Lift Up Your Hearts!

National Treasure (Walt Disney Pictures, 2004, PG)

I may have discovered the secret of enjoying movies:  low expectations.  All I had known about National Treasure was that it had something to do with a puzzle in American history, and when I learned that it was instead more along the lines of The Da Vinci Code, I wanted nothing to do with it.  My knowledge of history is shaky enough as it is—the last thing I need is another set of false "facts" cluttering up my brain, a la Braveheart and Amadeus.  But I was assured the movie is so unbelievable that would not be a problem, and indeed that I probably wouldn't like it because of the great, glaring impossibilities.

So, armed with that knowledge, I really did enjoy the movie, in the same way that I enjoyed Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Once you know it's ridiculous, it's actually funny. They even got some of the history right.

Between the two of us, we guessed a lot of the plot and even some of the lines, but the movie is about a puzzle so that only added to the enjoyment.  And I always like seeing places I know, like Philadelphia's Franklin Institute and Independence Hall.

The rating is PG, but I didn't find anything that would make me issue a granchild warning—in fact, it reminded me of the McGuyver shows they like so much.

A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe (New American Library, New York, 1960)

I first read this as a requirement for school, I believe, though I remember nothing of it, not even the grade I was in.  It has long been my theory that many schoolteachers take good books and make them boring, either by being bored themselves, or by presenting the books to students who don't have enough life experience to appreciate them.  A Journal of the Plague Year is proof that some required books don't need any pedagogical interference to be boring.

The plague in question is the Great Plague of London in 1665.  Defoe had been born about five years earlier, and wrote the Journal in 1722.  It is a work of fiction, but written in such detail and with so much obvious research that it is impossible to tell where history ends and fiction begins.  

It's not the history that makes it boring, but that Defoe writes as if he is being paid by the word.  It's not that long a story, but at least twice as bad as a Presbyterian sermon, in which the same point is merely repeated two more times than necessary.  The story of the plague and the Londoners' responses to it is truly interesting, but my eyes started to glaze over long before the sixth repetition.

In 1721, the plague was again sweeping across Europe and threatening England, which may have been Defoe's inspiration.  He might even have written it by request, as he was at the time working for the government, but in any case he would have been keenly aware of the heightened public interest in such a book.  Accordingly, it reads like part history, part political pamphlet, and part religious tract.  The supposed author—a saddler,^* like Defoe's own journal-keeping uncle—praises the governmental officials and high class people a bit overmuch, offers his suggestions for regulations and behavior in case the plague should return, and exhorts his readers in spiritual matters as seriously as any preacher.  It's all quite interesting—the first and even the second time.

That the Journal is undated and not divided into chapters adds to the reading difficulty.  I needed to mark my place carefully to be certain that the repetitive nature of the narrative was real and not an artifact of losing my place.

Is it worth reading?  I'm not sure.  It would be a good supplement to a study of the various outbreaks of the plague in Europe, or of the history of England during those times, or even of the nature of political propaganda.  But I probably wouldn't insist that a reluctant reader finish it in its entirety.

You can read A Journal of the Plague Year online in your choice of versions, including this one at Google Books.

 

Just Courage:  God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian, by Gary Haugen (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2008)

Christianaudio.com offers a free download each month, and a few months ago the offering was Just Courage.  I'd rather read a book than listen to it, but audio books are perfect on my walks or when driving.  It sounded interesting, and the price was certainly right. 

Gary Haugen is the president and CEO of International Justice Mission.^*  I was not familiar with the organization before reading (listening to) Just Courage, but it's enough to make one hesitate before making the next lawyer joke.  The description from their website sums their mission up well.

International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to ensure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to promote functioning public justice systems.

Much of what is spoken and written about "justice," especially among Christian writers, does not sit well with me.  There is altogether too much of a communist, or at least socialist, approach:   the idea that if you have money or education or power or land, it is at someone else's expense; that the rich (meaning just about everyone in the West) are wealthy because they have stolen from and oppressed the poor.  There may well be something to this, but I know too much about our own hard work and sacrifices, and those of our parents and other ancestors, not to find it offensive. Certainly it's neither helpful nor inspiring.

Haugen's approach is altogether different.  If I could paraphrase it, it would be that there is much suffering and injustice in the world, and those who have resources are invited to be a part of the great and joyful work of liberation and healing.  That positive viewpoint is the greatest benefit I received from Just Courage, though it's almost incidental to Haugen's main point about the spiritual growth that comes in bringing justice to the oppressed and in choosing courage over safety.

When I first heard the challenge to put oneself in a position—as the IJM lawyers, undercover agents, and criminal investigators do daily—of guaranteed failure if God does not "show up" and bring about a miracle, my reaction was that in our current choir situation we do that every Sunday!  But somehow I think that's not what Haugen has in mind.

 

Weapons of Mass Instruction:  A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada, 2009)

A pastor I know was fond of quoting Martin Luther, who, when asked why he preached on justification by faith every week, responded, "Because you forget it every week."  John Taylor Gatto has no love for Martin Luther, but I can imagine him giving a similar response when asked why his books, articles, and lectures include so much that he has said before.  He has a critically important message to deliver, and is clearly compelled to repeat it as many times and in as many ways as he can.

In his desperation to make people understand what he has learned, from his research and 30 years on the front lines of teaching, Gatto has become more pointed, strident and radical as time goes on.  It's an understandable reaction—I remember noting the same effect in John Holt's writings, and I fall prey to it all too often myself—but for this reason I hesitate a little to recommend Weapons of Mass Instruction to anyone who is not already convinced of the dangers inherent in our pubic school system.  And yet...I do recommend it, highly.  Why?  Let me digress.

Back in the 1980's, we attended a Christian Educators Association conference at which one of the speakers warned of the horrors being perpetrated against children in the public schools, largely under the guise of "affective education," "values clarification," "guidance classes," and the like.  I was appalled, not at the reported abuses, but at the nature of the presentation, which was inflammatory, not particularly helpful, and seemingly intended to induce panic in susceptible parents.  What was being reported was so much at odds with our own experiences—as public-schooled children ourselves, and as the parents of children in public elementary school at the time—to be believable.

But here's the thing:  It was true.  Even though I reacted badly to the presentation, the information stayed in the back of my mind and kept me alert to the problem.  Coming across information from my brother's elementary school days, I learned that he had been involved in some of the harmful programs.  (One notorious discussion was of the form, "You are in a lifeboat with seven other people:  a teacher, a doctor, a priest, etc....there isn't enough food for everyone to survive...whom do you throw overboard?")  I waded through pages of transcripts of U. S. Department of Education hearings, and heard parents testify over and over again about the abusive nature of the discussions their children were forced to participate in, and the intrusive questions they were asked.  Then I knew enough to examine the materials used in our children's school, and found one of the by now well-familiar programs.  Why hadn't I noticed the problems before?  Two reasons:  one, I didn't know to look, and two, their intelligent guidance counsellor had modified the program to eliminate the worse of the offenses.  I had been right:  what they had experienced was (thanks to that particular guidance counsellor) not all that bad.  But being alerted to the potential risk enabled me to forestall future problems.

This particular issue is not mentioned as part of Gatto's "dark world of compulsory schooling."  I present it as a cautionary tale, hoping that even the most enthusiastic supporter of modern American education will read, contemplate, and remember the information in Weapons of Mass Instruction.  Not to change your mind, but to raise your awareness, to forewarn and forearm you.  If you read this, or any of his other books, such as Dumbing Us Down, A Different Kind of Teacher, or The Underground History of American Education, you will be better prepared to navigate the course of your children's education, and may find some light shed on your own.

Weapons of Mass Instruction contains much of the shocking story of how we got our present educational system, in a shorter and more easily readable form than The Underground History of American Education, though the latter (available online in its entirety) has more details, examples, and references.  Follow the twisted path of compulsory education from militaristic Prussia to the industrial United States; check out its dark relationship with the eugenics movement; face the question of whether great philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were helping people or preparing an easily-exploitable labor force; and wonder why a self-described lapsed Catholic, libertarian New York State Teacher of the Year (Gatto, born 1935, writing about education), tells much the same story of that era as a distributist, English, Catholic convert journalist (G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, writing about eugenics), and a conservative, Evangelical Protestant theologian living in Switzerland (Francis Schaeffer, 1912-1984, writing about philosophy).  When people that diverse agree on something, I say it's worth listening.

If you have a couple of hours to spare, you can listen to many of the ideas and stories from Weapons of Mass Instruction on this C-Span program from last March.

The Selfless Gene:  Living with God and Darwin, by Charles Foster (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2009)

Charles Foster got one thing right:  "The biologists will think that I have oversimplified the biology....Theologians will justifiably moan that I have summarized too brutally some very big and complex ideas."  That's inevitable in a book that purports to bring sense to the evolution/creation debate, and might be forgivable for the extensive footnotes and bibliography, were the book not condescending as well.

Foster cries, "A plague on both your houses!" to young-earth creationists (a category which he unfortunately stretches to include nearly everyone with doubts about some parts of the evolutionary paradigm) and Richard Dawkins-style hyper-Darwinists, then sets forth his own solution to the problem. Unfortunately, his conclusions aren't as obvious or as logical as he would like to believe.  After several chapters that needlessly insult creationists he shifts his aim to the hyper-Darwinists, following that with chapters that must have theologians scratching their heads.  I can't decide if he's brilliant or merely heretical.

Nonetheless, The Selfless Gene is still a book worth reading.  Foster is unafraid to tackle the important and perplexing questions that most people, especially those on the extremes of this debate, would rather ignore.  And he's right that the extremes actually support and reinforce each other, increasing book sales while decreasing understanding.  Whether or not Foster's ideas are right, they are at least thought-provoking, and might break a few mental log jams.

The Omnivore's Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan (Penguin, New York, 2006)

My limited knowledge of Michael Pollan prior to devouring this book was primarily his mantra for healthy eating:  Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  There's a lot of wisdom there — not that I'm very good at following it — but that phrase itself is not found in The Omnivore's Dilemma.  It is the beginning, however, of an excellent Pollan article in the New York Times, Unhappy Meals.

I'll admit I was expecting a diatribe, a full-force blast against agri-business and the factory farm, more along the lines of what we hear from the more strident vegans and animal rights activists.  Pollan, however, is much too skilled as a journalist and writer for that.  If his journeys lead him to both Food Hell and Food Heaven, they also show him that there is no clear, simple, and easy path to salvation when it comes to eating.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is Pollan's attempt to answer some important questions about the food we eat, which I have unfairly boiled down to: Where does the food that we eat come from, and how did it get from there to us?  His quest takes him through the horrifying house of cards that is industrial farming, ranching, and food processing, a vision that will either open your eyes or make you screw them tightly shut, because most of us don't have a lot of choice when it comes, for example, to eschewing the monoculture corn that finds its way into most of what we eat and much of what we don't.  The first of the four meals in the subtitle is of McDonald's fast food, eaten with his family but hardly "shared," as they each consumed a different choice of foods, all the while driving along the highway, as many fast food meals are eaten in America today.

Skipping ahead, the fourth and final meal was as personal and local as Pollan could make it:  meat from the wild pig he shot himself, bread made with wild yeasts, produce from his garden, mushrooms gathered by his own hands, and more, all crafted into a gourmet feast that he shared at the table with friends, family, and good conversation.  With apparently honest and transparent struggles, he experiences both the attraction of vegetarianism and the joy of the hunt in preparation for what he called his Perfect Meal.  Not a meal for everyone, nor for every day, but a meal of grace, embodying the ultimate answer to his questions.

In between is Organic, what Pollan calls "pastoral food," in contrast to "industrial." This required two meals, because "organic" isn't what it used to be.  "Big organic," symbolized by the Whole Foods Market, has hit the big time.  It is proof that we do, after all, have some choice about where our food comes from.  That we can now buy organic food at Wal-Mart says a lot for the power of the consumer.  But this victory came at a price:  our 1960's-bred image of the small, family, organic farm remains only on the patently misleading pictures on the food packages.  In order to become a mass-market commodity, organic food has taken on many of the harmful practices of the industrial system, from migrant labor to "free range" chickens that never see the outdoors.  It's still a good thing — organic farming is much better for the land and produces food that is at least somewhat more nutritious — but has it lost its soul?

Joel Salatin would say it has.  The section on Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia is worth the price of the book all by itself.  This is Food Heaven on earth.  If you've seen the movie, Food, Inc., you've seen Joel and the wonder that is Polyface.  The Salatin family, beginning with Joel's parents, took an abused and exhausted plot of land and healed it ("We are in the redemption business"), turning it into a showpiece of truly sustainable agriculture.  It's all I ever dreamed of for the Ideal Farm, and more, one that produces a great deal of food while enriching, rather than depleting the land, and where the people, the animals, the plants, the smaller creatures, and the soil play out their interdependence to the advantage of all.  To add to my delight, the Salatins are also homeschoolers.

As many of us who have chosen to homeschool our children are in defending our educational way of life, Joel Salatin is perhaps a little too strident in his enthusiasm for his way of farming, not showing much concern for those of us who have no access to locally-grown food but still want to eat.  I know from experience that such is a common, though unhelpful, reaction when the rest of the world — and especially the government — seems determined to stop you from doing what you know is good, right, and healing for yourself, your family, and your community.  That is the position that small farmers are in today, much as homeschoolers were 30 years ago in the United States, and still are in many parts of the world.

Putting that defensiveness aside, however:  in all the areas in which I care so much for the local and the personal — homes, families, education, childbirth, businesses, farms, and more — no one path is right for everyone, and in diversity is our strength. 

Deciding whether [the future of food] should more closely resemble Joel's radically local vision or Whole Foods' industrial organic matters less than assuring that thriving alternatives exist; feeding the cities may require a different sort of food chain than feeding the countryside.  We may need a great many different alternative food chains, organic and local, biodynamic and slow, and others yet undreamed of.  As in the fields, nature provides the best model for the marketplaces, and nature never puts all her eggs in one basket.  The great virtue of a diversified food economy, like a diverse pasture or farm, is its ability to withstand any shock.  The important thing is that there be multiple food chains, so that when any one of them fails — when the oil runs out, when mad cow or other food-borne diseases become epidemic, when the pesticides no longer work, when drought strikes and plagues come and soils blow away — we'll still have a way to feed ourselves.

Michael Pollan is a superb writer, making The Omnivore's Dilemma a very welcome change from much that resides between book covers these days.  I doubt I'll ever get used to seeing certain four-letter words in print, but here they are context-appropriate, and best of all, rare.  There's no need for a grandchild or nephew warning, as by the time they are old enough to read this book (or, more to the point, old enough to want to read it), they will, alas, have already seen and heard things much more shocking.

Much of the content is, in itself, more shocking than a few Anglo-Saxon words could ever be.  But far from being the jeremiad I had expected, Pollan's careful investigations and respectful reporting make The Omnivore's Dilemma a book that everyone who eats should read.

Mayflower:  A Story of Courage, Community, and War, by Nathaniel Philbrick (Penguin, New York, 2006)

 Whatever your preconceptions are of the Mayflower, its passengers, and the Native Americans whose lives were irrevocably altered by its arrival on their shores, Nathaniel Philbrick will change them.  From the much-sanitized stories many of us older folks learned in elementary school, to the "politically correct" versions that sneer at the Pilgrims and idealize the Indians—forget them all.  They're all partly true, but mostly false, and completely over-simplified.  Both the Pilgrims and the Natives were better, and worse; more innocent, and more Machiavellian; wiser, and more foolish; more skillful, and more inept; than our visions of them.  In short, they were all thoroughly human, and Mayflower's greatest strength lies in its ability to make these humans, European and Native American, as real to us as our next-door neighbors.

There were cultural differences, of course; perhaps as much between them and us as between the two 17^th-century peoples.  We would find both appallingly bloodthirsty,  but those were the times.  There was no one "Native" population when the Mayflower landed, but political intrigue and warring among the various tribes—as there was in Europe at the time.  Lest we expect more civility on the part of the "civilized" Europeans, the custom of posting the head of a defeated enemy on a spike for all to see was still actively practiced in Europe.

Nonetheless, the original groups involved achieved surprising success at creating a working community out of their diversity.  I used the name, "Pilgrims" to refer to the Mayflower passengers, but of course we all know that's wrong, as the original Pilgrim group (the "Saints") was forced to take on a group of "Strangers" as large as their own.  Thus their intent of transplanting their already tight-knit community to a new land was foiled from the beginning.  The Strangers for the most part did not share their religious convictions, their morals, and certainly not their goals for life in the new world.  That these conflicting populations, along with the various Native American tribes they met, managed to live together reasonably peacefully and to their mutual advantage for about 50 years, was a triumph of both diplomacy, flexibility, and hard work.  One helpful factor was that the English Saints had been living in exile in Holland for many years before embarking on their quest, and thus had some experience in encountering and adapting to another culture.

They weren't as adaptable as the Natives, who quickly saw the advantages of the new flintlock rifles while the Europeans clung stubbornly to their matchlock guns.  Still, they did better than both the merchant adventurers who settled nearby, and the Puritans who settled in Boston and spread rapidly, each of which proved to be a serious destabilizing influence.

Eventually the more-or-less peaceful co-existence fell apart.  Even in the original populations, both Pilgrim and Indian, subsequent generations seemed to have lost their forefathers' vision and strength of character.  The result was King Philips War, a social, economic, and political disaster for the victors and a catastrophe for the losers.

I found the first 3/4 of Mayflower difficult to put down, and thus read it fairly quickly, despite the density of information and the voluminous footnotes.  The remainder, which deals with King Philip's War, also went quickly, but I must admit it was because I did not give it the same attention, as it was all battles and battle strategies.  I've never made it much past the beginning of the Iliad, and didn't care for G. A. Henty's With Lee in Virginia—even though I generally like Henty's books—for the same reason.  It's not, in this case, from squeamishness:  I find it b-o-r-i-n-g, though my strategy game-playing husband and nephews might think differently.

Here's a passage that struck me.  I wonder if some future historian might write something similar about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda?

Adding to the fears and frustrations of the English was the elusiveness of the man who had started the conflict.  By November, Philip had become an almost mythic figure in the imagination of the Puritans, who saw his hand in every burning house and lifeless English body.  In the years to come, traditions sprang up in the river valley of how Philip moved from cave to cave and mountaintop to mountaintop, where he watched with satisfaction as fire and smoke arose from the towns along the blue necklace of the Connecticut.

The truth, however, is less romantic.  Instead of being everywhere, Philip appears to have spent much of the summer and fall holed up near the modern Massachusetts-Vermont state border.  While he and his handful of poorly equipped warriors may have participated in some of the victories that season, Philip was certainly not the mastermind behind a coordinated plan of Native attack.  Indeed, there are no documented instances of his having been present at a single battle in the fall of 1675.  Instead of being heralded as a hero, Philip appears to have been resented by more than a few Indians in the Connecticut River valley.  One well-known warrior in the Hadley region even attempted to kill the Pokanoket sachem, "alleging," an Indian later recounted, "that Philip had begun a war with the English that had brought great trouble upon them."  Although unsuccessful, the assassination attempt indicated that Philip was hardly the dominant and controlling force the English claimed him to be.  Rather than looking to the Pokanoket sachem for direction, the Nipmucks and the river valley Indians, as well as the Abenakis in New Hampshire and Maine, were fighting this war on their own.

Theatre Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild (Dell, New York, 1983)

This wasn't on my reading list at this time, but the combination of (1) hearing a Teaching Company lecture about The Tempest and remembering the part it plays in this book, and (2) a dreary, chilly, rainy day in which the computer, the dryer, and the telephone all suddenly stopped working, led me to feel that what I needed was a bit of curling up by the heater with a blanket, a cup of tea, and an easy-to-read, uplifting book.

Written in 1945, Theatre Shoes is a delightful story set in World War II era England, and puts into perspective the problem of a few recalcitrant appliances.  It's a children's book, but quite suitable for adults looking for comfort.  I've said many times that you never outgrow good books.

We also have Streatfeild's Dancing Shoes and Ballet Shoes, but I think this is my favorite.  It's better written, more realistic, and less sappy than A Little Princess, but contains a similar theme of responding to bad times with good attitudes.  In this day of whining, fault-finding, and the victim mentality, such a reminder is a good encouragement.  It reminds me of a passage from Arthur Ransome's Swallowdale.  (Perhaps one of the reasons I like Theatre Shoes is that it mentions the Ransome books.)

    "They look happy enough," said Captain Flint, watching the Amazon slapping across the ripples on her way to Horseshoe Cove.

    "They aren't," said Captain John.

    "Ï know they aren't, but the next best thing to being happy is to look it."

Shakespeare:  The Word and the Action, by Peter Saccio; a Teaching Company lecture

For accessible, serious, high-quality, adult-level educational materials (DVD, tape, mp3 downloads) it's hard to beat The Teaching Company.  Tonight we finished the last lecture of Shakespeare:  The Word and the Action, a course which easily ranks as one of my favorites.

Here are the titles of the 16 lectures:

1. Shakespeare's Wavelengths
2. The Multiple Actions of A Midsummer Night's Dream
3. The Form of Shakespeare's Sonnets
4. Love in Shakespeare's Sonnets
5. Love and Artifice in Love's Labor's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing
6. As You Like It
7. The Battles of Henry VI
8. Richard III and the Renaissance
9. History and Family in Henry IV
10. Action in Hamlet
11. Coriolanus—The Hero Alone
12. Change in Antony and Cleopatra
13. The Plot of Cymbeline
14. Nature and Art in The Winter's Tale
15. Three Kinds of Tempest
16. History and Henry VIII

I find it easy to be intimidated by Shakespeare; despite the efforts of my high school teachers, the glories of the Bard didn't begin to open to me until a few months after my 50^th birthday, when I saw Kenneth Branagh's version of Henry V.

Saccio's lectures aren't this inspiring, I will admit.  But most of the plays he teaches I have never seen nor read, and every single lecture left both of us eager to experience the play, which is no small accomplishment.  I highly recommend this course.

Eugenics and Other Evils:  An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State, by G. K. Chesterton.  With Additional Articles by His Eugenic and Birth Control Opponents, including Francis Galton, C. W. Saleeby and Marie Stopes, as Well as Articles from Eugenics Review and Birth Control News.  Edited by Michael W. Perry. (Inkling Books, Seattle, 2000)

In a day when our political views are more polarized than ever, and we tend to choose and judge what we read or watch by its political and social slant, there's a delightful keenness about a book that cannot be so classified.  It is simultaneously far right and far left, which means nothing more than it is something else altogether.

Eugenics and Other Evils was first published shortly after World War I, though most of the material was written before the war.  Lest you think it a quaint relic of a bygone era, tilting at windmills that no longer exist:  if the name "eugenics" has been justly disposed of, the ideas and arrogance behind the movement are with us in many forms and guises.

Although I recommend Chesterton's book wholeheartedly, I've been debating whether or not to recommend this particular edition.  The editor's comments can be annoying, and his habit of disrupting the flow of Chesterton's prose with pull-quotes even more so.  Nonetheless, he does provide important context information, without which the topical references would be even more confusing.  To quote from the introduction,

Why have I chosen to devote a quarter of this book to the writings of his opponents?  Because I want Chesterton to get proper credit for his great achievement.  He wrote in the heat of battle, when the debate over eugenics was at its fiercest.... [N]o scholar alive has done as much to expose that strange blend of silliness, scientific bigotry and politically correct arrogance which once went by the proud name of eugenics....  [A]s a writer he stood virtually alone against a juggernaut that threatened to sweep all before it.  In 1924, a eugenist could speak proudly of a scholarly bibliography listing thousands of articles on eugenic-related topics.  Today, eugenics has few open friends (though many secret admirers).  But when Chesterton wrote its ranks were a [virtual] "who's who" of the respectable and powerful.  Apart from him, almost no one of importance spoke out against it.

From the book itself I cannot quote.  After affixing the 15^th sticky note to mark a passage worth sharing—from a book of only 119 pages, pull-quotes and all—I stopped keeping track and despaired of choosing.   Eugenics may be the substrate, but Chesterton brings forth wise commentary on industrial capitalism, socialism, anarchy, slavery, the loss of common sense in the legal system, how a downtrodden medieval serf might be considered more free than a homeless man in modern England, why a poor thief wants his victims to be rich but a rich thief wants his victims to be poor, the tyranny of social reform movements that begin by taking away a man's ale and do not stop with taking away his wife, how "science" became an oppressive state religion, and even the contrasting effects of alcohol on European Catholics and Scottish Protestants.

I was wrong; there is one quotation I can't resist sharing, the first paragraph of the first chapter:

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt.  It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt.  People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late.  It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.  It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air.  A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.

The latest version of Thunderbird, 3.01, includes a number of significant changes from Version 2.  I think I'm going to like it, at least once the fix a major bug, which I understand they are working on.  The old Thunderbird allowed the assignment of nicknames to e-mail addresses, so, for example, I could set up simple two-letter codes for people I write frequently, and typing those codes into the "To" field auto-completed the correct address.  The new Thunderbird still allows nicknames, but they work differently:  the named address becomes merely one of many suggestions made by the auto-complete engine, and it's rarely the first.  Hence I, and from the word on the Internet, many others, have been embarrassed by sending e-mails to the wrong people.  What's more, the auto-complete engine insists on searching all addresses for possible matches.  I have three address books in Thunderbird:  my Personal Address Book, one I call Archives, into which I put addresses I might want once in a blue moon, and one Thunderbird adds, called "Collected Addresses," which it populates from e-mails sent and received.  All of these are useful, but I'd like to be able to tell Thunderbird to ignore all but the Personal Address Book.

Like Firefox, Thunderbird now uses tabs.  In Firefox (and Internet Explorer) it's annoying, because the button to open a new tab is right next to the button to close the tab, and I'm forever closing tabs by accident and often losing work in the process.  But Thunderbird doesn't have the "add tab" button to foul me up, and it's handy to be able to have several search results and a few e-mails all open in tabs.  Thunderbird remembers what tabs you had open when you exited the program, and restore them when you open it again.

Speaking of search results, I've run into a few glitches with the new, much-changed search, but mostly it's great.  When I first upgraded, Thunderbird spent a fair amount of time indexing all my e-mails, but now it can search through my very large archive so quickly that it's almost as easy to search the body of every e-mail as just the subject or sender.  The way search results are displayed is much more useful also, showing excerpts from each match, and the distribution of matches by year (further subdividable), people, folder, and tags, and probably more I haven't yet discovered.

You can now add and e-mail sender or recipient to your address book with one click.  There's also an attachment reminder that responds to certain keywords in the body of your message.  I haven't tried this yet, but as I frequently forget to add attachments, this could be a boon.

One new feature I doubt I'll ever use, but which will no doubt appeal to the same folks who buy "skins" for their electronic devices, is "Personas," which allows you to customize the look of your Thunderbird.  The few Personas I experimented with did nothing but make the words hard to read.  Plain vanilla works best for me.

What I like best of all is the Archive button.  Thunderbird comes with a new Archive folder, and creates subfolders for each year.  When you're done with an e-mail you don't want to delete, press "Archive" (or type "A") and, presto!, it's moved to the current year's folder.  What I like best about this is that it fits exactly with my own archiving scheme (all I had to do was move my own year-named folders under the new Archive folder), and it now saves me a lot of mouse clicks.

I've been having a lot of fun with the new Thunderbird, but that auto-complete problem needs to be fixed yesterday.

Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003, Sony Pictures, directed by Sylvain Chomet, PG-13)

Also known as The Triplets of Belleville, this is the quirky, sometimes funny, animated story of a bicycle racer, his grandmother, his dog, the French Mafia, and has-been singing trio.  The award-winning film is meant for adults, but were it not for a couple of brief scenes (a music hall show, and some in-passing shots of prostitutes in the hallway), I think our six-year-old grandson would love it.  (Hmmm, there is a funny part that might be tough for his frog-loving mother, however.)

We enjoyed it, too, though we found it a bit like a Presbyterian sermon:  they could have said the same thing better in a third the time.  Maybe that is just my American impatience.

I found it quite amusing that for such a very French film, the only language options available on the DVD Netflix sent were English and Spanish.  Not that it matters:  there's almost no dialog, and what there is, is inconsequential.

For some reason I haven't pinned down, the movie brought to mind the Asterix comics.  Perhaps it was the French setting, perhaps something about the drawings, maybe something in the humor.

You can get a taste from the trailer:  Les Triplettes de Belleville. (Link provided because some feedreaders don't pick up the embedded video.) The trailer is safe for granchild eyes, at least as far as Grandma can tell.

The good news is, there's a new orchestra in town:  The Orlando Baroque Orchestra.  Some area musicians observed Central Florida's lack of concerts featuring baroque music and stepped up to remedy the situation.  We attended the third area performance of their first concert.

The venue was a small church, and we sat in the third pew.  The experience of music in such an inimate setting is worlds different from that in a large concert hall, and to my mind significantly more enjoyable.  It is not as much fun as making music yourself in a group, but comes closer.  For this reason, I thoroughly enjoyed the concert, despite having numerous complaints, most of which had to do with disappointed expectations.  But when your experience of baroque orchestras is Boston's Handel and Haydn Society; of lutists is Paul O'Dette; of harpsichordists is Kristian Bezuidenhout; and of oboists is, well, a whole host of marvellous performers; it's difficult not to set yourself up for a fall.

The Program
Handel - Arminio Overture
Bach - Suite No. 2 in b minor
Bach - Italian Concerto
Marcello - Oboe Concerto in c minor
Intermission
Bach - Air on G String
Reymann - Fantasia & Variatio triplae
Vivaldi - Violin Concerto Op. 3 No. 3

The ensemble included four violins, two violas, cello, bass, and harpsichord, and sometimes oboe, recorder, and/or lute.

It took half of the first offering for me to overcome the disappointment of my expectations for the instrumentation.  From a baroque orchestra I was expecting baroque instruments.  However, even though the orchestra's website states, "Wherever possible we use authentic period instruments...," apparently "possible" does not yet include most of the instruments in the ensemble.  In particular, all the bowed strings were modern, with the result that it was difficult if not impossible to hear the lute and the recorder.  The cello and bass managed to tone themselves down somewhat by playing very near or often on the fingerboard.  The upper strings appeared to be trying to do that now and then, but often forgetting.  Violins are the sopranos of the orchestra, and the music is so often "all about them":  they soar, they stand out, and—especially in Orlando's difficult Bob Carr Auditorium—they often need to work to be heard.  So I can't blame them for playing with all their hearts, and if they'd had period instruments it would have been fine.

The music itself was fun, particularly since I was familiar with much of it.  I was greatly looking forward to hearing the Marcello oboe concerto performed on a baroque oboe!  So my heart sank when the performer came out with a modern oboe in her hands.  She did a creditable job, particularly on the third movement; it was my hope for the baroque oboe that caused the disappointment.

In sum, I wish the Orlando Baroque Orchestra all the best; they are a welcome addition to the Central Florida music scene.  I expect that as they gain more experience they will iron out the sound balance problems.  And I encourage them to expand their use of baroque instruments.  I wouldn't, at this point, call it a baroque orchestra.  But it is an orchestra that plays baroque music, to which I say, "Hear, hear!"

Now if we could only get more Renaissance and medieval music here!

The Merchant of Venice (2004, Sony Pictures, directed by Michael Radford, R)

Not since Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Much Ado about Nothing have I seen a movie that brings Shakespeare to life as does this version of The Merchant of Venice.  I'm not familiar enough with the play to guess how much might have been left out, but as it stands, it is exceedingly well crafted and acted.  Unique to this performance is the empathy I felt with all the characters; all are portrayed with a depth of humanity that made me care about what happened to them.  The play is funny, tragic, poignant, and memorable.

The R rating is not as bad as might be:  sexual suggestiveness that would go over the head of anyone I'd worry about, and some brief nudity that wouldn't.  It's a pity movie makers don't think about children when they produce Shakespeare; the elements that keep me from recommending this to our grandchildren are not at all necessary for the film.  Children can get value from the rest of a book, play, or movie while remaining oblivious to descriptions that adults can fully understand and appreciate without explicit portrayal.

Carl Maria von Weber:  Ruler of the Spirits, J.109, op. 26, E-flat major
Schubert:  Symphony No. 9 D.944 in C major, The Great C major
Beethoven:  Violin Concerto, op.61, D major 

I deplore much of the current "superstar" movement, be it in music, academia, sports, business, or elsewhere:  the astronomical pay scale and near-idolatrous attention given to the very few, to the detriment of the field as a whole.  That did not, however, stop me from enjoying Itzhak Perlman's performance of the Beethoven.  The OPO's own Aaron Goldman^* can put on a show at least as exciting and excellent as James Galway's, but much as I respect most of our string players, the difference in Perlman's playing was striking.  And there's no doubt he draws a crowd:  the concert was sold out.