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Tag Archives: New Jersey
Worship or Wishing
Still on the hunt for a church in New Jersey. This week it seems the big takeaway from worship service was that they wish they were in Oregon.
When visiting new communities, especially churches, one of the American (US) common questions in the greeting and rapport building part of a conversation is the question: “So, where are you from?”
As a third culture kid this question has always been difficult to answer in a low-key way. Where am I from? Too much exoticism in the answer and the conversation gets either superficial or too deep. Also if our past doesn’t matter to Jesus should it matter to us? I mean it’s not that Jesus wasn’t concerned with the past of the people he engaged with, rather the past didn’t define the relationship. Often as Americans though we do let this information index our understanding of the people we meet. As Americans we understand this propensity and then craft our response to impact the indexing or framing of our history in the minds of the people we meet.
What is the class of questions which focus on the now, and forward rather than contextualizing humans in the past? And then what sub-class of questions can be more amicable to posturing the hearts of people meet with Jesus?
So what are some other possible discovery questions to ask? Maybe, “So, what brings you here today?” Or maybe “what makes you excited to meet Jesus today?”
Secure and expensive
Our house in New Jersey has these automatic locks by Lockly that lock automatically when the door closes. However, the net impact of these locks on human behavior is such that humans who find that the door locks behind them perceive the locks as a nuisance. Therefore, they either disable the lock or leave the door open. Leaving the door open in a home with a large-footprint open floor plan home rapidly changes the interior temperature. More traditional and pragmatic floor plans have constructed a foyer or mud room as a temperature barrier between the main living space and the entrance.
In the national conversation about home energy efficiency, locks and human interactions based on replaceable and disposable “amenities” such as locks are rarely discussed as they seem in-material to energy efficiency. However, humans interact with the internet of things (that these locks are a part of) and do create habits which impact energy consumption.
More discussed are architectural design choices in homes. But the long term impacts of not having a middle space and temperature barrier within the structure seems to be a gross oversight that many consumers and mass-home-builders don’t think about. It is something which should be brought back into the common design of newly built homes.
Princeton bike culture
Coming from Eugene, Oregon where bikes are constantly stolen and the homeless population ride $3-6,000 bikes around town, it is both a breath of fresh air and shocking to see so many people leaving their bikes around campus without locking them up.
New Jersey vs Oregon
There is quite a culture difference between New Jersey’s and Oregon. Evidently every Jersey Lawn needs this poison applied like sunshine!
With drains to the river what poisons do they think won’t leech the 20 feet from the lawn to the drain?
The big culture difference is that Oregonians who have been part of families who have lived in Oregon a long time generally are anti-pesticide. (Even though the logging industry uses pesticides without restrictions.) All over Eugene there are yard signs stating: “this yard is a bee sanctuary” and “pesticide free”.
The simple fact remains. Unconstrained capitalism allows a business to sell the poisoning of a domestic space as a product, even if that poison is liable to travel into other places in the watershed, including rivers and estuaries.
Princton Rec Pool Lifeguards
The first time Katja swam with me at the Rec pool she asked me if this was a dangerous pool to swim at. The question caught me off guard. I asked her what she meant. She said that the life guards were on the same side of the pool and talking to each other instead of watching the swimmers. So today I took a picture of one guard on break behind me and the other two chatting with each other.
The hard life in New Jersey
One of the hardest things to cope with in New Jersey is the change in quality yogart providers. We are accustom to Belleweather A2 yogart but apparently it is only available in Costco’s on the west coast.
Park reviews
We are in the throughs of evaluating parks in new areas.
Hilltop park has a skate park and Hugh rates it 5/5 while Katja rates it as 3/5.
Wedding trip
Katja is about to cross that magic age where airlines start to charge her full fare. My cousin is getting married and so I’m taking her on a trip! New Jersey here we go!
Nanny even danced, not at the weeding, but at roses house. Katja asked her to get up and dance with her and she did!
The Bialey
The Bialey
On the way back from Switzerland Becky and were convinced to stay with my Aunt in New Jersey for two nights. Continue reading