Prodigious Procrastination and the Great Big Box

January 11, 2012 By Mark D. Roberts Leave a Comment

When I walked into my office suite today, I saw a great, big box. According to the printing on the box, it contains a new printer for the office. That’s good news, because our old printer is biting the dust, day by day, bite by dusty bite.

There’s another bit of good news here. Where I work, we have an IT team of top-notch experts who can do things like setting up new printers in their sleep. Therefore, I will not be spending the rest of the week trying to get the printer to work.

When I first saw the printer box, I was reminded of an experience I had about twenty-five years ago. My wife and I had bought a small home in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. This “post-WWII” house included a modest, detached garage, which I determined to turn into my workshop. Though I had a decent collection of tools back then. With ample space afforded by the garage, I was ready to add larger, power tools, manly items like a table saw and a drill press.

A Sears radial arm saw with an attached cabinet. This looks to be exactly like the saw I bought 25 years ago.

At about that time, Sears was having a sale on radial arms saws. If you’re not familiar with tools, you may not know this sort of saw. It has a wide variety of uses, and is especially good for cross-cutting long boards. The sale was a good one, as I recall, something like 40% off. Radial arm saws aren’t cheap, but I knew I would get lots of use out of it, and with caution, it would last me for a lifetime. So I bought a deluxe saw, one that came with a large storage cabinet built into it.

The box for the saw and its cabinet was huge, perhaps three-and-a-half feet tall, three feet wide, and five feet long. It was also extremely heavy, and had to be delivered to my home. The delivery people placed it in my empty garage, because there’s no way I could have moved it very far on my own.

Excited to set up my new saw, I opened the box and took out the assembly instruction booklet. I call it a booklet today. At the time it felt like a modest telephone book. Thumbing through page after page of detailed instructions for how to put the radial arm saw together, I felt overwhelmed. “I can’t do this today,” I thought. “I’ll have to wait until I have more time to put this saw together.” I was disappointed, but not crushed. I put the instructions back in the huge box and planned on attacking the assembly on the weekend.

But the weekend came and went. And then the next weekend came and went. And then the next month. And the next. Meanwhile, I had lots of home improvement projects to do, and found that the giant saw box served nicely as an extra workbench. I used to joke with myself that I had the most expensive workbench in the world. Talk about prodigious procrastination!

When my wife and I moved from North Hollywood to Irvine, California, my “workbench” came along for the ride. Soon, it filled the garage in our new home. My wife had plans for that house, plans that included lots of crown moulding. Since I didn’t own a chop saw, I knew that the best tool for cutting long strips of crown moulding was . . . you guessed it, a radial arm saw.

So, after four years of feeling ashamed because of that unassembled saw, I knew it was time to tackle my Mt. Everest. I arose early one Saturday morning, opened the box for the first time in four years, and took out the intimidating instructions. I spent the better part of the day deciphering them, patiently assembling the saw and calibrating it for cutting. Sometime in the afternoon, I finished. And you know what, the saw worked. Flawlessly.

I still have that saw. It still works well. Suffice it to say, I did have to build another workbench, though. I used the saw.

Filed Under: Fun, Stories Tagged With: , , Leave a Comment

Wedged Between Glenn Beck and The Christmas Dog

November 23, 2011 By Mark D. Roberts 6 Comments

First, I want to say thanks to those who have purchased my new (and first) e-book, Discovering Advent: How to Experience the Power of Waiting on God at Christmastime. And for those who would like to buy the book but do not own an e-reader, I apologize for not having a way to distribute the book in another form. My guess is that by next year, there will be more options. I’m just getting started in the e-book world.

A few minutes ago, I surfed over to Amazon to see how Discovering Advent is doing. The book is ranked #8 among the Kindle store’s “Christmas” books, and #18 in Amazon’s overall listing of “Christmas” books. That is encouraging to me, though I don’t really know what this means in raw numbers. Maybe my Mom just bought a couple dozen copies!

Anyway, checking out the rankings for Amazon’s “Christmas” books, I learned that I have a curious position at the moment. I’m wedged in between Glenn Beck’s The Christmas Sweater (#17) and Melody Carlson’s The Christmas Dog. That struck me as a bit ironic. It’s not everyday that I find myself in the company of Glenn Beck and The Christmas Dog.

This is not the first time I’ve run into Glenn Back in unexpected places, however. This summer, my family and I had the privilege of touring Israel. During our day in Jerusalem, we visited the Temple Mount, including the well-preserved Southern Steps. These are the steps that Jews would ascend on their way to the Temple. They are most certainly a place where Jesus walked, and perhaps a place where he conversed with his followers and with some of the Jewish officials.

As I made my way along a narrow pathway to the steps, I had to skirt around a small group of people who were filming something. I practically ran into the man being filmed. When I turned to look at him from a couple of feet away, I looked straight into the face of Glenn Beck, the controversial radio talk show host. (I am not a regular listener to Beck’s show, but I have seen his face in various publications, including the cover of Time Magazine.) It seemed strangely ironic that, as I was about to sit on the steps where Jesus once sat, I almost tripped over Glenn Beck.

On the way out, I took a photo of the film crew, which had moved to a place with more room. My photography greatly displeased one of Beck’s handlers, who approached me with a menacing look, so I hurried away.

So, twice in a year I have found myself right next to Glenn Beck, sort of. On the Southern Steps of the Temple Mount, I did not see any sign of the Christmas dog, however.

Filed Under: Cultural Commentary, Fun, Stories Tagged With: , , , 6 Comments

My Strange History with Dr. Armand Nicholi, Jr.

October 13, 2011 By Mark D. Roberts 2 Comments

In yesterday’s post, I commended Freud’s Last Session, a play running in New York just off Broadway. This play, as I explained, is based on the work of Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Armand Nicholi, Jr., especially his book entitled The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. I mentioned that my relationship with Dr. Nicholi is a bit ironic. Here’s the story.

Dr. Armand Nicholi, Jr.

In my junior year at Harvard (1977-78), I was the leader of the Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship. In that role, I helped get speakers for our Friday night meetings. Someone I respected suggested that I should ask Dr. Armand Nicholi. He was highly regarded as a professor who taught a course in the college that focused on Sigmund Freud and his religious perspective. Dr. Nicholi was also known to be a Christian. So I called him up and invited him to speak at one of our Christian fellowship meetings. He was glad to do so. We agreed upon a date several months out, and he said he’d be delight to talk on the subject I had suggested: Faith and Freud.

In the days before Dr. Nicholi’s speech, we promoted it far and wide across the university. We figured that many people would be interested in what a Harvard psychiatrist might say about Freud and faith. We believed that we could gain wide exposure for our group as well as for Dr. Nicholi.

On the afternoon prior to when Dr. Nicholi was due to speak, I received a phone call from someone who could hardly speak. “Mark,” the stricken, weak voice said, “this is Dr. Nicholi. I hate to tell you this, but I am far too sick to speak tonight. I’m sorry to abandon you on such short notice. I’ll be happy to come again soon.” I graciously said I understood and that we would plan another date. Then I panicked. We had invited the whole university to our meeting to hear Dr. Nicholi. Now, we were without a speaker. (This was before the days of Facebook and Twitter and texting, so there was no way to get out the word about Dr. Nicholi’s situation.)

I decided that somebody needed to address the Christian fellowship that night, and I was the only one who knew that Dr. Nicholi would be absent. So, I quickly put together some notes. I would be the speaker.

The room in which the Christian fellowship met was packed to capacity. Standing room only. Sigh. I knew that I could not expect people who had wanted to hear Dr. Nicholi to stick around to hear me. So I got up and explained the situation. I told people we would have a five minute break before the meeting started. Anyone who wished would be free to leave. Those who stayed would get to hear me. As I expected, many people left, including all of our visitors. But I was pleased that many students stuck around for my talk.

That talk, as it turns out, was the first time I ever spoke to a Christian group larger than a small group. It was my debut performance, if you will, as a Christian speaker. Since that time, I have spoken thousands of times to groups like that, including church congregations. I do find it ironic that my first opportunity to use my gifts in that way happened because Dr. Armand Nicholi “sicked out” on me.

Sure enough, he did come to the Christian fellowship a few weeks later. Once again, we had a packed house. He did speak about Sigmund Freud and faith, and did so in a way that was compelling for all who had gathered, not just for the Christian students.

So, thirty-three years later, I find myself sitting in a theatre in New York City, watching a play that dramatizes many of the same ideas I heard Dr. Nicholi explain in his speech at the Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship. I am now working for Foundations for Laity Renewal, an organization of which Dr. Nicholi has been a close friend and advisor over the years. Sometimes the world is very small and life is wonderfully strange.

Filed Under: Stories Tagged With: , , 2 Comments