Lift Up Your Hearts!

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)

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.

Anything less would be curmudgeonly.

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 researcher, Dan Ariely, is a professor of behavioral economics at MIT, and at his website, Predictably Irrational, you can find not only this game but others, and much more on the subject of how we often act contrary to our own best interests.  I'm sure some of his experiments violate a research code of ethics somewhere, such as the experiment in which male college students were asked questions about sexual behavior before and after viewing Internet porn sites.  Nonetheless, even that research revealed some unexpected and frightening results.   Ariely has a book by the same name, which I would order from the library if I didn't already have a backlog of five library books pining away in the not-ready-to-be-returned state.

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....

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.

Every once in a while, however, I’ll find myself sucked into the story, never long enough to see the entire movie, but enough to provoke a few of thoughts. (More)

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."

Horses are not people, but the death of Eight Belles, the brave filly who finished second in today's running of the Kentucky Derby, then collapsed with two compound fractures of her front legs and had to be euthanized immediately, will put a damper on the post-race celebrations.  Or at least it should.

The acoustics in our house are such that the sound from the television is loudest in every room except the one in which the TV resides.  Perhaps that is not literally true, but to those trying to work or sleep while someone else watches television, it certainly seems that way.  Hence our joy when Porter's "thank you award" came from IBM:  a set of wireless headphones.

Fortunately, there was no need to understand in detail the instructions, which contained several gems.

This wireless headphone is worked based on optical-electricity transition.

Well, of course.  What else would it be worked based on?

I don't agree with John Stackhouse on everything—no surprise to those who know me; I'm not sure I even agree wtih myself on everything—but greatly appreciate the way he can take a controversial subject and shake it out with clarity and common sense.  I have little patience with the whole "postmodernist" idea that there's no such thing as real, absolute truth,  but at best only a useless, mealy-mouthed "true for you" or "true for me."  But equally frustrating are those whose claim to know the truth about something leaves no room for doubt, and what is worse, no room for the possibility that they might, in fact, be wrong.  Stackhouse addresses the latter situation with refreshing rationality in I'm Certain that There Are Two Kinds of Certainty.

Isamu Fukui doesn't make lemonade out of life's lemons, he makes the whole lemonade factory.  As a fifteen year old high school student, he vented his frustrations by secretly writing a novel about a dystopia in which the world is run like a school.  Unbeknownst to him, his father found out, and instead of sending his son to a psychiatrist (I'm extrapolating here), sent the manuscript to a publisher.  Three years later, Fukui is still in high school with a critically acclaimed, published novel and a contract for two more.

Write a book for yourself alone, so you can say just what you want, let someone else promote it, and have the publishers come begging you for more.  Works for me!  And a far better use of teen ambition than working for gender-blind college dorm rooms.

Thanks to Jon who directed me to the GeeK Dad article on Fukui's book, Truancy. 

The other day we were told, by one whose buisness it is to predict these things, that no matter who wins the upcoming presidential election, our taxes are going up.  He may be right.  If they're serious about stimulating the American economy, raising American taxes seems a foolish approach, but the public keeps demanding more services, and there's always a bill for services rendered.

So I got to thinking, at lunchtime, as I munched on my barbecue potato chips, about Switzerland.  They have some wonderful potato chips there, somewhat like our barbecue variety, but better—though that impression may have been due to Favorable Emotional Circumstances.  One day I made a hasty stop at the grocery store and grabbed some food for a train trip, only to discover, too late, that I had paid over $5 for a medium-sized bag of chips!

The bag I was munching from was more than half again as large, and priced at $2.50.  I actually paid half that; I generally don't by chips unless they're on sale.  It occured to me that a price tag of $7.50 would be a significant deterrent; I would probably still buy them for very special occasions, but casual purchasing would defintely be out.  Thus it would be in my best interest, health-wise, if the potato chip manufacturers decided to triple their prices.  But they wouldn't do it.  Without illegal collusion in the industry, competition would force the price back down immediately.

Unless the government stepped in.  Imagine a $5/bag tax on potato chips; applied to all, no one manufacturer could undercut the market, and suddenly Americans just might start reducing their consumption.  I only pick on potato chips because they are my own weakness, but let's not stop there:  corn chips, soda, candy, cookies, Happy Meals—all those top of the food pyramid, artificial ingredient, and preservative heavy "foods" that make up so much of our modern diet and have nutritionists and health professionals wringing their hands.

Sin taxes have their problems, I know.  The last thing I want to do is create yet another opportunity for organized crime to fluorish.  (Pssst!  Wanna buy an Oreo?) But it would be my favorite kind of tax:  likely to provide significant income for the government, yet completely avoidable simply by eating as we know we should. 

The Cult of the Amateur arrived from the library yesterday, not that I've had time to crack it open yet.  But I thought about it when I read today's perspicacious post from "Et Tu?" on Mommyblogging and the water well. It may be debateable whether the amateur works of ordinary blogging folks provide a valid community for otherwise isolated people, or merely distract us from the more difficult task of creating real, physical communities, but there's no denying their significance in many of our lives.

I treasure communities of both kinds, as does the author of "Et Tu?".  One important dimension added by the Internet, I find, is the ability to interact with people who are dealing with the same issues as I am, and/or have perspectives similar to mine.  I value beyond measure my short-distance, in-the-flesh friendships, but in all the contacts we have had locally—church, school, work, music, sports, neighborhood,  Indian Princesses and even other homeschoolers—we have found, yes, good friends, but also big, aching gaps with no one to understand, discuss, struggle, and rejoice together.  A broader net was required to gather that community.

Many thanks to Liz at Smithical for directing me to "Et Tu?".  And thanks to my feedreader (Bloglines), without which I wouldn't have allowed myself to indulge in yet another interesting distraction.

I wouldn't have thought to search the pages of USA Today for Good Friday inspiration, but Google News thought otherwise and led me to this article on the decline of sin in modern times.  Not a decline of sin itself, sad to say, but of the idea of sin as a fundamental break with objective, universal, and time-independent standards.  Relativism is not new, but it is getting more pervasive, as if most people are thinking, "We'll never know for certain what's right and what's wrong; we have to make it up as we go along, and change it as circumstances change."  Which means, of course, that we have traded the tyranny of God-ordained standards for the tyrrany of mutable public opinion.  Good Friday and Easter provide a path to forgiveness for sins against God; for offenses against rules-of-the-month standards our only hope is short memories and a good public relations campaign.

Polls to the contrary, it's hard for me to believe that most people don't carry with them, however deeply buried, the knowlege that they are not living up to anyone's standards, especially not their own, and that they are in need of radical repair to be consistently or even frequently good, however they might define the term.  Perhaps what we need is not so much an understanding of sin, but encouragement to turn off the televisions, put away the iPods, get away from our omnipresent distractions and take time to consider who we are, what we think we should be, and what to do about the chasm between the two.

I’ve been a fan of the Mars Hill Audio Journal since the early 90s, though only an intermittent subscriber.  I enjoy and appreciate its insight into life and culture, but generally prefer to receive information in printed, rather than spoken, form.  Plus I was tired of finding places to store the cassettes.

Recently I re-subscribed, because they now offer an mp3 version.  This I can take with me on my walks, and it takes up no physical space in the house.  Works for me. (More)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver,  Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 2007)

When we were visiting Janet, a friend of hers was reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  The friend wasn’t totally happy with it, but it sounded intriguing enough that I borrowed it from the library when we returned. (More)

Two years ago, Andy F. alerted me to a National Review article by Rod Dreher entitled Crunchy Cons.  This was actually a reprint, the original having been published 'way back in 2002.  Andy suggested I might enjoy both the article and the opportunity to turn it into a blog post, and he was right.  It's not his fault it's taken me so long to write.

Dreher has a book of the same title that I haven't yet read, so I'll only be commenting on the article.  But the book's subtitle nearly says it all:  How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party). (More)