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.

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!

Even from a perspective 40 years in the future, there are scenes in the films I would not want an adolescent to see; I’d rather not have seen them myself.  To this day I remember lines from one of the Bond books I managed to read that I wish had not been burned into my brain.  (My naïve imagination was not up to visualizing the scenes very well, but words stick.)  Yet that from which we were sheltered is standard fare for elementary-aged students (most of the children in Janet’s middle class, suburban, second grade class had watched R-rated movies—and that was 20 years ago); many of today’s teenagers have had more sexual encounters than James Bond himself, and been exposed to more violence.  Without the cool gadgets.

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.

Mars Hill also has more free resources, audio and print, than I have time to handle.  Here’s one that came to my inbox recently:  A Culture of One, a review of a book by Andrew Keen entitled The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture.  I’ve ordered the book from our library, but haven’t yet read it, so this post will not be commentary on the book, per se, but on some of the ideas expressed in the review, which I believe to be worthy of comment and on which I seek your opinions.

Although he doesn't use the phrase, Keen's book is about the loss of cultural authority. He believes that the survival of the very best forms of cultural expression, in journalism, music, fiction, and other disciplines, requires a network of mediation and accreditation. Cultural institutions that nurture the production of the best cultural artifacts maintain teams of editors, critics, producers, and teachers who have advanced in their careers through years of training and evaluation within a guild or tradition. Over time, some of those institutions earn more trust and respect among their peers than do others, their expertise and ability are acknowledged through an organic process of accountability and recognition. Those cultural institutions can be corrupted and standards can become debased. But without some form of institutionalized judgment established over time in communities of expertise, without, that is, some knowledgeable person to tell you your work isn't good enough to be published, cultural expression easily becomes mere self-expression.

I would respectfully cry, au contraire!  Perhaps I’m being a bit defensive here, as I am one of those who “can self-publish by putting up a few bucks for a website, [and] don't have to face the humiliation of rejection slips.”  He’s talking about blogging, but also about amateur music and other forms of cultural expression.  In this and all of life I fear the Cult of the Professional much more than the Cult of the Amateur.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m a strong proponent of excellence, and of training our children (and ourselves) to appreciate the best in music, art, literature, and life in general.  I readily admit that developing such taste usually requires deliberate effort; scattering random seeds on unprepared ground is not equivalent to planting and tending a garden.  In a world dominated by Doritos and Coke, children will not naturally prefer edamame and milk.  Similarly, much that is excellent and worthy of appreciation does not immediately captivate us, but must be assisted by experience and education.  Keen’s concern that the true ore is being buried in a flood of dross is valid, but the solution does not lie in letting a guild of professionals control access to the mines.

Professionalism is good, and professional certification is good when it provides information about minimum standards to those who otherwise would be ignorant.  When choosing a surgeon I would want him to be board certified; when purchasing raw milk I would like the dairy to have a governmental imprimatur.  However, the freedom to choose outside of official sanction is equally important; all the obstetricians in the world should not be able to stop a midwife from exercising her skills, and no state should make it illegal to buy milk from my neighbor’s uncertified farm.

We are too much overwhelmed by the professional in all of life.  We blindly trust our health to our doctors and our children’s education to their schools.  We watch; we do not do.  We watch professional sports; few of us play.  More of us watch the productions of professional actors, directors, set designers, and sound technicians, and fewer of us participate in amateur theatrical troupes.  We pay large sums to hear musical superstars perform, but who of us—besides Irish seisiún participants—gathers with friends to make joyful, informal music?  Mothers hardly sing to their babies anymore!  Professionalism has also put its mark on the amateur performances we do indulge in, and not always for the better.  Well-organized, scheduled, and rule-laden children’s sports may have their place, but they’re not a substitute for neighborhood pick-up games.

By all means, let’s encourage the development of excellence, discernment, and good taste in ourselves and our children.  (“By all means”—what an odd expression, when you think about it, because I don’t really mean “by all means”; I’m about to state an exception.)  But don’t close the door.  Above all, don’t assign as porter those in whose interest it is to keep others out of the business.

There’s a lot of junk on the Internet.  Some wicked, some dreadfully bad, some merely insipid.  And I’m not even going to talk about American Idol!  (There’s another odd expression; I just did.)  But to the extent that YouTube, blogs, amateur music publishing sites, and yes, even American Idol encourage people to become participants rather than observers, they are providing an important service.  Life is to be lived, not handed over to others and watched.

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.

I’m not totally happy with it either.  Kingsolver apparently doesn't know much about capitalism and corporations other than the standard leftist line, so every time she ventures into politics she becomes more annoying than enlightening.  She also seems to have a vendetta against anyone who doesn't believe in evolution (she has a master’s degree in evolutionary biology, which may explain a lot) and can't resist making totally unnecessary snide comments in which she reveals how little she really knows about most people who don’t accept the entire package of evolutionary theory.  She likes to point to microevolutionary changes and say, in effect, "See, take that! You ignorant creationists!" when in fact that is not a part of the theory creationists generally have a problem with.  She also misquotes the Bible at one point, which ought to have been caught by a proofreader, but that merely rankles; it doesn’t affect any of her arguments.

Be that as it may, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is well worth reading.  As a writer, Barbara Kingsolver combines a poet’s ear for language with an entertainer’s sense of presentation.  Even if I had found the subject dull, I believe I would have enjoyed reading this book.

The subject is by no means dull.  Kingsolver, her husband, and her two daughters decided to move to rural Virginia and dedicate a year to eating only what they grew themselves or that was grown nearby (with a very few exceptions, such as coffee and some spices).  In the process of following the family’s adventures, the reader learns too much for comfort about the sad state of eating in this most food-wealthy of nations.

For quite a while now I’ve been becoming increasingly uncomfortable with our “factory farming” methods of producing food, but my concerns were generally limited to two:  Cruelty to the animals and the associated pollution of their meat and milk with stress hormones, not to mention antibiotics and other unwanted chemicals; and the loss of flavor in our food.

These are certainly important issues, but there are many, many more.  I’ll mention here only one, perhaps the most frightening, though the book doesn’t give it as much prominence as I think it deserves:  Our food supply is no longer self-sustainable.  Plants and animals have for years been bred for many characteristics, but those which encourage reproduction, by seed or by sex, are not among them.  Those who sell seeds have little interest in plants that will allow the farmer to save seeds from his current crop rather than purchasing new seeds for the next year.  Characteristics that make animals successful reproducers are not generally compatible with the technique of keeping animals in close confinement, and besides, artificial insemination is more reliable and predictable, so that’s the way our agricultural animals are reproduced.  I find the idea of a food supply that can’t last beyond the current generation without artificial intervention to be very, very scary.  Closely related is the way we have bred variety out of our food plants and animals.  Ninety-nine percent of the turkeys we eat, for example, are of a single breed, the Broad-Breasted White.  All I can think of when I hear numbers like that is the Irish Potato Famine.  We may end up owing our lives to heritage and heirloom plant and animal breeders like our friend at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm.

This family’s year-long experiment could be considered a time of deprivation, but it was a time of abundance and joy.  They would be the first to say it would not have been so joyful had they been trying to earn their living as farmers.  With their living secured by outside employment, their farm work, onerous and time-consuming as it was, was more in the nature of a hobby—albeit one that bore primary responsibility for putting food on the table—than a job.  They only had to feed themselves, not figure out how to sell food to others.  The work of raising, harvesting, and preserving their plant and animal crops was hard, but also worthwhile, meditative, and restorative.

I don’t believe the author would recommend their course for everyone, but she rightfully and strongly believes everyone should know a lot more than we do about where our food comes from, how it grows, and how it gets to us.  Most of us could benefit from planting small gardens of our own, be it only a window box-full.  Buying whatever we can from local farmers’ markets would improve our eating while supporting small farmers, and some of us might even consider encouraging our political leaders to transfer some of the government’s farm subsidies from mega-conglomerates to small-scale farms and individual farmers, as an investment in a more sustainable (not to mention flavorful) future.

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).

Despite having been a card-carrying Democrat from the day I filled out my first voter registration form, I've never fit well with any political party. I learned quickly that the Democratic Party and I differ in significant respects on many crucial issues, not the least of which is the definition of words such as "liberal" and "conservative." Yet the Republicans haven't won me over, although I confess it's been many years since I've been able to stomach voting for a Democrat at other than the local level.  I consider myself a Liberal Conservative—on some days a Conservative Liberal—when I think of labels, which I rarely do, and feel very much alone.

Yet Crunchy Cons lets me know that I am not alone after all.  I'm not the only one who shares interests and convictions with people of drastically diverse political persuasions.  A number of those who hold conservative views on economic and family issues also realize that homeschooling, home birth, organic farming, locally- and humanely-raised food, recycling and composting, freedom of choice, and putting family and community before profit are inherently conservative activities, important ground not to be ceded to the political Left.  By following our desires and beliefs in these areas we often find ourselves side by side in common cause with those whose views on other issues we find appalling, as they do ours.

This is a good thing.  It's far too easy to demonize an unknown political enemy, but when that enemy has a face and meets you each week at the farmer's market, or works with you to make home birth legal in your state, then is the soil tilled for planting seeds of peace and understanding and hope.