Holy Cyclops

I’m afraid it’s easy for me to let this blog slide, so now I want to do a little catching up.

Thursday night (the eighteenth) was chess club night.  The West Chester Chess Club was co-founded by two of my old friends way back when I was still in high school, and it has always been a friendly little club.  We only have one master, and our expert doesn’t usually show up; at about 1815 USCF, I’m the third-highest-rated regularly attending player.  (If you don’t know what “1815 USCF” means:  By playing in tournaments sanctioned by the United States Chess Federation [USCF], a player gets a rating, based on his results, that gives a rough idea of his playing strength relative to other USCF tournament players.  1815 is low Class A, and is somewhere around the seventy-fifth or eightieth percentile of all tournament players.  Good, but not really  good.)  Anyway, I played a considerably lower-rated player on Thursday night—we play USCF-rated games most Thursday nights—and managed to win, but it was a tough game, as usual against that particular opponent.  I took what looked like a possibly-poisoned b2-pawn in a line of the Pirc Defense’s Austrian Attack that turned into something close to an f4 Sicilian Defense after trading pawns on d4, and then defended too passively and got into trouble.  (”b2,” “f4,” “d4,” and so on, refer to squares on the chessboard, using the algebraic system of notation.  See, for example, http://www.uschess.org/beginners/read/ .)  The game became really tough, and I thought I was done for, but I managed to make a good move when he threatened to trap my queen that won another pawn, and I survived very  severe time pressure to win the game.

The last few days have been very warm—in the 80’s Fahrenheit—and my nephews and I have gone to the park, a five-minute walk from here, to shoot baskets.  My younger, ten-year-old nephew, who is a little on the short side, finally learned how to keep himself going on a swing—I observed his technique and then corrected it, telling him that he had to sit up and pull his legs back just at the highest point in his forward swing, and then sit back and point his legs forward just at the highest point in his backswing.  It worked!  He still needs a push from me to get started, but he can keep going now; he was happy.

On the way to the park, we saw a butterfly (or, possibly, moth) depositing eggs with its ovidepositor on a branch.  It had the ragged wings and light yellowish stripe around the edge of the undersides of its wings that a mourning cloak has—mourning cloaks are really gorgeous butterflies—but it had its wings folded, so I couldn’t tell what the tops of its wings looked like.  And while we were at the park, we saw a pair of hawks soaring overhead, riding the thermals.  We didn’t used to see hawks often at all, but last summer we saw them often, and now we’re seeing them again this summer.

Alas, one thing we’re not seeing are red squirrels.  A couple of summers ago, we saw several of them; it was a thrill, as I had never before seen them.  But last summer, we didn’t see them at all, and we haven’t seen them yet this year.

Later, my younger nephew and I went for bicycle rides.  He loves going for bike rides, and he likes having me go along.  (His mother requires that an adult go with him, anyway.)  On Friday, we left out Heartbreak Hill, but on Saturday, he was ready for it.  (”Heartbreak Hill” refers, naturally enough, to a long hill that steepens toward the top and is difficult to climb all at once.  I got the name from the Boston Marathon’s Heartbreak Hill.)  Both nephews and I tossed around a baseball, and on Saturday, their father and I took turns pitching, fielding, and batting with my younger nephew.  (My younger nephew has more desire to get out and do things.  My older nephew, who is thirteen years old, has Asberger’s syndrome, and he tends to keep to himself.  He does seem to be becoming more sociable than he used to be, though.) 

My younger nephew also woke up in the wee hours of Saturday morning with a sore arm.  He was very upset, and was crying.  I reassured him and, after asking a few questions about what sort of pain it was, told him that he had probably just slept on it wrongly, and that although it might hurt for a while, he’d be fine.  Then we read one of his Magic Tree House books.  (He loves the Magic Tree House series.  The characters of Jack and Annie, a pair of kids, go on adventures to different times and places, and the books are actually educational—but it’s their entertainment value that is the reason my nephew likes them!  Mary Pope Osborne writes them, and Sal Murdocca illustrates them.  The fortieth book in the series will be available this September.  See, for example, http://www.marypopeosborne.com .)  After that, he went back to sleep.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how to put advertising on my Web page and on my blog, and how to customize my blog’s display page; I installed the blog using Fantastico, via HostMonster.com, but it’s version 2.3.3, and I’m not sure how I can update to version 2.5 when the blog’s files are on HostMonster instead of on my computer.  The same problem—that the files are on HostMonster instead of on my computer—is making it difficult for me to customize this blog’s display page.  I might just uninstall this blog and then go to the WordPress Web site and set it up there.  We’ll see.  If I do that, I’ll have to save these posts!

When she was in her late teens, my sister, who is several years younger than I, converted to Islam after closely examining the merits of Christianity and rejecting it.  The fact that her then-boyfriend and soon-to-be first husband was Moslem might have had something to do with it, too; in any event, she remains Moslem, twenty years later.  For the last couple of years, I have lived with her and her second husband, a recently-naturalized American citizen from Pakistan, and their two children (my nephews), in the house my parents used to own, so I’ve had the opportunity to see, to a certain extent, how their religion affects them.  (I say, “to a certain extent,” because I do not attend their religious services and only see the effects of their Islamic belief in small ways.) 

Both my sister and my brother-in-law are good people.  When I—an avowed nontheist—tell my nephews that the most important thing in life is to be good and kind to other people, my brother-in-law tells them to listen to their Uncle Keith.  I certainly hope and expect that if my sister and brother-in-law were not Moslem, they would still be good, kind people, but in any event, it seems that they use their religious belief to reinforce such qualities and to promote such qualities in my nephews.  (I take it that most Moslems are essentially this way:  People who want to get along with each other and who mainly try to use their religious belief to reinforce their commitments to treating other people well, rather than to justify treating other people badly.  However, I confess that I do not know what percentage do use Islam to justify treating other people badly, and of course we know that some Moslems in positions of authority in other countries have done so; and I don’t know how much of that is attributable to their religion and how much is attributable to their culture.  Because many Moslems do not believe in the separation of church and state, but rather suffuse their daily lives with their religion, it’s hard to tell how to make such attributions.)

So, what differences are there between how they behave as Moslems and how they would behave if they weren’t Moslem?  Obviously, since that is a counterfactual question, I’m limited in the conclusions I can draw; but my sister probably wouldn’t keep her head covered, as she does most of the time, and they probably wouldn’t kneel on their holy rugs, turn toward the east, and pray five times each day, and they probably wouldn’t keep several copies of the Koran around the house, and they probably wouldn’t be careful to eat only halal  (Islamically approved) food, and they probably wouldn’t have art depicting mosques or a calendar with the sayings of the Islamic cleric M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen hanging on their walls, and they probably wouldn’t fast in the daylight hours during Ramadan.  Perhaps my brother-in-law would drink alcohol, or womanize, were he not Moslem, although I’m inclined to doubt that he would do the former to excess or that he would do the latter at all.  He’s simply a good person.  (I don’t think my sister has ever been inclined to drink, religious belief or no religious belief.) 

The main effect, one that I deplore, is that my nephews are being raised Moslem—that is to say, they are being indoctrinated with religious belief.  I object to such indoctrination, and it’s fortunate for family harmony that my sister and brother-in-law seem to espouse a very moderate brand of Islam, so that I don’t feel compelled to loudly object to my nephews’ being taught religion.  At some point, they will ask me what I believe and why, and then I will tell them that although many very smart people do believe in God, I see insufficiently strong evidence or rational argumentation from acceptable premisses to justify such belief, and therefore withhold belief—as I think other people should, too.  For now, though, I don’t see a whole lot of ill effects from their teaching—particularly not drastic ones—and they’re even learning a foreign language as a result of it (Moslems do not think that you’re really reading the Koran unless you’re reading it in Arabic), which can only help them later in life.  The values they are learning are values of love and kindness and respect—ones I approve of; and they do not limit themselves in their social circle to other Moslem children.  They are growing up to be good people.