I like to point others to good things I've found. One of the most recent of those things is the crock pot split pea soup recipe at Kayla K's Thrifty Ways, which I've already cooked twice. Whenever I made split pea soup in the past, I made it on the stovetop, with indifferent to poor results. Cooking it in the crock pot makes a real difference in the quality, and there's less hands-on time than with the stovetop. I made mine with chicken broth (the real thing once, bouillion cubes the other) instead of vegetable bouillion, and I used a chopped up garlic clove for the seasoning. Yummy. With a piece of homemade bread, it makes a perfect Lenten Friday meal.* Outside of Fridays in Lent, my husband prefers a ham sandwich as accompaniment.
I've been a bit bread-happy lately, compared to recent years. In addition to several batches of Cuban bread, I've made cornbread three or four times recently. I normally buy self-rising white corn meal for cornbread and that is good, but I haven't been making much bread and I've been out for months. A few weeks ago I was given some stone ground white corn meal from a grist mill up in Laurel. Using the recipe on the bag (and the oven temperature of my usual recipe, since their recipe didn't include temp), I have made some really delicious corn bread. It has a really fresh taste, as well as being a wee bit more coarse than the usual meal I buy in the grocery store. If you can get hold of some in your area, I recommend it. A little square (or two) of the bread made from it is perfect with the crock pot split pea soup.
Also on the bread front, I recently had a decent storebought biscuit. My mother, who makes very good homemade biscuits, has taken to keeping a bag of frozen biscuits on hand for when she wants just one or two biscuits with a meal. I've tasted frozen biscuits before and, while they're considerably better than the wasp's nests that are canned biscuits, they're certainly no patch on the average homemade. But this kind my mother's using, Mary B's Tea Biscuits, is actually tasty. She cooks them in a litle toaster oven/convection oven combo with a thin smear of butter on top, and they come out tasting like real biscuits. I bought a bag and for some reason I can not get as good results in either my toaster oven or my regular oven--maybe it's the convection makes the difference?--but they are edible and certainly better than any canned biscuit. I like the size and, although I can't remember the price, it seemed reasonable enough.
I've started experimenting a bit with a George Foreman grill. I wouldn't have bought one myself, but someone who had two gave me one months back and I put it under my cabinet and promptly forgot I had it until asked how I was enjoying it. So I had to get it out and try it. It's not bad. Fairly easy to wipe clean, if nothing else. So far I've been most impressed with the fish fillets I grilled on it yesterday. The first fish I tried on it tore into pieces as I'd been warned would happen (still tasted fine), but these I didn't lift the lid to check until I was pretty sure they were done and I was super careful lifting them off the grill--with that and a little luck I had two pretty little fillets. I've never been an adventurous cooker of fish and grilled makes a welcome addition to my little repertoire. Extra welcome for Lent.
Do check out the rest of Kayla K's Thrifty Ways, which I found via Knitting Pattern Central. It's a nice little blog on thriftiness (obviously), including cooking and crafts, and the author seems like a really nice young lady.
*Re something with chicken broth being suitable for meatless Friday meals, my understanding (based on a possibly faulty memory of one of Jimmy Akins' Lent-related posts) is that soups and such cooked with animal juices are technically allowed, although not necessarily in the spirit of the thing. I probably wouldn't use real broth for a Friday meal and I hesitate at the bouillion cubes, but I figure a chicken bouillion cube is a long way from chicken and a couple of small cubes spread out over a crockpot of soup is pretty negligible. I haven't had vegetable bouillion in the house in years.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
A New Pleasure and a RIP
Two weeks ago today I was an hour and a half north of here and got to experience a pleasure I have never had in the whole of my life: I got to walk in the falling snow. Central and south Mississippi do have the rare snowfall and I have known several that were really notable by our standards. But every one I have ever known fell during the night, so I never got to experience more than seeing the flakes lit up in the car lights as we drove home or, if home when it started, running outside for a few minutes to see it; I could only take a walk in the snow the next day, after it had fallen. Friday before last, by contrast, much of the snowfall happened in the morning, so I got to take a walk in it and see the big, fluffy flakes fall past my face in natural light. It was beautiful.
Of course, I also discovered that snow can create a problem on glasses something like rain does and, not being at home, I didn't have a brimmed hat to wear to keep the snow off them, but nothing is perfect in this life and that walk, with the vision of snow on pines and more snow falling, was good enough for me.
Today was also the seventeenth anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing. Here is a piece from the fifteenth anniversary. Michelle Malkin notes the anniversary too. May the seven people who died that day and all of the people who have died in terrorist attacks on America and on her allies be granted eternal rest.
Of course, I also discovered that snow can create a problem on glasses something like rain does and, not being at home, I didn't have a brimmed hat to wear to keep the snow off them, but nothing is perfect in this life and that walk, with the vision of snow on pines and more snow falling, was good enough for me.
Today was also the seventeenth anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing. Here is a piece from the fifteenth anniversary. Michelle Malkin notes the anniversary too. May the seven people who died that day and all of the people who have died in terrorist attacks on America and on her allies be granted eternal rest.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Well, There Goes a Perfectly Good Joke...
There's an old joke that ends with Boudreaux shivering and saying, "Hot damn, the Saints done won the Super Bowl!" I guess we can't use that joke any more. But tell me now, is it a coincidence that it was such a cold weekend when they went and won it, hmm?
Not that I much care. I've never watched football and I was lucky enough to marry one of those few Southern men who couldn't care less about it. I usually don't even know when the Super Bowl is coming up, let alone who's playing, but I live in SW Mississippi. There is a lot of black and gold and a lot of fleurs de lis around here anyway, but in the past couple of weeks it multiplied. Sunday afternoon mass, whose attendance I've noticed looking a bit sparse on previous Superbowl Sundays (at least once this was my only clue there'd been a SuperBowl), looked this year as if a plague had hit the area. I guess some of the people who chose morning mass over afternoon got what they were praying for. Good for them. I'm happy for them, in a non-involved, benign, good-will-to-men-of-good-will sort of way.
Even if their win does spoil a perfectly good joke.
Not that I much care. I've never watched football and I was lucky enough to marry one of those few Southern men who couldn't care less about it. I usually don't even know when the Super Bowl is coming up, let alone who's playing, but I live in SW Mississippi. There is a lot of black and gold and a lot of fleurs de lis around here anyway, but in the past couple of weeks it multiplied. Sunday afternoon mass, whose attendance I've noticed looking a bit sparse on previous Superbowl Sundays (at least once this was my only clue there'd been a SuperBowl), looked this year as if a plague had hit the area. I guess some of the people who chose morning mass over afternoon got what they were praying for. Good for them. I'm happy for them, in a non-involved, benign, good-will-to-men-of-good-will sort of way.
Even if their win does spoil a perfectly good joke.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
A Random Thought
Do you ever find yourself wondering if the exact job that would have been most satisfying to you is one that no longer exists in any substantial sense, such as blacksmith, buggy whip maker, or wagon wheel maker.
Well, okay, me neither, beyond about five seconds today. Although I did used to wonder if the apple variety that would most exactly suit my personal taste buds is a variety that hasn't been grown within living memory.
Well, okay, me neither, beyond about five seconds today. Although I did used to wonder if the apple variety that would most exactly suit my personal taste buds is a variety that hasn't been grown within living memory.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Quote of the Past Month
It's been a long time since I've made one of my irregularly scheduled "Quote of the Varying Time Period" posts, so here is my favorite quote from the month of January:
It's from The Political Housewyf, whose blog I found by accident last week.
...I could whisper, ‘Turn,’ and 6,000 tons of aircraft carrier, four acres of
U.S. sovereign territory, thousands of people, enough aircraft to make a nice
air force for a small country, and billions of dollars of equipment and training turned.
And I traded it for a toddler who giggled and ran the
other way when I yelled, “Would you come here?!?“ [source]
It's from The Political Housewyf, whose blog I found by accident last week.
Here's An Idea for Someone Else
When I saw the movie Ushpizin (mentioned a couple of posts ago), I got to experience one of those minor pleasures of life that people seldom talk about: unexpectedly hearing words you know in a stream of what are, to you, meaningless sounds. In the movie when the wife walked to the sink and started the hand-washing blessing, it took a moment for the penny to drop and me to realize, "Hey I heard that, I didn't understand it by reading subtitles". I knew the whole beginning of the blessing (Baruch atah adonai melech haolam...), because they are the beginning of other blessings and I Iearned them a long time ago. In the middle of this flow of sounds I couldn't understand was a sentence--or partial sentence--I did understand. Usually when I have this experience it's only a word: some busboys saying manana, for example, or one of the handful of Japanese words I know (oba-chan, konichiwa--words like that) coming out of an anime character's mouth. Suddenly hearing an English word in a stream of foreign language is also pretty good, but not quite as good.
Anyway, this is only preparatory to recommending a website that has some Hebrew blessings with the words in both Hebrew characters and roman letters and audio of each word being said or sung so that you can learn correct pronunciation: Learn Hebrew Prayers.com. Presumably the site will eventually be expanded to include more prayers.
And recommending that website is only preparatory to asking why some Catholic somewhere doesn't do this for Latin prayers? I've read advice to pronounce Church Latin like Italian (rather than Classical Latin), and I once somewhere saw a few Latin prayers spelled out phonetically for English speakers, but that's it. Any media-savvy speakers of Church Latin want to perform this service for us slobs who never studied Latin and are too lazy to start but would like to know a few prayers?
If I'm complaining about a lack that has already been filled, please tell me.
Anyway, this is only preparatory to recommending a website that has some Hebrew blessings with the words in both Hebrew characters and roman letters and audio of each word being said or sung so that you can learn correct pronunciation: Learn Hebrew Prayers.com. Presumably the site will eventually be expanded to include more prayers.
And recommending that website is only preparatory to asking why some Catholic somewhere doesn't do this for Latin prayers? I've read advice to pronounce Church Latin like Italian (rather than Classical Latin), and I once somewhere saw a few Latin prayers spelled out phonetically for English speakers, but that's it. Any media-savvy speakers of Church Latin want to perform this service for us slobs who never studied Latin and are too lazy to start but would like to know a few prayers?
If I'm complaining about a lack that has already been filled, please tell me.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
"An Inexplicable Cultural Phenomenon"
Okay, I finally succumbed. I read Twilight. I admit it. I was weak. Earlier this month I was tired from somehow not having gotten any rest despite sleeping all night, so after I got my husband his Sunday lunch, I went to bed and curled up in a ball, thinking I just wanted to read something mindless. A friend had suggested I download the sample chapter of Twilight "just to laugh at how bad it is" and I finally had, but hadn't read it. So I did. The problem is when you finish a sample chapter the Kindle asks if you want to buy the book, and in a fit of boredom, impulse purchasing, or possibly insanity, I did.
Other than remarking that in all the time I spent reading in bed as a child, I never dreamed I'd one day be able to buy books in bed, what else is there to say?
I'm not sure I'd ever heard of Twilight before Gina R. Dalfonzo's NRO review of the series a few months before the first movie came out. I wouldn't have been interested anyway, and neither Dalfonzo's piece nor anything I heard after changed my mind. Thomas Hibbs' review of the second movie made me laugh, and so did YouTube clips of the Rifftrax for the first movie. (From memory--"You can read it, there just isn't anything there".) I think the young man playing Jacob Black is kind of hot, but beyond that I don't see the appeal.
Twilight is badly written, and I don't just mean stylistically: I never for a minute buy Edward's and Bella's sudden romance. (That's despite the fact I believe in the possibility of sudden romance.) The whole book is just blatant wish fulfillment. Bella may seem clumsy and average, but that just hides her secret specialness. She makes friends immediately. Boy after boy falls for her. The most handsome boy in school falls passionately, irrevocably in love with her the moment he lays eyes on her. He's a good boy who is also a bad boy. He smells good and sparkles in the sunlight, always dresses well, drives a luxury car, plays music for her, wants nothing more than to protect her, and will never, ever pressure her over anything unless it's for her own good. He makes her faint when he kisses her. Of course he's filthy, stinking rich too. And he just keeps on insisting on giving her presents and telling her how special she is, darn it. There may have been some wish fulfillment going on in Harry Potter books, but this...whoah.
And dear, blank Bella, who was apparently just waiting for Edward to write on her slate and give her meaning, remains pretty blank. Another case of there being no there there. Even before she knows how perfect Edward is, with the self-denial and the money and whatnot, she learns he is probably a soulless monster and she decides that it doesn't matter. Let me repeat that: her response to finding out that the boy she sits beside in science class has no soul and craves human blood is to decide that it doesn't matter. What?! Bobby McFerrin, upon learning that the soulless undead walk among us and go to our schools, would have decided to worry, but not this girl. Does she think souls are unimportant, or does she just think that having the hots for a boy overrides all other considerations, including survival? Or is she just thick?
Parents wondering if this series is wholesome reading for their daughters might want to read those two reviews I've linked above and some of Regina Doman's comments here. Personally, I wouldn't recommend giving this series to anyone, but considering all the trash out there, if your adolescent daughter really wants to read it, this may not be a hill you want to die on.
Beyond that, I don't have anything to say. I can't claim to understand why grown women have been devouring this. It remains for me what Rifftrax called it (and I quoted in the title of this post.)
Other than remarking that in all the time I spent reading in bed as a child, I never dreamed I'd one day be able to buy books in bed, what else is there to say?
I'm not sure I'd ever heard of Twilight before Gina R. Dalfonzo's NRO review of the series a few months before the first movie came out. I wouldn't have been interested anyway, and neither Dalfonzo's piece nor anything I heard after changed my mind. Thomas Hibbs' review of the second movie made me laugh, and so did YouTube clips of the Rifftrax for the first movie. (From memory--"You can read it, there just isn't anything there".) I think the young man playing Jacob Black is kind of hot, but beyond that I don't see the appeal.
Twilight is badly written, and I don't just mean stylistically: I never for a minute buy Edward's and Bella's sudden romance. (That's despite the fact I believe in the possibility of sudden romance.) The whole book is just blatant wish fulfillment. Bella may seem clumsy and average, but that just hides her secret specialness. She makes friends immediately. Boy after boy falls for her. The most handsome boy in school falls passionately, irrevocably in love with her the moment he lays eyes on her. He's a good boy who is also a bad boy. He smells good and sparkles in the sunlight, always dresses well, drives a luxury car, plays music for her, wants nothing more than to protect her, and will never, ever pressure her over anything unless it's for her own good. He makes her faint when he kisses her. Of course he's filthy, stinking rich too. And he just keeps on insisting on giving her presents and telling her how special she is, darn it. There may have been some wish fulfillment going on in Harry Potter books, but this...whoah.
And dear, blank Bella, who was apparently just waiting for Edward to write on her slate and give her meaning, remains pretty blank. Another case of there being no there there. Even before she knows how perfect Edward is, with the self-denial and the money and whatnot, she learns he is probably a soulless monster and she decides that it doesn't matter. Let me repeat that: her response to finding out that the boy she sits beside in science class has no soul and craves human blood is to decide that it doesn't matter. What?! Bobby McFerrin, upon learning that the soulless undead walk among us and go to our schools, would have decided to worry, but not this girl. Does she think souls are unimportant, or does she just think that having the hots for a boy overrides all other considerations, including survival? Or is she just thick?
Parents wondering if this series is wholesome reading for their daughters might want to read those two reviews I've linked above and some of Regina Doman's comments here. Personally, I wouldn't recommend giving this series to anyone, but considering all the trash out there, if your adolescent daughter really wants to read it, this may not be a hill you want to die on.
Beyond that, I don't have anything to say. I can't claim to understand why grown women have been devouring this. It remains for me what Rifftrax called it (and I quoted in the title of this post.)
Two Movies You May Not Have Heard Of
Ushpizin, available from Netflix for either DVD rental or instant viewing, is an interesting movie about a married couple trying to be religious and not always succeeding. It is the festival of Sukkot, and Moshe and his wife are so broke they barely have any food in the house, let alone supplies for celebrating the holiday. They begin to pray very hard and two things happen, they receive an unexpected sum of money and two guests from Moshe's not-so-religious past show up. They attempt to provide hospitality to the men, but things do not go smoothly.
I saw this small independent movie back in November, but I still remember it and would like to see it again; that's better than some big budget movies I've seen. I liked it not only because it gives a glimpse inside a world I will never be a part of, but because it shows religious people sincerely trying to follow God, failing to live up to their ideals, yet continuing to try. Religion is not shown as a contemptible thing, fit only for mockery. This makes Ushpizin an unusual movie by contemporary standards. It's also a good story.
Arranged (also available from Netflix) is another low-budget, seemingly small movie. It concerns Rochel and Nasira, two young schoolteachers in a NYC elementary school, who do not fit in with the other teachers. Both dress modestly and have expectations of an arranged marriage. Did I mention they don't fit in? They become friends through the shared bonds of looking for love in a now non-standard way and of enduring their principal's attempts to save them from oppression.
Ushpizin is the better film, but I like this movie too. How often do we get to see a young woman stand up in a movie and say that "traditional" isn't necessarily bad? Aren't all modern films supposed to be about young women defying authority and tradition? This is a different movie--refreshingly so.
As to family viewing, I don't think little kids would like these movies, but older girls might like Arranged and there's no acres of naked flesh, sex scenes, violence, or noticeable swearing in either movie. There's also no car chases and special effects, for family members who require them, and Ushpizin has subtitles, which I've learned is an issue for some people. (I'm sympathetic to illiteracy; I'm not sympathetic to whines of "I don't want to read" coming from literate people.)
I saw this small independent movie back in November, but I still remember it and would like to see it again; that's better than some big budget movies I've seen. I liked it not only because it gives a glimpse inside a world I will never be a part of, but because it shows religious people sincerely trying to follow God, failing to live up to their ideals, yet continuing to try. Religion is not shown as a contemptible thing, fit only for mockery. This makes Ushpizin an unusual movie by contemporary standards. It's also a good story.
Arranged (also available from Netflix) is another low-budget, seemingly small movie. It concerns Rochel and Nasira, two young schoolteachers in a NYC elementary school, who do not fit in with the other teachers. Both dress modestly and have expectations of an arranged marriage. Did I mention they don't fit in? They become friends through the shared bonds of looking for love in a now non-standard way and of enduring their principal's attempts to save them from oppression.
Ushpizin is the better film, but I like this movie too. How often do we get to see a young woman stand up in a movie and say that "traditional" isn't necessarily bad? Aren't all modern films supposed to be about young women defying authority and tradition? This is a different movie--refreshingly so.
As to family viewing, I don't think little kids would like these movies, but older girls might like Arranged and there's no acres of naked flesh, sex scenes, violence, or noticeable swearing in either movie. There's also no car chases and special effects, for family members who require them, and Ushpizin has subtitles, which I've learned is an issue for some people. (I'm sympathetic to illiteracy; I'm not sympathetic to whines of "I don't want to read" coming from literate people.)
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A Cheap "Luxury"
Saturday before last I did something I hadn't done in a long time: I made bread--"proper" bread, with hand kneading and everything. Back in the years when I was a relatively young married I made yeast bread fairly often, from different recipes, but a couple of things happened that stopped it. First Uncle Pookie found a clearance bread machine for only $20 or $24, which left my "bread machines are too expensive" reason not to have one in the dust, and brought it to me for a gift. I quickly discovered that, while it was true that the bread bread machines make is not as good as the best hand-kneaded bread, it was easily the equal of my hand-kneaded bread and I didn't have to do any work for it. So I made a fair bit of bread machine bread, until the second thing happened, which was my realizing how sugar and flour products were negatively affecting me (unstable blood sugar, excessive appetite, mood swings), and I ate very little bread for a couple of years, let alone made it. Then when I started up again on the bread, I was long out of any kind of habit of making even quick breads (biscuits, cornbread), let alone yeast bread.
But having tried out a beer bread recipe the week before Christmas as a possible dish to carry to a family gathering, I kind of had bread on the mind and getting out one old recipe ended too poorly to get it wholly out of my mind, so faced with a dull, cold evening I pulled out the bread recipe I used more than any other back then: the "Cuban Bread" recipe that ran in the old Tightwad Gazette newsletter. (Now available in the big Tightwad Gazette book.)
If you've never tried it, you really should. It's easy and, as far as I can tell, failsafe. There's only one rising period before you put it in the oven, so it's pretty fast, and my poor kneading skills have never spoiled the quality of the bread yet. Moreover, the other week when I made this, I was working with seriously old yeast; I'd proofed some beforehand, so I knew it was still alive, just really sluggish, so I had to let the dough rise longer than usual, but rise it did. I cut my crosses and sprinkled some oatmeal on top, because I didn't have any of the sesame seeds I used to keep on hand for breadmaking, and put it in the oven. Result: two of the most beautiful boules I've ever seen. Tasty, too. I don't think anybody could mess this recipe up without trying.
We can think of home baked bread as a sort of a cheap luxury. To get storebought bread that's equivalent in taste to homemade, you have to spring for the artisan breads, which cost several times more than the ubiquitous sandwich breads. Even then, they aren't always as good as homemade, you can't have a slice hot from the oven, and they never fill your home with the smell of baking bread. Which is a bonus you can't buy in the store.
A word about the name, Cuban Bread. I always suspected back when I used to make this that it might not necessarily be truly Cuban, because, after all, no self-respecting French person would eat what we call French dressing, right? I wouldn't venture to say it definitely is not, but a quick Google search while I was making it suggested it isn't. It does, however, sound like Puerto Rican bread, in that it's put into a cold oven with a pan of boiling water on the rack underneath it.
That quickie Google search had a side benefit, in that it informed me of the existence of the Cuban sandwich. Two kinds of pig flesh in one sandwich? Add some bacon and UP would be in heaven. Makes me sorry I never visited Miami.
But having tried out a beer bread recipe the week before Christmas as a possible dish to carry to a family gathering, I kind of had bread on the mind and getting out one old recipe ended too poorly to get it wholly out of my mind, so faced with a dull, cold evening I pulled out the bread recipe I used more than any other back then: the "Cuban Bread" recipe that ran in the old Tightwad Gazette newsletter. (Now available in the big Tightwad Gazette book.)
If you've never tried it, you really should. It's easy and, as far as I can tell, failsafe. There's only one rising period before you put it in the oven, so it's pretty fast, and my poor kneading skills have never spoiled the quality of the bread yet. Moreover, the other week when I made this, I was working with seriously old yeast; I'd proofed some beforehand, so I knew it was still alive, just really sluggish, so I had to let the dough rise longer than usual, but rise it did. I cut my crosses and sprinkled some oatmeal on top, because I didn't have any of the sesame seeds I used to keep on hand for breadmaking, and put it in the oven. Result: two of the most beautiful boules I've ever seen. Tasty, too. I don't think anybody could mess this recipe up without trying.
We can think of home baked bread as a sort of a cheap luxury. To get storebought bread that's equivalent in taste to homemade, you have to spring for the artisan breads, which cost several times more than the ubiquitous sandwich breads. Even then, they aren't always as good as homemade, you can't have a slice hot from the oven, and they never fill your home with the smell of baking bread. Which is a bonus you can't buy in the store.
A word about the name, Cuban Bread. I always suspected back when I used to make this that it might not necessarily be truly Cuban, because, after all, no self-respecting French person would eat what we call French dressing, right? I wouldn't venture to say it definitely is not, but a quick Google search while I was making it suggested it isn't. It does, however, sound like Puerto Rican bread, in that it's put into a cold oven with a pan of boiling water on the rack underneath it.
That quickie Google search had a side benefit, in that it informed me of the existence of the Cuban sandwich. Two kinds of pig flesh in one sandwich? Add some bacon and UP would be in heaven. Makes me sorry I never visited Miami.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Away from Your Desk and Out of School
For some reason I was a little more impressed this morning with a line in Mark Steyn's weekend column than I should be. It was his advice to aspiring writers: "Don't just write there, do something."
It put me in mind of somewhere in Sylvia Plath's journals, I think, where she observed that she had spent all her time on literature, whereas her husband, although he knew English language poetry very well, had also studied anthropology, read lots of myths, and, most important of all, spent a lot of time outdoors, fishing, hunting, and observing the natural world. It gave him more to draw on when he wrote.
I've always had a great regard for writing and for writers (as a group, not necessarily for every individual), and I don't think the world is best served when writers spend all their time in literature classes, in school generally, or, heaven help us, in creative writing programs. I noticed a decade ago that whenever I picked up an interesting looking fiction book and read the inside flaps, if the author's bio said he was from a graduate of a creative writing program, I almost invariably put the book back on the shelf; the book had to be exceptionally intriguing for me to break that pattern. I had gained a new bias without intending to or noticing myself acquring it. But when I noticed I had it, it wasn't hard to know why I had it: I had come to expect from books by people whose bio consisted mainly of getting a creative writing degree that their writing would be technically smooth, yes, but that all too often I would be left wondering why they bothered to write it. Like Gertrude Stein's hometown, there was no there there. There might be a story, but when there was, there often didn't seem to be a point. I may be a plebeian and a philistine, but I know worthwhile writing doesn't leave you wondering why the author bothered.
Steyn wasn't necessarily talking about fiction writers, of course, or those with "literary" ambitions, but I think his advice to do something is good for any stripe of writer who wants to avoid becoming someone "for whom words are props and codes and metaphors but no longer expressive of anything real." As someone else put it, the writer who never leaves his desk ends up writing odes to his desk lamp. Go out and raise dogs, as one of Steyn's suggestions had it, or grow vegetables, spend your summer break working construction or waiting tables in a truck stop, or even just spend a lot of time talking to people who don't have much in common with the people in your creative writing program. (Key point on that last bit would be to listen more than you talk.) Those of us humble readers who are in love with stories or who love to read nonfiction with some there there and who may be your future readers will thank you for it.
It put me in mind of somewhere in Sylvia Plath's journals, I think, where she observed that she had spent all her time on literature, whereas her husband, although he knew English language poetry very well, had also studied anthropology, read lots of myths, and, most important of all, spent a lot of time outdoors, fishing, hunting, and observing the natural world. It gave him more to draw on when he wrote.
I've always had a great regard for writing and for writers (as a group, not necessarily for every individual), and I don't think the world is best served when writers spend all their time in literature classes, in school generally, or, heaven help us, in creative writing programs. I noticed a decade ago that whenever I picked up an interesting looking fiction book and read the inside flaps, if the author's bio said he was from a graduate of a creative writing program, I almost invariably put the book back on the shelf; the book had to be exceptionally intriguing for me to break that pattern. I had gained a new bias without intending to or noticing myself acquring it. But when I noticed I had it, it wasn't hard to know why I had it: I had come to expect from books by people whose bio consisted mainly of getting a creative writing degree that their writing would be technically smooth, yes, but that all too often I would be left wondering why they bothered to write it. Like Gertrude Stein's hometown, there was no there there. There might be a story, but when there was, there often didn't seem to be a point. I may be a plebeian and a philistine, but I know worthwhile writing doesn't leave you wondering why the author bothered.
Steyn wasn't necessarily talking about fiction writers, of course, or those with "literary" ambitions, but I think his advice to do something is good for any stripe of writer who wants to avoid becoming someone "for whom words are props and codes and metaphors but no longer expressive of anything real." As someone else put it, the writer who never leaves his desk ends up writing odes to his desk lamp. Go out and raise dogs, as one of Steyn's suggestions had it, or grow vegetables, spend your summer break working construction or waiting tables in a truck stop, or even just spend a lot of time talking to people who don't have much in common with the people in your creative writing program. (Key point on that last bit would be to listen more than you talk.) Those of us humble readers who are in love with stories or who love to read nonfiction with some there there and who may be your future readers will thank you for it.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Another Grooming Post: OR Why I've Not Bothered to Go No 'Poo
Over the past several years, I've come across a number of people online who have stopped using shampoo. What used to be the province of a tiny number of usually SCA people with very long hair seems to going more mainstream. More power to them. But they mostly seem to be using a tedious system of baking soda rinses alternated with vinegar rinses which makes me tired to think about, so I don't know why they didn't first try an easier way: just use a small amount of shampoo, applied only on the scalp. And unless your hair is very short, don't wash it every day.
Unless you've fallen in a mud puddle or have applied something like oil or a henna pack to your hair, you don't need to put shampoo on your hair. The point of "washing your hair" isn't to wash your hair, so much as to wash your scalp. Your scalp is what produces the oil. That oil, which both moisturizes the hair and can make it look dirty, has to travel down the hair; the hair isn't making new oil all down its length. This is why the longer your hair gets the more likely it is to get split ends and why people with long hair will notice their hair starts to look a little dirty or oily near the roots when most of their hair looks perfectly fine.
Applying shampoo only to the scalp is apparently a bizarre and "not true" idea to some people, even hair stylists; I once had one gush at me when she was cutting my bra-length hair off to shoulder-length, "You are going to save so much money on shampoo!" But this isn't some crazy idea I came up with on my own. In my early to mid teens I read an article in a women's magazine about two or three models who had kept their long hair, against the pressure to cut it shorter. One of these models had very lush hair. She said she washed it every three days and applied shampoo only to the scalp, then applied a conditioner to the ends only. I've used shampoo only on my scalp ever since, except for the exceptions mentioned earlier.
What's more, I use cheap shampoo, I use more of it on my scalp than the minimum needed, I wear my hair long, and beyond a handful of homemade hot oil treatments over the years (mostly cuz I was bored), I used no conditioners until recently. I don't even have one of those chlorine filtering shower heads that I used to see in Real Goods catalogue. But my hair is healthy and when I wear it loose in public I often have women stop me and say how pretty it is, although that may be largely the color (long red hair has novelty value).
Washing my hair this way about twice a week and never using conditioner let me have bra-length hair (i.e. hair that covered the bottom of my bra strap) for years without any split ends. In my mid-thirties, after a while with hair so short I didn't have to comb it, just run my fingers through it, I decided to see just how long my hair could get. Somewhere around waist-length I transitioned to washing my hair about once a week (more in summer than winter) and eventually it reached to the top of my hips. I'm forty now and it seems everything on me is falling apart or drying up, but I've discovered that if I apply conditioner to the ends occasionally, I can have waist-length or longer hair with only minimal split ends. (That's split ends I can see looking close up, not something you can see across the room, like the straw piles my sister used to get so vocal about that appear on some women's heads after a permanent.) Maybe if I spent more time on it, I would have no split ends even at hip length. But what I'm doing works well enough for me and requires only the smallest outlay of time and money.
I don't doubt the "no 'poo" folks get good results, but for me it would take more effort than what I do now. It wouldn't save me much money (an inexpensive bottle of shampoo lasts me a year or more, despite the fact I use a bit more than I strictly need), and my hair is healthy enough with this treatment to get compliments.
Everyone's hair is different, of course, but I think some of the women who are contemplating going the no 'poo route would be well-served if they just started using less shampoo less often and applying it only to the scalp, rather than to the whole length of the hair.
Unless you've fallen in a mud puddle or have applied something like oil or a henna pack to your hair, you don't need to put shampoo on your hair. The point of "washing your hair" isn't to wash your hair, so much as to wash your scalp. Your scalp is what produces the oil. That oil, which both moisturizes the hair and can make it look dirty, has to travel down the hair; the hair isn't making new oil all down its length. This is why the longer your hair gets the more likely it is to get split ends and why people with long hair will notice their hair starts to look a little dirty or oily near the roots when most of their hair looks perfectly fine.
Applying shampoo only to the scalp is apparently a bizarre and "not true" idea to some people, even hair stylists; I once had one gush at me when she was cutting my bra-length hair off to shoulder-length, "You are going to save so much money on shampoo!" But this isn't some crazy idea I came up with on my own. In my early to mid teens I read an article in a women's magazine about two or three models who had kept their long hair, against the pressure to cut it shorter. One of these models had very lush hair. She said she washed it every three days and applied shampoo only to the scalp, then applied a conditioner to the ends only. I've used shampoo only on my scalp ever since, except for the exceptions mentioned earlier.
What's more, I use cheap shampoo, I use more of it on my scalp than the minimum needed, I wear my hair long, and beyond a handful of homemade hot oil treatments over the years (mostly cuz I was bored), I used no conditioners until recently. I don't even have one of those chlorine filtering shower heads that I used to see in Real Goods catalogue. But my hair is healthy and when I wear it loose in public I often have women stop me and say how pretty it is, although that may be largely the color (long red hair has novelty value).
Washing my hair this way about twice a week and never using conditioner let me have bra-length hair (i.e. hair that covered the bottom of my bra strap) for years without any split ends. In my mid-thirties, after a while with hair so short I didn't have to comb it, just run my fingers through it, I decided to see just how long my hair could get. Somewhere around waist-length I transitioned to washing my hair about once a week (more in summer than winter) and eventually it reached to the top of my hips. I'm forty now and it seems everything on me is falling apart or drying up, but I've discovered that if I apply conditioner to the ends occasionally, I can have waist-length or longer hair with only minimal split ends. (That's split ends I can see looking close up, not something you can see across the room, like the straw piles my sister used to get so vocal about that appear on some women's heads after a permanent.) Maybe if I spent more time on it, I would have no split ends even at hip length. But what I'm doing works well enough for me and requires only the smallest outlay of time and money.
I don't doubt the "no 'poo" folks get good results, but for me it would take more effort than what I do now. It wouldn't save me much money (an inexpensive bottle of shampoo lasts me a year or more, despite the fact I use a bit more than I strictly need), and my hair is healthy enough with this treatment to get compliments.
Everyone's hair is different, of course, but I think some of the women who are contemplating going the no 'poo route would be well-served if they just started using less shampoo less often and applying it only to the scalp, rather than to the whole length of the hair.
Women's Deodorant
Does anyone know why there don't seem to be many--or any?-- deodorants for women? I live in a hot, humid climate and I've never been one of those rare people who look fresh and cool as a morning flower even when working outside, so in the summer I use the strongest antiperspirant I can find: Mitchum. Mitchum's old slogan saying it was so strong you could skip a day was no joke and a couple of years back they strengthened the formula even more. It would be overkill in winter, so when the weather cools down in fall, I switch over to something cheaper and less powerful. (Suave is the cheapest brand here, so it's usually that.)
But I'm the sort of person who won't take anything to bring down a fever (unless it's dangerously high) because I figure that fever is there for a reason and I should let it do its job. I hate getting all sweaty, I don't want to stain my clothes with perspiration, and I have enough social strikes against me without adding the great American taboo of stinking, so I'm okay with stopping my armpit perspiration in summer. But there's not much of it in winter. So a couple of months ago I was thinking maybe I should just use a deodorant, rather than an antiperspirant, in winter.
But women's deodorant is missing in action. Men's deodorant is everywhere. Male-marketed deodorants are more common, or so it seems, than male-targeted anti-perspirants and anti-perspirant/deodorant combos. This is despite the fact male deodorants must be harder to make than female deodorants. Males are the stinkier of the species--of this species and every other species I have any familiarity with. Male deodorants must cover up the powerful male armpit sweat smell without stopping the sweat--and they do, and very well at that! So I know it's possible to make deodorants that cover up the lighter female sweat smell without stopping the perspiration, but going by the shelves in local stores, no one does any more. (For the record, I didn't check any health food stores in this little local search.)
Most women aren't going to use male deodorants because they smell like male cologne and the smell is strong (it has to be). There are some unisex anti-perspirants (like Mitchum), but I could only find one deodorant that seemed to be unisex: Tom's of Maine sat at the intersection of the men's and women's underarm products and was not noticeably targeted to either. It also claimed to be unscented, which means it only has the scent of the essential oils used in it. Pleasant enough, no doubt, but it was also nearly five times the cost of the Suave anti-perspirant. I bought the Suave. I also experimented a little with a homemade concoction, but my solution so far is just to use less of the Suave.
But the question here is why no (or so few) women's deodorant? Why do the manufactureres think there's less of a market for it? Uncle Pookie and I discussed this and our best guess is that women just don't like to sweat. Uncle Pookie also had a theory about these sort of products coming on the market back when many men still labored outside in the sun all day, so they needed to sweat, but I'm skeptical of that explaining it, because at that time few people had air conditioning yet and most people didn't eat out mucy, so most women spent hours over a hot stove every day. I don't remember what other ideas we came up with, only that our best guess was that women just don't like to get sweaty, so with women choosing anti-perspirants, the market for women's deodorants dried up. (Hardy har har.)
But I'm the sort of person who won't take anything to bring down a fever (unless it's dangerously high) because I figure that fever is there for a reason and I should let it do its job. I hate getting all sweaty, I don't want to stain my clothes with perspiration, and I have enough social strikes against me without adding the great American taboo of stinking, so I'm okay with stopping my armpit perspiration in summer. But there's not much of it in winter. So a couple of months ago I was thinking maybe I should just use a deodorant, rather than an antiperspirant, in winter.
But women's deodorant is missing in action. Men's deodorant is everywhere. Male-marketed deodorants are more common, or so it seems, than male-targeted anti-perspirants and anti-perspirant/deodorant combos. This is despite the fact male deodorants must be harder to make than female deodorants. Males are the stinkier of the species--of this species and every other species I have any familiarity with. Male deodorants must cover up the powerful male armpit sweat smell without stopping the sweat--and they do, and very well at that! So I know it's possible to make deodorants that cover up the lighter female sweat smell without stopping the perspiration, but going by the shelves in local stores, no one does any more. (For the record, I didn't check any health food stores in this little local search.)
Most women aren't going to use male deodorants because they smell like male cologne and the smell is strong (it has to be). There are some unisex anti-perspirants (like Mitchum), but I could only find one deodorant that seemed to be unisex: Tom's of Maine sat at the intersection of the men's and women's underarm products and was not noticeably targeted to either. It also claimed to be unscented, which means it only has the scent of the essential oils used in it. Pleasant enough, no doubt, but it was also nearly five times the cost of the Suave anti-perspirant. I bought the Suave. I also experimented a little with a homemade concoction, but my solution so far is just to use less of the Suave.
But the question here is why no (or so few) women's deodorant? Why do the manufactureres think there's less of a market for it? Uncle Pookie and I discussed this and our best guess is that women just don't like to sweat. Uncle Pookie also had a theory about these sort of products coming on the market back when many men still labored outside in the sun all day, so they needed to sweat, but I'm skeptical of that explaining it, because at that time few people had air conditioning yet and most people didn't eat out mucy, so most women spent hours over a hot stove every day. I don't remember what other ideas we came up with, only that our best guess was that women just don't like to get sweaty, so with women choosing anti-perspirants, the market for women's deodorants dried up. (Hardy har har.)
Friday, January 01, 2010
Happy New Year
Here's wishing everyone reading this a happy and blessed 2010.
Here at Chez Pookie et Suzanne, our New Year's celebrations began and ended with the eating of the traditional Southern New Year's food: black-eyed peas and cabbage. For anyone not from here, it's an old custom to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for luck in the coming year. Grocery stores put out displays of black-eyed peas right after Christmas. Some restaurants put them on the menu for the day. When I was a child, even my baby sister, who could usually get away with her picky eating, would be required to choke down a spoonful. (Okay, some years she negotiated that down to only one or two peas.)
I was grown before I heard of eating cabbage on New Year's Day. Uncle Pookie's family ate both, saying the peas were so you'd have plenty of change (coins) in the coming year and the cabbage so you'd have plenty of paper money. I've since encountered others who eat both and say the peas are for general luck and the cabbage for money.
I don't actually believe in good luck tokens and such, but I do believe in customs. Harmless traditional practices like this ought to be kept up. They add flavor to life. A sense of texture to the year and continuity to a string of years. And when they're regional or local, they help prevent every part of America looking exactly like every other part.
Here at Chez Pookie et Suzanne, our New Year's celebrations began and ended with the eating of the traditional Southern New Year's food: black-eyed peas and cabbage. For anyone not from here, it's an old custom to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for luck in the coming year. Grocery stores put out displays of black-eyed peas right after Christmas. Some restaurants put them on the menu for the day. When I was a child, even my baby sister, who could usually get away with her picky eating, would be required to choke down a spoonful. (Okay, some years she negotiated that down to only one or two peas.)
I was grown before I heard of eating cabbage on New Year's Day. Uncle Pookie's family ate both, saying the peas were so you'd have plenty of change (coins) in the coming year and the cabbage so you'd have plenty of paper money. I've since encountered others who eat both and say the peas are for general luck and the cabbage for money.
I don't actually believe in good luck tokens and such, but I do believe in customs. Harmless traditional practices like this ought to be kept up. They add flavor to life. A sense of texture to the year and continuity to a string of years. And when they're regional or local, they help prevent every part of America looking exactly like every other part.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Practicing Advent
Today is the third Sunday of Advent. Perhaps now, only two weeks after I installed it, is the time to thank the Curt Jester for the very nice Advent wreath graphic and counter he provided free to anyone. It's nicer to open someone's blog and see "12 praying days till Christmas" than to look at a newspaper and see "12 shopping days till Christmas".
When I was a child, I didn't know anything about Advent. The only time I ever heard of it was to see, once or twice, Advent calendars in this little mail order catalogue we got a few times. There was a little "letter from our customers" type testimonial from someone thanking them for carrying them, saying she'd fondly remembered Advent calendars from her youth but had been unable to find them for years. So I knew that this "new", Christmas-related thing I'd never heard of before had been around for a while, but I still didn't know what it was. (In recent years, I've come across a few articles saying that some evangelical Christians are starting to incorporate the liturgical calendar into their religious life, so between that and the Internet, maybe little children today won't be as ignorant as I was.)
Now, as an adult and a convert to Catholicism, I know what Advent is and participate in it to some extent (translation: in my own lazy, half-arsed way.) I had some notion back in the summer about making a Jesse tree or two (one to give away), but I never got around to it. I really like the idea of Jesse trees for helping to teach children about salvation history, and there are some good resources online for making them. I like the Domestic Church's pages here and here, but you can easily find more elsewhere: try here, here, and here for starters. But like festive Christmas decorations, it just seems kind of sad and pointless to do this only for myself.
Advent is generally considered the start of the liturgical year, when we sort of mentally put ourselves back into the time when the Messiah was still expected and not yet come. So it seems to me (maybe not to anyone else) that it might be a good time to make spiritual new year's resolutions. But I'm pretty used to the Christmas Day to New Year's Day thinking-about-resolutions thing, so I never got around to that either.
A couple of other ideas fell through as well, so Advent celebration for me so far has pretty much come down to a little extra reading and using a little purple on my blog. :-/ I've many times heard of Catholics selecting some spiritual books for "Lenten reading", so why not Advent reading? The Advent reading I decided on was Isaiah and Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. The book of Isaiah is an obvious scriptural choice, and The Case for Christ, which I first heard of from Jen at Conversion Diary, is a pretty good choice too; it'd make a fine Christmas gift.
Maybe the rest of Advent will hold a little more prayer and meditation on the Messiah, and a sacrifice or two. Or maybe I'll just dig out a purple scarf to wear to church.
When I was a child, I didn't know anything about Advent. The only time I ever heard of it was to see, once or twice, Advent calendars in this little mail order catalogue we got a few times. There was a little "letter from our customers" type testimonial from someone thanking them for carrying them, saying she'd fondly remembered Advent calendars from her youth but had been unable to find them for years. So I knew that this "new", Christmas-related thing I'd never heard of before had been around for a while, but I still didn't know what it was. (In recent years, I've come across a few articles saying that some evangelical Christians are starting to incorporate the liturgical calendar into their religious life, so between that and the Internet, maybe little children today won't be as ignorant as I was.)
Now, as an adult and a convert to Catholicism, I know what Advent is and participate in it to some extent (translation: in my own lazy, half-arsed way.) I had some notion back in the summer about making a Jesse tree or two (one to give away), but I never got around to it. I really like the idea of Jesse trees for helping to teach children about salvation history, and there are some good resources online for making them. I like the Domestic Church's pages here and here, but you can easily find more elsewhere: try here, here, and here for starters. But like festive Christmas decorations, it just seems kind of sad and pointless to do this only for myself.
Advent is generally considered the start of the liturgical year, when we sort of mentally put ourselves back into the time when the Messiah was still expected and not yet come. So it seems to me (maybe not to anyone else) that it might be a good time to make spiritual new year's resolutions. But I'm pretty used to the Christmas Day to New Year's Day thinking-about-resolutions thing, so I never got around to that either.
A couple of other ideas fell through as well, so Advent celebration for me so far has pretty much come down to a little extra reading and using a little purple on my blog. :-/ I've many times heard of Catholics selecting some spiritual books for "Lenten reading", so why not Advent reading? The Advent reading I decided on was Isaiah and Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. The book of Isaiah is an obvious scriptural choice, and The Case for Christ, which I first heard of from Jen at Conversion Diary, is a pretty good choice too; it'd make a fine Christmas gift.
Maybe the rest of Advent will hold a little more prayer and meditation on the Messiah, and a sacrifice or two. Or maybe I'll just dig out a purple scarf to wear to church.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Random Thoughts
A bumpersticker I'd like to see: Honk if you're not paying attention.
***
When a hypocrite blasts you for the bad behavior he himself blithely commits, his hypocrisy doesn't make his criticism of your behavior any less deserved.
***
I wonder if people whose names begin with an F are statistically less likely to buy clothing emblazoned with their initial than people whose names begin with an A. Someone should do a study.
***
The correct term for "pro-choice Catholic" is Protestant.
***
Is it any wonder American public school students can't do math or read very well, when American teachers in recent decades have spent so much time fretting about whether the effect of crayon color names like Indian Red and Prussian Blue.
***
I believe in freedom for individuals, families, and private businesses, so I don't hold with intrusive, pettifogging rules. But if I did and if I could make these rules myself, I assure you "no Christmas decorations or sales displays in October" would be on the list.
***
I think if the government really cared about reducing energy use there'd be a public service campaign every autumn encouraging people to gain weight for winter. At least outside the Deep South.
***
Babies are born without habits. Since every habit we have is acquired, any habit can be changed or eliminated.
***
Re the Gap's "Dowhateveryouwannakah" ad, urging us "you 86 the rules, you do what just feels right": What feels right to me is not to shop at the Gap.
***
If I were marketing a dictionary, I'd put wrapping on the outside that says "Find meaning(s) within."
***
We live in a society that has replaced Advent with "X shopping until Christmas". Does anyone actually think we're better off for having done this?
***
***
When a hypocrite blasts you for the bad behavior he himself blithely commits, his hypocrisy doesn't make his criticism of your behavior any less deserved.
***
I wonder if people whose names begin with an F are statistically less likely to buy clothing emblazoned with their initial than people whose names begin with an A. Someone should do a study.
***
The correct term for "pro-choice Catholic" is Protestant.
***
Is it any wonder American public school students can't do math or read very well, when American teachers in recent decades have spent so much time fretting about whether the effect of crayon color names like Indian Red and Prussian Blue.
***
I believe in freedom for individuals, families, and private businesses, so I don't hold with intrusive, pettifogging rules. But if I did and if I could make these rules myself, I assure you "no Christmas decorations or sales displays in October" would be on the list.
***
I think if the government really cared about reducing energy use there'd be a public service campaign every autumn encouraging people to gain weight for winter. At least outside the Deep South.
***
Babies are born without habits. Since every habit we have is acquired, any habit can be changed or eliminated.
***
Re the Gap's "Dowhateveryouwannakah" ad, urging us "you 86 the rules, you do what just feels right": What feels right to me is not to shop at the Gap.
***
If I were marketing a dictionary, I'd put wrapping on the outside that says "Find meaning(s) within."
***
We live in a society that has replaced Advent with "X shopping until Christmas". Does anyone actually think we're better off for having done this?
***
Monday, September 21, 2009
A Representative of the Kingdom
I heard an anecdote from my mother a while back. A preacher she knows said he went out of his house in an especially good mood one morning, and while he was on the way wherever he was going, he got behind a car that had a bumpersticker that said "Honk If You Love Jesus!" Being in a good mood and, as a minister, loving Jesus, he honked. Whereupon everyone in the car--the woman driving and her small children--all turned around and flipped him off.
He said it flattened his mood so much he turned around and went home.
People, this isn't the way to represent the body of Christ. When you identify yourself in public as a Christian,you become a representative of Christianity and thus of Christ. Flipping people off is bad PR.
When you slap a Jesus bumpersticker on your car, wear a tee-shirt with Christian slogans or graphics, or hang a big cross around your neck, you are proclaiming yourself a Christian, just the same as if you loudly announced, "I am a Christian" to all and sundry. Some of the people who see or hear your proclamation may not be familiar with Christianity or with the particular subgroup of Christianity you are a part of (if your announcement was, say, an XYZ Church Annual Picnic tee-shirt). Other of the people who see your proclamation may have a prior inclination to think negatively of Christians. So here you come saying "Honk If You Love Jesus" or "Follow Me to Church" and you proceed to act like a jackass. Which gives people in the former category a negative impression of Christians (or Christians of XYZ branch) and gives people in the latter group confirmation of their tendency to think badly of all Christians. Was that really what you wanted to do when you bought the bumpersticker?
Here's why I think this is going to become even more important than it used to be.
When you go somewhere you and your kin or kind are not much known, you become a representative of your group, like it or not. People in minority groups know this. Natalie Goldberg once wrote of going into a rural, Midwestern classroom and telling the kids she was Jewish; none of them knew anyone Jewish, so she figured that now she represented Jewish people to them--she was eating an apple, therefore all Jews eat apples sort of thing. Christians in America and perhaps especially in the Bible Belt have had the luxury of being in the majority for a long time. Even now something like 89 percent or more Americans self-identify as being at least nominally Christian. But that's going to change and do so sooner and faster than we are going to find comfortable. I'm not referring to immigrants from historically non-Christian parts of the world changing the demographics of our country. Already a lot of citizens who tick Christian subgroup XYZ or ABC on forms that ask religion could be more accurate by checking "other" and writing in "secularist who sometimes uses XYZ facilities for weddings and funerals and may bring out a manger scene tree ornament at Christmas". Throw in a little mild persecution and a great many of those people will fall away. And some of the people who remain will be people committed to redefining Christianity as something historically unrecognizable.
This means that practicing Christians will more and more often run into people who have never met a practicing Christian and have formed their view of the faith based almost wholly on the mockery of contemporary comedians and the vilification of our enemies. What you, as a known practicing Christian, do and say before such a person will either reinforce the negative opinion they've taken from pop culture or will be a witness against the caricature. Given that we're supposed to evangelize, which is better?
My point here is not to point fingers, but to point out the responsibility we take on when we display symbols that identify us as Christians. I've never worn any of those smarmy Christian tee-shirts that some people wear because I don't like them, but if I ever found one I liked, I would be reluctant to wear it in public, because it would make me feel under a greater obligation to mind myself. I do frequently wear a modest-sized Marian medal and I would hate it if I ever spoke nastily to someone or hit my shin and let out a stream of profanity and then had the people who witnessed this notice my medal; their seeing my behavior and thinking I am a jerk is one thing, their seeing my behavior and thinking Christians are jerks is another thing. I know I would hate this scenario because I let something like it happen once. (So if there were a finger pointing, it would have to point at me as well.)
Some years back I noticed myself getting angry while driving more and more often and I didn't like it. So, although I've never liked things dangling from rearview mirrors, when I got a free plastic rosary in the mail, I decided to hang it from my rearview mirror as a reminder to remember Jesus and not get angry and mutter bad things about other drivers. And it worked pretty well for weeks. Then I lost my temper worse than I ever had while driving.
I had to go pick up some medicine or something at Wal-mart and, unfortunately this was on the day before a hurricane might or might not hit us, and it was afternoon. Leaving the store after having suffered through the crowd inside, I ended up in the most godawful snarl of parking lot traffic likely to be seen in a small town. After what seemed like ages of this and escape to a less congested area seemed nigh, I witnessed a bit of what I took to be insane driving and someone nearly hit me, and I flipped out and did something I'd never before done while driving: angrily thrust two upturned fingers toward my window, while shouting the air blue.
But there's Jesus. Before I had even calmed down, I was overcome with remorse: Suppose they saw the rosary dangling from my mirror and thought all Catholics act like this? I felt horrible about it. Now, maybe it would be a finer thing to say I thought only of the wrongness of the act itself or of how sin hurts Jesus, rather than how I might have created a negative impression of my group of Christians. But if I were pure of heart, I probably wouldn't have snapped like that in the first place, and the results were good: my little bout of road rage ended, I became a much calmer driver for years after, and I found myself glancing over at my little plastic depiction of Jesus quite often.
And that's the good part of displaying symbols of our faith on or about our person: they make us think of God more often. The "bad" part of course is that they require we take on a responsibility to act as representatives of our faith; it's harder to hide when we're wearing a sign. And maybe that's a good part too.
He said it flattened his mood so much he turned around and went home.
People, this isn't the way to represent the body of Christ. When you identify yourself in public as a Christian,you become a representative of Christianity and thus of Christ. Flipping people off is bad PR.
When you slap a Jesus bumpersticker on your car, wear a tee-shirt with Christian slogans or graphics, or hang a big cross around your neck, you are proclaiming yourself a Christian, just the same as if you loudly announced, "I am a Christian" to all and sundry. Some of the people who see or hear your proclamation may not be familiar with Christianity or with the particular subgroup of Christianity you are a part of (if your announcement was, say, an XYZ Church Annual Picnic tee-shirt). Other of the people who see your proclamation may have a prior inclination to think negatively of Christians. So here you come saying "Honk If You Love Jesus" or "Follow Me to Church" and you proceed to act like a jackass. Which gives people in the former category a negative impression of Christians (or Christians of XYZ branch) and gives people in the latter group confirmation of their tendency to think badly of all Christians. Was that really what you wanted to do when you bought the bumpersticker?
Here's why I think this is going to become even more important than it used to be.
When you go somewhere you and your kin or kind are not much known, you become a representative of your group, like it or not. People in minority groups know this. Natalie Goldberg once wrote of going into a rural, Midwestern classroom and telling the kids she was Jewish; none of them knew anyone Jewish, so she figured that now she represented Jewish people to them--she was eating an apple, therefore all Jews eat apples sort of thing. Christians in America and perhaps especially in the Bible Belt have had the luxury of being in the majority for a long time. Even now something like 89 percent or more Americans self-identify as being at least nominally Christian. But that's going to change and do so sooner and faster than we are going to find comfortable. I'm not referring to immigrants from historically non-Christian parts of the world changing the demographics of our country. Already a lot of citizens who tick Christian subgroup XYZ or ABC on forms that ask religion could be more accurate by checking "other" and writing in "secularist who sometimes uses XYZ facilities for weddings and funerals and may bring out a manger scene tree ornament at Christmas". Throw in a little mild persecution and a great many of those people will fall away. And some of the people who remain will be people committed to redefining Christianity as something historically unrecognizable.
This means that practicing Christians will more and more often run into people who have never met a practicing Christian and have formed their view of the faith based almost wholly on the mockery of contemporary comedians and the vilification of our enemies. What you, as a known practicing Christian, do and say before such a person will either reinforce the negative opinion they've taken from pop culture or will be a witness against the caricature. Given that we're supposed to evangelize, which is better?
My point here is not to point fingers, but to point out the responsibility we take on when we display symbols that identify us as Christians. I've never worn any of those smarmy Christian tee-shirts that some people wear because I don't like them, but if I ever found one I liked, I would be reluctant to wear it in public, because it would make me feel under a greater obligation to mind myself. I do frequently wear a modest-sized Marian medal and I would hate it if I ever spoke nastily to someone or hit my shin and let out a stream of profanity and then had the people who witnessed this notice my medal; their seeing my behavior and thinking I am a jerk is one thing, their seeing my behavior and thinking Christians are jerks is another thing. I know I would hate this scenario because I let something like it happen once. (So if there were a finger pointing, it would have to point at me as well.)
Some years back I noticed myself getting angry while driving more and more often and I didn't like it. So, although I've never liked things dangling from rearview mirrors, when I got a free plastic rosary in the mail, I decided to hang it from my rearview mirror as a reminder to remember Jesus and not get angry and mutter bad things about other drivers. And it worked pretty well for weeks. Then I lost my temper worse than I ever had while driving.
I had to go pick up some medicine or something at Wal-mart and, unfortunately this was on the day before a hurricane might or might not hit us, and it was afternoon. Leaving the store after having suffered through the crowd inside, I ended up in the most godawful snarl of parking lot traffic likely to be seen in a small town. After what seemed like ages of this and escape to a less congested area seemed nigh, I witnessed a bit of what I took to be insane driving and someone nearly hit me, and I flipped out and did something I'd never before done while driving: angrily thrust two upturned fingers toward my window, while shouting the air blue.
But there's Jesus. Before I had even calmed down, I was overcome with remorse: Suppose they saw the rosary dangling from my mirror and thought all Catholics act like this? I felt horrible about it. Now, maybe it would be a finer thing to say I thought only of the wrongness of the act itself or of how sin hurts Jesus, rather than how I might have created a negative impression of my group of Christians. But if I were pure of heart, I probably wouldn't have snapped like that in the first place, and the results were good: my little bout of road rage ended, I became a much calmer driver for years after, and I found myself glancing over at my little plastic depiction of Jesus quite often.
And that's the good part of displaying symbols of our faith on or about our person: they make us think of God more often. The "bad" part of course is that they require we take on a responsibility to act as representatives of our faith; it's harder to hide when we're wearing a sign. And maybe that's a good part too.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
A Little Round-Up
In my last post I mentioned that I occasionally peek at John C. Wright's blog, which I found a few months back. I am not a regular reader and I haven't read back into his archives, but every time I visit his blog I find something interesting. Mr. Wright is a convert to Catholicism from atheism, as well as a writer of sf, and he writes about religious and moral issues, philosophy, sf/fantasy, with frequent mentions of his wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed. (Their "wedding photos" moved me deeply. From this and other posts, I now know that where I went wrong as a bride was in allowing misbegotten notions of male equality to prevent me from building a Pit O' Doom in front of my throne--in fact, I confess with head hung down that I even neglected to build an awe-inspiring throne. Result? One uppity husband. Listen and learn, ye maidens that have ears to hear.) His posts have made me think, made me laugh, or at least provided mild entertainment. Would that every blogger could provide half as much bang per visit.
Maybe if I were bigger on philosophy, I might visit more often, but I pretty much gave up on voluntary reading of philosophy in my mid-teens, when I decided it was all "mental masturbation", then decided that term was fun to say, and didn't miss a chance to say it for five or six years.
Another blog I like to look at sometimes these days is also written by an atheist convert to Catholicism: Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary. Mrs. Fulwiler blogs about religion, especially trying to put religious principles into practice in our everyday lives, and about young mother type stuff. Also scorpions. I mostly read the religion stuff.
I actually first saw Conversion Diary last winter when I saw an article by Fulwiler on how she became pro-life and clicked on the link to her blog at the end for a very brief visit. I didn't visit again until this summer. I can't remember where I saw that article, but I think it was pretty much the same as this blog post. If you've ever wondered how an intelligent, free-thinking, normal human female could possibly go so far wrong as to align herself with the pro-life crowd, read this post.
That first Cul de Sac collection I mentioned recently, Cul de Sac: This Exit, I got and read this past week. Good stuff, although not as good as Calvin & Hobbes. (That's called praising with faint damnation, BTW.) Uncle Pookie liked it less well. He expressed annoyance that Alice's parents don't explain things often enough, leaving her confused about many things. I argued that confusion is a pretty normal state for a four year old, even ones who don't have parents like mine who hold that children shouldn't ask questions because "children should be seen and not heard"; because there's just so very much seemingly basic stuff left to learn when you are four. Uncle Pookie also called Miss Bliss an idiot and asserted that "Alice deserves better". I didn't exactly argue against that, but I'll leave my comments on that for another time; I don't need hate mail from people in early education right now.
I finally got around to watching The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Excellent movie. It's a cliche to say this, but there's something for everyone--John Wayne, romance, action, political drama, a man trying to live up to his ideals, some good minor characters, and thought-provoking stuff about what it takes to settle a frontier and how we get and keep law and order. As to the question of which character is more attractive as a romantic partner, John Wayne's or Jimmy Stewart's, I have to say it is very, very close, but Tom Doniphon (John Wayne's character) nudges out Ransome Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart's) for me. It's a slight thing. They are both attractive characters. Tom Doniphon is tough and well-suited to frontier life. He's tall and manly. Plus he's played by John Wayne. Ransome Stoddard is a man of integrity, committed to his ideals, willing to stand up for law and order when it is awfully hard to do so, honest, and learned. Whereas Tom Doniphon is unafraid of Liberty Valance because he knows himself to be as tough or tougher, Ransome Stoddard (like most of us would be) is terrified of Liberty Valance when he goes out into that street to face him and yet he never backs down. That is very attractive in a man. (Or anyone else.) What puts Tom Doniphon slightly ahead for me is the way he puts his love interest's happiness ahead of his own when he lets Ransome take credit for killing Liberty Valance. It may not be the most noble thing ever done, but I think it is noble.
Question for anyone who's seen this movie: Do you think Liberty Valance was really dead already when the doctor declared him dead? Valance was scum and the doctor clearly knew that as well as anyone in town. When they turned Valance over for the doctor to look at, he barely looked at him. I think there may have been a little life fast draining away within him, and the doctor just didn't want to spend time on futile treatment of a man most people would agree needed killing.
Maybe if I were bigger on philosophy, I might visit more often, but I pretty much gave up on voluntary reading of philosophy in my mid-teens, when I decided it was all "mental masturbation", then decided that term was fun to say, and didn't miss a chance to say it for five or six years.
Another blog I like to look at sometimes these days is also written by an atheist convert to Catholicism: Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary. Mrs. Fulwiler blogs about religion, especially trying to put religious principles into practice in our everyday lives, and about young mother type stuff. Also scorpions. I mostly read the religion stuff.
I actually first saw Conversion Diary last winter when I saw an article by Fulwiler on how she became pro-life and clicked on the link to her blog at the end for a very brief visit. I didn't visit again until this summer. I can't remember where I saw that article, but I think it was pretty much the same as this blog post. If you've ever wondered how an intelligent, free-thinking, normal human female could possibly go so far wrong as to align herself with the pro-life crowd, read this post.
That first Cul de Sac collection I mentioned recently, Cul de Sac: This Exit, I got and read this past week. Good stuff, although not as good as Calvin & Hobbes. (That's called praising with faint damnation, BTW.) Uncle Pookie liked it less well. He expressed annoyance that Alice's parents don't explain things often enough, leaving her confused about many things. I argued that confusion is a pretty normal state for a four year old, even ones who don't have parents like mine who hold that children shouldn't ask questions because "children should be seen and not heard"; because there's just so very much seemingly basic stuff left to learn when you are four. Uncle Pookie also called Miss Bliss an idiot and asserted that "Alice deserves better". I didn't exactly argue against that, but I'll leave my comments on that for another time; I don't need hate mail from people in early education right now.
I finally got around to watching The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Excellent movie. It's a cliche to say this, but there's something for everyone--John Wayne, romance, action, political drama, a man trying to live up to his ideals, some good minor characters, and thought-provoking stuff about what it takes to settle a frontier and how we get and keep law and order. As to the question of which character is more attractive as a romantic partner, John Wayne's or Jimmy Stewart's, I have to say it is very, very close, but Tom Doniphon (John Wayne's character) nudges out Ransome Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart's) for me. It's a slight thing. They are both attractive characters. Tom Doniphon is tough and well-suited to frontier life. He's tall and manly. Plus he's played by John Wayne. Ransome Stoddard is a man of integrity, committed to his ideals, willing to stand up for law and order when it is awfully hard to do so, honest, and learned. Whereas Tom Doniphon is unafraid of Liberty Valance because he knows himself to be as tough or tougher, Ransome Stoddard (like most of us would be) is terrified of Liberty Valance when he goes out into that street to face him and yet he never backs down. That is very attractive in a man. (Or anyone else.) What puts Tom Doniphon slightly ahead for me is the way he puts his love interest's happiness ahead of his own when he lets Ransome take credit for killing Liberty Valance. It may not be the most noble thing ever done, but I think it is noble.
Question for anyone who's seen this movie: Do you think Liberty Valance was really dead already when the doctor declared him dead? Valance was scum and the doctor clearly knew that as well as anyone in town. When they turned Valance over for the doctor to look at, he barely looked at him. I think there may have been a little life fast draining away within him, and the doctor just didn't want to spend time on futile treatment of a man most people would agree needed killing.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Remembering 9/11 and "Psychological Comfort"
Today is the day we all remember (I hope) the Islamofascist terrorist attacks on the United States of America on 9/11/01. I will never willingly forget, although remembering is very unpleasant.
I remember what I was doing that morning when I found out, and all the rest of the day to boot. I remember what I did the night before: I went to my first RCIA meeting; when we walked into the next Monday's meeting, it felt as if the whole world had changed.
This year I once again prayed for the souls of the victims of those murderous attacks. I do not recall if I ever prayed for the souls of their murderers--I guess I figured they chose hell when they deliberately targeted innocent civilians for murder and were willing to die with that sin on their heads--but I did and have prayed for the souls of living terrorists and would-be terrorists. I do this because the religion I was moving toward at the time of the 9/11 attacks and am now part of requires it.
Today John C. Wright (whose blog I peek at occasionally, after having found it a few months ago), commenting on someone who sneeringly dismissed Christian faith as "psychologically comforting", says that
"...I would hesitate to call the conversion experience psychologically
comforting. Indeed, very much the opposite is the case: unlike my atheist self
of yore, I am now beholden to a higher authority, who pins me to a standard of
thought and deed very much against my nature and inclination."
Just so. I find nothing comforting or comfortable about praying for my enemies--whether terrorists who murder my countrymen or an arrogant coworker or someone who's threatened my family. I find nothing comfortable in reading a newspaper article about some disgusting child molester and being forced to consider that that person (someone even the very murders, thieves, and rapists in prison revile!) is a fellow child of God, whom Jesus died to save no less than he died to save me, and that I should pray for the person's repentance and reform. It is against my nature and my inclination. I don't like it and I don't want to do it.
Mr. Wright talks about trying to "obey the call to be charitable, loving, longsuffering, meek". I don't want to do any of that, except to be loving to my husband, and I probably fail at that as much as I do all the other stuff that I don't even want to try in the first place. But it's required, so I make my sporadic, grudging attempts at Christian virtue. And I don't find it comfortable to have to go into a confessional and name my failures aloud to another human being (much easier somehow to say in the privacy of my mind "God, I'm sorry I messed up" and leave it at that!), but it's required of me, so I do it, albeit less frequently than I should.
And I don't do these things just because I voluntarily joined this religion and my personal integrity demands that I follow its rules. I do it because I will have to answer to a higher authority than myself.
The part of the Narnia books that I keep coming back to is one that I think the books themselves repeated: Aslan is not a tame lion. I think that the real One whom Aslan is a fictionalized version of is also not a tame One. I think that He is not only "gentle Jesus, meek and mild", but the One who chased the moneylenders out of the temple with a whip, who came to bring not peace but a sword, who came to set a son against his father and a daughter against her mother. Demons feared him, and He defeated Satan with the shedding of his holy blood. One day I will have to stand before him. If you have less cause to tremble in that circumstance, then I am glad for you now, but I doubt I'll have room to give it a thought then. I have reason to tremble. Even leaving aside the thought of His fearsome justice, I don't know how I could ever raise my eyes to the presence of so much goodness.
Fortunately, my religion also teaches that He is merciful to those who seek his mercy. I hope that my nation turns from immorality and seeks his mercy. I hope that all of the victims of terrorist attacks around the world have found his mercy. I also hope--though it comes far less naturally for me--that would-be terrorists will seek his mercy before they die, expecting a reward for their murders. There is a prayer for enemies in a little Catholic prayerbook I have that desires of God that we may be saved souls together in heaven with our enemies; considering some of the jerks I've known in my own unadventurous life, let alone terrorists, that is a line hard not to choke over, but such is my faith.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Cul de Sac
In the movie The Iron Giant, there's a scene where the young boy, staying up late to eat junk food and watch scary scifi movies on TV, hears a large crash and thinks aliens have landed. He excitedly equips himself with supplies--a toy gun and a flashlight featured largely in this--and bounded out of the house to investigate. At this point, Uncle Pookie leaned over in the dark of the movie theater to whisper to me, "That's OUR child!"
Earlier this summer, I discovered the fairly new comic strip Cul de Sac and made it part of my morning read. Soon after I found it there was a strip in which four year-old Alice, who enjoys dancing on the manhole cover near her house, begs a scarf of her mother so she can run around waving it. Final panel has her, scarf tied around her face like someone in a Western, holding up her little friend Dill, who insists there's "no such thing as a bandit ballerina." Alice: "Then I'm the first! Stop and admire my dancing or I'll blow out your tires!" At which I exclaimed, "That's OUR daughter!"
Since then I've seen the YouTube video called "The Talking Stick", which gave me a similar reaction and seen a few other strips that reinforced the idea that Alice Otterloop is a fairly good approximation of what Uncle Pookie's and my DNA mixed together into a female child might look like, especially if said child took a bit more after Daddy than Mommy. It's not perfect, of course--neither of us were tantrum-throwing types, for instance, which is lucky as neither of us had mothers who would have put up with it, and I for one was a disgustingly obedient child and well-behaved, unless you count occasional grouchiness as misbehavior. (Yes, thank goodness you grew out of that, I hear someone murmuring.) But it's fairly close, and the strip overall is a good one.
Bill Watterson (creater of Calvin & Hobbes, for which blessings be upon him) wrote years ago that, while there'd been a lot of strips about little boys and childhood as seen by little boys, it still remained for us to have a strip on childhood as lived by a little girl. Reading Cul de Sac made me think this might be the one Watterson was talking about, or pretty close, so I was all the more pleasantly surprised to learn Watterson had written the introduction to the first Cul de Sac collection. I haven't bought it yet, but I think it's going to be in my next Amazon purchase.
It's a very good strip. Thompson has an interesting drawing style, a good sense of humor, and an eye for great little details, like how odd it is for small children when they notice their parents called by other names for the first time or how impressed little kids can be by things teenagers and adults ignore, like a shopping cart in a drainage ditch or the awesome responsibilities held by a teenager with a cool job like cart pusher. Thompson also has some non-cookie cutter characters too--for instance, how many eight-year old neurotics (Alice's older brother Petey) are there in comics? Petey encounters some weird kids his own age. And adorable little Dill, who's a bit eccentric himself, has a pack of never-seen older brothers whose exploits lend excitement to the strip.
You really want to give this strip a try.
As long as we're near the subject, my favorite little girl character in comic strips before Alice Otterloop and aside from the supporting character of Susie Derkins in Calvin & Hobbes, was Carmen in Prickly City. Carmen is a cute-as-a-button, little libertarian Republican who hangs out with a coyote called Winslow, but the strip's not in the running to be one of the ones Watterson was talking about, as it is a political strip, rather than being about childhood. It fell out of my small morning comic read about the time of the Democratic National Convention last year, victim of the election fatigue I was feeling pretty keenly by then, but it's a fun little strip. You can read it here.
Earlier this summer, I discovered the fairly new comic strip Cul de Sac and made it part of my morning read. Soon after I found it there was a strip in which four year-old Alice, who enjoys dancing on the manhole cover near her house, begs a scarf of her mother so she can run around waving it. Final panel has her, scarf tied around her face like someone in a Western, holding up her little friend Dill, who insists there's "no such thing as a bandit ballerina." Alice: "Then I'm the first! Stop and admire my dancing or I'll blow out your tires!" At which I exclaimed, "That's OUR daughter!"
Since then I've seen the YouTube video called "The Talking Stick", which gave me a similar reaction and seen a few other strips that reinforced the idea that Alice Otterloop is a fairly good approximation of what Uncle Pookie's and my DNA mixed together into a female child might look like, especially if said child took a bit more after Daddy than Mommy. It's not perfect, of course--neither of us were tantrum-throwing types, for instance, which is lucky as neither of us had mothers who would have put up with it, and I for one was a disgustingly obedient child and well-behaved, unless you count occasional grouchiness as misbehavior. (Yes, thank goodness you grew out of that, I hear someone murmuring.) But it's fairly close, and the strip overall is a good one.
Bill Watterson (creater of Calvin & Hobbes, for which blessings be upon him) wrote years ago that, while there'd been a lot of strips about little boys and childhood as seen by little boys, it still remained for us to have a strip on childhood as lived by a little girl. Reading Cul de Sac made me think this might be the one Watterson was talking about, or pretty close, so I was all the more pleasantly surprised to learn Watterson had written the introduction to the first Cul de Sac collection. I haven't bought it yet, but I think it's going to be in my next Amazon purchase.
It's a very good strip. Thompson has an interesting drawing style, a good sense of humor, and an eye for great little details, like how odd it is for small children when they notice their parents called by other names for the first time or how impressed little kids can be by things teenagers and adults ignore, like a shopping cart in a drainage ditch or the awesome responsibilities held by a teenager with a cool job like cart pusher. Thompson also has some non-cookie cutter characters too--for instance, how many eight-year old neurotics (Alice's older brother Petey) are there in comics? Petey encounters some weird kids his own age. And adorable little Dill, who's a bit eccentric himself, has a pack of never-seen older brothers whose exploits lend excitement to the strip.
You really want to give this strip a try.
As long as we're near the subject, my favorite little girl character in comic strips before Alice Otterloop and aside from the supporting character of Susie Derkins in Calvin & Hobbes, was Carmen in Prickly City. Carmen is a cute-as-a-button, little libertarian Republican who hangs out with a coyote called Winslow, but the strip's not in the running to be one of the ones Watterson was talking about, as it is a political strip, rather than being about childhood. It fell out of my small morning comic read about the time of the Democratic National Convention last year, victim of the election fatigue I was feeling pretty keenly by then, but it's a fun little strip. You can read it here.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Smart Kids, Depictions of
I have a near lifelong grievance with television depictions of intellectually gifted children. Leaving aside the frequent assumption that such children are always desperate to be "normal", what really galls me is the lazy, unthinking depiction of such children and teenagers as loving school. No exceptions--they all love it, just LOVE it! I guess that's why these hyper-intelligent TV children all do loads and loads of studying so that they can get their good grades! (Yeah, right; as a bumpersticker I once saw says, "My dog was student of the year at the local government school.")
In real life intellectually gifted children often despise school, because they are bored there. Hideously, hideously bored. A topic is introduced, said child grasps it, and then has to sit through days of having it expounded upon. Child's reading level is twelfth grade, child still has to suffer through the same fourth grade reading materials as everyone else. Child is ready for deeper explanations of causes behind historical events, child gets the same simplistic summing-up and "memorize this date" as the other children. Elementary school vocabulary tests give him words he picked up on his own a year or two before, and high school literature class has him read books he read on his own several years before. Result? Child spends the better part of twelve years bored out of his skull.
But for some reason smart children on TV always love going to school and have to do lots of studying, else how would they get those As.
I always used to think I wanted to see a depiction of just one highly intelligent child who didn't like school--just one. Still hasn't happened as far as television goes (the closest would be Malcolm in the Middle, but I never got the sense the eponymous character hated school, only hated being put into the gifted program--filled, needless to say, with kids who love school, just LOVE it), but last year it finally happened in another category of popular media--comic strips.
The new-to-me strip Frazz (launch date 2001) is named for a janitor-songwriter character who looks suspiciously like a grown-up Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) and features a highly intelligent child character who looks suspiciously like an eight year-old, black Calvin. Caulfield is refreshing because, as any thinking person who isn't a sitcom writer would expect of such a child, he is bored in school. He whiles away the time with drawing the Mona Lisa in his standardized test score capsules and pulling stunts on people, such as giving his race as "Callipygian", something I swear I'm going to start doing! Luckily for him, he has Frazz to talk to and play with.
Glad as I was finally to see a character like Caulfield, I find I just don't like the strip much. I put it on my daily read list (morning means news headlines and two to three comic strips) but soon took it off. There's too much about Frazz's exercise hobbies (he's a cyclist, like Calvin's dad) and it sometimes seems as if there's a moral superiority vibe coming off the strip, directed downward to people who don't exercise. I don't think I'm imagining it, but even if I am, in my non-exercising (yet still callipygian!) inferiority, deluded, the fact still remains that I'd rather be reading about Caulfield than Frazz's exercise routine. Still, I give the author, Jeff Mallett, credit for doing something new with his strip.
More later about another new (once again, only new to me) comic strip I like.
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