Lift Up Your Hearts!

Around here, we try to reuse sheets of paper that still have one good, blank side, which sometimes results in amusing or confusing combinations, as one wonders, "Is the back side of this page important?"  Or even, "Which is the operative side here?"  Yesterday I was browsing through my book of recipes—okay, my random collection of pages of all sizes and shapes stuck haphazardly in a notebook—when I came upon the recipe for "Nancy's Great Cookies."  On the back was a list of words, probably though not definitely in Heather's handwriting, which would make it quite an old list.  Although the words seemed random, I immediately realized that they were not.

Breathes there the man—or at least the American—with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!:  at, all, and, ball, bit, bump, cold, could, did, do, day, it, I, in, house, him, how, jump, go, looked, like, little, mat, made, not, nothing, on, one, out, play, sally, saw, sat, said, so, something, shine, sit, sun, step, that, two, the, too, then, to, there, us, we, was, went, wet, with, wish.

I awoke this morning to e-mails from two family members, each containing a link to a video.  They seemed as unrelated as can be...until I realized that each is a powerful statement of how we underestimate the abilities of ordinary human beings—from frumpy housewives to scruffy street children.

I'll admit it:  I did not get through Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent performance dry-eyed, her triumph over the sneering judges being overlaid on some pretty deep emotional memories associated with that song.

The lecture could have been better organized, especially at the end where the speaker is clearly running out of time, but the autodidactic abilities of these children will astound you.  And maybe frighten you, when you consider what a double-edged blade the Internet is.

I'm sure you're all waiting on the edges of your chairs for news about our worm farm.  I'm getting more and more excited, as they are finally beginning to make garbage disappear.  I made the mistake of thinking of this as an out-of-the-box working system:  having taken the plunge and bought the Can-o-Worms, I could no longer bear to throw away kitchen garbage.  However, this was like buying a brood of newborn chicks and expecting free-range eggs for breakfast the next morning.  After filling up and freezing two large bags of scraps, which I labelled "worm food," I gritted my teeth and returned to former disposal habits. The worms are settling in, eating their plenteous coir fiber introductory bedding, and growing.  For now, they are teenagers without teenage appetites.  A fully mature system should be able to handle five to eight pounds of waste per week, but for now I must be patient.

They've shed their post-transplant shyness, however; when I lift up their moisture mat I can see they are happy and active.  And they're finally beginning to turn garbage into gold, albeit in small amounts.  Already we're harvesting fertilizer in the form of the liquid that drains from the bottom—it's not as good as it will be, I'm sure, but enough to keep me enthusiastic as we wait.

Is anyone else as frustrated as I am with Word's so-called Title Case (called "Capitalize Each Word" in Word 2007)?  I haven't actually found any use for that option; in general, only the more important words of a title should begin with uppercase letters.

But ta-da!  The Internet comes to the rescue, again.  Allen Wyatt's WordTips has a macro that will do what is needed.  Here it is, modified slightly—I added "an" and "and" to the list of words that should not be capitalized, and removed "is"; I was taught that all verbs, even small ones, are important enough to be capitalized.  It's easy to change the list to suit your needs, and I may modify it further through time.  If the excluded words occur at the beginning of the title, they are left in uppercase.

Sub TitleCase()
    Dim lclist As String
    Dim wrd As Integer
    Dim sTest As String

    ' list of lowercase words, surrounded by spaces
    lclist = " a an as and at but by for from in into nor of or the this to with "

    Selection.Range.Case = wdTitleWord

    For wrd = 2 To Selection.Range.Words.Count
        sTest = Trim(Selection.Range.Words(wrd))
        sTest = " " & LCase(sTest) & " "
        If InStr(lclist, sTest) Then
            Selection.Range.Words(wrd).Case = wdLowerCase
        End If
    Next wrd
End Sub

I'm no Word macro expert, but found this easy to install in Word 2007.   On the View tab, click the arrow under Macros.  Choose View Macros, then change the macro name to "TitleCase" (without the quotes) and click Create.  Visual Basic opens up with your macros, including one at the end for TitleCase.  Replace the rather empty text there—from "Sub Titlecase ()" through "End Sub"—with the macro above.  I added a button for the TitleCase macro to my Quick Access Toolbar, and now it's ready whenever I want it.

SFSignal asked of several present-day science fiction writers, "What non-sf/fantasy books would you recommend to someone whose reading was predominantly in sf/fantasy?"  I found the responses notable for two reasons:

One of the respondents was John Kessel, whom I remember from the Science Fiction Society of the University of Rochester.  (I remember him as Jack, rather than John, but that could be either a no-longer-used nickname, or my own faulty memory.  In any case I'm sure it's the same person.)  Although an avid SF fan for much of my early life, I've been away from the genre for a long time and have read none of Kessel's books, but it was a pleasure to see that he succeeded in turning an avocation into a vocation.

The most delightful response to the question, however, came from John C. Wright.  It is neither typical of the responses nor what most people would expect from a science fiction writer.  I excerpt it here for those of my readers who care very little about science fiction but a lot about book lists and good reading. 

[I]t is a common experience to come across readers, especially readers of the generation after mine, who have read science fiction and fantasy so exclusively that they do not know what it is that they are reading. For them, the book is taken out of context, and is not part of that great conversation where the books of one generation speak to the books of another. The reading of the science-fiction-only reader becomes insular, and he does not recognize what he is reading. This kind of reader is the kind who thinks the trite ideas of Kurt Vonnegut are profound, merely because he has not come across them before in mainstream books, and (more to the point) has never come across the rebuttals. With fantasy the insularity is even worse: the fantasy reader who has not read the original ancient epic poems of which modern fantasy is merely a variation or imitation runs the risk of being unduly impressed with a watered-down and modernized version of a rich and ancient literary tradition.

He may be addressing current generation science fiction/fantasy readers, but what he says about lack of understanding of context and the "great conversation" probably applies to 95% of the American public, myself included.

1. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. These are the seminal works of which all successive Western literature merely forms a footnote. The fantastic elements, gods and monsters, curses and destinies and princes in disguise, the fall of mighty cities in the ruin of war, and all which form the backbone of modern fantasy, are present in their original forms here. These elements here serve a strong literary purpose usually absent from a tale of wonder.
2. The Aeneid of Virgil. The Roman poet and magician Virgil had a sense of history absent from blind Homer: his hero served a fate that would shape the world. It would be difficult to read about Conan of Cimmeria, Gandalf the White, Jommy Cross, Michael Valentine Smith, Paul Atriedes , or Ender Wiggins without an appreciation of the archetypical tale of a hero's journey, from the destruction of Troy, across cursed and monster-haunted seas, to the underworld and back again, through Punic love and Palatine wars.
3. Various Greek tragedies: Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound; Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone; Euripides: Hippolytus, Bacchae. These are the mighty and majestic writings of which modern fantastic literature is at best a variation on a theme, or, at worst, merely a pale imitation. One could make the argument that all science fiction follows in the footsteps of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (indeed, this is the gist of the argument made by Brian Aldiss). Frankenstein, also known as Prometheus Unbound, is a riff or reversal of Prometheus Bound. With apologies to classical scholars, I will not recommend any Greek Comedies: their influence on successive generations have been minimal.
4. The Biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Chronicles, Kings, Psalms, Job. A reader would be grossly uninformed not recognize the overwhelming impact the Biblical writings have had, not merely on the religion of Europe, but upon the literature. The basic difference between Greek and Biblical epics can be seen in the contrast between Oedipus and Jacob, or between King David and Prince Orestes. The ancient Greek cannot escape his fate; the ancient Jew can repent and choose again. No Greek hero would have spared King Saul when finding him asleep in a cave, as David did, for example.
5. The Peloponnesian War of Thucydides. There is no point in reading or writing military SF if you do not have an idea of why battles are fought. No writer has ever been clearer on the causes of war. Merely reading Starship Troopers is not going to tell you what the military is all about.
6. Paradise Lost of Milton. The Puritan poet pre-empts the entire field of English epic poetry in this work, and he suborns the motifs and tropes of Homer and Virgil, reversing the role of heroics to display the difference between Christian and Pagan themes. The modern world view which you, dear reader, have absorbed with your mother's milk, has been influenced, like it or not, by these themes, so you might as well know whence they come.
7. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The Modern SF tale is a variation of the traveler's tales of old, a genre that Swift expropriates for his own didactic and satiric purposes. Merely reading Stranger in a Strange Land is not going to tell you what satire is all about.
8. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This is the original for Asimov's Foundation, and is one of the books that founded the literature of history. At the same time, I might also recommend some of the historical novels of Alfred Duggan, such as Knight with Armor or Little Emporers. I have read far too many fantasy novels by writers whose knowledge of the Middle Ages comes from playing Dungeons and Dragons, and a little bit of realism comes in handy.
9. Plato's Timaeus and Critias. The origin of the Atlantis story. Also, the first attempt to use fiction as a vehicle for presenting a political theory.
10. Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia. All Utopian and Dystopian SF springs from this fountain. It makes for interesting reading, since what is being described is a Puritan, and not a Communist, communism.
11. Plutarch's Lives, especially : "Caesar," "Cato the Younger," "Antony," "Brutus."
12. Dante's Divine Comedy. This is what Niven and Pournelle were copying in their Inferno.
13. Tolstoy's War and Peace. Obviously.
14. Mallory's Le Mort d'Arthur. Modern fantasy should know its roots.
15. Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Again, modern fantasy should know its roots.
16. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is good practice learning how to read and to write a good book. Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is the germ from which endless SFF stories of time travel, first contact, and high-tech meets low-tech derive.
17. Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar and various Sonnets. If you have not read the Bard, you are a Philistine.

I cannot end the list without giving honorable mention to Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton, and Napoleon of Notting Hill by the same author. These are not science fiction, but they pass close enough that our watchmen on the boundaries can see them plain without a spyglass. Napoleon of Notting Hill, by no coincidence, takes place in the year 1984. In both these books we see some of the conventions and assumptions common to science fiction turned on their head to comical, and even philosophical, effect. (For example, the opening line of Notting Hill contains what could be a warning for science fiction writers: The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at one of the games called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.)

The reason why it is important to have a grounding in these great books, whose fame will never pass away...is that perspective matters....The modern reader who reads modern books by authors who only read modern books runs the risk of merely accepting the assumptions of the modern age without examining or questioning them. Since we live in an age particularly addicted to narrative propaganda fastidiously divorced from reality or reason, this danger is not harmless.

An unexamined idea is not worth having! (This is an idea of mine I have always accepted without question.)

Like the Internet itself, YouTube reveals the secrets you thought you'd left far behind you.  Even when they're not secrets.

In this case, the past lives of two church friends (one from a former church, one present) have been revealed.  Not being a rock'n'roll kinda gal, neither The Producers nor Johnny Winter meant anything to me, but I got a kick out of seeing Kyle and Floyd in their previous incarnations.

Looking back at my Lenten disciplines for 2009, I find it was a surprising exercise.  While I can't say I was perfect in keeping them, two worked so well I intend to continue the practices.

The computer goes off at 9:00 every night.   When I stick to a 10 p.m. bedtime, my life goes much better, but that's not always easy, especially when I'm in the middle of a project and "just one more thing" can lead to midnight or beyond.  Not only are most of my projects computer-oriented, but for some reason computing is one of those areas where I blink and two hours have passed. If I get nothing else from this discipline, at least I'll be better rested.

Discipline 1 was downright pleasant, except on days when my evenings were taken up by other things, like choir practice; then I felt entitled to at least a few minutes of computer time after getting home.  But even then the rule kept that time short.  I enjoyed having the excuse to stop work, and it dovetailed nicely with Discipline 3:

I'll spend between a half hour and an hour reading each day.  Preferably the longer time, though I haven't managed it yet.  I know; that's hardly a sacrifice.  But I've noticed that over the last several years my reading has become even more fractured and fragmented than it was when I had small children at home, if that were possible.  I read blogs, articles, and news stories online; I listen to audio books in the car as I run errands, I skim magazines.  I read books in five-minute gulps as I can throughout the day—on visits to the "reading room," while eating, while falling asleep at night.  What I'm missing is concentrated time on a single, book-length topic, and I have a very large stack of quality books—many recently purchased and one overdue at the library—on which the derivative of my progress is negative.  I'm hoping that a short, but consistent, dedicated time will reverse the trend.

Finding concentrated reading time during the day was more difficult than I had hoped, but turning off the computer an hour before bedtime led naturally to reading afterwards.  It was especially enjoyable because Porter often joined me.  I finished G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils (oops, not reviewed yet) and made good headway on Thomas Dubay's Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel on Prayer.  I'm almost halfway through that one, and without the Discipline I quite likely would have set it aside, as it is more difficult and less inspiring than I had hoped.

It was Discipline 2 that was most revealing.

I'm giving up reading and/or working puzzles while I eat.  Most of you will find this odd, but it is a real sacrifice for me.  I agree wholeheartedly with C. S. Lewis, who said, "Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably." There's no reason not to combine them; I'm doing this because it's a great pleasure I can dispense with for 40 days as an exercise in self-denial, without troubling anyone else or falling terribly behind in my work.  Exception:  Porter and I sometimes do puzzles together during meals; for obvious reasons I'm not abstaining from them.

This was unbelievably hard, and the strength with which I resisited it tells me I've hit an area in my life that needs work.  Whenever I had food or drink in front of me, I cried out, body and soul, for a book or a puzzle—as an addict must cry out for drugs.  It's amazing how many ways I devised to cheat:  working on the computer I justified if I didn't let myself read articles, blogs, or e-mails; going through my Penzeys catalogue needed to be done so I could place an order, even though it involved reading the spice descriptions; we watched movies during dinner; I would clean the refrigerator while eating, organize the cupboards while eating...anything but sit-down-and-eat-and-nothing-else.  Such a waste of time to do nothing else!  Once I even caught myself adding words to my crossword puzzle between bites, because, after all, I wasn't actually eating when I put pencil to paper.  It was easier when I had someone else to eat with; alone, I was miserable, until I finally discovered I could diminish the craving by taking my meal onto the back porch and enjoying the lovely spring weather.  Even then I couldn't stop Li'l Writer Guy from working—that's going to require an intense course in meditation techniques, I suspect.  I lived for Sundays:  On the Sabbaths I released myself from this Discipline—though I usually continued the others.

I could probably lose 30 pounds by forcing myself to do nothing but eat when I am eating.  I'm thinking of marketing the Full Attention Diet.  ("Fad diets are not the answer to your weight problems—FAD is!")  The rules are simple.

• Eat whatever you want, whenever you want.
• While you are eating, do nothing else.  No reading, no watching TV, no working, no walking around—just eating.  The only exception is for mealtime conversation, with which nothing should be allowed to interfere.  You may eat while listening attentively to what other people have to say.  (It goes without saying that you don't eat when you are the one talking.)
• Don't eat mechanically; take time to enjoy the flavors and textures of your food. This should be easy, since you'll have nothing else to do.
• Give yourself time between meals to enjoy the other pleasures that you normally associate with eating, so you won't be tempted to view mealtime as the only time you have for them...and to keep eating so you can keep reading....
• Brush your teeth after every time you eat.  The reason for this last rule is to minimize the read-between-bites syndrome.  Trust me; if there's a loophole, I'll make use of it.

From the frequency of my posting recently, my overwhelmed readers can see I'm hacking away at a hugh backlog.  Here's another  in the Casting the Net series, which makes the job easier for me, if not for you. The good news is, like the can't-pass-this-up offer at the bottom of my inbox, and that $1 off coupon that's been in my wallet for six months, several of my must-posts are enough out of date I can cheerfully hit the delete key and not trouble you with them.

Free-Range Kids.  I've only begun to explore Lenore Skenazy's site, but I like the premise, and it goes well with this cartoon.  Skenazy found herself plunged into controversy after whe wrote a column for The New York Sun entitled, Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone.

I started this site for anyone who thinks that kids need a little more freedom and would like to connect to people who feel the same way.  We are not daredevils. We believe in life jackets and bike helmets and air bags. But we also believe in independence.  Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned.  So here’s to Free Range Kids, raised by Free Range Parents willing to take some heat. I hope this web site encourages us all to think outside the house.

---

George F. Will's What Fear of Liability Has Wrought has unfortunately not gone out of date.

Called to a Florida school that could not cope, police led the disorderly student away in handcuffs, all 40 pounds of her 5-year-old self....No official at the...school would put a restraining arm around the misbehaving child lest he or she be sued, as a young member of Teach for America was...because the teacher put a hand on the back of a turbulent seventh-grader to direct him to leave the classroom.

In Indiana, a boy did what boys [and girls, I might add] do: He went down a slide head first—and broke his femur. The school district was sued for inadequate supervision.

A volunteer for a Catholic charity in Milwaukee ran a red light and seriously injured another person. Because the volunteer did not have deep pockets, the injured person sued the archdiocese—successfully, for $17 million.

The warning label on a five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook says, "Harmful if swallowed"; the label on a letter opener says, "Safety goggles recommended."

The thread connecting such lunacies is a fear permeating American life. It is, alas, a sensible fear arising from America's increasingly perverse legal culture that is the subject of what surely will be 2009's most needed book on public affairs—[attorney Philip] Howard's Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law.

Time was, rights were defensive. They were to prevent government from doing things to you. Today, rights increasingly are offensive weapons wielded to inflict demands on other people, using state power for private aggrandizement. The multiplication of rights, each lacking limiting principles, multiplies nonnegotiable conflicts.

But in such a society, dazed by what Howard calls "rule stupor" and victimized by litigious "victims," the incentives are for intensified complaining. Read Howard's book, and weep for the death of common sense.

---

Babies Know:  A Little Dirt Is Good for You, from Jane E. Brody in The New York Times.  Handwashing is a good thing, especially after using the bathroom, before preparing food, and during the time in our church service between the Peace, in which we've shaken hands with anyone and everyone we can reach, and the Eucharist, in which the bread is placed in those same hands and tranferred directly to our mouths.  Nonetheless, I agree that the germ-free life, like the risk-free life decried above, is unheathy, especially for our children.

In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma.

“What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment,” Mary Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt Is Good” (Kaplan). “Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.”

“Children raised in an ultraclean environment,” [said Dr. Joel V. Weinstock, the director of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston], “are not being exposed to organisms that help them develop appropriate immune regulatory circuits.”

Studies he has conducted with Dr. David Elliott, a gastroenterologist and immunologist at the University of Iowa, indicate that intestinal worms, which have been all but eliminated in developed countries, are “likely to be the biggest player” in regulating the immune system to respond appropriately, Dr. Elliott said in an interview. He added that bacterial and viral infections seem to influence the immune system in the same way, but not as forcefully.

Most worms are harmless, especially in well-nourished people, Dr. Weinstock said.

Dr. Ruebush deplores the current fetish for the hundreds of antibacterial products that convey a false sense of security and may actually foster the development of antibiotic-resistant, disease-causing bacteria. Plain soap and water are all that are needed to become clean, she noted.

“I certainly recommend washing your hands after using the bathroom, before eating, after changing a diaper, before and after handling food,” and whenever they’re visibly soiled, she wrote. When no running water is available and cleaning hands is essential, she suggests an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Dr. Weinstock goes even further. “Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat,” he said. He and Dr. Elliott pointed out that children who grow up on farms and are frequently exposed to worms and other organisms from farm animals are much less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune diseases.

Also helpful, he said, is to “let kids have two dogs and a cat,” which will expose them to intestinal worms that can promote a healthy immune system.

Amen to all but the last statement, which unfortunately would discourage visits from Grandma:  having cats as pets did not teach my own immune system not to overreact to the presence of their dander.

Thanks to Percival Blakeney Academy for publicising Southern Utah University communicatio major Jeffrey Wilbur's direct and pithy denunciation of restrictive "free speech zones."  (Brilliant, even if he did exclude Alaska and Hawaii.)

In light of SUU officials [sic] plan to designate "Free Speech Zones" on campus, I thought I'd offer my assistance. Grab a map. OK, ready?

All right, you see that big area between Canada and Mexico, surrounded by lots of blue ink on the East and West? You see it?

There's your bloody Free Speech Zone.

Once again I wonder why people can't make their points without resorting to offensive language, but as a great deal of blood was spilled to put the First Amendment into effect, perhaps it's appropriate.

Unfortunately, free speech—like free markets—can do great damage when not moderated by ethical principles.  (Nothing complex required:  the Golden Rule would suffice.)  Stepping out from under the restrictions of a moral code invites the imposition of far greater—and often irrational—restrictions in response to real, perceived, or potential public harm.

(I'll be including some links in this post, but follow them with care if you think there's a chance you'll want to watch the movies, as they contain spoilers.)

Our church periodically holds "communication" classes, mostly designed for couples, although the tools and techniques we discuss are applicable for all relationships, so I wish it was more widely advertised.  Be that as it may, most of us find ourselves signing up again and again, not so much for the content as for an excuse and a framework for spending time together.

In the most recent incarnation of the class, we began with watching the movie, Fireproof, and are working our way through The Love Dare book, which is featured in the movie.  Although it has some good points, I can't say as I've found the book all that useful, but the movie was great.  It was so enjoyable we hastened to put the company's previous film, Facing the Giants, high on our Netflix queue.  While not quite as well-made as Fireproof, it is still excellent—take note that I thoroughly enjoyed watching a movie about football!

Why did I like the movie?  First of all, it must be admitted, because it wasn't as bad as I had expected.  I've seen my share of church-produced films and low-budget, Sunday school fare, and most of them are so poorly made they're embarrassing.  As the film progressed, however, I grudgingly moved from "not so bad" to "riveting, gripping, and amazing."  No, it's not perfect, and neither is Facing the Giants, and there are one or two awkwardly-done "preachy" moments.  But overall, both are believable, delightful stories.  It's true that events and changes happen more quickly and easily than in real life, but this is a common dramatic device and requires no more of a willing suspension of disbelief than most movie and television fare.  And unlike most movie and television fare, the characters are recognizable, more like people I know than the characters I usually see on the screen.

Movie critics, and no doubt many veteran movie-watchers, will fault these films for their positive attitudes.  "Unrealistic," they would say.  This pervasive, modern viewpoint was described (and decried) well enough over 50 years ago by C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters; here one tempter is explaining to another how to use it to his advantage:

The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are "real," while the spiritual elements are "subjective"; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be an escapist.  Thus in birth the blood and pain are "real," the rejoicing a mere subjective point of view; in death, the terror and ugliness reveal what death "really means."  The hatefulness of a hated person is "real"—in hatred you see men as they are, you are disillusioned; but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a "real" core of sexual appetite or economic association.  Wars and poverty are "really" horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments….Your patient, properly handled, will have no difficulty in regarding his emotion at the sight of human entrails as a revelation of reality and his emotion at the sight of happy children or fair weather as mere sentiment.

What is truly unbelievable is how these movies were made.  Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who between the two of them cover the writer, producer, director, and some of the actor positions, are pastors at a Baptist Church in Georgia.  The instrumental scores were written by the church's music director.  While there were a few professionals involved, nearly all the work—including most of the acting roles—was done by church volunteers.  The budget for Facing the Giants (2006) was only $100,000, and for Fireproof (2008) $500,000.  For comparison, The Chronicles of Narnia:  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had a U.S. budget of $180 million, Star Wars Episode III:  Revenge of the Sith (2005) $113 million, Gone with the Wind (1939) 3.9 million. Granted, Facing the Giants is nowhere near Revenge of the Sith in quality, nor does it pretend to be—but on the other hand the latter is nowhere near 1000 times better.  I'm not knocking the value of professionals, but I am blown away by what can be accomplished by volunteers.  It was that good.

The experience reminds me of my reaction to Alex and Brett Harris's Do Hard Things.  Surely we expect too little of ourselves.

A brilliant student, Marcus sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Marcus puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Marcus suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son’s confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Marcus (who is a composite drawn from several children). Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

The story above is from a Scientific American Mind article entitled The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. (I've changed the name because in the original it is "Jonathan."  Apologies to any Marcuses who might read this.)  I insist that Marcus was probably right:  most seventh grade schoolwork is boring and pointless.  Be that as it may, the article investigates a question I have wrestled with for decades:  Why do so many bright students fail of their promise, surpassed sooner or later by their apparently average, ordinary classmates?

My own conclusion is that children who meet no challenge in their early schoolwork miss the opportunity to struggle early in life, when they are best able to learn from the experience. Eventually, even the most intelligent person will encounter a problem that does not admit of easy solution.  An average student will learn while still very young that answers aren't handed to him, but must be wrested from the universe with much study and effort.  The gifted student may not encounter this harsh reality until college or graduate school, when his approach to learning and problem-solving is already well established and may be difficult or impossible to change.  Hence my frustration with the American educational system, which in the main deprives young, smart children of the opportunities they need to develop one of life's most essential skills:  perseverence in the face of difficulty.

The article suggests another dimension to the problem, and what's better, an approach to counteracting it.  "Helpless" students have a fixed mind-set about intelligence, viewing it as something inborn and generally unchangeable.  "Mastery-oriented" students believe intelligence is malleable, and have what the authors call a growth mind-set.  Unfortunately, telling our children that they are smart, and allowing them to be labelled as "gifted and talented," encourages the former view.  We would do well, instead, to praise them for hard work and persistence, and emphasize to them that the brain, like a muscle, grows with exercise.

[M]ore than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

[C]hildren...who coast through the early grades [in school] under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted....hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

The students with a stagnant view of intelligence were presumably unwilling to admit to their deficit and thus passed up the opportunity to correct it.

Mind-set can affect the quality and longevity of personal relationships as well, through people’s willingness—or unwillingness—to deal with difficulties. Those with a fixed mind-set are less likely than those with a growth mind-set to broach problems in their relationships and to try to solve them....After all, if you think that human personality traits are more or less fixed, relationship repair seems largely futile. Individuals who believe people can change and grow, however, are more confident that confronting concerns in their relationships will lead to resolutions.

How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about math geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set, our studies have shown. People also communicate mind-sets through praise. Although many, if not most, parents believe that they should build up a child by telling him  or her how brilliant and talented he or she is, our research suggests that this is misguided.

In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, [we] gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”  We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

[Some colleagues and I] recently designed an eight-session workshop for 91 students whose math grades were declining in their first year of junior high. Forty-eight of the students received instruction in study skills only, whereas the others attended a combination of study skills sessions and classes in which they learned about the growth mind-set and how to apply it to schoolwork.

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

As the semester progressed, the math grades of the kids who learned only study skills continued to decline, whereas those of the students given the growth-mind-set training stopped falling and began to bounce back to their former levels.

Teaching children such information is not just a ploy to get them to study. People do differ in intelligence, talent and ability. And yet research is converging on the conclusion that great accomplishment, and even what we call genius, is typically the result of years of passion and dedication and not something that flows naturally from a gift. Mozart, Edison, Curie, Darwin and Cézanne were not simply born with talent; they cultivated it through tremendous and sustained effort.

There is a place for what used to be called salty language in our discourse.  As a seasoning, however, it is more like Dave's Insanity Sauce, and the extent to which it is poured out today only proves that our societal tastebuds have been destroyed.  Why can't people—especially intelligent, articulate people—communicate without being offensive?

The Front Porch Republic recently highlighted a lecture from 2004 featuring James Howard Kunstler.  His occasional use of a particularly offensive four-letter-word keeps me from embedding the video here, but anyone willing to take the risk can see it on the FPR site.  That I mention it at all is due to a suspicion that Kunstler may have a few good ideas, and the fact that I have one son-in-law who is interested in urban architecture and another who is interested in anything that promotes community life.

I do not share Kunstler's distain of suburbia.  I approve of yards (back and front) where children can play without constant supervision and where families can grow their own fruits, vegetables, and flowers (and even, in the right neighborhoods, their own chickens); of quiet streets where neighbors walk and chat after dinner while their children organize kickball games; of tiny wild places where birds and small animals can prosper.  If this is not everyone's view of suburbia, it is the suburbia in which I grew up, and I will not have it tarred with the brush of scorn.

Also I wonder about his approval of stores built to the sidewalk's edge.  When we moved from Florida to Massachusetts I remember feeling quite claustrophobic for just that reason, as if the buildings were crowding and jostling me more than my fellow pedestrians.  With that exception, I can see the appeal of his approach to urban planning, especially in contrast to the sterility of blank walls and parking lots.

There is a city near us called Winter Park, one of the older cities nearby, and I've often said it's the closest we'll get here to a European feel, with its cafés and coffeehouses, its central park area, its old apartments and its farmer's market.  Unfortunately, the character has been changing over the years as big chains buy out the little stores, but some of the community feeling remains, perhaps because the architecture is unchanged.

Green is as green does.

[Quoting Desperate (Green) Housewives] The greenest people are totally unhip and unlikely to be photographed for the Times or a glossy magazine. They’re still wearing their clothes from twenty years ago. They aren’t keeping their home spa-worthy clean. No need to worry about polluting the air with chemicals, if you aren’t dusting every five minutes. They aren’t constantly renovating their kitchens and bathrooms, all of which uses enormous amounts of energy and resources; they are still living with the Formica numbers from the 70s. They aren’t jetting off to Europe to browse the Paris markets; they go bowling in the next town over. They aren’t constantly shopping for new things and tossing out the old things.

Barring the bit about jetting off to Europe (is it okay if the purpose is to visit family?) the author could have been peering in our window.  Good to know we're cool if not hip.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Did anyone else grow up with that phrase hanging around their living environment—as counsel, as a warning, as a reprimand? I did. We sure didn’t live it as well as we might have, but still, I heard it recited often enough, from my parents and grandparents and church leaders and others, to accept it as the Gospel truth, long before I read any of the philosophy or politics or economics that persuaded me of its correctness on their own. Basically, the message is that the way to prosperity and happiness—at least insofar as the material world is concerned—is to live conservatively and renounce extravagance and stick with what you have and know.

[R]eal environmentalism begins with “tending to” our environment, rather than upgrading it or ourselves in the name of continual betterment, and supporting those moral causes and political campaigns that are actually trying to make tending to our families and jobs and neighborhoods more possible, rather than selling us on constantly retraining and retrofitting ourselves and our world.

Sons of Liberty, 2009

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of Kansas secessionists. The participants were rowdy, complaining of economic gigantism squashing them flat and bureaucratic thugs hounding their every move. They were all sick and tired of worker-ant existence in the hive-mind of American groupthink and they wanted out....Kansas patriots fomenting disunion? No, though there are a few of those kicking around these parts. These were local farmers organizing a farmer’s market....[T]he Spirit of ‘76 showed up in force. Damned were the federal busy-bodies who tell local farmers what they can and can’t sell; condemned were the centralized agents of agri-business who want ID chips implanted in livestock; mocked were the credentialed witch-doctors from the department of agriculture who own the brand “organic.”

All that was left undone was a patriotic march to the local Enormo-Mart to dump the limp and faded out-of-season tomatoes imported from South America into the local pond (which isn’t quite Boston Harbor, but it would have served). And while there was no Declaration, it was clear that these small growers wanted out–out of forced participation in the economic union of cheap mass production, central planning, credit money, and the ignorant consumerism they despised.

[Author Michael] Pollan issues this simple dictate: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The harping of a food-scold?  Perhaps. But Pollan fleshes his commandment out well, especially the first third. By “eat food” Pollan actually has in mind something quite revolutionary, because you can’t buy “food” most places. Walk into your local Mega-lo-Mart and what you see is not food—it’s processed corn syrup and assorted chemicals and “nutrients” packaged in plastic and shot so full of preservatives it will never rot.

Food rots. If it doesn’t rot, it’s not food. That’s a good principle to live by.

[S]elf-provisioning is dirty work done by sun hardened men who obtain...membership in the rarefied league of freemen who can pretty much tell anyone and everyone, as circumstances may require, to go to hell without concern for the consequences (taxman excepted). That’s the feed store definition of freedom in Jefferson County, Kansas, though it’s not taught much in social studies textbooks. Only such men—rich or poor, barber or builder, clodhopper or shopkeeper—know true equality, for they know and honor the true measure of the other....[T]he food problem in this country described and catalogued so aptly by Pollan is ultimately a symptom of the much more disturbing problem: that the league of freemen has dwindled to near extinction.  The important questions start not with what we eat but with who we are.

Where does Stephanie find these things?  I'm four days late but have to share this anyway.  If their country is no longer quite as pristine as when I visited 40 years ago, it's not the fault of these intrepid and dedicated Swiss!

Or, if you wish, in Russian, Dutch, or Italian.  Enjoy!

I know—the last thing you need is another blog to read!  And the one I’m about to recommend had several authors and consequently great risk of overwhelming your feed reader.  Especially since nearly all the posts are thought-provoking and well-written.

The Front Porch Republic is new—the first posts were on March 2 of this year—but has already produced so many shareable articles that it deserves its own post.  Treat yourself and subscribe to the Front Porch Republic; they have a Comments RSS feed as well, though I can’t usually keep up with it.  A mark of the quality of this blog (and its readers) is that the comments are so far above the “Your a &%$#& moron!” level seen all too often on websites without benefit of sufficient editorial oversight.

Knowing that most of you would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of meaty reading available there, however, I will continue my practice of sharing excerpts.  Here are a few by way of introduction:

Architecture matters.  I knew I missed our front porch; now I know why.  It’s a much easier way to interact with the neighbors than cleaning up after a hurricane.

[In his essay, “From Porch to Patio,” Richard Thomas] explores the social implications of the architectural practice of building porches on the front of homes and its eventual abandonment in favor of patios behind the house…. As with any central feature in our built environment, this is more than merely a passing fashion trend or a meaningless design change:  the transition from porch to patio was one of the clearest and significant manifestations the physical change from a society concerned with the relationship of private and public things—in the Latin, res publica—to one of increasing privacy.  The porch, as a physical bridge between the private realm of the house and the public domain of the street and sidewalk, was the literal intermediate space between two worlds that have been increasingly separated in our time, and hence increasingly ungoverned in both forms.

Why entrepreneurs, the self-employed, family farms, small businesses, and craftsmen are the bellwethers of liberty.

In 1913…Hilaire Belloc looked forward and anticipated our moment. He argued that what we today call corporate capitalism was fundamentally unstable and would eventually cease to exist.

The instability would be caused by the slow but inexorable concentration of property into fewer and fewer hands. As property became concentrated, power also would become concentrated, and concentrated power is a threat to the state unless, of course, it is co-opted by the state. Furthermore, as property became concentrated, the security of individuals would be threatened. People would find themselves in the precarious situation of living paycheck-to-paycheck. Because they possess no capital, they would not be able to provide for themselves in the way that a small farmer or craftsman could. They would be completely dependent upon their wages, and when economic crisis struck and wages were threatened, the insecurity of their situation would become acute. In such a time, it is not hard to image the people clamoring for a solution, rejoicing over a new kind of leader who promises change, if only he is empowered. Yes we can.

According to Belloc, the most obvious solution to this economic instability, the path of least resistance, is the acquisition by the state of the major economic interests, e.g. collectivization. This is sometimes called socialism, and, according to Belloc, it is the most natural course. But socialism is not benign or even honest, for the collectivization of property under the authority of the state results not in a more just society but one characterized by glaring inequalities and the loss of freedom for most. As Belloc puts it, “in the very act of collectivism, what results is not collectivism at all, but the servitude of the many, and the confirmation in their present privilege of the few; that is, the servile state.”

The unlikely alternative is what Belloc calls the “distributist state.” It is characterized by widely distributed private property so that the general character of the society is shaped by individual property owners. By “property” Belloc means “capital.” That is, property that can be used to make a living. When a critical mass of citizens possesses capital and are therefore economically independent, a stable situation exists. According to Belloc, private property is the only means of achieving security with freedom. Collectivization does, in fact, provide security. The price, though, is freedom.

The choices are stark. The Obama administration likely will continue to seek ways to nationalize the economy unless and until the American people rise up and demand a different direction. Do we even remember this better way? Can we imagine a world of free men and women who own real property and do not look to the state for happiness or economic security?

From a related post:

Here we can see the curious state of affairs in our waning republic: Democrats tend to be suspicious of big business but they trust big government to rein in abuses; Republicans express suspicion of big government but no fear of economic centralization. Both are half right but half blind. Here is a principle that we would do well to grasp: concentrations of power in any form are a threat to liberty. It may be too late for this generation to see this vital truth, or if seeing, to do anything about it. But nothing is inevitable, and there are hopeful signs that people are beginning to think seriously about the importance of localism, human scale, limits, and stewardship, the very things woefully lacking in the current spending orgy. While a return to these ideals is still only in its infancy, change is afoot. This represents a glimmer of sanity in a world succumbing to the apparent security promised by centralization.

Tobacco farming and community life.  My antipathy towards tobacco products is well-known, and I thought Barbara Kingsolver inexplicably inconsistent when in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle she decried our unhealthy farming practices yet bemoaned the loss of small tobacco farms.  I still can’t rationalize subsidizing such an unhealthy crop, but here’s another side to the story.

[E]very community must be bound together by something it shares—and for the ties to bind strongly there need to be several somethings.  Here in Henry County, when everyone used to raise tobacco, everyone had the crop’s seasons and its demands in common.

My state is one of the few that still has a good number of small farms, and for years here tobacco was the mortgage crop.  It made keeping those small farms possible for many families, and it was a vital part of a farmer’s mixed use of his land.  The federal tobacco program and the Burley Tobacco Growers’ Co-op acted as a brake for the small farmer on the pitilessness of the international market….Today farmers here and in the several burley-growing states are free from any buttressing power between the small growers and the supranational tobacco companies that buy their crop.  They are free to contract with the companies directly (and typically do, as otherwise there is no guarantee their crop will sell), and in one of those rhetorical equalities that is so unequal in fact, the companies are likewise free to set the price and limit the production, in a world market in which it is cheaper, of course, to grow tobacco in Brazil.

But my point is not only that farmers in my area have lost a good source of revenue.  We’ve also lost a shared experience intimately tied to this place in which we live.  Tobacco gave us something in common…tobacco was our common language…. [I]f the weather for curing was wet, everyone waited.  If blue mold hit the county, everyone compared their losses.  And everyone had a near-disaster story from working high in the rafters of the barn, to be retold every fall.

[W]ith the end of the program, most of us took the buyout and quit.  The relative few farmers who still grow tobacco grow significantly larger crops now, which is a different sort of operation.  People were growing something like two to twelve acres; now farmers often grow forty, or eighty, or even more.  This is factory farming, and there is no way a family can manage it alone.  There is too much to cut all at once, and hang all at once; it requires jobbed-in crews of migrant labor.  Raising a few acres of tobacco was good and satisfying work….Toiling under the pressure of eighty must be something else.

So it is that here in Henry County we have lost the bond that tobacco gave, and one important part of our shared history is only history.  And at times of real disagreement….we find we have fewer acres of common ground.

(My personal favorite tobacco farm is not in Kentucky, but Virginia.  The Claude Moore Colonial Farm lives in a time warp—1771—and raises tobacco along with other heirloom crops and livestock.)

The Front Porch Republic—I’m reserving a rocking chair, as I plan to be a frequent visitor.