An answered prayer

A few years ago, Yosemite Search and Rescue got us out of a jam when I goofed up big-time on the east bank of the Merced river, near Mirror Meadow. Last weekend, we got to be part of the solution rather than part of a crisis. Here's how I experienced it.

About 5:30 Monday morning, May 28, we left the our hotel in Fish Camp and headed north into Yosemite National Park. Breezing through the south entrance, we arrived at the Taft Point parking area some 45 minutes later, and walked out toward "The Fissures."

These fissures are what they sound like -- cracks in the rocks that widen out to several feet across. You can look through them to the valley floor about 3,000 feet below. One of them has a couple of boulders stuck in it -- very cool.

A few hundred yards beyond The Fissures is Taft Point, with a breathtaking view of the valley. Jenny and Sarah were ahead of Carol and me, and I stopped to take a few pictures. When I arrived at the lookout, Carol was holding what looked like our long lost digital camera. It was the same model, but it wasn't our camera; its owner was a madman from the over-55 set, who was planning to run up Half-Dome Wednesday and walk up it Thursday. Actually he wasn't really a madman. I'll call him "Jack" (as in LaLanne).

Anyway, Carol had taken some pictures of/for Jack, and after he returned for his camera, he told us about an Asian family in the parking lot: an older couple and some young people. The 38-year-old daughter had gone for a walk last night and never came back, he said.

It didn't take much imagination to envision falling off a cliff, or into one of those fissures, in the dark. Jack told us that the family were already there at six that morning, and that a ranger had been out 'til something like two, trying to find "Carolyn." Jack himself had called out her name for the past hour, but no joy.

We walked back to the parking lot after a while. I won't say the trail is poorly marked, but it would be very easy to lose track of it if you were inexperienced, or if the light was bad, or both....

I was in a rush to get to the rest-room at the parking lot, but as I speed-walked, I prayed briefly. "Lord, have mercy on this woman and on her family. May she be safe -- perhaps she found shelter somewhere. Restore her to her family soon I pray."

I unloaded my camera stuff into the car, leaving it unlocked for the girls (a couple hundred yards behind me). I saw the family in the parking lot, but being in a rush I didn't say anything to them. What could I say, really?

When I came out, I saw Jenny on the trail in her tie-dyed T-shirt, walking toward the car. She was waving, and I met her at the car. She said someone had been calling for help from the left of the trail.

"Really?" I asked, starting to get excited. "Male or female?"

It sounded like a woman, she said. "Let's tell the ranger!" (By then, a ranger had arrived and was talking to the family. The Yosemite Search and Rescue crew wouldn't arrive for another few minutes.)

We trotted over to the family's car, and when the ranger turned to me, I said, "Um, my daughter reports someone just off the trail, calling for assistance; sounded like a woman." He said something into his walkie-talkie, shouldered his knapsack, and started walking "cross-country" to the point where the Taft Point trail entered the woods.

Right about then, a round-faced woman in a red jacket, wearing glasses, became visible, right where the ranger was headed. She was by then drinking from one of our Nalgene® 1-liter bottles. We reached her, and the ranger asked, "Are you Carolyn?"

Yes she was. I told her that I'd said a prayer for her. The ranger told his walkie-talkie that he found Carolyn, but I didn't think the family would have heard. So I jogged back to the parking lot.

Flashing a thumbs-up sign, I told them, "It's her and she's fine." The mother gave me a hug.

Anyway, the joy and relief were palpable.

It turned out that at least three of them had gone out together, before sunset. They watched the sunset but there was a minor detail: after sunset, the lighting conditions get a lot worse. Then Carolyn tripped and fell over. She wasn't injured, but they got separated. She was a little disoriented.

She called out many times, she got hoarse, nobody heard. Meanwhile she found a stream and headed upstream. This was just the right thing to do because downstream might have led to a cliff. Meanwhile the ranger, who had been out for a few hours around midnight, was heading downstream (he had a light, though). She heard the ranger (who had a whistle) but she couldn't make herself heard. It all ended well.

Afterwards, I thought, "O me of little faith!" I'd prayed, and maybe I had some faith (maybe just a little), but I was as surprised as anybody else when she actually turned up safe.

Using a blowbag to clear a slow drainpipe

In our kitchen sink, there is a garbage disposal, which grinds stuff up so it can flow down a 2" pipe into a bigger drainpipe and out to the sewer.

The other day, that 2" pipe got clogged, which by itself would be bad enough -- but we have a shower that shares the drainpipe with the kitchen sink, so it backed up, turning the shower floor into an icky awful mess; I will not show you a photo of it. (You're welcome).

My mission, which I chose to accept, was to clear the drainpipe so that the stuff could flow out, rather than into the shower, and to clean up the mess.

The solution

The basic idea was to find the "cleanout" -- a pipe end I could uncap to clean out the drainpipe. I had to uncap it and use a blowbag to flush the obstruction out.

Uncap the cleanout

To find the cleanout, you have to find the 2" (or so) pipe that the kitchen sink drains into. This 2-incher slopes down to reach the bigger drainpipe. In our case, the cleanout is above the point where the 1" (or is it 1½"?) pipe from the kitchen hits the 2" pipe. I'm going to guess that if you google on "cleanout" and "drain" you'll find a useful diagram or two.

So I found the cleanout and tried to unscrew the cap with a pipe wrench:

Trouble was, I couldn't budge it. I tried putting the wrench on the other way and standing on the end. I tried banging on it with a 3-lb. hammer. I got a screwdriver, placed it against one of the bumps on the cap, and whacked it with the hammer. I got a piece of rigid electrical conduit to try to increase my leverage on the pipe wrench, but it wasn't big enough. Nothing seemed to work, until I remembered that I had a hydraulic floor jack:

That actually worked. If you try this at home, by the way, it's a good idea to put a big sign on the kitchen faucet -- that way, nobody will decide to run the water while you're outside (or under the house) struggling with the drainpipe.

If it's been long enough since your latest flood, you won't have a flood of goop fly out of the cleanout when you get it uncapped. If you're under time pressure, best you put a bucket under the cleanout. A big bucket. A tub.

I didn't have that problem this time around, but it has happened before. You'll want to use a bucket that you don't mind soiling.

What is a blowbag?

Here is a picture:

That was taken after it did its work, but here's the story. Its main body is made of some kind of black rubber. At one end is a brass fitting that you attach to the end of a garden hose. At the other end is some kind of flow restrictor. I fed it into the pipe -- making sure to feed it in far enough -- i.e., so that I would flush the goop further down the 2" pipe, rather than up into the shower or back into the kitchen sink.

In my case, that was about 5-7 feet, so to make sure I fed the hose at least ten feet into the drainpipe. Here's another picture:


(actually taken afterwards, as I was pulling it out -- as if you couldn't tell).

Then I turned on the hose full-blast. The blowbag expanded to the diameter of the pipe, then the "exhaust" end of the blowbag sent pulsating jets of water down the drainpipe. This forced accumulated sludge out of the 2" drainpipe into the 4" line that runs into the sewer line under the street (in our case, the alley behind our house).

I used hot water in the hose, but cold is also OK.

I heard the vibrations in the house, and turned off the hose after about a minute. Then I extracted it slowly from the drainpipe.

My next step was to re-cap the drainpipe and test the flow down the kitchen sink. All was good, so I cleaned up the hose, and the shower, changed, and took a shower myself.

Helpful(?) hints

• Do this job early in the day if possible. There are many reasons why. From the photos above, though, you can see that I didn't take my own advice. I think I learned of the problem after I got home from work in the evening, but didn't want to deal with it until after dinner. Then I conveniently forgot about it until after dark. That was not so convenient.
  
• Take a look around the house for cleanouts, and have at least one blowbag of appropriate size on hand before the need arises. Your spouse and your children will think you're a genius. Of course they'll be right!
  
• A corollary: Have pipe wrench(es) on hand that are big enough to deal with the cleanouts.
  
• Another corollary: If you don't have a floor jack, have a piece of rigid pipe big enough to accommodate the handle of the pipe wrench. Then you can use the pipe as an extension of the pipe wrench handle. A 3-5 foot pipe (insert the entire handle into the pipe if you can!) ought to give you enough leverage to deal with any sewer cleanout. If not, you may have to pry open your wallet and call a plumber.
  
• Be really sure, when unscrewing the cap from the cleanout, that you're turning it in the right direction -- i.e., that you're trying to loosen it, not tighten it. Don't ask me how I know.
  
• When replacing the cap, be really careful not to cross-thread it. Don't ask me how I know.
  
• Use your oldest, dirtiest, ugliest garden hose on the blowbag. For the reason why, take a close look at the photos above. See how icky the hose looks after doing this job?
  
• Corollary: Be sure that you don't mind staining whatever clothes you're wearing. Shoes, too.
  

Connected to Jesus?

Today's New Testament reading puts me in mind of a sermon we heard in Japan. Our pastor said that he used to think the Christian life was like a rechargeable shaver. At a meeting on Sunday morning or afternoon, or Friday evening, or whenever, he would charge up the shaver's battery, and then it would run like great guns -- at least on the same day. Over the next several days, the battery would run down, and the shaver would start sounding old and tired. Then, at the next meeting, it would get charged up again and sound terrific for a day or so.

He illustrated this with his own rechargeable shaver -- he plugged in the charger and the shaver ran great for 10-20 seconds, but then you could hear it slowing down.

He repeated this cycle many times, he said, until he understood that life with God was not supposed to be like that. We aren't supposed to run independently except for occasional recharging sessions, he said; rather, we're supposed to be plugged in, connected to Jesus, all the time.

At this point, he pulled out another shaver, which had no battery. He plugged it in and turned it on; it ran. So long as it was plugged in, it ran; as soon as he pulled the plug, it stopped.

Now of course Jesus didn't mention electric shavers when he talked with his disciples about his connection to them. Rather, he used an analogy they understood immediately: that of a vine (or a trunk) and branches. He is the vine, he said, and he told the disciples:

“⁴Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“⁵I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ”

John 15:4-5

So here's the thing: if we want any result to come from our lives, we need to remain in Jesus continually.

What does that mean? I think Jesus gives us a clue a little later on.

"⁹As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.

John 15:9-10

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the meaning of "remain in me" is really close to "remain in my love", if it's not the exact same thing. To walk in the way of Jesus, to follow his commands -- that seems to be what we chiefly need.

vague East-Asian chicken

I made up this recipe today. My girls loved it, so I thought I'd try to tell you about it.

1. Cut up
   • a chicken.
   I toss the giblets, the back, and the wing tips (I mean, I toss the tips of the wings; I'm not giving you footwear fashion advice). Some people cut the chicken into like 16 pieces, but basically cut it up however you like. You don't need the skin (your cardiologist will thank me) but don't obsess over it.
2. Brown it in a little vegetable oil on medium heat, turning occasionally.
3. Meanwhile cut up
   • a few (1-3) green onions.
   I like slicing 'em up really small, but do what's right in your own eyes.
4. Add
   • 1-2 Tbsp soy sauce
   to the chicken and reduce heat to medium or medium-low.
5. Add
   • the green onions you cut up in step #3;
   • 1 tsp minced garlic (from a jar if you have one, or mince 2 cloves if you don't);
   • 1/2 tsp fresh minced ginger (from a jar if you have one);
   • 1 Tbsp Chinese/Japanese/Korean sesame oil.
6. Optional: You can add
   • a small can of bamboo shoots, rinsed and cut up
   here if you like.
7. Continue stirring until the ingredients are well distributed.
8. Add
   • ¼ cup saké
   then cover and reduce heat to low.
9. Optional: You can add
   • ½ block of tofu, cut into 2cm (or whatever size you prefer) cubes
   if you like at this point
10. Simmer at least another 5 minutes but not more than 20-30, stirring occasionally.

This dish is not really time-critical. I mean, it's not like a stir-fry that's best served up as soon as it's done.

What is Steven Pinker?

In last week's sermon (transcript) our pastor started a series on Faith and Doubt. He mentioned several books -- The God Delusion by Dawkins, God Is not Great by Hitchens -- and mentioned that a friend of his doesn't read this sort of thing for fear it'll injure his faith. I don't tend to read this sort of thing either, but for a different reason: the idiotic arguments made by supposedly intelligent people tend to make me mad -- especially since I used to say some of the same stoopid things, and I guess I feel a little ashamed of them. Also, I don't want to encourage them by giving them royalties. I pick some of these things up and I feel like yelling at the author or throwing the book across the room. Usually I manage to control myself, though.

Our pastor also mentioned Steven Pinker, who says that there really isn't anyone behind your interlocutor's eyes; a human being is just a biochemical machine.

I was having dinner with a friend the other night, and he asked me what evidence Pinker gives for this idea. I really couldn't remember, so I picked up my copy of The Blank Slate (which I bought used a few years ago), and succeeded in not throwing it across the room.

Basically Pinker attacks Cartesian dualism (body vs soul, mind vs brain) by drawing connections between the physical and mental, or between biology and culture -- the idea being that if you can bridge that gap, you've bridged 'em all, I guess. This is all in Pinker's chapter 3.

One bridge is "cognitive science" -- he writes about AI, and about Deep Thought's beating Kasparov in 1997.

The second is neuroscience -- "the evidence is overwhelming that every aspect of our mental lives depends entirely on physiological events in the tissues of the brain" (p.41), he says, citing Phineas Gage's accident that permanently altered his personality. He also cites observations made by Gazzaniga and Sperry on patients whose corpus callosum (which joins the two hemispheres of the cerebrum) is cut. They found that

...each hemisphere can exercise free will without the other one's advice or consent. Even more disconcertingly, the left hemisphere constantly weaves a coherent but false account of the behavior chosen without its knowledge by the right. For example, if an experimenter flashes the command "WALK" to the right hemisphere... the person will comply with the request and begin to walk out of the room. But when the person (specifically the person's left hemisphere) is asked why he just got up, he will say, in all sincerity, "To get a Coke" — rather than "I don't really know" or "The urge just came over me" ....

The spooky part is that we have no reason to think that the baloney-generator in the patient's left hemisphere is behaving any differently from ours as we make sense of the inclinations emanating from the rest of our brains. the conscious mind — the self or soul — is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief.

Pinker, The Blank Slate
(New York: Viking, 2002), p.43

The problem with this line of reasoning is precisely this: how do we know that the "baloney-generator" is not active as I read Pinker's words? Or, as Lewis wrote, "If thought is the undesigned and irrelevant product of cerebral motions, what reason have we to trust it? Today we might say "electrochemical reactions," but a purely mechanical explanation for intelligent thought is just as dumb an idea as it was in the early 1940s.

Does this Harvard/MIT psychology professor really not understand what any Stanford philosophy sophomore does -- that by impugning the rational capabilities of the human brain in general, he casts doubt upon his own arguments -- indeed, all arguments?

Pinker draws at least a couple more bridges between the mental and physical worlds, or between biology and culture. I do not dispute that there are connections, but his conclusion -- that there is no one behind blue eyes -- is a bit much.

Here's how I see it. Pinker will not imagine that a morally-responsible agent could be mediated by imperfect biochemical mechanisms, and therefore he insists that no such agent can exist. If we take the definition of "religion" offered by some wags, viz., "believing something you know isn't true," then I'll assert that Pinker's position on this point is religious.

Why? Because he has had intimate relationships, and you can't do that while believing that there's no one behind those eyes. Nobody can consistently hold the position that humans are ultimately just biochemical machines and live his life that way -- well, maybe some can, but we lock them up. I am not willing to believe that Pinker is so diabolical and deceptive and downright evil that he would seduce women while not actually believing in them. He may not believe as I do about their immortal souls, but it's unimaginable that he thinks of women as mere biochemical machines, or that they think he looks at them in that way.

No, it's far more reasonable to believe that Pinker is in many ways like I am, or like you are. We all have blind spots; we all deceive ourselves in little and not-so-little ways. He holds people accountable for their actions, because he knows (when he's not writing books) that the auto mechanic, the cop, the secretary, the waiter, his wife or girlfriend, and so on really are people -- that when he looks into their eyes, he's looking at someone's eyes, not just at some biochemical super-robot's visual sensors.

OK, I've been repeating myself for some time now; time to stop and make dinner.

Last night

Last night, I looked at the clock. "Ten o'clock!" I said. "No wonder I'm so tired." Flossed and brushed my teeth, and fell into bed, lying on my left side so as to keep an eye on the lovely Carol, once she arrived. I closed my eyes briefly.

Pretty soon she climbed into bed beside me and turned on the headboard light. She pulled out a book. "I'm going to read something to help me set my mind on the Spirit," she said. "The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace."

I love it when she quotes the Bible to me -- I think it's so sexy. That was Romans 8:6 I think.

But in this case I wasn't really paying attention; I was admiring the shape of her leg and remembering how it felt. I closed my eyes again.

She smirked at me. "You don't care about setting your mind on the Spirit?" she said.

In response, I reached over and touched her leg, setting my mind on her flesh. Then I threw a pillow at her.

The best days of my life were almost behind me

Got off the train yesterday afternoon and rode my bike down Oak Grove. Approaching the intersection with Middlefield, I saw that the light had just turned green. I don't know why I was in such a hurry -- maybe I was in my "car" mentality (you know, just press the gas pedal a little and you can probably make it...) -- but I looked behind me and saw that there was plenty of room for me to move into the left-turn lane.

By the time I got to the intersection, I was maybe 25 yards behind the last car that had gone through the intersection, so I knew the light was about to turn red. Why I didn't notice the oncoming car I have no idea.

We both approached the intersection and I almost did it -- almost put myself in the path of that car. Its driver jammed on the brakes at just about the time I swerved back into my lane. I think she was hurrying to make the light, too.

We passed without further incident -- I turned left behind that car -- and I felt like an idiot.

Haste makes waste -- could have made a lot of waste. I could have been injured or worse, traffic would have been tied up there for hours, Sheri would have called and not found me home and ... I thanked God for waking me up in time to avoid a personal disaster.

I have a book about home wiring that has this helpful reminder:

Think! Stay alive!

That's something I need to remember, especially on a bicycle.

On a not completely unrelated topic, I sometimes find myself thinking about things enjoyed in the past.

Some old cynics say that youth is wasted on the young. I don't quite agree, because as an "old guy" (yeah right) I wouldn't use the blessings of youth any more intelligently than I did back then. In other words, any fountain of youth would be squandered just as well by the old as by the young.

I think of watching my children grow up, how they needed me to help them, teach them things, cook for them. To be brutally honest, their needs made me feel important and worthwhile, and as they grow up and need me less and less, I tend to feel less significant, less worthy of the air I breathe.

Two things occurred to me as I mused on this last night, and one more as I wrote this.

• Who provided the joy and blessing that came through my children? Children are a blessing from... from the Lord (Psalm 127), right? How likely is it that the Lord will stop giving? -!- (that was the sound of my hand hitting my forehead)
• Even if the days ahead are less enjoyable than the days past (which is by no means a certain truth), what is life about? Is life really about What Makes Me Feel Good? That is a childish way of thinking; it is, to steal a line from Out of the Silent Planet, "cubs' talk."
• And the thing that occurred to me as I wrote the previous paragraph was: idolatry. If the thing that makes me feel worthy is that my kids need me, then they constitute an idol in my life. Gaaaa! There's another slap-the-forehead moment.

Well, thank God that he accepts me in my folly and forgetfulness. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.