Wordless Wednesday - December 11, 2024

 

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Gustavo Gutiérrez dies aged 96

The Rev. Dr. Gustavo Gutiérrez is regarded as the father of liberation theology. I remember Gutiérrez giving a lecture series which I attended many years ago. He was wise, insightful, and had a sense of humour. He reminded me a lot of the president of our seminary, the Rev. Dr. William Hordern, like Hordern he had a strong theology of grace. For more on Gutiérrez, read the following tribute here.

The Weekend in Black & White: October 4, 2024

 

An historic building, which has, over the years been opened and closed as a restaurant.

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Wordless Wednesday - September 4, 2024

 

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Book Review: Becoming Steve Jobs

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

Reviewed by Eclecticity

Authors: Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

Publisher: Signal McClelland & Stewart, Random House of Canada Limited, Penguin Random House Company, hardcover, 447 pages, including: Authors’ Note, Prologue, 17 Chapters, Source Notes, Bibliography, Acknowledgments, and Index

Authors: At the time of publication, Brent Schlender was a premier chronicler of the personal computer revolution, who wrote about every major figure and company in the tech industry, He covered Steve Jobs for the Wall Street Journal andFortune for nearly twenty-five years. Rick Tetzeli, executive director of Fast Company, covered technology for two decades. He was former deputy editor of Fortune and the editor of Entertainment Weekly.

Brief Observations

Steve Jobs was one of the most influential persons in the Silicon Valley computer industry. His biological parents were Joanna Schieble, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian PhD candidate studying political science. Only a few days after his birth, Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, a lower-middle-class couple, living in Mountain View, California. Steve’s widow wife said of Paul and Clara: “He felt he had been really blessed by having the two of them as parents” (p. 25). His parents wanted Steve to have a good education. A bright student, he skipped grade six, eventually he would go to college, only to drop out. His dad, Paul had many jobs, including a machinist and car mechanic. He encouraged Steve to pay attention to detail while working, showing him how to take things apart and put them back together. He gave Steve a workbench in the garage to repair and built things. 

Eventually Steve met Stephen Wozniak, who was an “engineering genius.” “Woz,” as he is called in the book, learned engineering from his Lockheed engineer dad. Schlender and Tetzeli describe the formation of the Jobs and Wozniak company, Apple in 1976, the development and sale of the first Apple personal computers, and eventually Woz and Steve grew apart as their company grew. Not only did Woz and Steve grow apart, but in the mid-1980s, Steve had major disagreements with key people in the Apple company, who supported each other to demote Steve, which led to him leaving the Apple company that he had co-founded. 

The authors then describe Steve’s new company NeXT, hoping it would be a better company than Apple, its ups and downs, as well as the purchase of the Pixar business, which created the Toy Story animated movie and others, and eventually he sold the company to Disney. By then Steve had become a billionaire. After several years, Steve did return to Apple and become its CEO, and the company became a huge success worldwide. 

Much of the volume contains content from interviews by the authors of Steve’s company employees, friends and others. In addition, there is a lot of detailed information about technological products, including: Apple computers, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iTune App Store, iPhone, iPad, and others. 

The book also describes the complex personality of Steve. While he was thought of as a genius, a visionary, a brilliant aesthetic designer, a loyal friend, an inspiring leader and mentor, and a loving husband and dad; he also came across as overly critical, an unrealistic perfectionist, over confident and arrogant, aggressive, rude, and lacking empathy. 

Steve was a vegan and a Buddhist, and for a time he had a Zen monk mentor-teacher. In Buddhism, one belief about human beings is that we are always in a state of becoming—hence the title of this volume, and one of the personality traits of Steve was his constant restlessness to seek for something better in his life and work. 

The volume also includes Steve’s Stanford University commencement address, and his wife Laurene’s tribute at the memorial service on October 17, at the Memorial Church on Stanford University’s campus. Steve had died October 5, 2011, after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. 

Steve Jobs has indeed left a legacy in the personal computer world that lives on, and some believe he and his legacy have made this world a better place. 

Even though in their “Authors’ Note,” they stated that the first person singular referred to Brent Schlender, my critique in that regard is readers may not really know which sections were specifically written by Tetzeli. 

This volume will mostly appeal to computer geeks. 

Friday Face Off: July 12, 2024

 The following photos were taken on our Caribbean cruise. The first photo is Gabriel, and the second Steven. They were two musicians on the trip who played and sang a variety of songs. 

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Friday Face Off: July 5, 2024

 This is my first time I'm contributing to Friday Face Off. This photo was taken at a Heritage Festival of a happy couple.

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Weekend in Black & White - June 8, 2024

 

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Wordless Wednesday - May 8, 2024

 

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April 22 is Earth Day

Tomorrow is Earth Day. Our planet, as most of us know, is in big trouble. With climate change, there is already, and will continue to be, more extreme weather: destructive storms, floods, droughts, heat-waves, cold spells, and so on. The pollution of the water, land and air will also result in more endangered and extinct species, and more life-threatening diseases. Unless humankind is able to more rapidly and radically change our destructive lifestyle, climate change will only worsen and threaten humankind’s very existence. 

So on this Earth Day 2024, consider what you can do to make a difference. For example, here are some suggestions: instead of driving your vehicle, ride your bicycle or public transportation. Go for a walk in a park or by a lake. Enjoy watching birds and other wildlife. Write a song or hymn inspired by God’s creation. Have a picnic, but don’t leave garbage behind. Clean up the garbage on a beach, or a street, or a roadway ditch. Make an effort to purchase and use less plastic. Sign a petition and/or write a letter or make a phone call to your elected politicians. Make a concerted effort to use less water and electricity. Of course all of these suggestions and more can become part of your lifestyle. 

You can also educate yourself by reading books and/or articles about the environment. Here are some informative links.

*Earthday.org: https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2024/ This website is full of information—everything from quizes, to press releases, to fact sheets, petitions, reports, and much more.

*Earth Day 2024 Google Doodles: https://doodles.google/doodle/earth-day-2024/Includes aerial photos of the planet’s beauty and biodiversity, and an explanation on how the Doodle was created.

*Earth Day Canada: https://earthday.ca/ Includes information on municipalities receiving electric charging stations, news on their blog, an offer to subscribe to their newsletter, etc. One annoying thing about this website is their insistence on accepting cookies. 

*BBC article “What is Earth Day, when is it and what has it achieved?”:https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68610073 An informative article, which traces the origins of Earth Day back to 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, a US senator and environmentalist, and Denis Hayes, a graduate student at Harvard University.

*Earth Day-Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day Plenty of information here on the history of Earth Day, with a lot of references. It mentions that the first Earth Day in Canada wasn’t until 1980. 

*There are also a number of videos if you do a search, for example, on YouTube. Here is a good one for children and adults: “Earth Day: How it started and why it matters-CBC Kids News”: https://youtu.be/qXK-2U9NylE

Good Friday Prayer of the Day/Collect

Holy One of heaven and earth: On this most solemn of days in the church year, we confess that we, along with all of humankind, crucified, and continue to crucify Jesus your Son with our betrayals, denials, hostile rejections, hatreds, countless isms that divide us from one another and cause brokenness in our relationships with others, pride, arrogance, self-righteousness, destructive self-indulgences, indifference to the suffering and injustices of the poor, marginalized and oppressed, and a host of other sins. Have mercy on us, forgive us, and lead us in the way of the cross, that we may be ever grateful for the eternal love of Jesus our Suffering Servant-Saviour and Messiah; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. 

Weekend in Black & White - February 9, 2024

 

        

                                              St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Nassau, Bahamas

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Wordless Wednesday - January 3, 2024

 

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