I have three further reflections on what I learned from It Happened in Italy, which didn't fit nicely into my review.

The first is some thoughts on why the story of Jews in Italy during World War II is so little known.  These are my speculations only, and not from the book.

"Relative comfort" is perhaps one key idea.  Holocaust survivors from Italy would most likely feel a bit uncomfortable in a gathering of Holocaust survivors from anywhere else.  Can one talk about lost homes and possessions to one who has seen his children murdered?  Of wasted days to slave laborers?  Of hiding in a neighbor's cramped shed to those whose neighbors betrayed them?  There is a fellowship of suffering:  Amongst those who survived German concentration camps, I'd imagine those from Italian camps might feel they had not suffered "enough."  (More)

Posted by sursumcorda on Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 2:43 pm | Edit
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The Occasional CEO is one of my favorite non-family blogs, not only because Eric Schultz is a good writer, but also because he is a good compiler:  He's great at weaving into a coherent essay the common threads from varied sources I'd never find on my own.  His most recent post, with the unassuming title of Odds and Ends, led me to Paul Campos's excellent Wall Street Journal article, "Undressing the Terror Threat."

Both essays are well worth reading in their entirety.  The first quote box below is from Mr. Schultz; the rest are Mr. Campos's words.

[W]e are buried by data, and are constantly searching for ways to separate signal from noise....Someone wants to take flying lessons: that’s noise.  Someone wants to take flying lessons but doesn’t want to know how to land the plane: that’s signal.  Similarly, someone gets on an international flight, pays cash, and checks no bags—that might be signal.  Someone sews explosive into his underwear: Signal.  Panic.

The question is, how much do we pay to find out?  What’s the real risk of dying at the hands of a terrorist in America?  And if 1,900 Americans [under age 65] die today from a variety of preventable causes, how much are we willing to invest to save those lives?

 (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 11:02 am | Edit
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Jennifer at Conversion Diary is turning 33, and asked her readers what they would say to their 33-year-old selves if they could.  That's the kind of challenge I can't resist, and neither can I resist recycling what I wrote as a blog post.  It's pretty much just off the top of my head, and in no particular order, but here are a few of the things I wish I could have told myself.

  • Have more kids.  There were some good reasons why we didn't, but a very bad reason was buying into the "you can't afford it and neither can the world" mentality.  If you haven't lived through it, I don't think you can fathom how much pressure there was in those days to have no more than two children.
  • Expect much more from your children than society does, on every level.  From the day they are born, your children can learn more, do more, and behave better than you will be told is possible.  Don't limit them with your low expectations.
  • Homeschool.  Homeschool.  Homeschool.  From the beginning, and never look back.  This is one of the best decisions we ever made, and I wish we had never subjected our children to the "school mindset."  But when I was 33, school was "the way things are done," and I never questioned it till years later.
  • "Bloom where you are planted."  Make the most of your present situation, because you never know when it will change. 
  • Keep a journal, take pictures (and label them!), make recordings.  Concentrate on people and places dear to you—there are plenty of professionals documenting the rest of the scenery.
  • When you videotape your children's performances, be sure to include their friends as well.  You may not care, but your children will!
  • Talk with older family members about their childhoods and their life stories, and get everything you can from them about your ancestors and family history.  Make sure their pictures are labelled!
  • Take care of yourself.  When you have young children at home, it's very easy (and seems virtuous) to shortchange yourself when it comes to sleep, exercise, education, and the care of your soul.  Make yourself make time for these things.   Enlist the aid of your spouse—I don't mean to tell you what to do, but to make sure you get the time to do it.  Your children will thank you later.
  • If you are too busy to get organized, you are too busy not to get organized.  Make the time (and again, get your spouse to help).  There is no moment better than now; that mythical time "when I have time" will never come.  Never give up; experiment with different systems till you find one that works for you.  Be prepared to alter it as needed, however, when your circumstances alter.
I'm not that good at taking advice, so I'm not sure I would have listened.  But I wish I had.
Posted by sursumcorda on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 1:12 pm | Edit
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John C. Wright is a science fiction writer, but his essay, On Writer's Block struck me for its wider applicability in his assertion that even the best advice can be counterproductive if it doesn't fit the personality of the recipient.  [The emphasis below is mine.]

Each writer approaches his craft in a different way, and advice from one writer to another is useful if and only if you happen to be a writer of the same method and temperament as the first.

Robert Heinlein famously used to advise would-be writers never to rewrite their first drafts, except at an editor’s suggestion. Unless you are a ditherer, that is, someone who wastes his limited writing time rewriting scenes that are already saleworthy, this advice is not useful, or indeed may be counterproductive. Heinlein was warning against the pitfalls of perfectionism. But if you are not a perfectionist, and not a ditherer, the advice is counterproductive, because writers who should rewrite are being told not to. Heinlein was a First Draft man: he could breeze off printable copy his first try. His books sold on the strength of their wittiness, readability, and speculative ideas: one strongly suspects he never went back to his first chapter to set up some plot twist he invented for the last.

If you do not write like him, merely able to breeze off finely crafted copy in your first try, then do not take his advice. Frankly, I thought this one of the worst pieces of writing advice ever, because I suffer the opposite vice. I write impromptu and I like to stick with my first instinct, and therefore I do not rewrite often enough. Hence Heinlein’s advice was the opposite of what someone like me should be told.

Every bit of writing craft advice is only good for you to the degree that it applies to your situation. In this example, Dithering Perfectionists should follow Heinlein’s advice, and never rewrite except at an editor’s suggestion. Impromptuarians should follow the opposite advice that all writing is rewriting.

The catch, of course, is that Impromptuarians are inclined to snatch at the advice best for Dithering Perfectionists, and vice versa.  Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, we were frequently urged to do less driving and more walking, advice that I followed with alacrity and even a bit of pride.  Alas, there was no virtue in my environmentally-correct response, since at the time getting behind the wheel of a car tended to bring on panic attacks.  What I needed to do, at that particular moment, was to walk less, drive more, and conquer my phobia.

Know then thyself.
Posted by sursumcorda on Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 4:11 pm | Edit
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RootsMagic, my favorite genealogy database program, has released RootsMagic Essentials, a version you can download that is absolutely free!  In case anyone is wondering, I don't get a thing for this endorsement; I just like RootsMagic, and I like encouraging interest in genealogy.  It looks as if one can do a lot with Essentials, and it might be a great, commitment-free way to keep track of family information even if one doesn't have (yet) a desire to delve any further.  Sadly, one of my favorite features, color coding of families, is not part of the stripped-down version, but—tanstaafl—if there is, sometimes, a free lunch, the full-course dinner always costs.

If any of my family members decide to download RootsMagic Essentials, I'll be happy to send along a copy of my database.  :)
Posted by sursumcorda on Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 9:38 pm | Edit
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In Forgetting the Unforgettable, I remarked on how ordinary were my diary entries when the Berlin Wall was breached.  In a subsequent comment, Stephan mentioned that he barely remembers the event, despite living so close to Germany.

Soon thereafter, while taking my customary walk and listening to a history lecture on my trusty mp3 player, I was reminded that the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred when I was the age Stephan was when the Wall fell.  I have no memory of the event whatsoever, nor of any particular anxiety because of the imminent threat of nuclear war.  We had "air raid drills" in our elementary school, but that was nothing new; they were a normal part of school, like the equally-frequent fire drills.  If the adults in my life worried about the situation, none of that filtered down to me.  My life comprised surviving fifth grade, playing with my friends, and enjoying my new baby brother.

Curious, I delved into the journals that my father had kept, hoping there would be entries for October 1962, and there were.  I looked forward to hearing how he and my mother had dealt with the fears that, I'm told, caused families eating breakfast to wonder if they'd still be alive at dinnertime. (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 10:06 am | Edit
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This day in 1918 marked the end of the War to End All Wars.  Less than a handful of veterans of that war remain to be honored.  But where there are people, there will be wars; where there are wars, there will be veterans; and where there are veterans, they deserve honor and respect.  In any conflict there will be some, to be sure, who serve dishonorably, for their own gain, with evil intent, or with twisted logic, as recent events attest.  The hanging scene in Shakespeare's Henry V is intense, and shocking to our modern sensibilities, but makes the point that in a civilized society wrongdoing in members of the armed forces is even more offensive than civilian crimes.

Horrendous exceptions to the contrary, soldiers and sailors, be they enemy or ally, are standing "between their loved home and the war's desolation."  As J. R. R. Tolkien reminds us in The Return of the King:  "It must often be so ... when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them."

Thank you, veterans and current members of our Armed Forces.
Posted by sursumcorda on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 8:21 am | Edit
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Where were you 20 years ago today?

My own journal entry is remarkably filled with the mundane details of life with two young children.  There is one exclamatory sentence, "Would that every day could be like this!" but it was referring to Heather's having awakened with her alarm clock, showered, dressed, made her bed, cleaned her room and finished all her chores before school.  Not as momentous as events on the other side of the world, but a personal triumph. (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Monday, November 9, 2009 at 7:47 am | Edit
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What do hippies and Christians have in common?  A lot more than you might think.

The stereotypes:  Hippies are free-lovin', goddess-worshipping ultra-liberals who rebel against society's norms and customs; Christians are moralistic, hyper-conservative corporate capitalists; and never the twain shall break bread together.

Quite the contrary.  Christians and hippie types alike tend to look at society's conventions with a skeptical eye. (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Friday, November 6, 2009 at 9:58 am | Edit
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More from the backblog . . .

The Strange Double Standards of Abortion  John Stackhouse muses on the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, vigilantism, and hypocrisy. (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 9:01 am | Edit
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Despite my efforts, my backblog appears to be growing faster than I can deal with it.  Here's a quick look at several interesting health-related issues that have come my way recently.  (Where "recently" is defined as "sometime within the last year or two"; that's how old some of my backblog is.)

Acknowledging Preindustrial Patterns of Sleep May Revolutionize Approach to Sleep Dysfunction  Do you worry when you awaken in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep?  Your body may be rebelling against unnatural sleep patterns imposed by artificial lighting and our frantic schedules. (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Monday, November 2, 2009 at 9:27 am | Edit
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Studies showing that teachers will form expectations of a student's character and ability based on nothing more than his or her name are unfortunately nothing new.  Students with "traditional," common names are more likely to receive higher ratings on both academic performance and behavior than those with names perceived as odd.  What makes this article worth commenting on is not the results of the study, but the names themselves.

The study reveals that . . . traditional names such as Charlotte, Sophie, Marie, Hannah, Alexander, Maximilian, Simon, Lukas and Jakob are consistently linked to strong performance and good behaviour. Non-traditional names such as Chantal, Mandy, Angelina, Kevin, Justin and Maurice, on the other hand, are associated with weak performance and bad behaviour.

 (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 3:52 pm | Edit
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The Advent Conspiracy has nothing to do with my favorite computer adventure game.

Advent, celebrated during the four weeks before Christmas, is a season of the liturgical church year, a time of repentance and reflection in preparation for the coming of Christ, both as God who became man in a particular time and place (Christmas), and as God who will return to judge the world at its ending (the Second Coming).

That's the theory anyway.  In practice, it's a hard season to observe in a culture where Christmas events start before Hallowe'en* and the celebrations—instead of extending from Christmas Eve until Epiphany on January 6th—end abruptly about noon on December 25th.  Between Hallowe'en hype and Christmas hype, Advent—like Thanksgiving—gets lost.

Someone told me last year about the Advent Conspiracy, and I hope whoever it was will forgive me for not remembering.  I've searched all my e-mails and family blogs and come up empty.  This year, however, it was my sister-in-law who brought it up; her family is spearheading their church's incarnation of the idea.

I have a natural suspicion of "movements" and bandwagons, but so far I've seen nothing wrong, and much good, about this one.  It's a simple formula for making Christmas more delightful:

Worship Fully  It starts with Jesus. It ends with Jesus. This is the holistic approach God had in mind for Christmas. It’s a season where we are called to put down our burdens and lift a song up to our God. It’s a season where love wins, peace reigns, and a king is celebrated with each breath.  It's the party of the year.

Spend Less  We like gifts. Our kids really like gifts. But consider this: America spends an average of $450 billion a year every Christmas. How often have you spent money on Christmas presents for no other reason than obligation? How many times have you received a gift out of that same obligation?....We’re asking people to consider buying ONE LESS GIFT this Christmas. Just one.  Sounds insignificant, yet many who have taken this small sacrifice have experienced something nothing less than a miracle: They have been more available to celebrate Christ during the [A]dvent season.

Give More  God’s gift to us was a relationship built on love. So it’s no wonder why we’re drawn to the idea that Christmas should be a time to love our friends and family in the most memorable ways possible. Time is the real gift Christmas offers us, and no matter how hard we look, it can’t be found at the mall. Time to make a gift that turns into the next family heirloom. Time to write mom a letter. Time to take the kids sledding. Time to bake really good cookies and sing really bad Christmas carols [or really good Christmas carols]. Time to make love visible through relational giving.

Love All  When Jesus loved, He loved in ways never imagined. Though rich, he became poor to love the poor, the forgotten, the overlooked and the sick. He played to the margins. By spending less at Christmas we have the opportunity to join Him in giving resources to those who need help the most. When Advent Conspiracy first began four churches challenged this simple concept to its congregations. The result raised more than a half million dollars to aid those in need. One less gift. One unbelievable present in the name of Christ. 

Advent Conspiracy accepts no money and encourages participants to share a variety of ideas on how to give presence this Christmas.  But they also have a particular concern for the millions of people who suffer and die for lack of clean water, and for three years have supported the work of Living Water International.

The solution to this problem is directly beneath our feet. Drilling a fresh water well is a relatively inexpensive, yet permanent solution to this epidemic. $10 will give a child clean water for life. That's not an estimate. It's a fact. And here's another fact: Solving this water problem once and for all will cost about $10 billion. Not bad considering Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas last year. Our hope is that, by celebrating Christ in a new way at Christmas, the church can serve as the leading movement behind ending the water crisis once and for all.

LWI earns a four-star (highest) rating from Charity Navigator.  So does World Vision, one of my favorite charitable organizations, which has a Gift Catalog filled with ways to help, from water wells to farm animals to (one of my favorites) microfinance loans.

Your church doesn't participate in Advent Conspiracy?  You don't have a church?  Not to worry!  Participation in this conspiracy is open to all.



*So why am I writing about Advent in October, if I resent the rushing of the seasons?  Because the season of preparation requires its own preparation, especially if one wishes to take the road less travelled.
Posted by sursumcorda on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 6:03 am | Edit
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President Obama has declared the swine flu outbreak to be a national emergency.  I'm not sure that's all that bad of a measure, given that it lifts some governmental rules for hospitals that probably weren't a good idea in the first place.  But as Susan McWilliams points out in this Front Porch Republic post, our media-hyped fears seem 'way out of line.  It's hard not to quote her entire post.

What Thucydides helps us to see [in his description of a plague in Athens during the Pelopponesian War], as George Kateb has written, is “the ways in which fear of death through contagion disorganizes all human relations”:

It is the peculiar power of contagious disease to isolate people from each other; normal communal ties give way before the desire of every man to avoid contact which could bring on the disease and with it, death. The wish to remain free of sickness overrides all duty and all affection.

The plague resulted in what Kateb calls “a kind of negative state of nature: instead of the war of all against all, there was the avoidance of all by all.” What is ultimately most horrifying about the plague is how it exposes the fragility of civilization.  You might not be able to build Rome in a day, but you can destroy Athens in a few weeks.

 (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 2:07 pm | Edit
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I know I've been out of the comics loop for a while—having recently had three grandchild-comics available for my entertainment—but what's with the volunteerism theme?  I'm all for volunteer work, and think that one of the sad results of the "women's movement" was the conversion of so many volunteer hours into paid employment.  But when comic strip after comic strip at the same time starts pushing volunteer work, it sounds creepy, like groupthink.  Like the Florida public school system, which several years ago began requiring volunteer work from their students, many of whom probably cannot spell, much less define, "oxymoron."  (More)

Posted by sursumcorda on Friday, October 23, 2009 at 9:15 am | Edit
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