Wednesday Notes

Scotty's gone. We still haven't perfected the technology so we won't be beaming him up. They'll be using a rocket to shoot his ashes into space.

There are now only four members of the original Star Trek crew left.

On a somewhat related note, Gerry Thomas, the inventor of the TV dinner has died.
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The NY Billy Graham Crusade came up $2 million short. We're seeing the sunset not only on a great ministry but also the era of that particular style of crusade evangelism. I'm sure that there will be other "crusade" evangelists but they will be working with a new set of community assumptions -- even in the area of funding.
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Merced has been named as the nation's least affordable place to buy a home. Speculation, driven by the opening of UC Merced, has driven the cost of housing up faster than wages. And wages were already low. (It doesn't help that Merced County has some of the highest unemployment rates in the state, too.) One sign of the speculation is the number of "for rent" signs in the new housing developments. People are buying new houses as investments, assuming that the prices and value will continue to rise with the demand. At some point, though, things will even out and Merced will have normal outrageous California housing prices.
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Our Vacation Bible School starts Sunday night. We've got such solid leadership in Tance Salafia and an outstanding team. I'm excited, too, about the fact that they will be working through the Lord's Prayer all week. 5:30-8 p.m., July 24th-July 28th. It will be hard to top what we did last year but we're working our tails off trying. Info: 209-667-6768
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All that smoke last night appears to have been from a large grass fire that burned 10,000 acres around the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We're all breathing easier this morning.
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Four members of Northwestern University's championship women's lacrosse team showed up for a White House meeting with President Bush wearing flip-flops. I doubt that they were trying to "make a statement" but they've become the subject of rants on conservative talk radio and in opinion columns.

Frankly, flip-flops might be the best thing to happen to the White House in years. There are a lot of wound-too-tight people at 1600 (and in talk radio!) who should be wearing flip-flops as a part of their therapy.
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Last week the editor of the Turlock Journal approached me about the possibility of gleaning some material from this blog for publication on their opinion page. I've agreed to let them try it. It should be an interesting experiment since blogs are more dynamic than print media (links, commenting, etc.) .

I wonder if this is how Herb Caen got his start.

BTW, the TJ has done a nice update on their website.