Lift Up Your Hearts!

Our anthem for Sunday, January 26, 2014.

Down to the River to Pray (arr. Sheldon Curry, Daybreak/Hal Leonard 08743261)

From LarkNews.com, one of the best 404 File Not Found errors I've come across.

In one way or another, we covered a lot of bases with our church music last Sunday.  It was a wild ride.  But that's one thing I like about our church.  From Deck Thyself My Soul with Gladness to Shout to the Lord, from What Star is this with Beams so Bright to How Great Thou Art, from There's a Wideness in God's Mercy to a couple I'll highlight:

First, our choir anthem, Praise His Holy Name by Keith Hampton (earthsongs).

We arrived early at church, and having discovered that the processional hymn was a new one to us, I plunked it out on the piano several times before the director arrived.  It may sound easy, but it is decidedly not if you've never heard it before.  Mercifully, he took it down a whole third from what is written in our hymnal.

I would never have guessed that Lift Every Voice and Sing was an African-American song, much less the "Black National Anthem" as it is sometimes called.  Not knowing the tempo at which it is apparently usually sung (judging by the YouTube recordings I listened to), I took it at a faster clip, and would have guessed it to be a World War I era song, or maybe something from the Salvation Army.  If you listen to it and note that the middle part sounds like the more militant parts of Les Miserables, be assured that this was written in 1899/1900 by James Weldon Johnson and his brother John Rosamond Johnson.

The experience reminded my very much of singing with grandson Joseph, who chooses hymns not by name, but by number, providing an interesting tour through the more obscure parts of the hymnal.  Fun!

UPDATE 11/2/19 Once again, the automated updating of Flash videos to iframe cut out a chunk of the post, but I don't have time to worry about it now.

Nunsense was written in 1985, but neither of us had seen it until Sunday.  We went to the performance at Sanford's Wayne Densch Performing Arts Center because our friend Linda was the music director for the show.  As it turned out, we knew one of the main cast members, too—a friend of Heather's from high school.  She played Sister Hubert and did a fantastic job.  Everyone did a great job, actually, though some had better enunciation than others, so we didn't always get the jokes because we didn't catch all the words.

A few of the jokes were less than family-friendy, but they'd probably go over the heads of anyone who shouldn't hear them, and compared with much of what can be seen today, the show is fitting for—well, for a convent!

Afterwards we had a (too) quick bite to eat at the Willow Tree Café.  German food is not normally my favorite out-to-eat meal, but this was excellent and I'd love to have an excuse to go back.

We had the Gourmet Potato Pancakes and the Sausage Sliders from this menu.  Both were worth repeating, although next time I may want to try the Reisen Bretzen.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets, even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'here lived'.  — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Each Christmas we send out a slew of Christmas cards, and receive slew minus epsilon in return..  (By "slew" I mean about 120; and you wonder why we find postage stamps to be a good investment.)  The trouble is that these cards arrive in the mail at what is usually the busiest time of the year, where we have little time to appreciate them.  If we happen to go away for Christmas, the situation is worse:  we return not only to unpacking and laundry and neglected work, but also to a pile of cards and letters.  It's so easy to slip into a routine:  Slit envelope, check.  Open card, check.  Skim card, quickly read letter, and glance at photos, check.  Enter data (news, change of address, etc.) into our Christmas card database for next year, check.  Toss card and envelope into recycling, check.  Breathe sigh of relief, check.  But that's all wrong.  The cards are meant to be appreciated, photos admired, and newsy letters savored.

Last year I read about a family who saves all their Christmas cards until the next year, putting them in a "prayer basket."  Each day one of the children pulls a card out of the basket and the family prays for the people who sent it.  I found that an admirable idea, but my anti-clutter side couldn't bear the thought of keeping a basketful of cards sitting around all year.  I did, however, institute my own version, and I love it:

At the end of the above-mentioned data entry routine, the envelopes get recycled, but the cards go into my Tickler, spread out over the days.  Thus, each morning I have one or two cards/letters/photos to enjoy in a relaxed fashion.  I pray specifically for the people they represent, illuminated by whatever information I've just read.  Then, and only then, do the cards go into the recycle bin.

Win-win-win.  I receive much more pleasure out of our Christmas mail, people are prayed for, and I enjoy a small decluttering moment every day.

Publix, our local grocery store, often has tasting centers set up throughout the store.  Of course they are meant to encourage you to buy the product; sometimes I do, mostly I don't.  But I love the tastes, especially when it involves the sushi department.  :)

One of the stations usually involves not just a single product, but a whole meal or main dish prepared before your eyes (if you want to stick around and watch, which I usually don't).  These are almost always delicious, and every once in a while I can't resist picking up the ingredients to make it myself.  So it was one day last week.

Does Chicken over Warm Kale and Asparagus Salad sound good to you?  I can't say it did to me, but that's the advantage of these stations:  I tasted it.  I'm including the recipe below, at least as much for myself as for anyone else.  On the other hand, as far as I'm concerned recipes are merely suggestions, so here are some of the changes I made, or might make next time.  There will be a next time.  It was so good each of us ate more than the 1/4 recipe portion size recommended, and I could have eaten a lot more.

• I did use the shallots, but next time will probably just go with red onion, or any onion I have on hand; I don't think it makes that much difference.
• I didn't buy any fresh basil, because I thought we had enough on our basil plant at home.  But it turns out it still needs more growing time, so I used fresh Thai basil from our abundant supply.  (The flavor is quite different, but still great).
• I didn't add the asparagus, because what was available at the store didn't look very good.
• Instead of the raw chicken breasts, I used shredded meat from a whole chicken I had cooked earlier, adding it later in the process, because all it needed was to get hot.  I also used a lot less chicken than the recipe calls for, and mixed it in with the salad rather than placing it on top.
• I used Essex Garlic Salt (a wonderful product that was birthed about the same time Porter was; thanks, PJS!)
• The "kale salad blend" was by organicgirl ("Baby kale, tango, baby spinach, baby green chard, green romaine, baby green oakleaf lettuce. Ingredients may vary by season.")  It was on the pricy side, but absolutely delicious.  I'm trying to quell my frugal side when it comes to things that will help us eat more healthy food.
• The Parmesan cheese was fresh-grated, of course!
• I added some chopped pecans at the end, just because I had them and the idea sounded good.  It was.

Chicken Over Warm Kale and Asparagus Salad

Ingredients
1 (3-oz) package shallots, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped
1/2 lb fresh asparagus spears
1 3/4 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 1/4 teaspoons garlic/herb seasoning, divided
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 pint grape tomatoes
3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 (5-oz) container kale salad blend
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Prep

• Chop shallots and basil.
• Cut asparagus into 1-inch long pieces, removing tough root end.

Steps

1. Preheat large sauté pan on medium-high 2-3 minutes. Season chicken with 1 teaspoon garlic/herb seasoning (wash hands). Place oil in pan, then add chicken; cook 4-5 minutes on each side or until browned.
2. Reduce heat to low. Stir in tomatoes and shallots; cook and stir 2-3 minutes or until tomatoes are softened.
3. Combine vinegar and sugar, then stir into tomato mixture; cook 8-10 minutes, turning chicken occasionally, or until liquid has reduced by about one-half and chicken is 165°F. Remove chicken from pan; let stand 5 minutes to rest.
4. Stir kale, basil, asparagus, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon seasoning into tomato mixture; cook 1 minute or until salad is wilted. Transfer salad to serving plates; slice chicken and arrange on top of salad. Sprinkle with cheese; serve.

CALORIES (per 1/4 recipe) 380kcal; FAT 13g; CHOL 115mg; SODIUM 320mg; CARB 19g; FIBER 3g; PROTEIN 45g; VIT A 80%; VIT C 50%; CALC 15%; IRON 15%

Wouldn't all Kickstarter projects like to have funded $906,490 of a $50,000 goal?  And with 17 days left in the drive?  Well, not all Kickstarter projects involve both smart phones and paper airplanes!

A $40 pledge gets you the basic package.  No wonder they have so many backers; I can imagine that was many a geek's Christmas present.  (H/T Stephan)

Tired of Treasury bonds that pay nearly nothing, and bank accounts that pay less?  Frightened by the vicissitudes of the stock market?  We just made an investment with a guaranteed minimum return of six and a half percent.  Anyone else interested?

It's not a great return, but it's decent, could go much higher, and essentially risk-free.

Who's with me on this?

My sister-in-law's "books read in 2013" post has me itching to work on my own, but re-entry chores after our vacation are taking priority (with difficulty).  In the meantime, enjoy this post from the Occasional CEO.

In high school I studied the Civil War.  A few weeks later, we tackled World War I.  Those two wars seemed to me ages apart, in entirely different eons.  In one, ancient soldiers rode horses and wore funny hats.  In the other, ancient soldiers drove tanks and wore funny helmets.  The distance in time between the two events was, to me, like that between the Punic and Vietnam Wars.

As I arise on this snowy morning in the new 2014, I am reminded that the death of the Archduke is only six months away and the guns of August eight.  I realize too that I was in third grade when the Civil War ended.  Said another way, my living memory has now spanned the period between the Civil War and WWI, and it turns out they were not fought in different eons at all but in a very short, very connected period.  Brad Pitt was born the same year as Gettysburg.  We saw Google launch when the USS Maine sunk in Havana and we declared war on Spain.  Americans lost President Garfield to an assassin when Raiders of the Lost Ark premiered, and President McKinley when Apple introduced its first iPod.

Porter is always placing historical events in this kind of chronological context, which may explain why he has such a good sense of history.

There is a sense I now have of historical "connectedness" that I did not when I was young, or even when I was studying history in college.  It is something, I suppose, that truly gifted historians can create in their writing. Sometimes it comes upon us abruptly ... as it did for me last year when I watched the video of a man who witnessed Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theater appearing on TV's I've Got a Secret.  More often than not, though, this sense of connectedness probably just comes with age.

That it comes with age makes sense—how can a ten-year-old really grasp a time span of more than a few years?  Yet it seems worth the effort, given that apparently the graduates of 13 years or more of (mostly) compulsory education are even more ignorant of history than they are of geography.  I'm not mocking the younger generations:  almost all of my own historical and geographical knowledge was gained after I graduated from college.

(On the geography side, it didn't help that what I did learn in school went rapidly out of date.  Once I could identify all the countries on a map of Africa.  I can today—but few of them are the same countries.  Learning must never cease, and knowledge always be refreshed.)

How to help young learners develop a sense of history?  Timelines, certainly.  I don't mean just memorizing dates, but a clear visual representation of the relationships between events.  Perhaps something like Hillyer's Staircase of Time, or the huge timeline my sister-in-law created that took up most of their front hall.  Not hidden away in a book, but a part of the home or school landscape that confronts us daily.  Something frequently referenced, though, so it doesn't fade into the background.

It might be possible, also, to develop Porter's self-taught habit of translating bare historical dates into personal events, e.g. "When I was your age, we were fighting in Vietnam," or "Grandpa was born exactly 18 years after the Wright Brothers made their first flight at Kitty Hawk."

What other ideas can you think of?  If you are one of those blessed with a sense of history, do you know how you developed it?

Aargh.  I thought I could get a quick post by just putting up a link to someone else's.  Apparently I'm incapable of not adding my own two cents.  Especially since my refusal to set up a Google + profile keeps me from being able to comment on the Occasional CEO itself.

Back to post-vacation chores.  (I did say it was "with difficulty.")

How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson (HarperCollins, 2005)

The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson (Penguin Books, 2009)

Porter recently earned his ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) certification.  Not to be outdone, I read these books to obtain my IDLE certification.  (A joke that only works if you read it out loud, I guess.)  Unlike Porter's efforts, mine required no exam, although How to Be Idle did at times test my patience.

I read the second book first, on Janet's recommendation, and I'm glad I did.  It is by far the better, as evidenced by having over 30 of my sticky notes whereas the other only has eight.  I suspect that parenthood gave Hodgkinson a little more maturity, as it does most of us.  Even though I know he's exaggerating to make a point, in How to Be Idle there's still 'way too much disdain for effort, responsibility, and moral standards, and much too much praise for smoking, excessive drinking, drug use, unlimited sex, and all-night partying.  On the plus side, he mentions Paul Verlaine twice, a poet I'd never heard of till Stephan introduced me to him.  I love to find connections like that.

From the chapter on meditation, a sentiment I can relate to:

It's hard to drift off into nowhereland when your arousal hormones are circulating wildly as a result of your rage at mobile phone users.  Fantasies of hurling their mobile phones from the train window tend to disturb the search for inner calm.

Much of what Hodgkinson praises I cannot relate to, even a "pleasure" as innocent as remaining in bed until noon.  He's not even talking about getting a good night's sleep—as one would need after another of his pleasures, staying awake till three or four in the morning—but of lolling around, simply being idle.  Even if I were a night person for whom a 4 a.m. to noon sleep felt normal, I'd be climbing the walls if I couldn't wake up, get up, and get to work!  I never did get how breakfast in bed was supposed to be a luxury.

On the other hand, this touches on one of the book's best points:  that we have—unnaturally and to our harm—separated work from life.   We focus our educational efforts too much on training our children to get a well-paying job working for someone else, when we should be teaching them how to discover what they love to do and leverage it into self-employment.  Although he quotes  G. K. Chesterton several times, Hodgkinson does not mention one of my favorite of Chesterton's ideas, though I'm sure he would agree with it:  the world does not really have too many capitalists (owners of the tools of production), but too few.

Another important point, hidden in his obsession with what I'd call slothful idleness, is how essential to the creative process are unscheduled time, daydreaming, staring into space, meandering walks to nowhere, and the like.  Yet we feel guilty for these idle times, and others feel free to interrupt them, because we're "not doing anything."

The Idle Parent retains a modicum of the prejudice against Christianity in general and Puritanism in particular (or rather, the author's misinterpretation of them), and a bit too much respect for Rousseau, Locke and others who seem to know more about theoretical children than real ones.  And he still exaggerates at times to make his point.  But there are some real gems here.

Here follows a ridiculously long list of quotations, and I won't blame you if you are put off by the quantity.  But at least half the reason for making the effort to post them here is so that I'll be able to find them again myself, so I don't apologize.  They're worth taking the time to read, really.

Paradoxically, the idle parent is a responsible parent because at the heart of idle parenting is respect for the child, trust in another human being. It is the irresponsible parent who hands the child over to various authorities for its education and care, whether these be childminders, schools, after-school clubs, sports teams, CBeebies, Habbo, Club Penguin or whatever.  [p. xxi; the last several must be something particular to the U.K.  Boy Scout-type organizations?  TV shows?]

Hodgkinson's kids do go to school, so you can see what I mean about his "exaggeration for a purpose."

Children who have too much done for them cannot do things for themselves.  Have you noticed how they expect their parents to know the precise location of all their belongings at any point?  "Where's my Tamagotchi?" the child whines.  "I can't find my socks."  Piano practice is only done if there is a parent guiding him through every step.  He needs his hand held, but we have only ourselves to blame.  [pp. 2-3]

[T]he mollycoddling and overprotection of children has created a nation of "big babies." If we are dependent and impractical ourselves, then what hope for our children?

Well there is hope, because we can learn together.  We can recapture the lost arts of domestic living.  Simple jobs like making bread, jam and preserves can be done with your kids.  Kids love kneading, stirring and licking the bowl.  Learn to look after yourself and you will teach your children to look after themselves, and before too long they will bake bread for you.  [p. 3]

Instead of using a dishwasher, the whole family should wash up after each meal.  One does the washing, one does the drying, one does the putting away.  It takes a mere fifteen minutes. ... [T]he children will learn to help and what's more, they really will make a genuine contribution.  They will be useful.  And it may help to prevent whining....  This is becaue whining in children results from their sense that they are seen as encumbrances and have nothing to offer.  Only the powerless whine.  So make them useful!  [pp. 4-3]

[I]t has become practically an instinct to spend money, rather in the same way that when in need today we find ourselves almost instinctively reaching for the mouse.  The computer, sold as a tool of emancipation, becomes difficult to live without.  There is a power cut at home, the broadband connection is lost and the result is a terrible feeling of helplessness.  We come to depend on the thing that was supposed to free us.  So with money.  [p. 5]

[Quoting Rousseau] "The mother may lavish excessive care on her child instead of neglecting him; she may make an idol of him; she may develop and increase his weakness to prevent him feeling it; she wards off every painful experience in the hope of withdrawing him from the power of nature, and fails to realize that for every trifling ill from which she preserves him the future holds in store many accidents and dangers, and that it is a cruel kindness to prolong the child's weakness when the grown man must bear fatigue.  [p. 7]

Don't hover around [your children] and ask what they want all the time.  I see mothers hovering over two-year-olds like a sycophantic French waiter, saying, "Well, maybe this flavour of juice would suit sir?  Would you like one of these?"  while the two-year-old shouts "No" and throws stuff across the room.  You are in charge, but you need to create a hierarchy without recourse to authority.  As in the old medieval city, the "common good" of the family is paramount.  Much of the strife of the modern household comes because we have a selfish Enlightenment view of individuality and freedom in our heads.  We see freedom as a matter of asserting our own selfish desire in competition with the selfish desires of others. ... But we are living together and pleasures should be shared and bread broken together. ... And we must learn to live in the world—by which I mean the world out there, the consumer society, the world of jobs and money and shopping—while remaining unvictimized by it.  [p. 9]

Hmm.  Eight quotations already and I'm still in single-digit page numbers.  This is going to take a while.

These days we create for ourselves an absurd panoply of "likes and dislikes" and call it freedom.  It's a commodification of the notion of free will. ... Children pick up on this.  They think that when they shout "I HATE pasta" they are asserting their individuality.  [p. 10]

The key is to make work into something enjoyable. ... And you have a responsibility to enjoy your work as well, or else your kids will grow up with the idea of work as simply a necessary burden.  Every moan you make will be listened to by those little ears.  "Daddy works in a job he hates in order to buy you rubbish to fill your time until the day comes when you will work in a job you hate to pay the bills and pay the mortgage." ... You must not give your child the idea that work is suffering.  That idea will only make it easier for the capitalists to exploit your offspring later.  If children are brought up with the idea that work is suffering, then they won't be surprised when they go to work one day and find the experience painful.  And that means that employers need to make little or no effort to make work joyful.  [pp. 10-11]

Another bit of mothering advice in Locke is to tell the kids off in private and praise them in public.  He notices that parents tell their kids off in public in order that they are seen by others to be firm and strict. ... [B]ut this humiliates the child.  Better to praise them in front of others.  [p. 35]

We should all stop beating ourselves up:  there is no ideal mother and the very idea of a perfect mother is a tyrannical concept used as a method of control by the people in power.  [p. 42]

Tether [children] no more, say Locke and Rousseau.  Let them run free.  Help:  I am trying to let them run free but they are self-tethered to the computer.  [p. 53]

One of the greatest nature philosophers of recent times is Masanoubu Fukuoka, author of The One-Straw Revolution, published in 1978.  This remarkable book was written after Fukuoka had spent twenty years on his small farm perfecting what he called "do-nothing farming." ... [He] does not mean that he sits around doing nothing while everything around him turns into a wilderness.  What he means is that he creates situations where nature will do the work with minimum interference from man.  Therefore he does not plough or add chemical fertilizers to the crops.  Instead he simply puts the rice straw back on the ground after harvesting and scatters chicken manure on it.  As other times he sows clover, which works as a green manure.  That's about it, but he says that with these techniques he can equal the yield of fields farmed with modern methods.  [p. 46]

I don't know if Joel Salatin has read Masanoubu Fukuoka or not, but they'd surely get along.

In a similar spirit we must stop interfering with the lives of our children.  This does not mean abandonment, any more than natural farming means that you let the brambles take over.  Neither does it mean that you don't think about what you are doing and take responsibility for it.  You also need to provide good soil for the kids to grow in, for your little seedlings.  The plethora of consumer objects and the non-stop advertising that pushes them on children is a commercial form of interfering.  Consumer objects are like chemical fertilizer:  they seem like a good idea at the time but as each year passes more and more are needed.  And children become reliant on them.   All are diversions from the natural life of the spirit, which can actually rediscover itself on the rocky shores, by the sea, on the moors, in the woodlands, in the wild places or even in the cracks between paving stones.  [p. 48]

The whole purpose of this book is to encourage you to resist the work-hard-in-isolation Puritan culture and its inventions, such as school and the full-time job, and bring back some good, old-fashioned conviviality and providential thinking, in childhood as well as adulthood. [p. 53]

The primary objection to home-schooling, always made by dullards who have not thought the matter through, is that "school provides social life."  The home educators fight back with the convincing argument that the social life they get at school is not necessarily a healthy one:  "The social life of most schools and classrooms is mean-spirited, status-oriented, competitive and snobbish."  They also point out that it's easy for parents to organize a social life for the kids:  friends come and play, learning groups are formed with other home educators in the area, and there are umpteen sport, outdoor and drama classes available.  They point out that these out-of-school relationships are based on mutual interest and emerge from choice rather than necessity.  [pp. 66-67]

Sadly, Hodgkinson here makes the same mistake I did.  While arguments such as these have silenced those who think that the purpose of socialization is to make friends and learn to get along with others, a new twist has arisen:  I first noticed it in Germany, but I've even heard it spoken here, from those who believe (often strongly) that school socialization is necessary in order that all children absorb the values of the prevailing society.  These people (and governments) are not impressed by personally-chosen relationships.

Another alternative is flexi-schooling—school is used as a resource rather than a center of confinement.  ... The most important factor in all this is probably parents' own mental attitude.  If you have respect for your child, if you are not trying to mould the child into some perfect ideal, then all options are valid.  We are not talking about a glib list of rules for you to apply in order to make your children happy.  In fact, we are not aiming for happiness; we are aiming for strength, freedom and joy in our children and in ourselves.  We're aiming for satisfaction.  [pp. 67-68]

People today spend money on cars, holidays, enormous televisions, usury charges and mobile phones but will not spend a single penny on their children's education.  Most families could save £10,000 a year at a stroke by cutting out all such luxuries.  Think about your priorities.  [pp. 72-73]

Only the hard-working and talented tend to continue with music beyond primary age.  And then unless they get really good, they might be put off for life.  Victoria [his daughter], for example, reached Grade 6 on the piano, but she never goes near one (even though we have a piano in the kitchen) because she still has no confidence.  Grade 6 seems not really very good to her (it seems like genius to me).  Schools tend to turn out adults with many skills and lots of fear.  There is a wrong-headed notion that something's not worth doing unless you're the very best at it, which leads to most of us doing nothing at all.  [pp. 107-108]

Wrestling Time:  This, though I say so myself, has been a great success.  We now do it every evening after tea.  My motivation was that the boys, in particular, seemed to have an abundance of pent-up energy, which was being expressed in unhelpful ways, such as screaming and tantrums and generally smashing things up.  But wrestling is also great fun, for kids and for Dad, and leaves Mum free to do some jobs without being hassled. lt's me against them.  The three children stand on one corner of the rug in the sitting room, with me at the other corner.  I say:  "Round One, three, two, one," and then Henry says, "Ding ding."  We then prowl around one another in the ring.  I lock arms with Arthur, making growling noises, and then hurl him into the air.  The other two jump on my back, like little monkeys trying to bring down a bear.  The game is either that I hold all three of them for ten seconds, in which case I have won that round, or they hold me down for ten seconds.  We absolutely love it.  Henry wants to do it all day:  "Daddy, can we do Wessling Time?" he asks me while I'm working.  It's just really good to holler and shout, and to watch their faces flush red with excitement.  It tires them out and I hope provides an outlet for the wild thing within.  [pp. 125-126]

[W]hen a child is in charge of some part of the household economy, such as the egg production, it means that they are actively and helpfully contributing to the household economy, which they love to do.  A burden and a hindrance no more.  They become a useful addition to the domestic labour force.  And, what is also important to the idle parent, they are learning that "getting a job" is not the only way to make money.  As I have said elsewhere in the book, I will consider my education of the children to have been a success if they end up being self-employed in some way or other.  [pp. 155-156]

If you don't want your children to spend all their time on the computer, then don't spend all your time at the computer.  Teach by example, not authority.  [p. 162]

Be careful, too, of excessive praise and blame.  Act like what they do is normal and expected when it's good.  Too often we eject a torrent of praise so hyperbolic it sounds like surprise. ... The idle parent, in contrast to the shrieking praising-and-blaming parent, should pay it cool and expect the child to be cool as well.  [p. 162]

[Jean Liedloff, author of The Continuum Concept] suggests that "children ought to be able to accompany adults wherever they go."  This, of course, is not easy with our modern working lives. So change the situation.  Are full-time jobs for both parents and high-cost nurseries the only way we can imagine to organize our lives?  It seems crazy to me.  [p. 163]

The dialectic of work=bad and life=good is one of Western society's most pernicious and controlling myths and must be smashed without delay.  Incorporate your children into your life.  Do what you want to do and let them follow. l I have never found for a moment that having children stopped me doing what I wanted to do—bar going out to the odd dinner party, and who cares about that? [p. 164]

Children are forgetting how to play.  Or they are never learning in the first place.  This is the great concern of those of us who worry about our screen-dominated age.  Over-stimulated almost from birth via the telly and the computer, children become accustomed to an intense blast of colour, sound, music and words—and to living life at one remove.  Frightened by neurotic parents who believe what they read in the papers and consider the real world to be fraught with danger, kids retreat into "safe" virtual worlds where there is no knee-grazing, no frozen water, no trees, no wood, no nails.  Just a screen and a mouse and splendid isolation.  Is this our vision of the future?

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant (Crown, 2007)

It is good for me occasionally to read something written by someone I disagree with.  After all, I frequently find wisdom in unexpected places, and have been trying for five years to put my aphorism, "the wise man recognizes truth in the words of his enemies," into common usage.  (With spectacular lack of success, I might add.  A Google search nets seven results, all from my own blog.)  This book was difficult, and I haven't yet been wise enough to discern much useful truth, though by the end I was able to understand the author a bit better, I think—and to feel sorry for him.  He's ashamed of his background, he's afraid of the future, he's angry at the injustice he sees, and he thinks he knows where to assign the blame.

It was not my Christmas present.  I was only the courier, and if I don't like it, well, that's what I get for reading someone else's gift merely because it passed through my hands in the delivery.

Joe Bageant grew up in a small town in Virginia, not all that far from my own West Virginia/Western Pennsylvania ancestors.  Unlike most of his neighbors, he went off to college and, as my strongly right-leaning friend would say, became thoroughly drunk on the "Liberal Kool-Aid."  He became a hippie and a journalist and a hardline socialist.

Writing about his roots, he occasionally comes across as sympathetic to the sorrows of those who share his hometown, but mostly with a condescension that is difficult to stomach:  Surely the only reason they don't see the world the way he does is that they have been ground down by their corporate, industrialist, Republican masters who conspire to keep the serfs stupid, ignorant, poor, and sick!

By the end of the book I was convinced that his conflicted response to his own people—alternate sympathy and loathing—is due to his own self-hatred.  Sorry to go all pop-psychology on you, but he clearly has never forgiven himself for being white, and Scots-Irish at that.  To hear him tell it, all the troubles of the world are the fault of people who are white, of Scots-Irish descent, and/or Christian.  He himself is guilty of the first two, and if he managed to shed the last, to his embarrassment his own brother is a pastor—even one who admits to having cast out half a dozen demons in his time.  In an attempt to atone for these sins, Bageant indulges in what would clearly be branded "hate speech" and earn him the harshest opprobrium were the objects of his screed black, of Hispanic descent, and/or Buddhist.

The best chapter, oddly enough, is the one on guns, hunting, and the Second Amendment.  I say "oddly" because I dislike both guns and hunting, but appreciate Bageant's demolition of the standard Liberal gun-control reasoning.  Here he seems at last to understand his own people, even though he no longer has use for guns himself.  I suspect the recipient of this book will like this chapter a lot.

Although there are many places where I nearly threw the book across the room because of what I see as Bageant's ignorance and irrationality, he occasionally has some impressive insights:  as, for example, when he accurately predicted the subprime mortgage crisis well before it became obvious to the world.  On the other hand, Porter predicted that, too.  It's a lot easier to see that something is a house of cards than it is to do something constructive about it.

I'm also struck, again, by how much the far Left and the far Right have in common.  It's the Right that usually gets mocked for stockpiling food and water and otherwise preparing for the coming Doomsday, but Bageant is just as pessimistic.  He may see different causes for the impending disaster, but he's sure it's coming.  It's those of us in the middle who just keep on keeping on with life, expecting neither heaven nor hell anytime soon.

Here are a few quotes—then I have to go wrap the book.  :)

"Class" ... is defined not in terms of income or degrees but in terms of power.  Especially regarding labor.  If you define "working class" in terms of power—bosses who have it and workers who don't—at least 60 percent of America is working class, and the true middle class—the journalists, professionals and semiprofessionals, people in the management class, etc.—are not more than one-third at best.  Leaving aside all numbers, "working class" might best be defined like this:  You do not have power over your work.  You do not control when you work, how much you get paid, how fast you work, or whether you will be cut loose from your job at the first shiver on Wall Street.  "Working class" has not a thing to do with the color of your collar and not nearly as much to do with income as most people think. ... There are no clear lines, which is one reason why the delusion of a middle-class majority persists. [p. 11]

His definition makes a certain amount of sense, though I would argue that he's stretched the term "working class" to near meaninglessness.  His definition covers computer professionals, teachers, and even many doctors.  Who's left?

[The people who are too poor for decent housing and who can't avoid getting ripped off by predatory mortgage brokers and real estate agents] are ordinary working Americans, some of them making fair bucks.  Take Karen and Marty.  She is a physical therapist and Marty is a supervisor at the GE light bulb plant.  They earn $42,000 and $40,000 respectively.  According to the mortgage officer's calculations, they could comfortably afford a house costing $182,000.  Nevertheless ... they come to him having chosen a house costing $320,000. ... "The industry allows them to borrow to the absolute edge of their ability to repay," [the broker] says.  "What we never see when we drive by those big developments are the people inside surviving on tuna fish sandwhiches and living on the cusp of affordability.  If gas and heating oil go up, they will lose their home." [Eventually] they will walk away from that house and all the stuff they bought on credit to furnish it.  [pp. 109-110]

Good analysis, and I'll certainly give the industry plenty of blame for making possible, even encouraging, foolish loans.  But Bageant misses the boat by absolving the borrowers of personal responsibility for making poor financial decisions.  If you're making $82,000/year, even if it is on two incomes, I don't see how you can be considered "poor"—except, perhaps, in judgement.

Measured by pure ownership of "stuff," working people have never been better off.  Tom Henderson is cruising the boat shops for a new bass boat, and even Nance is considering a vacation in Cancún.  None of them has any grasp of the staggering changes taking place in the world, least of all that they are going to be steamed when the bottom falls out of the mortgage and construction games, when the cheap oil fiesta is over and even the Wal-Mart parking lot is empty.  [p, 110]

Bageant and I see the same problems, but where he sees hapless folks deceived and ground down by greedy corporate bastards, I want to ask how the public schools can justify taking the better part of 13 years of these people's lives and graduating them with no grasp of basic budgeting and financial common sense.  [A staunch advocate of public schools, Bageant seems to think that the only reason for the existence of private and home schools is so whites can avoid sitting in class with "brown people."  Where that leaves non-white homeschoolers in his mind, he doesn't say.]

Fundamentalist Christians look around at AIDS, warfare across the globe, crime, the rise of narco-states, and ecological collapse, and they see confirmation of God's plan.  Rev. Rich Lang of Trinity United Methodist Church in Seattle says, "This theology of despair is very seductive and it is shaping the spirituality of millions of Christians today." [p. 166]

I won't even try to get into how badly he misuses and especially mis-applies the term "Fundamentalist Christian," and misunderstands the theology he attempts to explain.  It is certainly one of the points on which I wonder if Bageant and I are even on the same planet.  I include this quote because he apparently misses the irony in his derision of those who hold this view:  Bageant has his own "theology of despair" about the future, every bit as depressing and seductive as this, but without any hope that good can work through even the worst disaster.

Constitutional scholars and historians who have actually bothered to study the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, among them Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of To Keep and Bear Arms:  The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, conclude that they were created to protect the citizen's right to arms.  The three-volume Gun Control and the Constitution, edited by Robert J. Cottrol, assembles historical documents that are hard for gun control advocates to challenge.  So they avoid them.

From the beginning there has been a racial aspect to the nation's gun laws, often masked by pieties about gun safety.  Much has been written about this, but the subject has been avoided by liberals, siezed on by Libertarians, and misused by the crazier right-wing gun advocates. ... The fact is that the right of every citizen to own a gun was taken for granted in this country until periodic race and immigration issues brought it into question.  After the Civil War southern whites denied blacks the right to own guns.  Consequently, race and gun ownership were factors in the ratifying of the Fourteenth Amendment. ... Supporters of Negro rights understood that an armed citizen "suffered significantly less likelihood of oppression"—shorthand for being lynched.  [pp. 142-143]

When reading these quotes from Bageant's gun chapter, it is important to remember how left-wing he is  in the rest of the book.  I always take note when I hear the same message from widely divergent sources, as happened when an evangelical Protestant theologian living in Switzerland (Francis Schaeffer in The God Who Is There) and a self-described lapsed Catholic schoolteacher from Pittsburgh (John Taylor Gatto in The Underground History of American Education), writing on issues that apparently differed markedly, made the same historical and philosophical point. Ditto here.  If Bageant takes on the gun-control lobbyists, with whom he probably agrees on most other points, he may or may not be right—but it's a pretty good sign I should at least pay attention.

Staunch antigun journalist and author Robert Sherrill ... did not shrink from writing:

The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed not to control guns but to control blacks, and inasmuch as a majority of Congress did not want to do the former but were ashamed to show that their goal was the latter, the result was they did neither.  Indeed, this law, the first gun control law passed by Congress in thirty years, was one of the grand jokes of our time.  First of all, bear in mind that it was not passed in one piece but was a combination of two laws.  The original 1968 Act was passed to control handguns after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated with a rifle.  Then it was repealed and repassed to include the control of rifles and shotguns after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy with a handgun.  [pp. 144-145]

For a decade criminological studies have demolished the cartoonishly over-simplified notion that people are more likely to kill a family member [with guns in the house] than they are an intruder.  To the contrary, the literature shows that self-protection weapons really do protect their owners.  Among the many studies proving what no antigun lobbyist wants to hear are those of Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, whose research indicates that about two and a half million Americans successfully protect themselves with guns every year. ... More than two million people are spared becoming crime victims because they own guns.  Almost never do these cases involve firing the weapon.  Displaying it and saying "Get the &^%$# out of here" seems to do the trick.  If that doesn't work, a shot in the air does.  Also disproved were the claims that every domestic fight and minor argument would turn into bloody shoot-outs.  I just didn't happen.  More than a million Americans are licensed to carry personal firearms, yet researchers find that misuse by this group has been statistically negligible.

Now that most states have passed laws allowing honest citizens to carry concealed weapons, gun advocates are being proven more right than they ever hoped to be.  Joy of joys, it is women—in fact, poor urban women—and the poor in general who benefit most from concealed-carry laws.  It doesn't get any better than that when it comes to serving up cold crow to Democratic gun controllers.  Large declines in rapes and attacks on women have occurred whenever the laws have been enacted.  A study by John R. Lott Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime:  Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws, found that the urban poor and minorities lived more safely with guns in their pockets or purses:  "Not only do urban areas tend to gain in their fight against crime, but reductions in crime rates are greatest precisely in those urban areas that have the highest crime rates, largest and most dense populations and greatest concentrations of minorities." Even though Lott is a bit too far right for my tastes, More Guns, Less Crime is a good book.  Neither camp in the debate is made up primarily of liars, and both sides would do well to listen to one another once in a while.

Most liberal antigun advocates do not get off the city bus after working in the second shift.  Nor do they duck and dodge from street light to street light at 1 a.m. while dragging their laundry to the Doozy Duds, where they sit, usually alone, for an hour or so, fluorescently lit up behind the big plate-glass window like so much fresh meat on display, garnished with a promising purse or wallet, before they make the corner-to-corner run for home with their now-fragrant laundered waitress or fast-food uniforms.  Barack Obama never did it.  Hillary Clinton never did it.  Most of white middle-class America doesn't do it either.  The on-the-ground value of the Second Amendment completely escapes them.  [pp. 146-147]

According to studies by press organizations, three-quarters of U.S. newspapers have advocated severely limiting gun ownership....

When it comes to gun control, even credible sources such as the Government Accouting Office cannot get media coverage.  What never makes the news are facts [supporting the value of private guns in preventing crime] ... from the National Institute of Justice (the research arm of the Department of Justice) and GAO reports on firearms. [p. 148]

Approximately 200,000 women defend themselves against sexual abuse each year.  The Carter Justice Department found that nationwide 32 percent of more than 32,000 attempted rapes were committed, but only 3 percent of the attempted rapes were successful when a woman was armed with a gun or a knife. [p. 149]

Newspapers, radio, and television give the impression that school shootings and gun accidents among young children are increasingly common. The truth is they are both very rare and declining.  More guns supposedly equals more violence, but over the past four decades, as the stock of civilian firearms rose by 22 percent, fatal gun accidents dropped by nearly 70 percent.  People believe what they want to believe, even people who pride themselves on being more educated, rational, and objective....  [p. 149]

Did you catch the most important line in the book, a few paragraphs ago?  Here it is again:

Neither camp in the debate is made up primarily of liars, and both sides would do well to listen to one another once in a while.

Repeat ad infinitum, over all issues.

December 15 was the Third Sunday of Advent, also known as Gaudete Sunday.  This day of rejoicing in the midst of the somber Advent season was fitting for our church's service of Lessons and Carols.  Christmas Eve would have been still more appropriate, but in a time when many choir members are out of town for Christmas—not to mention a time when pastors really, really don't want to give up their opportunity to preach to a packed church—compromises are made.  I love the Lessons and Carols service:  lots of Scripture readings, lots of music, no sermon.  Apologies to my pastor friends and relatives....

I know that the entire service was videotaped, but that's not available right now, so I once again resort to what I can find online.  Except for Christmastime, that is, which features our choir of two years ago—before we joined, so don't strain your eyes looking for us.  I'll modify this post if and when our own versions become available.  Hymn numbers are from the Episcopal Hymnal (1982).  We, personally, did not sing all of the works listed below; some were solos, some by youth and children's choirs.

Prelude:  Soli Deo Gloria (arr. Mark Hayes)  Our youth choir sang the non-Latin words in English, but this Russian version is cool.

How thankful we are to have been part of this service.

Gaudete!

UPDATE 11/1/19 Ugh.  This time, the problem with the automated updating of Flash videos to iframe cut out not just a little but most of this post.  :(  However, I can't deal with it now.

Here are some excerpts from Conversion Diary's 7 Quick Takes post today.

You may recall from previous years’ ravings that I love Christmas cards. LOVE. I love getting them, I love sending them out — I even love updating our address database and printing labels.

Throughout the year, [our friends] go through their Christmas cards one at a time to pray for the family who sent that card. I just love that tradition, and I think it speaks to the enduring value of Christmas cards, even in the online age. There’s something special about having a physical object that you can hold and feel, like a picture or a card, instead of pixels confined to a screen.

That said, I totally get why some people don’t send them. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it. We can’t do it all, especially during the holidays, and some activities have to go, even if they’re great in theory.

One of the things I’ve realized only recently is that I need to find as many liturgical year traditions as possible that are not work for me. Doing Christmas cards, for example, does not feel like work. Each evening I look forward to pulling up my basket filled with envelopes and pictures and our family newsletter and new pens and sharpies. I can’t wait to jot down little messages on the back of the cards and smooth labels onto envelopes, all with a favorite show playing in the background and a glass of eggnog at my side. It truly makes the holiday season more special for me.

Baking, on the other hand, makes me lose my will to live entirely. I know that it would bless my family if our counter were spread with warm cookies and pies throughout the season, but my children lost the mommy lottery on that one. I occasionally make some treats with them because they enjoy it, but you’ve seen how it tends to turn out, and then I feel like I need 10 hours in a Relaxman to recover. I have a friend who is the opposite (hates Christmas cards, loves baking) which makes me realize that the key to maintaining sanity during holiday seasons is to find activities that you genuinely enjoy.  [emphasis mine]

Wise words—easier said than implemented, but wise.

Three anthems, sung Sunday, November 24, 2013.  [Oops.  Forgot to hit "publish" before going out of town.]

Be Thou My Vision (arr. Jay Rouse, PraiseGathering Music A08367).  Our choir director cynically (though no doubt correctly) posits that arrangers always mess with the originals because that way they can make money on them.  But in this case I have to say that as much as I like the usual version, I also like this unusual arrangement.  The syncopation makes it feel more Irish—though only if you take it a bit faster, as we did.  I don't like this rendition, but the other one I could find online I liked even less.

For the Beauty of the Earth (Folliott S. Pierpoint, Conrad Kocher, setting by Joel Raney, Hope C5733)

No YouTube video that I could find, but you can hear it at the link above.

UPDATE 11/1/19 Once again, the automated updating of Flash videos to iframe cut out a chunk of the post, but I'm leaving it as-is.