Lift Up Your Hearts!

I know most of my Loyal Readers are shivering, with temperatures in the teens and even single digits, so you'll be glad to know that spring it on its way.  A week ago I was working in our backyard when a flock of robins came through:  bird after bird, alighting only long enough for identification before resuming their steady course—straight north.   As I stood there with sweat pouring down my face—my below-zero wind chill experience of ten days earlier barely a dim memory—I could hardly blame them.  Our highs were in the 80's and a few days later we switched the thermostat from "Heat" to "A/C."

Poor robins!  I hope they didn't get too far north last week.  It's 47 degrees at the moment, and the thermostat switch has reverted.  Then again, I'm sure 47 degrees sounds like a tropical paradise to most of you....

I had an incredible experience recently.  Having been transplanted, through the woders of modern aviation technology, from our unseasonably warm Florida home to some of the coldest Connecticut weather of the season, I was a little chilled.  Our kind hosts provided a fire in the fireplace and a space heater in our bedroom, so we weren't uncomfortable, but going outside was an adventure, despite heavy coats, hats, gloves, and scarves.

That is, until I found it desirable to take some pictures of the low Old Saybrook tide.  Leaning gloveless (I had to operate the camera) against a stiff, steady blow that pushed the wind chill-modified temperature below zero, I was beyond cold.  But when my hand finally thawed, something inside me snapped—or more accurately, some internal fire ignited.  For the rest of the week, I was warm!  Forget the hat, scarf, and gloves; if all I was doing was going from building to car to building again, my coat—and that often enough not even zipped—was sufficient.

On our sledding adventure, I condescended to don hat and gloves (and zip the coat), and the chill never reached me.  What a glorious feeling, to feel the cold without being cold!

Alas—though probably all for the best—my internal fire was quenched by returning to Florida's tropical temperatures.  Our current cold snap (presently 47 degrees outside) has me feeling quite chilly, even though it's above 60 degrees in the house.   I think I'll go fix some hot cocoa while the rest of you laugh at me.

We were in Old Saybrook for what in my personal expert assures me was the lowest tide in his nearly 80-year-old memory.  (We forgot to think about tsunamis.)

If you try to call us in the next few days, please be patient.  All calls are being forwarded to our cell phones, so it may take a little longer than usual to connect.

Our CallVantage Linksys router stopped working.  Well, to be more accurate, the router still works, or I wouldn't be posting this.  But the Telephone Adaptor part no longer functions.

After 45 minutes of work with us (following much longer than that of Porter trying various things on his own), an AT&T representative supposedly determined that the SLIC (whatever that is) was bad, so they are sending us a new router.

While waiting, however, Porter configured Janet's CallVantage Linksys router to work in our system.  Supposedly.  Lo and behold, it failed in exactly the same very weird way.  Back to the AT&T helpdesk again.  Different tech, same diagnosis:  a bad SLIC.

Wait a minute.  Two routers failing at the same time, and in a peculiar way even the help techs found hard to believe?  Another long time spent on the phone, this time "further up" in the helpdesk hierarchy.  An apparently very knowledgeable man tried every thing he could, to the point where Porter now knows a lot about the insides and hidden parts of Linksys routers.  Nonetheless, the final conclusion was, "As unbelievable as this seems, it appears you really do have two routers with bad SLIC's."

Stay tuned.  And please be patient when you call.  On the plus side, this has dramatically cut down on the number of nuisance phone calls we get.

So who is Celia Nicklin?  Beats me, but she is responsible for my getting up before five o'clock this morning.

I awoke at 4:20; although I normally have no trouble falling back to sleep at such an hour, today the process was taking a little longer, so I turned on the radio to distract my mind.  I came in on the tail end of a Chopin piano piece, then heard the next selection announced:  Johann Vanhal's Symphony in g minor.  You all know Vanhal, right?  Neither do I.  Nor had I heard of the London Mozart Players.  Perhaps I'm just ignorant; perhaps there's good reason:  in any case, I was back asleep after only a few bars.

Until I awoke to the sound of an oboe.  Somewhere in the middle of the piece there's a long oboe solo—so long that I wondered if I'd slept through the whole symphony and we were now on to some oboe concerto.  Perhaps it was the sound of the oboe that aroused me; what kept me awake was the quality.  It was gorgeous!  Smooth, flowing, light tone, with none of the harshness I've come to associate with the European oboe style.  Unbelievably gentle phrase endings, even on high notes.  The music itself was actually rather uninspiring, but I couldn't stop listening to the way it was played.  London orchestra or not, I was sure the soloist had to be an American, or at least American-trained, and was probably someone I'd heard of.

Needless to say, there was no hope of sleep after that.  I stayed awake to discover the truth—it was, indeed, still the Vanhal—and to do some Internet research to find the name of the oboist.  And to find out that she is English-born and English/German trained, and I'd never heard of her.  So I was wrong—but I wasn't wrong about her sound, and I'd like to hear her on a more interesting piece of music.

Or maybe not.  I don't really have time to post this morning (or I'd be working on my Why the Rest Hates the West review), but one of the blogs I check occasionally has a post so fitting to Janet's frustration with the unsmiling Swiss that I had to write.

In both the Marginal Revolution post, Don't smile too much, and the original New York Times' TierneyLab post, Solved:  The Mystery of the Miserable Models, and their attendant comments, are some enlightening observations on why not smiling is associated with higher class, quality, expense, power, and dominance.  Sad commentary as that is, it fits in with two other experiences that have come to mind recently.

When my mother worked as a teacher's aide in an elemenary school, she tried to call attention to the plight of a small child of Asian origin who was being harrassed by the other students.  The teacher would not take her seriously, because in her view the boy must be happy, since he was smiling all the time.  My mother—correctly, I'm sure—interpreted those smiles as cringing deference, masking fear.

I was talking with a British friend, who lives in France, and his observation was that many Europeans view a person who smiles at strangers as either mentally unbalanced or a prostitute!

Having so recently read Meic Pearse's analysis of Western anticulture, I can't help seeing a connection between a meaningless culture of consumption and entertainment, such as pervades Europe, Canada, the United States, and other places with a great "Western" influence, and the loss of smiling, innocent happiness.  (Not to say that this anticulture is common amongst "real people" in any country; but to many, what is rampant in Hollywood, the news media, and academia is perceived as reality, and may indeed be becoming so.)

Why the Rest Hates the West:  Understanding the Roots of Global Rage, by Meic Pearse (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2004)

This is not a book review; not yet.  I long to write about Meic Pearse's book, but it deserves a detailed and extensive review which I cannot at the moment accomplish.  Rather than wait entirely until I can put in the requisite time and effort, however, I'm posting this placeholder, because this is an incredibly valuable book!  Its somewhat unfortunate title calls to mind the hand-wringing post-9/11 whine, "Why do they hate us?" but Why the Rest Hates the West is a serious, insightful analysis of the chasm between modern Western culture—more precisely, "anti-culture"—and the rest of the world that no one with more than a few years left on this earth can afford to ignore.

Find the book!  Read it!  Then come back here and tell me what you think.

And I'll put Li'l Writer Guy to work on the review.

Tonight I had some mushrooms to use up, and created a dish that Porter really, really liked.  (So did I, for that matter.)  So I'm writing it down, as best I can, in hopes of being able to repeat it.  Since it was all spur-of-the-moment and I didn't measure anything, all quantities and even the directions are approximate.

2 tablespoons butter
1/2 medium onion, chopped
4 oz. mushrooms, sliced (I used a mixture of portabella, shiitake, and oyster)
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3/4 cup sherry
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon ketchup
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon mace
dash allspice
1/2 cup heavy cream

Caramelize onions in butter.  Add mushrooms and garlic and cook until soft.   Add sherry, simmer till somewhat reduced.  Add remaining ingredients; simmer till somewhat reduced.  Serve over pasta, rice, or wild rice.

Janet has a remarkable memory for faces, especially if seen in a dramatic/musical context.  I'll never forget when she was 13 years old, and immediately recognized the new high school chorus intern years after seeing him perform—in a video, on a small-screen television, in a non-speaking part—in a college opera production.

My memory for faces is quite the opposite.  I have a hard time recognizing good friends out of context!  What I've seen in print, however, is another story. 

A friend is looking forward to raising chickens, and on her blog mentioned her plans for acquiring buff orpingtons.  "Buff orpingtons"?  I know nothing about chickens other than a few good recipes, but as soon as I read her page I remembered the only other place I'd heard the term:  Dorothy Sayer's Busman's Honeymoon.  They play no role at all in the mystery, so there's no reason in particular I should have remembered them.

Last night we attended a Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra concert.  The first work was a beautiful modern piece called Musica Celestis, written by Aaron Jay Kernis; the last, Beethoven's Third Symphony.  In between we heard Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, featuring a cellist born in 1980 playing a cello born in 1790.  Both were delightful.  The cello was a Lorenzo Ventapane; the musician Julie Albers.

I recognized her name as soon as I saw it.  But why?  My first thoughts went down the logical trail of someone Janet knew at Eastman, but reading her biography squashed that idea.  When I learned she was from Longmont, Colorado, however, the mystery was solved.

Many years ago I discovered a book, by Robert Leland Johnson, called Super Babies.  It is the story of the first few years in the life of his son, Anthony—once a sickly, premature infant, now an MIT graduate.  At the very end of the book (1979), Anthony begins to take Suzuki violin lessons.  This morning I pulled the book off my shelves and quickly confirmed that his teacher had been a woman named Ellie Albers, of Longmont, Colorado.  Can anyone doubt my conclusion that Julie is her daughter?

Memory is an amazing thing.

I figured out why I am so impatient with sermons and generally find them the least important part of the church service:  I'm definitely a print person.  I'd rather read a story than hear it, and find written arguments more persuasive than spoken ones.  Still, I can't resist posting this homeschooler's speech, which Janet found.  The only quarrel I'd make with him is over his statement that community colleges provide "high level education."  Otherwise, he gives a good speech on the basic advantages of home education and counters some of the popular objections.

Everyone wants to "fix" our educational system.  But as long as most people have no choice over which school they attend, which teachers they sit under, and what they study, the system as a whole cannot be fixed.  At best we will continue to have an education lottery, because as long as schools are where people go to be taught, rather than to learn, everything depends on the teachers.

Today's Orlando Sentinel reports that although Florida's schools are being asked to place greater emphasis on the sciences, participation in county-wide science fairs is down drastically.  Some are blaming competition for students' time by other contests, such as Odyssey of the Mind; others bring out those customary whipping-boys, the pressures of standardized testing and of too many hours of employment.

(I could add another reason for disenchantment with science fairs, and that is obvious ignorance and prejudice on the part of the judges.  How frequent a failing this is I don't know; I suspect it's less common at the high school level.  But I know I lost my interest in encouraging our children to participate when a project that showed genuine mathematical inquiry and insight was passed over in favor of those which showed neatlly-graphed results of surveys of such things as classmates' snack food preferences.  Had the victim of this injustice not been my own child, I would have felt qualified to register a formal complaint.  As it was, I merely concluded that the judges either had no idea what mathematics is (not unlikely, at that level), or else disqualified the work on the basis that it could not possibly have been done by a first grader (she had had no chance to defend herself; her own teachers knew it was her work, but this was at the county level).  In any case, science fairs lost their luster for us at that point.)

Although not admitted directly, the article also holds the greatest clue to the puzzle:  so much depends on the teacher.

Science research matters to Doc Behel, and she makes it happen for Lake Brantley students.  Most other teachers do not.  Thanks in great measure to where their parents happen to reside, Doc's students have won the lottery in this particular field.  No doubt they lost in many others.  As long as the ability to choose one's own schools and teachers remains limited, we will continue to play educational roulette.

Not the same one as these people, certainly.

Thinking it was from someone else, I followed Erica's link in her comment on Heather and Jon's blog, which eventually led me to this supposedly funny story about the differences between the way men and women prepare dinner.  I realize it's intended to be hyperbolic, but there's enough seriousness in the post and responses to make me believe there's another world out there that has nothing to do with anyone I know.

First of all, who brought this man up that he is surprised to learn that it's rude to ask someone to make you (and some friends) dinner (big faux pas), then call her up an hour before mealtime to tell her you've eaten a big lunch and aren't hungry, so she needn't bother cooking (enormously huge faux pas)?  C'mon—there can't really be anyone so clueless on the planet, can there?

Secondly, the characterization of a man's approach to a meal might have been credible 50 years ago, though even for that time I have my doubts.  In any case, many of the men I know are good cooks who frequently exercise their talents, and the rest can do so in a pinch.  Sure, we all—male and female—have been known to "just grab something" when feeding only ourselves.  But for guests?

Nor is his picture of a woman preparing a meal much more reasonable, though at least it helps him grasp the idea that planning and work are involved.  But no one I know, of any sex, prepares meals that way—even allowng for the hyperbole—except for very special occasions.

Not being able to respond on the blogs I encountered while discovering this other planet, I resort to venting on my own forum.  Do YOU know people like this?

Still, I give him lots of credit for realizing he was a boor, and wanting to do better.  We need more people like that on our planet.

I found this gem reading MacDonald's story, The Portent.  Not profound, but there are several readers of this blog who will appreciate it.

[part of a dialogue between a student and his tutor] 

I suppose I should throw out my Peter Pan peanut butter.

Having read about the recall, I quietly scoffed at the paranoia of those who recommended getting rid of all peanut butter, as if the net of the "2111" product code weren't wide enough.  And all this fuss when no actual contamination has (yet) been found in the product—just a statistical link.

But just for fun, I looked at the product code on my jar, and lo and behold, it begins with the Number of the Peanut Butter Beast.

The fact that I've already consumed more than half the contents of the jar ought to count for something, though.

The Well-Educated Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer (W W Norton & Co, NY 2003)

The Well-Educated Mind reminds me of Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, only it's less intimidating. In a time when most people who can read, don't, and in which teachers are thrilled if their students read anything at all, no matter how worthless or even harmful, it's sobering to be reminded that—avid reader as I am—there is a world of reading far beyond the level of attention I bring to a book. My palate can distinquish between a white wine and a red, and can distinguish each from kerosene, but the sophisticated analysis of even a moderate expert is beyond by attainment. Susan Wise Bauer encourages me to believe it is not beyond my reach, however.

This may be what those annoying English teachers were trying so unsuccessfully to convey when they sucked all the fun out of a book by their analysis. If so, I missed the point altogether, because Bauer's approach—which incorporates historical, social, and literary context along with what amounts to a serious paying attention to what one reads—is both challenging and intriguing. In reality, I have to admit my list of books to read once, let alone three times with note-taking, is intimidating as it is. Still, I've already gained just by reading this book. (Once only, and even so not quite all of the extensive readings section before I had to return it to the library.)

Like The Well-Trained Mind, The Well-Educated Mind would be worthwhile for the extensive list (with summaries) of recommended reading alone.