bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

    My first two offspring never quite got into reading for pleasure, something which baffled me.   When I was your age I carefully propped library books inside my school desk and tried to read them one line at a time by surreptitiously lifting up the lid-top of the desk while the teacher was talking!  You don't even have to go to school and if you ever came to me and said, "Mom, can I just finish this book instead of doing my math?" I'd completely fall for it!  I reminisce all the time about how I was allowed to buy a paperback book nearly every week when I was a kid!  Do you know what I would have given to get my hands on an e-book reader back in 1984?

    Truly you can't make your children love what you love.  They are their own persons.  My oldest turned into the sort of person who loves to read nonfiction, something I can relate to, and is perfectly happy to read novels for college literature classes and get A's on the papers.  Number two prefers audiobooks, a preference that is harder for me to wrap my mind around, but I can see that he and I have different modes of taking in information. 

    More like me are the next two.  The resident nine-year-old is by far the most voracious reader of my children so far, devouring series faster than we can keep up with him, and cheerfully re-reading his favorites over and over.   He's the one whose reading style I identify with the most.    The newly-minted 13yo also loves to read, maybe not quite so thirstily as her younger brother, and has a different taste in genres; she's always got a book going, though, and she seems to enjoy the literature H. assigns them to read for schoolwork (not always the same stuff I would read for pleasure, either).

    + + +

    When I started homeschooling, I had this idea that I would fill my house up with enticing books and the children would spend their spare time curled up on chairs reading them.  I would pretend to be annoyed that I had to drag them away from their paperback books to do their math, but I would let a little twinkle in my eye show that I was really pleased that they were engrossed in their reading.  Well, I have filled up my house with books and stocked e-readers with titles and allowed my kids complete freedom of the bookshelves but none of that has come to pass (ingrates!  do they know how much I would have loved to have freedom to read any hour of the day when I was their age?  the only thing that made all my brother's Little League practices tolerable was that I could bring a book and read for three hours while I slowly sunburned!). 

    Nevertheless, she persisted.   

    Most of the books I put in were books I remembered from my childhood, sometimes the ones I remembered loving, other times the ones I remembered other people loving.  This year after I reorganized my shelves, rotating the stock from the upstairs bookshelves to the schoolroom bookshelves with an eye to the ages of the children, I had a little space left over in my "novels for kids" zone, and decided to search out some more recent titles.

    51hkXRTC65L._SX337_BO1 204 203 200_ I'm not sure how I settled on When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.  Perhaps I saw a review somewhere; or perhaps a list of award-winning books, as it is the 2010 Newbery Medal recipient.  Just after having finished the latest Neal Stephenson tome, which was pretty good and took me several days, I bought Stead's slim paperback from Amazon and read it in a couple of nights. 

    It had been a long time since I read a children's (not "YA") book that was new to me.    And I fell into it like into the beanbag chair in my bedroom at home, the one next to the blue-painted bookshelf crammed full of my favorite, dog-eared paperbacks.    The feeling of reading this book was just the same as reading the best of the children's books that I loved as a preteen, loved a little bit into my teenage years past the time when my peer group had shifted to the books aimed at teenagers, until I started reading books aimed at grownups.

    + + +

    Here are the reasons why this is one of the great children's books.

    (1)  It is called a science fiction book by some of the reviewers, but it is mainly experienced as a mystery.  The main character finds herself in the middle of some very strange happenings in her neighborhood, little events that seem to be of great import, and also events that seem small but turn out to be very meaningful.  There are clues along the way, some of them obvious and some not so obvious, and the reader has the power of piecing them together if she is very, very attentive.   And if she is not perfectly attentive — well, I for one, on finishing the book, immediately turned back to the first page and read it again, in order to find as many of them as possible.

    In this way, it reminded me of another Newbery Medal book, the 1979 winner, The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin.  Yep, another one that I keep fruitlessly trying to get my kids to read.

     

    (2)  The book takes place in New York City during the 1978-1979 school year, and features children going about their days from school to home in the city with very little supervision, encountering alarming people who really aren't a threat and less-alarming people who do turn out to be a threat.  They have a great deal of freedom; they are cared for by adults who watch out for them, at home and at school, but those adults have their own concerns and do not micromanage the children's lives.  Rebecca Stead has said that she wrote the book in part to show her own children what it was like to have one's "first independence" in that earlier time.  This sense of being a child, vulnerable and at the same time expected to make one's own way around, is palpable in the book.  

    (3)  This is in part a school story:  there are a group of sixth-graders, interacting and whispering and wondering about each other.  Are my friends still my friends?  Does she like me or not?  Why is he acting so mean?  What's going on at home?   It is among the best example of the genre called "surviving middle school:" in which the only source of drama is the normal-sized drama of children living their children's lives in the social fishbowl of their peers, when even the smallest slights seem  terribly fraught with meaning.  The best of those books, of which there were many, took the children's feelings as serious as we children did.  This is one.  There are hints of serious, even dark, things going on in the other children's lives; there are hints of incipient romance; but it's all under the surface and not fully understood, part of the mystery of life.  I'll say it again:  it feels like the good children's books of my youth.

    (4)  Every character, from the ones who make only brief appearances to the ones who are central to the story, is finely drawn and fully human.  I especially loved the adults in the story, who are seen only from the young narrator Miranda's point of view, but whose actions tell the story of their interior lives.   Miranda's mother is especially beautifully drawn, and quietly commands two whole story arcs of her own, one of which is under the surface, barely noticeable.  There are also two school officials, barely mentioned, but who step in to do what they can to rescue a young person in trouble.   Some of the other children Miranda encounters.  You are left with a sense of the full humanity of the apparently-minor characters, in this story and in real life.

    (5)  There is a LOT going on in this book.  There are numerous storylines going all at once; each of the supporting characters, even the least important of them, could have been the main character of a whole novel of their own.   Indeed, in one sense Miranda is not the main character of this story at all; the story turns on her, but it can be argued that it is not actually about her.   And this reinforces the finely-drawn characters:  there is a secondary theme in the book, one that goes unstated:  every person has their own story in which they are the main character.  Everyone.  And we are all supporting characters in other people's stories.  

    + + +

    Madeleine L'Engle's classic novel A Wrinkle in Time (Newbery Medal, 1963!) is itself almost a character in this book, a deliberate homage.  Two characters bond over their common love for it.  But it's also a reference meant to make a connection between the styles and subject matter.  I expect Rebecca Stead hopes that her readers who enjoyed When You Reach Me will seek it out, and perhaps discover all of L'Engle's work, and maybe more of the great children's books of my youth.  Now that I think about it, maybe I myself was drawn to When You Reach Me because somewhere I learned of the deliberate invoking of L'Engle within its pages.    Whether the connections went forward in time, or back, I'm very glad they did.

    I recommend this book for ages nine and up, and particularly for any child who has loved, or will love, A Wrinkle in Time.

    —

    |

    6 comments on When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

  • My kind of pep talk.

    I've been going around grumbling inside my head. "Our leaders suck and that sucks, and we can't do anything about it because everybody sucks."

    Yes, I'm that articulate inside my head these days.

    And outside my head?  Stunted, perhaps, by the lack of adequate vocabulary?

    I haven't been saying much out loud, at least not when it comes to anything related to leaders and authorities.  Dinner table conversation in that direction has largely petered out, and not necessarily been replaced by anything more wholesome; given a conversational vacuum, the children will squabble, or talk about cartoons.  There's always the latest technical challenge from Mark's job, or what the kids' schoolwork is like, and other normal things; but there's a gap that used to be filled with "Did you see where…[political or legal or Catholic-church-related news item]?" and it's mostly empty, because who wants to ruin dinner?

    Indeed, this post will also be short.

    + + +

    Why?  Why do we have such bad leaders?  Why?  Why?  Why?

    Even the "good" ones we have right now, or the good potential ones who might come along to replace the bad ones, well, likely they only seem good by comparison.    Add a little power to the mix and who knows what you'll get.

    The answer comes back bearing either despair or hope, depending on which way the coin comes down, or is it which way we turn it:   

    I, too, am a leader.  

    And I know what's in myself, what I hide and what I display, what I work for and what I let fall.

    + + + 

    I saw a video clip of an ice tsunami yesterday:  a sheet of ice gently approaching a sloped pebbly beach, and suddenly crumbling on itself and piling higher and higher, shoving sand and pebbles out of its way, overflowing like foam, building into an unclimbable wall. 

    Hqtxm4s

    Such is the effect of the force and weight of our small decisions, adding together.  

    It's neither an absolution nor a condemnation.  It's just that however placed, we all have the potential inside us, the potential to do terrible things, at least things that feel terrible and look terrible to the inner heart of someone who depends on us.   To lead badly.  To lead directly into the abyss and to take others with us.  

    Bloom where you are planted has a flip side.

    + + +

    And the source of both the dismay and the hope is the apparent smallness of what I can or must do about it.

    Our leaders suck, eh?  

    That's a figure of speech.

    Despair, the belief that everything, everyone, every system, is permanently broken, sucks too:  sucks you in, sucks the energy and light out of the room, sucks everything towards itself, creates an inflowing wind, one that's hard to push against.

    But what is broken outside myself is the same kind of thing that's broken within myself, and—difficult as it is, I know something about how the little breach in me is to be repaired.   And I know, too, who looks to me.  I am a leader as well.  

    So.  There's something I can do.   Now is the acceptable time.

     

    —

    |

    1 comment on My kind of pep talk.

  • Meta-popular science.

    One of my parallel non-fiction reads right now is The Tangled Tree by David Quammen.  It's a history of the understanding of horizontal gene transfer, so it's sort of a meta-story:  how the narrative of the origin of species has changed, especially how the shape and form of the representation of evolution's history as a tree has changed.  It's also a collection of stories about the scientists who worked on, are working on, the rather non-linear development of that knowledge.  It's well written and though I haven't finished it yet, I'm enjoying it and would recommend it.

    I'm reading it now because my second son is going to study biology this year with an emphasis on evolutionary biology.  My oldest chose that topic when it was his turn, and it's easy enough for me to repeat it (since I already designed the curriculum), and it's a convenient type of homeschooler biology because it doesn't require a lab. 

    (What's less convenient is finding a high-school level textbook.  I am here to tell you not to even try to find a commercial evolutionary biology textbook that is aimed at the homeschool market.  I use an introductory college text that is supposed to be accessible to non-STEM majors.)

    The college text is a few years old.  Most of the principles in it are still intact (especially since it is mostly about what happens in the world of multicellular animals).   But I'm aware that the evolutionary tree re: unicellular life has changed a great deal since genome-sequencing got easier and cheaper, and I needed a quick refresher that would bring me closer to up-to-date so I could add some corrections.   

    Of the major branches of scientific knowledge, biology is my weakest (I never took a class in it after ninth grade, and my ninth-grade teacher was crappy, those two things probably having something to do with one another).   So I picked up a book written for a popular audience, and I'm enjoying it, and learning enough that I can know when to say "oh, hey, the information going into the diagram on page eighty-whatever has probably been superseded—let's Google that to double check it."  So far so good.

    + + +

    I pick up popular books about other fields of science from time to time as well, including ones that I'm much more familiar with.  You all know that I have a great side interest in linguistics, for instance, and I periodically read popular stuff about that, especially applied fields like translation.  I have a couple of others going at the same time as The Tangled Tree.  One of them is a biography of Claude Shannon, who (to put it succinctly) invented all the mathematical theory behind data compression.  I got interested in this because Mark was telling me about the math and we became curious about the person who came up with it, and now we're working through it as a read-aloud together.   Another one is a bit of applied educational psychology which I'm reading to see if I can understand one of my offspring just a little bit better in order to help said offspring focus on learning.  I also have a history of the synthesis of the transuranium elements lined up, for after Mark and I finish the Shannon book, maybe for me to read aloud while he drives during our next road trip.

    I usually enjoy what I learn from such books.  But I have to tell you, I sometimes put them down with a feeling of unease and disappointment in myself.  It's difficult to put my finger on, but I think it's because I wonder if I have lost my ability (or the required patience) to dig through the literature itself, in a kind of atrophy of mental muscle.

    If that's happened, I don't regard it as an interior fault.  There are structural factors that come into play, such as the fact that for the first decade after my transmogrification it was a severe hassle to get hold of academic publications without an academic or industry affiliation.  (And it's not a lot better now, a subject about which I can rant at length, although it's moving in the correct direction.)  And also the nontrivial problem, left to the reader, of arranging the physical space and the boundaries on the scholar's, or the creative's time.   

    There's also the sheer volume of the literature—one always relies on word of mouth, social media now too of course, literature reviews that come out in this or that field and that summarize the changing shape of consensus or present multiple sides of an active debate.  The cream (or the flotsam, or even the scum!) rising to the top:  "Have you seen so-and-so's paper?"  Where do you start if you want to go straight to the primary source?  The only thing that makes sense if you value your time, and don't have students to track it down for you, is to begin with the tertiary or higher-order publications that catch your interest, and trace the citations backward.  We've done this with the Shannon book (to some extent), finding Shannon's master's thesis and reading enough of it to be certain that understanding the math behind it very well would require us to brush up with our old textbooks.  It is fun to do, this backwards-tracing, but it requires you to have a certain level of trust in the authors of the tertiaries-and-higher.  And that requires those authors not so much to be honest and smart scientists, but more honest and smart journalists.

    + + + 

    Behold the "Gell-Mann amnesia effect," which I unironically lift from Wikipedia:

    The Gell-Mann amnesia effect describes the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding. The term was coined by author, film producer, and medical doctor Michael Crichton. He explains the irony of the term, saying it came about "because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have", and describes the term in his talk "Why Speculate?" in which he says:

    "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward — reversing cause and effect. I call these the 'wet streets cause rain' stories. Paper's full of them.

    "In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

    The Gell-Mann effect is not a universal phenomenon, and some believe that there is increased distrust in news media when one notices errors in reporting.

     

    I'm aware of the Gell-Mann effect, and in the back of my mind as I read popular histories of science, or explanation of this or that phenomena, I've always got this tickle in the back of my mind of:  did this particular long-form journalist get it right?  Am I accepting this narrative because the writing is clear and the presentation is convincing?  Am I actually being misled here?  Would I think this matched up if I went back to the primary sources, the peer-reviewed articles, and formed my own judgment?

    And then I don't go back, most of the time, because I have to prioritize other activities in my rather full life.

    And I think that is why I feel a little sad when I read these books.  Trained as an academic, I learned how much I don't know.  Being a bit of an iconoclast, and not being hampered by any desire to be a team player, I walk around with a metaphorical mental stamp in my pocket that says "[citation needed.]"    I learned to say:  I do not know enough about this subject to have an informed opinion.  

    Years out of the academy, I also have ceased needing to have an opinion on everything.   But I haven't ceased wanting to know enough to have an opinion, and so I feel a little sad that I can't track everything down enough to do so.

    + + +

    One way for me to mentally make peace with that slight discontent:  I have developed an even stronger interest in sci-comm as sci-comm, in the way that technical information is adapted to suit the needs and background levels of the various audiences.   I'm endlessly fascinated with the way complex information changes, or remains constant, as it is transmitted to different ears or eyes and minds through different media. 

    Taking a step back and evaluating:  is this clear? is this correct? is this maintaining my attention? what is working and what is not?  This is a tool of detachment (I don't have to feel part of the intended audience) and also a way for me to think about what I am thinking.  I'm not sure whether it makes me a good scholar or a bad one, or really if it's just proof of being an ex-scholar; but it makes me feel more comfortable because I feel I've preserved my integrity.  These questions are something I can get at directly and immediately, unlike the content itself.  Of that, I must be satisfied (much more often than I'd like) to take someone else's word for it.

    —

    |

    No comments on Meta-popular science.

  • Sensory overload.

    I've mostly finished my planning for school next year, and everything is looking fairly tidy, and there's still a month of summer left.   I could… read a book or something?  

    The family is fairly busy: 

    The oldest, only home for three more weeks before he moves into his apartment at college, is working two jobs and taking Calc III online; yesterday evening while Mark and I were taking in the last two episodes of a Monty Python documentary, he was slouching around with headphones and my college linear algebra textbook. 

    (He's taking combinatorics next semester!  It's a kind of math I never had time for!  Vicariously thrilled.)

    The next oldest is on the Scouting BSA high adventure trip, which this year is on bikes.  I hear through the parental grapevine that he's getting pretty worn out by the end of the day.   The youngest two are doing youngest-two things:  sandboxes, Minecraft, building toys.

    Number three and I are preparing for a high adventure for her AHG troop:  four women and ten girls, we are plotting a four-day section hike on the Superior Hiking Trail later in August.   I am not the primary planner for this trip, and mostly am doing what other people tell me to do, which has been luxurious.  Also I am going to carry my own tent in which I get to sleep by myself (unless some disaster befalls one of the other tents) and this adaptation has made me feel very serene.

    + + +

    The story of my middle age is one of learning to be more gentle with myself, less demanding; less pretense of ambition and self-importance.  I frown at it sometimes, because I'm not entirely sure that I haven't overcorrected:  that in learning to say "no" to things and setting boundaries on my time and energy, I'm not relying too much on other people's (perhaps excessive) impulses to say "yes," and not letting others bear burdens that must be borne by somebody, that I could pick up if I cared to.

    It's tough to tease out.  Maybe it's a stage I'm going through, and I'll emerge with more purity of intention.   If so, I hope it happens soon.  I tend to fall into this trap of doing a lot, needing to be working all the time, busy all the time, not for kindness or a sense of community, but because I have this compulsion to not screw up—to not be seen as screwing up; a kind of modified perfectionism, where not everything has to be perfect, only the parts that I've decided have to be perfect.  Perfectionistic self-presentation, except that I don't care about looking like someone else's definition of perfect, only my own internal one, which includes a sort of curated collection of flaws.

    Anyway, I'm trying not to be so focused on looking like someone who Has It All Together, and a big part of that has been, when it's time to sign up for tasks, to (a) take on the ones that I find energizing instead of energy-draining; (b) to ask for, hmm, what's the right word here, sensory accommodations.  

    + + +

    Task selection, okay.  So one of the things that I hope is true is that I'm enough of an oddball that what energizes me is unappealing to other folks, so when I grab the tasks that I want, other people are breathing a sigh of relief that it isn't them.   When it's time to sign up for vacation Bible school, please let me work in the parish school kitchen, assemble snacks while obsessing about avoiding cross-contamination for kids with allergies, and run the noisy and steamy industrial dishwasher in the summer heat; please do not make me lead a room full of seven-year-olds in art projects.  When it's time to volunteer for the girls' troop, please let me schedule all of the boards of reviews and keep track of all the forms, or carry a thirty-pound pack on a section hike; please do not make me lead a room full of seven-year-olds in badge work for an entire year. 

    My fingers are crossed that somewhere is someone saying It's hard to do all these lesson plans, but at least I'm not serving snacks!  At least I'm not running those boards of reviews!  At least I'm not in charge of the spreadsheet!   At least I'm not pooping in the woods!

    As for the sensory accommodations.  Now I'm on shakier ground, but  I think maybe as a kid growing up, I was not exactly neurotypical?  And probably still am not, despite having learned some compensatory behaviors?  (I still feel perpetually a few years developmentally behind my peer set, which maybe is okay now that my peer set is in its mid-forties?  Don't know.) 

    One of the small mercies of the twenty-first century is a bit more gentleness and accepting of children who have, shall we say, "sensory issues."  I think there's less "suck it up, kid" and a bit more of cutting the tags out of clothing, or selling the clothing without tags in the first place, you know?  What comes to mind for me is an offhand story of a few years ago.  A friend who sent her child to a local Catholic school told me warmly about the unexpected accommodation the school made for her child, of letting her child wear soft knit navy pants instead of the too-stiff, betagged uniform twill; such a simple way to make her life easier every single morning and her child's days easier every single day, such an obvious thing to do for a child who needed it more than most kids, something that really didn't hurt anyone.   And yet it's the kind of thing that wasn't always done for kids.

    I'm trying to extend the same sort of thing to myself.

    There aren't a large number of troubles I have.  I'm not beset by food intolerances, or much to do with clothing now that I can choose my own freely (except for the sounds made by nearby corduroy or a certain type of finish texture on a certain type of nylon—eek, I've got chills running up my spine just thinking about it!) But there are a few things that do set me off.  Certain odors, certain sounds, and the lack of an escape route or shelter from whatever human beings happen to be surrounding me.   There's almost a synaesthesia about it—a syn-dysthesia, more like it.  There are sounds that make my teeth hurt and put a metallic taste in my mouth.  There are smells that make the back of my neck tickle.  There's a sudden and intense suffocation from the nearness of other human beings.

    It's been absurdly freeing to begin to think of these as not some kind of character flaw but instead as a sensory issue that I am allowed to accommodate in myself.   You know what?   I don't have to buy toothpaste that tastes too minty.  I don't have to use dishwashing liquid that has a scent that makes me want to flee the room.   I can turn off the radio if I can hear the newsreader's saliva gurgling in her mouth.

    And if I'd like to chaperone the tween girls' hiking trip and it's not actually vitally important that we save weight so much that I have to share a tent with other adults… I can carry my own tent.  

    + + +

    I realize I'm relying on other people to tell me if I'm causing a problem, this taking steps to alleviate the difficulties I have.  I don't read rooms very well.  I don't read minds, or faces, well at all; and I have practically no poker face of my own.  I am giving voice more often to something I should have said a lot earlier:  "Tell me if something else is needful; otherwise, I'll do this the way it works for me."  I don't mean to do what I want to do instead of what needs to be done, I mean choosing from what needs to be done, and doing it, with an eye to my charisms.  I would say I'm learning to set a boundary, except that it's not really a boundary I am setting for other people?  It's a boundary that exists in me; I'm learning to respect it.  

    Not that I never cross the boundary—yeah, I do stuff that doesn't feel great, who doesn't have to do that sometimes?—but that I'm aware of the consequences and I understand where my real limits are.  How to feed myself on a regular diet of solitude and flow, so that I have the energy to do what needs to be done, among people, with kindness, maybe even pleasantness; instead of pretending I can live on air.

     

    —

    |

    3 comments on Sensory overload.

  • Before the start of the year.

    Trying to get back into the blogging habit means, I'm sorry to say, writing when I can't think of something to write. 

    + + +

    It's late July, and I am just now pulling my schoolroom together as well as my outlined lesson plans for the year.

    IMG_7401

    After a couple of years of having the desks separated, I've pushed them back into table formation.  This is mainly for H's convenience, because on Thursdays she'll be running language arts sessions (mainly phonics and memorization of nursery rhymes) with three kindergarteners, while my fourth-grader does independent reading and such nearby.  I think it'll also help me manage the two youngest on the other days of the week, though.  

    The bigger two don't sit at the desks much anymore, but it's there if we need the table for something else, and they do store supplies in the drawers.

    + + +

    IMG_7406

    Now that my youngest is five whole years old, I realized I don't actually have to lock away everything that could be dumped out on the floor.  I can put a box of colored pencils and another box of crayons on the bottom shelf.  I can stack trays of all the paper right out there where I can see it.  It's so freeing.

    + + +

    What's going on this year?  Number one son will be off at college again, of course.  He got into the business school, which was the main unknown hanging over his head, and so things are looking good as far as he is concerned.  Number two, who turns sixteen soon, will have biology and algebra and English and driver's ed and American history and Swedish and art.  Number three, the eighth grader, has Latin and algebra (half time) and geometry (half time) and English and history and botany and also art.   What's great about those two kids is that nearly everything they are doing, I have been through once before, and I saved all my stuff, so maybe I won't have to reinvent so many wheels.  Botany and Swedish are new, but I have a workable curriculum for each.

    The nine-year-old is sort of cobbling together a bunch of things.  He wants to learn Greek still, so I'm doing my best to feed that.  And he's got his math program, and language arts from Hannah, and he'll be starting the geography program I love so much this year.  For science, what he wanted more than anything was just to alternate doing kits with good read-alouds, and that sounds fun to me, so I'm going to give that a try.  We're going to start by building a Gauss rifle and learning about velocity and acceleration, I think.  After that I have a kit about collisions.  I don't know how long it will take to do those, so we'll start from there and then decide what to do next.

    As for the kindergartener, who is already five and a half, well, all you really need to do is follow along in a math program, work on learning to read and write, and read aloud some books.  Have some art supplies available, I would normally say, except that this five-year-old doesn't spontaneously make art much.   They're all different.

    + + +

    The years are much the same, in broad strokes.  A big binder labeled with the different subjects,filled with grade recording sheets I make myself, and the first few weeks' assignments ready to go.  The bookshelves behind me all newly rearranged and arrayed in their beauty.  A newly cleared-off counter:

    IMG_7404

    And of course that sense that this year I'll totally be able to keep track of everything, no one will flop onto the floor making grunting noises, everyone will do all their assignments on time, nothing will take longer than the time I have allotted for it, and serenity will reign in our home.   I can enjoy it for a few weeks, anyway.

     

    —

    |

    2 comments on Before the start of the year.

  • Accomplishments.

    Do you ever tell yourself the story of your life, in your head?  Do you ever revise the story as you go?  

    I do, all the time.  I am not sure if the revisions are a kind of erasure and rewriting of history, or if they are a kind of re-interpretation of history, an improvement of perspective as time carries me farther and farther away and I can take a wider view.

    + + +

    As a girl I was told, too often I think, that I would someday do Great Things:  all the individual people meant well, or at least meant nothing serious, but the total accumulation of expectations weighed heavily.   

    At the same time I heard other things, too, and I think they carried the same weight:  that I didn't know how to deal with people, that I didn't know how to make friends, that I wasn't naturally likeable, that the problem wasn't what I say but always how I say it, that I didn't know how to dress myself, that I was physically clumsy and physically lazy. 

    It wasn't my sibling's fault, and I know this, but I got compared to him a lot, and the message was something along these lines:  You're pretty book-smart, but I'm a lot less worried about him than I am about you.  I know he'll do well because he's doing fine in school and he knows how to get along with people.  People like him.

    (Who knows what he heard or didn't hear from the other side of those comparisons?)

    + + +

    So, ultimately, I achieved some of the things I said out to do, and a lot of them were difficult and much of them were rewarding.  I haven't (yet) accomplished any of the Great Things.  I mean, plenty of Not-Too-Shabby things in that domain, but nothing world-changing.   And then of course I stopped trying in that domain entirely; I quit it.

    One of the things I'm gradually editing and rewriting in my story, though, is the column labeled "Accomplishments."   And here's the reason. 

    I quit that other domain, in part, because I felt myself (more than most people!  this isn't about you!) to be internally and invisibly disabled, hampered, struggling.   I'm not talking about imposter syndrome, I'm not talking about struggling as a scientist, though of course there was imposter syndrome, and of course it is challenging to be a young scientist.  I expected that, we should all expect that.  I'm talking about feeling disabled as a human being who relates to others.  I felt that I operated in a kind of impairment, that it was always going to take extra work, extra attention, extra care for me to hold my family together, or maybe to hold myself together enough.  Deep down, I did not think I could do both things adequately.  (No, not even when acknowledging that it's not just me who has to do the holding-together.)

    I know and admire many parents who can, and who do; who don't just hold it together, who excel.  I didn't think I could be one of them.   A few years of parenting and sciencing at the same time only reinforced it for me.

    + + +

    Weighing the opportunity cost now, I am trying to honor as accomplishments the relationships I have built.   The girl who wasn't naturally likeable has been married twenty years to a very good spouse who, by all appearances, loves her dearly.  The girl who was physically lazy is raising five lovely children.   The girl who didn't know how to make friends, well, she doesn't have a lot of friends, but she has some very, very good friends, real ones, who have made a tremendous difference; with some effort (maybe more than most people need) she's kept the best of the ones that go way back, and still occasionally makes new ones.

    These are things that I have worked hard for, and not things that were laid on me like weight, like expectations; they are unlooked-for gifts that I've thrown all my efforts to,  in order to keep and steward them.  I'm grateful for the opportunity.  They will never belong on a CV, of course, but I'm telling this story to myself, and they go in.

     

    —

    |

    7 comments on Accomplishments.

  • Cognitive labor and recipes.

    Last night I used the second half of a package of Spanish-style chorizo to make huevos rotos.  This tastes pretty close to how we had it in Spain. Recipe follows, and blog post below that.

    IMG_7396

    Simple Huevos Rotos (broken eggs)

    • 1.5 lb tiny potatoes… you know those bags of prewashed potatoes they have now?  One of those bags.
    • 2 links (so, 4-6 oz) of Spanish-style, fully-cooked chorizo sausage
    • 1 small onion, optional
    • About 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
    • 4 eggs
    • Salt to taste

    Cut the potatoes into halves or quarters, 1" pieces, and boil in salted water until just tender; drain and spread on a towel-lined tray to dry fully.

    Meanwhile, cut the optional onion into small dice and slice the chorizo thinly.

    When the potatoes are dry, heat 1/4" of olive oil in a broad skillet that can hold them all.  Fry the potatoes, stirring gently, till browned and as crispy as you like them.  Remove all the potatoes with slotted spoon and divide among four plates (if that's too many potatoes, put any extra to drain on paper towels); salt them.

    Add to the hot oil the onion (if you like) and stir, then the chorizo, just for a couple of minutes; remove with slotted spoon (if you dislike burned onion, be sure to get it all out) and scatter over potatoes.  

    Fry eggs two at a time in the hot chorizo-flavored oil, sunny side up.  Poke the whites with your spatula to spread them out and give them a lacy edge; baste the whites with a spoon.  When the edges are crispy and the whites set, but the yolks still runny, drape the eggs over the potatoes and chorizo.  Break the yolks so they run all over, and serve.

    + + +

    I've wanted to attempt huevos rotos ever since we had it on our brief vacation together in Spain last fall.  I've kept it there in the back of my mind as I made the grocery lists and meal plans, and checked the meat sections of the various supermarkets I have shopped in; they often had chorizo, but always the Mexican style, which I'm not as fond of, or an American "chorizo" that isn't quite the same.  When I was out on a long walk in Northeast Minneapolis last weekend, I stopped into Kramarczuk's (no dice) and then into Surdyk's cheese shop, where–hurrah!– I found a twelve-ounce package of Spanish-style chorizo.  I stuck it in the fridge and the next time the meal plan came around I figured out which day I wouldn't be gone all day, nor too tired to cook in the evening—a Saturday—and put it on the list.  I stuck a Spanish rosé in the fridge that morning.  It was a brilliant dinner.  And since it only used half the package of chorizo, I did it again last night.

    + + +

    A few days ago a new paper came out in American Sociological Review:  Daminger A, "The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor."   I appreciate Daminger's emphasis of the term "cognitive labor" here, because there's been a lot of messy terminology being thrown around about the work of generally keeping on top of the household.  I've particularly been annoyed by a trend towards calling it "emotional labor," which is a problem because

    • (a) "emotional labor" already has a useful meaning, i.e., the part of any job where you have to work to manage other people's emotions or work to control your own, and
    • (b) "emotional labor" as a referent to the management of physical tasks is precariously and non-ironically close to meaning "women's work."

    The same tasks have also been called "invisible labor" by others, but Daminger's term is more precise, and I think she's done us a favor in describing it in some detail.  From the abstract:

    The data [in-depth interviews with 35 couples] demonstrate that cognitive labor entails anticipating needs, identifying options for filling them, making decisions, and monitoring progress. Because such work is taxing but often invisible to both cognitive laborers and their partners, it is a frequent source of conflict for couples. Cognitive labor is also a gendered phenomenon: women in this study do more cognitive labor overall and more of the anticipation and monitoring work in particular. However, male and female participation in decision-making, arguably the cognitive labor component most closely linked to power and influence, is roughly equal. These findings identify and define an overlooked—yet potentially consequential— source of gender inequality at the household level and suggest a new direction for research on the division of household labor.

    I am genuinely interested in cognitive labor as a gender issue, not because it is a source of conflict in my own marriage, but explicitly because it isn't. 

    I completely understand how it can be.  I have observed such conflicts in others.  In my experience, this kind of conflict is responsible for a very high number of the "ha ha, aren't husbands always like this" sort of small talk that you occasionally get when a lot of mothers are together in a room.   

    So… why do I not perceive it as a source of conflict in our home?  Here are some possibilities.  

    1. My spouse and I share the cognitive labor relatively equally:  I specialize in some parts, and he in others, and we don't have an expectation that we'll keep track of the stuff that's in the other's sphere.  (This is my knee-jerk explanation.)
    2. We don't share it equally, but we are content with the division:  whoever's shouldering more is glad enough to be in charge of that stuff instead of something else. 
    3. We don't share it equally, but whoever's shouldering more has lower standards and/or has accepted their lot in this marriage.
    4. Actually, it's Mark who is carrying a burdensome cognitive load and I'm the one who is as clueless as the spouses (both male) who are quoted in the opening lines of the paper.  If you knew me in person, you would know that this is not an outlandish possibility.

    I'm looking forward to reading the paper in depth because Daminger applies to her thirty-five couples the kind of analysis that speaks to me.  She divides up the cognitive labor in the household into separate "domains," and classifies each as "male-led," "female-led," "shared," or "undetermined."  Along the way she identifies four components of cognitive labor (anticipation of a need, problem, or opportunity; identifyion options; choosing an option; and monitoring the results).  I noticed and appreciated that she left out the performing of the task—a lot of discussion of this kind of thing seems to me to have conflated the task-doing with the mental tasks, so she's made a newly nice distinction.  And then she examines the couples' dynamics for sources of conflict, the reasons why it doesn't make always make it into the couple's "economy of gratitude," and the balance of overall load and decision-making power.

    (Yes, I'm setting myself up to write a follow-up post.  Fingers crossed.)

    In the meantime I find myself musing about the cognitive load I perceive myself to carry. As a matter of personality and skill-set, I enjoy most kinds of cognitive labor more than most kinds of physical labor.  I will very often perform cognitive tasks, even fairly rote and low-level ones, as a means of procrastination of physical labor.  I loved being at school.  I didn't like the stress of graduate school very much, and I turned out to be a poor experimentalist, and it was hard to juggle everything after I had babies, but the actual academic work—the reading and writing, the computer code, the hours in the library, the organizing of information, the pencil-and-paper calculations—flowed right by.  I would look up and hours would have gone by, and I didn't even notice it.

    It would not be an exaggeration to say that I have chosen to take on most of the work homeschooling our offspring, in part, because it has allowed me to "cognitivize" a life of mothering at home.  As I write, the other windows open on my computer desktop involve detailed schedules of the school subjects that my homeschooled children will be starting this fall:  pages and pages of spreadsheets and booklists.  I've taught myself one whole new language and parts of four others, learned a considerable amount of  biology and art that I never got in school, crammed a lot of educational psychology to try to help one child struggling with the ability to focus, and worked out on my own how to put together a transcript customized for two different universities.

    All this is a lot of work, but work I enjoy (much more than the work of sitting down with anyone who is at all recalcitrant or fighting off sleep and trying to teach them).  I am primarily concerned with my own sense of satisfaction in a life well lived.  I admit one navel-gazing indulgence:    I occasionally consider whether the wider world has, in net, lost or gained from my decisions.  I'm not a special person, but my cognitive power has been trained at considerable expense to the taxpaying public, who might have expected to get some kind of results out of me.  And what do they have?  Not much work put into the economies of money and academy;  almost everything into an economy of relationships.  Almost all my efforts  into just a few people, instead of spreading it out and having a smaller effect on many.  Who knows who paid the opportunity cost?

    I do not know.  But I know this:  I eat very well.   

    And that is as good a stopping point for this post as any.

    —

    |

    3 comments on Cognitive labor and recipes.

  • In which I make an appearance.

    The most boring kind of blog post is the "why I haven't been writing" blog post.

    + + +

    Scratch that.  Sometimes, I bet, posts of this type can be gripping.  I might have just awoken from a coma.  Mark might have come home unexpectedly, weeks ago, with tickets and inn reservations for a lengthy hiking adventure in Scotland.   I might have gone bankrupt and failed to pay my Typepad subscription on time.

    But, no.

    + + +

    If these posts are so boring, why do they exist?  Why am I making one?  I think these posts aren't for the reader, for a reader, for any reader.  They are not really meant to be read at all.  They are for the writer:  they are the first interminable jog around the track after months on the couch.  Barely an effort.   The point is not to make an effort.  Effort has been a barrier.  This is just showing up, because  showing up is the first step.  

    + + +

     I think some of what has kept me away is a feeling of being unable to add clarity to anything at all.   The more experience one gains in any area, the more one realizes how little one knows; how very not-universal are the things one has figured out.   That sometimes translates to a sense of not having something new or useful to contribute, especially in an arena where there are already so many voices clamoring for attention.   

    I guess you could say that I took some time off to listen to other people?  That sounds more high-minded than it is.  It hasn't exactly been intentional.  I just kept finding, day after day, that I wanted to read a new person's opinion and ideas more than I wanted to generate any of my own.   

    + + + 

    I would like to believe that my lapse into radio silence is a symptom of having passed peak Dunning-Kruger, as in the following comic, but extending from political discourse to all discourse:

    20110308

    Weinersmith Z, "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal." Web. 8 Mar 2011.

    That is, I would like to believe that I shut up, having finally realized that I don't know as much as I think I do, and that ever afterward I can restrict myself to writing things I actually understand something about. 

    There are a couple of problems with this scenario, one of which is that (whatever readers may think) I don't blog in order to get my great ideas out into the world, I blog in order to think more clearly.  I always have done that, used writing to figure things out.  The possibility that other eyeballs will see it is only a kind of accountability:  I have to make some sort of sense, I have to write with some level of compassion and charity, or someone I respect will make fun of me for being wrong on the Internet.

    Perhaps I have suddenly realized that there is no level of sense that will protect any of us for being pointed at as an example of Wrong On The Internet.

    Perhaps I have suddenly realized that I do not, in fact, have anything like sufficient compassion and charity.

    + + +

    A couple of years ago I really started examining in earnest the notion that persuasion is for most people an exercise in relationship.  There's nothing wrong with trying to clearly articulate a position as a mental and logical exercise alone, or even in order to compile a useful resource for interested individuals; but persuasion itself, for most people, is mediated not by the persuader's logic but by the persuader's trustworthiness.  That's trustworthy not in the sense of "reliably correct" or even "intellectually honest," but a more intuitive and emotional connection between persuader and persuaded:  a sense of a real relationship and true, not fake, concern.

    It's possible that becoming aware of this has stopped me up a bit, because I cannot sense in myself anything real that can connect, that can generate true concern and charity and compassion, beyond my immediate friend-circle.  I mean, maybe I have it but I'm not sure, and I doubt I could fake it, and if I did fake it I would hate myself for it.   If Love must be seen before Truth can be heard, well, then, what point is there for me to write?  I can Love the people close to me, but invisible and imaginary potential readers are abstractions, and the only abstraction I can Love is truth itself.  I second-guess myself a lot when I think about writing hard topics.  Where I used to relish working out the connections and classifications, I find myself thinking:  but why am I doing it?  Am I just trying to win points in a game?  Am I just trying to feel satisfied that my position is the most sensible?  Is this in any way at all an attempt to communicate anything to a real human being?  Am I thinking of my imaginary reader as a real human person, a subject, or just an object which I may use as an imaginary receptacle for my polished arguments (or worse, a scratching-post upon which I can polish them)?  

    I think that's where I am.  I might have a lot to say, but what is any of it worth when it comes from me in particular?

    I don't mean that I know it to be worthless.  I mean that I don't know its worth, and the realization that I don't know its worth has suddenly clammed me up, made me want to figure it out, so I can put the proper disclaimer on it, whatever that is.

     

     

     

    —

    |

    4 comments on In which I make an appearance.

  • St. Francis de Sales on the worth of the Passion.

    Occasionally theologians, visionaries, saints, and homilists assert that no human being ever suffered pain, abandonment, and humiliation to such a degree as did Jesus in his Passion.  I certainly have heard that from the pulpit.  I have had conversations in which people speak movingly of their belief that no one ever suffered as much pain, or was tortured as cruelly, as Jesus was; that no human suffering can ever compare to it.

    It's possible.  I confess it is not an assertion on which I will stake everything, even interiorly.   And because of that uncertainty, I definitely would not give voice to it, lest I wound some listener.  Among mere humans, to sit in judgment over sufferings, deciding whose pain measures up and whose doesn't rate so highly, is fruitless and cruel.      "You have suffered, but I know someone who has suffered more; let me tell you about him."  Even some believing Christians, thinking back on their own suffering, find this approach dismissive.   This assertion sounds dangerously close to:  Your suffering doesn't matter, is nothing, in the shadow of this greatest suffering. 

    (Sometimes, in the midst of a sermon about Having Some Perspective, it sounds exactly like this.)

    But our faith does not rest in any way on the assertion that Jesus's suffering was the worst-ever suffering in the history of the human race.

    Here is another approach:

    Our Lord had two natures, human and divine. 

    As God, He could not die.  Further, He could neither suffer nor die…. And just as He could never sin, He also could never die, for, like sinning, dying is a lack of power. 

    Even as man He could die or not die; for although it is a general law that all men die, nevertheless He could have ben exempted from that law because there was no sin in Him.  Remember, it is sin that gave death entrance.  But our Lord never chose to avail Himself of this privilee, and so took a passible and mortal body.  He became incarnate in order to be Saviour. 

    He chose to save us by suffering and dying, and to take on Himself, in His sacred humanity, and in strictest justice, what we had merited because of our iniquities.  He was so one in His divine and human natures that even though He suffered only in His humanity and not in His divinity, which is impassible nevertheless, when one sees the manner in which He suffered, one cannot tell, so to speak, if it was God or man who suffered, so admirable are the virtues He practiced.

    Even though he suffered nothing as God, yet His divinity united with His humanity gave such price, value and merit to these sufferings, that the smallest tear, the smallest movement of His Sacred Heart, the smallest loving sigh was more meritorious, more precious and more pleasing to God than would have been all imaginable torments of body and spirit—more pleasing even than the torments of Hell—endured by creatures endowed with the greatest perfection. 

    I will say even more:  all the pains in a hundred thousand million Hells suffered with the greatest perfection possible to a human creature would have been nothing compared to the smallest sigh of Our Lord, to the smallest drop of the blood that He shed for love of us. 

    For it is His divine Person, infinitely excellent and infinitely worthy, that gives price and value to such actions and sufferings.

    Yet His divinity is so united with His humanity that we can truly say God suffered death, death on a Cross, to redeem us and give us life.

    This is St. Francis de Sales's "Sermon for Good Friday, March 25, 1622." 

    What makes the sufferings of Jesus valuable is not the degree of suffering that He endured.  All such sufferings are (by their nature) finite.  What gives them value is the infinite and uncreated value of the One who willingly underwent them.  It is the Incarnation:  the Passion is what brings it to fulfillment and completion; but the value of the Incarnation alone is infinite.

    God who is all Good and whose will is all Good willingly chose suffering of all kinds.  Therefore we can know that human suffering (of all kinds) is not worthless, has been baptized with the value of one who suffered all the little scrapes and stings of life with us in His compassion, all the way to the end.   

    The Passion cannot overshadow our human sufferings and make them worthless by outshining them in horror or shame or intensity.  The Incarnation, the moment when God entered into human suffering, infuses all human suffering with its value and power.  Our suffering is not worth less because God suffered all the things He did:  it is worth more.  

     

     

    —

    |

    1 comment on St. Francis de Sales on the worth of the Passion.

  • Self-care with St. Francis de Sales.

    (Read my other posts on Introduction to the Devout Life by following links here.)

    Introduction to the Devout Life may be read online here.  Link goes to table of contents.

    But if you are willing to purchase a physical book, and believe me this work is worth it because it's the sort of thing you might want to carry around with you, my recommended translation is that of Fr. Michael Day.  Look for it as a used book.

    + + + 

    When the year comes around to the end of January, close to St. Francis de Sales's feast day, I like to go through the method of "annual renewal and preservation of devotion" that he lays out in Introduction to the Devout Life.    

    A little ways into the method there's a fairly detailed, fairly general examination of conscience.  In fact, St. Francis offers two different forms of examination of conscience, a long form in V.3-6  and a shorter form in V.7; I'm considering the longer form, which he suggests doing in pieces over the course of one or two days. 

    It's quite reasonably structured, and might work well as a day-to-day examination of conscience as well:  it is divided into instructions on how to make the examination, then considerations of one's behavior towards God, towards self, and towards neighbor. 

    Despite this relatively ordinary form, it's a somewhat unusual examination of conscience.  It's not a simple accounting of sins, for the purpose of making a good regular confession.  Nor is it an overview of one's faults, temptations, inclinations, and bad habits, as one does before making a general confession (you know, the type that often requires one to make an appointment and block off an hour).  It's the medium-perspective E. O. C., with an object that is hardly penitential and accusatory. 

    Rather, it's celebratory, serene, and motivating.  Look at the language:

    • Protest [to God] that you wish to note your progress, not for your own satisfaction but to rejoice in it for God's sake;
    • not for your own glory but for his, that you may thank him. 
    • Protest also, if you seem to have made little progress or even fallen back, that you will not give way to discouragement and become faint-hearted and lukewarm,
    • but on the contrary that you will stir yourself to greater efforts, humble yourself and strive with God's grace to remedy your defects. 
    • Having done this, consider calmly and peacefully how you have behaved up to the present towards God, your neighbour and yourself.

    I want to pull out specifically a subsection from V.5, "Your Behavior Towards Yourself."  This is the very essence of self-care, now and circa 1609:

    3.  What sort of love have you for your heart?  With what care do you seek to cure it in its infirmities?  It is your duty to do all you can for it when it is tormented by passions and to lay all else aside to bring it relief.

    Now, the precise definition of "heart" here matters.   I took some time to search for other occurrences of the term "heart" in the book, working with an English translation (one of these days I'll attack the French, but I haven't cracked my copy yet).   

    In my opinion, what St. Francis de Sales means by "heart" is the seat of affections, inclinations, attachments, and emotions.  It's not, to him, the only part of the self, but a component that's closely linked to the body and to relationships both human and divine.

    I love St. Francis de Sales's tender regard for the human self, not a kind of disappearance of the self in favor of the divine, but recognizing the value of the human person as a creature that can be taken up to participate in the divine.   

    Amy Welborn wrote about this on the feast day, last week, and it's really closely related:

    In an empty, meaningless universe, if we can start there – you matter – well,that’s where we have to start. It may strike me as solipsistic and goopy, but if you have been formed to believe that your life means whatever you want  which means, in essence your life means nothing –  to learn that: your life has happened because the Creator of the Universe wants  it to…

    ….is, indeed, transformative.

    But here we are, back with St. Francis de Sales. And he won’t let you rest there. He won’t let you rest with I’m okay, I’m loved, I’m here for a reason, I have amazing gifts and talents. 

    Nope.

    Traditional Catholic spirituality – as expressed by today’s saint – is not about resting on our laurels and delighting in our unique gifts and talents. It’s about honestly looking at ourselves, seeing what trash we’ve allowed in, and sucking it up, embracing hard discipline, and moving forward.

    We post-Vatican II babies were raised to look back at this type of spirituality and shudder: Scrupulosity! God loves you just as you are!

    The basic difference has been:

    • Salvation = understanding and accepting that God made you and loves you as you are
    • Salvation = cooperating with the grace of God to restore the you he made. 

    And this is why St. Francis de Sales is so wonderful. He bridges this gap, he is realistic on every score, reminding us that we are not perfect and that we should be striving for perfection, but warning us against unrealistic expectations as well…

    I think I'd like to add that really, this vision of the human person and their relationship to God can be totally sufficient for conversion of people in 2019 — as long as we remember that it's not just ourselves for which we bridge this gap. 

    • We need to accept that other people, our neighbors, aren't perfect, but that they're not hopeless either, they're capable of striving for perfection, and it's appropriate to their dignity that we mentor those in our care to do so.
    • We must be warned against unrealistic expectations of those other human persons as well.
    • God made our neighbor, and loves our neighbor as they are.  Really!
    • Our neighbor is capable, is wanted, cooperating with God to restore the one he made.

    And if you read into St. Francis you'll see that there's constantly this tenderness (and realism) about the soul's relationship with other human beings. 

    I keep telling people that it's ahead of its time.  It feels like a modern book.  This is why I prefer the most contemporary-sounding language possible in the translation; anything with a scent of antiquity about it tends to obscure the frank and clear voice, the way a black-and-white photograph feels more distant from us than one in color.   It's the best manual I've found so far, at least for myself, because (I think) it was truly written, four hundred and some years ago, for someone like me.

    —

    |

    No comments on Self-care with St. Francis de Sales.

  • Six short pieces on which language to learn.

    A couple of weeks ago The Economist tweeted out a link to an 2012 article from their lifestyle arm, 1843 Magazine, entitled "Which is the Best Language to Learn?"  

    Screen Shot 2019-01-20 at 7.39.56 AM

    (image not clickable)

    The caption/link writers were a bit too vague.  I think this for two reasons: 

    First, they mention too subtly that the article is aimed at native speakers of English.  Granted, the problem is not entirely on their end, but we can all learn to be more clear from the flood of Twitter comments complaining that English was not identified as the best language .

    Second, more pointedly, the tweet suggests that clicking on the link will lead you to an article decidedly in favor of English speakers learning French.

    It's not!  It's better than that, and I only wish the editors had made the feature longer.  It's actually six separate pieces, written by six different people.  It's almost like a panel discussion with six speakers, each making an argument for learning their own favorite languages: 

    • French
    • Spanish,
    • standard Chinese, aka Mandarin
    • Arabic
    • Brazilian Portuguese
    • Latin.

    The feature has a major structural flaw, which probably contributed to the bad captioning.   The piece ought to have a distinct introduction, followed by arguments for each of the six languages.  Unfortunately, the introduction-writer and the French-learning-cheerleader are the same writer, as if one of the panelists was also the moderator.   He didn't take care to separate these two rhetorical tasks (not only that, but he feels the need to defend French from Chinese in particular, something that comes across as a sort of pre-buttal of the Mandarin fan whose bit appears later).  

    And of course, I'd have loved for the feature to have been even longer and included arguments promoting the learning of even more languages.   Even more importantly, I'd have loved to see more attributes of different languages being considered.  

    Still, they covered most of the key points to consider, and promoted language learning in general.  All too often, languages are suggested to English speakers merely on the basis of "usefulness," which in practice is rhetorically limited to considering the likelihood that one expects to have economic transactions in the language.   

    But there are lots of different reasons to learn languages, and the six "panelists" touch on many of them:

    • acquiring meta-language that allows you to understand and use all languages better, including your own
    • broadening your cultural understanding in general
    • deepening your cultural understanding of whatever particular culture you are most interested in
    • grasping, a bit, another way to think about various concepts, say through interesting idioms
    • career preparation for conducting international business
    • career preparation for conducting diplomacy 
    • reading literature
    • enjoying the challenge

    And what's great about this article is that it acknowledges that different languages fulfill these needs to varying degrees and in different ways.   

    And individual learners' tastes and ambitions matter more than anything.  Even the pro-French, Chinese-isn't-all-that-it's-cracked-up-to-be introduction writer says:  "By all means, if China is your main interest, for business or pleasure, learn Chinese. It is fascinating, and learnable."

    Beyond a particular interest, though, what are the arguments for each of the six featured languages?

    • Robert Lane Greene prefers French, calling it the most global language, with native speakers in every region; it's relatively easy for English speakers to learn, with grammar not very different from ours, and a great deal of vocabulary overlap.
    • Daniel Franklin promotes Spanish.  It has an enormous number of native speakers, is a regional champion, is heavily used on the Internet and as an international language, and has great literature and film.  Like French, it is relatively easy for English speakers to learn (and, I'd add, is far easier to pronounce and to spell).  It's also a bridge to Portuguese and Italian.
    • Standard Chinese, says Simon Long, has the most native speakers and its economic importance is growing very fast.
    • Josie Delap makes an enthusiastic aesthetic argument for Arabic:  difficult for English speakers at first, particularly because of the new script, but extremely rewarding and beautiful to learn (as well as an impressive feat).
    • Helen Joyce argues for Brazilian Portuguese on the grounds that it's not very difficult, invites you to visit and work in an interesting, beautiful, and half-continent-sized nation (plus a few other places), and will help you with your Spanish/French/Italian while letting you stand out from people who've chosen those more common second languages.  
    • Tim de Lisle begins by humorously stressing the lack of direct usefulness of Latin, but argues that it strengthens your linguistic "core," improves your understanding of grammar and syntax, requires rigor, and (perhaps ironically) claims it makes it harder to bullshit.  Its vocabulary is everywhere and its surviving literature is timeless.  He seems to argue that it is a great pleasure for a particular kind of nerd.

    So, across these few paragraphs, we have languages defended because they are easy and also because they are difficult.  Because your language has many second-language speakers, and because it has few.  Arguments based on economic importance, and arguments that concede nearly no economic importance at all.  

    It really depends on what your goal is.

    + + +

    There are a few more attributes for choosing a second language that aren't mentioned in here, which I would add.   Mine are:

    • Ease of accessing resources to learn a specific language in your town
    • Number of native speakers living near you
    • Closeness to English on the language family tree (which brings a kind of "easiness" that is distinct from the sort Latinate languages have).

    I never really thought about these three much until two things happened in our family.  

    First, something just for me:  I decided that for no reason other than personal interest, I wanted to learn a non-Indo-European language.  I wanted to explore a grammar that behaved sufficiently differently from the other languages I knew to give me a broader understanding of human beings' relationship to language, and see how different words worked together to create idioms. 

     In Minnesota overall, the non-Indo-European language that's spoken most widely is Hmong; but in my city, Minneapolis, public school students are much more likely to speak Somali at home than Hmong.  (In fact, they are nearly as likely to speak Somali as Spanish.)   That plus the convenience of not having to learn a new alphabet made it an obvious choice.  Not only do I have the chance to encounter native speakers regularly, but there are materials available which have been produced for Somali speakers:  signage, library books, newspapers, a radio station.   So even though my progress is fairly slow, as I work in my spare time through an imperfect text and meet a small study group monthly, I constantly get little affirmations from overheard snippets of conversation, from "thank yous" and "good mornings," and from being able to pick out words from signs and newsprint.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to have a real conversation, but I am enjoying the journey.

     

    Second, for one of my offspring, who begged to be allowed to quit Latin.  We all learn Latin at home because (being dead, and pronunciation and conversation unimportant) it's really well suited to the homeschool.  Most of the kids enjoy it, but one of mine… didn't.  He didn't have a particular desire to converse in a modern language either; he was struggling, and he needed something easier, because some language in high school is required for college.  "Anything but Latin!" he told me.  

    Well, if "anything but Latin" will do, then I was free to find something that would be relatively easy to arrange. 

    I speak French passably, read it fluently, and could probably have scraped together the time to teach it.  But I suspected that "Anything but Latin" also served, for him, as a tactful way to express "Anything but learning more language from you, Mom, who is a complete language nerd and can't deal with the fact that I find this really difficult."

    So I looked outward, and discovered relatively inexpensive Saturday-morning classes in Swedish, of all things, within walking distance of our house.

    Swedish doesn't hit many of the reasons from the article for why an English speaker would want to learn it.  It doesn't have global importance; its native-speaking population is small and almost entirely living in Sweden and Finland; fewer than 60,000 people living in the U. S. speak it at home (although, granted, a lot of them are probably living in Minnesota).   Finally, Swedes themselves overwhelmingly learn English and have even been called the "best in the world" at speaking it.

    What it does have going for it — besides the convenience of having classes available, and the fact that it is possible to supplement with commonly available commercial and online learning programs — is ease.    Although there's definitely grammar and vocabulary to learn, Swedish is possibly the easiest language for an English speaker to acquire.  And that is exactly what my son needed.  He has realized that learning a foreign language is something he can do.  And, surprising to both of us, he actually enjoys it.

    It's also slightly quirky, an unusual choice for an American kid with no Swedish heritage, and I think he enjoys that.   He had a fun time seeking out and greeting a small collection of very surprised Swedes at World Youth Day in Panamá.  We have a photo of him posing with them, grinning and holding the Swedish flag.

    I'm just saying, sometimes making it as easy as possible is the right thing to do.  There is no shame in that.

    + + +

    So, to sum up, what I've said before:  Really considering what you'd like to get out of a language, honestly — whether it's "I want to read cool literature" or whether it's "I just need the minimum possible so that I can get into college" — is key.

    —

    |

    No comments on Six short pieces on which language to learn.

  • Consolations and the prosperity gospel.

    Amy Welborn recently put up a post on the prosperity gospel's more subtle forms, a "well-trodden road" that she's considered many times.   

    This is an interesting discussion, because while some versions (the "health-and-wealth" gospel) are so obviously out of line with orthodox Christian thought as to be almost a parody, others are more difficult to untangle precisely because they seem to grow right out of unarguably Christian and Judeo-Christian beliefs.  

    It’s easy for us to look at an interpretation of Christianity with which we disagree and dismiss it out of hand, mock or condemn it – especially something as obviously wrong as the health-and-wealth gospel. More fruitful, I think, is to look at the why and the roots and explore how aspects of an incorrect interpretation might have crept into our own thinking. To examine it, see what’s true, what’s false and use it as a way, not so much to condemn others – over whom we have no control – but to grow in our own faith and conform ourselves more closely to truth.

    So let’s take the most recent newsworthy example – pastor John Gray purchasing a $200K Lamborghini for his wife.  Gray defended his purchase against criticism by pointing out that he’d not used church money to buy it, but rather money from a book deal, a television show on Oprah’s network and other income sources. He didn’t go whole hog Prosperity in defending it, but he did say: “God helped me to make my wife’s dream come true,” he wrote in an Instagram post Tuesday night. “Why not? She’s made mine come true!”

    This is a little different from promising the impoverished that if they align themselves correctly with God’s will, they’ll find more material comfort, but the very basic fundamentals are the same: When we do God’s will, it shows in our earthly lives. God helps us make our dreams come true.

    This is not, of course, incorrect. The deep roots of the Prosperity Gospel are in the ancient life of Israel. Read Psalms, read Proverbs. External blessing is a sign of God's favor in our tradition.

    But then along came the Exile.  And the challenge of Job. God’s people had to ask themselves: What does it mean to be blessed by God? What does God’s presence among us look like?

    The philosophical problem here is that our faith teaches that here on earth, all good things, visible and invisible, do come from God.   And we have plenty of Scripture to back us up that God does (at least some of the time) provide some kind of good to His faithful servants.  Perhaps health and wealth and safety; perhaps supportive mentors, friends, and family; perhaps graces of understanding and acceptance that help us put into perspective our lack of such things.  

    And yet… if this is the leaping-off point… can we leap off in the wrong direction?  

    One of the biggest dangers would be if we become satisfied.   Satisfied that our temporal blessings (visible and invisible) constitute evidence that we are doing the Christian life correctly.  Satisfied, too, in the sense of no longer… longing.

    Amy muses in this direction:

    It seems to me that the fundamental error of any “Prosperity Gospel” lies in the elevation of the truth that yes, we find authentic peace and true joy when our wills and choices are aligned with God’s will. That’s the truth we find in the very beginning of Scripture: Adam and Eve at peace in the Garden, and then at war with each other, God, nature and themselves outside of it.

    The way that a “Prosperity Gospel” twists this truth is when it encourages us to uncritically identify the fruits of a right relationship with God with anything temporal.

    It instrumentalizes the spiritual life.

    So now, look beyond the easy targets of health-and-wealth. Survey the contemporary popular spiritual landscape, Catholic and otherwise. If there’s a current self-help trend out there, are spiritual gurus close behind, baptizing it?

    ou might see and hear some of this:

    Through faith, I came to understand my purpose and look at the success I’ve found because of that.

    Through faith, I came to see and accept how beautiful I am, and what true beauty is.

    Because of faith, I feel great about myself and affirm my life as amazing and accomplished.

    This is hard, this is tricky, and I hope I can tease this apart correctly. Because I’m sure this might be striking you as just wrong. Because isn’t that  part of what faith is? In accepting Jesus as Lord of my life, aren’t I opening myself to a re-orientation, a proper understanding of myself and my relationship to the world that’s going to bear this fruit?

    True. All that is fruit of a relationship with Christ.

    Plot twist: But it’s really not that important, either.

     

    There's more, and you should go read what she has to say.   

    But I think there may be a way to… make it a little less tricky?  The Prosperity Gospel is a modern thing, but human nature is the same as always, and I suspect it's merely a new-ish manifestation of a very old temptation.

    In short:  Humans are perfectly capable of taking true graces that truly come from God and… screwing up our responses to them.

    + + + 

    This is what I wonder: 

    This sort of celebration of temporal happiness and satisfaction, accompanied by a broader understanding of what happiness and satisfaction means

    –e.g. “Now that I know what true beauty is” — something unspecified, but more than just conventional outer attractiveness — “I see that I am beautiful.”

    –Or: “now that I know what true wealth is, I see that I am wealthy”) —

    might fall under the category of “consolations.”  

    Consolations are, in the writings of the saints and in the writings of the magisterium, the opposite of affliction.   These are free gifts of happiness, contentment, felt blessings, confidence in the presence of God, strong feelings of conviction. All bestowed by God on some of the faithful, and occasionally understood to be withdrawn from them by God, as a means of increasing their (or someone's) growth in faith.

    Numerous saints have warned Christians against mistaking the consolation for something it is not. It is not (necessarily) a reward or a punishment; it is certainly not a reliable indication of the holiness of the individual, such that holier people receive more or fewer consolations; and while we may hope for consolations, we are expressly warned against making the consolation the end that we seek.

    In the Introduction to the Devout Life (IV.13) St. Francis de Sales includes "Spiritual and sensible  consolations" in the catalog of temptations to be overcome. 

    [Man's state] is ever changing, constantly in movement; his life on earth like waters which ebb and flow, sometimes lifted up by hope, sometimes depressed by fear, swept one way by consolation, another by affliction; no day, no hour, exactly the same.

    It is well to remember this, for we must strive to preserve our equanimity in the midst of these various changes; though all should change about is we must remain immovable, our eyes and our hearts ever fixed on God.

    He then lists items of "particular advice," which are really quite detailed and wonderful but which I will paraphrase here for brevity.

    1. Feelings of pleasure, sadness, consolation, or compassion which make our spiritual exercises pleasing or agreeable are not evidence of real devotion and can even be "snares of the devil, who encourages them to make much of these consolations and take such satisfaction in them that they no longer seek true devotion, which is to do constantly, resolutely, promptly, and energetically whatever we know to be pleasing to God."
    2. However, they are sometimes very useful, for they make the spiritual life attractive to us.  "
    3. How to know the difference between the two situations?   You will knmow them by the fruit they yield.  Our hearts are as trees, our feelings and desires their branches, our actions which follow from them the fruit.  If [consolations] make us more hunble and patient, considerate and merciful towards our neighbour, more fervent in mortifying our evil desires and inclinations, more constant in our devotion, more docile and submissive to those in authority over us, more simple in our lives [!], there can be no doubt that they come from God; but if we seek such feelings for our own satisfaction, if they make us selfish, irritable, self-assertive, impatient, overbearing, proud, presumptuous and harsh towards others and make us imagine that we are already saints and no longer in need of guidance or correction there is no doubt that they are false and evil….
    4. We must receive consolations with humility, never taking them for evidence of our own goodness, and use them according to God's intention, and also "occasionally detatch ourselves" from consolations by protesting to God that we seek only His love and not the sensible goods that he sends.

    Now, St. Francis doesn't take the position that I suggested above, that all consolations come from God and it is our response to them that matters.  He phrases it that some consolations are good and come from God whereas others arise "from our fallen nature" or are "sent by the devil."  I think either construction works.

    If indeed the sentiments that lead one into the prosperity-gospel error are incorrect responses to real spiritual consolations, then the ancient and medieval fathers will have much to say to us about how to avoid falling into this apparently modern error.

     

     

     

    —

    |

    No comments on Consolations and the prosperity gospel.

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Categories

…more to come later