left, it’s one thing to advocate an idea, but a totally different thing to “put your shoulder to plow” (to use an out-of-context farming metaphor). There are things you learn when you are committed to working on a challenge, when you don’t give up, when you devote years of your life to a resolution. Right and Left start to blur. Then right and left lose meaning, because finding solutions to centuries-old challenges nearly always involves “inventing” solutions. You make the road as you walk, indeed.

(I’m still hashing this out…)

(I’m thinking out loud here…)

There’s this quote I’m looking for as it relates to war. Something about how, “Every battle plan goes out the window, or is outdated, the moment the first shot is fired.” I think that’s an appropriate way to look at people, discipleship, ministry, church, poverty-fighting. You have to constantly evaluate what is going on around you. THE MINUTE you stop evaluating, well, you begin to get off track.

John Perkins has this phrase about, “Justice is eternal vigilance.” I don’t know where he got that; maybe he came up with it; but I worked with him for years, he’s a humble listener who will take any good idea from anywhere and make it work for him. But Justice is eternal vigilance; I like it. Right and Left don’t tell us what we need to know when it comes to fighting for justice.

This is very sad:

Afghanistan, July 25, 2006—The bodies of two World Vision Afghanistan employees shot and killed on Saturday, July 22, have been returned to their families for burial.

Afghanistan driver Naqibullah (one word, full name) had worked with a World Vision program for two years. His passenger, Abdul Zaher, a pharmacy stock keeper, joined World Vision 22 months ago.

The two Afghani nationals were returning to the city of Chagcharan, the capital of Ghowr province, from a World Vision health clinic in the village of Charsada when they were attacked by a group of unknown men. The pair radioed their travel location to the base at Chagcharan at 6 p.m. local time. Two hours later they were found shot to death outside their World Vision vehicle.

A witness told authorities that approximately eight men with guns attacked the vehicle. One bullet pierced the windshield and another went through the door. When the two men inside got out to surrender they were shot dead and the vehicle was destroyed with continued rounds of gunfire.

The incident has prompted World Vision to close some programs in the area and impose strict guidelines on travel. World Vision has also sent trained staff to provide critical incident debriefings with Afghanistan staff and the families of the deceased. All staff have returned from the field to the safety of Chagcharan. The Afghanistan Ministry of Health has shut down health clinics in the area while World Vision Afghanistan and local authorities investigate the incident. The motive for the killings is unknown at this time.

It’s my first day back at my Harambee desk. All sorts of neighborhood intrigue swirled about me, but I felt calm. Peaceful. Ran into some old heads. Plotted while driving around the hood. Came home. Worked out. Ate a little lunch. More plotting. Scheming. Now I’m going to pick up Micah from Aunt Shirley’s.

Catblogging! Wait, Flickr is not working. Will have to upload photo later.

I wrote this article for Youthworker. I just got a copy of it in the mail. Yeah.

Turned in an article for Outreach magazine last week. Yeah Yeah.

I’ve been wanting to write an op-ed for my local newspaper. I used to be a columnist for the Pasadena Star News, all the way back at the end of the 20th Century.

Tonight we host small group bible study at my house. Our church, Pasadena Church of God, has a buncha these groups. Good times.

Did I say it’s still hot?

“El Chavo del Ocho” is:

(a) Un narcosatánico
(b) The Mexican Benny Hill
(c) A famous cholo
(d) On Tuesdays

More questions over at Rate Your Pochismo.

Related: Abner has thoughts on Chicano Studies.

The Carrascos are back home. At midnight, when we arrived at LAX, it was 82 degrees. LAX is near the ocean. For the temperature to be 82 at midnight near the ocean in LA means something is wrong, or highly unusual to say the least. It’s cooking, baking, with no end in sight. Yet and still, that’s just a minor thought. We slept in our beds last night, and now we are just glad to be here.

Sort of - Tim Colson, who runs Veneration Coffee House in Virginia and is an emerging church blogger, has been called to active duty by the U.S. Navy. He will be gone for a year in an undisclosed location, which could be the Tahitian South Pacific or the Middle East, no one knows. My prayers are with you, bro. I will wait patiently for that fresh roasted coffee ya’ll have planned. Prayers for your wife and kids while you are away, too. Here’s Tim’s blog: Coffee House Church.

• Finally, after 15 years of coming to New York, I went to the Museum of Natural History yesterday. You can take the C train up to 81st Street, and you don’t even have to leave the Subway station - you can enter the museum right off the train. It was me, Kafi, Sam, Micah, and Muslimah (Kafi’s mom, for those of you who don’t know). It’s a big old museum. No way we tried to see everything, or even a little bit of everything (how can you, with kids in tow?) We saw a lot of summer day camp children from church-run day camps - in fact, ALL of the day campers I saw were from Christian programs. Interesting. We went to the ocean life exhibit and the two big dinosaur rooms. They’ve got this sweet Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil display that will give you the chills if you imagine yourself in the clutches of its jaws.

• My wife is one of nine siblings. At last count, they have 18 university degrees among them. I married up.

• Right wingers have been making fun of this site for a few days now. They are currently calculating the results.

• Today we went to Coney Island today with both of Kafi’s parents and the kids. I scarfed down two Nathan’s hot dogs. Sam and I rode the bumper cars. Everything - everything - costs at least $2 to ride.

• I understand the logic of the legislators, but this just doesn’t seem right: Feeding homeless outlawed in Las Vegas.

• Commentator Cal Thomas says that “World Trade Center” is a world class movie. I did not expect this, since Oliver Stone is the director. According to the press packet about the movie, “…Oliver Stone is quoted as saying: “Although my politics and John and Will’s may be different, it didn’t matter; we all got along. I can make a movie about them and their experiences because they went through something that I can understand. Politics does not enter into it - it’s about courage and survival.” Thomas recommends both World Trade Center and United 93, a movie I did not see.

• Tonight Kafi and I watched “Super Size Me” by that Morlan Spurloch guy, the first time for both of us. We both liked it. The guy has a knack for film-making and story-telling.

• For about the 739th day in a row, my son Samuel received chemotherapy. Tonight I woke him at midnight (the posting time remains on West Coast time; I’m currently three hours ahead) to give him 1 1/2 tablets of 6mp. I mixed it witih grape juice. I also took him to the bathroom, in case he needed to go. Somehow Micah woke up and is clinging, with eyes wide open, to her mother’s bosom. I came back and washed out Sam’s plastic chemo syringe, making sure it’s ready for next time.

• I’ve been reading through 1 Samuel. First I loved the story of the Lord calling Samuel for the first time. Then I was interested in how Saul came to be anointed the king. Among his kingly details: he was tall! A head taller than others!. Then I tracked his relationship with David. The biblical narrative gets a bit disjointed at that point, or at least the chronology is off. But what impressed me was the number of times the writer(s) note that the Spirit of God was on someone, or not on someone, or sending evil spirits to oppress Saul. The Spirit is very active in the Old Testament.

• I did not know this: Evidently Salem Publishing now owns Youthworker Journal. I just wrote an article for YWJ, it’s in the current issue, which I guess I’ll see soon. Wow, Salem has evidently bought up a bunch of domains: Christianity.com, Crosswalk.com, CCMmagazine.com, and XulonPress???

• Note to self: Lower your expectations for your birthday (July 28, if you must know). You have already received your Father’s Day, birthday, wedding anniversary exchange, and Christmas gift, that sweet video ipod you are lugging around…

• OK, I’ve delayed on this one, but I gotta say something: What The Heck Happened To That Cruise Ship That Rolled Over? The Washington Post says the ship will be back in circulation in a minute, despite the fact that they still don’t know what caused the ship to tip 15-20 degrees. And I just got off a Carnival cruise ship! Here’s what I think happened: (you be the judge as to whether I’ve watched too many movies), but I think someone up in the steering area did something stupid or accidental or reckless to cause the problem, like in some slapstick comedy where someone pushes the wrong button (think Bean).

• top 50 emerging church blogs: including “Doogie Howser did it, so why not me?”

• The president aces his NAACP speech: in center-left Slate.com. Things are apparently looking up for Bush ever since he was caught on tape using the s-word to describe Hezbollah’s provocations - all sorts of folks who typically hold Bush’s feet to the fire (like this guy) have expressed appreciation that he’s doing what he’s doing right now.

• Booking in advance: I just said yes to an invitation to speak at the Fresno Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast - in March 2007.

• Here’s Sam with one of his uncles, Amen:

This is the same uncle Amen who is one of Essence magazine’s 50 “Do Right Men,” tagline, “Who says a good single Black man is hard to find?” CHECK IT OUT. Amen is in great company. Others on the Essence list include Cory Booker, Harold Ford Jr., Jamie Foxx, Kevin Johnson, Tyler Perry - and Amen Ra Mashariki. Congratulations, Amen.

Right on - that was Bush speaking today to the NAACP. The text of his speech is here: President Bush addresses annual NAACP convention. Here’s Condi in the front row:

Mike Potemra made the above comment, in context of Pope Benedict XVI’s call to pray for the terrorists.

So I’m back in the States and doing grant-writing for Harambee. In going through old files, I saw that there’s a bunch of foundations that gave us money in the past 10-15 years that we never went back to - I’m not sure how that happened. But those foundations are back on the list, yes!

Here’s a brief round-up for stuff on the net:

• States stepping up to tackle immigration laws: It’s gonna get rough out there
• A New Alliance of Democrats Spreads Funding: It looks like they read this report:

Stanford Social Innovation Review: War of Ideas: Why mainstream and liberal foundations and the think tanks they support are losing in the war of ideas in American politics

• Interesting: Airline Makes Panama a Hub of Latin American Air Travel
• A week old: Surprising jump in tax revenues is curbing deficit
• Top 50 California Foundations in Total Giving: In case you were wondering
• Bonus pic: Micah on the table:

…just had a gun held to her head by a police officer. She and a bunch of other teens had to get off a bus, get face down on the pavement, and get a gun pointed at them. We are calling in to the police department to find out what happened. I would despise it if that happened to my Sam Sam. THEN I heard that the corner store that my house is adjacent to CAUGHT FIRE FOR A THIRD TIME last night. At 2am to boot, just like the first time. Very suspicious. Plus someone said it hit 110 degrees the other day. On the bright side, I just talked with my friend Derek about nothing in particular. We reminded ourselves that our ship is coming in, except when it isn’t.

UPDATE: We talked to the police. It looks like they will come to Harambee on Thursday night to speak to our teenagers. They will explain their procedures in such situations, and may even bring a copy of the 911 call they received and to which they responded. That’s a good step on their part.

Bono was telling the truth in that song, cuz it’s hotter than a mo’fo, i mean, uh, it’s hot hot, real hot, so hot it doesn’t even matter any more. I just don’t care. I left the fan on me all night as I slept, and I never do that. New Yorkers are tough. And for whatever it’s worth, you know that new show in USA called “Psych“? I’ve never seen it, but I like the adverts. Well, I went to iTunes Music Store and looked for it. Turns out the pilot is free for the download, so I’m, uh, downloading it. It’s about a guy who fakes like he has psychic powers to solve crimes, somehow he’s successful, so he has to continue to facade of being a psychic.

APPLE STORE: I think I’m about seven blocks from that crazy new Fifth Avenue Apple Store… Yes, I’m in a Starbucks in mid-town, what did you expect?