Thursday, March 27, 2014
Optimism
Thursday: The last day of Spring Break week that you can still pretend you're going to do everything on your Spring Break list.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Battle Squirrel 2014
Well, that organic squirrel deterrent wasn't.
Not much from the spring planting survived.
A few broccoli.
Some herbs and peas.
And the pretty pansies, which really have been cheering.
The onions were squirrel-proof, as promised. A few got dug up and nibbled, but the rest were entirely left alone. But they didn't stop the squirrels from traipsing their way through and eating all the greens.
So, we're trying something new.
Stephen built me a few pest-deterrent cages.
(He had lots of help.)
Wood frame, covered in chicken wire.
All right, you vermin. Here's another salad bar for you. Come and get it.
Not much from the spring planting survived.
A few broccoli.
Some herbs and peas.
And the pretty pansies, which really have been cheering.
The onions were squirrel-proof, as promised. A few got dug up and nibbled, but the rest were entirely left alone. But they didn't stop the squirrels from traipsing their way through and eating all the greens.
So, we're trying something new.
Stephen built me a few pest-deterrent cages.
(He had lots of help.)
Wood frame, covered in chicken wire.
All right, you vermin. Here's another salad bar for you. Come and get it.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Prayers For an Unworthy Soul
Some occasions tempt me more than others to declare a particular soul unworthy of the grace of God.
But that is, of course, the very definition of the grace of God. And so I give thanks for the reminder that my soul, too, has no claim to deserve the prayers of the saints, the forgiveness on which it depends, or the beatitude which God's grace imparts.
And I offer a prayer for the unworthy departed, and for those who must somehow learn to live the grace we proclaim:
May he know the love and grace of God in death that he seemed not to know or value in life. And may we all repent of our sadistic delight in the deaths of those for whom our Lord was pleased to die.
But that is, of course, the very definition of the grace of God. And so I give thanks for the reminder that my soul, too, has no claim to deserve the prayers of the saints, the forgiveness on which it depends, or the beatitude which God's grace imparts.
And I offer a prayer for the unworthy departed, and for those who must somehow learn to live the grace we proclaim:
May he know the love and grace of God in death that he seemed not to know or value in life. And may we all repent of our sadistic delight in the deaths of those for whom our Lord was pleased to die.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Adventure in Literary Land II
Isaac is back with another review of obscure books your teenage child probably loves.
John Green is my favorite modern author behind Scott Westerfield and Rowling. Not only does he write excellent books for teens, but he also has multiple YouTube channels dedicated to random facts and education. His brother Hank is more of the same. Check them out.
I first heard of JG about a year ago when a friend of mine was fangirling about his book The Fault in Our Stars. Apparently it's the best book ever and I need to get around to reading it. Anyhoo, a girl in my bio class was reading a JG book and offered to let me borrow it, knowing that I would finish within the school day.
An Abundance of Katherines is the story of a child prodigy who never reached full potential. This distinction is discussed several times throughout the novel and is better explained there than here. The protagonist, Colin, is said genius and his amigo Hassan plays the part of slightly less intelligent but far more funny Muslim best friend. Hassan spends the better part of the novel trying to get Colin out of his self-obsessed funk. Colin has a mental block when it comes to dating, which manifests itself in that he can only date girls named "Katherine." It must be spelled that way or no deal. The general pattern of these relationships is that Colin get dumped and feels bad about himself, and then finds another Katherine and the cycle repeats. Well, the 19th time is the worst for poor Colin because Katherine XIX is also Katherine the Great: the original Katherine who started the trend. Hassan observes the emotional fallout and takes Colin on a road trip. The two find a job in a small town somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and encounter Lindsey, who is the love interest of the story. That's about all the plot that one needs to know except this last bit.
Colin becomes fixated on the idea of creating a mathematical equation that plots the outcome and happiness of a given relationship. For the sake of brevity, I will link to it here.
The novel's main strength is that it connects deeply with its reader. It seems written by one of us, and by one of us I mean teens. Hassan is the best friend we all wish we had. Lindsey is the cool not-girly girl that we all wish we were dating. Colin is the tormented teenager we all think we are. John Green's writing style is the epitome of young adult literature. Each chapter has at least three footnotes that impart a random fact or related anagram or strange historical parallel that both lighten the mood and complete our of Colin's brain: random, funny, and tangential. Never will you ever find more anagrams in one piece of literature.
So Abundance of Katherines is really one of those "voyage of self-discovery" books that you read in freshman English class, only AOK is actually enjoyable to read. Holden Caufield, we're looking at you.
Hopefully your humble literature critic will get his hands on more John Green and will be able to more accurately discuss his authoring merits. But you all / y'all / youse should not panic in fear if your child comes home with a JG novel in his/her backpack. It's okay. It gives you an excuse to read it too.
Cheers,
Isaac
John Green is my favorite modern author behind Scott Westerfield and Rowling. Not only does he write excellent books for teens, but he also has multiple YouTube channels dedicated to random facts and education. His brother Hank is more of the same. Check them out.
I first heard of JG about a year ago when a friend of mine was fangirling about his book The Fault in Our Stars. Apparently it's the best book ever and I need to get around to reading it. Anyhoo, a girl in my bio class was reading a JG book and offered to let me borrow it, knowing that I would finish within the school day.
An Abundance of Katherines is the story of a child prodigy who never reached full potential. This distinction is discussed several times throughout the novel and is better explained there than here. The protagonist, Colin, is said genius and his amigo Hassan plays the part of slightly less intelligent but far more funny Muslim best friend. Hassan spends the better part of the novel trying to get Colin out of his self-obsessed funk. Colin has a mental block when it comes to dating, which manifests itself in that he can only date girls named "Katherine." It must be spelled that way or no deal. The general pattern of these relationships is that Colin get dumped and feels bad about himself, and then finds another Katherine and the cycle repeats. Well, the 19th time is the worst for poor Colin because Katherine XIX is also Katherine the Great: the original Katherine who started the trend. Hassan observes the emotional fallout and takes Colin on a road trip. The two find a job in a small town somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and encounter Lindsey, who is the love interest of the story. That's about all the plot that one needs to know except this last bit.
Colin becomes fixated on the idea of creating a mathematical equation that plots the outcome and happiness of a given relationship. For the sake of brevity, I will link to it here.
The novel's main strength is that it connects deeply with its reader. It seems written by one of us, and by one of us I mean teens. Hassan is the best friend we all wish we had. Lindsey is the cool not-girly girl that we all wish we were dating. Colin is the tormented teenager we all think we are. John Green's writing style is the epitome of young adult literature. Each chapter has at least three footnotes that impart a random fact or related anagram or strange historical parallel that both lighten the mood and complete our of Colin's brain: random, funny, and tangential. Never will you ever find more anagrams in one piece of literature.
So Abundance of Katherines is really one of those "voyage of self-discovery" books that you read in freshman English class, only AOK is actually enjoyable to read. Holden Caufield, we're looking at you.
Hopefully your humble literature critic will get his hands on more John Green and will be able to more accurately discuss his authoring merits. But you all / y'all / youse should not panic in fear if your child comes home with a JG novel in his/her backpack. It's okay. It gives you an excuse to read it too.
Cheers,
Isaac
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
What I've Been Reading This Past Week
I've been saying this for awhile now, but only to people who are tired of me saying it: praise music makes it harder, not easier, for the congregation to participate. I could add ten more reasons than the ones offered here by Erik Parker, but I'll stick with two.
The more a tune follows a pop aesthetic, the harder it is to sing, unless you're the kind of tenor for which most pop music is written. The majority of hymn tunes, boring and unlovely as some of them may be, are written to be sung by almost any voice, and virtually all of them also have parts that can be sung by specific voices.
And, second, when the tune is all there is (and it's hard enough to catch that), the church misses out on the strangely theological wonder that is harmony, the unique sound that can only come when people sing different notes at the same time. Beauty is enhanced by difference--what a wild world our God has made for us!
This was a fun story: professors on a plagiarism sting op! I would love to be a full-time plagiarism detector. That would be fun.
In many ways, this is old news: Children with family routines have better emotional health. But just in case you needed an expert to tell you so, there it is. The sorts of things you imagine a healthy, happy family doing--reading, playing, eating, making music together--tend to make for healthy, happy families.
This was a fascinating article on Shakespeare performance. I was especially interested in how the company dealt with The Taming of the Shrew, which ceases being a comedy at precisely the point it offers the pretense of a happy ending.
The more a tune follows a pop aesthetic, the harder it is to sing, unless you're the kind of tenor for which most pop music is written. The majority of hymn tunes, boring and unlovely as some of them may be, are written to be sung by almost any voice, and virtually all of them also have parts that can be sung by specific voices.
And, second, when the tune is all there is (and it's hard enough to catch that), the church misses out on the strangely theological wonder that is harmony, the unique sound that can only come when people sing different notes at the same time. Beauty is enhanced by difference--what a wild world our God has made for us!
This was a fun story: professors on a plagiarism sting op! I would love to be a full-time plagiarism detector. That would be fun.
In many ways, this is old news: Children with family routines have better emotional health. But just in case you needed an expert to tell you so, there it is. The sorts of things you imagine a healthy, happy family doing--reading, playing, eating, making music together--tend to make for healthy, happy families.
This was a fascinating article on Shakespeare performance. I was especially interested in how the company dealt with The Taming of the Shrew, which ceases being a comedy at precisely the point it offers the pretense of a happy ending.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
College-Level Kiddie Lit
I told my ethics students that one of the goals of the class was to make it harder for them to go grocery shopping (or car shopping or pet shopping or spouse shopping and so on). Being an ethicist--especially one trained in narrative theology--just plain makes it harder to get stuff done, sometimes.
The "narrative theology" part makes it especially hard to just pick up any old kids' book and read it to my poor, long-suffering children.
I infected my students with that bit of insanity this morning--I had them read a few children's books to each other and talk about what a person or community formed by that book my believe or practice or understand. (I'm grateful to Vigen Guroian for having written on this topic a few years ago.)
I've done this exercise a few times, and the thing that struck me most this time around was the way books don't always do what they purport to do.
For example, we were all a little put off by Hooper Humperdink...? Not Him!, which was supposed to be a fun romp through the alphabet, wrapped in a tidy narrative of inclusion. The narrator spends the entire book building a fabulous party, while throwing out little asides about not inviting Hooper Humperdink, because he just doesn't like him.
Of course, it's a kids' book, so, in the end, the narrator decides to invite him after all.
Well, you know, that's real sweet and all, but after thirty-two pages of sneering at him, that sort of grudging permission is hardly inclusion. When I asked my students what children might learn, morally, from this book, one of them rightly suggested that this book gives a child permission to dislike other children, so long as they throw them a few token invitations to participate in special activities.
I think there might be some wisdom in giving children permission to talk about their dislikes of other children--it's a natural enough phenomenon, and the solution (corralling and contravening one's own emotions) is a little unnatural and probably needs some verbal processing.
But that is not the delicate dance that Hooper Humperdink performs.
Richard Scarry, without bothering to wrap his silly story in a tidy moral, actually does a much better job of introducing children to the notion of inclusion.
His Firefighters' Busy Day is, like all his books, simply a silly story from start to finish. The four firefighters never seem to manage to get to eat, because every time they sit down to try, the alarm rings and they have to tend to another not-terribly-urgent emergency. The needy-person-in-distress is always Mr. Frumble, a hapless cat who can't seem to manage his pickle car, or anything else.
Where it gets interesting--far more interesting than Hooper's little morality tale, for all that Scarry is completely uninterested in being morally interesting--is when the firefighters figure out that Mr. Frumble is Busytown's most annoying citizen. What do they do? "So that they can finally have a quiet moment to eat, the firefighters invite Mr. Frumble to have dinner with them at the firehouse."
And they prepare him (and themselves) a meal, while keeping him safe there at the firehouse.
I always tell my students that they should run toward their problems (like, a professor whose class they've been cutting or for whom they haven't turned in a bucketload of work), not away from them. Richard Scarry is telling them to grab their problems and bring them home for dinner.
Now, Scarry keeps it from being a tidy morality play by having the alarm ring once again, just as they were sitting down to dinner with Mr. Frumble . . . and they all leave, wishing Mr. Frumble a good dinner on their way out.
Am I reading too much into this silly story by suggesting that a community formed by this story might just have better resources for dealing with difficult people than a community formed by the Hooper Humperdink story?
Perhaps. But guess which one I'm going to be reading to my boys way more often than the other?
The "narrative theology" part makes it especially hard to just pick up any old kids' book and read it to my poor, long-suffering children.
I infected my students with that bit of insanity this morning--I had them read a few children's books to each other and talk about what a person or community formed by that book my believe or practice or understand. (I'm grateful to Vigen Guroian for having written on this topic a few years ago.)
I've done this exercise a few times, and the thing that struck me most this time around was the way books don't always do what they purport to do.
For example, we were all a little put off by Hooper Humperdink...? Not Him!, which was supposed to be a fun romp through the alphabet, wrapped in a tidy narrative of inclusion. The narrator spends the entire book building a fabulous party, while throwing out little asides about not inviting Hooper Humperdink, because he just doesn't like him.
Of course, it's a kids' book, so, in the end, the narrator decides to invite him after all.
Well, you know, that's real sweet and all, but after thirty-two pages of sneering at him, that sort of grudging permission is hardly inclusion. When I asked my students what children might learn, morally, from this book, one of them rightly suggested that this book gives a child permission to dislike other children, so long as they throw them a few token invitations to participate in special activities.
I think there might be some wisdom in giving children permission to talk about their dislikes of other children--it's a natural enough phenomenon, and the solution (corralling and contravening one's own emotions) is a little unnatural and probably needs some verbal processing.
But that is not the delicate dance that Hooper Humperdink performs.
Richard Scarry, without bothering to wrap his silly story in a tidy moral, actually does a much better job of introducing children to the notion of inclusion.
His Firefighters' Busy Day is, like all his books, simply a silly story from start to finish. The four firefighters never seem to manage to get to eat, because every time they sit down to try, the alarm rings and they have to tend to another not-terribly-urgent emergency. The needy-person-in-distress is always Mr. Frumble, a hapless cat who can't seem to manage his pickle car, or anything else.
Where it gets interesting--far more interesting than Hooper's little morality tale, for all that Scarry is completely uninterested in being morally interesting--is when the firefighters figure out that Mr. Frumble is Busytown's most annoying citizen. What do they do? "So that they can finally have a quiet moment to eat, the firefighters invite Mr. Frumble to have dinner with them at the firehouse."
And they prepare him (and themselves) a meal, while keeping him safe there at the firehouse.
I always tell my students that they should run toward their problems (like, a professor whose class they've been cutting or for whom they haven't turned in a bucketload of work), not away from them. Richard Scarry is telling them to grab their problems and bring them home for dinner.
Now, Scarry keeps it from being a tidy morality play by having the alarm ring once again, just as they were sitting down to dinner with Mr. Frumble . . . and they all leave, wishing Mr. Frumble a good dinner on their way out.
Am I reading too much into this silly story by suggesting that a community formed by this story might just have better resources for dealing with difficult people than a community formed by the Hooper Humperdink story?
Perhaps. But guess which one I'm going to be reading to my boys way more often than the other?
Monday, March 10, 2014
What I Read Last Week
(Besides, of course, a million papers on Hinduism.)
This is a lovely reflection for the beginning of Lent. Even we high-church folk are a little childish in our church-going, sometimes.
I listened to this, rather than read it, and then I repented of having preached a merely entertaining Ash Wednesday sermon.
I read this lovely collection of reflections by women religious, and was reminded that a life hedged in by promises and renunciations is no less full than the allegedly unrestricted life. Indeed, self-denial creates the conditions for an unlooked-for kind of flourishing.
I read this, and then stridently repeated it near verbatim to my offspring. And then I wished the accompanying chart had provided guidelines for the adult consumption of screen entertainment.
This is a lovely reflection for the beginning of Lent. Even we high-church folk are a little childish in our church-going, sometimes.
I listened to this, rather than read it, and then I repented of having preached a merely entertaining Ash Wednesday sermon.
I read this lovely collection of reflections by women religious, and was reminded that a life hedged in by promises and renunciations is no less full than the allegedly unrestricted life. Indeed, self-denial creates the conditions for an unlooked-for kind of flourishing.
I read this, and then stridently repeated it near verbatim to my offspring. And then I wished the accompanying chart had provided guidelines for the adult consumption of screen entertainment.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Adventures in Literature Land
NOTE: Isaac has been on sabbatical from the blog. He's been busy with various duties, including: getting older, doing copious amounts of homework, and trying to be cool. No fear, he has returned.
So, I read a book the other day. Shocking, I know. But I read a book, and it turned out it was the first in a trilogy. Then it turned out that this trilogy had a sequel, so really it was four books, proving for once and for all that authors clearly have no idea what they're doing.
But the book was Uglies (Scott Westerfield) and I categorize it as YA dystopian tech-fantasy. The main plot theme is in this brave new world, surgery and science have combined to find the archetype of the most attractive faces possible. These features include large eyes, symmetrical faces, and other tiny markers that make humans subconsciously attracted to one another. So in this semi-postapocalyptical society, the governments of the various cities have decided that to eliminate the conflicts and unfairness of the previous mold of humans, they will make the pretty-making operation compulsory starting from age 16. Certain other imperfections of society are removed, including the money system (governments pay for all of their citizens' needs), weapons (except for the giant cache the government has), and anything at all that damages the natural world of the earth.
The whole history behind the book's current events is that the old humanity, the "Rusties," seriously screwed up the world and that the above changes are the way to recover and fix it. Problem is, some people don't like being forced into surgery, forced into a certain physique, etc. The main character, Tally Youngblood, loses her best friend to the elite clique of pretty people when he turns 16 three months before she. She quickly finds a new friend, Shay, who goes against the norm and runs away rather than become pretty. She feels comfortable with her natural look. This aggravates the government. "Special Circumstances" (the new FBI or whatever) forces Tally either to follow her friend and give away the location of a hidden village of like-minded rebels, or to forgo the pretty-making surgery -- to be ugly forever. The rest of the book catalogs Tally's struggle with betraying Shay and her new friends and the inner turmoil of realizing that life as an ugly isn't that bad.
Despite being young adult literature, Uglies and its sequels are worth reading. Scott Westerfield keeps the story interesting and relevant from start to finish. You keep reading for the resolution of the plot twists, and then keep thinking because of the many ethical issues that Westerfield brings up, all the while satirically hinting that today's modern society is the generation responsible for the semi-apocalypse.
Anyway I can't give away the plot of the novel, nor the rest of the trilogy (quadrilogy?), but more and more through the books the government is shown to be evil. Mind-control and other unethical acts are disguised as the only possible way to keep society from destroying itself. So I asked myself the following question: regardless of how it turned out, was the government's original idea right?
Is the main problem of humanity our propensity to judge people based on one look at them? No, really -- is it?? Westerfield doesn't intend to tell us that we all have to be 100% pretty (or 100% ugly) to solve our problems. The "rusties" were also wasteful, constantly at war, and selfish.
It still begs the question: how much does appearance affect our lives?
Think about it.
Cheers,
Isaac
So, I read a book the other day. Shocking, I know. But I read a book, and it turned out it was the first in a trilogy. Then it turned out that this trilogy had a sequel, so really it was four books, proving for once and for all that authors clearly have no idea what they're doing.
But the book was Uglies (Scott Westerfield) and I categorize it as YA dystopian tech-fantasy. The main plot theme is in this brave new world, surgery and science have combined to find the archetype of the most attractive faces possible. These features include large eyes, symmetrical faces, and other tiny markers that make humans subconsciously attracted to one another. So in this semi-postapocalyptical society, the governments of the various cities have decided that to eliminate the conflicts and unfairness of the previous mold of humans, they will make the pretty-making operation compulsory starting from age 16. Certain other imperfections of society are removed, including the money system (governments pay for all of their citizens' needs), weapons (except for the giant cache the government has), and anything at all that damages the natural world of the earth.
The whole history behind the book's current events is that the old humanity, the "Rusties," seriously screwed up the world and that the above changes are the way to recover and fix it. Problem is, some people don't like being forced into surgery, forced into a certain physique, etc. The main character, Tally Youngblood, loses her best friend to the elite clique of pretty people when he turns 16 three months before she. She quickly finds a new friend, Shay, who goes against the norm and runs away rather than become pretty. She feels comfortable with her natural look. This aggravates the government. "Special Circumstances" (the new FBI or whatever) forces Tally either to follow her friend and give away the location of a hidden village of like-minded rebels, or to forgo the pretty-making surgery -- to be ugly forever. The rest of the book catalogs Tally's struggle with betraying Shay and her new friends and the inner turmoil of realizing that life as an ugly isn't that bad.
Despite being young adult literature, Uglies and its sequels are worth reading. Scott Westerfield keeps the story interesting and relevant from start to finish. You keep reading for the resolution of the plot twists, and then keep thinking because of the many ethical issues that Westerfield brings up, all the while satirically hinting that today's modern society is the generation responsible for the semi-apocalypse.
Anyway I can't give away the plot of the novel, nor the rest of the trilogy (quadrilogy?), but more and more through the books the government is shown to be evil. Mind-control and other unethical acts are disguised as the only possible way to keep society from destroying itself. So I asked myself the following question: regardless of how it turned out, was the government's original idea right?
Is the main problem of humanity our propensity to judge people based on one look at them? No, really -- is it?? Westerfield doesn't intend to tell us that we all have to be 100% pretty (or 100% ugly) to solve our problems. The "rusties" were also wasteful, constantly at war, and selfish.
It still begs the question: how much does appearance affect our lives?
Think about it.
Cheers,
Isaac
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