The Hemmer-Beaumont Family Blog

This article from the Post totally speaks to me. I am the computer guy to many people both in my family and among my friends. This used to really bother me - after all, I worked in the computer field all week, why should I be 'on call' 24x7 for everyone? In recent years, however, I have come to embrace this role rather than harbor resentment for having to work the holidays. Simply put, I was blessed with this ability. It would be insulting not to use it to help as many people as possible. Merry Christmas to all!


Stan King is going to Pittsburgh and then Los Angeles to visit family for the holidays; he has already gotten word that he needs to fix computers belonging to his cousins, his nieces and nephews in both places. District resident Laura Maschal needs to load Apple's iTunes on her dad's computer during her Christmas break. Robert Clemenzi, meanwhile, will be trying to fix his sister's broadband connection during his holiday jaunt down to Asheville, N.C.

For many folks like them, having a family reputation for tech savviness means that going home for the holidays has become the time for connecting printers and figuring out why mom's e-mail software stopped working a few weeks back. As computers have found a place in nearly everyone's home, the annual computer checkup has become almost as much of a tradition as dad putting together the new bicycle or sister-in-law getting dragged into the kitchen to make gravy or eggnog.

"It used to be that grandma wanted you to put in a new light bulb in some hard-to-reach place," said Maschal, who works for a local Web company, though in a non-techie capacity. "Now you have to come over to take spyware off her hard drive."

If there is a tech professional in the family, that is the person who gets the job of configuring that new wireless network connection or figuring out why a computer is acting "funny." Otherwise, it's the young guy, the one who is into computer games or uses an iPod or who packs cutting-edge gadgets like a Treo smart phone. After that, practically anyone who uses a computer at work might wind up appointed to the task.

"Once you're in a technical field, you're automatically the computer guy," said Manassas Park resident Manny Mangilit. Mangilit works for a local tech firm, sure, but he's no programmer -- he works in personnel and administration. "I'm certainly not a techno-geek by any stretch of the imagination," he said.

Even those designated fix-it guys and gals who visit their out-of-state family several times a year say the holidays tend to be the main time when they get hit up for help. That's because now, of course, is when people tend to have a lot of new gadgets.

Dennis Courtney has another theory as well: During the summers, family activities usually involve spending time outdoors -- computers are out of sight and out of mind.

Courtney, who is scheduled to be in Detroit fixing his sisters' computers right about now, runs a server data center for a bank in Ashburn as his day job. He is happy enough to do the family computer maintenance work, especially because his family tries to repay him for the effort in their own ways. One of his sisters does nails in a beauty parlor, so Courtney's wife and daughters get their nails done free as he tries to figure out how to remove the latest pieces of spyware or viruses on those hard drives.

Some family tech guys are so used to the routine that they pack travel kits for problems they anticipate. King said he always travels with about 20 CD-ROMs containing antivirus software and diagnostic tools. "It'd be foolish not to," he said; after all, he spends about one full day of every family-visit vacation devoted to fixing tech support problems.

King got stuck with the job of being his family's fix-it guy because he is an engineer who works on mainframe supercomputers, machines that cost upward of $50 million. The IBM X900 probably does not have a lot in common with the typical $500 Dell laptop, but his family members seem to think his day job should make removing pesky computer viruses and spyware a snap.

"I would love to run and hide, but it's very hard when you're a captive audience," he said. When he was at a funeral in Pittsburgh recently, a family member tried to get him to commit to giving computer aid over the holidays.

In families blessed with more than one alpha geek, fixing a computer is a matter of pride. When antivirus expert David Perry finds himself at home with his computer science PhD brother and his computer engineer brother-in-law, it can turn into a bit of a showdown. Correctly diagnosing the family computer's ailments becomes "the geek holiday sport" he said.

The tech-support issues do not just revolve around computers, either, as other appliances in the home get more complex. When Clemenzi is not fixing his sister's high-speed Internet connection, he might be working on his parents' TV setup. They have been flummoxed by their satellite system, and for a few months had to use the living room TV to change channels on the set in the bedroom. Clemenzi fixed that problem with a gadget he got at Radio Shack.

Sometimes, though, you just have to draw a line. When Timothy Shey, an executive at a local Web applications company, found out that his parents were deciding on a new computer a couple of years ago, he offered to give them free and unlimited tech support, on one condition-- they had to buy an Apple MacIntosh.

For Mac fans such as Shey, having to do maintenance on a rival Windows computer is a galling experience. Shey said he knows one guy who took his parents' Windows system when they were out of the house and replaced it with a Mac: Tech-support problem solved.

But the Sheys ignored their son's advice and bought a Windows-based computer. So a year later when the machine started acting up, he kept his word.

"I cut them off," he said with a laugh.
The Computer Geeks Who Saved Christmas

Another well written article from the Post addressing the attempts to teach intelligent design in school. This article comes from a person of deep faith, no less! Again, I will repeat: As a person of faith myself, I have no problem believing in both intelligent design and evolution. There is room in my personal schema for both.



Can you imagine a more faithless pursuit than trying to prove the existence of God?

Yet that is what the whole "intelligent design" movement is really about, and it seems to me that people of faith should rejoice at the federal court decision Tuesday forbidding the schools of Dover, Pa., to read a statement touting intelligent design in science classes. The eloquent ruling by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Christmastime blessing.

"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID [intelligent design] as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," Jones wrote in a painstaking, 139-page opinion that probably will set the parameters for future battles over intelligent design around the country. No appeal is expected, because the pro-ID school board members who tried to inject religion into the classroom have already been ousted by voters.

ID is the belief that life forms are too complex to have evolved on their own through natural selection and therefore must have had an intelligence -- so powerful that you would have to call it divine -- guiding their development.

The state of Pennsylvania requires its schools to teach evolution, the theory developed by Charles Darwin that most scholars accept as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The Dover school board thought it knew better and required that students be made to listen to a statement proclaiming that evolution "is not a fact" but just a theory, that it contains gaps "for which there is no evidence," and that ID "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."

Well, it's true that anything is possible -- before Albert Einstein, who would have believed that time passes infinitesimally more slowly for a passenger on a train than for a farmer standing beside the tracks. But equating evolution with ID is like comparing a mighty fortress to a line in the sand. Someday a new theory of the life sciences may supplant Darwin's, just as Einstein's revolutionary theories supplanted those of Isaac Newton. As Jones carefully and forcefully explains in his ruling, however, ID isn't even science at this point. It's belief.

Jones notes that during a discussion of the ID disclaimer, one of the Dover school board members made the argument that "2,000 years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?" That helped Jones reach the reasonable conclusion that the board was motivated by religious belief -- specifically, Christian belief -- and that the policy was an unconstitutional mixing of church and state.

Mainstream theologians have long since come to terms with evolution, which seems to be as unconditionally true as any scientific theory could ever be. As Jones points out, the fact that there are gaps in the fossil record does not logically lead to the conclusion that ID must be the answer; there is a mountain of evidence that supports evolution and essentially none that supports ID.

Jones traces the way that intelligent design grew directly out of an explicitly religious "creation science" movement and finds that "ID fails to meet the essential ground rules that limit science to testable, natural explanations." He adds, "Science cannot be defined differently for Dover students than it is defined in the scientific community."

The judge notes that nothing in Darwin forecloses religious belief. Intelligent design, on the contrary, seems to me to be anti-faith.

One of the best definitions of Christian faith is attributed to St. Paul, who called it "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." At every Mass, Roman Catholics around the world "proclaim the mystery of faith." There is no need to have faith in something that can be touched, measured, quantified, predicted; no need for faith in something that can be seen if only we build a big enough telescope or a sensitive enough electron microscope.

What would be the posture of a believer toward a God who could be seen? It might be adoration, I suppose, or obeisance, but it wouldn't be faith as believers since St. Paul have understood it. Faith requires mystery. Faith requires a leap.

Someday, perhaps, legitimate evidence of intelligent design will be found and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals -- papers that don't just cast doubt on Darwin but offer some tangible evidence of a designer. I doubt it, though. Science and faith are two separate paths to knowledge, and neither is meant to depend on the other.

It seems to me that it's wrong to use faith as a means to a scientific end. Doesn't faith have to be the end in itself?

A Design That's Anti-Faith

Was there an 'attack' on Christmas? No. No there wasn't. A great article from the Post.



Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in considering the ongoing war on Christmas, let us begin with the evidence that Mathew Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, calls "Exhibit A."

Said prosecutorial evidence is tiny Ridgeway Elementary School in Ridgeway, Wis. Youngsters are set to perform a play in which the lyrics to "Silent Night," which celebrates the Christ child's birth, have been changed to "Cold in the Night," which do not. The charge, leveled by both Staver's group and the American Family Association, is that this school rewrote a sacred song to erase Christ from Christmas.

Earlier this month, both groups fired off outraged press releases. TV networks reacted with segments. Conservative bloggers howled. The school principal got 1,500 e-mails. One unhappy Christian called Pat Reilly, the school board treasurer, a "spineless liberal [expletive]."

Here's Tucker Carlson of MSNBC, interviewing Staver:

"It is kind of heartening, I think, for Christians to see this, all this outrage, all this fear at Christmastime, you know, Christmas tree, Christmas carol, 'Silent Night'-- oh, that's a, you know, that's a subversive song -- because it means that Christianity isn't dead. It still has the capacity to scare people. It still gives people the creeps."

Giving people "the creeps" at Christmas is a serious thing, so we decided some actual reporting might be in order.

The first thing we found out, contrary to both news releases, is that nobody at the school rewrote anything. The song is part of a copyrighted play. Really in-depth reporting -- making two phone calls -- revealed the offending playwright and composer to be one Dwight Elrich. No one had talked to him until we called.

Here is what we found out:

(a) Elrich was a music director for a choir at Bel Air Presbyterian, former president Ronald and Nancy Reagan's church in California, for decades.

(b) "Cold in the Night" is part of a children's play called "The Little Christmas Tree" (note title). The little tree sings the little song. The little tree is looking for a family to take it home, sort of like Charlie Brown's little tree. The play comes with a "Christian" page, which may be performed or not. In Ridgeway, where the play has been performed for years, it is sung with Christian Christmas songs, including "Angels We Have Heard on High."

(c) Elrich's other musicals: "What in the World Is Christmas?" (Answer: "Kids from around the world celebrating Jesus's birth.") "Christmas in Hawaii," "365 Days of Christmas Each Year!"

(d) "The Little Christmas Tree" has been performed in more than 500 schools and churches across the country for nearly two decades. Mostly churches.

Statement by the defendant:

"I'm just flabbergasted. I'm a choir director in a church! I do Christmas carols in retirement homes! I perform 'Silent Night' 40 or 50 times each year! I thought the play was a really charming, wonderful, positive story about love and acceptance . . . removing it from the Christian tradition was something I never thought anyone could ever come up with. We were telling a story about a little tree, so we used a familiar tune to help the kids get it."

Of course, this is just one exhibit on the prosecutorial table. Let's look at another. Let's go to Fox News. Here's host Bill O'Reilly, in a recent broadcast:

"In Plano, Texas, a school told students they couldn't wear red and green because they are Christmas colors. That's flat-out fascism."

Here's a corresponding memo from Doug Otto, superintendent of schools for Plano:

"The school district does not restrict students or staff from wearing certain color clothes during holiday times or any other school days. . . . Our attorney requested of Mr. O'Reilly that, in the future, he ask his fact checkers to do a more thorough job of confirming the facts before he airs them."

O'Reilly did not correct his broadcast in a prepared statement, instead noting that there was ongoing litigation about other Christmas-related issues at the school.

And . . . oh, you've heard the rest, in this, the Christmas of our discontent. Some of it is actually real.

There is the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" brouhaha, and the "Christmas tree" vs. "holiday tree" smackdown. Those two issues alone have involved Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, the city of Boston, the state of Georgia, the White House and too many others to count. The AFA and the Liberty Counsel alone have mobilized 1,500 Christian lawyers to do battle.

So far, they've encountered maybe 60 problem areas, Staver says.

"A lot of soldiers in this battle are not going to have much to do but drink eggnog," says Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who often debates Jerry Falwell and others on these kinds of issues. "We're not out there trying to make this an unpleasant season."

On the other hand: "People are so worried about offending the minority, they go ahead and offend the majority, who are Christians," says Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.
The War Is On

The "war" is composed of conservative Christian groups railing against "politically correct" advertising campaigns that, they say, do not include the words "Merry Christmas" in sales literature or seasonal greetings. Some municipalities and government institutions -- including the U.S. Capitol for many years -- refer to a Christmas tree as a "holiday tree," also drawing flak.

It is an emotional campaign -- a petition against Target for not including "Christmas" in its advertising drew more than 600,000 signatures -- but it is also an easy one. Virtually all of the stores that conservative groups have targeted have quickly changed their advertising to feature "Christmas" more prominently, as have many of the groups that had "holiday trees."

And despite some high-powered rhetoric -- Fox News host John Gibson says in the subtitle of his book "The War on Christmas" that there is a "liberal plot to ban the sacred Christian holiday" -- neither Gibson, nor anyone at the AFA, the Liberty Counsel, Lynn's group or the ACLU, is aware of an attempt to halt religious observance of Christmas or to stop making it an official federal holiday. And the real irony, religious and academic scholars point out, is that Christmas is observed in one way or another by more Americans than at any point in the nation's history; indeed, more than any nation at any time in history.

Given that, perhaps it's not surprising that substantially more people (52 percent) were worried about the commercialization of Christmas than they were about any opposition to displays of religious symbols in public places (35 percent), according to a new nationwide poll by the Pew Research Center. Some 83 percent of respondents said they preferred "Merry Christmas" to something like "Happy Holidays." But in a follow-up question, a plurality of 45 percent said it really didn't matter much either way.

To Karal Ann Marling, a University of Minnesota professor of popular culture who documented the holiday's evolution in "Merry Christmas! Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday," the campaign is an attempt to whitewash the nation's religious and ethnic mosaic.

"I don't want them to come to my house and poison my dog, but the religious right wants all of American religious life to be permeated by one point of view, and it's just not so," she says.

"Persecution of Christians, at Christmas? In this country? None that I'm aware of," says James P. Byrd Jr., assistant dean of the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. He graces the observation with a gentle laugh, a comforting sound in this suddenly confrontational season.

Instead, Byrd suggests looking at the current fray in a larger context: conservative Christians yearning for what appears to be a simpler time. When Christmas was Christmas, the argument goes.

It might look something like this:

It is about 1950. A good clean snow has fallen. It crunches underfoot as you round the turn into your yard. Darkness is falling. It is not just quiet, it is peaceful. The small lamp in the kitchen window throws a shaft of light onto the snow. Your mother is there, cooking, singing lightly to herself. It will smell like baking, when you walk in, stamping the snow off your boots, throwing off the cold. Presents will be by the tree. Your pop will be in the easy chair, your little sister tramping down the stairs in her angel costume ready to go to the pageant.

Your heart freeze-frames: This is Christmas.

And now you wake up and it's 2005. You go to hear the kid's Christmas play, except by the time it clears all the church-state hurdles the ACLU worries about, it sounds more like "Songs of Many Lands as Sung by 6-Year-Olds." The Christmas Tree at the Capitol in Washington, they call it a "holiday tree" most years now. Even President Bush, a devout Christian, sends out a Christmas card that does not say "Merry Christmas." Now you hear a lot about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and "the holidays."

What is to be made of all this?

Byrd says the attention to other traditions, the growing complexity of American life, is frustrating to some Christians, who grew up accustomed to Christmas being the preeminent holiday.

"It's the concept of the majority, and what rights they have to define American holidays, about what it means to be an American," Byrd says. "The majority of Americans are Christians who celebrate Christmas, and yet there is a sense of alienation that they are still not able to dominate discourse."

And there is one problem with that pristine image of the American Ghost of Christmas Past, he and others say: It never quite existed. "White Christmas" -- which became one of the best-selling songs of all time -- was already lamenting a season "just like the ones I used to know" in 1939. The same year, entrepreneur Charles Howard opened one of the first Santa Claus schools, dismayed by the cynical crush of "bums, ham actors, and thousands of odd job men" who were cashing in by playing the man in red.
A Secular Christmas

Confrontations over Christmas are as old as the day itself. The Bible mentions Christ's birth in a manger, which brings the tradition of the star in the night, the three wise men and many others. But it was nearly 400 years after Christ died before church officials thought to make the date of birth a holiday. This was greatly complicated by the fact that no one knew the exact date. But in 395, church officials set it as Dec. 25, putting it amid a huge pagan festival in ancient Rome known as Saturnalia. The latter was a raucous celebration -- lots of alcohol and sex -- that church officials allowed to continue as a means of attracting converts.

"That made sure the holiday would be observed, but it gave up any real Christian control over it," says Stephen Nissenbaum, author of "The Battle for Christmas."

Across northern Europe, there were pagan celebrations that stemmed from the dark, fallow days of the winter solstice. As Christianity spread, the two often overlapped, even as Europeans began to settle America. The Puritans were horrified at the combination. Finding no mention of Dec. 25 in their Bibles, they banned the holiday as sacrilegious.

"People drank a lot, caroused in the street," says Leigh Schmidt, professor of religion at Princeton University and author of "Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays." "Puritans thought Christmas was the worst day in the year to preach Christ, because people showed up at church after imbibing a lot of rum."

The founding fathers had no Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas, a minor European saint, did not morph into the current image of the gift-laden Santa Claus until the 1820s). There were no Christmas trees (a German import that didn't take root until the 1840s). Dec. 25 wasn't made a federal holiday under the first 17 American presidents (including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln). The holiday did not come until 1870, under Ulysses Grant, perhaps one of the least pious of presidents.

As the decades passed, Christmas became a holiday that celebrated the values of home and hearth and family and generosity, not just a Christian rite. There was Santa and the magic of childhood, a particularly Victorian ideal, that went alongside the Christian underpinning.

By the early 1900s, when companies began to learn how much they could commercially exploit the Santa Claus magic (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer began life as a Montgomery Ward advertising gambit) the modern idea of Christmas was born.

Today, secular Hollywood gives us Christmas shows and Christmas specials without end, not to mention Christmas-themed movies. It is virtually impossible to walk into a commercial enterprise in America this week and not be overwhelmed with Christmas symbolism.

Which, says Staver, the Liberty Counsel president, is exactly the point. If stores are going to profit from Christmas, then they should at least acknowledge the day itself. Calling the evergreen tree in the lobby a "holiday tree" is a needless insult, he says.

"It's so obvious, removing the word 'Christmas.' It made a non-controversial issue controversial," he says. He speaks by cell phone from the steps of the federal courthouse in Jacksonville, Fla., where he has filed a request for an emergency injunction to allow a man to install a nativity scene in a public park between two tiny beachfront municipalities. "You come down to the question of 'Why?' Nobody renames Santa Claus or Hanukkah or Rudolph. A Christmas tree is a Christmas tree. It is exclusive to one thing. To say otherwise is contrary to history. It's an invention."

Historically speaking, academics and scholars agree, he's right: It is a Christmas tree.

You wonder if the Deity thinks that is the point. Or, perhaps, if it misses it entirely.

Have a Holly, Jolly Holiday

While this statement from the President of Iran seems absurd on the surface, it makes me wonder whether 1,000 years from now major incidents that we see as truth will be considered 'parables' by future generations. While there is significant physical evidence for these events now, who knows what will survive years into the future? Will the holocost, WWII, and 9/11 be seen as masking a lesson as we see many stories of the bible?



From the Post:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday called the extermination of 6 million Jews during World War II a "myth," bringing a new cascade of international condemnation onto a government that is increasingly viewed as radical even within Iran.

"They have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the prophets," Ahmadinejad said in an address carried live on state television.

Iran's President Calls Holocaust 'Myth' in Latest Assault on Jews

The only reason that I'm blogging on this particular subject is to mention two things: 1. DC still spends the most money per student of any locality in the entire country (over $12,000) and still can't manage to get materials for their students 2. At the open meeting discussing the lack of school texts a council member said: "I ran into a parent at the Safeway and I had to explain why there ain't no books." What a fabulous role-model for the children of the District!

Janey Pledges to Fix Glitches In Textbook Ordering Process

Not that I'm a Hillary fan, but one can only say "Wah-Ha". I only knew Ms. Pirro from the famous 30 second pause, but in reading about her husband...why did they even let this candidacy move forward? Excerpts from the article follow...

Republican prosecutor Jeanine Pirro's once-promising campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is lingering somewhere between the critical list and terminal.

The latest bad news came yesterday when county Republican leaders emerged from a meeting and recommended that Pirro put aside her senatorial ambitions and concentrate on an office she might win, such as state attorney general. Only four months ago these county leaders urged her to challenge Clinton. (Republican Gov. George E. Pataki, who has endorsed Pirro, also has told confidants that he is pessimistic about Pirro's prospects.)...

...It's a quick undoing for Pirro, who is a popular three-term district attorney in Westchester, a leafy and well-heeled suburban county just north of New York City. Her campaign got off to an inauspicious start, as she misplaced a page of her speech and fell absolutely silent for 32 seconds during her televised announcement. Fundraising lagged, and then came the stories, well known but immediately recycled, about her husband, Albert Pirro Jr., who hauls a steamer trunk's worth of political baggage.

He is an influential lobbyist and a convicted felon who served 11 months in prison for hiding $1 million in taxable income. He claimed dozens of luxury items -- including his Ferrari and her Mercedes-Benz, as well as the salaries of employees who care for their pet pigs -- as business expenses. He also acknowledged some years ago that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, but only after being confronted with the DNA evidence.
Pirro's Challenge to Sen. Clinton Falters

Yet another example of the administration massaging the facts to get to their goal of drilling in the ANWR. If we put this kind of effort into alternative fuel research rather than trying to find the last drips of oil hidden deep in the recesses of the Earth, we could be out from under the collective thumbs of the Middle East in record time. From the Post:

Interior Secretary Gale Norton, campaigning to win oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, had the urgency of a saleswoman falling short of her monthly quota.

"ANWR would supply every drop of petroleum for Florida for 29 years," she told a friendly audience at the Heritage Foundation yesterday, "New York for 34 years, Illinois for 43 years, California for 16 years or New Hampshire for 315 years."

So how many years would ANWR's oil keep the whole country fueled up?

Norton balked at the question. "When you look at it for the whole country, you really get somewhat of a deceiving picture," the secretary answered. She said that's "not the way this operates," and said the question "assumes that unless a source of energy is going to meet all of America's needs then it's not worth looking at."

For the record, ANWR's oil, using the administration's own estimates, would supply the whole country for 13 to 17 months before it runs out. But Norton's argument -- that it is acceptable to promise New Hampshire oil for three centuries but "deceiving" to ask about the whole country -- underscored the tension gripping ANWR-drilling proponents as Congress approaches another climactic decision on the Alaskan refuge this week.

Arctic Oil Gets an Administration Gusher: "ANWR's oil, using the admin"