Planning

Do managers ever rubber duck their proposals? (with someone who does not report to them, of course). Also see rule 12. You can think of business or government decisions with unhappy side effects that should have been forseeable.

Odd

The book is nominally to be released on 18-June, though word is that Amazon started shipping already.

But "SuperBookDeals" claims to have it available already, second hand. I assume they won't ship until they actually get a second-hand copy, and thus delivery might take a while, but that's a curious business model. "81% positive over the past 12 months"

Shattered Sword was Parshall's book on Midway.

Bohemian Rhapsody

The East and West mixed choir sang this, as arranged by Philip Lawson. I can see why they left out the part about Why the "poor boy from a poor family" was in such trouble -- singing about random murders is maybe not what you want impressionable youth doing -- but it changes the tone quite a bit. This way the singer seems almost justified in his complaints.

Libraries

Thanks to Anecdotal Evidence, a description of our living room: To Read. So many books, so little time...

Formation

Evangelical colleges have not been on my radar--never really were, since I wasn't planning to study liberal arts. The link explains why they're in trouble: partly demographic change, partly cultural changes (can I get a good job?), and partly heads in the sand.

What's the purpose of them? Liberal arts education and Christian formation, apparently--seminaries seem to be the place to go for specifically church-related credentials like MDiv (*) and MRE.

If the evangelical college is like a secular college but with Christian focus and an effort at formation, then how can this be accomplished more flexibly and cheaply?

Online study is popular, though zoom is an inferior substitute for in-person discussion. One obvious problem is supplying the "Christian formation" part. If the college partners with the home churches, perhaps the local church could implement formation plans. Of course you might ask: "Aren't the churches supposed to be doing that for everybody?"

Well, yes. But I notice that the church doesn't keep close tabs on who "attends chapel," and doing that might cause problems. Unless, of course, the person volunteers for closer supervision and regular meetings with his spiritual advisor.

Even with that voluntary aspect there's still the risk of developing a two-tier church with "ordinary" and "more holy" groups. Which would be very very bad.

There's interest in programs for spiritual formation. Naturally, they will only be as effective as you let the Holy Spirit be. And there's a lot of fuzziness in definitions. I just looked up one (EFCA) program that read like a course description instead of a relationship.

I clearly have quite a bit of reading-up to do. And I should collar one of the pastors and ask some questions.

(*) Master of Divinity -- among all the weird names for a degree, this stands out.

Wisdom of teenagers

Fledgling robins fly about the garden, hoping to still be fed. Or something. Two stood on the far side of one of the garden fence panels, giving the mulched garden the side-eye. Then one tried to hop in as though the chickenwire wasn't there.

Then it tried again. And again. And its nestmate tried too. Three times. Finally both wandered off. As far as I can tell, they didn't try to fly in that day. Not that there was much to dig for in the wood-chips.

Honeyberry

aka haskap, grows nicely here. We've had some in the front yard for several years now. I've only eaten about 3 or 4 of the berries, though.

The way that you know that the berries are ripe is to look at the bush. If the robins are busily eating all the berries, they're ripe.

FWIW, we also planted strawberries in a 4x4 raised bed. They never produced much, so we yanked them out and planted flowers and fennel (don't do that) and whatnot. However we missed a few runners, and the strawberries spread, escaping the baleful shade of the coneflowers and forming a perimeter about the central garden, that actually produces strawberries. We usually get a few (mice get more), which is fine for a no-maintenance/no-expectation plant.

It took about 25 years for the grapevine to start producing significant quantities, and by then all the kids were grown, but grandkids learned how to harvest them anyway. We squeeze a lot of plants in a tiny city lot. You can't feed a crowd off them, but that wasn't the point.