My Trip to Cape Town

A few months ago, I spent 9 days in Cape Town, South Africa visiting my friend and former roommate Derrick Lovick. He and his wife Rashidah were spending a year there working with student leaders of Christian fellowship groups at two different universities.

We toured the wine country, had some traditional meals, saw one of the several shanty towns outside Cape Town, hiked Table Mountain with a group of students, and visited Robben Island, home to the former maximum security prison used during the Apartheid era for political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela.

Cape Town 2006

Irish Festival pictures

The Lord Family visited the Massachusetts Irish Festival in June and had a great time. Lots of step dancing, diverse music, face painting, and big bubble machine, and even a rugby match made it a fun day. Click on the photo below to see all my pictures.

Irish Festival 2006

Christmas in August?

For those who like to revisit their holidays 8 months later, there's a link below to my Christmas 2005 photo album. BUT, for your own safety, and of those around you, (or if you want to download/print the full size version of a picture), please read the instructions below.

1. When you get to the web album, click on an image to get a medium-sized version
2. After clicking on a photo, to the right there will be a "Download Photo" link. This saves the full-size image to your computer for printing or putting in your own photo album.

Click here to see the photo album:

Christmas2005

Musings on Humility and Gratitude

Humility and Gratitude are strengths beyond understanding. Forget not to consider the value of others and what they do, and your life and theirs will overflow with goodness; their support and even devotion will be strongest because it is willfully given. If those with whom you live and work ever say, "No one notices what I do until I don't do it," then you have failed.

Quotes & Notes

Aristotle: The Law is reason, free from passion. STL: It makes me wonder if Aristotle, and probably many after him, regarded passion as negative by nature. If reason is considered the only worthy guide for determining behavior (and what is law but governance of behavior?), then for what purpose do we have passion? While it may sometimes lead to all sorts of evil, passion is certainly capable of producing the opposite. And is reason all that trustworthy? The rationalism of a wise person may be, but not all people will arrive at the same reasoning. Indeed, rhetoric and debate likely originated with one wise leader trying to pursuade another to agree with the first's reasoning. Only perfect reason, and perfect rationality will always lead to the right course of action or behavior. But I submit that perfect passion would do the same. If Aristotle is correct, then it must be that imperfect reason is preferable to imperfect passion in creating law and governance. Of course, who am I to judge Aristotle?! For a multitude of other quotables attributed to Aristotle, read this Wikiquote page.