Notes from my Knapsack 1-11-24
Jeff Gill
Learning what from who, where, and when
___
Who was it that first said "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?"
Well, I'm typing this on a laptop connected to the internet, plus I have a smartphone next to me with a good cell connection. Hold on a sec.
Huh. It is from an essay in 1841 entitled "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
This is one of the huge advantages of the internet world we now live in. In school or even in seminary, I would have needed to not only have some research skills around how to use various reference tools to find the full source of that quote, I almost certainly would have needed to physically go to a library building, downtown or elsewhere, and possibly be sent from that library to a library at a college or other more distant location.
I remember when the rise of inter-library loan was seen as a massive transformation of the research process, that you could get books sent from another city or state to your local library for access. It was, truly, big stuff. (When? It was a college only thing when I was in high school, but . . . let's look it up. Oh my. So interlibrary loans between colleges began in 1876; the Ohio College Library Center began here in 1967, which grew to become the Online Computer Library Center, now based just down the road in Dublin!)
So when I talked at the end of last year about concerns around being too online for school age youth, I was echoing what an overwhelming plurality to school officials have been telling me these last few years. The constant checking and scanning and scrolling around personal platforms and messaging has, in their eyes, increased both anxiety and depression, as well as threats and conflict between students. None of us think the internet created these issues, but they've been an accelerant, like gasoline to a match, causing brush fires of interpersonal tensions to blaze out of control faster and more widely than they did just a decade ago.
Is a totally un-connected world feasible, in education or for parenting? I don't think so. It's a question of management, of guardrails and boundaries. And the everlasting question of how one family raises their child while a nearby family has different boundaries, if any at all, and what happens when they come together.
In the Scouting movement, it's become a requirement along with knife and axe safety and how to handle fires and flames, to take a sort of cyber-safety course. Many schools have begun to include online etiquette and ethics in their plan of study.
And I will continue in 2024 to note that many of the ills blamed on the online life may have more to do with the sleep that is lost to them than the content you find in it. Lack of sleep is plaguing both youth and adults, and we're seeing that loss in many ways.
Some of you have proposed solutions, and I plan to share some of those ideas as we roll on into 2024.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he spent too much time reading about Emerson & the OCLC while preparing this column. Tell him how the internet distracts you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Tuesday, January 02, 2024
Faith Works 1-5-24
Faith Works 1-5-24
Jeff Gill
Not to create a theological controversy
___
Rarely do I venture into the murky and deep waters of theological debate in this column.
The goal, as always, is to seek unity and shared understandings among those open to a faith based perspective, not to defend certain religious traditions or particular church structures.
Yet I've been intrigued recently by a subject which is on the teetering precipice of sectarian dispute. I've wondered about this for some time, and have never quite had the nerve to write about the subject. Here we are at the outset of a new year, and perhaps this is the time.
I'm talking about shredded chicken sandwiches.
Moving here from central Indiana in the fall of 1989, I'd never had them. Then I went to an early craft show that year, and the cafe to one side of the Christmas decor and other sale tables included "Shredded Chicken." It was a dollar, and fit both my budget and my current cash situation, and I was hungry. But what was it?
"Oh, everyone makes this around here." I was shown a can of Sweet Sue boneless chicken, and told you simply heated it up with crumbled saltine crackers and some pepper. I ate of it, and it was good.
But this was only the beginning. As the years scrolled by, I would sample shredded chicken sandwiches in a variety of homely settings: church basements, after funerals, at football games and basketball tournaments, in snack bars set up for choir and band contests. And I developed a cook's interest in asking when I could "how do you make it?"
This is where you get the second of the two interesting but fraught questions around the dreaded shredded (as some would say). The first is the boundary of the sandwich's domain — it's not everywhere, but it is everyone around here, if you can figure out where here is. Let's say from Urbana in the west to Mansfield in the north, and down to Portsmouth and over to somewhere this side of Steubenville and Martin's Ferry, but shredded chicken has made inroads up to the Ohio in a few points around past Marietta. This field needs further research.
The second and more truly theological question is what makes "true" shredded chicken. I learned early on that some will say "not saltines, but Ritz crackers." You get a buttery taste, 'tis true. Yet the saltine true believers hold Ritz to be an external imposition on the one true shredded chicken.
Adding to the denominational complexity: adding soup. There is a reformation of shredded chicken cooking which breaks out into many traditions, each certain of their own rightness. The mainstream is a can of cream of chicken to a much larger can of boneless chicken into the roasting pan. Others say the chicken on chicken effect is not useful, and prefer cream of celery; there are a few obscure sectarians who assert the ideal of a can of cream of mushroom (this may be a Great Lakes Lutheran influence, I don't know, again worth scholarly study).
Atop the soup/no soup distinction, there are the modifications of soup (but which one) plus crackers (saltine or Ritz, or even Club), plus I have had a perfectly satisfying shredded chicken sandwich which I learned had breadcrumbs added in, not crushed crackers.
Finally, in a liturgical flourish, there's the question of if the vat or roaster of shredded chicken should have pepper added, lightly or not at all, versus leaving the pepper quotient to the one stacking up their sandwich.
In central Ohio, these are existential questions. Where does your faith stand?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's eaten many shredded chicken sandwiches. What's your preferred recipe? Tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Not to create a theological controversy
___
Rarely do I venture into the murky and deep waters of theological debate in this column.
The goal, as always, is to seek unity and shared understandings among those open to a faith based perspective, not to defend certain religious traditions or particular church structures.
Yet I've been intrigued recently by a subject which is on the teetering precipice of sectarian dispute. I've wondered about this for some time, and have never quite had the nerve to write about the subject. Here we are at the outset of a new year, and perhaps this is the time.
I'm talking about shredded chicken sandwiches.
Moving here from central Indiana in the fall of 1989, I'd never had them. Then I went to an early craft show that year, and the cafe to one side of the Christmas decor and other sale tables included "Shredded Chicken." It was a dollar, and fit both my budget and my current cash situation, and I was hungry. But what was it?
"Oh, everyone makes this around here." I was shown a can of Sweet Sue boneless chicken, and told you simply heated it up with crumbled saltine crackers and some pepper. I ate of it, and it was good.
But this was only the beginning. As the years scrolled by, I would sample shredded chicken sandwiches in a variety of homely settings: church basements, after funerals, at football games and basketball tournaments, in snack bars set up for choir and band contests. And I developed a cook's interest in asking when I could "how do you make it?"
This is where you get the second of the two interesting but fraught questions around the dreaded shredded (as some would say). The first is the boundary of the sandwich's domain — it's not everywhere, but it is everyone around here, if you can figure out where here is. Let's say from Urbana in the west to Mansfield in the north, and down to Portsmouth and over to somewhere this side of Steubenville and Martin's Ferry, but shredded chicken has made inroads up to the Ohio in a few points around past Marietta. This field needs further research.
The second and more truly theological question is what makes "true" shredded chicken. I learned early on that some will say "not saltines, but Ritz crackers." You get a buttery taste, 'tis true. Yet the saltine true believers hold Ritz to be an external imposition on the one true shredded chicken.
Adding to the denominational complexity: adding soup. There is a reformation of shredded chicken cooking which breaks out into many traditions, each certain of their own rightness. The mainstream is a can of cream of chicken to a much larger can of boneless chicken into the roasting pan. Others say the chicken on chicken effect is not useful, and prefer cream of celery; there are a few obscure sectarians who assert the ideal of a can of cream of mushroom (this may be a Great Lakes Lutheran influence, I don't know, again worth scholarly study).
Atop the soup/no soup distinction, there are the modifications of soup (but which one) plus crackers (saltine or Ritz, or even Club), plus I have had a perfectly satisfying shredded chicken sandwich which I learned had breadcrumbs added in, not crushed crackers.
Finally, in a liturgical flourish, there's the question of if the vat or roaster of shredded chicken should have pepper added, lightly or not at all, versus leaving the pepper quotient to the one stacking up their sandwich.
In central Ohio, these are existential questions. Where does your faith stand?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's eaten many shredded chicken sandwiches. What's your preferred recipe? Tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
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