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?

I post first of all because I can't stop my mind from writing, and it's helpful to give concrete expression to the phrases, paragraphs, and essays that are constantly churning within my brain.  See the story of Li'l Writer Guy.  The blog is a particularly satisfactory way of getting my thoughts into print:  the primary audience may be small, but they're loyal readers, and occasionally people stop by from all over the world and find something useful.  I can write what I want, when I want, with no pesky editors, stockholders or advertisers to interfere.

Because I write primarily for family members and friends who actually enjoy hearing about the details of our lives, there are a number of posts that are personal and of no interest to the general public, whoever that may be.  I make no apology.  You don't like it?  Don't read it.  This is not high school English class.  There will be no homework grade and no final exam.

Then there are the random posts of odd bits of news, posts from other blogs, and anything else good or ill that has struck me as worth sharing.  There's a lot of data, and a very poor signal-to-noise ratio, out there.  If I find something good, important, or thought-provoking, I want to increase its visibility.

Years ago I overheard one woman speaking derisively of another, saying, "She's the kind of person who gives books to other people."  This puzzled me at first, since I find books to be among the best possible of gifts.  What I eventually learned was that the complainer felt the gift books were being used as weapons, a means for pointing out the recipient's faults.  Perhaps that was true, but as one who loves to give books at least as much as to receive them, I suspect the giver was misjudged.

It is obvious to me that most of the best ideas I've had, and the good decisions I've made, especially in the areas of childrearing and education, came because someone else was willing to share them.  I take some credit for implementing and expanding ideas, and for having a few of my own, but I'm keenly aware that most of what I've done right I owe to someone's book, someone's conversation, someone's example.  What's more, there have been many, many ideas about which I've thought, "Why didn't I know this years ago, before it was too late?  Why didn't someone tell me?"  For this reason I have not hesitated to pass on good ideas when I think the recipient might be receptive, or at least interested.  I love to give books that I've found helpful, though I almost always add the caveat that I don't necessarily approve of everything the author has to say.  Sometimes there's much I don't like, but always there's at least something I find so valuable I want to share it.  Do I expect everyone to appreciate what I find valuable?  Of course not.  Am I offended if they ignore what I find important?  No.  Do I direct certain books or articles at specific people because I think they "need" them?  Believe it or not, I don't.  I share what I find good, useful, enlightening, or helpful.  I want to make information available, in hopes that fewer people will look back and say, "I wish someone had told me about that before."

Blogging provides many more opportunities than giving away a few books, and that's another reason I write.  This is the one area where I think of a wider audience; someone, somewhere out there may care about what I have learned about xylitol, or epidurals, or math curricula.  Again, I don't apologize for writing what some may not find interesting; if you don't like it, skip it.  But if you find something valuable in it, and especially if you have something to add to the discussion, I greatly appreciate comments.  From the beginning I had hoped this blog would be "a forum for spirited—but polite—discussion and the exchange of ideas," and I still mean that.

One thing all my posts have in common is commentary.  You get my opinion on politics, education, and health; on books and movies; on bike trails and genealogy.  More often you get my opinion-in-progress, as writing is as much my way of forming thoughts as of expressing them.  What you won't get is something directed as a weapon against you—certain public persons excepted, although even then I prefer to challenge ideas, not people.  I write from my own accumulated knowledge and experience; whether you agree or disagree, your own experiences are more than welcome.  My best work still comes from those who are willing to share.

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.

But where was it coming from?  Although the house and the yard were permeated with the smell, it seemed pretty clear that the garage was the source, not that that narrowed the possibilities down much.  Diligent dog-like sniffing could not pinpoint the origin.  Well, not really "dog-like"; our noses were not in danger of physical contact with anything, and we made frequent retreats outside for fresh air.  I did more thinking than sniffing, myself, in an effort not to complicate the scents by vomiting on the garage floor.

My first reaction was "propane," but a brief opening of the valve of a known propane tank proved that the scents were not the same.  There's no gas line to the house, so it couldn't have been a gas leak. Finally, my eyes lit on a container of weed killer, and I had a "Eureka!" moment:  Insecticide.  The smell was the chemical reek left in the wake of some pest control operations.

With that in mind, it was not long before our neighbors found—behind closed doors, in a box, on a shelf in the back of a cabinet—a leaking bottle of malathion.  They carefully bagged it up, removed the wooden shelf onto which it head leaked, and set it all outside to be taken on the morrow to the county's toxic waste facility.  Mystery solved, and the garage and house could begin to air out and detoxify.

The atmosphere in the neighborhood, on the other hand, deteriorated rapidly.  Even bagged up, the permeation of the malathion was amazing.  After returning home, opening either the front or the back door immediately let in an overwhelmingly foul odor.  We turned off the air conditioner so as not to bring outside air into the house.  I, worried about what harm our exposure might have done, and whether or not our neighbors should spend the night with us instead of in their polluted house, turned to Google.  I was somewhat reassured that malathion is not one of the banned pesticides, but still in use, and that we'd probably already received far greater exposure through mosquito-control spraying.

We had planned to go to bed early, but the adventure had already scotched that idea.  Furthermore, since I'd read that symptoms of malathion poisoning can take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to appear, we decided to stay up a bit longer and watch the final episode of Season Two of Monk.  (Monk is our latest Netflix TV show venture about which I intend to post at some point; we tried it at the recommendation of a friend, and because Season Four of Numb3rs is not yet available.  So far we have found it very enjoyable.)

If the point was to keep us awake, it succeeded.  If the point was to distract us from worrying, it was the wrong show to watch.  The lyrics of the theme song,  in case you don't know it, are thus:

It's a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
Hey, who's in charge here?
It's a jungle out there
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what's in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it's amazing
People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don't think so
It's a jungle out there

When they got to "poison in the very air we breathe," I took notice, and by "if you paid attention, you'd be worried to" I'd decided to make a call to Poison Control.  Our neighbors were going to call the fire department, which in the past has been very helpful with oddball situations (including the time an insect set off our smoke alarm), but there is no longer an off-hours phone number, and it didn't seem like something to bother the 9-1-1 folks about.  Fortunately, Poison Control is a different system, and they were not only avaiable, but very helpful.  We were able to sleep well, and our neighbors were glad to know that they didn't have to evacuate.  Here's a tip from Poison Control that I woudn't have thought of:  Today's kitty litter is very useful for cleaning up liquid chemical spills.

This morning when we awoke a sniff out the back door revealed nothing but a chlorine smell from the pool, but the front yard was as bad as ever.  I find that pretty amazing.  That's powerful stuff!  We're fine now, though, as the offending substance has been properly dealt with.  I'm very glad it all happened in a situation in which it was discovered quickly—no more than a couple of hours from leak to clean up.  What if our neighbors had been on vacation, or even just gone for a normal work day?

I's a jungle out there.

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.

I have my doubts about the statement in the Wikipedia article that his initial book was "the first origami book where each model is folded from single square sheet and no cuts," though I know that was a passion of his, and his innovations were many, including a realistic, rather than symbolic, style.  Be that as it may, John is a remarkable polymath whose accomplishments are more understated by the article than not.  How many other people can honestly say that they wake up in the morning eager to go to work?

Any family members who have learned to love Settlers of Catan through us can thank Johnny, for it was he who taught us to play, during a delightful visit when it was much more fun to play games together than face preparing for our imminent move to Boston.

Although we have a large collection of his origami books, Janet is the one of us who most appreciates them, having mastered the techniques well enough to make some impressive models.  Perhaps Jonathan will one day, since at age four he designed and folded his own origami bat.  :)

The Drabble strip was the immediate inspiration for this post, but I had been thinking about John anyway, thanks to my recent trip on Southwest Airlines, and this article in their Spirit on-board magazine.

By the way, Johnny really can whistle in five octaves!

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.

Eric Schultz is the Chairman of the Council of the NEHGS, and The Occasional CEO is his blog.  The link that took me there was to Genealogy, the Idaho Russet, and Innovation, his speech at their recent annual meeting.  Here are a few other interesting posts I found:

I'm Going Crazy...But So Are You — the way we use the Internet is rewiring our brains.

Hey, That's Mine!: When the Other Side Adopts Your Innovation First — what do the telephone, Facebook, King Philip's War, Swiss watches, and IBM have in common?

A Plague of Dead Squirrels, (a.k.a. The Unintended Consequences of Innovation) — what we really have to fear from electric cars.

It's a Messy, Messy World (or, "How the Web Was Won") — the importance of knowing history, and how AT&T (among others) got to be where it is instead of where it could have been.

There's more, but you'll have to find it for yourself.  I need to get on with Real Life (and those e-mails).

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.

Planet Narnia is a cool stream dancing through a thirsty land.  It is intellectual and academic without being in the least bit dry, a book clearly written for the general public—but an intelligent and educated general public.  It was not, perhaps, the best of books to take to the shore where one is constantly in (delightful) danger of being interrupted by friends who drop by or grandchildren who want to play, but it was too fascinating to give up for lighter fare, and will well bear re-reading, probably several times.

As soon as I heard about Ward's identification of the relationship between the Narnia books and medieval cosmology, I knew I had to rush right out and buy the book.  (Note:  "rush right out and buy" is used in the same sense as "dial a phone number."  What I actually did was order it from Amazon.  To be fair, I did try first to get it from our library or a local bookstore, but without success.  I want to support local businesses, but what can I do if they so rarely have what I want to buy?)  If you are not as impatient as I was, you can get a preview at the Planet Narnia website.

(In case anyone is confused, I should probably note that Lewis's use of this cosmology has nothing to do with believing in a geocentric universe, but rather its symbolic and philosophical meanings.  As Aslan explains, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, "a huge ball of flaming gas" is not "what a star is, but only what it is made of.")

A little background will help explain one reason I was so excited about Ward's ideas.  I have not (yet) read Dante's Divine Comedy, but Porter is in the middle of Purgatorio, having finished Inferno a while back, so for his birthday or some such occasion I bought the Teaching Company lectures on the Commedia.  This is a course I recommend very highly for anyone contemplating reading Dante's masterpiece.  I had no idea what an absolute genius Dante was!  While listening to the lectures, I was struck repeatedly by how much parts of the Divine Comedy reminded me of the writings of C. S. Lewis. Planet Narnia showed me why this is no coincidence:  Lewis was a great admirer of Dante, and much that is in Dante's great poem, particularly the Paradiso, is reflected in Lewis's works.

Although I've always loved to read, I never liked literature classes in school, despising the way teachers would take what otherwise might have been an interesting book and analyze it to death; I see now that my distain developed because I had never seen such analysis done right. Both the Teaching Company lectures and Planet Narnia showed me that the right analysis of the right book is like solving an enormous cryptic crossword puzzle.

Ward's work also helped me understand one reason I've been so disappointed by the movie versions of The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books (so far).  Even where they are true to the characters and plot of the stories, even where they have caught some of the ideas conveyed by the books, they have largely missed what Lewis called the "Kappa element"—roughly, the atmosphere, flavor, or tone—that makes each book what it is.

Is an understanding of medieval cosmology, or the way it infuses the Narnia tales, necessary for appreciating the books?  Of course not; they have been well loved ever since they were written, by people who, like me, had no clue that all the references to gold in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader were part of its "Solar" flavor.  The Kappa element was apparently intended not to be seen (except by puzzle solvers), being much less obvious than the Christian element, which Lewis states he deliberately kept low-key.  Its importance is on the imaginative, not the rational level.

The distinctive roles of the imaginative and the rational are expressed much more clearly in Planet Narnia than I was able to articulate in a recent, frustrating discussion with a friend, and thus particularly welcome reading.  Although Truth is one and undivided, we cannot see it correctly if we do not look at it through both lenses.  I doubt that C. S. Lewis ever used the terms "left brain" and "right brain," but he would have appreciated the value of both approaches.

Enjoy the Narnia tales just as they are, if you wish.  You don't need to know the Jovial elements in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, nor how Mercury influences The Horse and His Boy.  But rest assured that J. R. R. Tolkien was wrong in considering the Narnia septet to be a literary hodge-podge.  Planet Narnia makes a convincing argument that the apparently random elements are instead carefully placed stones in a brilliant mosaic.

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.

His siblings, all girls, are no doubt equally bright, but their musical tastes are quite different.  When she was pregnant with the next two, our friend was the music director of a traditional church; they are now mellow, happy children who love traditional hymns.  The youngest spent her formative pre-natal days listening to her mother rehearse with the "praise band" at another church, and she is the rocker of the family—the louder and more intense the guitars and drums, the better she likes it.

"So whence," I asked, "comes the delight all the children have in Broadway music?"  "Subliminal," our friend replied.  She and her husband sing together every night after the kids are in bed, and Broadway tunes are a favorite.  Every night, as their son solemnly informed me, even when they get home really late, they take time to sing together.

No wonder the kids love music, and are singing all the time themselves.  And no wonder theirs is such a delightful family.