6.27.2008
>>
I think the reason I've become so nervous about teaching this fall is only partly to do with how hard it's going to be, and otherwise because I know deep down that it had better be a ruddy phenomenal experience if it's going to compensate for the deep-seated and intense hatred I have for graduate study and the utter hopelessness of my career options. The problem is, I think it's probably not going to be. I can't imagine that any group of forty college students--even freshmen, whom in general I like--can just bring that about. And how could I expect them to? They're not here to justify my questionable career choices.
6.26.2008
On Chesterton (Subtitle: Public Domain Laws Are Awesome!)
My theory on G.K. Chesterton, so far, is this: the average person reading a little of him out of one of his essay collections probably won't be all that impressed by him, but if one reads a little more of him, a sampling from several of his many publications, one probably will.
Chesterton was a British writer from the early 1900s, and it's for a reason that he's called the "Prince of Paradox": he is pretty hard to describe in any generalized way. After reading about forty-four-and-a-half of his essays (and there are many more to go, believe me, in the book I have out from the library...and I haven't even gotten to his theological or his fictional--including mystery--writing, or his poetry), I can say only this: sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't; sometimes I have no idea whether he's right or wrong, and at such moments, sometimes I hope he's right and sometimes I hope he isn't. Sometimes he sounds very much like a product of his time; sometimes he sounds alien to it. Sometimes he sounds flooringly sensible; sometimes he sounds kind of like a whack-job. Sometimes, to my amusement, he makes me think of Tom or Sean or of Alfred's odder art majors. His politics (he wasn't particularly fond of politics, either) are delightfully nuanced; liberals and conservatives alike quote him. He eventually converted to Catholicism (from a position, I understand, of general orthodoxy); his The Everlasting Man was an influence in C.S. Lewis's conversion from atheism to Christianity.
And, to my great pleasure, many of his writings have hit the public domain, so I am free to post them here. Here is, in its entirety, one of my favorites so far of the essays of his that I've read--with love to Jo, of whom it makes me think:
Cheese
(As copy-pasted--not counting slight textual cleanup and my breaking Chesterton's original behemoth paragraphs into multiple smaller ones--from this site)
-Published in Alarms and Discursions (1910)-
My forthcoming work in five volumes, "The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature," is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to sprinkle these pages.
I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet that I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: "If all the trees were bread and cheese" - which is, indeed, a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Except Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. Yet it has every quality which we require in an exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to "breeze" and "seas" (an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say "Cheese it!" or even "Quite the cheese." The substance itself is imaginative. It is ancient - sometimes in the individual case, always in the type and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with soda-water. You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it) that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall.
But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties. In each inn they had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it. In each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different. There was a noble Wensleydale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on.
Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization that holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both the good and the bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella - artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.
So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese. Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us say, we compare cheese to soap (that vastly inferior substance), we shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith's Soap or Brown's Soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the Red Indians have soap it is Smith's Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown's Soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not produced all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead identity, never that soft play of variation which exists in things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine, or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at every outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire-builders go mad. But you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.
When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get a great many things besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits - to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits - to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to understand that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. I have therefore resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against Modern Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong.
Maybe I'll post others in the future, as the mood strikes me. 'Til then, I'm off to read some more, and to have a glass of milk, as unfortunately I've just finished off a bunch of chocolate chips, which I'd originally planned to eventually use in something--oh well, I guess.
Chesterton was a British writer from the early 1900s, and it's for a reason that he's called the "Prince of Paradox": he is pretty hard to describe in any generalized way. After reading about forty-four-and-a-half of his essays (and there are many more to go, believe me, in the book I have out from the library...and I haven't even gotten to his theological or his fictional--including mystery--writing, or his poetry), I can say only this: sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't; sometimes I have no idea whether he's right or wrong, and at such moments, sometimes I hope he's right and sometimes I hope he isn't. Sometimes he sounds very much like a product of his time; sometimes he sounds alien to it. Sometimes he sounds flooringly sensible; sometimes he sounds kind of like a whack-job. Sometimes, to my amusement, he makes me think of Tom or Sean or of Alfred's odder art majors. His politics (he wasn't particularly fond of politics, either) are delightfully nuanced; liberals and conservatives alike quote him. He eventually converted to Catholicism (from a position, I understand, of general orthodoxy); his The Everlasting Man was an influence in C.S. Lewis's conversion from atheism to Christianity.
And, to my great pleasure, many of his writings have hit the public domain, so I am free to post them here. Here is, in its entirety, one of my favorites so far of the essays of his that I've read--with love to Jo, of whom it makes me think:
Cheese
(As copy-pasted--not counting slight textual cleanup and my breaking Chesterton's original behemoth paragraphs into multiple smaller ones--from this site)
-Published in Alarms and Discursions (1910)-
My forthcoming work in five volumes, "The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature," is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to sprinkle these pages.
I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet that I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: "If all the trees were bread and cheese" - which is, indeed, a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Except Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. Yet it has every quality which we require in an exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to "breeze" and "seas" (an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say "Cheese it!" or even "Quite the cheese." The substance itself is imaginative. It is ancient - sometimes in the individual case, always in the type and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with soda-water. You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it) that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall.
But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties. In each inn they had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it. In each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different. There was a noble Wensleydale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on.
Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization that holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both the good and the bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella - artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.
So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese. Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us say, we compare cheese to soap (that vastly inferior substance), we shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith's Soap or Brown's Soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the Red Indians have soap it is Smith's Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown's Soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not produced all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead identity, never that soft play of variation which exists in things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine, or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at every outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire-builders go mad. But you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.
When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get a great many things besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits - to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits - to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to understand that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. I have therefore resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against Modern Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong.
Maybe I'll post others in the future, as the mood strikes me. 'Til then, I'm off to read some more, and to have a glass of milk, as unfortunately I've just finished off a bunch of chocolate chips, which I'd originally planned to eventually use in something--oh well, I guess.
Get your twelve baskets ready, right?
I wonder whether Matt and Anne, still in Jerusalem, could possibly have taken a side-trip today to Bethsaida: our church runs a weekly soup kitchen, and one feature thereof is a table upon which we put leftover bread and things from the Giant (a supermarket chain here), which donates them to us; people can take them home to eat later.
Well, we got a call today from Crossroads of Life Church, just about two blocks from us, offering the four big ol' garbage-type bags that constituted the local Panera's bread donation to them, which they couldn't use. Loaves, bagels, baguettes, who knows what else. Added to the Giant's usual donation, there is now an almost-startling amount of bread in our fellowship hall. So much that I totally wish, just because it'd be spectacular, that Long John Silver's would call to offer us their extra fish.
Well, we got a call today from Crossroads of Life Church, just about two blocks from us, offering the four big ol' garbage-type bags that constituted the local Panera's bread donation to them, which they couldn't use. Loaves, bagels, baguettes, who knows what else. Added to the Giant's usual donation, there is now an almost-startling amount of bread in our fellowship hall. So much that I totally wish, just because it'd be spectacular, that Long John Silver's would call to offer us their extra fish.
6.24.2008
Little Bits of Quotidity
1. Now that I have a replacement cell phone, I keep checking nervously to make sure I haven't lost that one, too.
2. To my surprise, I've used up all my chicken stock already. Yesterday the last of it went into making boiled-potato-and-leftover-Chinese-restaurant-cabbage soup. It was pretty delicious, for something so simple and fairly impromptu. It would've been even better if I'd washed the sauce off the cabbage instead of letting so much of it get into the soup, thus mostly-overpowering the stock flavor and oversalting the whole thing as well. ...While I'm usually more or less pleased by what I cook, I aspire to make a few things that fully satisfy me taste-wise, things I wouldn't change at all. Occasionally I do that when I write (see, probably, the entry on Basileia '06), but never yet when I cook.
3. I had said cabbage around because Carrie and I grabbed some lunch last Friday after I came over to learn the part-time stuff she's paying me for. It turns out that there're two menus in some Chinese restaurants, the one for ignorant-of-real-Chinese-food customers like we were assumed to be, and the one we suddenly got when Carrie ordered something she remembered eating there with Sunroot, which wasn't on the Americanized menu.
4. On a further culinary note, I cooked and ate my first fresh artichoke the other day. It was pretty good, though I'm still not quite sure how much of the leaves I was supposed to scrape off against my teeth. Also, the choke wasn't nearly as fuzzy and pricklyish, and therefore wasn't nearly as easy to identify and remove, as the hype made it out to be. On the other hand, it was much easier to cook than popular lore makes it out to be (I mostly went by Alton Brown's method, which for once was simpler than Fannie Farmer), so that probably balances things.
5. Seriously, how can anybody stomach politics? People who love it have got to be the same people who love debate, another thing I can't understand. "Because it gets us closer to truth." Oh, so you mean that if I watch a presidential debate, they might have their views modified or slightly-altered on national television, as I watch, thanks to solid debate? Without wondering who will or won't vote for them after that? Or is mind-changing debate in such a case not possible to begin with because they don't think they can be nuanced in front of an entire nation?
6. I'll have new glasses pretty soon. Maybe they'll be more comfortable than the ones I currently have and thus I'll wear them more and give my eyes more oxygen. Turns out I've been unintentionally-bad about that.
2. To my surprise, I've used up all my chicken stock already. Yesterday the last of it went into making boiled-potato-and-leftover-Chinese-restaurant-cabbage soup. It was pretty delicious, for something so simple and fairly impromptu. It would've been even better if I'd washed the sauce off the cabbage instead of letting so much of it get into the soup, thus mostly-overpowering the stock flavor and oversalting the whole thing as well. ...While I'm usually more or less pleased by what I cook, I aspire to make a few things that fully satisfy me taste-wise, things I wouldn't change at all. Occasionally I do that when I write (see, probably, the entry on Basileia '06), but never yet when I cook.
3. I had said cabbage around because Carrie and I grabbed some lunch last Friday after I came over to learn the part-time stuff she's paying me for. It turns out that there're two menus in some Chinese restaurants, the one for ignorant-of-real-Chinese-food customers like we were assumed to be, and the one we suddenly got when Carrie ordered something she remembered eating there with Sunroot, which wasn't on the Americanized menu.
4. On a further culinary note, I cooked and ate my first fresh artichoke the other day. It was pretty good, though I'm still not quite sure how much of the leaves I was supposed to scrape off against my teeth. Also, the choke wasn't nearly as fuzzy and pricklyish, and therefore wasn't nearly as easy to identify and remove, as the hype made it out to be. On the other hand, it was much easier to cook than popular lore makes it out to be (I mostly went by Alton Brown's method, which for once was simpler than Fannie Farmer), so that probably balances things.
5. Seriously, how can anybody stomach politics? People who love it have got to be the same people who love debate, another thing I can't understand. "Because it gets us closer to truth." Oh, so you mean that if I watch a presidential debate, they might have their views modified or slightly-altered on national television, as I watch, thanks to solid debate? Without wondering who will or won't vote for them after that? Or is mind-changing debate in such a case not possible to begin with because they don't think they can be nuanced in front of an entire nation?
6. I'll have new glasses pretty soon. Maybe they'll be more comfortable than the ones I currently have and thus I'll wear them more and give my eyes more oxygen. Turns out I've been unintentionally-bad about that.
It's a long and mostly-boring story, how I got there in the first place.
I defy you all to find a celebrity's website that's simpler than this.
6.23.2008
Link-y
Because I know that not all my readership will consider themselves included in the target audience for such posts, I don't do a lot of sermon-linking here, but both of these have definitely "challenged me" (that's one of those terms that's overused when talking about sermons, but here it really is true) over the past couple of days, and I really think that both are, if any readers at all are interested, accessible and worthwhile:
Micah (I've mentioned him several times here) is running Sunday school and services while Matt and Anne are in Jerusalem(!) for the next week. He decided to talk about our living out the gospel in Binghamton and came at it from a really interesting angle.
Bishop David Roller spoke yesterday at Pearce, the church in which I grew up, and defied my mild skepticism by preaching a really thought-provoking sermon on the Tower of Babel passage (that's why I was skeptical, because it's a passage that you wouldn't think would make for a particularly deep message) by way of telling stories about being in Peru.
Micah (I've mentioned him several times here) is running Sunday school and services while Matt and Anne are in Jerusalem(!) for the next week. He decided to talk about our living out the gospel in Binghamton and came at it from a really interesting angle.
Bishop David Roller spoke yesterday at Pearce, the church in which I grew up, and defied my mild skepticism by preaching a really thought-provoking sermon on the Tower of Babel passage (that's why I was skeptical, because it's a passage that you wouldn't think would make for a particularly deep message) by way of telling stories about being in Peru.
6.22.2008
Another reason you Alfredians should be listening to Says You!
Because Dan Duggan played music for the Syracuse episodes. If you're wondering why he sounds so much like the Susquehanna String Band, it's because he's the hammered-dulcimer guy therefrom. :)
Except I'm a little slow and just figured that out tonight, though two weeks ago I sat there wondering why his name sounded so familiar.
Except I'm a little slow and just figured that out tonight, though two weeks ago I sat there wondering why his name sounded so familiar.
6.21.2008
More Saturday Fun
I have to say, strawberry picking has been more of a joy in the past three years than it's been all the rest of my life. In 2006, it was my last picking before we moved out of Rochester, and I remember that it was a nice day and Mom and I had a nice time doing it. In 2007, it was my first time picking in Allegany County and without my family, as my own thing, though I went with Jess (whom I think had maybe never gone...maybe I wrote in last year's entry whether she had or hadn't?) and Tom and Emily. This year, I got to experience it with Anthony, NYC boy for all his life, another one who'd never picked strawberries (or ridden one of those tractor-pulled wagons, as we did to get to the fields we wanted). As I've mentioned, Anthony is one of the most cheerful people I know. The best joy of this year's picking trip came in the way he got excited about the whole thing--and about his first bite of ripe, sun-warmed, just-picked-a-second-ago berry.
He'd also never baked from scratch, apparently, so we used up some of my three-and-a-third pounds of berries (and a few of his, but since he'd only picked about a third of the amount I had, they were really more symbolic than anything else) in making strawberry bread, the kind Tom brought to my house when the guys came for Terri's wedding. (In fact, I ended up talking to both twins as I attempted to find out whether the recipe contained a misprint [yes] or whether the two loaves really were to be baked at 450 degrees.)
So today was not filled with cleaning and theory/theology, as I had planned, but was lovely and fun. Back to slogging through TiStiUtB tomorrow, maybe.
He'd also never baked from scratch, apparently, so we used up some of my three-and-a-third pounds of berries (and a few of his, but since he'd only picked about a third of the amount I had, they were really more symbolic than anything else) in making strawberry bread, the kind Tom brought to my house when the guys came for Terri's wedding. (In fact, I ended up talking to both twins as I attempted to find out whether the recipe contained a misprint [yes] or whether the two loaves really were to be baked at 450 degrees.)
So today was not filled with cleaning and theory/theology, as I had planned, but was lovely and fun. Back to slogging through TiStiUtB tomorrow, maybe.
Excursion
About half an hour or so ago I found, completely by chance as I was wandering the streets and neighborhoods near my apartment complex (there are a lot of apartment complexes in my area, it turns out), the Four County Library System Special Collections Building, which, according to the 4CLS website, houses--wait for it--the "Reardon Collection of Historical Childrens' Literature." So I've got a children's literature (or, um, apparently "childrens'" literature...sigh) collection within a short walk from my apartment. And it's got visiting hours. I don't care whether I ever go there; just knowing it's there makes me happy.
(Honestly, though, I don't know that much about children's lit as a whole. I know a lot about Newbery Medal winners and a little more than most about the history of children's lit, but the kind of stuff they teach the undergrads in Signorotti's class about it would probably mostly be news to me.)
But to get back to the walk, I also found a Catholic church, a Jewish temple and possible Jewish school, and a Jewish community center, all tucked up along that road. I had no idea so much was back there, though it makes sense that a lot of stuff could be, now that I think about it. Next time I should tackle all of that road, not just the part I trod this morning.
(Honestly, though, I don't know that much about children's lit as a whole. I know a lot about Newbery Medal winners and a little more than most about the history of children's lit, but the kind of stuff they teach the undergrads in Signorotti's class about it would probably mostly be news to me.)
But to get back to the walk, I also found a Catholic church, a Jewish temple and possible Jewish school, and a Jewish community center, all tucked up along that road. I had no idea so much was back there, though it makes sense that a lot of stuff could be, now that I think about it. Next time I should tackle all of that road, not just the part I trod this morning.
6.20.2008
Well, I have in the past complained about 24/7 reachability feeling intrusive...so here's my out?
So I've done a lot of screwing up over the past day or two, most notably in (though not limited to) somehow losing my cell phone this morning. No, really, it's gone--and, by definition, I have no idea where. I do, in fact, have a landline here at the apartment (though I never bothered finding the number and plugging in Mijeong's very basic phone, which I swiped out of our old apartment, until today), so if for some-odd reason you'd like to reach me and AIM just isn't doing it for you, you can ask me for the number.
If by Monday it (that is, the cell phone) still hasn't turned up at my apartment, in my car, or at Wilson Hospital, I'll get a new one. My parents and I discussed the fact that maybe someone's picked it up and could potentially make calls with it, but really, the weekend (free calls) is coming, I have no text-message service, and there're enough prepaid minutes left over right now to support almost constant calling from now 'til whatever PM tonight the free-weekend stuff kicks in. So I'll wait on it.
On a more amusing note, against considerable odds I also ran into Aunt Cathy and Yvonne this morning, circa 8:15 AM, as I was trying without much success to find the Piccano Building. I think I've smelled like Aunt Cath's perfume, or lotion, or whatever it is ever since.
Update (about 6 PM): Oh, you're kidding: I've had this landline plugged in for all of about 75 minutes, and already I've gotten some sort of sales-type call trying to get me to take a survey. Um, super-weird.
Secondary update (as of 8:15ish PM): It's happened again, I think. I forget what the second one was for. Something different.
If by Monday it (that is, the cell phone) still hasn't turned up at my apartment, in my car, or at Wilson Hospital, I'll get a new one. My parents and I discussed the fact that maybe someone's picked it up and could potentially make calls with it, but really, the weekend (free calls) is coming, I have no text-message service, and there're enough prepaid minutes left over right now to support almost constant calling from now 'til whatever PM tonight the free-weekend stuff kicks in. So I'll wait on it.
On a more amusing note, against considerable odds I also ran into Aunt Cathy and Yvonne this morning, circa 8:15 AM, as I was trying without much success to find the Piccano Building. I think I've smelled like Aunt Cath's perfume, or lotion, or whatever it is ever since.
Update (about 6 PM): Oh, you're kidding: I've had this landline plugged in for all of about 75 minutes, and already I've gotten some sort of sales-type call trying to get me to take a survey. Um, super-weird.
Secondary update (as of 8:15ish PM): It's happened again, I think. I forget what the second one was for. Something different.
6.19.2008
<mild crankiness>
Here's why I'm not going folk dancing: because I'm more than a little sleep-deprived (I really did try to go to bed, but it took so long to finally fall asleep--maybe afternoon naps ought to be included in Proverbs's warning chapter against being seduced) and because I have to be up at 6:30 tomorrow morning so's to work a blood drive at 8. So I'm probably going to go to bed right about now.
Truth is Stranger than it Used to Be: probably going to be a worthwhile book, but why, why, why must it be set up like a scholarly piece? How am I going to learn not to hate grad school via a genre that represents much of what I hate about grad school?
Also, I miss everybody.
Truth is Stranger than it Used to Be: probably going to be a worthwhile book, but why, why, why must it be set up like a scholarly piece? How am I going to learn not to hate grad school via a genre that represents much of what I hate about grad school?
Also, I miss everybody.
6.18.2008
There was a time...
...when I was so enthusiastic about folk dancing that, when no one was around, I would occasionally play the songs and dance them solo. Now I feel too silly to try. I should go tomorrow night to dance again in Binghamton for the first time since September. It's just a matter of getting past being nervous about not really knowing anyone there well and about how long I've been gone and how much I might not remember. I do need the exercise, to be sure.
Not that I'll get to all of them, but here are the things I should do with my remaining six or seven weeks of summer:
-Read my new books on Christianity and postmodernism
-Read the books my friends assigned me
-Read the Lad Tobin books Abby lent me
-Maybe finish the last six-or-so Newberys
-Get outside more, or at least get some form of exercise, instead of saying I will but then not actually doing it
-See the museum and science center
-Frequent the farmers' market downtown
-Design my 115 syllabus (this is less a "should" than a "must")
-Get myself onto a sleep schedule conducive to teaching 115--or, at the very least, start limiting my naps to an hour in length
-Act like the IV prayer-ministry team member I am
-Figure out how to take a bus somewhere besides campus
-Have enough love for and patience with the junior-high girls at church for Carrie and me to take them somewhere as a girls-only function
(-Remind Carrie that she suggested that, or else she's never going to remember)
-Grow fingernails in time for Bethie's wedding (if I start much sooner than July 1st, however, I'll probably end up biting them off)
-Post some clever G.K. Chesterton quotes here, like I've been meaning to
-Suck it up next time I know at least, oh, five questions and actually call into the Mad Trivia Party, instead of flaking out
I don't want to go to bed. I want to stay up and read. But it is midnight. And I am sort of tired.
Not that I'll get to all of them, but here are the things I should do with my remaining six or seven weeks of summer:
-Read my new books on Christianity and postmodernism
-Read the books my friends assigned me
-Read the Lad Tobin books Abby lent me
-Maybe finish the last six-or-so Newberys
-Get outside more, or at least get some form of exercise, instead of saying I will but then not actually doing it
-See the museum and science center
-Frequent the farmers' market downtown
-Design my 115 syllabus (this is less a "should" than a "must")
-Get myself onto a sleep schedule conducive to teaching 115--or, at the very least, start limiting my naps to an hour in length
-Act like the IV prayer-ministry team member I am
-Figure out how to take a bus somewhere besides campus
-Have enough love for and patience with the junior-high girls at church for Carrie and me to take them somewhere as a girls-only function
(-Remind Carrie that she suggested that, or else she's never going to remember)
-Grow fingernails in time for Bethie's wedding (if I start much sooner than July 1st, however, I'll probably end up biting them off)
-Post some clever G.K. Chesterton quotes here, like I've been meaning to
-Suck it up next time I know at least, oh, five questions and actually call into the Mad Trivia Party, instead of flaking out
I don't want to go to bed. I want to stay up and read. But it is midnight. And I am sort of tired.
6.15.2008
In Which My Weekend is Briefly Described, and Imitation Continues to be the Sincerest Form of...Insanity
Seeing t3h br0 in the Baltimore area was pretty good--in the way that everyone's family time always is, alternately nice and inherently frustrating. For being there less than 48 hours, we did a lot: in no particular order here, we toured and saw a game at Camden Yards, saw a Pennsylvania-Dutch market (that was still there in Maryland, I mean), saw the Inner Harbor (hey, homestars from Mrs. Rice's choruses, didn't we stop there on our way back from the VA Beach trip? I'm almost sure we did) and its big and cool aquarium, unexpectedly ate at two different Irish restaurants (but not at the same time, ha), and had crabcakes. Oh, and Sean and Mom and I played MarioKart on Sean's Wii. I've played several versions of MarioKart, but I have to say, that one's probably the coolest, though it doesn't have the sentimental value that the SNES and N64 ones have.
Sean called a meeting the other day at his co-op, made his project team partners show up. That's kind of impressive, though not as big a surprise as it might be, given that he's not shy even though he's the youngest guy there.
On a completely different note, here's the conversation I've just been having (non-bracketed ellipsis mark several lines' worth of conversation condensed into one cluster; brackets means I'm skipping text):
[Laurel]: [...]You do anything interesting [this weekend]?
[Anthony]: nathan [also of IV-B; he was visiting] and i walked from my apartment [which's currently downtown, not on campus] to walmart yesterday
[A]: lol...and we had a huge adventure
[L]: Wait, how far is it to Wal-Mart? [What I meant was, is there one closer than Vestal Parkway? But I'm guessing that's where they went, regardless.]
[A]: well, it took us like an hour
[L]: Dude! What is it with people walking to Wal-Mart? Did I tell you guys the story of my friend Erik walking to Wal-Mart/Wegmans from Alfred?
[A]: lol...no...you didnt
[L]: Oh, jeezh. Well, my friend Erik, from high school, also spent a semester at SUNY-Alfred [I never call it SUNY-Alfred to anyone but Binghamtonians, who seem only to know it by that name], across the street from AU where I was...and early one Saturday morning, like 6 AM or something, I get a call from him, telling me that he's at the Wegmans in Hornell (the next town over, 10 miles away), and could I please come get him and his friend Orrin, because they'd walked there the night before but now Erik's knee was sore?
[...]
[L]: I had friends in Alfred who thought the story of Erik's walk was so funny that they actually replicated it [back on May 3, longer ago than I estimated for Anthony at first].
[A]: lol
No, seriously, you read that right. Joe and Emily and Tim No. and a bunch of people went. I would have gone, too, had I not been writing the Shakespeare paper. I probably mentioned that at the time, though.
Anyway...crazy.
Sean called a meeting the other day at his co-op, made his project team partners show up. That's kind of impressive, though not as big a surprise as it might be, given that he's not shy even though he's the youngest guy there.
On a completely different note, here's the conversation I've just been having (non-bracketed ellipsis mark several lines' worth of conversation condensed into one cluster; brackets means I'm skipping text):
[Laurel]: [...]You do anything interesting [this weekend]?
[Anthony]: nathan [also of IV-B; he was visiting] and i walked from my apartment [which's currently downtown, not on campus] to walmart yesterday
[A]: lol...and we had a huge adventure
[L]: Wait, how far is it to Wal-Mart? [What I meant was, is there one closer than Vestal Parkway? But I'm guessing that's where they went, regardless.]
[A]: well, it took us like an hour
[L]: Dude! What is it with people walking to Wal-Mart? Did I tell you guys the story of my friend Erik walking to Wal-Mart/Wegmans from Alfred?
[A]: lol...no...you didnt
[L]: Oh, jeezh. Well, my friend Erik, from high school, also spent a semester at SUNY-Alfred [I never call it SUNY-Alfred to anyone but Binghamtonians, who seem only to know it by that name], across the street from AU where I was...and early one Saturday morning, like 6 AM or something, I get a call from him, telling me that he's at the Wegmans in Hornell (the next town over, 10 miles away), and could I please come get him and his friend Orrin, because they'd walked there the night before but now Erik's knee was sore?
[...]
[L]: I had friends in Alfred who thought the story of Erik's walk was so funny that they actually replicated it [back on May 3, longer ago than I estimated for Anthony at first].
[A]: lol
No, seriously, you read that right. Joe and Emily and Tim No. and a bunch of people went. I would have gone, too, had I not been writing the Shakespeare paper. I probably mentioned that at the time, though.
Anyway...crazy.
6.12.2008
Flowers and Toner
Emma, who's Matt and Anne's eldest daughter (about five and a half or so), and I played school yesterday and today when she came into church. It was her idea, and it appears to be a long-term game. Most of it has consisted of her asking me math problems, writing down my answers (which she presumes are right because they're problems she mostly can't do herself, so I never bother trying to throw her off) on Post-It Notes, drawing hearts by the figures to indicate their correctness, and sticking all the notes on my shirt. ("Now, take these home and show your mother," she said yesterday, pretending I was younger.)
Today she continued, "Now we're going to do history. I'll teach you the pretty things about history, and he"--referring to Aedan, one of her brothers (he's four)--"will teach you the handsome things about history."
(For the record, the "pretty things about history" were supposed to be flowers. Soon, though, upon hearing that history was stories about the past, she came up with the idea--and I thought it was kind of a clever one, seeing as kindergarteners don't have much in the way of history class--to draw a manger scene together as the history of Jesus coming to Earth.)
Aedan, not into the handsome things about history, whatever they might in Emma's mind have been, trotted off to do other things.
But not just with Emma was I learning things today: it apparently takes three college graduates, all of us with at least some additional study under our belts, to figure out how to change the toner cartridge in an old copier. Reverend Matt, Ife, and I puzzled over Canon's "instructional" (read: confusing) drawings on the box, which were not accompanied by words. At one point, once we'd figured something out and uncovered a tab on the cartridge, Matt and I simultaneously had the idea to have Ife pull the tab--but we didn't check the pictures first, which would have indicated that that was a great idea if we were on about Step 7, but we were only on Step 5.
Turns out that toner is powder, not the liquid I've always for some reason assumed it to be, and that pulling the tab at Step 5 makes a respectable amount of it whoosh out of the cartridge, right onto whoever's in the line of fire. In this case, it was Matt. And part of the table behind him. And the carpet right under Ife. And the top part of the copier itself. And the corner of the desk. And almost the printed-out bulletins themselves, but a couple of stray pieces of paper I'd idly set atop them saved them.
The complex ways of God, the intricacies of language, and the art of composition? Not too problematic for us. Office skills? That's something else again.
Today she continued, "Now we're going to do history. I'll teach you the pretty things about history, and he"--referring to Aedan, one of her brothers (he's four)--"will teach you the handsome things about history."
(For the record, the "pretty things about history" were supposed to be flowers. Soon, though, upon hearing that history was stories about the past, she came up with the idea--and I thought it was kind of a clever one, seeing as kindergarteners don't have much in the way of history class--to draw a manger scene together as the history of Jesus coming to Earth.)
Aedan, not into the handsome things about history, whatever they might in Emma's mind have been, trotted off to do other things.
But not just with Emma was I learning things today: it apparently takes three college graduates, all of us with at least some additional study under our belts, to figure out how to change the toner cartridge in an old copier. Reverend Matt, Ife, and I puzzled over Canon's "instructional" (read: confusing) drawings on the box, which were not accompanied by words. At one point, once we'd figured something out and uncovered a tab on the cartridge, Matt and I simultaneously had the idea to have Ife pull the tab--but we didn't check the pictures first, which would have indicated that that was a great idea if we were on about Step 7, but we were only on Step 5.
Turns out that toner is powder, not the liquid I've always for some reason assumed it to be, and that pulling the tab at Step 5 makes a respectable amount of it whoosh out of the cartridge, right onto whoever's in the line of fire. In this case, it was Matt. And part of the table behind him. And the carpet right under Ife. And the top part of the copier itself. And the corner of the desk. And almost the printed-out bulletins themselves, but a couple of stray pieces of paper I'd idly set atop them saved them.
The complex ways of God, the intricacies of language, and the art of composition? Not too problematic for us. Office skills? That's something else again.
6.11.2008
(ahhh)
I am here in the apartment. I had a simple, nice dinner of shirred (lightly oven-baked) eggs with bread crumbs on an English muffin, and the end of my frosted shredded-wheat for a sort of dessert, and since then I've been lying on my stomach in the common room, reading Meet the Austins. One of the windows is open, there's a bit of a breeze coming in, the light quality is nice because the sun's going down, and my basil and spearmint thrive in the sill. I am going back to read more, deeply content with my lot in life.
"Hey, you've got some English snot on your face." -John, back during Alfred, when I corrected grammar unnecessarily
It bothers me every time I read weather.com's thing that says, "Having a cookout? See if weather will be a factor." Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it obvious that it's going to be a factor? The question is, will it be a positive or a negative factor?
These really are the questions I ask myself, of a sunny spring-turning-to-summer morning. ::sigh:: I suppose I need a life. Though you people should all correct me if I make grammatical mistakes here. Except for sentence fragments used for effect, about which I remain largely unrepentant.
Also, I'd probably go for "Liberty Bell March" instead of "Mos Eisley Cantina." But then, maybe not, because whatever song I chose would be ruined for the next several years for me. So I'd have to find something I liked, but not too much. Maybe "Blitzkreig Bop," but could I stand that guitar part for 48 hours? Hmm.
These really are the questions I ask myself, of a sunny spring-turning-to-summer morning. ::sigh:: I suppose I need a life. Though you people should all correct me if I make grammatical mistakes here. Except for sentence fragments used for effect, about which I remain largely unrepentant.
Also, I'd probably go for "Liberty Bell March" instead of "Mos Eisley Cantina." But then, maybe not, because whatever song I chose would be ruined for the next several years for me. So I'd have to find something I liked, but not too much. Maybe "Blitzkreig Bop," but could I stand that guitar part for 48 hours? Hmm.
More Randomness
You know how some songs seem just made to stick in your head? Well, if you had to have one of those songs stuck in your head for 48 hours straight, for some reason, which one would you choose?
Offhand I'd go for "Mos Eisley Cantina," but I'm still thinking about it.
Offhand I'd go for "Mos Eisley Cantina," but I'm still thinking about it.
6.10.2008
Oh, ::facepalm::
Tonight, when they run a bunch of questions I actually know, including almost an entire Peanuts category, I can hardly even hear The Mad Trivia Party through the listen-live static and high-pitched, whiny interference (I had to read their questions as posted to their MySpace; that's how painful listening is). I was going to call in for the first time ever, but you know what? Forget it. My ear hurts. Maybe next week.
Apologies, therefore, to any readers of this blog who actually tried, per my recommendation, to listen to their show (perhaps luckily, that is probably none of you).
Also, I ate a jongzi and drank some aloe juice. More on that later, maybe.
Apologies, therefore, to any readers of this blog who actually tried, per my recommendation, to listen to their show (perhaps luckily, that is probably none of you).
Also, I ate a jongzi and drank some aloe juice. More on that later, maybe.
A fairly random thought, followed by a fairly random link
I understand it's supposed to be Dutch, but the story was written by an American. Seriously, what the heck kind of a name is Rip van Winkle?
Also, this is kind of funny, in a mild way.
Also, this is kind of funny, in a mild way.
6.07.2008
Radio links of awesomeness!
Says You!, which is only the best word-nerdy radio show in history, taped several shows in Syracuse(!!!), and the first of them airs this week. You're too late to get the original airing off of WGBH (Boston...I don't know whether the New York stations have already aired it or won't until next Saturday), but interested parties (especially those from upstate New York) are enthusiastically encouraged to catch another airing something this week; find times here, look up your radio station of choice on Google if you can't get it where you are, and look for a "listen live" link. (Try to find an hourlong version of the show if you can. I think KALW's is, for example.)
Interested radio quiz-show fans (both local and otherwise; all are welcome) may also want to check out Binghamton's (less G-rated but more outside-participant-friendly) The Mad Trivia Party, which airs from 10-11:30 on Tuesday nights; one of the hosts is my English 300T co-grader and friend, Charles Berman, except that he's off for the summer, calling in from home instead. If you know any of the answers, you too can call in, and if you get any right, you get to ask questions back to the panel--a nice twist, if you ask me. (Well, I guess you can also sort of do that with Says You!, through the website, but the MTP version cuts out the middleman.) But you might want to listen to an episode first, so's to get an idea of how it works.
There, that should keep your brains busy.
Interested radio quiz-show fans (both local and otherwise; all are welcome) may also want to check out Binghamton's (less G-rated but more outside-participant-friendly) The Mad Trivia Party, which airs from 10-11:30 on Tuesday nights; one of the hosts is my English 300T co-grader and friend, Charles Berman, except that he's off for the summer, calling in from home instead. If you know any of the answers, you too can call in, and if you get any right, you get to ask questions back to the panel--a nice twist, if you ask me. (Well, I guess you can also sort of do that with Says You!, through the website, but the MTP version cuts out the middleman.) But you might want to listen to an episode first, so's to get an idea of how it works.
There, that should keep your brains busy.
6.06.2008
Yay!
Micah, Ife, Carrie, Jason, some of Carrie's friends, and I went to watch the Binghamton Mets play tonight. It was a pretty quiet game, as they go, but we ended up pulling ahead after a home run at the bottom of the eighth and eventually winning.
More importantly, however, there were fireworks at the end, and I think they're the first fireworks I've seen in 2008. They were pretty good, too.
More importantly, however, there were fireworks at the end, and I think they're the first fireworks I've seen in 2008. They were pretty good, too.
Postscript
It's also hard, I imagine, to be living at someone else's house because of weird, heavy stuff going on at your own.
6.05.2008
Am I doing too much baking? And here're other questions...
Am I just picky, or is Bruce Springsteen's music way less interesting than I feel like it should be, given how famous he is?
And file this under "the plot thickens": my mystery reader from Syracuse also reads Reverend Anne's blog--but, oddly enough, appears to have checked our blogs from two different computers. The IP addresses are identical, but the operating systems aren't.
Carrie, are you sure you don't read this? Since Anne and I don't link to each other, and since you're in Syracuse a lot to see your parents, that would be the most logical explanation.
And file this under "the plot thickens": my mystery reader from Syracuse also reads Reverend Anne's blog--but, oddly enough, appears to have checked our blogs from two different computers. The IP addresses are identical, but the operating systems aren't.
Carrie, are you sure you don't read this? Since Anne and I don't link to each other, and since you're in Syracuse a lot to see your parents, that would be the most logical explanation.
6.04.2008
This American Life, Part 2
Today I stopped for gas at a Hess station that was running the price at $3.99 a gallon. Granted that this was cheaper than the $4.03 just a bit up the parkway in the other direction, but I kind of doubt that four cents' difference alone was enough to explain, let alone justify, twelve cars trying to gas up at once (at, I might add, an eight-pump station), something I've never seen before this afternoon. And I didn't even have to wait as long as I might've, since my gas tank is on my passenger side, so I got to go in the shorter passenger-side "line"--which really was more or less a line, though I was afraid I was going to accidentally violate some sort of line-joining protocol established minutes before I'd arrived by the other cars that'd been there first. The pumps cut everybody off at $50, I guess as a way to stretch the supply out just a little farther and help keep prices down. Or something. It was the weirdest fueling experience I've ever had (unless you count the time freshman year at the APO thing where I got hit on in a skeevy part of Rochester--no, I'm not going to link to the writeup; I'm too tired. But that wasn't weird, that was creepy).
Running a "quickish" errand to Matt and Anne's at 4, I was, of course, there until about 10:30. In my defense, so was Micah, and he was already there by the time I arrived. In our collective defense, he and I went out and bought the meat, milk, and cream (the Kennedys are big believers in cream) that were incorporated into the very good dinner Matt made us and Anne and himself. In our further collective defense, three of the house's ten current residents were out getting pizza, so at least we weren't causing even more chaos than already existed.
Anne, who is big on blogging, says you need to be interesting and opinionated to blog. Um, uh-oh. The problem is, I like this blog. I like being self-important and boring, apparently. I should care that that's a bad deal for my readership, but then, you're not a sizeable readership, and apparently to you guys I'm somehow interesting enough that you'll put up with that. And, too, your minutiae is usually interesting to me. But then, I'm a nosy person. Maybe so're you guys, heh.
I really ought to go to bed. I even want to go to bed, except that, because I'm tired and still marveling at the Kennedys' lives right now, I also want to sit here until I think of something profound to say, or at least something that captures the way this evening feels. But then, I don't feel like doing melodrama, and that's probably where this is headed if I go any farther. So good night.
Running a "quickish" errand to Matt and Anne's at 4, I was, of course, there until about 10:30. In my defense, so was Micah, and he was already there by the time I arrived. In our collective defense, he and I went out and bought the meat, milk, and cream (the Kennedys are big believers in cream) that were incorporated into the very good dinner Matt made us and Anne and himself. In our further collective defense, three of the house's ten current residents were out getting pizza, so at least we weren't causing even more chaos than already existed.
Anne, who is big on blogging, says you need to be interesting and opinionated to blog. Um, uh-oh. The problem is, I like this blog. I like being self-important and boring, apparently. I should care that that's a bad deal for my readership, but then, you're not a sizeable readership, and apparently to you guys I'm somehow interesting enough that you'll put up with that. And, too, your minutiae is usually interesting to me. But then, I'm a nosy person. Maybe so're you guys, heh.
I really ought to go to bed. I even want to go to bed, except that, because I'm tired and still marveling at the Kennedys' lives right now, I also want to sit here until I think of something profound to say, or at least something that captures the way this evening feels. But then, I don't feel like doing melodrama, and that's probably where this is headed if I go any farther. So good night.
Lesson to the Dallas Morning News: Hindsight is...
I confess that I purposely haven't been paying much attention to the presidential race (I did watch coverage of one of the caucuses with my dad over Christmas break, but I think that was the only deliberate effort I made), but now that all the Democratic bickering is finally ruddy over, I guess I'd better get down to examining the two actual candidates left standing...this would be a good time for me to hammer out my more uncertain political opinions, though, cf. New Year's Resolution #4, wouldn't it?
Anyway, perhaps in (dubious?) honor of the upcoming Democratic National Convention, the Dave Barry Official Website put up a copy of a 1988 column of his that I (I guess it wasn't anthologized, and I was only three years old when it first came out!) had never read. In it, as you can see if you read the first few paragraphs, he reports from the Democratic National Convention that the media are so desperate for news stories that he and two friends went to the Official Designated Protest Zone (or whatever the section for protest groups was called) with cardboard boxes on their heads and "protested" as the members of People With Boxes On Their Heads. Within seven seconds, a journalist was taking pictures of them; they also conducted dozens of interviews.
I was curious to see how the protest was depicted in the newspapers, so I did a Factiva search (yay for free access through the BU library!) on the event. Nobody seemed to have taken it all that seriously, thank goodness. I do, however, want to include this interesting paragraph from the Dallas Morning News's "Convention Highlights and Lowlights," dated 23 July 1988:
[In the article's "losers" section] "Bill Clinton. His presidential nominating speech was so windy that House Speaker Jim Wright, the convention chairman, cut off the TelePrompTer and the crowd urged him two [sic] quit. 'We want Mike! We want Mike!' shouted restive delegates. But Clinton kept talking. In the end, the Arkansas governor's speech had lasted 35 minutes, more than twice his alloted time. Don't look for Clinton to be heading the Democratic ticket anytime soon."
Anyway, perhaps in (dubious?) honor of the upcoming Democratic National Convention, the Dave Barry Official Website put up a copy of a 1988 column of his that I (I guess it wasn't anthologized, and I was only three years old when it first came out!) had never read. In it, as you can see if you read the first few paragraphs, he reports from the Democratic National Convention that the media are so desperate for news stories that he and two friends went to the Official Designated Protest Zone (or whatever the section for protest groups was called) with cardboard boxes on their heads and "protested" as the members of People With Boxes On Their Heads. Within seven seconds, a journalist was taking pictures of them; they also conducted dozens of interviews.
I was curious to see how the protest was depicted in the newspapers, so I did a Factiva search (yay for free access through the BU library!) on the event. Nobody seemed to have taken it all that seriously, thank goodness. I do, however, want to include this interesting paragraph from the Dallas Morning News's "Convention Highlights and Lowlights," dated 23 July 1988:
[In the article's "losers" section] "Bill Clinton. His presidential nominating speech was so windy that House Speaker Jim Wright, the convention chairman, cut off the TelePrompTer and the crowd urged him two [sic] quit. 'We want Mike! We want Mike!' shouted restive delegates. But Clinton kept talking. In the end, the Arkansas governor's speech had lasted 35 minutes, more than twice his alloted time. Don't look for Clinton to be heading the Democratic ticket anytime soon."
6.02.2008
by our love
A single mother at my church, who's a hairdresser by trade and, in fact, exactly like almost every hairdresser-lady I know (likeable, funny, talkative, candidly opinionated, a bit odd), has had to leave her boyfriend's house 'cause he got nasty, emotionally if not physically. She took, of course, her three young daughters with her.
While the four of them look for another place, they're living until further notice with Reverends Matt and Anne. Who have four children, all under the age of seven, so they're pretty busy. It's not that they don't have the space, since the rectory basement is apparently surprisingly big and has couches and futons and the like. It's not that this is not considered pastors' duty--I guess. And it's not that both families are too poor for this kind of thing, though certainly neither is exactly well-off. It's just that it's hard for me to grasp that the Kennedys can take on any more responsibility, given all that they have going on already. Not that the rest of the church isn't helping with this--people helped yesterday with the move, and there's lots of goodwill and prayer everywhere, and things like that.
The reason I bring this up is not because I think that people are only self-disinterested within the church--I don't--but because it's a sort of team effort, and a lot of selflessness, that I am used to associating with smaller places, like Alfred. I mean, this is a small church, so I guess it's not that surprising. But I can't help looking on it with admiration. And it's nice to have it here in Binghamton.
Carrie made much of Tammy's quote in December about IV-B being her "perfect imperfect family." Though the people I'm closest to here are, as in her case, all associated with InterVarsity, I'm usually content to let "best friends" serve as my term of relational summa cum laude, especially in an environment with such a comparatively-narrow age range. What would calling them family add to their loveliness?
But Tammy's phrase does seem to fit Good Shepherd, where people are often a little annoying and a little complicated, but always simultaneously and subtly of importance to me.
While the four of them look for another place, they're living until further notice with Reverends Matt and Anne. Who have four children, all under the age of seven, so they're pretty busy. It's not that they don't have the space, since the rectory basement is apparently surprisingly big and has couches and futons and the like. It's not that this is not considered pastors' duty--I guess. And it's not that both families are too poor for this kind of thing, though certainly neither is exactly well-off. It's just that it's hard for me to grasp that the Kennedys can take on any more responsibility, given all that they have going on already. Not that the rest of the church isn't helping with this--people helped yesterday with the move, and there's lots of goodwill and prayer everywhere, and things like that.
The reason I bring this up is not because I think that people are only self-disinterested within the church--I don't--but because it's a sort of team effort, and a lot of selflessness, that I am used to associating with smaller places, like Alfred. I mean, this is a small church, so I guess it's not that surprising. But I can't help looking on it with admiration. And it's nice to have it here in Binghamton.
Carrie made much of Tammy's quote in December about IV-B being her "perfect imperfect family." Though the people I'm closest to here are, as in her case, all associated with InterVarsity, I'm usually content to let "best friends" serve as my term of relational summa cum laude, especially in an environment with such a comparatively-narrow age range. What would calling them family add to their loveliness?
But Tammy's phrase does seem to fit Good Shepherd, where people are often a little annoying and a little complicated, but always simultaneously and subtly of importance to me.
6.01.2008
Check
Upon rereading it, I'm concluding that my stock entry came out all right, but I should clarify the following:
-I wasn't taking breaks in between chicken cuts to bite my fingernails. Like, ew. What I meant was, you know, there's broken skin and I was getting chicken in it.
-It sounds like I have this big set of knives, but I really only have two. You can all stop having nightmares now. Or silly mental movies where I'm slicing my way through an entire vegetable garden in, like, thirty seconds.
(Really, though, how many times was I going to use the word "Wegmans" in those couple of paragraphs towards the beginning?)
You'll all be happy to know, incidentally, that I have "passed" my background check for the Red Cross. I apparently haven't committed any major crimes (smart-alecky people could here retort, "At least not within the past seven years," since that's the checking range), and it looks like I really do live at the address I claimed. So maybe I'll be coming to run a blood drive near you (um, if you're Joe/Andrea/Emily/Anthony). Free Little Debbie snacks: yes-s-s-s.
-I wasn't taking breaks in between chicken cuts to bite my fingernails. Like, ew. What I meant was, you know, there's broken skin and I was getting chicken in it.
-It sounds like I have this big set of knives, but I really only have two. You can all stop having nightmares now. Or silly mental movies where I'm slicing my way through an entire vegetable garden in, like, thirty seconds.
(Really, though, how many times was I going to use the word "Wegmans" in those couple of paragraphs towards the beginning?)
You'll all be happy to know, incidentally, that I have "passed" my background check for the Red Cross. I apparently haven't committed any major crimes (smart-alecky people could here retort, "At least not within the past seven years," since that's the checking range), and it looks like I really do live at the address I claimed. So maybe I'll be coming to run a blood drive near you (um, if you're Joe/Andrea/Emily/Anthony). Free Little Debbie snacks: yes-s-s-s.