Lift Up Your Hearts!

Today's Drabble comic, suitably modified, is for our friend Johnny Montroll, a.k.a. The Origami Guy.

I have my doubts about the statement in the Wikipedia article that his initial book was "the first origami book where each model is folded from single square sheet and no cuts," though I know that was a passion of his, and his innovations were many, including a realistic, rather than symbolic, style.  Be that as it may, John is a remarkable polymath whose accomplishments are more understated by the article than not.  How many other people can honestly say that they wake up in the morning eager to go to work?

Any family members who have learned to love Settlers of Catan through us can thank Johnny, for it was he who taught us to play, during a delightful visit when it was much more fun to play games together than face preparing for our imminent move to Boston.

Although we have a large collection of his origami books, Janet is the one of us who most appreciates them, having mastered the techniques well enough to make some impressive models.  Perhaps Jonathan will one day, since at age four he designed and folded his own origami bat.  :)

The Drabble strip was the immediate inspiration for this post, but I had been thinking about John anyway, thanks to my recent trip on Southwest Airlines, and this article in their Spirit on-board magazine.

During the 18 months we lived in the Boston area, we experienced three deaths in our immediate family.  This, as I realized how much vital information was being lost, was half the reason I developed an unexpected and almost obsessive interest in genealogical research.  The other half was inspired by the proximity of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) library on Newbury Street.  Although I am now over 1200 miles away from that treasure trove of information, I maintain my membership in the Society, and their eNews letter arrived at my inbox this morning.

Eric Schultz is the Chairman of the Council of the NEHGS, and The Occasional CEO is his blog.  The link that took me there was to Genealogy, the Idaho Russet, and Innovation, his speech at their recent annual meeting.  Here are a few other interesting posts I found:

I'm Going Crazy...But So Are You — the way we use the Internet is rewiring our brains.

Hey, That's Mine!: When the Other Side Adopts Your Innovation First — what do the telephone, Facebook, King Philip's War, Swiss watches, and IBM have in common?

A Plague of Dead Squirrels, (a.k.a. The Unintended Consequences of Innovation) — what we really have to fear from electric cars.

It's a Messy, Messy World (or, "How the Web Was Won") — the importance of knowing history, and how AT&T (among others) got to be where it is instead of where it could have been.

There's more, but you'll have to find it for yourself.  I need to get on with Real Life (and those e-mails).

I hate to give such horrors any more publicity, so if you already view Planned Parenthood as evil incarnate, don't follow any of the links on John C. Wright's post, Footnote to Modern, Ever-Changing, Ever-Evolving Moral Standards.  If, on the other hand, you still cling to the hope, as I did for a long time, that the omni-present organization might not be utterly irredeemable, you owe it to your children to take a look (with them out of the room, of course—preferably out of the house).  I wish I could cleanse my brain of those cute, Sesame Street-like videos, but sometimes it's useful to know just how bad the situation really is.

I like the idea of socially responsible investing, but this has reminded me that whatever harm might be done by an undesirable gnat stock amongst those in our mutual funds is dwarfed by the camel damage paid for with our tax dollars.

My first reaction to the good news that girls are now doing as well as boys in mathematics, at least through high school, was to laugh at the headline, which was "Numbers don't lie: Girls equal to boys in math."  Anyone who knows anything at all about numbers knows that they are frequently used to express untruths.  Nonetheless, it's still good to hear that the distressing gap between male and female performance that once appeared between elementary school and high school has disappeared.

And yet, I wonder.  I don't give any more credence to the idea that boys might be inherently better in math than girls, any more than I do to the idea that girls are naturally superior in reading.  (I do leave room for the idea that certain ways of thinking, some approaches to problems, and even some narrow fields of mathematics, might show sex-specific correlations, because, after all, men and women are inherently, biologically different.  I'm quite certain, however, that differences among individuals are great enough to make sex-related differences of little import.)  What makes me less than elated about this new study is a nagging suspicion of anything that sees parity as the goal.  From the school principal who told me that the ultimate purpose of kindergarten was to get all students on the same level, to the school board members who were much less concerned with student achievement than with making sure no school in the district looked any better or worse than another, I've found that a victory in mere equality often masks a decline in real accomplisment.  Both kindergarten and school district "parity" are often achieved as much by holding some students back as by bringing others forward.  I'm certainly glad girls are doing "as well" as boys in mathematics—but much more interested in how all our students are doing, not only in comparison with each other, with students of the past, and with students of other countries, but most importantly in consideration of actual achievement.  "As good as" is a slippery measurement, and "better than" is little better.  In the company of serial rapists, a "mere" adulterer might feel pretty good about himself.

John C. Wright's post about his discussion with a utopian communist awakened memories of my own encounters with people who look back with affection to the time of the 1960s and 70s.  It's probably good, in general, that human beings tend to forget the sorrows of the past and remember it with a golden tinge, but when it's the sufferings of others, rather than our own, that we ignore, we are in danger of making grievous mistakes.

No age (nor philosophy) has a monopoly on evil, and I'm the first to admit both that my own life was largely insulated from the pain of that time and that some good things came from it, but the era was one of selfishness, incivility, and disastrous policies unequalled in my (admittedly limited) experience.  Worse, it was the spawning-ground for much future harm.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek...to be understood, as to understand.—St. Francis

I can't resist taking a moment to share another excellent post from Random Observations, which gently reminds me that I need to spend more time trying to understand the point of view of those with whom I disagree, especially if I disagree strongly and emotionally.

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, by Michael Ward (Oxford University Press, 2008)

It is hard to overstate the excitement with which I read Planet Narnia.  I'll return shortly to Michael Ward's discovery of the pattern and scheme under which C. S. Lewis wrote all seven of his Narnia books, but it's also worth noting that Ward's writing itself was a delight to read.  I am so very, very tired of the recent trend of informal, conversational writing that appears to have been put together in haste, without benefit of editor or even proofreader.  That style is good for blogs, but in a book the lack of consideration for sentence and paragraph structure, the grammatical mistakes, the impoverished vocabulary, and what often comes across as a condescending tone detract significantly from the message proclaimed.

Planet Narnia is a cool stream dancing through a thirsty land.  It is intellectual and academic without being in the least bit dry, a book clearly written for the general public—but an intelligent and educated general public.  It was not, perhaps, the best of books to take to the shore where one is constantly in (delightful) danger of being interrupted by friends who drop by or grandchildren who want to play, but it was too fascinating to give up for lighter fare, and will well bear re-reading, probably several times.

As soon as I heard about Ward's identification of the relationship between the Narnia books and medieval cosmology, I knew I had to rush right out and buy the book.  (Note:  "rush right out and buy" is used in the same sense as "dial a phone number."  What I actually did was order it from Amazon.  To be fair, I did try first to get it from our library or a local bookstore, but without success.  I want to support local businesses, but what can I do if they so rarely have what I want to buy?)  If you are not as impatient as I was, you can get a preview at the Planet Narnia website.

(In case anyone is confused, I should probably note that Lewis's use of this cosmology has nothing to do with believing in a geocentric universe, but rather its symbolic and philosophical meanings.  As Aslan explains, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, "a huge ball of flaming gas" is not "what a star is, but only what it is made of.")

A little background will help explain one reason I was so excited about Ward's ideas.  I have not (yet) read Dante's Divine Comedy, but Porter is in the middle of Purgatorio, having finished Inferno a while back, so for his birthday or some such occasion I bought the Teaching Company lectures on the Commedia.  This is a course I recommend very highly for anyone contemplating reading Dante's masterpiece.  I had no idea what an absolute genius Dante was!  While listening to the lectures, I was struck repeatedly by how much parts of the Divine Comedy reminded me of the writings of C. S. Lewis. Planet Narnia showed me why this is no coincidence:  Lewis was a great admirer of Dante, and much that is in Dante's great poem, particularly the Paradiso, is reflected in Lewis's works.

Although I've always loved to read, I never liked literature classes in school, despising the way teachers would take what otherwise might have been an interesting book and analyze it to death; I see now that my distain developed because I had never seen such analysis done right. Both the Teaching Company lectures and Planet Narnia showed me that the right analysis of the right book is like solving an enormous cryptic crossword puzzle.

Ward's work also helped me understand one reason I've been so disappointed by the movie versions of The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books (so far).  Even where they are true to the characters and plot of the stories, even where they have caught some of the ideas conveyed by the books, they have largely missed what Lewis called the "Kappa element"—roughly, the atmosphere, flavor, or tone—that makes each book what it is.

Is an understanding of medieval cosmology, or the way it infuses the Narnia tales, necessary for appreciating the books?  Of course not; they have been well loved ever since they were written, by people who, like me, had no clue that all the references to gold in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader were part of its "Solar" flavor.  The Kappa element was apparently intended not to be seen (except by puzzle solvers), being much less obvious than the Christian element, which Lewis states he deliberately kept low-key.  Its importance is on the imaginative, not the rational level.

The distinctive roles of the imaginative and the rational are expressed much more clearly in Planet Narnia than I was able to articulate in a recent, frustrating discussion with a friend, and thus particularly welcome reading.  Although Truth is one and undivided, we cannot see it correctly if we do not look at it through both lenses.  I doubt that C. S. Lewis ever used the terms "left brain" and "right brain," but he would have appreciated the value of both approaches.

Enjoy the Narnia tales just as they are, if you wish.  You don't need to know the Jovial elements in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, nor how Mercury influences The Horse and His Boy.  But rest assured that J. R. R. Tolkien was wrong in considering the Narnia septet to be a literary hodge-podge.  Planet Narnia makes a convincing argument that the apparently random elements are instead carefully placed stones in a brilliant mosaic.

A friend of ours has four children.  They're all still less than eight years old, and have yet many years to develop their tastes in music, but where they stand now offers some food for thought.

His siblings, all girls, are no doubt equally bright, but their musical tastes are quite different.  When she was pregnant with the next two, our friend was the music director of a traditional church; they are now mellow, happy children who love traditional hymns.  The youngest spent her formative pre-natal days listening to her mother rehearse with the "praise band" at another church, and she is the rocker of the family—the louder and more intense the guitars and drums, the better she likes it.

"So whence," I asked, "comes the delight all the children have in Broadway music?"  "Subliminal," our friend replied.  She and her husband sing together every night after the kids are in bed, and Broadway tunes are a favorite.  Every night, as their son solemnly informed me, even when they get home really late, they take time to sing together.

My to-do list is too long for me to indulge much in long stories or philosophical musings, so today you get just plain fun.  Sometimes I think I'm the last person in the world to see things that have apparently been circulating on the Internet for years, but just in case I'm only the second-to-last, don't miss this.

Be sure to check out Matt's site for more details and other videos.  You know how many teenaged boys dream of getting paid to play and design video games?  Well, Matt had that dream job, and chucked it over for this.  And I thought Janet was good at getting paid to travel.

We celebrated my birthday with a three-way phone call (Florida/Pittsburgh/Basel), good wishes from family and friends, and a dinner at the Kobé Japanese Steakhouse.  We'd been to the Kobé before, but that was probably 15 years ago.  Their teppanyaki service doesn't remind me in the least of our experiences in Japan, but that doesn't mean the food wasn't good.  We didn't even spring for the $80 Wagyu beef; the $18 sirloin was quite delicious enough.  And the $15 birthday bribe was worth a bit of mild embarrassment.

As usual, I made loud crashing noises with cymbals, and Porter kept the band members well hydrated.  He's had that job ever since our first gig, Atlanta's Independence Day parade in 1993.  Geneva lacks the television coverage, the long parade route, the melting tar in the pavement under our feet, and the real, desperate need for frequent hydration—in Atlanta we were the only band not to have someone faint—but his efforts and antics are no less appreciated.

Geneva's Master of Ceremonies challenged us to take this patriotic quiz in today's Orlando Sentinel, claiming that he only missed two questions.  I was more than pleased that I missed none at all, though on one question I used my multiple-choice test taking skills more than my real knowledge.  (Porter, of course, easily got them all right.)  The pride was somewhat short-lived, however, since I found the full version of the test and only scored 90%. That would still be a respectable score if I did not have the nagging feeling that I've seen that test somewhere before, so it doesn't really count.

For a monolingual person, I have an inordinate love of languages.  Not only is multi-lingualism increasingly important in today's world, but it does wonderful things for the brain—from increased brain growth in babies to decreased dementia in the elderly.  I wish the great resources available for teaching young children another language had been around when our kids were little, and I wish I had more aggressively pursued what there was.  Be that as it may, I am only a language dilettante, enjoying learning a few phrases of Japanese before our trip there, brushing up on my minimal high school French, and listening to the language CDs from the Hippo Family Clubs.  I wish I were multi-lingual, but face the reality that at my age it just isn't going to happen.

The source of my prejudice against Spanish was not hard to discern:  I don't react well to threats and pressure, and the increasing dominance of Spanish in Florida makes me feel about that language the way many Québécois feel about English.  Unreasonable prejudice, I know, but at least I understand its origins.

German is another matter.  Anticipating many future trips to Switzerland, not to mention German-speaking grandchildren, learning German should be a high priority.  And it will, when I can talk myself past the mental block.  But why the reluctance?  Why does the German language sound ugly and angry to me?  Sophie Scholl helped me untangle this puzzle:  My association with German and Germany is too much influenced by World War II.

Not that I ever experienced WWII myself, nor did my parents express any particular anti-German sentiment.  But when I was growing up, the memory was yet green in American culture, and Germans were not presented positively in the books we read, the movies we saw, the television shows we watched, and even the games we played.  The bad guys barked "Heil Hitler!" and "Seig heil!" and "Ya voll!" and spewed angry-sounding, though incomprehensible, strings of harsh consonants.  For some reason, perhaps because I grew up on the East Coast rather than the West, Japanese was spared this treatment.

I'm sure that German words out of the mouth of a young grandchild will sound perfectly lovely.

And fortunately for me, Schwyzerdütsch k'valt mir goed.  (Real Swiss German speakers please forgive my attempt at spelling what I hear.)

Having worked my way (the first time) through the Pimsleur Swiss German lessons (unfortunately there are only 10 of them), I can now say hello, goodbye, please, and thank you, ask you to repeat what you just said, tell you my name, and ask how to get to Bahnhofstrasse or Marktgasse.  I can also order a restaurant meal—though only if it's Gschnätzlets mit rösti—and a drink, if I'm willing to have coffee, beer, wine, or mineral water, which means I'd get pretty thirsty if it weren't for those great Swiss public drinking fountains.  I can make a date with you; that is, if you're willing to come at 9:30, 10:00, 1:30, or 2:00.

I shouldn't be surprised when what is said in comic strips mirrors opinions expressed by essayists in more serious venues.  After all, both get their inspiration from the same human condition, and humor is an efficient and effective way to make a point.  Nonetheless, I always take note when I hear the same message from widely divergent sources, as happened when I read in close succession Francis Schaeffer's The God Who Is There and John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. When an evangelical Protestant theologian living in Switzerland and a self-described lapsed Catholic schoolteacher from Pittsburgh, writing on issues that apparently differ markedly, make the same historical and philosophical point, perhaps I had better listen.

Safe Havens is one of the quirkier comic strips I like to read, but if the following strip is incomprehensible to you, it's not because you don't understand about the mermaid, the grandmother's ghost, the genetically-altered animals now serving as roadies.  I follow all that and was still confused.

Yesterday's mail brought a letter from Ken Myers, whose Mars Hill Audio Journal I enjoy greatly.  The purpose of the letter was an appeal for support, but the content shed light on the Safe Havens strip.

With my children grown, I have been blessedly even more clueless of pop kid culture than I was when they were young, but I did hear the name Hannah Montana thanks to a friend of Heather's who blogged about the effort she went through to secure concert tickets for her Hannah Montana-crazy daughter.  That's all I knew though—she sings, and she's enormously popular with the younger set.  Thanks to Myers' letter, however, I know—and worry—more.

• Miley Cyrus (now 15) plays the lead character on Hannah Montana, a character named Miley Stewart. Stewart has migrated west from her humble Tennessee origins to live in Malibu, to pursue her dreams as a superstar singer known to the public as Hannah Montana. Hannah Montana is thus a persona, an alternate identity assumed by Miley Stewart. Miley Stewart is also a character, performed by Miley Cyrus. What makes it even more reflexive is that Miley Cyrus performs in concert as Hannah Montana, bypassing Ms. Stewart entirely. One might ask if Miley Cyrus is really a celebrity pop sensation, or whether she just pretends to be a pop sensation when she’s in character.


• The image in Vanity Fair of Miley Cyrus [apparently nude, though provocatively draped in a sheet]…has evoked intense media scrutiny and widespread parental anxiety over the apparently important question: Has this wholesome role model been stained by this arguably provocative photo.


• The question moms (and dads) need to be asking is not whether Miley/Miley/Hannah is going to go all Britney on them, but whether their six- and seven-year-old daughters really benefit from having as a guide to growing up a performer playing a performer playing a performer. Just as the most important lesson taught by Sesame Street is that learning must be fun, so the most important lesson taught by Hannah Montana may be that growing up is about learning how to perform one’s life, how to define your identity as a desirable commodity, how to assemble and project the brand called Me.


• The culture of celebrity and personal performance which permeates our society is profoundly destructive. It’s not simply that being well-known for simply being well-known (in Daniel Boorstin’s classic formulation) is a thin and vapid achievement. More fundamentally disordering is the way in which the deeply sensed notion of “identity as performance” promoted in the culture of celebrity undercuts the very idea of reality or real life; more than the work of nihilistic philosophers, the prominence of performers in our society nudges us toward referring to “reality” (with the ironizing quotation marks) rather than to Reality.

Mike Thomas, an Orlando Sentinel columnist, has had a special place in our hearts ever since he interviewed Heather for a magazine article about her summer camp experiences.  That I often disagree with his opinions in no way keeps me from appreciating his intelligence and writing skills.

Mike also takes the time to explain to younger generations why some of us older folks refuse to take too seriously all the global warming hysteria.  We've lived long enough to see theories come and theories go, and hear the cry of "Wolf!  Wolf!" once too often.  That doesn't stop me from being in favor of fuel-efficient cars, public transit, and non-motorized transportation, along with recyling, sustainable agriculture, water conservation, and other ways to make our envionmental impact more beneficial than harmful.  But my opinions and actions in these matters are more in spite of the hype than because of it.

[I]n 1975, Newsweek ran a story warning climate change could cause famines and political unrest. This was based on growing scientific evidence Earth was cooling. There even was a proposal to keep the polar ice cap from expanding by covering it with black soot.

Mike's article was on my "possible blog fodder" list for a while, but Mallard Fillmore's comic of yesterday pushed it to the top of the list.