Oh to be Free of Student Loans

This morning the bus passed a small sign which read, “Enjoy Saving Money.” “I do,” I thought. “Oh, I do.” I sat in satisfied communion with this kindred spirit for a few ticks of the clock until reality shifted, and the sign, standing in front of a furniture store, pointed out that it meant “Enjoy Spending Less Money than You Otherwise Would Have.”

Stranger in a Strange Land

One of my later (and therefore wetter) errands this Monday had been to drop off an application at a parish. The secretary met me at the door.

“Yucky day, huh?” she said, nervously eyeing the rivers of water escaping from my person.

“Oh, sure,” I said, thinking “‘Yucky’? It’s just fine clean water.” “I’ve come to apply for the office position.” The bulletin had read “Come by, tell us about yourself, and learn more about the position!”

“Oh, heh, heh, heh,” she responded, gingerly taking my resume while carefully blocking me from completely entering the door. She obviously needed to protect the vinyl chairs and wall-to-wall indoor/outdoor carpeting.

Then the door shut and I turned from my nascent dreams of getting half way thawed out and started hiking back to the bus stop.

The Return

I sat staring at the rain through the window of my ninth bus that day. A ten-foot-tall purple neon elephant was happily spraying neon water over itself, humming about nature’s drenching not being thorough enough. The rain which would have been sufficient to drench three states had been stopped over one greedy coastal city and most of that water had soaked its way into my jeans, where it evidently felt welcome and whistled for friends. The idea of resurrecting my blog popped into my mind. There I was, a single girl trying to make it in the big city, all the elements needed for a hit TV show. All that was needed was a slight wardrobe shift from “Wish I Were Warm and Dry” to “Miniskirt Grunge.” The moment seemed more dreary than dramatic, but the seed was planted, and we shall see how it flourishes in the Emerald City.

How to remain proud of your culinary achievements even after removing the lid from the pot.

Some humanitarian has been sending me spam whose subject lines urge me to investigate a new healthy way not to cover with shame.

I keep picturing a junior-higher at a party who accidentally continued talk/shouting at one of those random moments when everyone in the room (including the music) happened to be taking a breath. "And he turned his face to the wall, covered with shame."

But that's silly. Obviously, this is an affair of the stomach.

They probably want you to pay $19.95 for the secret (order now and get bonus "No Shame: Housecleaning Edition"! $6.95 value), but I will give them both to you for free:

What they can't see can't hurt them: always eat in romantic candlelight.

Bonus Housecleaning Edition:
What they can't see can't hurt them: only use environmentally-friendly 40 watt bulbs.

Novena Time

Just a reminder that today is the first day of the novena to St. John Marie Vianney (the Cure d'Ars).

There is another prayer request as well: a friend has discovered that she has a molar pregnancy, meaning that instead of a baby developing there is a possibly cancerous tumor. She is having surgery tomorrow, and has requested prayers. This is a very rare and serious illness but hardly ever fatal and there is hope for them being able to have children again after a year has passed. This was discovered today, and it seems like the obvious response is to say the novena to the Cure d'Ars for her and her husband as well.

Thoughts on opening Solzhenitsyn's "November 1916"

Truly, this is a book to beat off assailants with.

Has anyone else wondered if they would be charged with “assault with a deadly weapon” if they hit an assailant with their backpack? Really, the whole trial would swing on proving whether I remembered the hardbound German-English dictionary and Norton Anthology of Poetry as I was making my counter-attack.

I have a Ukrainian student with an interest in history, so I asked him about Solzhenitsyn. He said that Solzhenitsyn was famous but not popular: everyone agreed that what he said was true, but they were sick of him constantly talking about it. No one likes to be reminded of what they have done badly. Also, it is thought that Solzhenitsyn took the easy way out—yes, he only left Russia because he was exiled, but he forced the government to exile him.

His One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is read in schools (because it is history), and First Circle is well known. The young man asked whether Solzhenitsyn had written anything lately, and I replied that he had a new book, Russia in Collapse, but that I hadn’t been able to get a copy. “Russia in collapse! Very interesting! But why would he say that? Putin is so strong. I mean, Russia compared to the Ukraine or Georgia—Russia is very strong, not in collapse.” I don’t know much about Putin, but the little I do know (a quote from an article he wrote shortly after becoming prime minister) is not auspicious: in regards to Chechnyan rebels: "we will piss on them!” Ask not what your country can do for you…

Then again, the reincarnated KGB carried out a successful assassination attempt on anti-Russian Yukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko—meaning by successful that they got him to ingest so many times more than the lethal amount without facing any serious retribution. ("Oh my gosh! I thought that was only poisonous to guinea pigs! I could just kick myself for having made such a mistake.") Not successful insofar as the politician has remained just barely this side of paradise (to be fair, he does look like he’s crossed over).

The student strongly recommended Suvorov (Viktor?), a historian of the second World War who was also exiled by the Soviets. I must look him up.

Prayer and Fasting

The son of some family friends was murdered a few days ago. A girl was also murdered at the same time, another boy was stabbed but not killed, and then the murderer killed himself.

The horribly public nature of the tragedy can be turned to good if all of us who hear about it pray and fast for the victims, murderer/suicide, and families of the dead.

The widow of a suicide was praying in the Cure d'Ars's church one day, and the Cure d'Ars (St. John Mary Vianney) came to her and said, "Be comforted. Your husband repented before he hit the water. Remember the altar to Mary that you had in your bedroom? Although your husband was a scoffer, he would sometimes join sincerely in your prayer. Because of this, he was saved." (This is a very loose paraphrase from memory). The man had killed himself by jumping off a bridge. The amount of time required for repentance is smaller than any measurable period, so there is hope even for the murderer/suicide who shot himself in the head.

St. John Mary Vianney's feast day is August 4th, so it would be very nice if we could fast and say a novena to him, starting July 27th and ending August 4th.

Link to a long novena, with a different prayer for each day:
http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/novena/Vianney.htm

I have been completely unable to find a short novena. If anyone knows of one, please let me know! Other possibilities for novenas are: a novena of Masses, Divine Mercy chaplets, or rosaries.

Below is an unapproved novena prayer of my own composition. I will try to find out if it is an appropriate or acceptable prayer before July 27th, and will delete it if it is not.
Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory Be. "O St. John Marie Vianney, please intercede for the souls of the victims, the families of the dead, and especially for the murderer. Please obtain for them the grace of eternal salvation from the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. May we all grow in love and trust for our dear Lord, who turns all evil to good, even the unimaginable evil of his own crucifixion and death. May the families of the dead take comfort in his cross. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen."

R and L

Today one of my Japanese students replied, "Oh Leerry?" to a comment. I understood immediately (hooray for one year's practice!), then mused over the girl's courage in attempting such a difficult word and the way that sometimes stereotypes are remarkably apt.

I shouldn't really find it so funny, having been rrr-deprived as a child. Even now I can hardly roll my rs, which was a great handicap a couple of weeks ago when I visited some llamas, who are irresistibly drawn to r-rolling (especially if one blows softly on their noses at the same time). But would Sam have been happy had I returned covered in llama-kisses? Hard to say.

But what has puzzled me is the fact that my students can make both sounds, but switch them. Recently I discovered that the sounds are switched when they hear them as well. I asked for written movie requests, and had several for "Gradiator". I don't know why it wasn't "Gradiatol". I have a theory (of course), but something tells me that it would be beaten by the result of some "Elvis Code" numerology.

Watermelon beverages

My parents visited me last Lent, and one of their primary goals was to eat as much barbeque as possible. What with one thing and another, we ended up at a barbeque place on a Friday, which I didn't particularly mind since I'm not terribly fond of barbeque. However, my meal turned out to be quite a feast--french fries and watermelon juice. Why did I go all my life without watermelon juice? It is one of the most delicious beverages possible.

Since that time, I have kept an eye out for watermelon-inspired beverages, and I just found a good recipe at Plato's Kitchen, a brilliant cooking-blog which also offers links to fake Starbuck's Frappucino recipes.

Thoughts applicable to the war on terror

It takes two to have a war.
It takes one to rape, sack, and pillage.
It takes two to make peace.

Therefore, if one party gives serious signs of having striven after peace, the mere presence of strife should not be taken as a proof against the sincerity of their efforts.

Locked out

Last night three of my people went to bed early, while the fourth was still out—much later than my old mother would have approved of. Mother always said that the early dog gets to tell the bird a thing or two. My particular person was the last of the three, and I let her help me make the rounds. She has better self-esteem if I give her meaningful daily tasks. Of course, I retain the truly necessary duties, such as sniffing for intruders, but she can turn off lights and lock doors. Tonight she insisted on not locking the deadbolts.

“This is very irregular!” I snorted, “I cannot recommend this course of action!” But she is headstrong, and must have her will.

Sure enough, just as I suspected, the doorknob rattled and the doorbell rang shortly after we had gone to bed. (Malefactors either ring doorbells or do not ring them—both scenarios require careful inquiry.) My person leapt out of bed, mumbled something about keys, and rushed off without a thought for the brave dog waiting to be lifted off the bed! When she came back, she found me huffing in indignation and concern.

“Ho!” I said, puffing out my upper lip, “Ho!”

“I’m so sorry!” she said, “Of course you need to investigate!”

I’m not blind to my person’s impetuosity, but even the harshest critic couldn’t say that she is hard-hearted. I had already begun my inquiry while she was lifting me down: “What’s all this? What’s all this?”

Then, Dat-da-daaa, Da-da-da-da-dat-da-daaaaaaa—I was off, epic music blaring and ears fluttering heroically behind me.

And it’s just as well that I went because, after careful examination of the fourth roommate (who was now in the kitchen) and the perimeter, I found absolutely nothing suspicious, which is exactly the kind of situation that a dog of action needs to look into.

I went back upstairs and gave my report to my person and my auxiliary person. They were struck by the rightness of my actions, and spent some time talking about it. I am indulgent of their chatter, especially when it is admiring. Deeds can be left in my capable paws, and I find their happy voices soothing.

Vigilance. Always Vigilance.

Food Poisoning

Ten minutes ago I gave myself food poisoning for the second time this week.

First, a note of advice to other youths stepping out into the world. Jars of spaghetti sauce when left to their own devices for three-ish weeks in a corner of the refrigerator, feel neglected and act out. Neglected cucumbers turn themselves into little Molotov cocktails of liquid nastiness, but spaghetti sauce is passive aggressive and tends to nurse its grievance in its bosom. Or, for it is but one and the same, to develop a fairly potent mold on the inside of the lid.

Cut to me, the famished wanderer from Walla Walla, looking for dinner. As when Trimmer came across the former Mrs. Crouchback, seeing that she possessed all of the qualities to attract, but failing to observe that she was not exercising them, so I with the spaghetti jar which possessed all the qualities of edibility while somehow going wrong between the mouth and the stomach. Trimmer took advantage of the situation (being the kind of person whom no one would attempt to attract) and turned it to his own advantage. I, on the other hand, poured the sauce into the pan thinking, “I wonder if I’ll get sick,” and then thought no more of it. A bit later I said to myself, “How strange—earlier I could have sworn that I was hungry enough to eat a horse, but here I am, only halfway through, and my stomach totally refuses to accept another bite of this wonderful food!” It was only 24 hours of not being able to anything later that recognition and reversal came at the moment that I decided to attempt to eat the leftovers before they went bad.

Tonight, I was eating the last of a six-pack of bagels purchased recently (that is, I can remember buying it) and thinking, “Mmmmm, raisiny deliciousness, offset with a mysterious tang,” when I happened to turn it over and found it covered in communist mold. As I threw away the remains, I murmured

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Note: 100 kisses from Sam to the reader who can successfully identify what I was reading in the three hours prior to writing this (roommies excluded).

Mark Steyn

Lately I’ve been enjoying Mark Steyn’s articles more. The New Criterion has featured Theodore Dalrymple rather less frequently of late (although, really, to feature him more they would have to rename the magazine “All Dalrymple, All the Time”), and I found that Mr. Steyn had filled the favorite-author void. The nice thing about his articles is that when he mentions people I have never heard of, I feel interested and pleased to learn about them (much like the man I saw in the ER who had been brought in for alcohol/vicaden/gunk-his-dog-found-under-the-fridge overdose—I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a human over the age of three with a more pleased, interested, and self-satisfied expression). This is a nice change from the way I feel when the editors of that magazine mention unknown people. Really the only appropriate reaction to them is to slit your wrists in despair at ever having presumed to try to learn anything, and then write in the last spurts of life-blood, “Sorry about all that…aw…damn…presumed aga…” So anyhow, I found that my mental picture of Mr. Steyn was changing from an intelligent skull to a kind of kindly skull.

The last page of this month’s New Criterion substituted a “Dartmouth Review” ad for their regular nekkid-girl-in-New-York picture. Again, pleased, I looked it over. In the middle, I was shocked to see a picture of a lumberjack on his yearly day in the city. My gaze bounced around to something more congenial. Ah, Father Rutler, looking very fatherly and intellectual. Then, yarrgghh, mountain man. Back to Father. Finally I hit on the words: “Mark Steyn,” then “Keynote speaker: Mark Steyn.” Then … Good Lord.

There seem to be two things to say. One is that there seems to be much more of Mr. Steyn to fill the void than I had imagined. The other is that I’m not certain if he looks like a skull or not, since there’s a noble growth of bushy beard between him and the onlooker.

Mark Helprin

This review was supposed to be part of a "Reviews of cool books you want to read even when not forced" article someone was writing for the school newspaper. I got jumped by old mister migraine (sometimes he's coy, sometimes he's brutal), so communicating with my species was temporarily removed from the list of possible activities. I finished it anyhow, and thought it would be a shame to waste it entirely.

Review of A Soldier of the Great War and Winter's Tale

Mark Helprin’s novels are magical realism, which accepts as truth everything in the half-world of imagination that you feel is true but must remind yourself is not. And in that it differs from fantasy, which is only what you wish were true.

What this means is that a 20-year-old feels that he can out-race the girl he loves, though her horse is far better than his, the mounted police, though they are trained soldiers, and even a train—and he does. A teenage boy is terrified that the smutty pictures hidden under his bed will defy the laws of physics and burn through the floor, dropping to the floor below and into his father’s hands at dinner—and they do. A white horse escapes his master, and the exhilaration of freedom explodes within him, so that he no longer runs, but flies.

The greatness of the novels is that in freeing the world of imagination, intuition—which is also felt to be true—is freed and allowed to speak clearly. In the novel, a father is able to respond correctly when his son hurts him. The rational faculty might prompt him to forgive so that he will be forgiven, because his son didn’t really mean it, or because his relationship with his son is too precious to be lost. These are all true, but they merely surround the center of truth, which is that the father forgives the son because he knows that his son may never forgive himself.

And throughout, each sentence is a delight. Mr. Helprin clearly loves the English language and revels in his beloved’s charms.

Teaching

As I walked around my writing class this morning, looking for students with questions, I saw more clearly that my relationship with them was not that of a peer, but rather that for these eight weeks of the teaching-relay I had the enormous responsibility of leading each one of these different people through to enjoying writing and being good at it.

It is a very great honor to be allowed to give new writers creative writing assignments, and to be allowed to read their writings. Some of them take my assignments and make them their own, showing me anew how little of me and how much of each student teaching is. Today, a student showed me a tender and beautiful essay about playing in the rain as a child. It is a beauty that I will treasure, and far more than I expected from my assignment of an autobiographical story.

Why is Kraft brand fake cheese so much better than the others?

They got all the secret government grants during the War.

Something Beautiful for God

I’ve been reading Something Beautiful for God. It is primarily Malcolm Muggeridge’s reflections on Mother Teresa, but also includes a transcript of one of his interviews with her and some of her prayers. Here are a couple of my favorite parts:

Malcolm: You took [the poor] things that they needed.

Mother Teresa: It is not very often things they need. What they need much more is what we offer them. In these twenty years of work amongst the people, I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. Nowadays we have found medicine for leprosy and lepers can be cured. There’s medicine for TB and consumptives can be cured. For all kinds of diseases there are medicines and cures. But for being unwanted, except there are willing hands to serve and there’s a loving heart to love, I don’t think this terrible disease can ever be cured. (p. 73-4).

It seems to me that this disease can afflict many of the people you see in an affluent Starbucks: bitter middle-aged divorcées, the successful businessman who bullies everyone, teenagers who were only read to by daycare employees. This is the disease of the culture of death.

But there is hope, and it is not in pity but in active love.

Malcolm: I understand that [love must be expressed in action, and the poorest of the poor are the means of expressing love of God], and even in this short visit I’ve sensed it as I never have before. These lepers and these little children that you get off the street, they’re not just destitute people, to be pitied, but marvelous people. Anyone who’s well can pity a man who’s sick. Anyone who has enough can pity someone who hasn’t enough. But I think what you do is to make one see that these people are not just to be pitied; they are marvelous people. How do you do this?

Mother Teresa: That’s just what a Hindu gentleman said: that they and we are doing social work, and the difference between them and us is that they were doing it for something and we were doing it to somebody. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in, that we give it and we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible. Because it is a continual contact with Christ in his work, it is the same contact we have during Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament. There we have Jesus in the appearance of bread. But here in the slums, in the broken body, in the children, we see Christ and we touch him. [This is the other part, the greater gift, the harder part.] (p. 87).

These passages resound of Dostoevsky, especially in the Brothers Karamazov. Prince Myshkin (in The Idiot) and Ivan pity from a distance and destroy, while Alyosha and Fr. Zosima love by sharing the lives of others, and they redeem. The similarities are so strong that one is tempted to find out whether the Brothers Karamazov was in Mother Teresa’s library. But she didn’t have a library, and there’s no reason to think that this book was important to her. Dostoevsky and Mother Teresa both discovered the same and fundamental truth of the two great commandments: love of Christ lived through active love of neighbor in Christ.

The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty and disease. (From a reflection, p. 53). Her Home for the Dying is filled with people who were literally picked up off the street. She is doing the work of the Good Samaritan, who cared for the traveler beaten and helpless on the side of the road. But when she sees that those she serves are Christ, she sees the deeper truth of the parable. Christ is the Good Samaritan, but much more so he is the man lying on the side of the road.

Dostoevsky discovered this because—largely through his own fault—he was the man lying on the side of the road, so much so that almost all of his critics have felt free to condescend on a scale that puts Lady Catherine De Bourgh to shame. What they don’t realize is that it doesn’t matter how Dostoevsky got to be on the side of the road, but rather what matters is that once he was there he was with Christ, in pain and ignominy. He learned there that pity, helplessness, and disgust are fellow-travellers, whereas love sees only equality and the means to serve the Beloved.

Mother Teresa learned that Christ was lying on the side of the road without apparent humiliation—certainly not exterior humiliation like Dostoevsky suffered. She learned it by uniting herself to Christ in prayer and in the Sacrament. Christ gave her a profound belief in the verse that she references throughout the book: “I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, and I was homeless and you did that to me.”

Sam and comments

Feel free to refer to Sam by name. As someone who has to be watched while he does his duties (so as to be cleaned up after), he has no privacy. His name does not appear in his posts for the same reason that Flannery does not appear in mine.

Iseult of the Fair Paw

One of the other humans that lives in my house has a small statue of a baby lying in a manger that I take care of. The straw can’t be comfortable, so I am removing it piece by piece to make room for a down bed. The down will come from the five or six birds that I am hunting as a present for my mail-order bride, Iseult of the Fair Paw. My mother told me that my father gave her a whole dead badger when they were married, and that I couldn’t get married until I could give my bride a token of my love. I’ve already killed one bird and one rabbit, but both were taken away from me. My person can be so reckless with important things! I tried to tell her that I needed the bird and the rabbit, and that I would keep them under her bed, but she ignored me. Now every time that we go outside I check all the bushes for presents, and sometimes I feel like even a cat would do! I know I just need to be patient, but I’ve already had to wait so long for my fair-pawed darling.

But Iseult never whines at me, although I know that she is unhappy at her job taking care of spoiled children. She has a great soul. Her life, though short, has been heroic. She was orphaned after her parents’ tragic escape attempt and grew up on the streets of East Berlin. (I grew up on the streets of South Dallas, so we have lots in common). Her parents tried to tunnel under the Berlin wall, but were stopped by a horde of communist sewer rats. Husband and wife fought back-to-back, and they took out rat-squadrons by the hundred, but in the end they were overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. She always breaks down at this point, and I try to comfort her, but it’s hard when she’s so far away.

The waiting is the hardest part.

Crunchy oats and honey

If you lived in a communist country, what kind of granola bars would you bribe the officials to stock?

Bull in a Grocery Store

While I was at the grocery store the other day I noticed a fellow shopper who looked (and moved) like a frustrated bull. The store was unusually crowded, and every time he needed to negotiate through a clump of shoppers he seemed to be reminding himself that, although catching the unwashed masses on his horns and tossing them into the displays would do them no end of good, society would wrongly censure such a course, leaving nothing but baleful glares and teeth-grinding to relieve his feelings.

In general, he seemed like he was in a hurry, but he did so much back-and-forth-to-the-opposite-side-of-the-store-ing that I had been sitting by the door waiting for my roommate for some time before he showed up at the check-out lane.

He started issuing extremely detailed instructions for bagging the groceries, but suddenly broke off in despair and frustration, as though he had just heard the checker tell the bagger, “Okay now, if we’re really going to make this model of the Eifel Tower work, we’re going to need to use the bread and eggs for the foundation and save the canned goods for the final spire.” He ground out, “Oh, I’ll just do it myself!” and proceeded to bag his groceries very, very slowly. That is, it took him a long time, but he worked feverishly with fierce concentration the whole time.

When he was finally freed from doing the bagger’s job, he rushed over to pay, which also took a long time because he had to do it just so, and wanted cash back in an intricate breakdown of different bills (involving, if I remember correctly, 20 ones). The poor checker (whose line was curving around the floral department) got the money out quickly, but then had to count it back. The impatient man made “no, just give it to me” noises while reaching towards the money and making little “gimme” motions with his hand. The checker ignored the beefy hand fluttering centimeters away from his own, and counted back the whole sum (it was a lot of money, so he really needed to). The instant he finished the man grabbed the money from him and rushed off to be oppressed by inefficiency and incompetence elsewhere.

[Charity note: This post does not necessarily diagnose the bull's spiritual state. Motives and character have been supplied solely by my imagination.]

Motherhood and the Theotokos

Sometimes I come across people urging Marian piety because “she was Christ’s mother!” with no further argument required. And it’s never been very convincing because mothers tend to be a mixed bag. It reminds me of the Delaney sisters, who voted for Ted Kennedy even though they disapproved of his politics and morals. What was more important for a politician than politics and morals? His devotion to his mother. Their own undifferentiated respect for motherhood led them to vote for an all-around scoundrel because of a supposed regard for the woman who raised him to be what he is.

Consider the mother in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep. She is an avid member of both a society for mothers advocating widespread use of birth control and another society for mothers in favor of unlimited motherhood. She sees no problem with this—it’s all motherhood. There’s a great moment when, unsettled by her daughter’s waywardness, she accidentally begins reading the unlimited mothers a speech prepared for the eugenics mothers and nearly gets lynched.

And in general, mothers can be remarkably callous toward other women’s children. Addie Bundren (of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying) seems to have hated her own children about as much as she hated other women’s, but hatred was something precious to her. The norm is what stepchildren often suffer—their father’s new wife is a basically good woman, not a psychopath, but she just doesn’t have the interest in the children living in her house that didn’t come from her own body. Usually it just means that she is not quite as patient with them, doesn’t get them as nice of food when her children aren’t around, is more likely to blame them for things that go wrong, and so on. Their motherhood is strictly biological and does not extend to other children. (I’m not going to talk about what stepfathers do here, but it can be far worse.) Then there are the mothers who kill or wound their daughters’ rivals on the cheerleading squad in a twisted version of the maternal desire for the good of their children. In the end it seems like you have to say that mothers are human, and as such sometimes Lana Lee is right—“Mothers are full of s***.”

But where does that leave Marian piety?

Look at Luke 11:27-8. A woman in the crowd shouts out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and blessed the breasts that you sucked!” She is the archetypical proponent of Marian piety as given above. Jesus’s reply at first seems to be a rebuke at her focus on Mary: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” But as M.M. said at a recent Bible study, think about what he said. Mary keeps the word of God when she says “Let it be to me according to your word,” which results in her keeping the Word of God within her in the full sense of biological motherhood. Her motherhood, in fulfillment of her whole life, is entirely focused on the will of God. It is not directed towards her own glory or preference, so much so that she accepts the death of her son for the sake of other women’s children. Christ is not saying that we shouldn’t honor his mother, but that we should honor her for the right reason, a reason that will actually lead to honoring the womb whose fruit was Jesus.

And it is a fruitful honor. On the spiritual level we are given the example of complete surrender to God which we all need to strive for. On the physical level, the reality of childbearing has been changed since it brought salvation to the children of Eve, and should never again be seen as a punishment or an illness. In her fiat, the Theotokos participated in the Divine reversal of sin: In pain she brought forth a child who crushed the head of the serpent who had brought her the pain. And most importantly, Christian mothers are invited to give their own children the same freedom to do God’s will that Mary gave Christ.

The mothers in the first examples are focused on themselves, and on children only as an extension of themselves whose life and character they have a right to. The mother in Twilight Sleep is defeated when her daughter refuses to follow in her footsteps. Addie Bundren imposes her will on her children even in death in the gruesome pilgrimage she forces upon them. Their motherhood is an ugly thing.

But this is not the way it has to be, and it is not what motherhood really means. In a truly beautiful post, Mrs. Bear compares motherhood to contemplative monasticism, and it is clear that for her motherhood is like Mary’s motherhood: the contemplation of God.

Cuteness and Being

Whether the Infant Confessor (son of the Sapientiae Amatores) is more cute than energetic?

It seems that the Infant Confessor is more energetic than cute.

For he is in constant motion. Further, his short and infrequent naps are marked by a concentrated effort to rest as quickly as possible. But motion and concentration require energy. Therefore, energy seems to be an essential attribute of the Infant Confessor, leaving no time when he is not energetic. Therefore he is more energetic than cute.

On the contrary, the Infant Confessor is more cute than energetic.

For his constant energy is in itself cute, such that whatever amount of energy is added, an equal amount of cuteness is also added. Finally, energy is an attribute, while cuteness is convertible with being.
Therefore, the Infant Confessor is more cute than energetic.

Touch the puppet head

Is it legitimate to make up a meme, or do they have to be spontaneously generated? Anyhow, here’s my answer to the one that both Clashing Symbol and Mrs. Bear tagged me with.

7 things to do before I die
Become holy
Pay off my student loans
Write a book
Get a Ph.D.
Be imprisoned in China
Ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad
Visit Pope John Paul II’s tomb

7 things I cannot do
Wolf-whistle
Fly (despite years of trying)
Be silent in the middle of an interesting conversation
Keep food from escaping onto my clothes
Be entirely still
Maintain a savings account balance of four digits
Keep from discovering personalities in things (including numbers) around me

7 things I like about my other half
He’s so vigilant
He’s so easy to please
He’s cute when he sulks
[This is boring. On to the next one.]

7 favorite books
Money in the Bank or The Mating Season both by P.G. Wodehouse
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

7 favorite movies
The Royal Tenenbaums
Rumble in the Bronx
Pride and Prejudice (A&E version)
Conspiracy Theory
Napoleon Dynamite
The Disney Cinderella (this was when I was a little girl)
Horse Feathers (The Marx Brothers)

7 things I say
Right, right, right (Annie says I say this—I’d never noticed)
Well, I think…
No no no no no
Yup
...Sam...
That’s horrible! (Again, Annie)
Make references to obscure songs that only Mrs. Bear or Guy Crouchback would get (see title).
7 people to meme
No one’s left. I came out of my room from being sick, and found myself in a ghost town that all the cool people had left days and days ago.

They only do it to give us a thrill

I can't think of any explanation for this other than that they wanted me to start off my day with a heartier guffaw than is usually provided by the news:
Kevin Sites Reports
Gay filmmakers explore Israel's role as victim and victimizer.

God's gift to the unbiased press

Well, they haven't been good, but they get a little treat anyhow:
Hunter Shot by Cheney Has Heart Attack
It's nice to think of them clapping their little hands in childish glee.

If you read the article, you'll find these fabulous quotes:

Banko said there was an irregularity in the heartbeat caused by a pellet...

David Blanchard, chief of emergency care, called it "a silent heart attack, an asymptomatic heart attack. He's not had a heart attack in the traditional sense."

And if you read between the lines, you will see that although the patient was originally in intensive care, he asked to leave the hospital, which means that he is not actually dead.

The Lord giveth...

Close friends, Russian-soul and English-cavalier, have been trying to adopt for several months. The second attempt fell through last week, and they decided to focus on international adoptions. Russian-soul e-mailed their social worker, who responded at 9:30 this morning: they had a four-day-old baby girl whose mother had already signed all the papers for a closed adoption and left the baby at the hospital. Would our friends like her?

We got to meet Little Flower this evening. None of us had heard that it was in the works. What a beautiful thing it was to see Russian-soul with a baby in her arms!

Glory be to God.

Ninja hedge

I didn't explain the second example of the ninja archetype, but some people have thought that the young man quoted only said that ninjas (as well as giant squid and whales) were inherently funny. Attempted denials like this are just a ninja hedge. The example given is what we care about: a funeral mass over-run by regular people rather than priests should also be over-run with ninjas, giant squid and whales. Therefore the ninjas are clearly at mass, so it is another instance of the ninja archetype.

Temptation in the fruit aisle

I went to the grocery store today and was accosted by a gnome-like woman who really wanted me to drink some juice. I did so (ever obliging), and found myself in the checkout line, clasping a bottle to my bosom and trembling in fear that my mother would take the goodness away. It was only after I got home that I looked at the receipt, found that it was a $3.99/450mL bottle, and that I am now going to have to spend half the year in Hades. I'm not sure whether I'm upset about it, though--it was good pomegranate juice.

The Tactless Olympics

As a person who has gone through life with one foot thoroughly lodged among my tonsils, I'd like to salute the leading lady of Don Gately's recent post. I thought that I had reached the greatest height possible in that lofty sport (talking-with-foot-in-mouth), and was suffering from ennui. Now I see that there are whole vistas left for me to aspire to.

Ninja Archetypes

Mrs. Bear recently posted on that age-old feminine archetpye, Longing for a Sewing Machine.

This reminded me of something I've been meaning to comment on for some time. Sapientiae Amator posted about distractions in mass. A young man in his twenties confessed to wandering in spirit away from the holy sacrifice of the mass and toward the fortification prospects the particular church would offer, in the event that it was attacked by ninjas. On another occasion, when discussing the inadequacy of pre-Cana classes in most parishes, the same friend lamented that grooms were not properly prepared for the possibility of ninjas attacking their bride and guests mid-way through the ceremony. Indeed, it is a grievous lack, and is probably a significant factor of the high annulment rate in the U.S. church. But it was not a scenario which leaped immediately to my (feminine, sewing-machine-preoccupied) mind.

However, another young man in his twenties, developing entirely separately from the first, also revealed a deep-seated connection between ninjas and the mass. Coincidence? I think not. This is clearly an archetype for young men. In fact, I think that youth ministers should begin organizing ninja masses to reach out to them.

Sufferance

I know I'm asking a lot of my dear readers, posting two large entries (one huge) on the same day. I usually won't read an entry more than four paragraphs long, so it serves me right if you don't read them. But I would like to know what you think of the huge one.

(And yes, I did finish the rosaries on time. Thank you for asking, Mrs. Bear.)

The World from the Ground Up

Today it happened.

I’ve been hungry lately. People have been saying, “He’s a fat little bugger, ain’t he?” and my human got upset and started starving me. I tried to tell her that they were just jealous, and it is best to ignore them and be aloof. Or I could chivvy them up a tree. In fact, I’d like that. But starvation! She said that it was not starvation but a diet, but when I asked what a diet was, she said, “Well, it’s when you don’t eat as much food as you like.” I think that is starvation.

Another reason I’ve been hungry is that my person has been taking me for walks. She’s been really busy lately, at “work,” and she spends a lot of time sitting in an uncomfortable chair at the table, poking at the innards of a flat thing that opens up. I’m afraid she loves it more than she loves me, so I’ve been pensive with perhaps a bit of dignified sorrow (my mother said that we were Teutons, so we feel life deeply). I was grieving silently in the center of the living room, staring at my person and sighing a bit, when she suddenly leaped up and said, “Okay, let’s go for a walk and get the sulks out of you!” I was excited to learn that I had sulks in me, and I wondered what they smelled like. She put me on my nice long leash, and then walked me quickly all over. We even got to play in some bushes and low-hanging tree branches. It’s my favorite game when I’m on my long leash. I run back and forth and around and under as much as I can, and then when I can’t move any more, she comes and tries to do exactly what I just did, but she never pays as much attention to the fun smells as to my leash. We’ve been doing this every day. Then we come home and I feel hungry. Then my person gives me a little bit more kibble, but I don’t think it is enough.

My mother told me that when I was worried about being hungry I should consider the birds of the air and some lilies. They were once sent to a group of hungry dachshunds who were walked through the desert for forty days, without ever finding their beds and foodbowls. But they didn’t starve, because food was dropped from heaven—sometimes kibble, and sometimes the birds. Mother said that the same thing could happen for me, if I prayed with a pure heart and perfect trust. And today it did. I was standing next to a friend’s feet while he ate something out of a box (he likes to eat standing up, so I keep him company). Suddenly, the air was full of kibble (heavenly kibble, lighter and sweeter than normal kibble), raining all around me! I ate until I was full, and there was more left over.

Tortillas and Lovers

Two days ago I participated in a marketing study. I’d done it once two years ago—three hours in a conference room in the nicest hotel around, rating all kinds of things on a scale of one to ten, and in the end they give you $75. They don’t tell you what the thing is for beforehand. Last time it was credit card reward programs. This time it was three new kinds of tortillas. We watched commercials and participated in taste tests. Overall, both were pretty fun, mostly because it’s interesting seeing how the other half lives. (That is, people who make lots of money by shoving their souls under a rug in the corner). It’s also fun to apply Dorothy Sayers’ disclaimer in Murder Must Advertise to the particular people running it.

We started off rating our feelings about different brands of tortillas in ridiculous detail. How can tortillas be sophisticated or innovative? (Innovative jockeyed against versatile as the word of the night.) And even worse, how can one brand be more so? Most of the brands were complete blanks for me—I remember thinking of one “Gosh, they were really scraping the barrel here—if this brand even exists, it’s got to be in the Spanish-speakers-only stores.” Yesterday I went to the store and noticed the corn tortillas I used to buy in the good old gluten-free days—and it was that exact brand! Ah well, they never asked how observant I was.

Letting a tortilla company show you ads is like letting your date sneak his arm around you—before you know it, you’re a lot more familiar than you might have liked. Because of this, I knew that if I went to the store and couldn’t find my favorite cheap tortilla store-brand ($0.99 for 20), I would probably look around forlornly until I saw the next most familiar brand (the advertised one), and if I couldn’t see the price tag ($1.59 for 12), I would probably buy them. (Yes, I do have grocery prices memorized.) So every time they asked me how I felt about their brand after seeing the commercial, I gave them one point above perfectly neutral. Unfortunately, they interpreted this as getting to first-base.

They alternated questions about tortillas with questions about how we viewed ourselves. We were asked whether we liked change (100% no), were exciting (100% no), were spenders or savers (at the moment, neither), and so on. It was nice to have a break from trying to figure out to what degree the products advertised in the commercial fit with my image of the brand (Damn it, all I think is that their tortillas are a little softer than the cheap ones while being extremely expensive!) and instead answer questions about myself. But then there was the group of questions asking “Do adults ask you about [fill in the blank] more than other adults you know?” Options included vacation spots (Trans-Siberian Railroad!), makeup and toiletries (Don’t use anti-bacterial soap!), childcare and babies (I thought about this a lot as a child…), business (Er, well, business is for sucks), etc. But the question didn’t ask me whether I had good advice, just whether people asked me for it. And I realized that I’d been giving a lot of advice without waiting to be asked for it. I had to push “Never” for every question other than “Food preparation and recipes.” It was one of those moments when the veil between the self and the image of self is stripped away, and you have to stare at the drooping flesh under fluorescent lights.

At the end we were given the opportunity to give our opinions. This portion of the credit card market study had released untold animosity from the participants (there were 100 of us, evenly split between men and women). This time there were only 60 of us, and we were all women. The experiences were vastly different. In many ways this was a far nicer group to be in. Everyone was trying to be polite and considerate. There was a huge desire to affirm and be affirmed. However, the atmosphere became redolent of hurt feelings when “Why did you like this commercial?” was followed with “Why didn’t you?” And then there were the emotions.

We had been asked to circle five words that best described what we had felt while watching the commercial. Horrors! Really, all I’d felt was 1. interested to see what kind of shenanigans they were up to and 2. neither repulsed nor excited by a commercial that struck me as 100% predictable but inoffensive. The commercials didn’t give me any of the information needed to know if these tortillas really were good for you (96% fat free? What’s replacing the fat? That’s 4% fat—what percent fat are regular tortillas? That’s far more fat than regular bread.) “Interested” wasn’t even on the list. Instead there were things like “sympathetic,” “accepted,” “loved,” “understood,” “eager,” and my favorite, “in awe.” There were also the corresponding negative emotions. 95% of the emotions on the list were ones that only the high and low points of my life have excited. They certainly weren’t accessible to TV commercials. But, I thought, these poor folks have a whole page to fill with words—who can blame them for reaching?

But the tortillas were being marketed as healthy (with a hint of better-for-you-than-bread, though of course they couldn’t say that, since it isn’t true) and good for your family. The ladies seemed to have run the gamut of positive emotions, and were overflowing in their approval of a company that cares for the health of their families, and listens to its customers (them). Of course, there was even less reason to think that the company cared about the health of their families than there was for thinking the tortillas were healthy. Not that the CEO would go out of his way to run your child down with his limo. They were just a normal company which saw that the low-carb fad could be turned to their advantage since tortillas are generally thought to have less carbs than bread. They actually have quite a bit more—a burrito sized tortilla is about the same as three slices of bread.

The fact that these ladies felt so strongly about the welfare of their families was really good. Good for children, good for husbands, good for women, good for society. But the way that these good emotions were played upon with no resistance from the rational faculty was appalling—the commercial seemed to have come within a toucher of home-base with many of the participants. I sat in my chair, shocked. All I could think was, “Good lord, these people should not have the vote.”

Most people require a solid education to develop their rational faculty (I did and do!) And most women do not receive it. Degrees in mathematics and the sciences tend to develop this faculty, and most women do not go into these fields (a degree in traditional liberal arts is, of course, best.) And so the problem could just be one of education. Unfortunately I won’t have the opportunity to see what an all-male market study would be like. But I feel far more shaken than I even have been before regarding women's suffrage, and if I’d been asked to vote on it at that moment, I would have voted the right away.

Pot pouri (pronounced pot-purr-y)

It turns out that "pushing the pills" means "playing billiards." And the young man was not hung-over, just tired. However, even an expert could have been mislead by the description of this fellow the morning after. (This is all vis-a-vis yesterday's post).

I'm glad that I stuck it out, because A Gentleman of Leisure is actually delightful (see Wodehouse misses). And Whiskey says that I mistook his emphasis--when he said that Joy in the Morning was the worst Wodehouse book, he simply meant that it was not as good as other Wodehouse. For reference, Joy in the Morning is the book where lady novelist Florence Craye (daughter of Aunt Agatha's husband) threatens to replace her current fiance with Bertie, the current fiance-cum-policeman (Stilton Cheesewright) threatens to kick Bertie's spine through his (Bertie's) teeth, Bertie is manipulated into renting a country cottage (where Jeeves can go fishing) and Bertie's Sinbad the Sailor costume is used to facilitate some big business deal. This description is for those of you who believe that you remember Wodehouse books by plot (rather than by what the cover looks like). I'm not sure I believe you, but there you go. Of course, the only distinctive feature here is the Sinbad the Sailor costume (with the ginger whiskers).

Those of you who have grieved over my hands' rapid change from lily-white beauty to reddened calloused masses will be delighted to hear that I have completed the 35th twine rosary (The World's Ouchiest Prayer Tool--64 knots which have to be tightened by wrapping the twine a couple of times around each hand and pulling). Only nine more to go (if they're not done by Thursday, I'll have single-handedly ruined a local school's yearly retreat, and 44 boys whose prayers might otherwise have saved their souls and others will have to make do with their natural merit on The Big Day).

Finally, the Pope's new encyclical (On Christian Love or Deus Caritas Est, depending on whether you want the title or the first three words) is hot stuff.

Slang from before the Great War

Does anyone know what "pushing pills" means in the vernacular of 1910 musical comedies?

Here is the context: A mentally and fiscally impoverished young English lord is explaining why he does not want breakfast: he had a friend staying over who "was still up when I got back last night, and we stayed up playing pills--he's rotten at pills; something frightful; I give him thirty--till five this morning. I feel frightfully cheap." (p. 88 of the Overlook edition of A Gentleman of Leisure).

The description of the young lord fits exactly with Wodehouse's ubiquitous portrayal of Young Man with a Hangover. But what is "pushing pills"? It wouldn't make sense for it to be drugs--usually Wodehouse steers clear of such things. Besides, how can one be rotten at drugs? So it's probably some game involving drinking (Tiddly-winks? Dominoes?).

On Christian Love

What with rappers posing as Christ for national magazines and pro-choicers writhing with the pains of the damned at the idea of Roe v. Wade being challenged, it's about time for some relief. Pope Benedict XVI released his first encyclical, On Christian Love, yesterday.

The Time of Your Life

Whiskey brought this photo essay to my attention. It covers the San Francisco Walk for Life and the Pro-Choice counterdemonstration. It is incredible.

It seems like this is where life is--being in the orderly column of pro-lifers surrounded by the furies. I can't believe that I've let every chance to be there (or at a similar Walk for Life) slip by. It's not going to happen again. Next year I'll be there with the handy digital camera that my loving family provided me with (no doubt they foresaw some such occasion).

I mean that this is where life is in two ways. The first is simply in the way expressed by saying "This is living!" where you feel like you're doing something more than simply transforming oxygen into carbon dioxide. The other sense can be seen by looking at the pictures. The pro-lifers all look like decent people. Even the crazy independant fundamentalists have nicely embroidered jackets proclaiming the judgment to come. In general they seem serious and somewhat sad. On the other side are the pro-choicers, many of which have obviously taken far more care with their appearance than the pro-lifers. Many of the outfits seem uncomfortable, so only a desire to be fittingly adorned would make a person don them. However, they are all truly hideous and wrong. There is a girl wearing a buckled girdle over her red T-shirt and a white wig that has mini red clotheshangers stuck in it. She is also carefully made up in a Rocky Horror Picture Show style. The ensemble demonstrates the line where ugly meets evil and well-groomed meets self-hate. Her expression is closer to smugly complacent than frenzied with wrath (the other option for the pro-choicers). The signs against heterosexuality and "breeding" simply add to the overall effect: these poor people hate the human race, themselves, and life.

News Flash

Guy Crouchback has just informed me that our older brother, John Flory, has a blog. The stop-the-presses character of this news is somewhat lessened by the fact that Mr. I-always-keep-my-family-updated-even-when-I-don't-update-my-blog Flory started the blog back in the paleolithic age but hasn't updated it since The Reign of Terror (aka Jimmy Carter's presidency). I've also discovered that John Flory's friend, Don Gately, has a blog on which he has just posted a brilliant analysis of Guy Crouchback's character. Don Gately is itty-bitty, so some of his criticisms of Mr. Crouchback stem from jealousy of the latter's impressive physique.

Anyhow, there are now links to both blogs under the "Blogs Not Meant for Children" heading. This is not because they post pictures from anatomy and "learn to draw" textbooks, but rather because both are liable to break out into a rousing chorus of "I love you, you love me..." at any time, followed by hugs, cocoa, and a discussion about how we each feel about our mothers. Therefore it is not appropriate for children, invalids, or persons of a nervous disposition.

Also, Mr. Flory is known for his colorful use of language--though not so colorful as that of the brother who doesn't have a blog. What I've seen of both blogs looks like appropriate reading for grandmothers, so I'll probably merge the two lists in a bit. The thing to delight in is this: what kind of children's blogs would Messers. Flory and Gately write?

Small Talk

This semester I am a teacher’s assistant in a “Conversational Speaking” class. Today was the second day of class, and I have discovered an enormous fly in the ointment. Conversational speaking apparently means small-talk, replete with rejoinders (surprise: Oh, really?, sadness: I’m sorry to hear that, interest: that’s nice) and follow-up questions (what, when, where). The problem hit me between the eyes when the main teacher turned on me without warning and tried to carry on an example conversation with me.

Him: Ask me what I did last night.
Me: What did you do last night?
Him: I played computer games. [This was the response a student gave.]
Me: [Oh God, Oh God, Oh God—nothing I can think of is on the vocabulary list.] Awkward silence.
Him: So you see class, that follow-up questions are a way that you can continue a conversation. If you want to kill the conversation, you don’t ask one.

Thinking about it afterwards, I realized that the problem here is that in general conversation I’m good for about one follow-up question (at best), after which it’s time to go. I can see that small-talk is a worthwhile skill, because it allows one to express a charitable interest in others. But the conversation is not rooted in anything very significant, so I forget everything and then find myself hot-footing it for the opposite side of the room right at the time that I should have been following-up “So how do you like Texas?” with “That’s nice. Have you been to one of the rodeos, where stout-hearted men are cheered by beautiful women as they (the men) try to ride bucking cockroaches?”

But the opposite side of the room is full of people I’ve just talked to.

Me: So what do you do for a living?
Them: Well, I’m still an accountant.
Me: [Pause while I grapple with the information and extract the necessary point.]
Still? Are you planning a career change?
Them: Not since five minutes ago.
Me: [Pause, then shock.] Oh, did I just ask you that?
Them: Well, yes, you did.
Me: Oh. That’s nice.

Wodehouse misses

I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse lately, and while a lot of Wodehouse is incredibly good, some is really best left alone. So far all of them have been adapted from the stage. Of course this cannot be a coincidence, and so far I have a two-fold theory to explain the phenomena:

1. Dramas require a certain kind of slang which does not age well--it has to be the kind of slang used at the time. The rest of Wodehouse's novels are full of slang, too, but it's the slang of the Golden Age (that is, it's never existed).
2. The snappy cross-talk which is so enjoyable in drama does not translate well to the written word. For some reason it's grating rather than enjoyable.

Guy Crouchback told me that there was a Jeeves and Wooster book which is also sub-par, but I've forgotten the name of it. (This might be because he couldn't remember the name when he was telling me, but I don't remember.) And Whiskey doesn't like "Joy in the Morning," but I think it's okay. Also okay but not great is "Leave It to Psmith."

This is the list of Wodehouse books to avoid:
The Small Bachelor (readable)
The Return of Jeeves (not readable)
A Gentleman of Leisure (not sure--slogging through it right now).

Hail in the evening

Yesterday a friend told me that it was going to rain today. This means nothing, because this is Texas, and stormclouds behave the same way that drivers of Ford Excessives do on the freeway. That is, that they're apt to suddenly cross three lanes of traffic without signalling (signalling is for sucks), four-wheel it over the strip of grass and drainage ditch between the freeway and the feeder road, then roar off in the opposite direction. Hurricane Rita did this (for which we are profoundly grateful), and all of the weather systems seem to be involved in a giant square dance in the sky to music and announcers that only they can hear.

However, as I lay in bed reading one last chapter (take that, Mom!) last night, spurts of torrential rain and thunder started up. Then another spurt started, but it was ten-fold louder. "Annie, it's hailing!" I shouted, forgetting momentarily that just because I was still awake didn't mean she was. We ran downstairs and looked out on hailstones ranging in size from the size of peas to garbanzo beans (post-re-hydration). My car was immediately in front of us, protected by the blessed car-port that our luxury accomodations provide us with. I felt a deep sense of satisfaction at seeing the thwarted hailstones bounce off it rather than my car.

Almost three years ago, I stood on a third-floor balcony with friends watching hailstones as large as baseballs pelt our cars. I had owned my own car (my very first) but one week at the time. The noise of the hail was augmented by strange sirens which seemed to have no purpose (I thought they were old air-raid sirens that had been triggered in some mysterious way by the hail.) It turns out they were tornado sirens, which explains the high winds we experienced up there. I wasn't too upset because my car was fully insured and this was going to be a great story. However, I did make a point of finding an apartment with covered parking spaces.

When a body meets a body comin' through the rye...

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl tells the story of going for a walk with a friend immediately after being released from prison camp. They were headed right for a field of young oats, and when Frankl tried to avoid tramping through the field, his friend became very angry and said, “You don’t say! And hasn’t enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed—not to mention everything else—and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!” The man dragged Frankl through the field and they crushed thousands of stalks of oats. The point of the story was the indiscriminate brutality caused by a sudden release from horrific suffering. But the point in today’s blog is somewhat different. Read on.

The Gospel from Tuesday’s Mass was the story of the disciples plucking the heads of grain while they walked “through the grainfields” (Matt. 12.1, Mark 2.23 and Luke 6.1, RSV). On the one hand, the disciples were hungry, on the other, it was the Sabbath. The result was that the Pharisees were scandalized. But the fabulous “revised for accuracy” translation given in Mass was as follows: “As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the Sabbath, his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain.” (Mark 2:23-24). Does this remind you of the first paragraph? In this translation the Pharisees were right to be frantic with disapproval—the disciples were engaged in a foul act of senseless destruction, without even the excuse of quality time with the Nazis. Making a path through a field of oats!!! “Walking through grainfields” in the plural implies that they were walking on the footpaths between fields, close enough to the standing grain to snaffle up a small meal, but not doing any harm. These idiots who revise for “accuracy” should not only pay attention to what sounds cool, but also to what the words actually mean.

Boys' Night Out

One of our friends is having a “Boys’ Night Out” tonight. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that this is not a legitimate event. Only “Girls’ Night Out” exists, and its essence is to allow a liberated woman the chance to spend her husband’s money while making fun of him to appreciatively giggling girlfriends. The husbands stay in their proper place: at home watching the children and doing the dishes.

amazon.com

About a week ago I placed an order at amazon.com for $100 of P.G. Wodehouse (sponsored by my paternal grandparents). Originally I had them on one order, but then I found out that they wouldn't arrive until March! After investigating, this is what I found: if you are using free shipping, do not place one large order. The books are stashed in warehouses all over the country, and since free shipping orders cannot be broken into more than two shipments, all of the books must be shepherded together at some common meeting point before being shipped to you. This can take several weeks. The solution is to break the order up into smaller orders of about three books each. Four days after splitting the one order into three, I have received four books, three are in transit, and all should be here in a couple of weeks.

De-lurking is Delightful!

Mrs. Bear and Sapientiae Amator tell me that this week is National De-Lurking Week. If you are a regular visitor, the way to de-lurk is to leave a comment. I often do not comment on people's blogs because I don't have anything clever to say. I assume that the great masses reading my blog (apart from the two dedicated commentors) feel the same way. Fear not. Like Aristotle's magnanimous man, I will accept your offerings, because they are the best that you have to give.

Sorry--the best way to show how foul Aristotle's magnanimous man is is to apply his principles frequently in everyday life. I'd just be happy to know if this blog is fulfilling its purpose of keeping me in touch with people. It turns out that blogging can be an oddly lonely pursuit. I would also like to know if people have read "Laundry", which was one of my first posts.

Puns and God

A recent post on Sapientiae Amator's blog recounted a pun about Gandhi. This pun is proof that God exists, and that He is the Word because He likes words.

Five Weird Habits

My roommate Annie (of "My Lady Tongue" fame) said that she was "tagged" by Whiskey, and would have to think of five weird habits about herself. I was simultaneously intrigued and offended, because of course my ever agile mind had sprung back quickly to my own self. I do not have any weird habits. Every last one is perfectly normal and rational. Like Alice, I am the one sane person. I'm not sure how useful this particular exercise is, since everyone's eccentricities seem normal to them (eccentricity, like virtue and vice, is unconscious of itself.) I've been tagged too, so here goes, anyhow.

Rules: The first player of this game starts with the topic "five weird habits of yourself," and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals.

1. I really really like pets, especially dachshunds, and generally find that the interjection of a pet into a lagging conversation is just what the doctor ordered.
2. I like to keep my hands busy by making crafts when watching movies, chatting, etc. This serves two purposes: I can give fairly nice gifts on a small budget (rather than giving the remains of the paper towel roll) and I don't have to be bored. I spent a lot of my childhood being bored (well, beginning to be bored, but quickly discovering interesting things to do after my mother offered to find me a few chores to do), but haven't been since reaching an adult's estate. The key is to keep plenty of books on hand, of many different genres to suit fluctuating moods, and keep the hands busy. The other key might be to have lots to do, so that even when you're not doing it, whatever you are doing becomes enjoyable simply because it isn't what you're supposed to be doing.
3. Like Whiskey, I hate stopping sleeping or being awake. It makes it easy to stay up late and hard to wake up early. I wish I had been born when "morning" meant "before 5 pm" (i.e. Jane Austen's time).
4. I like cooking for fun when there's enough room to move around (i.e. generally not in my current Condo of Light and Happiness), especially when I can cook using gluten. Two of my three brothers also like to cook, and I've been marvelling over it, since we didn't cook much as kids. (However, our mother is a fabulous cook, so maybe that's the key.)
5. I really, really hate showers. When I was a child I protested since I would be dirty again in a day or two. In recent years, social pressures have forced me to the daily shower, but I submit in ill grace, and get it done as quickly as possible--apart from the blanks of time where I suddenly realize that I'm staring slack-jawed at the tiles four inches from my face with no sense of purpose connected to the soap in my hand.

I tag Windmilltilter (everyone else I know has been tagged.)

Peace in the laundry

Yesterday I finally went to wash my bedding. I've been meaning to take my comforter, quilt, blanket and mattress pad to the laundromat for months and months (Sam spilled a vanilla latte on the quilt an embarrassingly long time ago, and I'd only spot-cleaned it in a half-hearted way). Our home washer and dryer are very very small, so even twin blankets, etc., don't fit. I'd only been in a laundromat once before, I think, and I hadn't liked it, and was dreading this whole thing. I brought five dollar bills because I had heard that there was a change machine, but when I got there I couldn't figure out how to make it work and there wasn't an attendant. There were a couple of ladies there, but they only spoke Spanish. I walked around the local businesses, trying to get enough quarters, but finally had to drive to the bank. I was really mad that this had happened to me, and upset that after I'd been virtuous enough to go the laundromat, my virtue hadn't been rewarded but rather, even more effort had been required. But I got the quarters easily and deposited a check that I should've taken care of earlier. I got back to the laundromat, plugged my quarters, soap, and bedding in, and started to become aware of how lovely and peaceful the place was. The washers were big, pretty stainless steel front-loading ones, with glass doors, so I could watch my blankets swish around (I had four machines in a row running). There were just a couple of hispanic ladies there, with some very well-behaved children. It was very quiet, and the sun flooded through the glass walls (it was in an old-fashioned strip mall with the glass front wall, and I think part of a glass back wall). There'd been a variety of things that I hadn't really noticed or understood, but as I sat and watched the other people, I saw how the things worked. There were wheeled laundry carts at the exact right height for the washers, and they had tall bars so that you could push them standing up (the wheels ran very smoothly, too, which was delightful). There was a bar across the top that you could throw laundry over. There was also an old wrought iron and dark yellow/light avacado colored laundry table, nice and clean and big and easy to fold laundry on. The chairs faced the dryers, so I had to twist around and look over my shoulder to watch the laundry in the washer, which I regretted until I switched my blankets to the dryers. These were really big, and stacked two high, with glass fronts. I filled a 2 by 2 square of them. Then I sat down, and alternated between reading bits of my book and watching the bedding in the dryers. Blankets in really big dryers are remarkably soothing to watch. Each blanket tumbled in a different way which seemed to express its particular personality. I ended up watching and musing almost the whole time, and time seemed to slow down or not exist the way that it does when you homeschool and have no particular schedule that forces you to over- and under-value time and regret that the present is not the past or the future. I left with a strong feeling of wanting to return soon, and delight that it had all happened. While the idyll lasted I could see that I'd been a spoiled princess over the quarters, but that it was okay--I didn't have to be a spoiled princess now.

I came back to regular life tired and did a bunch of house-work and became ubertired, so I lost a lot of the peaceful delight, but I know I can go back to it--if not in reality, then in memory.

Bright and Colorful Fatherhood

Yesterday one of my roommates remarked that now that the Christmas lights have been taken down, her 17-month-old nephew has started calling his father "Dada" again. While the lights were up, they were "Dada" and the baby's father (and mother and older sister) were "Mama."

The years spin by...

I just realized another big change from childhood: one's attitude towards food. It used to be that food was just something to be put in one's mouth, and all the interest was on previously established tasty foods (pizza with boring toppings, macaroni and cheese, pies, etc.) Now (or at least when I have some energy) food is something fun to shop for, enjoyable to prepare, fascinating to present to others, and an interesting factor of health or illness. I'm always on the lookout for dishes featuring meat and vegetables because of the good-health associations, and unless I'm very sick I'm much more interested in meaty spaghetti sauce with spinach than I am in macaroni and cheese. Processed foods are so seductively easy that they occupy a much larger part of my life than I would like, but as a child I would have been shocked at the idea that a surfeit of processed foods could result in anything other than bliss.