Lift Up Your Hearts!

John Stackhouse has another perspicacious post, this time on the homogenization of music in contemporary churches.  I know nothing about the "white gospel" style he laments in Disappearing (Musical) Languages but his experience strikes a sympathetic chord, since my musical "mother tongue" for worship is equally endangered.

[T]he Welsh, among others, would tell us to keep alive the languages we love. Those who still speak them must take them up as sacred causes, maintaining these vital ways of perceiving and articulating the world without which humanity is diminished.

That's much more encouraging than being told to get over it and learn to like the new languages.  It's helps to realize that when it comes to church worship music I am a Native American child forced to speak only English in school, a deaf child forbidden to sign, or a Scot required to use the language of his conquerors.  Prudence tells me the value of learning the dominant tongue, but a higher wisdom calls me to preserve that which is in danger of perishing.  Call it the genealogical impulse.

It's been harder than I thought to write the "why I blog" post that's been on my backlog for ages.  So I'm just going to do it.

I suppose my blog can most charitably be called "eclectic."  Some blogs are political, some personal journals, some accumulate interesting articles and news stories, some keep far-flung families in contact, some are formed around a specific cause or issue.  I aim to be jack-of-all-trades, and if that means being master of none, I see nothing wrong with that. It depends on your audience.  Five-star restaurants require highly-trained and gifted chefs, but I'd take my mother's home cooking and the family dinner table any day.  Fine.  But why?  Why do I put so much time and effort into blogging?  What do I hope to accomplish? (More)

This is a joke, right?  It doesn't surprise me that some crackpot with "Dr." in front of his name should decide that we could solve the widespread problem of students' appalling inability to spell by merely accepting their mistakes as "spelling variants."  After all, professors of education have promoted weirder ideas, and Ken Smith is only a lecturer in criminology who is fed up with wasting his time trying to correct the failures of his students' spelling teachers.  It's not our children's fault they had the misfortune to be born into an era of standardized spelling.  Dr. Smith's frustration can't be much more than mine as I try to decipher the writings of my intelligent, well-educated, and highly respected colonial American ancestors, who couldn't even spell their own names consistently.

What makes me sure of the intended humor is this passage in the article: Dr. Smith said there was no reason many commonly misspelt words were configured the way they were. The word 'twelfth', for example, would make more sense as 'twelth', he said.  'How on earth did that "f" get in there? You would not dream of spelling the words "stealth" or "wealth" with a[n] "f" (as in 'stealfth' or "wealfth") so why insist on putting the "f" in twelfth?'.  Since a moment's thought about both the origin and the pronunciation of "twelfth" would reveal the answer, Smith must be pulling our legs, perhaps making his point in the spirit of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.

As the story spreads, however, some folks are finding the idea of this Irish baby fricassee more palatable than not.  All I can say is that my friends who teach college math should have thought of this years ago.  Instead of complaining that your students can't add two and two and get four, much less construct a simple proof, why not simply accept 2+2=5 as a variant sum?  And who are you to decide what's "true" and "proven," anyway?

Holcomb Farm has posted the winning photographs from its 2007 Photo Contest.  My favorite is the third prize winner.

Last night our neighbors called to ask if we had noticed a terrible odor.  They had just returned home after a few hours away and smelled something awful as soon as got out of the car; it was so strong they couldn't tell if it was widespread or localized.  We stepped outside of our house and smelled no more than the normal hot-and-humid Florida vegetation smells.

Until we approached their house, that is. We were then hit with what was, indeed, a foul odor.  But not, I was certain, a what-died-in-here? odor; it was something chemical rather than biological.  Don't get started on the truth that biology is also chemistry; I'd say it was an inorganic smell rather than organic, but that's not true either.  I know what I meant, and you would, too, if you'd smelled it. (More)

Whenever I despair about unnecessary governmental interference in our lives and families, it's good to be reminded that we could be educating our children in Germany or giving birth in Israel.  Think about the Israeli system next time you're tempted to believe the government should be more involved in our health care.

I've often noted that there is a significant generation gap between my siblings and me; even seven years makes a big difference.  Not that it keeps us from being a closely-knit and loving family, but it's noticeable.  Although for a number of reasons my upbringing was somewhat different from theirs, that's not what I'm talking about, but rather changes in the surrounding culture and "conventional wisdom" between my formative years and theirs.  Perhaps change always happens this way, and I only noticed it because there is that half-generation gap between us.  It does serve as an interesting bridge between our generation and that of our children.  It was a bit of a shock when I realized that certain customs...that our children thought of as "the way it's done" were those of my siblings' era, and quite different from my own views of "normal."

That's what I wrote in a comment on a previous post. Now I've learned that I'm not the only one to notice the half-generational difference.  Apparently those born between 1954 and 1965 are now being differentiated from the rest of us Baby Boomers by their own designation:  Generation Jones.  I don't set much store by this idea of naming generations; as with many attempts to classify people, I believe individual characteristics are more important than mere demographics. Still, patterns are interesting, especially when they relate to something I've observed myself.

Today's Drabble comic, suitably modified, is for our friend Johnny Montroll, a.k.a. The Origami Guy.

 (More)

During the 18 months we lived in the Boston area, we experienced three deaths in our immediate family.  This, as I realized how much vital information was being lost, was half the reason I developed an unexpected and almost obsessive interest in genealogical research.  The other half was inspired by the proximity of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) library on Newbury Street.  Although I am now over 1200 miles away from that treasure trove of information, I maintain my membership in the Society, and their eNews letter arrived at my inbox this morning.

Normally I can skim the newsletter quickly, maybe click on a link or two and read associated articles, bookmark an occasional new resource, then liberate my inbox.  This time, however, the missive included a link to a new (to me) blog that is only tangentially connected with genealogy.  Over an hour has since elapsed and I am still on the course begun when I opened that e-mail, now making my own post about The Occasional CEO. (More)

I hate to give such horrors any more publicity, so if you already view Planned Parenthood as evil incarnate, don't follow any of the links on John C. Wright's post, Footnote to Modern, Ever-Changing, Ever-Evolving Moral Standards.  If, on the other hand, you still cling to the hope, as I did for a long time, that the omni-present organization might not be utterly irredeemable, you owe it to your children to take a look (with them out of the room, of course—preferably out of the house).  I wish I could cleanse my brain of those cute, Sesame Street-like videos, but sometimes it's useful to know just how bad the situation really is.

I like the idea of socially responsible investing, but this has reminded me that whatever harm might be done by an undesirable gnat stock amongst those in our mutual funds is dwarfed by the camel damage paid for with our tax dollars.

Oh, by the way.  In case you miss it (which I recommend), take my word for it that when the folks at Planned Parenthood use the word "abstinence," they mean something entirely and disturbingly different from what you, I, and the dictionary do. So define your terms carefully (and make them define theirs) before conceding agreement on any point.

My first reaction to the good news that girls are now doing as well as boys in mathematics, at least through high school, was to laugh at the headline, which was "Numbers don't lie: Girls equal to boys in math."  Anyone who knows anything at all about numbers knows that they are frequently used to express untruths.  Nonetheless, it's still good to hear that the distressing gap between male and female performance that once appeared between elementary school and high school has disappeared.

And yet, I wonder.  I don't give any more credence to the idea that boys might be inherently better in math than girls, any more than I do to the idea that girls are naturally superior in reading.  (I do leave room for the idea that certain ways of thinking, some approaches to problems, and even some narrow fields of mathematics, might show sex-specific correlations, because, after all, men and women are inherently, biologically different.  I'm quite certain, however, that differences among individuals are great enough to make sex-related differences of little import.)  What makes me less than elated about this new study is a nagging suspicion of anything that sees parity as the goal.  From the school principal who told me that the ultimate purpose of kindergarten was to get all students on the same level, to the school board members who were much less concerned with student achievement than with making sure no school in the district looked any better or worse than another, I've found that a victory in mere equality often masks a decline in real accomplisment.  Both kindergarten and school district "parity" are often achieved as much by holding some students back as by bringing others forward.  I'm certainly glad girls are doing "as well" as boys in mathematics—but much more interested in how all our students are doing, not only in comparison with each other, with students of the past, and with students of other countries, but most importantly in consideration of actual achievement.  "As good as" is a slippery measurement, and "better than" is little better.  In the company of serial rapists, a "mere" adulterer might feel pretty good about himself.

(It is also worth mentioning that the reason given for poor female performance in the past, that people expected girls to be stupid when it came to math, was certainly not universal, even "50 years ago."  My parents never expected that I would not do as well as my brothers, nor did any of my teachers offer me such a flimsy excuse as gender for poor performance!)

John C. Wright's post about his discussion with a utopian communist awakened memories of my own encounters with people who look back with affection to the time of the 1960s and 70s.  It's probably good, in general, that human beings tend to forget the sorrows of the past and remember it with a golden tinge, but when it's the sufferings of others, rather than our own, that we ignore, we are in danger of making grievous mistakes.

No age (nor philosophy) has a monopoly on evil, and I'm the first to admit both that my own life was largely insulated from the pain of that time and that some good things came from it, but the era was one of selfishness, incivility, and disastrous policies unequalled in my (admittedly limited) experience.  Worse, it was the spawning-ground for much future harm.

Perhaps if more people remembered those decades with suspicion, rather than admiration, the present age wouldn't be as likely as it threatens to repeat them. 

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek...to be understood, as to understand.—St. Francis

I can't resist taking a moment to share another excellent post from Random Observations, which gently reminds me that I need to spend more time trying to understand the point of view of those with whom I disagree, especially if I disagree strongly and emotionally.

If you can't even correctly repeat the arguments of your opponents, how in the world do you imagine you've refuted them?

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, by Michael Ward (Oxford University Press, 2008)

It is hard to overstate the excitement with which I read Planet Narnia.  I'll return shortly to Michael Ward's discovery of the pattern and scheme under which C. S. Lewis wrote all seven of his Narnia books, but it's also worth noting that Ward's writing itself was a delight to read.  I am so very, very tired of the recent trend of informal, conversational writing that appears to have been put together in haste, without benefit of editor or even proofreader.  That style is good for blogs, but in a book the lack of consideration for sentence and paragraph structure, the grammatical mistakes, the impoverished vocabulary, and what often comes across as a condescending tone detract significantly from the message proclaimed.  (More)

A friend of ours has four children.  They're all still less than eight years old, and have yet many years to develop their tastes in music, but where they stand now offers some food for thought.

When the oldest was in utero, his musician mother was teaching at a college, and was totally immersed in classical music, particularly opera.  He is now very bright, intense, and serious, with a lovely boy soprano voice and a love of classical singing to go with it. (More)