Weekend and Book Report

Weekend:

The older one worked a lot – Friday evening, Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon into the evening. After working almost every afternoon last week as well, it’s good that he has somewhat of a break this week – not working again until Friday. He seems to be managing it well, though. He’s certainly learning to value free time and not take it for granted.

On Saturday morning, I had a very enjoyable time speaking to women of the diocese of Birmingham at Our Lady of the Valley parish.  I used some stories from the Guatemala trip in the talk, and as I did so, some points really clicked in my brain, so hopefully as the busy-ness of the early part of the week abates, I can move forward on that project with clarity.

After a summer break, they were back serving at the Casa Maria retreat house yesterday:

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(Again – sorry it’s huge. I wish you could resize videos on WordPress…but you can’t. I don’t think.)

Afternoon: reptiles.

 

This week:  Eclipse Day today – we are staying right here and will just see what we can see (with our glasses!). I was pretty convinced that if I attempted to travel to full totality – even though we had added incentive because Charleston, where my son, daughter-in-law and grandson live is in the path of full totality – what would happen was this: The spot to which I traveled would experience heavy cloud cover and it would end up being clear back in Birmingham.

So we’re here today. Eclipse Education, Eclipse, then a piano lesson. Tomorrow, M is back at the convent, serving for a Final Profession Mass, then to the orthodontist and then on Wednesday I’m thinking “school” will be a little more focused.

All right, let me try to do this: offer some thoughts on some of the books I’ve read over the past ten days.

First was – as I mentioned and posted about – Ride the Pink Horse.  Such an interesting, surprising read.

Then I turned a bit and traveled to somewhere in Illinois in 1918 for They Came Like Swallows.

 William Maxwell is well-known as an editor, but he was a fine writer himself. They Came Like Swallows was the first novel of his that I’d read.

It’s a short, intense book about childhood, the passing of time and grief. In some respects, it reminded me of Paul Horgan’s Things as They Are. 

I hate to say too much about  the important plot points because while it is clear something is going to happen, the precise nature of the incident is somewhat of a surprise and perhaps shouldn’t be spoiled for future readers.

So what shall I say?

It’s a short novel told, in three sections, from the perspective of three characters (all in the third person) – a young boy, his older, young teen-aged brother, and their father.

The time, as I mentioned, is 1918. The Great War ends during the novel, but something else is brewing, something called influenza. The family at the center is a comfortable, middle class family living in Illinois. The younger boy has an intense relationship with his mother and lives, it seems to him, primarily in reference to her.  Through his eyes, as well, his older brother is a rough figure who cares little for anyone, but when his turn comes around, we see that things are not always as they appear.

They Came Like Swallows is a lovely book with as authentic a representation of the feeling of grief as I have ever read in literature.

A note on the edition I read. Most of you know about the Internet Archive – you may not know that one of the features of the site is a book borrowing service – that is, of books that are still in print. That’s how I read They Came Like Swallows  What I didn’t like was that copyright limitations prevented it being downloaded as an actual Kindle book, ,so it had to be read online, which meant that I couldn’t highlight or make notes. But at least I was able to read it, and for that I’m grateful. It’s very good, beautifully written, sad and true.

Coming attractions:

Frost in May

The Tortoise and the Hare

 So Long, See You Tomorrow

 Time Will Darken It

 The Lost Traveler

 

 

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

This week’s takes are mostly about listening and watching. Things will get interesting over the next few days, but probably mostly on Instagram – so head over there to keep up.

— 2 —

In Our Time has sadly gone into its summer break, but it ended on a very high note with an excellent program on bird migration. What I particularly enjoyed about it was Melvyn Bragg’s infectious awestruck attitude about the whole business, which mirrors mine – How do they know?  – and the fact that he just couldn’t get over it, which is the proper attitude in the face of mystery. Secondly, the scientists on the program were all refreshingly honest about the answers to Melvyn’s questions, which most of the time involved a lot of we’re not sure and maybe and…we just don’t know. 

So much of the media’s reporting on science is couched in almost religious and certainly ideological certainty – a certainty which many, if not most scientists themselves would reject. I always enjoy the scholars on In Our Time, who are willing to admit what they don’t know and engage in respectful disagreement about what they think they might have a handle on.

— 3 —

Also this week, I listened to In Our Time broadcasts on the poet John Clare, of whom I am ashamed to say I had never heard, and Hannah Arendt. 

The program on Clare was interesting because, well, it was all new to me, but also because of the material presented about Clare’s relationship with publishing. He was a farmer, and while we might think, “poor lower class poet rejected by the smart set,” in fact the truth was the opposite – ever since Burns, the search had been on for the next Big Country Poet, and it was thought for while that Clare might be the one. And then he ended up in insane asylums for two decades, sadly, probably because of manic depression.

The program on Hannah Arendt set her work in helpful context, with a great deal of discussion about how she was misunderstood by critics. In brief, the “banality of evil” is not an invitation to diminish evil, but an explanation of how evil can become just another job to do.

— 4 —

And then I discovered a new BBC podcast program!

It’s called Science Stories and while the format is different than In Our Time, the general attitude and approach are the same, emphasizing the importance of  context as we seek to understand past scientific endeavors, which is something I appreciate so much, and is so refreshing, surrounded as we are in our media sea of context-free accusations, assertions, presumptions and fabrications.

And guess what? Religion is quite often part of the context – and might even be a paradigmatic framework for the context – and that is okay. 

On a science program!

So, for example, a program on Robert Grosseteste, 13th century Bishop of Lincoln and teacher, famously, of Roger Bacon. Grosseteste was, as many learned men of the time were, a polymath, but this particular episode of Science Stories focused on what the presenter termed his proto-“Big Bang” theory rooted in his observations of light and informed by his Genesis-shaped faith. It’s only 28 minutes and well worth your time. A taste:

Scientist: The story I was told when I was growing up was before 1600, all was darkness and…theology and dogmatism…and then suddenly Newton, Galileo, Kepler, who-hoa – all is light and Enlightenment and we get back on track with science. And you know, that’s never rung true because science doesn’t work like that – we all make little steps and we all, as Newton said, stand on the shoulders of giants. I think in Grosseteste, we’ve come across one of the giants on which the early modern scientists stood…..

….Presenter: And the motivation, certainly, for people like Grosseteste was ultimately a religious one, a theological one.

Scientist: Yes, it’s very clear that he would have been mystified by the question, “Can you reconcile your science with your religion?”  – he would have looked at you very askance and said, “What do you mean? That’s why I’m doing this science!”

.

— 5 —

The episode on “The Anglo Saxon Remedy that kills MRSA”  was also fascinating, involving researchers who are exploring these 1100-year old books of remedies with the aim of not only figuring out the origins of these remedies but also their effectiveness.

As in the previous program, spirituality is given due credit and respect as are techniques and approaches we might want to initially wave off as nothing more than superstition – for example, chanting a rhyme or prayer in association with the application of the remedy. As the researchers pointed out, it was not mere superstition at work here – in a world without clocks, this would be a way of keeping time as you applied the compress or shook the mixture.

— 6 —

My older son has been working a lot at night, so we haven’t been doing a lot of movies – two we have watched over the past week have been The Seven Samurai and Twelve Angry Men.  We spread out The Seven Samurai over two nights, although I think we could have done it all in one, in retrospect. It’s quite absorbing and didn’t feel at all like an almost 4-hour movie (as opposed to the Heston Ben-Hur which felt every minute of it to me during last year’s rewatch after 40 years, probably –  #confessyourunpopularopinion)

They really liked The Seven Samurai, and so I see more Kurosawa in our future, whenever we can manage another evening, which won’t be for a while, it looks like, what with travel and work. Probably The Hidden Forest, which inspired Star Wars, would make the most sense, although I’m more interested in Stray Dog. We won’t do Rashomon. 

Twelve Angry Men is, of course, much shorter – having begun as a television drama – and quite an efficient and compelling way to introduce a good discussion of appearance, reality, truth and integrity. There’s one simplistic psychological-torment-motivation subplot that was annoying and overwrought, but then that is par for the late-50’s course.

Oh, and one night after work, the 16-year old pulled Doctor Strangelove off the shelf and took it in his room to watch it. Speaking of context, what I offered him afterwards was that early 60’s context of nuclear terror which led the young parents of a two-year old, living in Texas in the fall of 1962, to formulate a plan about what they’d do if the bombs dropped – a plan that involved an overdose of sleeping pills, as they calmly reminisced a few decades later. The grown daughter was startled, to say the least, but the fact that her quite traditional parents had felt driven to concoct such a plan showed how frightened people really were at the time. They weren’t building bomb shelters just for the fun of it.

Speaking of mid-century psychological-torment-subplots..

Kidding!

— 7 —

Okay! Let’s have a saint!

Today is the feast of Kateri Tekakwitha. She’s in The Loyola Kids Book of Saints – a couple of pages of which are available online. 

 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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Still here!

Hey! Sorry for the lack of an update…I was pretty wiped out last night and I realized two things: First, that my habit of late night blogging this trip was working to stimulate my brain and mess with my already messed-up system and making sleep very difficult. Secondly, I realized that I will have 9 hours or so on an airplane in a day or so, and I can do lots of writing then – finish it all up, basically. So I’ll do that. You can expect to see full reports and photos Sunday night (American time).

But in short, what we’ve done over the past two days:

• Warner Brothers/Harry Potter Studio Tour – very good and much more interesting (to me) than the Universal Harry Potter stuff. I am not a PotterHead, but I don’t hate them, either, and contemplating how Rowling’s vision and hard work have stimulated the imaginations of so many is…inspiring and invigorating to me.
• Spent  time last night (Friday) hanging out near a film set near our apartment. Talked to a couple of interesting people. Caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis.
• Saturday: Younger son and I took a quick trip to the British Museum (4th time this week) to wrap up seeing the two major sections he had not seen yet, but wanted to most of all: the Americas. Then, with both, the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert – both quick, the first because it was mobbed  – it’s a free museum (as most of them are) plus it was a Saturday, plus it was the first day of the school holiday, so it was crazy. And they’re renovating things, so it was confusing. We didn’t stay long, but I did see a few interesting things that I’ll share later.
• The Victoria and Albert was more interesting than I had anticipated. I had thought it was focused on “decorative arts,” so I expected little more than teacups and ceramic roses. But…wrong again.  We could have stayed longer and all enjoyed it.
• But we were hungry.
• Popped into the Oratory.
• Then raced up around Hyde Park to Tyburn Convent.
• Had a tour of the Martyr’s Shrine with a quite wonderful Sister.
• Back up Oxford Street THROUGH MOBS OF PEOPLE. Today was the first day I really had a sense of “Yes, London is actually bigger than New York City.”  It was insane. 
• Got back up to the apartment, ran down to St. Pancras Station to do some souvenier shopping, watched two young women gleefully break open their bottle of wine on the train back, then had, after my concern that can we fit everything into the suitcases? was assuaged, had the best dinner (for me) of the trip, at, fittingly, an Italian restaurant.

 

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7 Quick Takes

 

— 1 —

Well, hello there.

We have stuck around home for Christmas. Rather than traveling, we have been doing grandson/nephew duty for the past few days, and are happy to do it and give his parents a break. Plus, I was still fantasizing that I could “get” “work” “done” during the time here. But, par for the course: hah. Very funny.

Which means you will not be seeing much of me over the next month, and if you do, scold me and send me packing back to the Word document where I belong. I’ll toss up entries about saints and such, but we’re in crunch time now, that time in which I must think ahead to the time in which I will *not* be in crunch time, and how wonderful that will be.

I checked this out from the library today, and I told them….mid February, when the book’s done and basketball is winding down…here we go….

 

— 2 —

Spend less time analyzing celebrity deaths online, thinking of how to sadly yet wittily condemn 2016 to oblivion or bitingly condemn those condemning 2016 to oblivion… and instead spend more time chatting with your actual neighbors, seeing how they’re doing, and swapping stories about life, face-to-face. Try it. It makes for far more sanity and a deeper perspective on what’s real. Probably better for your eyes and joints, too.

— 3—

Are you a Catholic? Then you, like most Catholics, probably had one question on your mind as December 26 dawned. And that question is:

So, when’s Ash Wednesday this year?

Well,since you asked.

(Feel free to swipe and share)

A little later, so a bit of reprieve, unlike this past year when it was February 10, when Super Serious Catholics – who observe Christmas til Candlemas – have barely brushed away the last of the pine needles.

So, yes. March 1. If you’re prepping for a parish or school, check out my Lenten devotional from Liguori, also available in Spanish.

(pdf sample here)

Speaking of self-promotion, if you are a woman looking for a daily devotional for 2017, check out mine. It’s a perennial, which means that it’s not explicitly tied to 2017 moveable feast dates. But I did try to make the February-March entries Lent-ish, the April-May entries Easterish, and so on. Moreover, since most Catholic female-centric devotionals are directly pitched at women who are mothers, this might be a good choice for a woman who is not a mother, or to whom motherhood is not a defining anchor of her spirituality.  Check it out.

 

— 4 —

 

A couple of election-related pieces that echo points I’ve tried to make here.

One of my favorite bloggers, just-retired U of Wisconsin law prof Ann Althouse, writes in relation to an essay in Elle by a woman super-concerned about how to raise a son in “Trump’s America.”

Since President Trump will be out of office by the time your child is 8, I’d suggest not talking about any of that. Piazza frets about “explaining sensitivity and nonviolence” to the boy. I’d suggest demonstrating it, beginning by not going out of your way to express contempt for the President.

A child — boy or girl — lives with real people, and these people set the example that the child will copy. It’s not really very much about explanations and characters on television. How about not putting on the television and not talking about politics and sex in front of young children? Give them a real, comprehensible, simple, gentle environment that is on their level.

Piazza worries about explaining “the president’s picks for attorney general and CIA director voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.” Frankly, she shouldn’t try to explain that to anyone, since she doesn’t even understand it herself. Votes against the Violence Against Women Act were not votes for violence against women. If you don’t know why, at least have some modesty and restraint about your potential to confuse and unnecessarily rile other people.

Let children be children. And let adults who don’t want to understand law — including things like federalism — have some peace. Your hysteria is not helping….

…Explanations are overrated. The power of the presidency is overblown. Find love and meaning where it really is.

It’s much simpler than you’re willing to say, perhaps because you have a career writing columns about feminism and politics. That’s nice for you, but be careful. It’s a brutal template, and you are having a baby.

And Kevin Williamson on the absurdity and fundamental wrongness of our imperial presidency and why for God’s sake do we have to have Obama’s America or Trump’s America or anyone in particular’s America , when, you know…it’s not supposed to be that way. 

The idea that a large, complex society enjoying English liberty could long endure without the guiding hand of a priest-king was, in 1776, radical. A few decades later, it became ordinary — Americans could not imagine living any other way. The republican manner of American presidents was pronounced: There is a famous story about President Lincoln’s supposedly receiving a European ambassador who was shocked to see him shining his own shoes. The diplomat said that in Europe, a man of Lincoln’s stature would never shine his own shoes. “Whose shoes would he shine?” Lincoln asked.

As American society grows less literate and the state of its moral education declines, the American people grow less able to engage their government as intellectually and morally prepared citizens. We are in the process — late in the process, I’m afraid — of reverting from citizens to subjects. Subjects are led by their emotions, mainly terror and greed. They need not be intellectually or morally engaged — their attitude toward government is a lot like that of Trump’s old pal Roy Cohn: “Don’t tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is.”

For more than two centuries, we Americans have been working to make government subject to us rather than the other way around, to make it our instrument rather than our master. But that requires a republican culture, which is necessarily a culture of responsibility. Citizenship, which means a great deal more than showing up at the polls every two years to pull a lever for Team R or Team D, is exhausting. On the other hand, monarchy is amusing, a splendid spectacle and a wonderful form of public theater.

But the price of admission is submission.

 

— 5 —.

I have a contribution to a “Best Books I read in 2016” article, but it hasn’t been posted yet. This is a place holder for that.  But I can tell you right now, without knowing who else contributed and what books they’ll discuss, mine will be the lowest brow. Guaranteed.

 

— 6—

Oh, can I come back to this point? A year does not “suck” or need to be prayed to  end or told to go home because celebrities died.

Source

— 7 —

 

Have you seen this? Do you need a time-suck? Try this site, Radio Garden, in which you can just move your cursor and explore radio stations streaming from around the world. There have always been websites with lists of such stations (which I like because you can find stations by genre), but this is the first one that I’ve seen with this kind of framework. My quick conclusion: Everyone around the world is listening to really bad music at the same time! We are Family!

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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Monday was a….(wait for it..)

…short day!

Today’s excuse was pi. The local science museum had advertised itself by proclaiming Pi Day and Einstein’s Birthday Day, so we marked off what we would have left of the afternoon (early dismissal at the high school) for whatever that would be about.

• Prayer: Gospel and Morning prayer. Nothing exciting, got the job done.
• Copywork was the first half of Psalm 23, which he will be memorizing this week.
• A couple of practice cursive sentences from the handwriting book.
• Math – we are working on operations with fractions from the 6th grade volume of the EnVision curriculum, just because it is around, leftover from brother’s life of three years ago.  Today was section 7.6 on subtracting mixed numbers. He got it, quickly.
• We also watched a couple of videos on Pi.
• Then we just quickly went over the next chapter in Latin – he will work on memorizing the vocabulary and the new verb – ire – to go – tomorrow. Discussing the vocab always entails lots of talk about derivatives.
• Quick start to the next chapter of Writing and Rhetoric, in which he will write his first refutation essay – on a deceptively simple topic – a Bre’r Rabbit story.  It strikes me as ingenious. Don’t teach a fifth grader to write a refutation about some political or philosophical topic – teach him the mechanics of it by having him refute a folk tale.
• Then…I gave him twenty minutes or so to go off and read through some of those National Geographics we snagged for free last week – then it was time to head to the museum..
• Which was a bust. Look, we have been faithful patrons of this place ever since we moved here, but I’ve noticed a trend towards mediocrity and disrepair in the regular exhibits while attention and $$$ goes to special exhibits (which non members must pay more to see) – so for example the current Body World exhibit.  I wrote about it a couple of months ago when I recounted the conversation I had with my son about what it was all about and what my objections were.
• So today – the Pi Day/Einstein Birthday activities were – handouts being distributed at the demonstration table in the main hall. One, a handout jut about Pi, the other a sheet to fill in with answers to questions about Pi, the answers to be found on pieces of paper taped to the wall around the museum. Oh, and you could make paper chain. Of circles.
• I hate to be so critical, but honestly, you get five homeschool parent – or heck, 3 math teachers – on a committee, and they could come up with far more interesting activities than that.  Harrumph.
• Well, we hung out anyway, and I said, “Okay, we’ve been here a zillion times, a third of the exhibits don’t seem to be working, but try to learn one new thing anyway.”  The new things he learned were about ginormous prehistoric turtles.
• Oh, there was a bit more cultural education, as well. All I’ll say is that if your kid picks up volumes of Bloom County to read, you might want to brush up on your 80’s cultural trivia. “Who’s Leona Helmsley?” “Who’s Dan Quayle?” “What’s The Towering Inferno?” “Who’s Melanie Griffith?” “Who’s Oliver North?”
• Oh, but there’s one major figure from the era I unfortunately don’t have to identify

 

• After we got brother, we headed to do our Monday afternoon volunteering in the reading room, then as soon as we returned, M got the invite to go watch a HS baseball game, which he did, but the learning did not stop! For after he did his geometry homework, brother was climbing a tree, noticed an interesting-looking creature in a water-filled hole, removed it, and went through the process of identifying it – a rat-tailed maggot, larval edition of a drone fly.  Good to know.
• And that was it. Latin verbs, refuting folk tales, Leona Helmsley, Pi, and prehistoric turtles. A day in the life.

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Quick Friday

Here’s today Homeschool Daily Report, offered to the Interwebs as a witness to what one homeschooling day is like for one student in one corner of the universe. Take or leave.

• Late start.  He was up late reading and drawing.
• Prayer: Mass readings. Before that, a quick review of the sections of the OT (had him tell me what they are) and recitation of the books of the OT through 2 Chronicles.  Then talking about what the Wisdom books are (1st reading is from Wisdome today).
• He read it aloud, then I mentioned how the dynamic described in the reading (go take a look) is quite real, even today.
• Gospel. I read this one.  Quick review of geography (Galilee/Judea/Jerusalem).
• Morning Prayers.
• Rehashed the liturgical calendar for the next two weeks – 5th Sunday of Lent coming this weekend, then Palm Sunday, etc. Implicit, unstated relief on both our parts that the end is near and Lenten penances, while SO HELPFUL in developing spiritual discipline….are almost done, too.
• No copywork, no illustration of past copywork either. It was late, and he’s been doing a lot of drawing this week.
• Math: starter/revew problems from EnVision (they call it “Daily Spiral Review), then we went over section 7.5 of the 6th grade text, which was about adding mixed numbers. He did two practice pages, plus an enrichment page. Easy.
• I mentioned that Monday was Pi Day plus Einstein’s birthday, and that we would go to the science museum on Monday to see what was up with that.  He mused about how if Einstein was alive he would be very gratified to know that even though people had not believed him at the time, what he said about black holes has been shown to be true.  We then talked about what scientific thinking takes: rigor and understanding of principles, self-confidence (he said) and imagination (I said.)
• Then he asked, “What kind of shoe is a Tony Lama?”  A boot, I replied.  Pull up images on internet. Why? “Because it’s in Bloom County.”  Extensive narration of the context followed.
• Then, you know what? Videos.  Several. Haven’t watched videos since last week. Time to catch up.
• Started with Hip Hughes History on the War of 1812.
• Then Brain Scoop about species identification – giving me a chance to reiterate, once again, that scientific knowledge is by no means carved in stone and is always, er, evolving.
• An ostrich racing bicyclists from Laughing Squid.
• Several from the Kids Should See This.
• KQED has good science videos, too: we started with this one about a mouse that is resistant to a particularly virulant scorpion venom (he knew the kind of scorpion – bark – just by looking at it, before they identified it onscreen), this one on flesh-eating beetles (actually used in this research collection to help), and this one on squid skin. All quite interesting.
• Then let’s watch the ostriches again.  And the baby sloths making cute sounds.
• Last, I pulled out The Red Pony by Steinbeck, which will be the next “school” read. (This study guide, among others, will be useful)  I introduced Steinbeck, we looked at a map of that area of California, found Salinas and Monterey and talked about the places in the area to which we have traveled – Monterey, down to Big Sur, Santa Cruz, up in Silicon Valley (his sister had an internship in San Mateo three summers ago, and we visited), San Francisco, etc.
• I told him it was a coming-of-age story and asked what he think those type of stories have in common thematically.
• We then read the first couple of pages together. I highlighted the initial, opening description of Billy, isolating each physical aspect and asking what it communicates about Billy. Then I pulled the sentence, “The triangle picked him up out of sleep.”  and asked how that was different from just saying, “The triangle woke him up.”  What does that tiny difference communicate about that moment that a less vivid sentence does not?
• He’ll read the first chapter for Monday.
• All this time, we were sitting in the living room in front of the patio door, where we watched, first a couple of mourning doves just hanging out, which struck us as strange until we understood they were probably prepping to mate – there was a lot of strutting and preening happening – and then another, unfamiliar bird appeared, which we looked up and found to be a Northern Flicker. And then a cat strolled by, scattering them all.
• Timeframe:  10:15-1. Followed by lunch, piano practice then off to pick up another kid at his school and head to a birthday party at a trampoline place way the heck on the other side of town. #Friday

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