strangerlands: seeking a homeland

Will not teach for cash

2009-04-03T09:11:00.005-06:00

Time for a new post. . . .

This morning, I received a startling email. I subscribe to a Creative Writing listserv that announces writing contests, calls for submissions, and teaching jobs. This particular digest included an ad for a creative writing instructor at Centenary College. The ad goes like this:

"Instructor wanted for 2-credit poetry writing course for the fall semester (September through December, 2009) at, Hackettstown, NJ. MFA required. The course meets once a week for approximately two hours. Salary $900. Centenary College is in the process of developing a creative writing minor. We anticipate ongoing teaching opportunities."

As quickly as my eyes widened at the "poetry instructor wanted: Centenary College" line, they also calmed down because I know that there are two Centenary Colleges in these United States (the "Jewel of the South" where I teach and the other one in New Jersey). But still.

So I sent this to my husband, who did the following math (which, notably, does not even account for taxes):

Let's see, 18 weeks x 3 hours class per week. Plus 1 hour prep and 1 hour grading for every hour in class. No travel if you taught via video alongside your normal Creative Writing course this fall. That makes this offer approximately $5.56/hour. Of course, since the pay is capped, there is a natural disincentive to doing a good job if that means spending more time. What they're really offering, in economic terms, is a minimum wage job with a singular price floor/ceiling and an incentive for the employee to do a poor job.

Right.

I'm reminded of the advice we MFAs received at the University of Florida from the tenured prof who provided the massive lectures for Technical Writing: 400 students in the live lecture on Monday nights, 100-200 more in the video replays that happened at least two other nights a week. We MFAs served as his teaching assistants, instructing the smaller "lab" sessions (18 students in a computer lab where we practiced whatever writing that week's lecture covered).

The prof told us very frankly that if we excelled as teachers of those labs, we were wasting our time and working too hard: that we weren't being paid enough to be great teachers and that our main task was to do our own graduate work. Therefore, he expected us all to be mediocre as TAs.

Once, I remember having an issue with a particular student, and I asked the prof about it; he advised me well about what to do but also starkly told me where to draw the line, reminding me that to be mediocre got his praise but to go the extra mile got his disapproval. This is partly because he didn't think the students were worth the trouble (the good ones would figure it out despite my mediocrity) but mostly because he didn't think it was really my job.

He had a point or two there.

Looks like Centenary @ Hackettstown should expect the same kind of mediocrity. Even poets should know better than to work for that pay.

The grace of frowning years

2008-08-17T06:52:00.005-06:00

Indeed, "caring for [mother] through the frowning years and glorifying the gospel are the same thing."

John Ensor's "Magnifying the Gospel and End-of-Life Issues" evokes a complex set of responses in me: a desire to do this as much as possible for the elders in my life (those in this stage and those who will enter this stage later, by God's grace), a wish that we could have conversations like this one with my grandmother, and a hope that I will engage this Christ-centeredly with my children or other care-givers in my last days (should they come relatively slowly and difficultly, as seems most common). May God help us face our own frowning years and those of our loved ones with courage.

Mamma Mia!

2008-08-12T13:52:00.005-06:00

"It would be charity to call the plot contrived."

Uh huh. It's almost a poor imitation of a Shakespearian comedy. And a total loss if not for all its beautiful people.

Also, if not for mother-in-law's monstrous large DP and fourth-act seat dancing, plus sister-in-law's extra butter on her low-calorie "small." But that doesn't have anything to do with the movie. Except to say that if you plan on seeing it, please take fun people.

So Mamma Mia! does not offer a stellar plot. Nor stellar singing. And I mean "not stellar" generously. But my main problem with the movie is simply this: every character lives for self and his or her fleshly pleasures without any hint of self-control or order at any moment, and they are all rewarded for it.

I don't want to complain that the movie fails as art (as Ebert deftly noted, it does not aim to be good in that way). And I don't actually want to complain that the movie heralds debauchery, though it does. Instead, the movie unearthed in me some sadness. Sadness that many viewers might secretly (or not so secretly) long for their lives to have such freedom as these characters seem to have.

Maybe some of us wish our twenties were full of one-night stands, or wish that our moms were cool enough to headline our drunken bachelorette parties, or wish for such steamy moments on the beach with beautiful lovers, or wish that we could become rich off three divorces and then fill our lives with plastic surgery and younger men. I wish it went without saying that such a life would be wasted. Vanity.

But the real temptation of the movie is to wish for the philosophical and relative freedom in which these characters seem to dwell. Freedom to determine your own identity. Freedom to explore all that life has to offer. Freedom to drink yourself sick. Freedom to sleep with whomever you wish. Freedom to be cool in the eyes of others. Freedom to live in loyal relationship that holds the truth of self-loyalty rather than God-vows at its core. Freedom to prize family over everything else. Freedom to long for the unattainable and actually get it one day. Freedom to write your own story.

It's not the objects of those prepositions that are important: it's the noun. The movie does not claim that drunkenness or promiscuity are necessarily good but that the freedom to choose those if you wish is. That at any cost, one should have personal freedom to choose for oneself what she deems best.

On our own, we will express such freedom only for temporary hedonism because we cannot possibly see the virtue of present agony for later joy. Oddly, that does seem the unapologetic moral of the movie. The characters themselves would not balk at admitting it. Why not get pleasure now? Why not rule the self?

The fact that we weren't made to do so is sufficient reason for me. But the eventual outworkings of it are compelling as well. The self is too short-sighted to get even the best pleasure now. If you're smart enough or powerful enough, you could acquire for yourself the best pleasure you can see now. But there's a world unknown beyond it. It's impractical to depend on the self for the highest pleasure.

Even the movie shows us this. Donna has suffered these twenty years because she didn't have the self-discipline when she was young to actually work at relationship. She has made it fine and worked hard and raised a lovely daughter, but she has suffered loneliness and fatigue and, ironically, loss of pleasure. All this, at least in part, because she did not work at love but expected it to land in her lap. She chunked the "agony" (as it were) of living in community because she preferred rule of the self unto immediate pleasure insofar as she could see it.

In the postmodern way, she eventually gets her pleasure . . . the man after whom she has secretly pined all these years. That's hardly a spoiler: it's a romantic comedy, after all. But will it last? She will have to set aside herself to do so. She will have to prefer his good over her own, and he hers. Methinks there is a tragedy to follow.

Salary search

2008-08-07T19:33:00.001-06:00

Apparently, I need a new (and more lucrative) job.

The power of numbers

2008-08-07T16:56:00.002-06:00

It's hard to blink past this bit:

"If only 7 percent of the 2 billion Christians in the world would care for a single orphan in distress, there would effectively be no more orphans. If everybody would be willing to simply do something to care for one of these precious treasures, I think we would be amazed by just how much we could change the world."

This from Steven Curtis Chapman, reflecting on the beauty of adoption through his and his wife's journey. About two months now after having lost their youngest to an automobile accident in their driveway, the family is appearing on various television shows this week to talk about their hope amid grief. I can hardly count how many blogs I read have linked to the "Good Morning America" interview posted on youtube.com.

The pater familias appears again tonight, this time on "Larry King Live," so I gather this piece on CNN.com introduces that interview. Watch for it, you who have cable; I'll look for it online afterwards. Maybe he'll repeat this call. It's a stunning number: if all those adopted by the Redeemer would care for but one. . . .

Share the Road

2008-07-29T13:09:00.009-06:00

There's a whole lot interesting about Motoko Rich's "Literacy Debate: R U Really Reading" in the New York Times. This first installment in a series on digital versus print explores the generational reading gaps in a family of four. The header photo says it all: dad reads the paper, mom curls up with a novel, kids glow in front of their Mac laptops. It's a Gnostic paradise, gathering for family togetherness time but each one engaging a separate activity. The children more distant still, they practice the subtle art of "social networking" and "interactive fiction" from the safe confines of a virtual reality.

And in this article, we read about young Nadia, the melancholy would-be poet, the product of her technological age.

I recognize the irony of my embedded complaint. I read the story online because we don't take any newspaper at the house. I'm logging my complaint about it online in my unkempt blog. But I spent the morning unpacking cherished books and reading from two others (not to mention children's books): real books with glue and binding and pages. Some of the unpacked books include ones self-published by Great-great-great-aunt Laura Crews, whose words aren't online for young Nadia to ever encounter, much less change.

Maybe I'm just an old Romantic who shares with my husband an affection for the smell and look and texture of books. Maybe I'm an elitist who still believes that old adage that to write well one must be a good and generous reader. (Apparently, one must now qualify this remark by saying that a writer must not only be a reader but a reader of books, including old ones.) If so, I hope to remain this kind of elitist Romantic for a very long time.

My own flaws on this front are too numerous to mention, though I must to continue: in short, I have not read nearly so many books as I own, nor do I read or write as much as I should. So it is not the high-standing achiever who laments Nadia's story; rather, it is the struggling imperfection in me that longs to be a better reader and writer and cannot stand to lower the standards.

"What about Nadia's story has got you so worried?" you ask. Two things:

1. She prefers online fiction because she can change it to suit her own interests and desires.
2. She wants to be a writer.

Regarding #1. Some might say that she's really getting into the story, interacting with it, so what's the problem? But whatever happened to the authorial craft? Whatever happened to catharsis? Whatever happened to reading as an experiment in something different from what you already know and want? I too have wanted to change stories I have read (haven't we all?) but I don't have the liberty to do so, and that's part of what lets fiction do its job. That is, fiction forces us into uncomfortable situations that we then must work through; we are the readers, not the writers.

For example, I would love to make Willoughby less of a lout, because there's something about him that I love too, but I don't have the liberty because Austen made him that complex lout, and there's a beauty in that for the reader: I have to deal with his complexity and not just change his narrative line to suit my interests. Sounds like real life.

Now, regarding #2. What about Nadia's desire to be a writer? Scratch that; she's already a published writer online, having authored a story with a misspelling in the title. Grammar fail.

Nadia would like to be an English major but "does not see a problem with reading few books. 'No one’s ever said you should read more books to get into college,' she said." Something in my gut hurts, and bad, every time I read that paragraph.

Please give me one good reason why someone who does not want to read books should major in English. Perhaps you would offer that such a person should major in English because she wants to write. Good: then she must also read . . . books. Want to be a poet? Read poetry books. New ones and old ones, very old ones. On my desk right now are several books of poetry, half by living poets and half by dead ones. There's also a tab open in my internet browser with another living writer's poem, linked to an audio recording. Just because you are a human being with emotions and an affection for language does not make you a poet. (Of course, having poetry books on your desk and a poem open in a tab does not necessarily make you a poet either.)

If English ever becomes a major without that kind of reading, I don't want to teach it anymore. And if writers ever quit reading books, I don't want to try to be a writer anymore.

Ms. Rich does a fine job in her article of responding to Nadia's comment that college entrance does not require reading books. After all, she may be right. But Ms. Rich writes, "The simplest argument for why children should read in their leisure time is that it makes them better readers." Statistics prove that's good for college entrance exams and future employment. The history of humankind proves it's also good for general life.

Last weekend, I attended a conference on classical education, where we chanted the glory of helping children think about ideas rather than merely learn how to test well. So maybe my conscience is particularly pricked toward the true, the good, the beautiful; since that conference, I have felt more keenly my love for books and ideas than for my Mac. True, I've spent more time today with online pages than printed and bound ones, but I still love them more, partly because they last, and I think every writer should.

Conferences

2008-07-18T13:29:00.006-06:00

After long silence, I must report the following:

We've moved, which is mostly the reason for the silence. Orange carpet is up, hardwoods are stained. Pictures, maybe, will follow.
Next week, I'm attending the Circe Conference in Houston. Apparently, I'll be joining there geeks of the highest rhetorical order. I offer as evidence for this claim the fact that the Circe Institute recommends the following clip as humor:

This fall, I've had a paper accepted at a regional Christianity and Literature conference, and I'm pumped about it. To increase the pump, yesterday I received an email informing me that I will present that paper in one of two panels entitled "Christianity and Eros," and they asked me to chair the other panel of the same title. Woot!

Moore Saying More on Transracial Adoptions

2008-05-31T07:28:00.004-06:00

Russell Moore adds comments to the recent debate about transracial adoption here. A provocative tidbit to whet your appetite:

Right now, there are untold numbers of children, many of them racial minorities, languishing in the foster care system in the United States. Would the social workers really have us believe that it is better for an African-American child to grow up bounced from home to home in this bureaucratic limbo than to be a child to parents whose skin is paler than his? Do they really believe that a white Russian child would do better to live in an orphanage until she is dismissed at eighteen to a life of suicide or homelessness than to grow up with loving African-American parents?

This approach loves the abstract notion of humanity more than actual humans. It neatly categorizes persons according to their racial lineages rather than according to their need for love, for acceptance, for families. Our love for neighbor means we ought to prioritize the need for families for the fatherless -- regardless of how they're skin colors or languages line up with one another.

But there's an even bigger issue here: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Dorothy Bode on NPR

2008-05-29T05:42:00.003-06:00

Dorothy Bode, mom to a transracial family in Minneapolis, whose blog I follow, was interviewed yesterday by NPR. The main impetus for the interview seems to have been the release of an Adoption Institute study this week regarding the potential problems with race-blind adoptive processes in place since 1994. Just under 8 minutes, the interview is definitely worth a listen.

Just Curb It

2008-05-28T06:34:00.003-06:00

My giddiness over the curbside recycling program about to begin in Shreveport is slightly ridiculous, but I ain't proud. I can hardly wait to get our blue cart: it may arrive as early as next Monday. I can hardly wait to figure out a new use for our current in-house recycling bins. I can hardly wait to not separate our recyclables.

I can hardly wait for Micah to have more time to get my Saturday beignets, though I am slightly concerned that without the coincidental function of taking the recycling out, he won't have as much reason to go get said beignets.

And when I read this morning that one of the recyclable items one can place in one's blue bins is . . . glass bottles. Well, I about fell out of my chair. The local recycling joint won't take those (last I checked, anyway).

So let's all get ready to smile the first day we have a multicolored trash day, the brown and blue together at the curb. My oh my.

An abstract

2008-05-19T08:07:00.002-06:00

In case anyone is curious, here's the abstract I submitted last week for hopeful presentation at the southwest regional Christianity and Literature conference this October. The paper is already drafted (written originally for possible presentation at an earlier conference) but I'll revise it if the abstract is selected for this. Here goes.

Tell Me a Story: Redemptive History as the Overwhelming Narrative of Self and Sexuality

Human beings create community with narrative, and we do so because we were created in the image of a storyteller. We seek inspiration and self-exploration in various ecologies, but we finally resort to story for our own self definitions and group delineations, and those stories either resonate or conflict with the infinitely renewed nonlinear narrative of redemptive history God has been writing since before the foundations of the world. All our smallest narratives thus point us either toward or away from our creation and toward the communion we were designed to have with God himself. So we continually tell the story of how and why we came to be, especially regarding human sexuality.

In this paper, I suggest that we can only understand human sexuality when we order it according to God's overwhelming redemption story. Alice McDermott's Child of My Heart provides a good case study: the sexual fate of the novel's protagonist seems inevitable due to the wrong self-story she has adopted. Without any governing narrative of identity and purpose, without the order that God's redemptive narrative should provide her, Theresa loses herself in a false story of bodily autonomy that she, her parents, her neighbors, and her culture write easily and often about human sexuality. Theresa's wrong self-story, rooted in a wrong God-story, makes McDermott's novel a perfect example of the great stakes in the human narrative.

Indeed, we do violence to ourselves and to all human beings when we avoid or ignore our most essential story, the one that the sovereign God wrote us into and for, when we get the story about human sexuality wrong. Thus, writers of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and sermons must continue investigating deliberately and complexly the story of human sexuality, which is only ordered rightly by God's all-consuming redemptive narrative. After all, we humans will tell stories, so we might as well tell the right one: human sexuality and indeed human beings themselves depend on it.

To do

2008-05-12T21:01:00.001-06:00

Blessed are the Barren

2008-03-17T15:51:00.004-06:00

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson published "Blessed are the Barren" in Christianity Today last December, and I have had the article open in a tab almost ever since. I have read the first paragraph countless times, remembered that the essay was eight pages long, and switched to another tab with the good intent of reading the entire essay when I had time. But then I would forget. Today, I remembered and had the time. So today I can hardly believe I waited this long to read it.

Wilson takes a her sweet time lamenting barrenness, which will rightly make those of us who have borne babies want to weep. And she writes with a tender harshness about the reality of adoption, really calling the Church to love it with tears, knowing that it always also means grief, or else. Finally, she concludes:

"And so the barren, and the adopted, and the adoptive, live in the middle of an apocalyptic blessing. It is an uneasy way to live before the end has come. There is always something of a reproach in it, to ourselves and to others. It constantly asks us whether we believe in the resurrection of the dead."

So please make the time and read this essay; don't open it in a tab and wait three months like I did. And live the apocalypse of adoption.

Tiger Roars

2008-03-17T11:50:00.001-06:00

I'm disappointed that this story didn't mention how I creamed Tiger last week in the last match of the Tiger Challenge on his Wii golf game. Now we all know.

If only he'd had a sock

2008-03-17T09:58:00.001-06:00

Oops.

Women in Christianity and Islam

2008-03-10T22:34:00.005-06:00

Weekend before last, I served as co-leader of a discussion on "Women in Christianity and Islam" for a Christian-Muslim Relations program organized by the Christian Leadership Center at Centenary. What glorious fun. And it left me with much to think about regarding biblical womanhood, the grace of God through Jesus Christ, compassionate ministry, and real faithfulness. Maybe some other things too. But in an effort to at least post some bits about this, here are some lessons I learned from the experience:

1) Lesson: putting a face to those who don't love Jesus as the Redeemer is a blessed thing indeed. It was a true blessing for me personally to meet and dialogue with the Muslim convert who served as the other co-leader for our session (let's call her Asna). She is a learned woman and I look forward to developing a friendship with her.

2) Lesson: regarding womanhood and faith, I have more in common with Muslims than with most Christians. That is, as a complementarian Christian (one who believes that men and women are co-equal in creation and redemption but distinct in role), I have way more in common with Asna and Muslims like her at least regarding the roles of men and women than I do with egalitarian American Christians. Asna seemed intrigued to learn that the idea of gender distinction is in the Christian Bible too, and that at least I would say that the Biblical ethic is adamant that no sex or type of person has inherent second-class status to anyone else, that we are all equally depraved and then also, in Christ, equally redeemed.

3) Lesson: the issue of women and faith might serve as an entry point for interfaith ministry. My presentation just hinted at the distinctions between complementarian and egalitarian views in Christianity, and Asna's just hinted at the issues relevant to women and Islam. Both of us had lots more we could have said, and our "audience" engaged interestingly; I am hopeful that we might see more discussion on precisely this topic in the future.

For example, Asna was rather intrigued to hear that the Bible does talk about head coverings for women, that the idea of veiling as such is not completely foreign to the Christian Bible. She wants a copy of the notes I made for my talk so that she can check out the New Testament scriptures I noted; she is eager to share these with so-called Christians who stop her in Wal-Mart and think she's nuts for wearing full burkha. I chuckled at the idea of a veiled Muslim woman challenging the biblical illiteracy of so-called Christians in the grocery check-out line.

4) Lesson: genuine understanding is an important entry point for interfaith ministry. The whole program, though it featured interfaith prayer and a panel discussion where Muslims and Christians called one another brother, was no kumbayah session of inarticulate pluralistic doctrine. Now, to be sure, many of those present (though the crowd was very small in general) definitely thought that, but that was not the overt theme of things. Rather, the overt theme seemed to be respect for theological distinctions even if they are not reconcilable; the general call was one of peaceful dialogue, which I dare say we should all welcome.

5) Lesson: be a person of your book. The last imam to speak in the panel discussion called all of us there to be people of our books, earnestly living out what righteousness we read there. He repeated it often, the importance of our books. At our church, we take this for granted, that Christians determine to live in faithfulness to God's revelation in His Word, and maybe we forget that it's not an altogether common belief among so-called Christians in general.

In "our book" we Christians will hear the call to humble but urgent ministry, to radical acts of love, to passionate and thoughtful relationship . . . all through serious attention to the supremacy of Jesus over all things. But most of the "Christians" in attendance that day wouldn't have agreed with that last part. At my lunch table, two women actually dismissed the idea of original sin as not in the Bible at all "unless you read Genesis literally" but as a mere fiction of the Catholic church. I was so baffled that I could not compose a reply. Later, they were surprised to hear that I actually believed Jesus is the only way, truth, and life, and that no one comes to the Father but by Him. I'm still confused as to how someone could call herself a Christian and not believe that.

But the point here is that I think we may find in our local Muslim community people who are willing to dialogue about what God has actually said; the larger Christian community locally may not, ironically, be as interested in that. Oh the urgency of speaking compassionate truth to those around us who claim to be Christians as well!

6) Lesson: hanging around people who sincerely believe they must work hard to earn God's reward will sure highlight the preciousness of God's powerful grace through Jesus. The experience of being with these earnest Muslims made me recall with awe at so many points that Jesus died to make so many of the things they desire available to sinners like me completely and freely. He has set us free from bondage to sin! His Holy Spirit empowers us to walk in righteousness! I cannot begin to describe, then, the renewed joy in my own heart: our Jesus is indeed unique, precious, exalted, and good.

Perhaps more on observations from that day and beyond later. But for now, I have an assignment from one of my students to write a 10- to 15-line poem in trimeter. I have two lines:

Cheap bread and pickled fish:
a side dish, not a meal.

Now for eight more and something for them to say. . . .

Broken legs, broken bulbs

2008-03-09T22:07:00.002-06:00

Today, I visited Grandma without Noel, which means decreased joy (for her) but increased usefulness (for me). I arrived and was almost immediately put to work. Here's how it went:

Grandma: Jackie went to Wal-Marks for me this morning to get a bulb for my outside, you know I burn it all night ever night. Those heavy curtains in my room, they're just light enough to let the light in, so that's like a nightlight for me in the night. Been out three days, so I been pulling that floor lamp there into the kitchen and burning it all night, but it's not right. Your Daddy told me keep this package when he replaced the light last, five years ago or so, one of these new fancy bulbs, so I kept the package. Five-year warranty, he said. Now it burned out. But Jackie said they didn't have the same one: had one 13 watts, but not 15 watts like this one. And she didn't even ask if they were gone get some like this soon.

Me: Well.

Grandma: I use that light, now. Kids walk cross my backyard. Your Daddy tied up those gates tight with wire so the men have to get back there to read the meters have to jump over. They could open it but they don't want to. But I need that light, now. Jackie even went to Radio Shack but didn't find anything.

Me: Well, I bet they'll have it at Home Depot right up here. Let me go for you. I'll be back in 15 minutes.

Grandma: No, Jenny, you'll break your leg.

Me: Break my what? I don't think so.

Grandma: Now I just don't know what I'd do if you went up there for me and broke your leg. I'd never forgive myself is something happened to you and Noel.

Me: Noel's not even with me!

Grandma: Still, now, you've got to be careful.

Me: Okay, I'll be careful. I'm going, okay? [This is, in case anyone reading can't guess, an incredibly shortened version of this conversation: it was more like a programming loop.]

Grandma: Call me if you don't find the right one.

Me: Okay.

10 minutes later, I'm in Home Depot and find something similar but not the same, so I call:

Me: Hey.

Grandma: Hey.

Me: So there's a bulb here that I think is just right, but it's not exactly like the package. It uses 14 watts instead of 15 [of course, this is better, but that's beside the point] but it is like a 60 watt bulb, just like the one you have. It's not made by GE, but it's cheaper: Jackie said the GE one at Wal-Mart was $15 but this is only $5 [not necessarily a good thing to Grandma]. But they're otherwise the same.

Grandma: Just come back and let's call Wal-Mart to see if they're getting any in.

Me: I think this will be good, really. It's what I would buy if I needed a bulb.

Grandma: Okay. [Again, I'm truncating the loop for the sake of time here.]

Back at Grandma's . . .

Me: Let's put this bulb in, okay?

Grandma: Well, let's wait.

Me: I know this is important to you. Let me put the bulb in. Where are some scissors to cut the package?

Grandma: Those scissors won't cut that.

Me: Why not?

Grandma: I can't get them to cut anything.

Me: I'll try them. [They immediately and easily cut through the plastic.] Okay, let's put it up. Where's the step ladder? And the keys to the back door?

Grandma: I'll come out and hold the ladder.

Me: I think you should stay inside. Every time you come out here, you fall.

Grandma: I think I know when I'm going to fall.

Me: Whatever.

Grandma: Leave that bulb in here. If you drop it, it will take me forever to clean it up.

Me: I'm not going to drop it. I'm putting it in this chair here. It's fine. [I set up the step ladder underneath the light fixture on the back porch.]

Grandma: I'm going to hold onto the ladder for you.

Me: I don't actually think that's a great idea.

Grandma: Why not?

Me: Well, with all respect, your tremors kind of make the ladder a little shaky.

Grandma: I'll hold on with my good hand.

Me: Okay.

Climbing up, I realize this might not be so easy: the glass parts of this cubed light fixture don't come out by sliding, so the only way to replace the bulb is to take the entire fixture down. That means unscrewing the two flat-head screws and lowering the contraption carefully. But we finally get it down, bugs and all.

Grandma: Let me take that inside and clean it while you replace the bulb.

Me: No, I don't think you should touch this; you'll cut yourself.

Grandma: Jenny, I think I know what I can handle!

Me: Seriously, now, it's heavy and kind of sharp. You'll snag yourself with that paper-thin skin at every turn here.

Grandma: Well, you bring it in now and let's wash it.

Me: I'll just get a wet rag. [I go in for moist paper towels, come out and clean out the bugs and such that have collected in the fixture.]

Grandma: I didn't want to use paper towels. That's my last roll. Besides, that's not good enough. I clean that every time I take it down.

Me: Every five years?

Grandma: I keep a clean house, now.

Me: But this is an outside light. It goes outside, where the bugs are.

Grandma: Your Daddy cleaned that real well last time he changed the bulb. And that's how I always do it.

Me: Okay, let's take it inside. [I rinse it in the sink and it does look nicely clean afterwards.]

Grandma: I'll get a rag so we can really clean it out and dry it.

Me: But it's fine!

Grandma: Now this is the way your Daddy did it.

Me: But Daddy is obsessive-compulsive about stuff like this. That's not the way it has to be done.

Grandma: Well, I'm obsessive too. This is how we're going to do it.

Me: Okay. [So I take the rag and dry it. Grandma notices a few bits remaining in the crevices but I finally convince her it's just fine for an outside light. We take it back to replace it and I realize a problem: I've only got two hands, and I have to use one to hold the fixture in place while I use the other to position the screws and screw them in with the screwdriver. Hmm. I need a third hand. Long story short, I figure it out and the fixture is back. Yea!]

Grandma: Thank you, Jenny. Now let me pay you. [I groan but accept, with apology for having been disrespectful about the cleaning. She just chuckles; I think she actually appreciated the challenge.]

A few other issues later--namely, discussion of her taxes, search for Jerry's phone number, watering the plants with 4 gallons of water, and fixing the folding doors between her kitchen and living room--I'm off. Later, she calls me:

Me: Hello?

Grandma: uh, hello.

Me: Hey.

Silence.

Me: Grandma?

Grandma: Oh, Jenny, hi.

Me: Hey. You okay?

Grandma: Well, yeah, except I'm sitting over here in the dark.

Me: What? Why are you in the dark?

Grandma: Well, that light out there is so dirty I can't see anything.

Me: Grandma, I told you I think it's fine! Now you seriously can't see?

Grandma: Oh, I'm just kidding. [She laughs.] Now did you get home without a broken leg?

We got to get some of that re-form!

2008-02-28T07:46:00.003-06:00

Bobby Jindal, the reformer. Bobby Jindal, the ethicist. Delivering an ultimatum to the Ruth's Chris Steak House and other legislative institutions in our fair state.

The New York Times followed his campaign closely, which I found interesting: just a state governor's campaign. No, a minority campaign (he is a Republican) in a corrupt little state where governors are more like princes. Jindal talked big and won the public like Huey Long on the back of open trucks, the gospel of fairness coming soon to a yard near you.

So it's no surprise that today the national paper showed Governor Jindal resting in his office while the legislature grumblingly okayed most of his ethics bills (save the one blasting retirement benefits to legislators convicted of state-related crimes, because we the people want to make sure Edwin Edwards and Representative Jefferson have a pillow to rest their heads on in their golden years). Adam Nossiter's story is a must-read, partly because it is informative but mostly because it is beautifully written. Clever, like a Cajun confessing he bought bad lobster traps.

Como?

2008-02-26T21:39:00.001-06:00

"Wonder Pets" in Portugese? How glorious has our world just gotten?

Swimming lessons with Seeger

2008-02-25T22:16:00.003-06:00

"But what about the kitty cats?" asks a little one.

Pointing to the picture of the people clinging to the rocks (see below), say, "These children asked a lot of questions, too—and look what happened to them!"

Then close with prayer: "God, please don’t cover the earth with water ever again. Some of us don’t know how to swim yet. Amen."

Ah, biblical teaching for children at its best. For more ludicrous game ideas and inspiring curriculum, see Rejected Sunday School Lessons: Totally Inappropriate Ideas for Working with Children. And please let's all chip in and get Rev. Segner a copy.

I think I'm having visions; it's a world like this one but with awesome grammar.

2008-02-20T22:01:00.003-06:00

The New York Times is officially neat-o. For all you semicolon lovers out there, here's an article for you: a story about a real-life punctuation hero.

You'll think it can't be, that this must be some fiction crafted by Lynne Truss or maybe a trusty follower; you'll think that follower could be me. But no, it's a real writer in a real city with a real writerly job doing writerly hero work; he knows a "pretentious anachronism" when he sees one, and he holds it up for all the train riders to learn.

So, a raised glass for Mr. Neches, please, and for all his winking friends.

A poetry list

2008-02-14T06:47:00.003-06:00

Here's a list inspired by Arthur Jackson from the poetry catalogued on my Library Thing library (I started to do just books, but that was too hard). I started a list of prose too, but that was also too hard; I need to divide by genre or else the list is off balance.

An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry edited by Elizabeth Bishop
The Bacchae of Euripides: A New Version by CK Williams
or (if drama is cheating)
Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956 by Bertolt Brecht
Collected Earlier Poems by Anthony Hecht and Complete Poems of John Donne
Desert Fathers, Uranium Daughters by Debora Greger
Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop
Four Quartets by TS Eliot
Glass, Irony, and God by Anne Carson
Homecoming: New and Collected Poems by Julia Alvarez
I
J
K
Looking for Trouble by Charles Simic
Mysticism for Beginners by Adam Zagajewski
New and Collected Poems by Richard Wilbur and The Nerve: Poems by Glyn Maxwell
The Odyssey by Homer
A Part of Speech by Joseph Brodsky and The Portable Milton by John Milton
Q
Robert Browning's Poetry by Robert Browning
Second Space: New Poems by Czeslaw Milosz
The Urizen Books by William Blake
View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems by Wislawa Szymborska
The Whole Motion by James Dickey and WH Auden: Selected Poems by WH Auden
X
You Come Too: Favorite Poems for Readers of All Ages by Robert Frost
Z

In commas and other news

2008-01-29T11:56:00.000-06:00

I'm in heaven: my Advanced Rhetoric, Grammar, and Composition class has attracted some geeks of first rank. And here's a story about how I know that.

Yesterday, we were discussing the glories of the short sentence: pithy rhythm-changing attention-grabber, etc. And we considered examples in Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch," which, by the way, is a terrific essay. My gut felt all strung out after reading it again before class; every time I read it, in fact, I lose a little more gut. And that is very good. Not in a physical dieting way but in a metaphorical way.

Anyway, we were considering short sentences in Wright's essay, a portion of which I was reading aloud for the class. At one point, I interrupted myself, as I often do, to make some stylistic observation about the power of one particular short sentence and followed my comment with, "Amen?" meant more as an inside joke with myself than anything else.

But lo and behold, several members of the class responded with a resounding, "Amen!" which made me want to quit right there and just giggle. But then the hilarity of the moment would really have been lost; it would have only nerdy rather than nerdy funny. So we had to just leave it at that, the amen-ers among us amused, the non-amen-ers confused and/or possibly annoyed.

Isn't that a beautiful story?

This just in

2008-01-29T11:55:00.001-06:00

I learned today from my grandmother that I am "just like one of the family."

Good to know.

The Centenary . . .

2007-12-08T23:27:00.001-06:00

Speaking of adopting pets, the big college just did.After receiving votes from 1400 alums, faculty, staff, currents students, and even a batch of prospective students, Centenary College (alma mater, hail) has announced an additional mascot. We'll remain the Gents and Ladies, of course, but now we have a Catahoula cur named Skeeter to tote around and love.

What a beautiful dog. And from a rescue shelter too. Even better.

Go Skeeter the Gent!

Adopting a pet or a child?

2007-12-05T12:22:00.000-06:00

Here are two poignant sentences from Russell Moore's must-read article "The Brotherhood of Sons" in a recent Touchstone journal:

It is one thing when the culture doesn’t “get” adoption, and so speaks, for instance, of buying an animal as “adopting” a pet. When Christians, however, think the same way, we betray that we miss something crucial about our own salvation.

So let's learn and love it, friends, with passion and action. We meditate too little on how, through the Messiah whose birth we celebrate during this season, we now have the perfect love of the perfect Father. And we marvel too little at how earthly adoption can help us see that reality a bit better. The reality Moore conveys about the Russian orphanage where their boys lived for too long can help us do exactly that, yet it deserves warning: it is emotionally and spiritually hard to read, making me want to simultaneously genuflect in gratitude for my own adoption as daughter to the Most High and crawl on those knees to the nearest airplane that can transport me to Russia.

All that said, I have one critique for the article: Moore insists that when they teach their boys about their cultural heritage, that means teaching them about what it means to be a Moore, with all its Mississippi-ness, but not what it means to have been a Russian, with all its Tchaikovskian folk opera.

Now, maybe the spiritual precedent would suggest that it's better to know as little as possible about the previous reality but to live robustly the new adopted life. But as it pertains to human existence and adopted life, I worry a bit about this idea. I worry about it culturally, because I think everyone should have broad cultural educations, and a family with adopted children from other cultures has a particular privilege to learn such business with a great deal of personal investment.

I also worry about it socially and economically, for it is often the privilege of the relatively wealthy to adopt, and when the wealthy adopt children from foreign countries where disadvantage is the norm, then that cultural heritage is threatened with weakness and perhaps even extinction. If God has designed the Church with cultural diversity as an integral component, then local churches whose members have adopted have, again, a particular privilege to practice such stuff.

Finally, Americans are particularly good at privileging American-ness. We live rather obliviously to the global community, partially because we spend too much time in our own virtual worlds of materialism and celebrity culture. It's necessary that the adopted Moores understand their Moore-ness, with all its Hank Williams and Charley Pride, but there's nothing particularly smashing about those things. All the Moore boys, and all of us too, would do well to know some "Peter and the Wolf" too, but the Moores especially.

After all, adoption is the privilege of leaving what was squalid and empty to enter into what is rich and yours. But human adoption isn't quite like spiritual adoption in that some of that richness is of the flesh, and some of the yours is really ours. That is, human adoption does liberate orphans from a kind of loneliness into another, like the consumerist supremacy of McDonald's. But transcultural adoption liberates the adopting family from its monotony of blood into a hegemony of culture, like the broadening of Moore-ness for all the Moores from Mississippi to Russia.

For now, to be a Moore means more than Baptist ministers and the Confederacy. Now it means to be a Russian brother.

Other good photos, on that other topic again

2007-12-04T21:38:00.000-06:00

For more good photos about that Bobby Knight business, check out The Times' photo blog from whence the one above came. At least the story is better fleshed-out there. (PS the guy with his head up is one of my students. Bonus points? Er, probably not.)

Mr. and Mrs. Menefee

2007-12-04T14:38:00.001-06:00

And now for pictures from the professional, Kevin Beasley.

Of course, I can't actually reproduce them on my site, but if you want to see the multitude of images he shot of my sister's wedding, go here and navigate to "weddings" and then "Emily's and Craig's wedding" (password phifer).

I especially suggest you look for the photo of Noel gazing at his navel. The shots of Craig in the suicide-door car are really grand too. Oh, and then there's the fun of a wedding in general. Yeah, that.

Updates

2007-12-02T00:55:00.001-06:00

Just as I hit "publish post" for the bit below, ESPN was linking to two stories about the game on its main page! The links: Tech losses Knight at halftime | Centenary wins. An unfortunate typo in the former; a simple beauty in the latter.

Centenary's athletics site paraphrases the issue this way: "A group of 20 to 30 Centenary students baited Bob Knight as he passed by. Knight stopped, turned, and headed back towards the section with a pointed finger. After a few words to the crowd he disappeared into the tunnel to meet up with his team."

Centenary's big W

2007-12-01T23:57:00.001-06:00

Proud to be a Gent. And/or whatever we will be. Because tonight, the Centenary Gents defeated the Texas Tech Red Raiders in a great game at CenturyTel.

The crowd looked small to start, no doubt owing to the competing SEC championship game. Regardless, we grew to a relatively large crowd soon and would have seemed rather impressive in the Gold Dome. Alas, we were home away from home.

But we had to dress pretty because Bobby Knight was there. At least until half-time.

At the end of the first half, Kelly and Kakie and I retreated to the C Club area for free munchies and apparently missed the show. When we returned to our seats, Kelly's husband (who had stayed in his seat during half time) said that just as Texas Tech was returning to the locker room, Knight stopped at the Centenary student section and was gesturing passionately to them. He couldn't tell what had happened or who started it.

Then a fellow faculty member joined us and said that Centenary radio had reported "an altercation" between the students and Knight. But that was all he knew for sure.

By this point, it was quite clear that Knight would not be returning to the game. The official line later was that he was ill and has been since Texas Tech played in Alaska last week.

Finally, we heard the story from a student, an advisee of mine, who had been standing there and experienced the situation first-hand. He first told the story to a group two rows in front of us; then he told us, and then he repeated it again to the mother of a basketball player directly in front of us (she had apparently not overheard either of the previous tellings). So if he was making any of this up, he was doing it well and repeating the same details three times in a row.

The advisee said that just as Knight passed them, one of the students said, "Watch out: he's got a gun!" alluding to a recently reported incident and a bunch of students responded by hiding their heads in mock fear. Clearly a planned bit of trash talk, and clearly in poor taste, but clever nonetheless.

The advisee then tells us that Knight paused to yell at the students, saying that he didn't have to be here, that the only reason Texas Tech would bother playing a team like Centenary was as a favor to Rob Flaska (our coach, who has some former connection with Knight).

This is where local news stories stop . . . well, what local stations even covered the game. KTBS spent their entire sports section via satellite to their main sports guy who reported on virtually nothing, spending the entire segment on his personal commentary about LSU's possibilities for the National Championship.

So if you want news on this game, you should check out this story on usually crummy KTAL (an entertaining piece, what with the reporter's singing and all) or check out virtually any Lubbock news outlet, like this one.

Anyway, the point is that advisee did not stop there. He said that Knight proceeded to curse the students and yell angrily. When one of his assistant coaches approached and tried to help him leave the court, he began yelling at the assistant and cursing him. Then he returned to the students and took up his rant again, so fiercely that the advisee found himself feeling rather frightened and had to turn away.

The Shreveport Times' photo gallery (from which the photos in this post come) seem to support this story, especially the one above showing Knight interacting with an assistant coach in front of the Centenary student section. If Knight merely "stopped, walked to the students and calmly explained" his position, why would his assistant need to intervene?

Regardless, Bobby Knight left, not to return. And Centenary prevailed, defeating Texas Tech definitively only in the last two seconds. An intense second half, and rewarding.

Knight's son and heir responded defensively to the media, but it hardly matters. Whether or not he has his father's talent for coaching, he clearly shares his temper. (Anyway, does the fact that Texas Tech couldn't maintain their lead in the second half at all indicate that Knight's son can't coach?)

We shall see how the story shakes down. Since the game happened on Championship Saturday in college football, hardly anyone will take the time to report on this game or its shenanigans. Some of our local sports could hardly bring themselves to do it, but shame on them for that.

After all, the Knight business is really no surprise. But the varying stories are. Which will prevail, the provocative one from my trustworthy advisee who claims to have seen it, or the tamer official line from the SID to the AP and beyond?

Moral Compass

2007-11-28T23:44:00.000-06:00

This is sure to offend and worry, but I'd like to hereby champion this small but reasonable blog post about The Golden Compass.

Let us celebrate the imagination and guard our children with active instruction, not knee-jerk boycott. Let every Christian be a cultural critic and a public philosopher, engaging the world (the kosmos) with compassion and information and wisdom . . . not an uninformed grinch or a prudish fearmonger, avoiding the world with anxiety and control and faithlessness.

Dying Well

2007-11-26T23:34:00.000-06:00

The good bits in this article are the names: Tanya O. Walker-Butts, Gaines C. McCorquodale, Loretta L. Pettway, and Dr. Sumpter D. Blackmon. Apparently, everyone in Camden, Alabama, gives a middle initial when speaking with a reporter from the New York Times.

But the bad bits in the article start early, like the second paragraph:

Over the last eight years, the refusal of patients to die according to actuarial schedules has led the federal government to demand that hospices exceeding reimbursement limits repay hundreds of millions of dollars to Medicare.

Darn those patients, refusing to die on a timetable that would please insurance agencies. Reminds me of that Monty Python skit: "I'm getting better!" the old man says. "No you're not," says the Cleese character, who proceeds to beg the rotating "Bring Out Yer Dead" gatherer to help him a bit. He finally agrees and finishes the elderly one off with a hit to the head.

An unfortunate picture of our Medicare situation today, it seems. Preferable to whack the ill prematurely on the head and lob them on top of the wheelbarrow with the rest of the dead than to provide help and care until the last natural day.

It seems rather grievous to me that we would not consider it a privilege to serve the dying. A civilized society such as ours has ample resources; indeed, we are so technologically advanced that we have ample means to create the problem in the first place by medically prolonging life past when it wants to live.

Let us protect our elderly and care for the dying. No unnecessary tubes or needles but simple, authentic service. Hospice can be a true blessing, enabling the ill to celebrate their final days sometimes in their own homes but always with comfort. What a wonder!

So shame on Medicare for fleecing hospice providers just because they actually did a good job, continuing to care for the dying even when they refused to die. And may we all instead show much mercy, learning to show such care to those around us.

The Day Miss Phifer Became Mrs. Menefee

2007-11-14T21:55:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday, the last Phifer woman gave up her maiden name and took on a new one.

We began at Debora David's Face to Face where we got our hair did and faces made to the tune of so much fun. Then to the ceremony site where we all got dressed (hello Spanx) and enjoyed Kevin Beasley's photojournalism: it felt tremendously glamorous to stand about and do normal things while someone else unobtrusively but constantly snapped photos.
After we were ready, we hopped over the puddles as we crossed to the shotgun house on the property and awaited our processional cues.But who can tell it all? The cast of characters is a start. Or the honoring toasts the bridesmaids gave at the rehearsal dinner, the skilled musicians, the festive dancing, the beautiful dress, the photogenic bride.
But then the most unique bits: how the mother of the bride made the ringbearer's pillow out of her wedding dress when she married our father, how our 11-month-old rode in a tulle-laden wagon as the ring bearer, how the bride wore our great-grandmother's aquamarine as is our tradition, how the bridesmaids outlasted everyone on the dance floor and even returned there by themselves after the bride and groom left while the coordinator began the picking up.

How the matron of honor was so delighted to stand by her sister and celebrate her all evening long. To celebrate her wedding and all marriage.

Mumble, mumble

2007-11-14T21:51:00.000-06:00

Here's a nod to Myles' alter ego, whose new biopic "I'm Not There" I'm officially excited about . . . not least because it features Cate Blanchett as the young Bob Dylan. So that's two reasons why Myles is surely salivating for the movie. Wow.

Glover praised by decrepit old man

2007-11-08T22:50:00.000-06:00

According to the Shreveport Times, Mayor Cedric Glover gave a "well-delivered and comprehensive" State of the City address yesterday. At least, that's what former Mayor James Gardener thought, but his term ended fifty years ago, and things may have changed a little since then.

James Gardner, who served as Shreveport mayor from 1954 to 1958, said he felt optimistic about what Glover said about Cyber Command and his support for the initiative.

"I think he's doing well," Gardner said after noting Glover's address was well-delivered and comprehensive.

Gardner may be quite a fine man and a stellar former mayor, but if he is the best we have to critique the current mayor's speaking skills, then we are lacking. Even if he was a young mayor, he's pushing past 70 now. What he knows about the cyber command center brewing across the river also seems (therefore) doubtful. Nobody at Centenary can figure it out, so my bet wouldn't be on the senior ex-mayor.

But maybe I'm speaking out of turn. Wouldn't be the first time. Maybe Gardner is young, or a young 80. And maybe he is a cyber command genius. But the Times would do well to say so. As it is, their source made me guffaw rather than aw.

Cognitive-behavior therapy: just another faith

2007-11-06T10:31:00.000-06:00

"God wants us to become part of his redemption of a fallen world, not simply to manage our reactions," says Powlison in a beautiful, lengthy response to a probing comment on the piece linked below. Let us counsel each other toward activity and glory.

Hold on to the weak

2007-11-05T22:34:00.001-06:00

What a wonderful post by David Powlison over on the Between Two Worlds blog. Moves me toward words of gentleness and courage.

(The blog's link to the Mad TV sketch didn't work when I tried it, but you can see it here.)

Sissies and the gospel

2007-11-04T14:57:00.000-06:00

I have just commented on Denny Burk's blog, as he has been following John Piper's comments about women in combat. But I have a few more words to say than merely those. Here they are.

Whether or not Piper has appropriately made application of biblical manhood and womanhood to military combat, I do not quite know. But surely a man can be redeemed and indeed enact robust biblical manhood without taking up as his cause the issue of women in combat. Surely a man can be redeemed and enact robust biblical manhood while still pausing at the sound of an intruder because his black-belt wife could be a great helper when meeting that danger. Does such a man need to be called names by a humble and powerful preacher who frankly has bigger fish to fry?

I recall Myles telling me that Piper preached at Glorieta about how ridiculous he had thought an American couple who proudly celebrated their plans to retire and travel around the country in their RV to follow butterfly migrations. Such a thing would be marvelous to watch, and the journey would inspire much worship in the retirees, but Piper boldly declaimed that as a lifelong goal when the time and money required to do such could be used in much more specific gospel-promoting and Jesus-honoring ways.

So reading Piper's comments about wimps, focused on such a temporal issue as women in combat, makes me grimace. Even if we grant that the issue reflects a deeper heart issue, and even if we grant that the deeper heart issue is central to the gospel, name-calling seems ill-advised. And, as I say, I'm not sure I want to grant those other things.

Heaven forbid that my husband would think it more important to keep women out of combat than to love orphans. Or even to give a barbaric yawp of manhood when danger enters our front door than to extend the lovingkindness of undeserved forgiveness to that danger-bearing intruder.

Not that Piper would state such a preference either. Or that I would hold Micah back if he wanted to pummel an intruder. Or that he would ever pause with wonder if he or I should go, since his wife, unlike a certain martial artist I know (Cherish), will likely never have any sufficient skills to thwart any such danger.

My problem, then, is not with the complementarianism, nor with the underlying intent. Rather, my problem is with Piper's tone, which smacks of merely chauvinistic gender politics.

Having profited from so much of his teaching and writing, I gladly grant that he undoubtedly has sincere affection for our Lord's divine hierarchy at heart. And the cultural weakness of our men and women fairly in mind as well. But, please. These remarks are invitations to lambasting, along with unfair and out-of-context quotations that could put a shadow over his entire ministry. And that seems absurd.

More Gore

2007-10-13T08:57:00.001-06:00

"Why would he run for president when he can be a demigod?"

Sure. Good question. Al?

"My cellphone. Something's wrong with my cellphone."

Nobel, what?

2007-10-12T23:10:00.000-06:00

Except for the fact that Al Gore's latest prize is surely putting a damper on my mother's European cruise (watch out! says Mr. Tony) I have had more interest in Doris Lessing's too-long expected Nobel win than in any other Nobel-related news in any recent memory. Here's one reason:

And here's another:

But I haven't even read any Lessing! Must remedy that.

Please adopt.

2007-10-09T19:54:00.000-06:00

This afternoon, I had a meeting at school to discuss how we faculty types might help our FYE students do better research and ask more interesting research questions. When I came home, Gram and Noel were hanging out in his room, investigating the window and carpet fuzz and exciting things like that. I should have kept that going.

Instead, when Gram left, I absentmindedly turned on the television and heard Alexis Stewart (Martha's daughter) lamenting her 42-year-old infertility and gladly confessing to Oprah that she spends $28,000 every month feeding her idol of pregnancy.

My heart sank. It sinks again every time I think it. That's about as much as an international adoption costs, and she's been spending it every month for almost two years now. With the money Alexis Stewart has spent trying to make a mini-me, she could have adopted 44 American children.

Do billionaires have more right to children that look like them and act like them? They certainly have more ability to ensure that product. But the poor middle class suffers most from this idol, it seems; Oprah also featured a couple who has taken out second mortgages on their homes to accommodate their IVF bills, and another couple who traveled to India for a foreign surrogate mother because it cost less than half of an American surrogate. (Notably, again, the latter couple could have adopted an Indian child for the same cost as their surrogate experience.)

I shudder at the financial implications, for it seems unethical to spend money in this way. Infertility has become a multi-billion dollar industry while children yet live in orphanages all over the world.

Thankfully, current discussion on Oprah.com's discussion boards (which I only had time to momentarily skim) mentions the need for balance and some responders cry out for adoption. More, though, praise the information, glad to have company in the infertility wars.

God help us to not idolize our wombs. I am reminded of my own son, who stands (literally) at the precipice of walking and makes us marvel and rejoice every day. But I am also reminded of women I know who have recently carried their babies to full term, but not to life. And I am reminded, again, of the 200+ children conceived as a result of sexual assault, finding love and comfort now in a daycare in Congo.

Please, let us practice hospitality. Will the childless not welcome the motherless and fatherless into their homes? Let us welcome them all the more for having entered our families through a strange providence rather than a medical phenomenon.

Hardly imaginable

2007-10-08T20:21:00.000-06:00

As noted on the Think Christian blog, this is no easy read, but I commend it to you with all sobriety and caution (for it conveys some rather disturbing details): today's New York Times article "Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War" should give us all pause as we consider the plight of humans across the globe.

The article features the work of Dr. Denis Mukwegeat the Panzi Hospital of Bukavu, a tremendous place. Their website notes that they counsel women and their husbands, when applicable, toward real forgiveness of their aggressors and perseverance together. The hospital also hosts a daycare for children conceived from sexual violence, counting more than 200 such children in their care between 2003 and mid-2006.

It remains unthinkable to me that such atrocity would happen anywhere, on my street or in the wilderness, and yet this story suggests that violence toward women has become the norm in Congo. And this points us to at least three tragedies.

First, the obvious tragedy that women would be so violated, physically assaulted because they are regarded as chattel, economic means to a political end, mentally and emotionally and physically annihilated by men who have lost any semblance of control or real humanity.

So we see the second tragedy: that these men would become so inhuman that they would perpetrate such acts, and in widespread manner. They not only do evil but approve of others who do so, and help commit the crimes against other humans, perhaps in an attempt to simply justify one's own lawlessness. And suddenly, the standard of real manhood drops: the norm becomes rape and murder, divorce and war.

And the third tragedy remains for the children, some of whom carry disease and all of whom carry stigma into this world. All that results in more stigma and maybe even abandonment, even as they dwell in a sick land that seems only to wait for them to grow up so that they may join the war too. May God heal the land and the people, not just "that" land and "those" people but we who are their sisters and brothers, and soon.

Emily, the Bride

2007-10-04T14:51:00.000-06:00

Is my sister gorgeous or what?

As I approached the corner of Cotton and Common, she suddenly came into view, a statue atop her pedestal, veil flying in the wind.

What could I do but roll down my window and scream with excitement? Then park and join the smiling gallery.

Lots more veil-flying ensued, with both mom and Vicki serving as helper. Noel behaved himself rather well throughout as well. He only ate a few leaves and otherwise enjoyed the show as much as the grownups did.

The heat seemed as nothing, Emily our cool celebration at every location: that temple, the old red-brick church downtown, a levee, and a graffiti wall perfect for her cop fiance.

I can hardly wait for the big day (November 10) when we all get to join in the photos. Kevin Beasley seemed to be having such fun, exuberant and giddy as he described this and that pose, looking through the veil and laying on the ground to get this or that angle. Highly recommendable, he is, for adding to the celebratory giddiness.

And then, what images we get in the end!

Noel at AC Steere

2007-09-23T23:17:00.000-06:00

All right, already! Enough with the demanding comments.

My excuses for not blogging recently include the following:

1. I've been busy. The fall semester started, and I've been doing lots of media writing for the big college. And to think, I even got a new laptop (a MacBook Pro!) and I've had no time to laud it here. My "to do" list is longer than my . . . well, it's long.

2. Grandma got stuck in the bathtub. Long story. Maybe when it's less fresh and more funny, I'll write about it. No, just when I have time. Wait for that.

3. I turned 30. And who wants to write when she's old? Well, me. As per Holly's request, I'll take a photo of my present from Noel very soon and post it here. Just post nagging comments until it happens. To appease the rude masses until then, how about some photos of Noel?

The talented Catherine Humble took these last Tuesday night (coincident with the bathtub incident, by the way) at AC Steere Park. Aren't they wonderful? (Click on the slide show itself to bring up a separate tab/window with bigger photos.)

Lead poisoning, anyone?

2007-08-07T08:38:00.001-06:00

In the Strange strange news report, here's one for the books. Or, more accurately, the pencil boxes.

Today, the AP reports that a German surgeon has removed a pencil lodged these 55 years in a woman's brain.

I can imagine, based on the scant details provided in the story, little Margaret skipping along with a pencil in her hand, ignoring that common wisdom not to run with scissors or other sharp objects lest you poke an eye out, when oops, she tripped and the pencil invaded her gray matter.

Apparently the aphorism lies, for the pencil did not seem to affect her eye. Just produced a half century of nosebleeds and headaches. Small potatoes. So we should say instead "Don't run with pencils because they might disappear into your brains."

Worse things can happen, for sure, but this must be a parents' nightmare nonetheless. And a skipper's nightmare too, according to Margaret: ''It hurt like crazy.''

I can confirm. Once, when we were at orchestra festival, I was running and tripped on a sidewalk, scraping the knuckle of my big toe on the concrete. Ripped a big hole in my hose and left a scar that remains to this day. Just writing the story makes my toes curl.

Now if that isn't the same kind of thing as wearing a pencil in your brain for 55 years, then I don't know what is.

My mom the cowgirl

2007-07-24T10:54:00.001-06:00

My mom. An Air Force family, she and her sisters grew up in Pakistan, Germany, Taiwan, and Japan. She can still count to ten in Urdu and Mandarin Chinese. She's a cultured woman of the globe.

Her parents moved back Stateside just in time for her to graduate from high school as the fastest typer in Texas. Over the next twenty years, she morphed from typist to business owner (not that she can't still type lightening fast), opening a catering company, a series of executive suites with centralized secretarial services, and then the Express Personnel Services franchise in Shreveport that my sister now manages. So she's a smart gal with lots of initiative and lots of pants suits.

But to my knowledge, she never drove an AWD vehicle across any ranch. Or talked to cows. Certainly never bottle-fed any calf. Until she married Randy Glass. Now look at what's happened.

It's a good transformation. Seems like the natural next step: globe-trotter, entrepreneur, cowgirl. And blast if I'm not jealous about her feeding that calf!

Though I've not met him, that calf has already won me, or at least the lactating mother in me. Since he was born, the mama cow has kicked him away from her udders; Mom and Randy finally had to put her in a squeeze chute and tie back her leg so he could suckle. Hopefully, he got the all-necessary colostrum and will survive.

His surrogate mom will surely do her tongue-sticking-out derndest to make that happen. Ride 'em, cowgirl!

Too clean

2007-07-09T21:53:00.000-06:00

Because I only used the word "hurt" once and no other potentially racy word ever, my blog has been rated G. I'm a little disappointed. Maybe if I quoted my grandmother more often, I could up the rating some.

Maybe one day I'll become a librarian

2007-07-09T21:28:00.000-06:00

Apparently, it's now cool to be a librarian. Kara Jesella's recent New York Times piece "A Hipper Crowd of Shushers" confirms that information fluency isn't just for geeks. Or at least that geeks can sometimes do cool things, like get tattoos and order drinks according to their Dewey Decimal book-title equivalence?

Some people have too much stuff in their brains.

Quotable for sure

2007-06-21T21:54:00.000-06:00

Tonight's conversation with Grandma Esther yielded these quotables. By the end, I was in tears, mostly because I was trying to keep my audible laughter to a minimum.

1. "I meant to put my trash can out tonight. I don't have anything in it . . . much."

2. "I had the diptherie. Did you know I had the diptherie? I got it one Christmas at the store."

3. "I found those cuff links in a drawer in that little bathroom. Same drawer as a broke plate. I thought it could be fixed sometime, would be real nice to display flowers on. But I never did. That and some rags Melva gave me, like ones I gave you."

4. Grandma: "I guess Eric was glad to see you today."
Me: "Who?"
Grandma: "Your baby."
Me: "Noel?"
Grandma: "Yeah, I called him Eric."

5. "I'm proud I don't have a blue hip."

6. "She thought she had the poison ivy, but doctor says it's east from taking drugs."

Sending to Uganda

2007-06-19T13:19:00.001-06:00

The Desiring God blog today posted several responses from students at Westminster Theological College in Uganda to John Piper's book Let the Nations Be Glad as taught by Dr. Dave Eby in an introductory missions course. This interests me for at least two reasons:

Our dear friends Kathryn and Brent Applegate have been planning a mission trip to Uganda for some time now. They and four others from their church, North City Presbyterian near San Diego, leave July 30 and return August 15. Kathryn is currently in search of long gauzy skirts to appropriately clad herself while there.
Dave Eby is now the Dean of Graduate Studies at Westminster Theological College in Uganda, but he was the founding pastor of North City Presbyterian (see #1). The church has therefore long enjoyed a strong affection for Uganda, at least partly represented by their Uganda Children's Sponsorship program. Obviously, this August mission trip is connected to the Ebys' ministries there.

So my eyes opened widely when I read these encouraging bits from Ugandan believers. Perhaps the Applegates and their fellow travelers will meet some of these initialed folk. At the very least, I pray the short-term missionaries can love some kids lavishly and encourage the long-term indigenous ones while there. I'm quite sure encouragement will flow the other direction. May God be famous in Uganda.

If Grandma Esther wrote 8 facts about herself

2007-06-14T10:48:00.000-06:00

1. Jenny, you don't want to know about me. I mean, nobody wants to know eight things about me. I'm just going to stand over here now.

2. What am I doing? First one thing and another.

3. Keep this hammer beside my bed, just case this house catches on fire I'll break that window out now.

4. That boy at Brookshire's, he must have pushed the wrong keys; salad dressing on sale last week two for three dollars, but do you know I paid 3.49? I got that jar in a bag with my ticket and last week's circular; Venita said she'd take it for me or I will, she does that all the time they get things wrong. That ain't right, Jenny.

5. Well, he don't have to be black.

6. Wish I could get a hose and put that gas from my old car into yours.

7. If you'd come in right now, I'd write you a check for Nolan. Whatever he wants, now. I don't want him to not have something he needs. You buy him some food now, Jenny. Don't let him cry, go hungry. We want our little boy to have it all. Something you see somewhere else, something someone else has, you just get it and I'll pay you back now.

8. Call me. Grandma. Esther.

Another guest post, this time from Auntie Vicki

2007-06-04T13:11:00.000-06:00

Since my no-blog mom tagged herself, I decided to tag another non-blogger: my aunt Vicki. Here they are together in a photo from last Christmas, Vicki on the left looking rather like their father, and my mom on the right looking rather like their mother (Santa hats notwithstanding):
I don't think anyone will mind my saying that this guest post comes not merely from my aunt but from Noel's third grandmother, insofar as she does a great deal of mothering toward him and is generally grand. So, enjoy these 8 random facts about my aunt Vicki, guest-written by my aunt Vicki:

I love books. Not just the words in them, although that is like unlocking a mystery, but I love the feel and look of books. I love the shape of books. I love the adventure of books. I love the anticipation of starting a new book – the hope that it will quickly engage me. Then, when it does and I can’t wait to get to the end, I’m so excited about the next book – not always knowing what it will be. Excited, yet at the same time, apprehensive – because maybe it won’t grab me. But – they most always do! And, thanks to Jen, I love librarything.com – there I can see all my books at one time – the art of the covers and the comfort of their existence.
I love mornings. I love the beauty of God’s creation – the way the light comes through the trees in my back yard; the song of the birds as they welcome the day and welcome me into it. I can’t wait for those days when the weather is kind enough to allow me to I throw open my windows and welcome the promise of a new day, a new opportunity. Even rainy, overcast days – I love the mornings!
I’ve recently rediscovered that I love mowing and weed eating! There is something soothing about the monotony of those straight lines and the smell of the freshly cut grass. If that by itself wasn’t enough – then I edge. Oh my, the wonder of a freshly cut edge where the grass meets the concrete! In addition to the beauty and zen-ness of the mowing, there is that little bit of righteousness I feel about actually breaking a sweat and “exercising” – while doing something that gives me pleasure in and of itself!
I fear heights. When living in California, I seriously could not consider taking a job that would require me to be higher than the third floor (although I did once work on the fourth floor – with constant trepidation). The Seattle Space Needle – no way. The new bridge over the floor of the Grand Canyon – kill me now! I once was invited to dinner at the top of one of the tallest buildings in San Francisco. I was with a bunch of people and didn’t want to appear foolish, so went – trying the entire time not to have a panic attack. Fortunately – it was foggy – so there wasn’t much to see. I think that’s all that saved me (and the fact that I purposely sat with my back to the window). But my fear of heights is only related to attachment to the ground. I don’t mind flying – in fact enjoy it. And – one day before I leave this earth I hope that I can take a hot air balloon ride!! High? Yes. But not attached to the ground!!
I once had dinner with Orville Redenbacher. It was at Benihana’s in San Diego – where you eat around a hibachi grill with several other people. Well, this day Dan and I went in, were led to a table with only two other people and low and behold one of them was Orville Redenbacher. He was like a caricature of himself – his grin, large black-rimmed glasses, shock of white hair, brown tweed suit and famous bowtie. He was there with his publicist – and was in the midst of a conversation about his recent trip on the Goodyear Blimp (now that I don’t want to do – height fear notwithstanding!). When we sat down he introduced himself, gave us a round sticker of his face which he autographed and then proceeded to spend most of the time there in conversation with us about popcorn!
I would love to play a musical instrument that would allow me to play with a group (in my dream – a symphony orchestra). I play the piano, but that is not a “group” instrument. Ideally it would be the cello (which I played in junior high school). I love the vibrations of a cello and its mellow tones. But it could also be the oboe. I would love to be part of great music – not a standout, just part of it!
I have my father’s hands (Nancy has mother’s hands). I recently compared my hands with my fathers’ – held them up, side by side – they were the same. I see character in my hands and I see wrinkles and aging skin. I see my hands a lot these days – on the computer keys, playing the piano, holding a book, patting Noel. I think I’ve noticed them most recently because when Noel holds them, or sucks on my fingers, there’s such a contrast between my hands and his. My hands are large, more tanned than his. Yet, I like my hands. There seems to be experience in my hands – evidence of days past and lessons learned.
I love competition – games and sports. I wish I had the talent and physical ability to figure skate. I’d love to play golf again. I love a good baseball game – being there, not so much watching on TV. I’m crazy about game night. Won’t ever turn down an opportunity to play Scrabble, Boggle, Bridge, Taboo, Settlers of Catan, Balderdash – or just about anything. OK – maybe I’m not so anxious to play Worms (I’ll never figure out those controls). I’m unfortunately addicted to computer games – I always know just one more game will be the BIG one! The BIG win! So – anytime, anyplace – deal the cards, set up the board – whatever. I’m there!

My mom tagged herself

2007-05-31T08:40:00.000-06:00

Gosh, I love my mom. Look for more about how and why later. But for now . . .
She wasn't even tagged (since she has no blog) but emailed me 8 random facts about herself anyway. I've asked if I could post them here as a "guest post" and she obliged. Her 8 reminded me what I left off my list: namely, how much I love the game of bridge (inherited honestly from the women of my distaff side) and how I am clearly my mother made over (except for the quilting thing). Enjoy!

8 random facts about my mom, guest-written by my mom:

I love the hand of a fabric. Randy noticed it early on: "You shop with your hands, not your eyes!" I love the folds of fabrics, the play of the light, the weave, the color combinations, the weight, you name it, I love it about fabric. Even though I've always had an affinity for fabric, I'll never look at it the same way since I started quilting.
Air is different colors. My favorite is just after dawn or just before the sun sets. There's a rare pink, blue, turqoise (and too many other colors to name) quality to the space between you and any particular object in the distance.
Reconciling a bank statement is a beautiful thing! I've come upon this love relatively late in my life. It would have been helpful in earlier times, but as they say better late than never. The advent of computer programs like Quickbooks and Excel have brought a completeness to reconciliation. Who knew there would be so many opportunities for my favorite activity: bank and credit card statements, cash reserve and bad debts, associate advances, chargebacks, ahh the list grows all the time! At the end, not a penny's difference, that's my goal!
I'm an oatmeal kind of gal. For the last many years I've enjoyed a half glass of orange juice and plain oatmeal made with water for breakfast almost every day. Recently I've added dried blueberries, but it will take several months to decide if they are a permanent addition to the menu.
I love looking at old family photos. All, except ones of myself. To see Jennifer stretched out on the couch sucking her thumb at about age 3, and Emily riding her tricycle in the backyard gives me a thrill and warms my soul. But then there's that photo of myself, hairstyle and clothes of some unknown era. What was I thinking??
I would wear a long gown with a train everyday to work if I could. I think there is nothing quite as elegant as a gown with a train and I've decided there just aren't enough opportunities to wear one. My daughter's wedding dresses are sheer beauty! But let's face it, that's a one-time opportunity. I did have the hint of a train in the gown I wore to ILC this year, but it only whetted my appetite for more!
A good hug will fix anything! I'm a hugger from way back. I don't understand or even really trust people who don't like to hug. I've known several people like that, but the joy they miss is immeasurable. Good people hug. Or anyway that's how it seems to me.
Finally, I'd like to discuss a finesse. A finesse is a beautiful thing! Getting someone to do what you want them to do without complaint, or hesitation, or even really knowing they're being led to do is a high art. In Bridge, a finesse yields extra tricks. In life, a proper string of finesses could end war.

Tagged: I'm It

2007-05-28T07:59:00.000-06:00

Shannon Stevens tagged me. Walked right into my inbox and said "You're it." Or something like that. Here are the rules:

Each tagged "player" states 8 random facts/habits about himself or herself and then writes a blog entry that reveals the 8 things and posts these rules. At the end of the blog, the tagged person must list 8 newly tagged people, leaving a comment that says "you're it" and asking them to read your blog.

So here goes. 8 random facts about me:

I'm a huge fan of The Cosby Show. Got highly disappointed when a sociologist visiting Centenary several years ago said the show didn't do any good to upset African-American stereotypes and might even have had an opposite effect. Hrmph. I love it anyway. Hardly missed a new episode growing up, hardly miss it in syndication now, am buying the DVDs as they come out. Go on, ask me any trivia.
Like Shannon, I love roller coasters. Even "the old, crickety wooden ones like the Texas Giant at Six Flags." One of my favorites: The Big Bad Wolf in Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Katy Valentine and I rode that hanging coaster too many times in a row just because we could (the park was so empty that day), and we tried it out in the front, in the middle, in the back. At dusk, we learned by experience not to ride in the front car of a roller coaster once the bugs come out.
I'm afraid of big things, like the really tall statue of Ramses II that finished the eponymous touring exhibit my family visited when I was a kid (subsequently, I have learned to go slowly and searchingly through museum doors lest some huge thing in the next room shock me). Too, the ocean: I love the sound but won't go past where my toes can touch, because other big things like whales and giant octopi live there. And also like St. Stephen's in Vienna; we got lost returning to our hotel from the opera late one night and suddenly, there it was, dark and looming. We had walked into the incense-filled nave a few days before, and I pivoted a careful, scared circle to map it in my mind: immense rose window behind, the tomb of Emperor Frederick III plus various relics and mystical things in side chapels, Habsburg intestines in the crypt below.
Whenever I hear Willie Nelson or Prairie Home Companion, I feel a little carsick. (My dad made us listen to his one tape of Willie every time we took a road trip. As for Prairie Home Companion, it was always on during my parents' seemingly endless countryside drives on Sunday afternoons: "Look, girls, isn't that dogwood beautiful? See it, in the middle of that forest? Right there. Beautiful." We learned to quit saying "no" because it just prolonged the pause; until a few years ago, neither my sister nor I even knew what a dogwood looked like. And we're working on Willie and PHC.)
Every time I move, I pack all my books in alphabetical order. Not alphabetical in each box but alphabetical per box, so that a box marked "Mc" only has books authored by writers whose last names begin with "Mc" and so on. Thankfully, we don't move often (random bonus fact: I dislike moving).
In high school, I rarely read required books. Well, I generally began them but almost never finished. But in 10th grade, I tested very well on the books: the now-doctor April would tell me what happened just before the quizzes.
I didn't have play clothes growing up.
I have a scar at my hairline where my sister threw a size D battery at me. We were fighting over a tape player and when the battery compartment opened from our jostling it, she just picked up the batteries and threw them, not meaning to actually inflict injury (she was maybe 7) but just get me out of the room, I think. My mom didn't punish her: she was so scared that she didn't need it! And my dad figured I didn't need stitches, so now I've got a wad of scar tissue to remember it by.

So there we have it. Now to tag a few more: Strange, Two Sheds, Sic, to-be Mrs. Menefee, Kathryn, Shelby.

Are you busy?

2007-05-23T10:23:00.000-06:00

So my grandmother called this morning while I was at work. We don't have a land line anymore, so she called my cell, and even though she understands it is mobile, she nevertheless assumes that I'm at home when I answer it. She'll probably remember later that I work on Wednesday mornings, and then she'll feel terrible: she hates to call when I'm at work, even though I tell her that if I'm busy, I won't answer. But she definitely didn't remember this morning. Here's about how the conversation went:

Me: Hello? [I say this like I'm answering a land line without caller ID, because that's what Grandma expects, even though I'm actually answering my cell phone.]

Grandma: [Long pause.] Ooh. [Like I've surprised her.] Jenny?

Me: Hi Grandma.

Grandma: Jenny, did you call me?

Me: Um, no.

Grandma: Well, I was just in the bath [by which she means 2 inches of tepid water in her tub] and the phone rang, but I couldn't get to it in time. Called Jackie because she sometimes calls in the mornings, thought she was at her exercise class but maybe not, so I called her to see if she called, and Bob answered, said she wasn't back from exercise yet, so it wasn't her. Thought it might be you, but you didn't call?

Me: Nope.

Grandma: Well, I hurried out the bath [which now makes me think she could be dripping naked next to the phone, like when she answers the "What're you doing?" question with an obvious mouthful of toothpaste muffling "Just brushing my teeth" because she's crazy afraid of missing a phone call] and put on a bathrobe real fast [phew] but didn't make it. Thought it could have been Jackie, but no, so I thought maybe you.

This continues on a loop for a while as she runs through previous missed phone calls and possible callers, reiterating how Jackie often calls in the morning but it couldn't have been Benita because she calls at 10:30 every night and never in the morning, etc. Then, finally:

Grandma: So I probably ought to let you go because I'm getting cold here. Are you busy? [Absolutely no pause for answer.] I mean I just got out real fast and put on this bathrobe.

Etc, with a diversion about her always impending haircut, until finally she does say bye.

Curious as the World Turns

2007-05-17T11:48:00.000-06:00

It's Friday night. Noel has finally fallen asleep after lots of rocking: every noise, every shift of the tide, every relaxation of a new muscle of his own and Noel arches his back and pins his eyes open to check it out.

This isn't new. Most naptimes and night-bedtimes go this way: sometimes it's accompanied by fussy crying, but usually it's just a long winding down with lullabies. Even at only five months, our son seems rather concerned that he will miss something important if he submits to sleep.

But finally, last Friday night, with Curious George in hand, he falls asleep in my arms and I take him to the bassinet. When I lay him down, he manages to keep Curious (as Micah calls him, even though I insist that's not his first name) in his hugged arms and looks particularly precious, so I call Micah in to look at him.

Micah brings the camera and even though he takes care not to use the flash (hence the blurry image), I am skeptical. The camera still clicks, a vestigial sound alluding to the actual click a non-digital shutter would produce.

Noel's eyes crack open once and he tightens his grip on Curious. We finally exhale, figuring he has not really awoken.

As Micah gets ready to take one more picture, Noel's eyes open again, focusing straight on daddy and widening his eyes. Not long after this, he drops Curious and extends his arms to be picked up.

Nothing to confirm a suspicion that there's stuff you're missing during sleep than to wake up and see daddy hovering over your bed with a camera.

Lessons from a saint

2007-05-03T22:04:00.000-06:00

I wrote earlier about the homegoing of a friend who suffered with brain tumors these five years and finally departed this flesh in favor of a glorified body that has no tumors whatsoever. Now a few words about lessons observed from another friend over Libby's last months.

I've learned so much about real ministry watching this friend (let's call her "Sue"), though I'm sure that what I've observed isn't half of what one could see. Her love for Libby was a true overflow of her affection for her Lord, so she gave of herself in body, mind, soul, and affections liberally and gladly and without pause. This is primarily remarkable because, honestly, Libby wasn't always the easiest woman to love.

What I observed in Sue was a real forgiveness, reconciliatory spirit, compassion, and sacrificial love. Her love toward Libby in those last days especially was tireless, never seeming to remember any former complaint or difficulty. I'm sure the hours she spent praying for Libby in the last months, not to mention the years over which she knew her, are nearly countless. And after Libby's death, she grieved deeply in that hope-filled manner that befits the people of Christ.

Sue often stayed with Libby overnight at Grace Home and stood bedside for counsel. A few weeks before Libby's death, I thanked her for staying with Libby those nights, for I wished I could and knew that it was very hard as Libby was in much pain. Her response was, "Jen, what else could I do? I love her!" And of course, she meant it: no false modesty or imagined affection, no mere sense of duty.

Now, Sue isn't an emotional kind of gal; her heart is simply near to the heart of God, which means she loves all those in Christ with a genuine and sacrificial affection. I've been able to watch it unfold these past few months especially, and it's taught me a lot about how to minister. This is how one must conduct ministry: love to the uttermost, never keep a record of faults, pray unceasingly, regard those the Lord gives you to care for as true daughters, never demand fruit from your efforts and rejoice only in God if you ever see it, never count any of the work as your own but offer it all up to the Lord as a holy and acceptable sacrifice, and give up everything you are (body, time, emotions, mind) to do all the good you can.

All this Sue has learned from our Lord, of course, who did and does all that infinitely better. And all this she would insist is not of herself but is only of Him. And she's right. That's why she can do it. And that's how and why I must do it too.

Top Five

2007-04-26T21:07:00.000-06:00

To honor the last day of National Poetry Month (and to try and keep up with the Muffins, the Two Sheds, and the Sics) I shall hereby post a Top Five:

Four Quartets by TS Eliot (well, and "The Rock" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," but 4Q tops them all).
"Epithalamion Made at Lincoln's Inn" by John Donne (but oh the Holy Sonnets!)
"In Memoriam" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (but let's not forget "Ulysses" and "Crossing the Bar")

"Upon the Circumcision" by John Milton.
and "Birches" by Robert Frost, because earth really is a pretty good place for love.

I have much dismay realizing that those Five are all dead white men, but they are indeed my favorites, at least the top five poems that I go back to and read over and over. Of a whole host of other beautiful poems, though. Five is too hard.

Travel for Jacks and Goober

2007-04-26T14:56:00.000-06:00

The organizers for C. S. Lewis: the Man and His Works, a 21st Century Legacy were "pleased to inform" me today that my proposal has been accepted to be read at the conference. To quote Myles, "yeeeeeehaw!"

Now I've just got to write the paper. . . . And plan for a busy fall, what with parading around North Carolina as a Lewisite and parading around Florida as an honorable matron while my sister becomes Mrs. Menefee. Should be eventful.

Speaking of Mrs. Hagler

2007-04-25T11:49:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we celebrated Libby Choate on the occasion of her early entry into the perfection of our faithful King. I would like to say more about all this later, but suffice it to say now that we remembered her wit and melancholy with glad tears, and we honored her affection for music with some fine tunes indeed: the Nicholls women started with "Great is Thy Faithfulness" and Lin Norman closed with a capella "Amazing Grace" featuring beautiful gospel rolls and rhythms. April commented afterwards, "If anyone doubted Lin could sing before. . . ." Indeed.

Though I have hardly played at all over the past year, I broke out the violin for "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," which Libby requested long ago. With Myles on voice and guitar, it seems we did reasonably enough, and I am grateful for the grace that made it so. But apparently there was some dissension from the pews. Specifically, the pew hosting Mrs. Joy Hagler.

Libby was a faithful participant in the church's widow ministry, which enjoyed a particularly high swing when I was in college. During that time, Libby and I, along with Mandy Yeager and April Callaway (as they were then known), cleaned Mrs. Hagler's home bimonthly under the able leadership of Jenny Weimer (also as she was then known).

We all had our stations, and Mrs. Joy informed us when we failed to clean them well. The learning curve was steep, and she swatted at you with her cane if she wanted you to attend better to your duties. The shag carpet was always my favorite: vacuum, then take the "carpet rake" out to lift the flattened lines. But she was generous, and we learned lots there . . . about cleaning and about ministry too. I highly recommend regularly cleaning a widow's house for rigorous spiritual formation.

But if you have asthma, be careful what widow you choose. Mrs. Joy is now 86 and she has smoked vigorously since well before her 20th birthday, so the woman has a terrifically scratchy voice. A lover of art and exotic things, she has interesting nicknacks all over her house, and a wonderful record collection too. She has a certain beauty about her too: Mrs. Joy liked to take out her photo albums and remind us that she won a contest (in Las Vegas, I think) with her long, shapely legs when she was young.

So here's the picture you need: a 60-year cigarette expert, long white hair in a ponytail, bright and beautiful big eyes, spunky mind and smile. She doesn't go many places, but she came to Libby's memorial service yesterday, and that should tell you something . . . about Libby and Mrs. Joy.

But get on with it, you beg. The point is that after the service, she commented on my part: "You sure have gone a long way since I heard you last," she began, and I said "Yes, ma'am?" still unsure about whether she meant this as a compliment or complaint. "But you still sounded good," she finished, with down-turned eyes that meant to convey a little shame.

So I chuckled a bit and repeated, "Well, yes ma'am." Oh my, got to love Mrs. Joy. She does tell it like it is.

Lenten disciplines

2007-04-06T09:49:00.000-06:00

It's Good Friday, which means it's the best day for the exercise of my favorite Lenten habit: reading TS Eliot's Four Quartets. Eliot wrote these four five-movement poems late in life, arguably adapting sonata form to written language, and I esteem them as some of the best poems ever. (Maybe one day I'll post a fives list of poems.)

Two of the quartets, "Burnt Norton" (Quartet No. 1, if you will, as Eliot placed it first in the collection) and "Little Gidding" (No. 4), are highly anthologized, but my favorite is "East Coker" (No. 2), not least because it ends with the line "In my end is my beginning," which one day maybe Micah will let me have as a tattoo.

But we're getting off the subject. Every year during Lent, I read the quartets because they explore the humility of this age and the glory of the renewed age to come. And every year, I find that I love the poems even more than the year before, especially my favorite section, that which celebrates Good Friday ("East Coker," fourth movement):

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

In these metered feet and careful rhymes, we see the beauty of the Messiah: he is the wounded surgeon, the bloody-handed healer, the ultimate keeper of the hospital which that ruined millionaire endowed with sin and death, our only food and drink. He makes us whole on this ironic Friday, such a day of death and terror, a remembrance of the most awful bad. Let the dying nurse tell us the story again so that we might again call it good.

Things my grandmother gave me

2007-04-02T19:25:00.000-06:00

Every time I go to my grandmother's house, she says she wants to give me something, and sometimes she actually does. Today, it was a hodgepodge as she puttered around her house finding things she had set aside just for me:

Half a pan of yellow cake with crushed pineapple on top. She wanted me to take more, but I told her we would struggle to eat what I was taking before it went bad. She thought I was lying, but Micah has confirmed that he probably won't eat any, as it's "just yellow cake with pineapple on top." To take the cake home, Grandma provided a plate, three toothpicks, and some aluminum foil; the toothpicks are ostensibly to keep the foil from sticking to the cake top, but, of course, they poke through the foil immediately, no matter how careful you are. Micah thinks this is a hazard. She really wanted me to use another pull of foil to go crosswise and also wanted to provide a plastic bag and twist-tie to further secure the package, but I refused those.
$5.50 cash. The $5 was an honorarium for taxiing her to the accountant's office this afternoon as she delivered her "tickets" (read: "receipts") and other tax-worthy documents so that he can prepare her W-2. (The papers were sealed with an entire roll of tape in the envelope her CPA sent last year's taxes to her in.) The 50 cents was repayment to Micah for scanning and printing two copies of an old family photo; she has asked multiple times "how much do I owe Mike for that work, now?" and we've told her the photos were only 20 cents each, so she doesn't need to repay us. She doesn't take anything for free, though, so she finally got out her coin purse and even gave him a 10-cent tip.
A pile of scrap paper. Every time I have talked to her over the past month or so, her answer to the question "What are you doing?" has been "First one thing and another, cutting up these papers." She has a small table-top shredder that she feeds the mailing labels on everything she receives, along with bank statements and the like, but the shredder is so small that she can't just shove in a full sheet of paper. Well, she could on the trifold, but that's too simple. And she could just tear them into shredder-size bits, but that's not sufficiently neurotic. So she cuts them with old-school scissors: metal and pointed, with a pinky rest. It's a wonder she hasn't punctured herself with them. And she apparently maintains piles of "to-be shredded" documents somewhere in her house so that she can tackle them all at once rather than bit-by-bit. Ergo, the project requires a good month of paced work. She never throws her mailing address in the trash can (you know, the one that she puts directly in front of her house, a stone's skip from the mailbox) and she gets scrap paper out of the deal. What's more, she can share the scraps: all the size of 1/3 a full 8.5" x 11" sheet, these apparently indicate that the month-long project has come to a close.
A spot of tea. In a common marketing endeavor, Tetley sent a sample of their round tea bags to postal customers and Grandma thought I might like to have them since she doesn't plan to brew tea with them. The envelope proclaims these are "FREE" and "Introducing" Tetley Round tea bags. And it seems that Tetley introduced those round bags in 1989. . . .
A bag of baby spoons with one surprise fork. Each utensil is still in its original cellophane package, and they are bound together with a twist-tie. That package was then dropped into a cellophane bag that has some gold stripes on it, and that bag is closed with a gold twist-tie. Grandma thought we might like to have these for "Dola." When I told her that another silver spoon originally in the gold bag wasn't a baby spoon but one designed for some kind of serving, like the spoon we always use for cranberries, she took that one out and only let me leave with the baby ones. She said, "I found these before your shower and held them, case nobody gave you spoons, but if you don't want them, I can keep them, but if you only have one, you could have another, case Doel knocks one on the floor you can just get another one, don't have to clean it. But Jenny, you don't have to take these, now, if you don't think you'll use them, but I'd like Doel to have them. You know Avon gave me those, worked for them long time and they always gave us things like that, a spoon in every big order, and I worked hard."

All this came after several stories about snakes, a lecture about how to feed Noel in such a way as to obviate all crying, and an offer of a boiled-ham sandwich ("Don't tell me you're not hungry. Oh, Jenny, I know. I know you're hungry." At 3:30 pm? Some of us lunch on more than a handful of potato chips, which is what she said she had today). It was an ironic afternoon.

198 words: quick, now

2007-03-31T22:04:00.000-06:00

Earlier, I announced my knowledge of a certain CS Lewis conference. This evening, while watching the Gators trounce the Bruins (as predicted in my bracket and the warm cockles of my little heart), I emailed a paper proposal for that conference. Hopefully, they accept.

It was harder than I expected to do this. Lots of reasons why, but they're mostly compositional. That is, I have never composed an actual title for something unwritten, and I have certainly never composed a confident thesis before actually writing the body of its essay. But the CFP required both, so I struggled for them and have relative peace with what emerged. Here they are: first the proposed title, then a 198-word abstract for an unwritten but proposed paper. All comments welcome.

Will the Green Lady Become a Self? The Dangers of Self-Consciousness in CS Lewis' Perelandra

In the book of Genesis, no one asks "Who am I?" before the Fall, but all sons and daughters after ask this because the initial temptation struck directly at the question of identity: will humans define themselves as creatures in relationship with their Creator or as autonomous beings? In CS Lewis' Perelandra, the Un-man tempts the Green Lady with Eden's rhetoric, arguing that she can and should take upon herself the independent risk of disobedience: he tells stories about great women and teaches her about beauty, and then he makes those arguments practical by showing the Green Lady her other self in a mirror. As she begins to believe that experience trumps all theory, her interceder, Ransom, fears he may have finally lost her. After all, Ransom knows that this rhetorical triptych—the high call to maternal martyrdom, the definition of beauty as costume, and the assertion of an autonomous self—could steal the Green Lady's affections from Maleldil and the king to herself. Though many have argued that self-awareness distinguishes humans from all other creatures, the Perelandrian temptation demonstrates its dangers: such consciousness leads to independence, which leads to ego-centrism, which destroys relationships and compromises real beauty.

Birds and other books

2007-03-28T12:52:00.000-06:00

Even if you don't like birds or books (oh, heavens, don't not like books!) please read Cindy Crosby's "Chuckleheads and Timberdoodles?" in the most recent Books and Culture. This review of The Birdwatcher's Companion to North American Birdlife is a treat, and most reviews aren't treats. So brew a cup of tea, grab your binoculars, and learn a few new vocabulary words from Crosby's lovely paragraphs.

This is for Malcolm

2007-03-27T14:48:00.000-06:00

Just to confirm that I do take an interest in my husband's extracurricular activities, I would like to post these highlights from a very recent Books and Culture interview with William Langewiesche:

Q: Are you a pilot who writes or a writer who flies?

A: I'm a writer. Even when I was a pilot I was a writer.

and

Q: Should we honestly believe that if we're in a plane going down that our seat cushions can be used as flotation devices?

A: There are plenty of cases of airplanes going into the water and people surviving. What to do in that case is not difficult to remember. Get the hell of out the plane and don't wear your high heels down the inflatable exit ramp.

All righty, then.

This reminds me of that night outside Portland, Oregon, when we accidentally passed the Spruce Goose. We had been to a wedding in Medford, though we had stayed in Ashland at the beautiful Ashland Springs Hotel. We spent the post-wedding afternoon in the redwood forest ogling gigantic trees and then took a leisurely drive up the Oregon coast the next day because we were flying back home from Portland the day after that.

So we stopped at various points to watch creatures and eat local desserts and such, but as darkness achieved its westward creep from the east, we set our faces toward Portland. Until we saw this:

Imagine that the sky is a beautiful black and you haven't passed anything worth discussing in a while. Imagine that you're just driving down the highway and happen to glance left as you're approaching a huge hangar full of a huge airplane some ways off the road. Imagine that you say to your pilot husband, "Look, look" and the car drifts in the direction you are gesturing almost instinctually.

We can hardly close our jaws as we turn off the road and drive toward it, for the plane keeps getting bigger and bigger. I scramble for some kind of guide book that might tell us what we see, but signage finally makes it clear: that's the Spruce Goose.

Of course, the museum is closed because it's past dinnertime, but we park and walk around the hangar. The all-glass front wall lets you see the thing fairly well; what you can't see in the photo above is that other small planes (like the ones Micah flies on a regular basis) are lined up for display under the Spruce Goose's wings. The photo below might help you get a sense of scale: note the helicopter flying above the plane.

Now, the history of the Spruce Goose is a fascinating one, and so is the biography of the one who envisioned and built it. But the awe I felt driving toward it and standing next to it (albeit outside its hangar, which seemed all the more awful) was oddly not like the fear I feel for big things (like gigantic artifacts displayed at museums, like whales and all other massive creatures that abide in the ocean, and like the ocean itself) but more like a great intrigue for a meal I have never before eaten but suddenly find before me.

That is, it was deeply satisfying to see such a huge, crafted thing, such a bold creativity put so carefully together. And it was delicious to stand and reverence the thing, because that seemed the only right thing to do. Just like a primo bowl of macaroni and cheese at the Steakhouse. . . .

Today's Mail

2007-03-21T21:38:00.000-06:00

I didn't think I'd been away from the office that long. Went by the department to check mail at least two months ago. Apparently I should have gone earlier, because today I found on my desk a big USPS bin, which our friendly campus mail persons must have lugged over to keep the stuff from overflowing onto the floor.

So I lugged the bin downstairs to the car and just sifted through it all at home. What was inside?

Eight free textbooks I did not request but am cool with receiving. One publishing company sent books they've sent me before (that time upon request).
Lots and lots of marketing material from various publishing companies that want me to buy books. I'll request at least one as a possible teaching text and put several others on my wish list.
Several interoffice memos: one from the music secretary who's filling in for me as ODK faculty secretary while I'm on leave and doing a much more brilliant and generous job than I think I'd have ever done, another from the public relations office sending copies of invoices related to marketing we did for Lauren Winner's visit last November, another from the FYE program chair inviting me to read the philosophy and goals for a similar program at St. Lawrence University, another with the minutes from a previous faculty meeting, and yet another from the registrar's office informing me that one of my advisees is failing two courses.
One wedding invitation, announcing the to-be wedded bliss of a former student and notifying me as to his two registries.
A few brochures for summer writing programs at other universities.
Two bits from Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion received via inter-library loan: an essay by poet Scott Cairns entitled "The End of Suffering" and an interview with Alice McDermott. More on those later, no doubt.
An envelope from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary announcing their "CS Lewis: The Man and His Work – a 21st Century Legacy" conference this October. The poster they sent is beautiful, and so is the conference. Arthur, we must go! CFP has a March 31 deadline. Can we make it? Let's go anyway.
And then, at the bottom of the bin, a Noel gift from one of my favorite writers. Two board books and a simple card. Very, very cool. It's the positive yin of the negative yang that came to light yesterday when a visitor responded to Noel's active legs by saying it will be okay if, when Noel starts moving on his own, he annihilates some of the books on my lower bookshelves, because they're replaceable, and I nodded nervously because I guess she's right, but I can quickly form lots of arguments for how no book is really replaceable, especially the author-signed ones that sit on those lower shelves. And I'll be derned if the kid rips those pages up or marks out my marginalia with some Crayola. Shifty better be ready for a new box in our moving oeuvre: not just "Ma to Mc" but "signed by author so don't leave these in the sun, cuh." Anyway, receiving in today's mail two Happy Noel books from that giver is the inverse of happy Noel one day taking a crayon to one of my books. That's the point.

So we read the two new books to Noel as he emerged from the bath tonight, hoping to again instill in him the truth that books are our friends. Then I pasted Boudreaux's on his you-know-where, put a doubler in his diaper, and handed him off to Micah for rocking to sleep. Now he's slumbering, and we're blogging. What an evening.

Plagiarism at home

2007-03-14T13:35:00.000-06:00

Well, this story is ridiculous. If sad and pathetic equals ridiculous. And ridiculously close to home, seeing that the plagiarized Dr. Sikes' office is almost directly under mine at Centenary.

The quotations provided by the accused plagiarists (what a father-daughter pair) remind me more of undergraduates blubbering in my own office when caught red-handed rather than established academics. Unbelievable. If the claims are correct (indeed, if the narrative borrows 90% from another document, they surely are) this woman's PhD should definitely be revoked. How can we require honorable scholarship from students if teachers don't even require it of themselves?

How Christians Spend Money

2007-03-13T13:49:00.000-06:00

Maybe it's because I spent the morning reading about missionary work in Kenya and thinking about other work going on in Uganda. Maybe it's because Sunday night I finally watched The Departed and felt inimitably sad afterwards because of this world's brokenness and how we brought Noel (albeit broken too) into it, such that I am more eager than before for our righteous God to make this world right. And fast, no more dilly-dallying.

But whatever the reason, when a coworker sent an email flyer about a Christian comedian coming to town, I was slightly more than frowny. After all, who but Americans would think "Christian comedian" is a legitimate career choice?

Maybe there's nothing inherently wrong with it. I can imagine a gazillion reasons why it seems ridiculous, but those hinge more on the teleological worthlessness of amusement in general, and I'm just not willing to make the argument that we should only pray and feed the poor but never read novels or watch films or even enjoy silly comedic business from time to time ("am I right?" she asks in that Monty Python way).

But the reality of Christian comedians speaks to our affluence in ways that unsettle me. The emailed flyer essentially declares that American Christians are so rich in time and money but so stressed in energy and affection that they need stand-up comedians to make them happy. And we rich American Christians have so many ways to spend our money that the church needs to organize entertainment for us so that we can feel like we're doing Christian things when we're really just laughing at clean jokes instead of dirty ones. We love to disengage our minds and spend money, and we're practiced at both. We must do them, must.

So it may not be wrong (I certainly don't mean to pick a fight with the coworker about it), but it bugs me. Then again, maybe I'm just a bitter codger who needs to laugh a little.

How Pretty lost his beauty

2007-03-09T15:40:00.000-06:00

My grandmother and I just had a conversation about nicknames. It began when she asked what "Nolan" was doing and how she thinks she might take to calling him "Baby" because she can't ever get his name right, always wanting to add a "g" or "r" (note that "Nolan" has neither a "g" or an "r" in it). But she figured she couldn't call him that forever because "Baby" is hardly a good nickname for anyone past baby-hood.

Of course, this reminded her of their neighbors back in the day whose son she always called Baby, because that's what his mother called him. One day, his father heard her say this and asked her not to call him Baby, so she asked what she should call him and he suggested "Son" since that's what he called the boy. Grandma has no idea what his real name was. (Apparently his father didn't either.)

This made her remember how her brother C. H. (by all accounts, those aren't initials but his given name . . . or letters) was always called "Abe" by their other brothers. She believes this began because he often asked his father why their neighbor Abe did thus and such with his cattle. I guess preoccupation with a neighbor named Abe justifies taking said neighbor's name for your own nickname.

The story goes that "Abe" stuck, though it's worth noting that I've never heard anyone refer to C. H. as "Abe" in my life. But she didn't think her other brothers ever had nicknames.

"Well, there is Pretty," she mused. Her brother Dennis was known as "Pretty" for a while at school when the other kids made fun of the primping required to care for the ringworm he had on his nose. The teacher didn't like the name, and neither did their parents, but somehow the other brothers heard of it and called him "Pretty" for a while.

"But when the ringworm went away he lost his beauty," Grandma concluded. And that was the end of the conversation about nicknames.

Stumpy! Stumpy! (Imagine Brando screaming that.)

2007-03-02T12:00:00.000-06:00

Let's all take a thankful moment for the stumpy.

This Australian skink sacrificially loves her babies, carrying them until they weigh "on average, 35 percent of the mother's body weight," which is like a human birthing a seven-year-old. Obviously, the mother has trouble breathing, eating, and moving toward the end of gestation, making predator evasion difficult and general living uncomfortable.

And I thought I was swollen at 9 months. Give me stretch marks any day just so Noel comes out at 7 pounds, 13 ounces, rather than the weight and size of Anna Kate. Bigger, really, but I can't think of an actual seven-year-old at the moment.

The creation can teach us much about perseverance and longsuffering, but there is something particularly peculiar about the way God makes new creatures that generally seems rather instructive to me. At the very least, much gratitude wells up in this heart for the stumpy and for the radically different process that is human birth. I'm glad stumpy females go to so much trouble to make new stumpies, unwittingly but nevertheless consistently risking themselves for reproduction. But I'm also glad that it's less trouble for human females to make new humans.

Me Meez

2007-02-28T10:41:00.000-06:00

How fun is this? Like I could ever krump in real life.

Bachman here!

2007-02-26T13:58:00.000-06:00

My grandfather retired from the Air Force at the highest non-commissioned rank and then began a history of complicated hobbies: art collection, baking, needlepoint, genealogy, computer-virus quarantining, hypochondria, etc. Pa (as my sister and I call him) has a wonderful mind, but it comes with a terrific talent for recalling specific details that may or may not be correct. (My mother, therefore, is her father's daughter.)

This is where our story begins.

My Aunt Vicki, who is her father's keeper, took Pa to a new doctor Friday. As they discussed his medical history, the doctor asked if Pa had experienced any significant weight changes over the past few years.

"Oh, gad, yes," he said. "Few years ago, lost 140 pounds."

Vicki showed her astonishment with wide eyes, so Pa reconsidered his number: "100. 80? Don't you remember, you all said I looked gaunt." He stroked his cheeks to demonstrate the location of the gauntness but submitted to Vicki's revision of the number.

Egad! do we love Pa.

Witches on Foot

2007-02-22T10:43:00.000-06:00

Kudos to Wikipedia's co-founder for supporting the ax Middlebury just sharpened against the famous user-edited encyclopedia as a source for academic papers and exams.

I mean, I love Wikipedia as much as the next gal, because it's easy to use and indeed informative, but it's not an appropriate academic source. Middlebury Russian prof Beyer says it perfectly in this New York Times article: “I guess I am not terribly impressed by anyone citing an encyclopedia as a reference point, but I am not against using it as a starting point.” Starting point? That presumes students have have multiple points in their research. We live in a world where first-year college students know how to share music and stalk friends on MySpace but not discern whether or not some site they find is accurate or reliable. They must be taught such information fluency.

Countless examples abound in my own experience alone, witless frosh struggling with MLA documentation and grimacing when I tell them it would be a lot easier to cite their sources if they used books rather than AOL personal homepages. Real books, like from the library, that building on campus with the computers on the first floor.

But rather than complain about first-year dopes, I'd like to tell a borrowed story. Arthur Jackson once text-messaged me in the middle of a class he was taking because the prof, Dr. Lake, had just interrupted a woman making a class presentation. He wanted her to explain the source she had mentioned: "What's Wikipedia?" he asked. "Witches on foot?"

Fashionista

2007-02-22T10:39:00.000-06:00

Arthur, don't be alarmed if we're late to your place for the Oscars: it might take a little while to finish my Botox neck lift, but I want to look my best, so it's worth it.

White-Out

2007-02-21T11:33:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Shannon Stevens for introducing me to Heather Jamison's blog, and thanks to Heather for telling this story about becoming absorbed into their surrounding culture so that the locals presume they just belong. How does a family of white Americans dissolve themselves on a backdrop of black Kenyans for a ministry of love and learning? Let's learn and do it too, white Baptists worshiping in a black neighborhood (as I wrote before).

Surely we at Springs of Grace will also need to take a clue from SOG Tulsa, where their largely white church sweats (literally) long hours (but they like that) to establish real relationships with their neighbors. Hopefully, Lin won't mind my posting this photo of her and Chrissy, a Tulsa girl who joined us for a sports camp at her apartment complex two summers ago. It's precious ministry, walking so near the sun (my oh my, it's HOT there) just to love some kids. Let's carry more strangers on our backs.

Revisionism

2007-02-17T12:49:00.000-06:00

Last week, I joined four other women and their babies (one is still in utero) as show-and-tell for a Human Growth and Development class at Centenary. We began by telling a little about ourselves . . . pregnancy, birth, and post-birth. Since I was last and the other women had already introduced the subjects of natural childbirth and breastfeeding, I quickly told my labor story and then improvised some comments about how amazed and pleased I was at the automatic and powerfully natural love I felt for Noel immediately upon his birth.

The comments went something like this: "I was never a baby person before, never babysat, never had those oogly eyes some women especially just have for babies. Of course, I was excited that our baby was on the way, but I still didn't feel any particular bonding with Noel while he was in the womb. But when Noel appeared in the world, I felt a complete love for him that I cannot explain except that this is how God makes mothers."

But that's not what the class heard.

I saw the professor the other day, and she said that the written reports the students submitted after our visit expressed much concern for baby Noel. They heard the first clause: "I was never a baby person before," at which point I noticed a collective dropping of heads, each student writing that down in the class notes. But they quit listening at that point and apparently presumed I meant, "I was never a baby person before, and I'm still not, and I'm thinking of leaving Noel out in the snow to fend for himself."

Good thing we don't have snow around here. Good night, Irene.

Once upon a time . . .

2007-02-14T14:38:00.000-06:00

there was a fussy boy named Noel. He was the most precious baby in all the land, even if he had lately learned to scream (at least he learned to smile first).

One day, his parents went out for their first hot date since Noel was born. They made reservations at Superior's Steakhouse and filled their pockets with the gift certificate a friend had given them plus the cash Opa had given them, just for this purpose. When Aunt Emily came to babysit, she found neither parent ready, but they quickly gussied up, showed her the ropes of cloth diapering and bottle warming, and then drove away.

At the restaurant, Noel's parents were seated in the cigar room, where they feasted on Cabernet (which the wine steward recommended), bisque, spinach salad, ribeye, Dijon-crusted mahi-mahi, creamed spinach, and braised mushrooms. Meanwhile, a very tall woman sat on the leather couch with her floor-length fur coat and a glass of champagne. The men at the next table ate raw oysters. A couple nearby took a thousand pictures of each other with their one-candled cheesecake; Noel's dad said they didn't seem to speak good English, but Noel's mom still felt oddly out of her league.

An hour and a half later, they left sated and happy. Because the wind had not yet pierced their skin, Noel's parents decided they would go out for ice cream before returning home, but they first called Aunt Emily to see if she would like for them to bring her some home. She didn't answer; not a good sign. And when she called back, Noel was wailing in the background with the long, pitiful wail that says "I'm not happy, and I've not been happy for some time. I'm not hungry and my diaper is fine, and I refuse to be comforted by this aunt person, even if she was there the moment I was born. So there."

Noel's parents offered to come home, but Emily said she was fine and we should go. Good soul, patient soul. By then, Noel's parents were in their car, but they were still shivering from the cold wind and they realized they would be crazy to get ice cream, lest they remain frozen until March. Hot chocolate was what they really wanted, and they had that at home.

So, home they went. Uncle Craig was on the couch, playing a football video game, and Emily did not even look wearied, trying unsuccessfully to feed Noel a bottle. Noel's mom changed clothes quickly and held the wailer, who calmed in about five minutes and fell asleep from exhaustion.

The moral of this story: Noel is a mama's boy. But it's probably okay to be that way when you're barely over two months old.

The end.

Raw, but it doesn't hurt. Really.

2007-02-12T10:50:00.000-06:00

In the first (and probably only) online-shopping recommendation here, I point you toward Uncooked: The Store. I don't know who came up with this, but I'm pretty sure he or she must be related to Little Sic: looking through the cards this morning, the voice I heard in my head reading the awkwardly funny card fronts was definitely his, because these things sound like what he would just concoct. Sic, you missed your calling! Well, maybe not, but these made me laugh lots. And that's kind of something. Sort of.

Who Those Feet?

2007-02-07T17:45:00.000-06:00

Cherish (I'll refrain from referring to her by an appellation I prefer) has asked in a comment to the last post about those janky feet, so I figure the explanation deserves a post of its own.

These feet belong to a woman affectionately called "Hobbit" who was one of us four who walked Wainwright's Coast to Coast in England together. This photo was taken at the end of our penultimate hiking day, a day whose path goes along an old mineral railway for miles; the black minerals make you filthy, and Hobbit's feet show that well. (The photo here shows another view of the path; what you can't see here is the back of my legs getting a horrible sunburn that same day.)

Because her boots blistered her feet horribly, Hobbit had abandoned them well before the ghost of that railway dirtied us. As I recall, she ended up walking almost the last 50 miles in those flip flops.

But no matter how proper your boots, the minerals crept between all your toes. Just before entering the idyllic Grosmont where we planned to eat dinner, we crossed a creek, pulled out our sandals, and washed our feet in the running stream. Good thing we did, because the pub turned out rather fancy; we were nevertheless grateful that they let us eat outside, something many places did not allow.

So, I'm proud of those janky feet, Cherish! Might have been even prouder if they were my own. . . .

Yet another way to love my books

2007-02-02T16:18:00.000-06:00

Check this out. Beware jealousy as to my current reading pile. I'll just go from this point forward; backtracking would take way too long.

Rock On

2007-01-30T23:11:00.000-06:00

Another poem accepted: Rock and Sling will publish "Bradenton's Relic" in their next issue! I learned about this mag when Lindsay Terrell and I perused their booth during last spring's Festival of Faith and Writing. Somehow the subject of hiking came up and I recommended Wainwright's Coast to Coast to the editors, so when they asked for submissions, I had to send some. Of course, if they were worth half their salt, they requested submissions from every dolt Dick and janky Jane who passed their table, but who could pass up sending poems to a mag whose editors might one day walk across England as you had? I mean, really now.

Diverse Unity, and Other Oxymorons God Loves

2007-01-28T15:27:00.000-06:00

In a recent Christianity Today article entitled "Exit Interviews," Edward Gilbreath (no relation, so far as I know, to my Aunt Vicki) pokes an honest finger at white and black Christians who aren't proactive about pursuing the diverse unity that God seems intent on creating in the Church. Gilbreath suggests a scenario that probably too few church members have found themselves in: facing their own ignorance and uncomfortable fidgeting while trying to engage in meaningful dialogue with the Other.

Sometimes that Other isn't so other after all, but a few shades different in skin color and we might as well live on separate planets. So Gilbreath asks bold questions we should all truly ask ourselves. Then he concludes by observing the real difficulty as well as real urgency we ought to feel about this business:

"To break out of the monochromatic status quo of today's evangelical movement, we must confront hard truths about ourselves and about the things that truly drive our institutions. If we don't, we'll never find ourselves in that place of total freedom and faith and unity that allows us to be used by God in radical ways."

I guess Gilbreath and John Piper are channeling each other, because the latter just wrote a wild proposal (called "How and Why Bethlehem Pursues Ethnic Diversity") that aims to enact exactly what the former proposed. In an effort to purposely diversify the staff and elders at Piper's church, those who are already staff and elders want to practice affirmative action when selecting future members. Of course, biblical standards of doctrine and practice will not be compromised in this effort, but the church wants to look more like the Church, not just wish for it.

Wow. Where Gilbreath provides cultural criticism, Piper provides practical application, and both make bold calls for real problem-solving and love. As much as both had me on the edge of my pew, though, I never did get up.

That's partly because I'm joined at the hip (well, not literally any more) to my seven-week-old. But Noel won't serve as an excuse. Too many mothers use their children as excuses to not do ministry outside their homes, and they're doing their children (not to mention the more-important Church and world at-large) a disservice in the process. Perhaps more on that later. In the meantime, may God have mercy on us so that our home and hands might become more active in ministry now that Noel has come into the world.

But my not-getting-up problem also reflects the complexity of the issue itself. That's part of the point Gilbreath and Piper are making, after all: this stuff is tricky.

Last semester, I confessed to one of my African-American students my chagrin that our church looks very little like our neighbors. We began as a neighborhood church, and the middle-class whites that raised their children there have now grown into the oldest generation at our church. But those white flew away into more affluent neighborhoods, and they sold their houses to the working-class poor who are (at least here) primarily black. Our neighbors regularly visit the church . . . on Monday nights for basketball and Bible study, or during the summer when the gym opens daily for the same. But that's mostly it.

The upshot: we have conducted neighborhood ministries for more than a decade and only folded a handful of those Others into our white pews. My student said that she didn't think we could ever expect more.

Of course, in the end, we can only do faithfully what God calls us to do and trust Him for whatever fruit He will bring. If that means laboring long in a neighborhood that always looks unlike us, then fine. But the very notion of an "us" and "them" seems antithetical to the Kingdom. Since the beginning of a people He called His own, God has been grafting in Others: Rahab the prostitute, Ruth the Moabite, the Ethiopian reader, Onesimus the slave, to name a few famous ones. Today, we need more Rahabs and Ruths and Onesimuses, not just as members of the global Church but as integral components in our local congregations.

So let's start by honestly answering Gilbreath's hard questions. And let's continue with practical plans to overcome our monochromatic lives so that we might really display love for and likeness with Jesus. I applaud Piper's staff and elders for making a bold move in that direction. But such clapping will hardly do any good in and of itself. Something serious needs to change in this chick and in her church. Not just a nice round of applause added onto a rather pale life. In odd diversity God's fame will shine brightest.

Now, I love Jesus, but I do drink a little.

2007-01-17T10:57:00.000-06:00

This morning, Ellen Degeneres called an 88-year-old woman named Gladys in Austin, TX, because Gladys had earlier called her and left a voicemail recommending that Ellen redecorate the set by moving a spiky plant from behind her head. And Gladys, who is either spry of the mind or else in that funny stage of dementia, told Ellen all manner of hilarious things, not least of which was "I love Jesus, but I do drink a little" as an excuse for some odd behavior she then described. I can't even remember how the rest of the story went because the introduction was just too funny.

I'm drooling.

2007-01-16T16:15:00.000-06:00

Seriously. Are there any better places in the world than libraries?

Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink. / The very deep did rot. . . .

2007-01-15T18:02:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, a friend came to visit Noel, and then she drove south to Lafayette for a night with her parents. When Ashlie walked into the house, her mother informed her that she'd been thinking of me all day because she'd earlier heard of a Jennifer Strange who died in a "how much water can you drink without going to the bathroom" contest. So, Ashlie left me a voicemail to this effect and I later researched the facts.

The BBC version of the story indicates that this doppelganger was only a year younger than I, though with three kids and a desire for a Wii. Thus, she entered a radio contest offering a free Wii to the contestant who drank the most water without a visit to the WC.

I can hardly believe that this radio station had the idiocy to concoct such a contest. In a day when the dangers of drinking too much water are a standard component of anti-hazing Greek governance (frats had taken to replacing beer-guzzling with water-guzzling for their underage members, but that only made undergrads die from water toxication rather than alcohol poisoning) and marathon training programs (because when you sweat that much, you must replace not only water but also electrolytes), one would think that someone at that station would have better sense.

As I understand it, the chemistry lesson basically goes like this: the cells in our bodies have an amazing balance of electrolytes and water, but if you take in too much water at once, you throw that balance off and the cells swell. But your body doesn't like swollen cells, so it shuts down.

Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't drink water. I, for one, drink lots of it every day because I enjoy the privilege of autothermoregulation and general hydration. We drink so many sodas and caffeinated beverages that we don't realize how thirsty we really are. But everything in a balance: we need salty foods too so that the water can stick to our bones (as it were).

Just because "wee" is a homophone with "wii" doesn't mean wit can compensate for good sense. Still a dumb idea, but better if they had been drinking Gatorade or beer or soda. That's what my teary-eyed husband suggested after hearing the story, just before he insisted I quit telling him about it because it was just too horrible.

Noel is a Genius

2007-01-08T21:23:00.000-06:00

Lauren's comment on my last post reveals she's a good sleuth, and it's worth confessing in a real post: we're going with cloth diapers, having ordered our supply of Bumgenius 2.0 just the other day. They're en route (well, minus the butternut color, which is on backorder and will come in a couple weeks). Woot!

So far, we're convinced that that these cloths are as easy as disposables: an extra load of wash per day (depending on how many you buy, but Tracey Carrin reports this only means $2 more per month on the water bill) but no trash (which suits our recycling pinko-commie selves), and way cheaper (these one-size-fits-all diapers aren't much bulkier than disposables right now, but they get sleeker as he gets bigger, and they should last until he weighs 35 pounds).

We'll let you know if we do or don't stay so rosy about them, but so far we're pumped. . . .

Oel?

2006-12-20T19:37:00.000-06:00

More from Great-Grandma Esther: Oel? Olan? Orlen? "I'm always wanting to add an N or R," she says. "You've got to correct me, now." I'm just shocked that she has yet to call him Noie ("Like Noie in the Bible," she once told me about her Uncle Noah, and emphatically, as though she couldn't figure out how I missed the allusion) or Junior (which is what she always called him in-utero).

Thanks to Papa Strange

2006-12-07T16:06:00.000-06:00

for stating some classroom rules so clearly. Why don't students just presume these things?

Of course, he's forgotten one of the most important rules: don't tick off Mama Strange or else she'll go home and complain to Papa Strange about it. He has been known to offer kind commiseration when deserved, so watch out.

One of these days, I'll actually take him up on his offer to appear as a guest lecturer on exactly this subject.

Full circle with the Bean

2006-12-06T23:18:00.000-06:00

Timeline:

I learned that Oxford American accepted my poem "Three Days After Easter, 1994" during the same week that I learned I was pregnant.

Now the issue featuring that poem is appearing on newsstands during the week when I will likely deliver.

How's that?

Yes, I can think about something other than labor

2006-12-06T23:05:00.000-06:00

As you await the arrival of Baby Strange, please read "Kramer's Sins—and Ours" from Christianity Today. I started reading it with a little skepticism, presuming it might merely be an opportunistic commentary on the recent Michael Richards incident. Turns out that the writer, Edward Gilbreath, instead takes that opportunity to write rather insightfully about the problem of how we manage political correctness regarding race in the media and other professions and, finally, the Church. So, enjoy . . . and please respond.

The Rumors Rumble On

2006-12-06T11:09:00.000-06:00

Dr. Palmer just called me to ask, a bit tongue-in-cheek, if it was a boy or a girl. That's what her sister had just called to ask her. Apparently, she had heard from their mother yesterday that I was 4 cm and going to the hospital, when what April claims she clearly told her mother was simply that I was 3 cm and might probably maybe likely could have the baby in the next 2-3 days. Translation by 11 am the next morning: Baby Strange has surely entered the world.

Who knows where the message went wrong. Of course, it matters very little, as April has reminded me that I am only allowed to have this baby today, tomorrow, or Saturday and following, because she's taking her boards on Friday. If we care at all about Aunt April, we will organize the labor schedule accordingly. Yes, indeed.

Your Mother Should Know (Your Mo-ther Should)

2006-12-05T09:53:00.000-06:00

Lest the previous post suggest any complaining bitterness (as, indeed, my dear mother suggested), I'd like to clarify that I really only meant it as a gentle jab toward the rumor-makers. After all, again as my dear mother noted, few folks start rumors unless they care about the rumor subjects. (NB this isn't always the case, for some simply like to control information, but that's a different issue.) The bean's parents are beyond grateful for those who care about the bean and us. Especially those who perpetuated rumors 2 and 3 :) Be it known.

Six Days and Counting

2006-12-04T13:57:00.000-06:00

Yesterday my belly received its first unsolicited touch, and what a touch it was. More like a fingernail tickle. Good night, Irene. Just because I'm 9 months pregnant doesn't mean my body has become public property.

But what do I have to complain about? After all, I'm 9 months pregnant and that was the first unsolicited touch. Rumors have, however, circulated back my direction over the past few days. I'd like to celebrate by sleuthing out some untrue rumors I have heard about myself over the past few weeks:

1) "What are you doing at work? Weren't you on bedrest?" Thanks for informing me. Apparently a co-worker started this rumor when the doctor was doing tests to confirm whether or not I had pre-eclampsia, which I have not had. In the conversation that required my informing this co-worker that my doctor had this concern, I specifically noted that even if I had pre-eclampsia, she would not prescribe bedrest but would simply let labor bring the baby early.

2) "Your contractions were so significant Thursday night that you almost went to the hospital." Really? Indeed, contractions have been getting sharper, but they're nowhere near regular. This could go on for weeks. We never had thoughts of actually going to the hospital last Thursday night.

3) "If the baby doesn't come by your due date, she'll induce Monday the 11th." Right, um, no. We did ask how long she'd let me go, and her answer was that she'd like for me to not wait much past the due date, but that does not mean induction is a real possibility, and we certainly have not scheduled anything, nor would we expect to do so that early.

So, beware if you hear rumors about me and/or Baby Strange. If, on the other hand, you hear rumors about Papa Strange having sympathy fatigue and pains, believe those all you want because they're probably true.

36 Weeks of Chub

2006-11-15T21:41:00.000-06:00

Today's ultrasound showed, among other things, one fat fist. The doctor was so impressed by the chubbiness that she had to print it out (she does an ultrasound every time we go, but she doesn't normally print the shots).

And this may be the fist we touched.

The other day, Micah was checking out the baby's movements and told me he thought he'd found a hand. When I put my two fingers in the same spot, I agreed and marveled. Then that invisible hand within the womb seemed to grasp at my poking fingers. Entirely cool and entirely creepy at the same time. I'll be thrilled to do that when the baby is part of the bright world, but for now I'll just wait.

Making Much of the Bean

2006-11-01T09:57:00.000-06:00

Saturday night, we attended a delightfully tame costume party. Myles went as a surprisingly scary ghost (who knew a white sheet with two holes could actually blend into the scenery so well?) and Cherish as a Ghostbuster. Katie and Caleb were Alice and the Mad Hatter. Amber and Ben were a hunter and deer (her t-shirt featured a target). Cristy, Paul, Hailey, and Cade were the Flinstone four. Then Lauren and Rafe showed up as Brangelina, toting dolls borrowed from the church nursery in their Baby Bjorn and sling; Lauren appropriately skirted her eyes for every photo taken of her. Phenomenal.

Micah and I had several ideas about how to exploit the bean. Lauren and Cherish had suggested pregnant Britney and KFed. My sister suggested the milkman and a (desperate) housewife. We wondered if we could somehow plaster a bun to my belly and call me an oven; Micah could be the baker.

But then we remembered we're nerds. And nerds like to make allusions that they think are funny even if other people might not get the joke. So Micah went to Wolf and Diller, a local costume shop that happens to be going out of business, and bought pilgrim outfits so that we could be Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale:

While We Were Out

2006-10-21T11:40:00.000-06:00

One week ago today, I woke up with a surge of nesting adrenaline, but there was little nesting for me to do that day. Instead, my job was simply to get out of the way while my mom, my aunt, my sister, and their crew transformed our second bedroom into a nursery.

By 9 am, they had all arrived, so we exited for a leisurely breakfast, a trip to the "Faces of Katrina" exhibit at artspace (fantastic, if emotionally draining), and my prenatal massage (oh my! fabulous). Then I spent the afternoon grading English 101 exams and watching the Detroit Tigers win their berth to the World Series while Micah changed out switches or some geek thing like that at work. By 7 pm, they were done and ready for us to see the new room.

It's hard to say how much we love the space. The colors, the canvas painting, the book wall, the giraffes, the new chest of drawers, the books, the quilt! Mom sewed her fingers off, Emily was Martha as usual, Vicki researched books and painted beautifully, Dan brought bright rugs and updated the blinds etc, Randy did whatever they told him (I'm guessing), and even Craig showed up at some point to help everything finish. So the room makes me happy because it's lovely but also because it represents such loving work from the fam.

They took inspiration from Grandma Bachman's claim that books are our friends. Primarily meant to warn us against setting open books upside down in such a way as breaks their bindings, this phrase now seems largely and simply symbolic of her. A lover of words and books of all sorts, Grandma went to work for BDalton when Pa was finally stationed stateside in San Antonio, when her last daughter was leaving home and most women would probably consider themselves free to just hang out. She retired several years later as manager of the largest BDalton in San Diego.

She often sent us boxes of books, and we were surely not faithful to read them as we should. No doubt we did not always treat them as our friends. But Grandma taught us something of her own lifestyle in the sending and the saying. I have always regarded books as mystical repositories of great things, objects of art that decorate my space. And I often think of those thoughts and decorating notions as Grandma's doing.

So it seems right that this particular influence would continue to the bean. May our child love words and ideas more than we do and somehow know even from the earliest breathing moments that books are indeed your friends.

Mutton Busting

2006-10-20T09:55:00.000-06:00

If it weren't Tigger's daughter, I would call this child exploitation and not laugh so hard, but "ME Denison, Champion Mutton Buster" just seems too classic of a headline. Please read her own blessed mother's telling of the story and watch the video on their blog.

Because of the videotape and the involvement of sheep, not to mention those other poor kids who (let's face it) never had a chance, this story does beat in laughter the one Micah tells about the time he hooked that dog chain to ME's backpack. She, of course, ran as hard as she could away from him and was yanked to the ground (when unleashed, she proved only mildly shaken and immediately started playing with something else).

Of course, this story does not beat the one involving Tigger's laptop getting run over by my car, since I saw that with my own eyes.

I'm Worried About This

2006-10-07T09:09:00.000-06:00

I'm too much of a traditionalist for this. I can still remember my first symphony concert: my dad was sick, but my parents already had tickets and mom still wanted to go, so I got picked to accompany her. After all, I was the older one at maybe 7 or 8, though that still seemed rather young to attend the symphony.

She suggested I wear the white dress with red ribbons, the fanciest I had (it matched one in my sister's wardrobe, maybe they were Easter dresses). And she instructed me in appropriate concert behavior: how to sit still and silent, like church, and maybe when to clap. She asked me several times if I was sure I wanted to go, if I thought I could act the needful way.

It was too much an exercise in the imagination not to go: the floofiest dress, the adult event. I had played violin since before I could remember, and now the teachers would perform for me.

Since then, I have been a behavior nazi. Well, that's partly because my dad never abided fidgeting or other distracting or inappropriate actions in public places. But especially not during concerts: no talking, definitely no candy wrappers, no head-bobbing or toe-tapping, certainly no getting up before intermission, no clapping at the wrong time. I'm nervous about even moving my legs to change which one crosses which. I have unwittingly taught myself to place the program on the crossed knee so that I can consult it for the current movement name at only a glance, no drop of the chin. It's ridiculously staid, but at least no one gets distracted . . . least of all myself.

Now, maybe I have remembered the details of that first concert incorrectly; my mother will have to offer a correction if that's the case. But surely she will agree with me that there is something in my nature and my years of practice that really ought to bristle at the idea of bringing a cell phone to a symphony concert, and especially at the idea of using it there.

The idea is tremendously creative and apt, hopefully more of a subtle cultural critique than an actual celebration of the ubiquitous mobile phone, but I'd rather I and everyone else attending the symphony learn to leave their cells in their cars. Better still, at home. Go to listen, not to wish you were somewhere else with someone else who might have something unnecessary to tell you while you're stuck in a concert.

Bring Out Yer Dead! Bring Out Yer Dead!

2006-10-05T07:08:00.000-06:00

A story in The New York Times entitled "Dead Bachelors in Remote China Still Find Wives" points out several ironies that are the modern China.

The overall problem here: false worship drives you to do stupid things. After all, such stuff makes the Chinese poor believe they should pay good money for dead women. Their hearts have taken advantage of the obvious procreative problem men will have when their ancestors preferred baby boys over baby girls.

The people profiled in this story are poor, but they will pay big money for brides, even dead ones for dead relatives. The cost of a female corpse to simply bury your male corpse near so that he might not remain a virgin in the afterlife is phenomenally high. I wish it were because the woman's remaining relatives prized her that much, but it is too likely that she lived with much shame, if not terrible abuse, because she did not earn that dowry while she lived and then could bear progeny for the good of the village, the family name, and the future economic health of everyone involved. Of course, she would probably have endured much abuse regardless; the status of wives in rural China seems only slightly above that of abandoned female infants.

But if you believe that the afterlife is as materialistic and base as this life, and if you believe a corpse is better than nothing, and if your village has believed that female infants should be left in fields to die, you will pay a lot of money to get any woman in the age to come. Even if it all you get is a dead Leah, you will pay your own personal Laban for the dowry he failed to collect while his daughter yet lived. Seven years? A wad of cash? But at least you can bury yourself with a smile on your face. No telling how much more it costs your soul.