It's been a busy week -- with Marci's brother's family coming to Ohio for a visit, followed immediately by me taking a trip out to South Dakota -- so blogging has taken a back-seat.  The stories from Richland County are still percolating in my head, and I'm still very hopeful about writing them out in the days to come.  But for now, I've been focusing any blogging energies that remain within me to keep up with my Proverbs 365 project.

Today's entry feels to be particularly timely to me, though, so I thought I'd reference it here.  It's titled P221 - Land Issues, and it explores one of the trickier issues of North American history:  the conflict between the Native American populations and the white settlers who forged their way across the continent over the last 500 years.  The discussion is all based on Proverbs 2:21-22, where it says, "For the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be torn from it."  As you can see from the illustration on the right, it's a passage that can feel a bit provocative -- particularly when juxtaposed with American history.

And I have to admit:  I'm genuinely confused and conflicted about how American history is supposed to be interpreted -- or, more accurately, how we're supposed to deal with the aftermath of history.  Significant problems remain in the Native American community, which is still fairly prevalent in South Dakota (from which I'm writing this).  The local newspapers from this weekend have carried several stories detailing the complexities of land claims, issues of national sovereignty, and basic problems of poverty and substance abuse among the Native Americans in the area.  In addition to this, I've been reading a biography of Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States of America, who developed something of a reputation for himself as an Indian killer and developed some significant policies during his presidency which led to the issues we are dealing with today.  And even further, Elliot has been reading a book from the library about Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief from the area which is now called Ohio -- which challenges some of the standard ways that American history has been interpreted (particularly regarding who's the "Good Guys" and who's the "Bad Guys")...

Suffice to say, it's an interesting issue to consider, especially in light of Proverbs 2:21-22.  I'd be curious to hear if anyone else out there has any particular thoughts to add to the mix.  So please, take a minute to read P221 - Land Issues, and let me know what you think...

Link: http://proverbs365.ericasp.com

I'm now officially one-quarter of the way through my Proverbs 365 project:  taking a Proverb for each day of the year and then considering it and applying it for 21st Century living.  And it's still going like gang-busters.  In fact, there seemed to be a surge in momentum and in readership over the course of the last month -- which makes it even more instructive and enjoyable, getting to experience the Proverbs in (electronic) community.

So I thought I would continue what has now become something of a monthly tradition -- highlighting three of my personal favorites from the month of March:

One of the month's most meaningful entries for me, personally, was drawn from Proverbs 19:3 where it says, "A man's own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the LORD." It occurred to me that I have, on more than one occasion, thrown myself a pity party when there was no reason for pity.  I can make such a big fuss of the "horrible curses" God has thrown my way -- when in fact the difficult circumstances really result from my own life choices.  In particular, I recalled a cold February night in 2007, when really found myself raging against God.  I'm guessing that others might be able to relate to my experiences.  If so, you may want to take a look at P1903 - Misplaced Rage...

Another highlight from the last month was my post entitled, P1704 - Accomplices.  In it, I consider the questions of how one is really supposed to deal with awkward social situations like someone mouthing off about their boss, or openly insulting one's own spouse, or sharing inappropriate information about one's own vices.  These situations happen all the time.  Proverbs 17:4 says, "A wicked man listens to evil lips; a liar pays attention to a malicious tongue." But how is this really supposed to work itself out in these awkward social situations?  This particular post may not offer any magical answers -- but at least it poses some interesting questions...

And thirdly, one of my most personal entries in the past month was P617a - Pitfalls of Pride.  In this post, I share about one of the most significant moral struggles in my own life:  pride.  I pick apart some of my negative thought processes -- ranging from "The Blame Game," to "The White Knight Complex" -- and I realize how frequently my life can unpleasantly veer towards the "haughty eyes" that are listed in Proverbs 6:17 as one of God's most hated human vices.  I don't know about anyone else, but I definitely know that I was challenged significantly by this particular Proverb in the month of March...

For a more comprehensive listing of March's content, here are the titles of all 31 entries, along with direct links to the rest of the content.

• P118 - Burning Flesh, Bleeding Wounds, and a Nice Big Bowl of Popcorn
• P208 - The Pathmaster
• P305 - Life Mandate
• P425 - Pick Your Line
• P508 - Practicing Peripatetic
• P617a - Pitalls of Pride
• P719 - Long and Gone
• P801 - The God Who is There and Is Not Silent
• P908 - Mockers and Sages
• P1011 - Busting an Agent's Cover
• P1101 - Calibrating the Scales
• P1228 - The Path to Immortality
• P1320 - Call to Community
• P1405 - God's Honest Truth
• P1511 - Sheol, Abaddon, the LORD, and Me
• P1615 - When the Compulsory Education Bureaucrat's Face Brightens
• P1704 - Accomplices
• P1802 - Listening for Heaven's Sake
• P1903 - Misplaced Rage
• P2024 - Following the Inukshuks
• P2105 - Lessons Learned from the Acquisition of a Cherry Bomb
• P2229 - Pining Away on the Island of Obscuritania
• P2331 - Red Red Wine
• P2413 - Sweetness
• P2525 - Coldwater News
• P2602 - An Undeserved Curse Does Not Come to Rest
• P2707 - A Honey-Loathing, Gruel-Gobbling, Crying Shame
• P2801 - Lessons from the Three Amigos
• P2911 - E-mail Wars
• P3017 - Quoth the Raven
• P3121 - When a House Becomes a Home

April promises to be another great month -- so check it out for yourself at http://proverbs365.ericasp.com.  And feel free to spread the word, too... One of the distinct advantages of the Proverbs is that it's easy to tune into them, whenever one might so choose.  It's not like if you missed the first three months, then you're "behind" or anything like that.  The Proverbs are just like these little power pellets that can be consumed and digested immediately.  So it's never too late to start enjoying them!

It seems to me that there's an unspoken cultural code in the American Midwest, which subtly discourages the celebration of one's own birthday.  One can celebrate a friend's birthday, whole-heartedly and unashamedly; but to celebrate one's own birthday by throwing oneself a party -- or even by simply informing other people, "Today is my birthday" -- is considered selfish and uncouth.  Back in college, a friend of mine coined the term "Birthday Announcer" to describe the type of person who goes around proudly telling people that it's his birthday; and I knew exactly what he meant.  There's just a certain perception about these things, back where I come from.  Perhaps I'm overstating the American cultural position here, but it definitely seems like birthdays are meant to be held as some kind of loosely-kept secret.

The Dutch, on the other hand, are almost categorically "Birthday Announcers."  Birthday parties are usually organized by the birthday celebrant himself (or herself), and it's even common for someone to bake or buy their own birthday treats to share with friends at work or in school.  There's no shame in celebrating one's own birthday.  And while it's taken me awhile to get used to the cultural shift, I have to say that there's something nice about the Dutch way of doing things.  It makes sense, actually -- and it helps to alleviate any potential feelings of self-pity or disillusionment.  Quite awhile ago, I started admiring the Dutch tradition of unashamedly serving as one's own "Birthday Announcer."  But I've still had a hard time crossing that cultural barrier for myself...

Until this year.

I feel like it's a sign of my cultural integration that I'm finally going so far as step across the divide and become a "Birthday Announcer" myself.  Indeed, I'm not only announcing my birthday (coming up on the 26th of February) -- but I'm also throwing my own party, together with two other friends who happen to share birthdays within a week of my own.  This week, I sent out the following birthday invitation by e-mail...

Dear friends,

Once upon a time, there were three friends living in Amsterdam.  They were different in many ways:  one coming from the mountains of Colorado; one coming from the farmlands of Ohio; and one coming from the flatlands of Zuid Holland.  But in other ways, they were the same:  enjoying good food, good music, good stories, and good time together with friends.  As fate would have it, their birthdays all fell within nine days of each other.  So one day, they decided to celebrate their birthdays together, with a big party.  They prepared all kinds of good food, good music, and good stories, and they invited their friends to celebrate with them in the heart of Old Amsterdam.  And they lived happily ever after.  The End.

OK.  So that may not be the best story ever -- but it does get the point across that a very special Storytelling Triple-Birthday Extravaganza is being organized for Saturday, the 27th of February, starting at 19:00 at the [e-mail me or send me an e-mail if you really want to know the address, so I don't have to post it here as a matter of public record]… And you are hereby cordially invited to join us for the celebration!  Patricia Flynn, Ariënne van Leussen, and Eric Asp are the hosts / birthday celebrants, and we are really looking forward to a great party.  Like most parties, there will be time for simply chatting while sharing in drinks and snacks and birthday cake (remember:  this is a party involving the baking talents of both Ariënne van Leussen and Marci Asp!).  But in addition to this, we will also share in several rounds of storytelling.  Not readings, like you might find at a typical open microphone event, but oral storytelling.  Thus: no pre-arranged, carefully worded, written accounts, but rather spontaneous, random storytelling, like you might have heard around the fire 1000 years ago.  The idea came from the Mezrab Cultural Café here in Amsterdam -- where people regularly gather to share myths, fables, legends, remembrances, and personal anecdotes -- and it seemed like a fun idea for a birthday party.  Yes, of course, you could choose to share stories that involve the birthday celebrants (i.e. stories about Patricia, Ariënne, and/or Eric).  But this is by no means the only type of story allowed.  You could share an amusing story about something that happened to you on your way to the supermarket… or make up a legend about how the leopard got his spots… or tell a stylized version of a Bible story… or pass on a treasured family story about how your grandparents got married… The possibilities are nearly endless!  The specific form of the evening will be determined by those of you who come to celebrate with us.  We just want to spend time enjoying the company of good friends enjoying good stories.

So all that to say this:  please mark your calendar for Saturday, the 27th of February, starting at 19:00 and going until late (towards the end of the festivities, there may even be some dancing!).  If you wanted to bring a nice card or gift or bottle of something to drink, that would certainly be welcome.  But more than anything, we hope that you will be able to come with your stories and be a part of the fun.  We're looking forward to celebrating with you at the end of the month…

Patricia
Ariënne
Eric

And to show just how Dutch (and "Birthday Announcerish") I've become, I thought I might even go so far as to post the invitation (with the exception of the location information, to protect my friends' privacy) here on my blog, just to make sure that I haven't forgotten anyone.  If you'd like to come and celebrate with us, please let me know and I'll supply you with the rest of the information.  Forgive me, my Midwestern friends, if it seems that I've gone astray.  I promise that, on this particular point, it's only one day of the year. :-)

Marci got me started with listening to This American Life.  It's a radio program, broadcast by Public Radio International (PRI).  For the last couple of months, I've been downloading their weekly podcast and enjoying the program while I bike throughout Amsterdam.  My main reasons for enjoying the program are its artistry and entertainment.  Just plain good storytelling.  But this week's episode about health care in the United States was not just entertaining and artistic (as usual), but also remarkably educational.

Health-care in the USA a very worn-out topic, but I feel that this piece covered it from some angles that I had never heard before.  You'd have to hear the whole episode to know what I'm really talking about, but I was particularly intrigued by one anecdote from "Act 2" of the program.

It tells the story of a teenage girl who was in a minor car wreck.  As a precaution, she was brought into ER, with her neck stabilized as a precaution against potential spinal injury.  When the doctor on the scene performed some manual exams, he was able to determine that a fracture was extremely unlikely and that the girl was, in fact, not seriously injured.  When the girl's father showed up, however, the doctor was confronted with a very different situation:  "a very tall, very powerful figure who was very upset and spoke very loudly and he also happened to mention that he was a lawyer and that there would be consequences for anyerror that we made."  Basically, in spite of the physician's professional opinion, the teenaged girl's father demanded not just an x-ray but a CAT scan, which involves significantly greater cost and greater exposure to radiation.  As the doctor explained on the program, the dangers that an otherwise healthy girl would face by taking an unneccessary CAT scan could eventually result in not just trivial harm, but "important harm" (for example, a greater risk of thyroid cancer later in life).  But the father persisted in his aggressive tactics, insisting on a CAT scan.  Again, the doctor was 99.9% sure that a CAT scan would be more harmful than beneficial to the patient, but he was faced by a dilema that he was suddenly able to articulate to the patient's father, like an epiphany, as he explained to him below:

 "You know, for me it really is the right thing to do the CAT scan.  If I don't do the CAT scan, you're probably going to lodge a complaint about me; if I do the CAT scan, you're going to be really happy with me.  In addition, I'm almost certain that your daughter is fine; but there's a, maybe, one in a million chance that she isn't, that there really is a hidden factor and I'm missing it.  If that's the case, then the CAT scan will save my butt.  On the other hand, if I do the CAT scan and your daughter gets a cancer, maybe 20 years from now, no one will blame me.  In addition, I'm spending a lot of time talking to you here that I need to be going and doing other things.  If I got the CAT scan, I could do it in a second.  It would be done with; it would be easy.  Finally, the really strange thing is that I'll get paid more if I do the CAT scan.  With the way that  bills are made, you get paid more for more complex patients.  The insurance companies of the world think that it proves that the patient was more complex and more difficult if you had to do a CAT scan!  So everything about this was pushing me to do the CAT scan.  There's only one problem:  which is that when I decided to become a doctor, I made a pledge.  And the pledge was that I would put my patients' interests in front of my own interests.  In this case, my judgment was that it was not in my patient's interest to do the CAT scan, and therefore I can't do it."

Eventually, the father of the daughter from the car accident elected not to press the issue further, and the doctor's judgment stood.  But the whole situation dramatically illustrated many of the problems facing health care in the United States of America.

I've run across many of these same dilemas, first-hand, since moving to the Netherlands and experiencing a different health care system.  To be honest, the Dutch system has often frustrated me, the disgruntled American patient.   But I've been learning about how things can be done differently.  And the above-mentioned broadcast helped to make things even more clear.  Perhaps you'd be as interested in listening to it as I was.

I saw this photograph on the The Big Picture, and I was so moved by it that I thought I'd post it here as well (with its original caption copied beneath). 

President Obama bends over so the son of a White House staff member can pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster wanted to see if the President's haircut felt like his own. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) 

Now I'm not totally ga-ga over Barack Obama, like many others.  I have genuine issues with some of his policies -- but I really respect him as a person (at least what I know of him).  And it's especially meaningful to see the way that his life offers significant hope for future generations of African-Americans.