Lift Up Your Hearts!

I like academia. I love college campuses, chem labs, and the smell of libraries with old books. Places and institutions dedicated to the advancement of knowledge, to study, investigation, and discussion. In an odd way, I feel more at home on a college campus than in most places. They feel exciting, challenging, and yet as comfortable as a pair of well-worn shoes. That my own college experience differed significantly from my theoretical ideal did not do much to diminish my belief that a college professor had a near-perfect job in a near-perfect setting.

Thirty plus years away from the university experience—if you don't count paying tuition bills—along with a fair amount of reading, and discussions with friends who are college professors themselves, have revealed not only that an academic job is not the halcyon experience I had imagined, but that my view of academia as the ideal of intellectual inquiry is also seriously flawed. A recent article at Inside Higher Ed, entitled Does Academe Hinder Parenthood?, confirms both illusion-shattering discoveries. (Thanks to GroshLink for alerting me to this.)

The comments following the article are as revealing as the article itself, which notes that an academic career significantly reduces one's (statistical) chances of having children.

Controlling for such factors as age, weekly hours worked, and race or ethnicity, male faculty members are 21 percent less likely than male physicians to have recently had a birth in their households. Controlling the same factors for women, those who are academics are 41 percent less likely than physicians to have recently had children.

I was pleased to note that the comments were for the most part several steps more civilized than the usual playground taunts I see in comments to online news articles. However, I also noted a disturbing tendency—which may in itself reveal something about academia's view of children. "I was 36 when I felt free to start procreating," "Not once in non-academic circles have I ever heard mothers referred to as 'breeders'—but I hear it from academics all the time," "fulfilling a biological function," "women have family caretaking pressures IN ADDITION TO reproduction," "the male/female binary couple"—perhaps the writers are merely being academic and precise, but terms like "procreating," "breeders," "biological function," "reproduction," and the redundant "binary couple" all sound cold in this context, and distant from the reality of children and families. When doctors talk about an unborn baby at a certain stage of development as a "fetus," they are being technically correct, but an abortion-rights advocate uses the same term to put distance between that being and the idea of a living, human child. I find it quite likely that the very language with which those in academia are speaking about having children would have a negative effect on their own childbearing decisions.

So too, would the attitude of the commenter who calls himself "ScienceProf."

Of course academia hinders parenthood — it’s hard to be a parent when you work 80-100 hours a week. The question, however, is not whether it hinders parenthood, but whether anything should be done about it.

My answer is a flat out No! We cannot and should not coddle to those who make the decision to have children. When a woman has a child it is her problem, and no one else’s. Why should her colleagues pay the cost of her decision with their time? Why should the department be dragged down by having a member is not producing research? Why should a university be expected lower its standards of excellence?

When I serve on a hiring committee or select graduate students to work in my lab, I don’t want any with children. I know that they will be unable to commit the 80-100 hour weeks that is the standard workload of my department. As a supervisor for tenure-track faculty and graduate students, I refuse to accept lesser productivity due to someone’s choice to have a child. Anyone who has a child must accept the responsibility for their actions.

For those who do choose to have children, it is wholly unfair to expect your colleagues and department to share the burden of your personal decision. Their child is their problem, not mine, nor the department’s.

Even with my less-idealized view of the academy, I trust that attitude is not widespread—though I fear it might be. If it is, the problem goes far beyond whether or not college professors must jeopardize their careers to have families. Such a system would require them to jeopardize their careers to have a life. Even the medical establishment is beginning to learn that one cannot require that kind of work load for any more than a short time period and expect decent, let alone creative, work.

I recently finished reading a book called The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom.  That's not what this post is about, because while the author, David Kupelian, does have some important insights into how our culture got to be the way it is, his tone is too strident to allow me to recommend the book with particular enthusiasm.  However, he cites his sources well, and thus I am able to give full credit for what is perhaps my favorite part of the whole book, the following great quote from G. K. Chesterton.

Sex is an instinct that produces an institution; and it is positive and not negative, noble and not base, creative and not destructive, because it produces this institution.  That institution is the family; a small state or commonwealth which has hundreds of aspects, when it is once started, that are not sexual at all.  It includes worship, justice, festivity, decoration, instruction, comradeship, repose.  Sex is the gate of that house; and romantic and imaginative people naturally like looking through a gateway.  But the house is very much larger than the gate.  There are indeed a certain number of people who like to hang about the gate and never get any further.

— G.K.'s Weekly, January 29, 1928

It is a great tragedy of our day that we have been all but convinced that the gate is all there is, that the house and fields beyond it are, and have always been, no more than a romantic, imaginative dream—at best.  Perhaps we need a Puddleglum to stamp on the enchanted fire and clear our heads.

Perhaps the strident tone of Kupelian's book is, after all, just the un-enchanting smell of burnt marsh-wiggle.

Don't take my word for it; read about Our Big News in Janet's own words (and pictures).  For the really curious, you can find a link to Stephan's blog there.  Hmmm, her webmaster is going to have to make a change, and move thduggie up from Friends to Family on the sidebar.  And while I'm at it, will IrishOboe change to SwissHarp, or maybe SwissFiddle?  Stay tuned!

Such as figuring out how to type umlauts.  In Word, it's easy—CTRL/SHIFT/colon key followed by the letter, in this case "u"—easy to remember because the colon looks like an umlaut turned 90°.  In HTML, ü translates to ü, and in LifeType one can insert it via the "custom character" button.  (Technically, in LifeType it's called "u diaeresis," but while that may matter to people like Peter, it's a distinction without a difference to me.)  There's also an easy out:  one can write "ue" instead.

Oh, I know there are a few other difficulties, such as no matter where they live, at least one half of the couple is going to be too far away from family.  But I'm not thinking about that (much) now; instead I concentrate on the delightful side, such as having in-family tutors in another culture and several other languages.  It's not all bad to have an excuse to visit Europe.  :)

I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.  It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.

— Frodo to Sam, at the end of The Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Thanks to Janet reminding me (she'll have to write her own post as to why), I was able to watch NASA TV live coverage of the landing of Phoenix on Mars (and at a much more reasonable hour than she did).  For obvious reasons (the view out our front door) I pay more attention to Shuttle launches than other NASA activity these days, but watching this excitement took me 'way back.  Back to 1969 and the Apollo 11 moon landing...stories from my cousin who worked in the space program...some of the first pictures of the Earth from the moon that were treasured trophies from a Boy Scout (Explorer) program I participated in with General Electric...and even 'way, 'way back to standing on the porch with my father, watching Echo I pass overhead.

I actually enjoy airplane food, perhaps because I don't eat it all that often.  It's part of the adventure of flying, and something to break up the monotony of a long flight.  But maybe next time I should wave away the attendent with the tempting tray.  Recent research has shown that fasting for about 16 hours can reset the circadian rhythms and speed adjustment to a new time zone.

I don't enjoy reporting bad news, really.  It makes me sound old and curmudgeonly.  Okay, so I am old and curmudgeonly, but that's beside the point.  So today I feature an exciting story from the Philadelphia Inquirer:  Midwife Diane Goslin has emerged victorious from a court case in which the State of Pennsylvania accused her of practicing medicine without a license by assisting at home births.  (See my previous post.)  The author of the article, Angela Couloumbis, and the headline writer who created the title, Birthing Women Win Legal Decision understand that this victory is not about one person's profession, but about one of our most basic freedoms:  choosing where and with whom we will give birth to our children.

I could point out that some of the rejoicing may be premature: the State is considering appealing the decision, and the court only dealt with the charge of practicing medicine, not with the problem that Pennsylvania is not among the 22 states in this country that recognize the Certified Professional Midwife license.  There is cause for joy, to be sure, but not for letting down our guard.  But we'll take our victories one at a time, and be thankful for daily bread even if we're not certain of next week's provision.

I don't yet know how I'm voting in the upcoming presidential election, though I do know it will be a matter of the least objectionable candidate rather than some ringing endorsement. Frankly, I find them all objectionable; the question is, Who will do the least harm? So I'm not endorsing any candidate at this point, but as I've said before, Barack Obama scares me because he's so charismatic he might very well succeed in implementing some very dangerous policies.

I'm chronically bad at making decisions.  Not that I usually make bad ones; actually, most of them end up being pretty good.  But whether the decision is big or small, buying a house or choosing from a restaurant menu, I agonize over each decision and often experience second thoughts as soon as it is made.  Porter tells an old joke about a man ordering dessert:  The waitress informs him that they are offering apple pie and cherry pie, and after considering the matter for a while, he chooses the apple.  A few minutes later she returns to his table and say, "I'm sorry, sir, I forgot to tell you we also have coconut cream pie."  "Oh!" the diner exclaims, "In that case I'll have the cherry."

The point of the joke is the man's irrational behavior in changing his mind after the addition of irrelevant information, but I understand him completely. Coconut cream pie has nothing to do with it.  He couldn't decide between apple and cherry, and when he finally closed the door on the cherry pie, it suddenly seemed the more attractive.  The waitress's return gave him a chance to change his decision.

With that in mind, you can see why I was attracted by the headline of a New York Times article by John Tierney called The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors. It seems I'm not the only one who likes to keep her options open:  In a series of experiments, MIT students playing a game chose to take what amounted to a 15% penalty in their earnings (cold, hard cash) in order to keep unnecessary doors from closing.

The proper answer, at least as taught in elementary school, is "nothing."  Get yourself out as fast as you can; don't waste time taking anything with you.  Once past that simplistic answer, there are obviously exceptions:  adults, at least, are allowed to take their children with them.  People will take time to look for pets, and I know I would try to grab a few things, such as important papers, laptops, and family photos, even though I'm sure that's officially frowned upon.

Once out, with firefighters on the scene, one can pretty much count on not being allowed back in for anything, even children, as the professionals prefer to do the work themselves without adding another potential victim in need of rescue.

Unless one lives in Germany, where firefighters are currently battling a fire at the home of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.  This is Europe, where classical music and musicians are respected and understood more than in the United States.

Bassoonist Stefan Schweigert said the fire brigade had allowed musicians into the building to remove instruments that had been left in lockers overnight....

Prince Caspian, One Sentence Review:  Not a bad movie, but several times I had to wonder where the story line came from.

A few more thoughts: 

Reminded me greatly of The Lord of the Rings movie:  take the names, places, and surface plot of a popular book, then make up your own story to hold it all together.

Great animation and special effects, measured mostly by the fact that I hardly noticed them.  Walking and talking badgers and mice seem perfectly normal, and even the centaurs are convincing.  Reepicheep is wonderful; they did a great job with the mice, not just the animation but also the dialogue and action.

The actress who plays Lucy does an excellent job, and the actor playing Edmund is pretty good, too.

One thing that had bothered me about the first Narnia movie was what appeared to be a deliberate flouting of Lewis's determination that the girls not be fighters if at all possible ("battles are ugly when women fight").  After having read an interview with the director of the movies, it concerns me less, as I see his point that Lewis's view towards women changed through time, no doubt at least in part due to getting to know Joy Davidman, the strong, intelligent woman whom he eventually married.  I'm not sure that even were he still alive today Lewis's views would have evolved to the point where he would have been happy with women fighting on the battlefield, but I doubt he would have objected to strong, wise, competent female characters.  Indeed, girls are often depicted just that way in the books, but the movie is so focused on the battles that there is hardly time for any character, male or female, to show strength and courage in any other way.

Battle fatigue.  Enough with the fighting, already!  Reminded me of a Presbyterian sermon:  first third, interesting and valuable; second third, unnecessary rehash; final third, soporific.  Much too much violence for its PG rating, in my opinion.

If they'd devoted less screen time to killing, they might might have had room for some of my favorite scenes from the book, like the Romp with Bacchus when Aslan awakened the trees, the Feast after the battle, and what Aslan and the girls did in Beruna. 

My two favorite scenes from the movie, though neither is in the book:  the cat in the castle, and Lucy drawing her dagger on the bridge with Aslan.

If the main characters are disconcerted by the time shifting between the two worlds, I am equally so by the incongruities in the movie.  I could understand a re-setting of the story so that Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy were modern children, but in that case, why keep the World War II setting?  In the book, the characters' speech, actions, and attitudes reflect either the mid-twentieth-century world, or the quasi-Medieval world of Narnia; in the movie, the setting is WWII London or Narnia, but the culture 21st century Hollywood.  Including some romantic scenes that are totally unnecessary and definitely not in the book.

Was Prince Caspian worth seeing?  For us, yes, since our tickets were only $5 each, we already know the books well, and I want to be able to converse about it.  Would I see it again?  I doubt it, and therein is a great difference from the book, which I have probably read more than two dozen times in the last 45 years.  If the movie encourages people to read the Narnia books who otherwise wouldn't, then, yes, it's well worth seeing.  But don't watch the movie and think you know much at all of the story as C. S. Lewis wrote it.  Perhaps it is possible for a movie to convey the delights of a book like Prince Caspian, but it doesn't seem to happen very often.

Having finished watching all the available “Best Picture” Oscar-winners—all except for one or two he decided early on weren’t worth the wasting of his time—Porter is catching up on the James Bond movies he’d missed, which was many if not most of them.  Not feeling any lack whatsoever for having missed them myself, I’ve generally elected to indulge in what to me are more profitable activities, such as reading, writing, or sleeping.

There’s a lot of fun in the Bond movies, or at least the early ones, which is all I’ve seen so far.   Many of the lines, and in particular the way they are delivered (by Sean Connery, anyway) are genuinely clever, and some of the scenes border on slapstick, which I was not expecting.

What surprised—and disturbed—me most, however, was how tame the movies have seemed so far.  In violence, sex, and foul language they are far outdone by today’s ordinary, broadcast television fare.  Yet I remember how shocking James Bond was when first he came to the theaters.  Few of my young teenaged friends actually managed to see the films, but reading the books—or pretending, or wishing, to have done so—was risqué and definitely cool.  I remember the birthday when my mother gave me The Diamond Smugglers in an attempt to satisfy my desire for a Bond book.  How ignorant and uncool could she be to have picked out one of the very few books by Ian Fleming that was not about James Bond and in fact was not even fiction?  Ignorant like a fox, my Phi Beta Kappa mother!

I recently read the answers to a genealogist's request for people's "top three genealogical regrets," and discovered that I am not alone.  Hands down, the greatest frustration and sorrow reported was over not recording stories and asking questions of those who died taking irretrievable history with them.  I'm far from the only one who developed an interest in family history too late to get easy and accurate answers to the family mysteries that are now taking so much time and effort to unravel, and which may never be made clear.  From bare-facts birth, death, and marriage information, to photographs of people and places once dearly loved by those whose love made us what we are, to the unique, intimate, and irreplaceable stories of a family's daily lives, thoughts, feelings, and culture—these personal connections with history all too often mean little to the young, engrossed as they are in the here and now.

When I speak of elders, I do not necessarily mean old folks.  Trust me, when you try to remember events for which you have no written record, you discover you can recall but little of many momentous occasions you were certain you'd never forget, so don't think you can easily delay the project till the time when your kids are all grown, or when you retire.  Here are some lessons I've learned, mostly the hard way, about how to avoid genealogical regrets.

• Keep a diary. I speak as one whose own journal-keeping has become exceedingly spotty in the last couple of years, and who wishes she'd started it sooner than after her youngest child was already two years old, so I'm no role model.  But what have managed to record has been an invaluable memory aid and a source of many great family stories that otherwise would have been lost.  The thought of keeping a written, daily journal can be intimidating, but almost anything is better than nothing.  Even brief notes, such as "Today Bill, Joan, and Tiffany came for dinner," or "Jeffrey swam the full length of the pool," can trigger memories for later expansion.  The more detail the better, especially if it includes thoughts, feelings, and philosophical musings, but good enough is better than perfect if perfect isn't going to happen.


• Take pictures, and label them.  Digital cameras make it easy to take photographs, but all too often that means 100 times more unlabelled photos to puzzle over.  When I look up to the shelves above my desk and see album after album of photos. most of which will lose all meaning if I don't identify them, I become Dorothy, watching the sand pour inexorably through the hourglass and trying not to panic.


• Identify family heirlooms.  You may treasure your great-grandmother's teacup, but if your heirs don't know it was hers, it's just another non-microwaveable dish.  Take pictures, label them, and make sure your kids know where the information is stored. 


• Write down the stories from your past, especially where they intersect other people's.  As important as I believe my genealogical work to be, always nagging at the back of my mind is the realization that I am the eldest in my family, and if I get killed by a car as I bike along the trail (as happened to one woman here recently), many stories will be lost that my siblings and children would rather hear than know the identity of their great-great-great grandparents.


• Find a safe place to keep your irreplaceable information.  The three most important words in data storage:  backup, backup, backup.  Don't trust to one medium, either; CDs deteriorate over time, hard drives crash, papers get moldy.  Determine the person in your family most interested in taking over your family history collection after you die, and include that bequest in your will.  If you can find no one who cares enough to save it for future generations, consider bequeathing some of it to a long-standing and reputable genealogical society.


• Document your sources.  Facts and stories are of minimal value when stripped of source information.  Does Great-Great-Grandpa Jim's birth date come from a family Bible, an unreliable Internet genealogy, his birth certificate, or the failing memory of Aunt Jane?  Who told the story of Uncle Dick falling out of the apple tree—Dick himself, or his second cousin who wasn't there but heard the story from his sister?


• Organize, organize, organize.  All the data in the world is useless if no one can find it, or if it fills 20 large books no one else will want to store, much less read.


• Distribute your work.  Don't wait till it's perfect, or even half done, to share your discoveries with others.  Several short stories now are much more likely to bless your family than a masterpiece unearthed only after your will is read.  Put your unfinished (but organized) work where it can be seen:  you'll gain proofreaders and contributors, you may inspire others to record their own family history, and you'll have established another level of backup for your data.


• Don't be overwhelmed, but start today and be consistent.  Find five minutes at the end of each day to jot down a few notes and you'll create a priceless legacy for your children.  Can you spare twenty minutes instead?  Choose one project—photo identification, writing your children's birth stories, whatever inspires you at the moment—and apply the Daffodil Principle. Dedicate a mere 15 minutes a day to that project—consistently, four days a week, for a just 40 weeks out of the year—and by this time next year you will  have put in a full work-week's worth of time and accomplished wonders.  Maybe even have moved on to another project or two.


• Don't allow the knowledge that the future is rapidly closing in on your ability to document the past take away from your life in the present.  I'm still working on this one, too.

Earlier this month the Seattle Times ran a heartwarming genealogy story by Jan Burak Schwert about her husband's accidental meeting, in a German pub, of a man who shared both his interest in genealogy and his great-great-grandfather.  The meeting itself was not planned, but the ground well-prepared, since they were in Germany, and that particular small town, searching for  information on his ancestors.  ("You fly down the street on a chance that you'll meet, And you meet—not really by chance.")  Despite the dilution of so many generations, the two looked like brothers.

Having been alerted to the Evangelical Manifesto by both GroshLink and John Stackhouse, I decided it was probably worth reading.  I generally shun labels other than "Christian," if I can, and "Manifesto" sounds a little radical to me, but there's a lot I can identify with in this document.  I greatly appreciate its even-handed, moderate, dare I say Christ-like approach. It may sound ho-hum to some, but I suspect that a clear and courteous statement of basic beliefs and principles is more necessary than we'd like to believe.  Others apparently read the Manifesto as a wimpy effort not to be identified with Fundamentalists, though what I see is not one-sided, but a true effort avoid both Scylla and Charybdis.

Knowing many churches give short shrift to Pentecost, I asked Jonathan if they had done anything special for Pentecost in his church.  "No," he replied.  "Do you know what Pentecost is?"  "Yes, I do!  We saw a movie about it.  I remember the part about the paper clips...."  Hmmm.  That part of the coming of the Holy Spirit had apparently escaped me.  Later, Heather cleared up the mystery by remembering that they had seen a movie about the Holocaust.  Not quite the same thing, but you can see the confusion.  I still wonder about the paper clips, though.

On the way home from church we stopped by Lowe's and did our part to stimulate the economy—of the U.S. and, unfortunately, of China too.  Nothing against the Chinese people, but I'm not happy with their government, their cavalier attitude towards health and safety, their blatant disregard for patents and copyrights, and the fact that it's so difficult to find items that are made anywhere else but in China.

It wasn't completely an impulse purchase—I believe Porter had been ruminating on the idea for quite a while—but nearly so: Porter had to go home (fortunately only about 2.5 miles away) to exchange our smaller car for the one that could carry...A PORCH SWING! I love porch swings, and I remember many happy hours reading, napping, or just daydreaming on my grandfather's porch swing, which turned into our porch swing when he moved in with us.  Sadly, when it was my father's time to move to a place too small to accommodate the swing, it had deteriorated too much to make it worth moving 1000 miles south.  Nonetheless, that swing remained the gold standard for porch swings in my mind, and though we've looked at swings off and on over the years, I've never found one that really excited me.

Until yesterday.  That's why I was able to overlook the "Made in China" label, and the fact that Lowe's was rather disorganized and we had to wait quite a while before they actually found a swing we coudl take home.  Porter spent the afternoon assembling the swing (no small task—it might have been worth the $10 assembly fee, except that an installer wouldn't have done such a careful job), and there it is on our porch, looking very much like the picture, except without the sunshade, which we don't need.

Quite a Mother's Day present, huh?  It's as much like my grandfather's swing as makes no difference, perfect for naps, meditations, sitting side-by-side with my sweetheart in the evening, and reading aloud with grandchildren snuggling on either side.  What's more, it opens out into a bed; I foresee a "rite of passage" for the grandkids, marked by being old enough to sleep on Grandma and Dad-o's swing.  (Age is important because of the proximity of the pool.  No sleepwalkers need apply.)

As my father would say, we were sloppin' up culture like a hawg yesterday.  (I believe the reference was to a L'il Abner comic strip, although it may have been Pogo.)  It all started when the Orlando Magic (local basketball team) advanced to the playoffs, thereby causing a parking problem for the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra concert since the Bob Carr Auditorium and the O-rena (it keeps changing its name based on sponsorship, so since I can't keep track of it I generally call it by its original appellation) share parking facilities.

In order to help alleviate the problem, the OPO delayed its concert by half an hour.  We figured that still wasn't going to be good enough, since one never knows how long a basketball game is going to last, so we decided to expand the evening.

We left for downtown at 4:30, and found our usual parking garage already filled to capacity.  On to Plan B, which involved parking some distance away but near the free downtown bus line.  We could have then taken the bus to our first event, dinner at the Napasorn Thai restaurant, but decided instead to enjoy a walk in the lovely weather.  Mmmmm, tom yum gai, beef with basil, and pad Thai. :)

Our next stop was an easy walk away, for an Orlando Cabaret Festival show at the Mad Cow Theatre.  This was our third year at their popular It Was a Very Good Year series (see last year and the year before, and our choice of year was made easy by the fact that 1951 was the one that made it possible for us to see it and still make the OPO concert afterwards.

Actually, 1951 had been my first choice this time, anyway, it being close enough to my birth year I thought it might be especially interesting.  It turned out to be my least favorite of our three years, not so much because I recognized fewer of the songs as because the singers often didn't take them seriously enough to make them sound authentic.  Well, okay, there's only so much you can do with I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat....  The songs from various musicals were the best, and the most convincing.

No lingering allowed after the show; it was time to run to the next event:  The Orlando Philharmonic and the Bach Festival Choir presenting Verdi's Requiem. We didn't run, exactly, but having just missed a bus we decided to walk the nine-tenths of a mile to the Bob Carr, moving as quickly as we could against a flood tide of basketball fans in various states of depression, elation, and/or inebriation.  Arriving on time to the concert was necessary because the Requiem was performed without intermission.  Not only is it rude (and often forbidden) to enter the hall after the performance has begun, but we had also consumed many large glasses of water with our fiery Thai food....

This was, as far as I remember, the first time I'd heard Verdi's Requiem, and though I go into OPO concerts predisposed to enjoy whatever they present, I must confess I found this oddly disagreeable.  The orchestra and chorus were splendid; it was an excellent performance.  But it felt less like a requiem mass and more like an opera without costumes.  Actually, supertitles would have helped, since it was too dark in the hall to read the words printed in the program.  One of the advantages of being in a liturgical church, however, is that I was familiar enough with the words to follow fairly well anyway.

Perhaps it wasn't that much of an advantage, because often the music did not seem to fit the words.  A mental shift, not without effort, did enable me to envision someone (not seraphim) singing the light, dancing Sanctus around the throne of God, but it was a far cry from my usual Isaiah 6 inspired image.  Verdi did the Dies Irae well, however, with Carl Rendek and the men of the chorus providing a relentless, driving energy to the terrible words.

One or two of you might understand when I say that the absolute highlight of the delightful evening was the few minutes we shared with our table-mates at the Cabaret.  Turns out they were from France, and though as always in such situations my very limited French vocabulary took rapid retreat, nonetheless we did manage to communicate some in French before reverting to English.  It's always a thrill to me when someone actually understands my French, and, gracious woman, she said my accent was very good....

The Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen (Doubleday, 2007)

I'm finally reading the book I first wrote about a month an a half ago.  This post is no more a proper book review than the earlier one, since I'm only through the introduction and 3/4 of Chapter One.  I can feel Mr. Keen's keenly disapproving I Told You So look: yet another example of amateurs doing things badly.  So be it.  I just experienced a perfect example of why I have a problem with some of his assertions, and want to share it with you, my minuscule but beloved audience.   Otherwise, distracted amateur that I am, I'd probably forget the illustration before finishing the book.

While I am reading The Cult of the Amateur, Porter is enjoying a G. A. Henty novel, In the Reign of Terror, and tonight he came upon a word with which he was unfamiliar:  louvetier.  Naturally, he asked me about it, since for years I have been the family's reference-book-of-choice.  If Mom doesn't know, she'll look it up and save the rest of us the trouble.  Well, I didn't know, so I went to my handy dictionary.  This is no pocket-sized or student edition, but a thick, heavy Webster's with its own dictionary stand—but it failed me.  On to the next room, and my online references.  BabelFish: No.  Answers.com: No.  Merriam-Webster:  No.  Encyclopedia Britannica, surely:  Not at all.  Yet the combination of Google and Wikipedia, very much maligned in that first chapter I had been reading when Porter's question interrupted me, gave me the answer in a matter of seconds.  I should have tried them first, but I was under the influence of the book.  A louvetier, for those of you who are panting to know, is a French wolfcatcher, master of the wolfhounds and responsible for organizing the wolf hunts.  Wikipedia may indeed be amateurish and prone to bias and error, but it answered the question swiftly and—confirmed by Porter from the context of the book—accurately.

Today's NEHGS eNews includes the following lovely passage written on July 4, 1632 by New England Puritan leader John Winthrop. (The website version the eNews link will take you to is currently a few issues behind, but will eventually catch up to the one to which I refer, which is Vol. 10, No. 19).

I have much difficulty to keep John Galloppe here by reason his wife will not come [to the New England colony]. I marvel at the woman’s weakness that she will live miserably with her children there, when she might live comfortably here with her husband. I pray persuade and further her coming by all means: if she will come let her have the remainder of his wages, if not, let it be bestowed to bring over his children, for so he desires: it would be above £40 loss for him to come for her.

I won't pretend anything other than a highly selfish interest in my dismay at the decision by the Catholic Church to forbid digitization of their parish records.  I disagree with the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), but genealogists and other historians owe them a great debt for the records they have kept and assembled over the years, records which they make freely available to people of all faiths.

The concern of the Catholics is with not wanting to facilitate the Mormon practice of posthumus, vicarious baptism for their ancestors—which for those of European descent means ancestors who were baptized by the Catholic Church.  I have a problem with that practice, too, but my own faith is strong enough to be assured it's a meaningless ritual, and finding that some of my ancestors have been vicariously baptized into the Morman faith bothers me no more than hearing that some voodoo practicioner had posthumusly hexed them.  They are in God's hands, far beyond the reach of either Mormon or witch doctor.

Someone on one of my Internet forums alerted me to Rush, Little Baby, a Boston Globe article of a few months back.  As articles critical of academically-oriented education for young children, it's a pretty good one, covering many perspectives and giving fair space to the opposing view.

For all that it's a long trek through the article, I finished the trip feeling more as if I had been on an If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium tour of Europe: sound bites rather than substance.  And though I have criticisms myself of some of the ways preschool children are taught, they naysayers in this article are generally setting up straw men to knock down.

The case of William Sidis, for example, is a tired old chestnut, full of half-truths, and in any case there are plenty of reasons to account for his problems without blaming his precocity.

I've written before on the problems with the Baby Einstein study.

Phonics instruction is important, and those who never learn to sound out new words are at a distinct disadvantage as readers.  I've quarreled often enough with schools that teach reading by the infamous look-say method.  But the article's assertion that those who learn to read that way can't really read is ludicrous.  Poor as it may be, that's the way I learned to read, and I'm an excellent reader, having figured out (enough) phonics along the way.  More to the point, I'm sure the author doesn't really mean to imply that Chinese, Japanese, and other speakers of non-phonetic languages aren't really reading....

Studies purporting to show that children who are advanced when they enter school generally lose their advantage in a few years will remain unconvincing as long as most schools offer little or no opportunity for such children to continue to blossom, but instead encourage them to become bored and complacent.  I'm very tired of making that point, but apparently it needs to be made over and over again.  (Martin Luther, on being asked why he preached on justification by faith every week, responded "Because you forget it every week.")  

Most of all, I'm frustrated by the false dichotomy that is always being presented. Of course sitting on the floor with your child and building block structures together is a good thing, as are creating puppet shows, snuggling on the couch reading together, cooking dinner, and a host of other activities.  But why are these things always presented in opposition to showing your child pictures of art works, or butterflies, or words, or mathematical quantities, or introducing them in other ways to the lively world they will later "study" as academic subjects?  The people I know who do the latter also do the former, probably more than most.  I'm sure there are those who plop their kids down in front of "brain-boosting" DVDs or TV shows for hours on end and call it education, but that's no one I know, and even if it were, a few bad apples don't invalidate a practice.  I'll grant this:  IF one only has time to build block castles with a child, OR show the child pictures of art masterpieces, but not both, I'd take the blocks.  But that's a foolish premise, an impossible situation.  Whoever needs to make that choice?

If you have time, check out the Doman Inspired Parenting blog.  I have issues with some of Timothy's parents' choices for his upbringing—not that it's any of my business, but so you know I'm not holding them up as paragon parents.  Nonetheless they've done an absolutely amazing job.  A most intense program of the kind derided in the article, with plenty of activities of the kind promoted (check out their ExploraZone!), the parents also managing a job and a half plus grad school...no, these aren't the Incredibles, but they certainly show the foolishness of the above either/or dichotomy.

While chatting with the dental hygienist yesterday, I learned about a science project that had been assigned to her fifth-grade son: Each student was assigned a "body system"—perhaps circulatory, digestive, respiratory, etc.; I didn't get the details—and told to make up a game using questions about that system.  At first glance that seems reasonable, perhaps even interesting. Games are not a particularly efficient way to learn facts, but they can be an enjoyable way of masking the repetition that is required to commit them to memory.  Certainly making up the questions is a good exercise.

However, the amount of time and effort required for this project was 'way out of proportion to the science knowledge gained, most being devoted to extraneous matters:  the game must have a well-made game board, with a detailed, typed instruction sheet, and a sturdy, well-decorated box.  Such a project might be a joy for some students but torture for their less-crafty classmates—and to what purpose?  Whatever one might think of the merits of training fifth graders in manual dexterity and design, it seems unfair to base a science grade on such work, and in any case one ought not to pretend that it is science that is being taught.

This assignment is yet one more example of how those who claim they don't have enough time to teach properly waste the students' time with busywork.  Craft projects instead of science, PowerPoint presentations instead of written reports, browsing the Internet for images instead of writing paragraphs, and tweaking fonts and backgrounds instead of improving sentence structure!  It's bad enough when a teacher allows a student to get away with such nonsense; to require it is ludicrous.

The end month of Porter's recent gig was very stressful, with lots of pressure and 80+ hour work weeks.  My father often said that his favorite Bible quotation was "And it came to pass...."  This, too, has passed at last, and we have survived.  Many thanks to those of you who upheld Porter in your prayers.

If anyone wants a measure of how stressful the time was, I need only say that he has spent several days recently working on replacing a neighbor's roof, and some of you remember that two years ago—after replacing ours—he said he'd never, ever do that again. But this is how he chooses to relax these days, finding the physical work a delightful change.

Picture this:  During the upcoming Olympics, the second place finisher of a big race suddenly collapses and dies.  Nonetheless, the crowd still celebrates with the winner, and the medal ceremony takes place as if nothing had happened.  It's a tragedy, sure, but that's life, that's sport, and nothing should take away from the winner's glory.

That's not as far-fetched as it might seem.  We don't like to rain on anyone's parade.  No one seems anxious to boycott this year's Olympics, despite China's blatant and unrepentant violation of human rights and international law.  We don't want to hurt our athletes, and that's understandable.  Still, there was a time when celebrations were set aside in the face of tragedy, such as the wedding of my mother's cousin, for which, as the newspaper announcement put it, "nuptials were quiet owing to the late bereavement in the home."

When I was in Pittsburgh, we bought some dried pineapple at Trader Joe's, and it was very, very good!  Thus when I saw the same at my local health food store, I snapped it up.  Did I say it was the same?  Not.  Even thought the label did not mention added sugar, this pineapple must have been sweetened, as is the dried pineapple I can buy at the grocery store.  Yuck.  I couldn't eat it, so I cooked it with some dried apricots to make a fruit topping for my breafast muesli.