LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 4

Okay, the Advent Calendar is swerving madly all over the Star Wars world by giving us another build, like yesterday, that isn't from any movies.

Day 4 sees a Republic Fighter Tank as I was pretty sure was seen in Episode III, but according to the Star Wars wiki page, it's only showed up in games, books, and animated shows.

It's perhaps as good a model as one can expect given the 23 or so pieces in it.

LEGO released a large build of this last year, and I always thought it looked pretty good, but not something I wanted, so I don't have one.

So, here it is:

Pretty cool!

And it came with a spare turret, which are good to have around as extras to spice up other models that could use an antenna, or a laser cannon, or a bzzzzt thing.

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 3

Today, we go away from the movies entirely and into the realm of animation with The Freemaker Adventures. I have no idea what they are, because I've not watched them.

I did, however, know that this build is called The Arrowhead, because LEGO released a large scale build of this last year and it seemed pretty similar. I did not get the large-scale Arrowhead because it's an ugly ship, IMO.

To me, that's a very unpleasing ship design.I'm curious what the ship looks like in the cartoons. So bear with me a moment - I'm going to look for one.

Here it is, to the best of my knowledge - not having seen the show, I don't know if this is a picture of the actual one or a fan-person's rendering. But close enough.

It's a bit better than the LEGO realization, but it's still not a ship I would want to be flying in the Star Wars universe. I'd feel cheated. Might even join the Empire just to get a cooler ship.

Anyway, the point here is to show what comes in the calendar, so here is today's build of the Arrowhead.

Somehow the low-piece-count version turns out kind of charming and cute in a way that the original doesn't manage. It's a close approximation, I'll give it that, but not very close. But for a build that is, I think, 16 pieces of what is a kind of complex design, this is pretty impressive.

It's a strange choice, though, to go to a somewhat fringe version of Star Wars. I mean, I've known about the animated Clone Wars for a long time, even though I've never watched any of them, either. But Freemakers? Brand new to me today.

When I saw the Arrowhead big build at the store when I came out, I just assumed it was one of the number of lackluster forgettable ships we've seen in Episodes VII and VIII.

So,well, there you go! I'm actually pleased with the little thing. Like I said, it's kind of charming and fun.

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 2

The second day of the Advent Calendar takes us away from the original trilogy, and away from the second trilogy, and into the third with a minifigure of Rose Tico. I was surprised to get a minifigure so soon, and to move from Episode IV to Episode VIII in one day.

But I'm not complaining! The minifigures are often the most exciting ones to open in the Advent Calendar. The ships and tech thingies are fun, but because they have such a limited piece count, they just will never be as nice as the full-size models. For example, the landspeeder from yesterday is a really good version of the landspeeder using just 18 or so pieces, and I quite like how they made it look, and anything from Episode IV is always going to be a big hit with me; but it'll never match the coolness of the versions made with hundreds of pieces.

Minifigures, however, are just like they are in the larger sets. They are not reduced versions of what one gets in the larger sets, they're the same thing

I wouldn't mind if the Advent calendars focused much more on the people. Because let's be honest, the Advent Calendars usually have a good 8-10 days' worth of prizes that aren't particularly well done or models of some of the less interesting Star Wars ships, devices, or other tech.

So here is Rose Tico, as seen in the Last Jedi. A good, strong character who confronts Finn for wanting to bail on the heroes (even though that wasn't what he was doing), then they o searching for Maz the coder and have a great adventure in the casino city (and ride those crazy animals and meet those children, one of whom at least has Force powers) and then go to Crait to battle the First Order where she keeps Finn from making a suicide run, which leads to her getting seriously injured. She's a great character. She's a super mission-focused hero, and should be an inspiration to all Star Wars fans. Unfortunately, after Episode VIII came out, the world was witness to the fact that Star Wars has terrible racists and terrible misogynists in its demographic, and the character - and even more unfortunately, the actor, Kelly Marie Tran, was the recipient of much racist and sexist abuse, along with a lot of the other female characters and actors. Knock it off, Star Wars fans. The only racists in the Star Wars universe were the Imperials, who felt that humans were the only valid sentient life forms. Don't be like them. Jerks. Episode VIII was awesome partly because it was filled with humans of many races, and many strong and capable women. Grow up.

I mean, how small and cowardly does one have to be that one is threatened by a **fictional character** in a space fantasy such that one must go all Internet-warrior and post racist/sexist things and send threatening notes and make sure that ol' ALL CAPS key is always on? Pathetic. It's not the year 1 any more, you throwbacks to a thankfully-lost time.

Here she is:

And in case you've not done one of these Advent Calendars, here are some photos of what the "playmat" area looks like. It's really quite silly of LEGO to do this, because there is no way to have this box open and display the daily builds on the playmat while still also being able to open the doors. The doors are far too difficult to open without tearing them that one has to hold the box in order to do it, which means any figures on display have to be taken off every day. Kind of defeats the whole purpose. So I display my daily builds on a table, and then once Christmas arrives and there are no more doors to open, the box goes to the recycle bin because I don't like having things lying around taking up space if I don't need them. Then the whole batch of Advent builds go into a plastic display box, nice and tidy. :D

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 1

Hello, all -

Another time of Advent, and another LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar! I've gotten the calendars for a few years, and always enjoy the daily surprise. Sometimes they're kind of disappointing, most of the time they're pretty cool, and sometimes they're really exciting!

I posted the calendar to Facebook last year, and this year I thought I'd post it to my blog.

Today is the first day of Advent, so I opened the Day 1 window and got the pieces to build this:

Day 1 is a landspeeder. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell exactly what a build is supposed to be, but I'm quite certain this is supposed to be Luke's landspeeder from Episode IV.

It's really quite an efficient design and well - for only having 17 or 18 pieces, it does the trick!

And as much as I love all the Star Wars related stuff, my heart will always be for Episodes IV-VI, so getting something on Day from the very first episode is a super treat. The "playmat" that comes with the Advent Calendar box has a lot of ice and snow on it, making me think of Hoth, so hopefully we'll be seeing some Episode V goodies, too. I'd love an imperial probe droid, medical droid, an AT-AT, and/or a snowspeeder. I could look at the front of the box to get an idea of the stuff that's coming, but I don't like to do that. I prefer to be surprised. What would be really cool from Hoth would be Luke in an eviscerated Tauntaun.

Which reminds of a joke my Amazon Echo told me - 

Q. What is the internal temperature of a tauntaun? [highlight the line below to see the answer]

A. Lukewarm!

Come back tomorrow to see what Day 2 offers!

#NeverAgain, #MeToo, Good Friday, Easter, and Dickens Duality

I wrote this essay for the Faith Walk insert for the Leader-Telegram for their Spring 2018 Edition, which was printed on Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018. The essay is not available on-line at the LT website, so I post it here:


Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities famously begins, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.”

Dickens’ words are in my head because we are coming to Holy Week, a week that has Good Friday crucifixion and Easter resurrection, truly the worst of times and the best of times. We live post-Easter so ostensibly we live in the best of times. We humans are imperfect, though, and fall to the lull of false idols and are quite clever in convincing ourselves of only noble intentions, refusing to see just how much we allow ourselves to live in a Good Friday time. A time when the innocent are crucified just as Jesus was crucified by the Roman Empire, an empire that lived by the ways of death, weapons of war, and state-sponsored murder while falsely calling it the Peace of Rome.

We live in a Good Friday time, watching over the decades as our school children are killed as sacrificial lambs, as well as church-goers, country music attendees, soldiers on military bases, shoppers in malls. We’re now five months past the church shooting in Texas, five years after Sandy Hook, eighteen years after Columbine, thirty-four years after the McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro (1984 - the first mass killing I remember, which was my senior year of high school). Plus far, far more, and yet nothing has been done. We haven’t even been allowed to have a conversation about it. “Now is not the time,” we are told, as though we should shun the truth until it’s convenient for us. As a follower of Jesus, I believe that the time for truth is always right now.

Yet the week I am writing this, a dog died in an overhead bin on an airplane and already a senator has introduced legislation to keep it from happening again. Immediate action for a dog, but we are forced to helplessly watch our children, neighbors, teachers, fellow church-goers or concert-attendees murdered while Pilate washes his hands and offers prayers. Surely, the worst of times, an age of foolishness, a season of Darkness, a winter of despair. This is against the gospel of Jesus Christ and the good news of Easter.

But like the times of Dickens, we are also in an age of wisdom, an epoch of belief, a season of Light, and a spring of hope. Truth-speakers are calling us back to the way of Easter and away from the ways of Good Friday. The student Walk Out happened this week, students rising up to say #NeverAgain and demand that we adults fix a problem we have been complicit in allowing for far too many decades. Women (and men) have been rising up to say #metoo, exposing their abusers and calling for an end to normalizing sexual harassment. The Black Lives Matter movement is raising awareness of the many ways racism plagues us. Millions have marched and continue to march supporting science, women, the environment, and the many who are left behind. Local governments are passing laws that state and national ones won’t, supporting the Paris Accords, sustainable energy, living wages, school safety, better health care, less imprisonment, religious diversity, protections for minorities.

An Easter movement is happening here and abroad, an Easter movement elevating hope, life, and love, and it gives me great hope. We have a young generation demanding a better future, we have formerly silent voices demanding to be heard, and some who hold power admitting their abuse of that power who are starting to listen and invite in these new voices. As a pastor of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God who came to liberate and bring hope, life, and love, I find that this is, in so many ways, an Easter time, which is surely the best of times.

The United States' messed up health and health-insurance system

Our health industry in this country is messed up. I was prescribed a med back in the spring, and for ease of everything, I had it filled by the pharmacy at the Mayo clinic where my doctors are. All I had to do was walk downstairs. It cost me $15. I didn't think much of it, figuring I must have a $15 co-pay (my insurance has changed co-pays a number of times the past ten years, and since this is my first long-term prescription, I hadn't really paid attention to the current values of the co-pay).

The second month I refilled the prescription and it was $15. Woo hoo - consistency! At least the price wasn't randomly changing.

Out of curiosity, I asked the clerk if that was my co-pay amount, or if the co-pay was larger and this medicine was just $15. She said, 'You have no insurance on this.' 'Oh pfffft,' I said to her, 'I assumed that since Mayo has my information that the pharmacy would have it as well. 'No,' she said. I banished her to serve at the Ice Wall for her frostiness, and I trotted off to get my insurance info and brought it back to the pharmacy later. So to recap: the full price of the medicine was $15, for me, an apparently insurance-less person at the time. $15 is the price without any insurance interference.

After they got my info, the cost of the medicine went down to $5.60, of which I paid $1.80. So the medicine that cost $15 for uninsured people now cost just a bit more than 1/3 of that (and my cost was now less than a third of that new negotiated price). I went from $15 a month to $1.80, and the insurance was charged $3.80. The pharmacy gets $9.40 less from the insured than from the uninsured. And now that I have to mail order, the pharmacy gets nothing.

Then, after using my insurance that one time, I got a letter from my insurance saying that this medicine needs to be fulfilled by their own mail-order prescription system, and not the pharmacy, or else I would be charged more than that one-time co-pay. 'Fine,' I thought, 'Mail service for me it shall be. How wonderfully old school, but also convenient, that they'll automatically send me my medicine every three months.' I filled out on-line the information they needed, and the prescription for three months was $4.60.

So, to recap, I went from $15 a month to $1.80 a month to $1.53 a month. The mail-order price also includes shipping.

That was three months ago. Today, my second shipment of medicine for three months arrived. This time it cost me $3.16, which is a third of a cent more than $1.05 per month.

I am blessed to have health insurance! But the system is so rigged. A person without health insurance, and let's assume they work a full-time job but it's a minimum wage one which is why don't have insurance from their employer. would be paying more than two hours of his/her labor per month for this medicine. A total of $180 for a year. That is three days of full-time work plus one more hour. Or let's assume our person in need is homeless - and so many of the homeless that our street ministry work with need prescription medicines and most don't have insurance (some have medicare [or Medicaid, I can never remember what the difference is between the two, and that's not important now anyway] or here in Wisconsin, they might have BadgerCare). For an unemployed homeless person, even a $15 a month prescription can be an impossibility. Hell, let's be honest - it's damn near impossible for them to even get to a doctor to have a check-up and have a prescription written out, so whether they can afford is itself a moot question. They can't even get to a doctor to get a prescription. That's outrageous, and a shameful state for the supposed greatest country in the world, or for the factually country with the largest GDP in the world that exceeds #2 by about 70%. And we can't afford to help our homeless brothers and sisters? Can't afford to offer healthcare to all our citizens? Pshaw. It's not a matter of money, it's a matter of too many people not having the moral will to make it happen.

And yet my insurance company, because of their power and ability to negotiate, would pay the clinic just over a third of that, $67.20. [But of course, now the clinic gets nothing because of the mail-order requirement.] I don't know what the insurance company gets charged now from whomever they are buying the pills, because that information isn't on the paperwork I receive, but I'm sure they're paying less than the $5.60, because a) otherwise they wouldn't require the mail order service since they'd be paying more, and it must be less than $5.60 b) because the cost of shipping the meds is included in the amount they charge me.

And that's one example of what's wrong with our for-profit health-care system that is also so employer-dependent for people to have coverage - yes, the ACA has really helped get a lot more people covered, but it's still a system in which employer's are paying for most of us. Basic universal healthcare for everyone - a moral society would say "We have the money!" and make it happen. Let the insurance companies and employers offer bells and whistles plans and coverages if they'd like, but We The People ought to be taking care of one another to ensure that no one goes without preventive care, no one goes without the medicine and medical care they need, and no one should ever have to declare bankruptcy or steal money or sell all they own simply because they got sick.

This Thanksgiving, I am very grateful for the insurance I have - I've had a lot of medical this year, and if I'd had to pay it all by myself I'd be in a lot of hurt. But there are far too many people who cannot be thankful because we who are rich and well off refuse to give them anything to be thankful for. To continually ship people's jobs oversees, to reduce their healthcare or to deny it altogether, to consistently refuse to make it a law that employed people should be paid a living wage, to continually increase the pay and benefits to CEOs and other executives while reducing pay to the folks low on the ladder, or just firing them because it will make this quarter's earnings look awesome, to continue to imprison the poor at ludicrous rates instead of helping them, to introduce a "tax plan" that will benefit the rich and harm everyone else even as the "Christians" who wrote it constantly bear false witness about it... --- and then to constantly harp on how folks ought to be thankful? That's immoral.

We're better than this, America.

My letter to friends sent on Sept. 11, 2001 after returning home from the WTC attacks

On Sept. 11, 2001, I was working for Lehman Brothers in the World Financial Center Building #3, across the street from World Trade Center Tower #1 (the north tower), the first one hit by terrorists. After a long walk home (I lived on 139th St., so that was about 8-9 miles), during which I stopped at Union Seminary for a few hours to be in a holy place, and spending time in Riverside Park for another kind of holy place, I sent this email to many friends and family. Our landline phones were out in the apartment, and cell coverage was really spotty, but the DSL was still working so I at least had Internet and email was the only way I had to get news to a lot of people. There was no Facebook yet!

here it is, with all the typos and mistakes:

Evening of Sept. 11, 2001: Letter to friends and family and the world

To all my friends who have inquired already, and those who might be wondering about the events in NYC this terrible day, I send this note.

I thank you for the many messages and phone calls you have offered to me and to my sister and to Yuki to find out if I was safe. Coming home from the World Trade Center and finding so many emails and phone messages was a real delight, although as we know, the circumstances were not good. But rest assured, I did escape without injury. I had always wondered just how long it would take to walk between work and 139th street where I live, and now I know: about 4 hours. Work is *not* within walking distance.

I began work as normal this morning about 8:00 am in World Financial Center Building 3, which is across the street from the World Trade Center Tower 2, the first building to be hit by terrorists.

As we watched from our office window the flames and smoke pour out from that first strike in Tower 2, our thought was simply that a very unfortunate - but possible - accident had taken place. Fairly unworried, we sort of went back to be about our work, though many of us continued to watch CNBC on the many monitors that are placed around the trading floor, and which some poeple have on their TVs on their desks. After the second plane hit, we realized it was intentional, and called for the evacuation of our building. Though we could see the damage fairly well through our windows, we still did not have a good sense of just how terrible it was.

I left our building and headed north a block or two. As I was walking through a group people watching the towers, I heard the sudden intake of breath and horrified gasps. I turned around, and witnessed a person - a fellow human being - jumping out of a window from near the top of the tower. That was just the first jumper I was to see. It was a sickening feeling, knowing that for those people, jumping was probably the most painless and hopeful way to die, as they were certainly trapped at the top with no hope of getting out. I think of those people's families, and shudder and recoil at this senseless murdering. I do not wish to ever be witness to such a thing again. I soon came across Claire, a woman with whom I work, who needed to take the ferry across the river to get to New Jersey. We walked back to the Ferry, which is located on the other side of the building I work in, and has a full - and close - view of both towers. Thankfully, she managed to get onto the ferry and it left the dock just as the first building collapsed. It was an incredible sight - though it is diffuclt to describe something which is, ultimately, such a horrible thing. It was loud, it was scary, and created a cloud of debris and dust that went much higher than the 45 story building I work in. The crowd who were gathered there, including me, once we realized what was happening, ran like hell, and I don't mind saying that to you all.

I followed the advice of the police who were shouting constantly "Don't look, just go North!!!!!" I went North, and didn't look back, until I hit about 20th street. Being more than a mile away, I felt safe turning around to look. After a few seconds I was witness to the destruction of the second tower. That tower came down in two parts - first the top slid down, and when the dust cleared just enough to see an angled portion of the tower left, broken beams and metal sticking up like a building you might see in an "end of the world" movie, the angled part also slid down, with a mighty roar and another fantastic plume of smoke. I continued walking north, and did not rest too easy until I was north of the Empire State Building. Beginning at about 50th street (or as we New Yorkers would say, beginning in the 50s), life around me became more normal. People were gathered in parks, mothers and fathers were pushing their children in strollers, people ate at outside cafes. Of course, it only makes sense, but after coming from the chaos of the World Trade Center, it was surreal. As I walked through the 60s and then the 70s, the amount of "normal life" increased, until perhaps about the high 70s, when one would have no idea, in watching people, that something had happened, though many people carried radios with them, and did have stunned looks about them. But there was no panic, no running, no crying, no police officials like I had been immersed in earlier in the morning. Still shaken, and occasioanlly realizing that I had just watched two buildings be destroyed, I moved into Riverside Park, to enjoy some quiet and some nature along the river.

It was a horrible thing what happened today, and though I wasn't totally at ground zero, and managed to avoid any of the smoke and dust, watching those magnificent towers, those giant, tall, admittedly eye-stain-ugly late-60s architecture towers go down was stunning. Not stunning like a diamond, but stunning as in "I was stunned". I still am stunned. I can barely comprehend these towers, which I have linked with NYC for so many years, are gone. And not just gone, but actually attacked with intent to destroy by people who have no value for life. To think of the loss of life, which must be in the thousands between the innocents on the airplanes, the innocents in the towers, and the fireman who were in the buildings trying to help people out when they collapsed.

I am not quite sure what to think of this event, or how to feel about it. It is one thing to watch disaster strike from afar; quite another to be in it, and to realize that it happened here in the US, where such things have not happened before. Random bombing and exloding is something for Isreal or Palestine, or London, Afghanistan, Africa or Europe. But not here. Not in the US. And certainly not in my workplace.

I am confused and still in shock, and have finally turned off the radio, as I couldn't take listening to the news any more.

My prayers go out to those who were trapped in the buildings, and trapped in the airplanes. My prayers go out to their families. My prayers also go out to those who did this, and those who would like to have done this. Though their act was evil incarnate, and they must be brought to justice swiftly and surely, and though we must do what is necessary to guarantee to the best of our ability that this not happen again, still our prayers must be with them, and especially with the rest of their cabal. Jesus certainly taught us to pray for our enemies and those who would do us harm. Pray for them, that they might come to know truth and peace. And of course I pray for all of us, those of us who will spend much time wondering if we are safe, wherever we are. Always wondering. I pray that you are all angry about this, but I pray that our anger be the anger of good toward evil, the anger that serves as our energy to drive us into constructive action, and not the senseless anger that cries merely for revenge and offers no real solution. Let us be angry! I'm angry as hell - they almost killed me, and they did kill a lot of innocents! Senselessly, brutally, for no reason that any human could comprehend. let us be outraged! Let us be righteously shocked! let us call for our leaders to swiftly destroy this evil wherever it is, and to eliminate it forever. But let us also do so with hearts and mind open, and not be a mob that does not reflect on its actions, and that quashes evil with only more evil in the name of "good". Be a force for good, and pray for us and for our country that our actions will be done in mindfulness, with full understanding of what we are about to do, and not out of the mindlessness of a berserker who simply smashes and hacks at anything that gets in his way.

I do not know when I will be able to return to work. I do not even know how much, if any, damage my building suffered, though I imagine it lost the windows and is filled with with a thick coating of dust at the least. I heard on the radio that later this afternoon another building went down, though I doubt it was mine, since the Towers, if you look at one of the good cnn.com maps, has numerous smaller buildings immediately next to them. But who knows how much collateral damage might still happen in the next couple days.

I am praying for you all, and for us, and for this country, and for our world at this time. Let us give thanks for what we have, and for those who escaped the clutches of violence. I am grateful - very grateful - that I was led out of the violence unhurt and unscathed. And let us pray for God's presence to heal and to strengthen us, to unite us, and to bind us together in love and peace like the children of God that we all are, that war may no longer be known by any child or adult.

I leave you all with a fitting quote from a good friend of mine that my random quote generator popped up when I opened this email.

"In a land where ignorance is a virtue, the blind man is king" - Joe Raposo, Statesman and composer, August 27, 2001


Blessings to you all,

David