Lester, Jean. Jorgy: The Life of Native Alaskan Bush Pilot and Airline Captain Holger “Jorgy” Jorgensen._ Ester, AK: Ester Republic Press, 2007. $25

In the late 60’s my grandfather purchased an 8mm film camera complete with light bar. It was a hand-wound model that would only capture a minute or two of action before needing to be rewound. The movies he captured from that era featured select highlights: children crawling on the ground, adults gesticulating towards children to get them to crawl, birthday cakes being extinguished. The special moments were carefully selected and shaped. Watching them now is entertaining and effectively allows us to expand our memories.

In the 80’s my grandfather acquired a videotape camcorder. The inexpensive recording medium and lack of any processing time or fees meant that we could record every moment of every family event. And we did. A tripod was set up in the dining room so that whole family dinners could be recorded in their entirety; each and every Christmas present was unwrapped for the camera in slow succession. Watching these tapes now is an exercise in endurance. The lack of any selection or shapliness to the events reveals the banality of the majority of our conversation. Comments and remembrances that had us laughing till we cried or fondly remembering other family events are buried in the lengthy stretches of passing carrots and explaining mundane daily business. The documentarian of the past, sifting through the sands of the creek to find nuggets of gold, was replaced by an undiscerning strip mine.

Such is the effect of Jorgy: The Life of Native American Bush Pilot and Airline Captain Holger “Jorgy” Jorgensen. The book reads as though Jean Lester, the “as told to” author, merely transcribed hours of interview tapes with Jorgy Jorgensen. Events are repeated, fascinating side-stories are introduced and abandoned without care, rabbit-trails are followed at whim, and even seemingly unrelated political ramblings are included with little context or thoughtful development.

The shame of it is that the life of Jorgy Jorgensen appears to have been an interesting and important one. Here is a man who spent his early years subsisting in a mining village on the Alaskan frontier. After just an 8th-grade education, he stepped into the early years of Alaska aviation, helping to build important airstrips and learning to fly. Jorgensen had a front seat in watching the development of the Alaska oil and air industries. Had Lester collated the interviews and given them some kind of narrative shape, even as little as ironing out the temporal wrinkles that often appear when we tell stories about our lives, the events of Jorgensen’s life could have presented a compelling narrative of the history of aviation, Alaska, and the life of native peoples in the frozen wastes. As it stands, the considerable power and romance of the story is lost.

I still find myself wanting to go back and watch the old 8mm films my grandfather made, but I cannot remember a single fleeting desire to sit through a recorded family dinner. For dogged researchers interested in the facts of the area and period, the book will stand as a solid record of one man’s experience of Alaskan aviation. However, a solid record does not make a compelling biography.

One of the joys of the academic calendar is that while a ton of work has to be done in the “off” months, your schedule can be very flexible. This usually means that we do a fair amount of travel in the summer. This year, due to Sherry’s impending book deadline, we seem to be cramming all of our travel into the month of May. Last week we were in Williamsburg with friends the Morefields, and now we’re heading off to North Carolina with the Fam. The downside of course is that while we’re go, go, going, we have precious little time to process one trip before the next.

Thus, I leave you with the above photo from Williamsburg until such time as a more thorough accounting can be made.

ain’t what it used to be. This past week, Sherry and I had the pleasure of enjoying Williamsburg, VA for a week thanks to a prize she won. The package included first class airfare on United Airlines. Before I complain too much, I must say that yes, the seats were wider and more comfortable; yes, we got to board and deplane first, which was handy when we had a short layover; yes, our luggage was given priority such that our bags were among the first unloaded. That was all great! Oh, and I shouldn’t forget that our beverages were served in real glass tumblers, which was nice.

However, the only other time I flew first class was a few (three?) years ago on American Airlines. In addition to those niceties, I was also offered warm towels, actual food, and our beverages were served before we even left the gate. Further, when we were close to landing, we were told what gate our connecting flight was at.

Not surprisingly, United is at the very bottom of a recent survey of customer satisfaction.

It seems that Evangelical Christians are always trying to figure out who we are.

I remember reading Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto in high school. I don’t remember much of it now, but I do remember it causing me to think a great deal about what we Christians are. Later, I struggled through Lloyd-Jones’s What is an Evangelical?, struggled with statements that didn’t seem to jive with what I had experienced evangelicalism as. A few years ago while we were going through our trials in the South, I came upon Alister McGrath’s Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity; his historical tracing of the roots of American Evangelicalism not only made sense to my own history but also helped make some sense of the chaos we were going through.

This past week, another group of Christian leaders have tried to define who and what Evangelicals are and believe. They have posted a new Evangelical Manifesto. The steering committee features some folks whom I respect–Dallas Willard, Os Guinness, David Neff–and some Charter Signatories that are also meaningful to me–Erwin Lutzer, Mark Noll, Ron Sider, Jim Wallis. My brief skimming of the text reveals a tone that I find refreshing and highlights some qualities that appeal to my understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

I do plan on reading the full text in depth at a later point. You can get it here.

So, things have been hopping here at Chez Truffin. Last week was graduation. This year was the first time that Sherry and I were able to see students who were in our first classes here graduate. It also marked the first class of English Majors earning their B.A.’s at TU. We’re all a bit proud of that. We were also very proud that Lindsey Jesnek, a student Todd had in his first class here and Sherry become something of a mentor to, earned the highest academic honor TU offers.

Because of the special occasions, I attended the ceremony. Graduations are odd things. Yes, there’s the pomp and the circumstance, but you begin to see how class-bound our notions of celebration and honor are when you’re in a crowd filled not only with upper middleclass folks but also families for whom this is their first college graduation. Sure, we can understand why politeness dictates that we hold our applause until the end of the ceremony: don’t want the interminable list of names to take any longer than it has to, don’t want anyone’s name drown out, don’t want to highlight those who may not have family there to cheer them on, etc. But there’s also something wonderful about the family who has sacrificed mightily so that their loved one could be the one person in the family with a chance to escape poverty being very excited when their graduate’s name is called and just having to ring that cowbell.

We were also excited about this year’s ceremony because, as part of Sherry’s promotion, TU purchased for Sherry her own proper set of academic regalia. They did it up right, too. Her robes and tam look exactly like the official Loyola robes she wore at her graduation and are of the same high quality. The best part is that these are hers for keeps.

On Sunday, the revels continued. TU has an extension campus in Bucharest. Yes, Romania. This past spring, our friend Pat was teaching there for three weeks, and a group of the Romanian MBA students who were graduating asked how far Columbus was from Tiffin. Hearing that it wasn’t terribly far, they announced that the group wanted to attend a concert taking place the day after graduation. What concert? Why, The Police with Elvis Costello. Now, we’d seen The Police last July early on in their reunion tour. But the lure of seeing Elvis Costello open was too strong. So, we joined up with the Romanian 9 and headed to Columbus. Despite members of the Athletic Department being stupid and a mis-programmed GPS unit, we all arrived at the arena on time and enjoyed a fantastic show. Costello sounded great, and The Police were in even better form than when we last saw them. It helped that Andy Summers didn’t look like he was going to keel over at any moment. The set list was mainly the same as the last show we saw. They added “Bring on the Night,” “Demolition Man,” and “Hole in my Life.” For the life of me, couldn’t figure out what “Demolition Man” brought to the table. “Truth Hits Everybody,” “Bed’s Too Big Without You,” and “Walking in Your Footsteps” were all deleted from the setlist.

On the way home, we encountered something that disappointed, saddened, and distraught us: a closed Steak N Shake. Not closed because they were out of business, but just, you know, closed. As you can clearly see on the corporate web site, Steak N Shake is supposed to be a 24-hour business. 24 hours. We had to go all the way home with no steak, no shake, no chili cheese fries at 1am. Left a sour taste in our mouths.

Oh yeah, Pat got these loud, bright yellow t-shirts made up for everyone. The front featured the TU seal, and the back is pictured below. Our group always knew where we were, and everyone else did too. Not being a grad or a Romanian, I found myself being a playacting spy the several times that people wanted to know what was the deal with the shirts.

Pie and coffee
This morning I sit here drinking stale coffee and eating bad pie. And I’m happy. The coffee, while stale, started out as good coffee a few days ago. And by good I mean freshly ground, properly stored, french press brewed Garuda Blend coffee from San Francisco’s Peet’s Coffee. Sure, two or three days (who can remember) sitting in the press on the counter hasn’t done it any favors, but I’m sticking by the idea that good coffee gone stale is still better than bad coffee fresh.

As for the pie, it’s not really the pie’s fault. It never really had a chance. When our friends Jack and Nancy moved to Baltimore–what? two years ago?–they gave us some gleanings from their freezer. Among the goodies was a box of frozen pie dough. It’s been sitting in the frost-free since then. I finally decided it was time to free up the space, so I thawed it out, slammed it in a pie plate, scooped in some canned pie filling (1 can blueberry, 1 can raspberry), slapped on the top layer of dough, and had done with it. And you know, for two-years-plus old dough, it came out ok. Nothing to write home about, mind you. Oh wait…

Two fingers
So yesterday, to celebrate turning in final grades, I went out to the disc golf course. I’ve been feeling that I’ve hit a plateau in regards to my distance throws. Yes, I get good spin. Sure my form is basically good. My accuracy is passable, and my consistency is ok. But, man, I just couldn’t get the disc to GO FURTHER. So, yesterday morning during my morning internet stroll, I happened across some youtube videos of folks throwing their discs FAR. I watched them. Despaired. And then caught something out the side of my ear. Someone mentioned using a two-fingered grip.

A two fingered grip? I’ve been using what’s known as the “power grip”: four fingers curled under the rim, thumb on top. It’s served me well. But this two-fingered idea intrigued me. So I decided to use the two-finger on every hole. Well, except #7 and #11, which are too short/tight for me to be messing with. I was amazed. I did nothing different on my drives except change my grip on the disk, and I was easily adding 20-30 feet. That’s almost a 10% increase just by moving two fingers. Of course my accuracy and consistency took a hit, but nothing that some dialing-in work won’t cure. I was very happy.

By the end of the round I was looking at the possibility of shooting under par for the first time on my home course, but some unlucky wind gusts took care of that perfect ending. Still, it was a good day on the course thanks to two fingers.