What is beautiful?

The backyard of the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie?


The bridge over Lake Defiance?


The flowers this spring?


Volo Bog's trails?


My children?

All of it. And more. Life is beautiful.

For Miz Booshay at "Quiet Life."

Little Sister, revisited

In "Chipping away at your privacy" (12.7.2003) and "Little Sister" (6.2.2004) we mused on the insidious technology "radio frequency ID" (RFID).

From "Radio frequency ID tags making rapid gains" (Chicago Sun-Times, August 29, 2005):

RFID uses a computer chip the size of a grain of rice to store data, which are transmitted wirelessly by a tiny antenna to a receiver. The chips, embedded in tags, now track pallets in warehouses and let drivers pass toll booths without stopping, but their potential is almost limitless.

Indeed, their potential is limitless. Why aren't more folks concerned? Perhaps I read too much science fiction, but this technology makes my stomach hurt.


Coffiest
Speaking of sci-fi, we recommended Frederik Pohl's The Space Merchants last year (6.16.2004).

Harvey relaxed again. "Well, about this Coffiest," he said. "We're sampling it in fifteen key cities. It's the usual offer -- a thirteen-week supply of Coffiest, one thousand dollars in cash, and a weekend on the Ligurian Riviera to everybody who comes in. But -- and here's what makes this campaign truly great, in my estimation -- each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid. Nothing harmful. But definitely habit-forming. After ten weeks the customer is hooked for life. It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure, so it's simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest -- three cups with every meal and a pot beside his bed at night, just like it says on the jar."

Fowler Schocken beamed....

Habit-forming, indeed. Well, the lovely C. sent me this link over the weekend. From the article:

They concluded that the average adult consumes 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams. According to the Agriculture Department, the typical adult American drinks 1.64 cups of coffee daily.

C. assures me, then, that it's okay to forego the dreadful green tea. Amen. And thank you for the note, C.


Culled from the blog stats
"Byzantium Shores" has linked us in the past, and recently, we were added to the site's master blogroll, "The Voices of Byzantium." But the remark in this entry was just about the loveliest thing anyone has ever said about M-mv:

This is really a good blog, the kind of blog that, in a just world, would have a million hits a day while InstaPundit struggled to get a hundred.

Many, many thanks for the kind recommendation.


In the sidebar
While you're clicking about in this post, why not click on today's "Daily Toon" by Andertoons? (No, we don't "get" anything for the links. It's all about chuckling and showing a struggling artist some appreciation via clicks.)

Worth repeating: Weekending

Now that the rumors of summer's death are less rumor, more reality, we must take some time to enjoy the season's parting gifts.




Take a long walk.

Throw rocks in the lake.

Drive with all of the windows down.

Sing along with the car radio. Even (perhaps, especially) at stoplights.

Dream.

Read.

Sleep in tomorrow morning.

Buy two weekend papers, a local and a regional. Read more than the funnies.

Let Bob's Service wash the car.

Better, participate in a community carwash fundraiser.

Swim.

Eat cherry or grape tomatoes. Whole. POP! SQUISH!

Let the kids push you on the swing.

Learn something.

Talk about something other than yourself.

Read.

Bring canned goods to the food depository.

Dance to your own eight-track. Stop eyeing the room to see what everyone else is doing. Just move.

Live.

Stop thinking about living, planning it to the minutest detail, scheduling it, listing it, comparing to-do lists with any who will listen.

Just get on with the living.

First appeared in a slightly different form 7.16.2005.

Life is short.

My father was forty-one when he died. His death was utterly unexpected. He was there one day. The next, he was not. He was survived by a wife and three daughters.

I was his oldest, a freshman in college when he died. Graduated college early, married young. Had my first child four years later. Had my second a couple of months before my tenth wedding anniversary. Had my last a year and some after that.

We've moved several times, and my husband works long hours. He travels more often than I ever let on. My wallet has a large hole in it. And my work must be done in the interstices that parenting and the family-centered learning project allow.

Yet I am happy in the chapters that are this life's book. On the less-than-perfect days (and we have a few of those, yes), I think, "I'm here, at least. Let's see what we can make of this."

Yes, what can we make of this day, this moment, this goofy misunderstanding, this blasted math lesson, this broken bowl, this sleepless night, this too-tight budget, this roof that sometimes leaks, this van that is too old, this body that has grown soft, these relationships that are so dear.

What can we make of this?

Over the years, I have realized I am haunted by the idea that the game could be over in fifteen years, then eight, then five, then next year. This year.

This year I am forty-one.

Yes, I have been haunted as surely as if a ghost were at the foot of my bed every night.

And the ghost has shaped me.

It has made me think, "What would I want the children and my husband to remember about me?"

Not yelling, that's for sure. No, not clean floors, either. Not arguments. Nothing like that.

And so it was that my thinking was reshaped. I began offering the best of myself as often as I could because it makes the people I care about most in this world happy, and that, in turn, makes me happy.

Call it fear. Call it an earnest yearning for the life well-lived. Call it anything you want. It's what motivates me to celebrate rather than complain, sing rather than scream.

Sometimes, reminding myself that this just isn't that hard (and it isn't, folks; it. just. isn't.) is enough to smooth the rough edges. I am also one who benefits from the "Well, things could be worse; I could be [insert terrible burden here]" comparison study (as in, "Yeah, the kids are squabbly today, but it could be worse. I could have a zit on my nose [or, I could have lost a client, or they could be getting ready for school, or I could have gotten some other life,etc.]"). So I rely on that once in a while.
________________________

My father died twenty-three years ago, and he died young, and his death taught me nearly as much as his life did.

Simply put, it taught me that life is short. If I'm going to do something worthwhile with it, I need to it now -- not tomorrow or next week. Now. I need to find the joy or wonder or, at the very least, the lesson in each day's moments, not just for me but for my family.

It all begins with me, I think, and so I try, and some days, yes, I have to try harder than others, but failure just isn't an option.

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

The twenty-first edition of "On the nightstand" is a little early and presented in no particular order. Hey, and remember:

The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used. Atrophy of the mental musceles is the penalty we pay for not taking mental exercise. And this is a terrible penalty, for there is evidence that atrophy of the mind is a mortal disease.

-- From How to Read a Book (Mortimer J. Adler)

Reshaping the geography of the imagination
Any Human Heart (William Boyd)

When I stood at the stall, later, smoking, holding my mug of coffee, both my hands started to shake, quite visibly. Delayed shock, I suppose. Something tells me I'm not cut out for politics.

The State of the Union: Essays in Social Criticism (Albert Jay Nock)

The school should take pupils at the age of eight, and carry them on until they meet the college's requirements. Neither institution should take any account whatever of bogus democratic doctrine, the idolatry of mass, vocationalism or the pretended rights of ineducable persons. If such persons presented themselves they should be turned away, and if anyone got in and afterward was found for any reason or to any degree ineducable, he should be forewith bounced out.

[Nock can be a little uncomfortable.]

The Trial of Socrates (I.F. Stone)

No other trial, except that of Jesus, has left so vivid an impression on the imagination of Western man as that of Socrates. The two trials have so much in common.

Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension (Michio Kaku)

In Flatland [2D], a "jail" is a circle drawn around a person. Escape from the circle is impossible in two dimensions. However, a three-dimensional person can yank a Flatlander out of jail into the third dimension. To a jailer, it appears as though the prisoner has mysteriously vanished into thin air.

The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (Juliet B. Schor)

Part of what keeps the see-want-borrow-and-buy sequence going is the lack of attention. Americans live with high levels of denial about their spending patterns. We spend more than we realize, hold more debt that we admit to, and ignore many of the moral conflicts surrounding our acquisitions.

The Excellent 11 and The Essential 55 (Ron Clark)

It's one thing to have a lot of enthusiasm and energy, and it's another thing to use that spirit and attitude to make a difference.

[This is not the world's best writing, nor are Clark's ideas terribly original. If you're looking for a book to set the tone for the new academic year, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (Parker J. Palmer; recommended in our last "On the nightstand" entry) is the finer text. Yet, the Clark texts are quick reads with an upbeat tone. Perhaps the dose of encouragement some of you seek?]

Prep (Curtis Sittenfeld)

The way my family behaved felt both truthful and indecorous -- another version of my real self, perhaps the realest of all, but one I took pains to conceal.

Briefly noted
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (Jonathan Eig)

The Bravest Man: The Story of Richard O'Kane and U.S. Submariners in the Pacific War (William Tuohy)

The Introvert Advantage (Marti Olsen Laney)

Katie John (Mary Calhoun)
[Did you see this entry?]

Enchantress from the Stars (Sylvia Engdahl)

The Little Grey Men (BB)

Otis Spofford (Beverly Cleary)

Blubber (Judy Blume)


And for those who made it this far and were wondering...


They're part of a large stash of bookmarks collected over the last twenty-three years. Fabric. Leather. Promotional. Decorative. Souvenirs.

From stores like the Lido Book Shoppe in Newport Beach, CA. The Globe Corner Bookstore in Boston. The Book Trader in Philadelphia. Coliseum Books and The Strand in NYC. Powell's Bookstores in Chicago. The bookstand at the Capitol building in DC.

Proverbial like "The wise man reads both books and life itself." (Lin Yutang) "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." (Albert Einstein) "This is the land I have been looking for all my life though I never knew it til now." (C.S. Lewis) "Education is the best provision for all age." (Aristotle)

Owls. Classic Winnie-the-Pooh. Lord of the Rings. Where the Wild Things Are.

The bookmarks we've saved say nearly as much about us as the volumes on the shelves.


Previous "On the nightstand" entries
8.5.2005
7.06.2005
5.28.2005
4.18.2005
3.20.2005
2.14.2005
1.14.2005
12.21.2004
11.21.2004
10.12.2004
9.13.2004
8.24.2004
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003


As always...



Many thanks to those who purchase books, music, software, and other products through our Amazon.com links.

And when they do wake up?

One has no choice but to be thankful for children who need nothing more magical than a spider's web (well, is there anything more magical?) to awaken them to the day's possibilities, adventures, and lessons.

Another good reason to get up well before the kids

The scoop of Edy's vanilla ice cream you can plop into your "rich, nutty, complex" ("Like you, hon!") hazelnut coffee sans the chorus of "Hey, can we have some?"

Mmmm.

Look. My death bed scene doesn't include regret. This tastes better than skinny feels. Trust me.

The Trial of Socrates (I.F. Stone)

As always, many thanks for using our Amazon.com links.

It's only 69 here this afternoon.

And cloudy. And breezy. All three children have long-sleeved shirts on.

No one here is going to the pool this afternoon.

It's only 59 here this morning.

But already each of the kids has gently reminded me how few days remain on our summer swimming passes. Guess I know what we're doing after lunch.

Celebration

The Rage Diaries is celebrating two years of linking, thinking, and writing. If you haven't already, bookmark the site.

Gravity

When I hear from both M. and R.T. on the same day, that's a pleasure. When they both include the phrases "higher being" and "golden pen" in their messages, that's a wink and nod. But when they both include the same link? That's a sign.

"Intelligent Falling" Theory
Warning: Not for the easily offended, and you already know who you are, so don't (that's DO NOT) click the link, read with feigned dismay, and then email me. That sort of message is not a pleasure, a wink, a nod, or a sign. It's just silly.


Added later
Fussy.org sells T-shirts emblazoned, "Writing well is the best revenge." Um, neat, but no. Getting paid (and paid well) on or before the fifteenth of each and every month for writing well... that's the best revenge.

Heh, heh, heh.


From the worth repeating files
For those who are embarking on a new school year or who are simply looking for a little encouragement in their parenting, teaching, or parenting-teaching:

Be a sun. (5.05.2005)

Feed a cold; starve a (spring) fever? (4.22.2005)

Katie John

Arguably, one of the best things about being a parent is passing along the books you once loved most in the world to the people you now love most in the world.

"Oh, Mom! She does! She looks like you when you were little!"

Yes, and that's part of the reason I loved Katie John. That and the fact that I was utterly convinced she was the me I would have been if I had been allowed to take my bicycle further than the old lady's trashcans.


The recommended daily allowance
Katie John by Mary Calhoun. After a long swim and a delicious barbeque, curl up in the Adirondack chair with your daughters and let the words cover them like a summer-weight blanket.

"Mom, Mom! Look!"

I suppose this image could be viewed as a follow-up to our "Potty talk" entry (11.20.2004), but, really, it's just a seven-year-old's sense of humor at work.

"You know what you need to do, Mom," Master M-mv said over his sisters' laughter. "Blog it."

So there it is.

Added later
Yes, I know the floor is old and stained. It's been attacked with all manner of cleansers, including bleach. It. Just. Looks. Like. That. We know it's clean. And some day, we'll remodel that room. Until then, our discretionary income is more happily spent in this room or this one.

Introverts
Poet Kay Ryan seems to be writing a loner's manifesto of sorts:

It turns out I have an aversion to cooperative endeavors of all sorts. I couldn’t imagine making a play or movie, for instance; so many people involved. I don’t like orchestral music. I don’t like team sports. I love the solitary, the hermetic, the cranky self-taught. Make mine the desert saints, the pole-sitters, the endurance cyclists, the artist who paints rocks cast from bronze so that they look exactly like the rocks they were cast from; you can’t tell the difference when they’re side by side.

The entire piece is here.

We've written about our favorite loner's manifesto here.

Oh, and speaking as one of "the cranky self-taught," I am surprised by how much I appreciated the virtual flood of email messages over the last two or three days. Many thanks.

And many thanks to the incomparable R.T. for this link to "Mired" (The New Yorker). "I don't know if you get the New Yorker or not [not this year], but this week's issue has a "Talk of the Town" column not to be missed, especially after reading the New Republic column on Intelligent Design you linked at M-mv." From "Mired," then:

Mud is not mentioned by name, but you'd have to be a pretty strict Biblical literalist not to infer that mud is what you get when you add water to dust.

Heh, heh, heh.

Business
The affiliate program has become ubiquitous; everyone and his mother now features links and subtle (or not so) requests that visitors buy using their links. That is the nature of business, of course. Our only recourse is to thank you for your business and your loyalty. "Mental multivitamin" has never been about making money, but the money we do make helps.

(Hey, M.? I can see the products purchased, not the buyers. (Well, at least not that I know of.) When I see certain titles in the lists of what has been sold via my links, though, I sometimes wonder.)

What I'm bringing poolside today

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed (Karen Elizabeth Gordon)

Knitting: Learn To Knit Six Great Projects (Anne Akers Johnson)
I don't know about six projects, but I seem to have mastered the "simple scarf." The Misses M-mv each want one now.

Read something good today... this weekend. Think. Learn. Write. Play. (But don't upstage the kids. We're the grown-ups now. And there is fun and pleasure and love and laughter in that, when you're old enough to trust it.) Laugh. Live.

There's a rumor going 'round...

... that my pen is enchanted, magical, perhaps even [hushed voice] golden.

Heh, heh, heh.

It's an ordinary Papermate, folks. Red and silver. Purchased on sale at Jewel-Osco. And it is only magical in that it hasn't been lost.

Yet.

Hey! Read something good today, okay? Think. Learn. Write with your ordinary pen. Play. Laugh. Live. It will be if not magical, then certainly worth the effort.

I promise.

Puzzling

Puzzles are a decidedly winter-ish pursuit, no? But we're having summer-ish fun with the Global Puzzle, especially the Misses M-mv, who are quite convinced that any puzzle with this many pieces (six hundred) must be a "big kid" puzzle.


For the second cup of coffee
From "The Case against Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name" (The New Republic):

Why all the fuss about a seemingly inoffensive statement? Who could possibly object to students "keep[ing] an open mind" and examining a respectable-sounding alternative to evolution? Isn't science about testing theories against each other? The furor makes sense only in light of the tortuous history of creationism in America. Since it arose after World War I, Christianfundamentalist creationism has undergone its own evolution, taking on newer forms after absorbing repeated blows from the courts. "Intelligent design," as I will show, is merely the latest incarnation of the biblical creationism espoused by William Jennings Bryan in Dayton. Far from a respectable scientific alternative to evolution, it is a clever attempt to sneak religion, cloaked in the guise of science, into the public schools.

Funny
Have you been clicking the cartoon in the sidebar each day? Andertoon provides a daily giggle.

Optimism

From "It's a wonderful life" (Times Online):

The real shift can only come from below — from a million small decisions to scrub a wall of graffiti, to rear a child, marry a loved one, teach an immigrant, turn off a mobile phone, look out for an elderly neighbour, decline that last beer. These things change not when politicians or bishops demand that they do. They change when people have finally had enough of the boorishness that selfishness sustains.

Unrelated
We are not characters in our own lives. This isn't a novel. It would probably be a good thing if we taught young people that donning and shedding personas and affectations (and, metaphorically, casting said on the dressing room floor for a personal shopper to tidy) is a behavior best relegated to one's teens. To reach adulthood and still be about the business of auditioning roles for one's self -- adopting this one, advertising it as if all the world were interested, and abandoning it a few weeks or months later (wash, rinse, repeat) -- is a personal failure that can be, with a little self-discipline and -scrutiny, avoided.

No, this isn't a novel. It can, at its finest, be a work of creative non-fiction, though -- if we shed our childish behaviors and clasp to our hearts only our child-like wonder, interest, and tenacity.

Morning meditation: What I live for

If any one finds that he never reads serious literature, if all his reading is frothy and trashy, he would do well to try to train himself to like books that the general agreement of cultivated and sound-thinking persons has placed among the classics. It is as discreditable to the mind to be unfit for sustained mental effort as it is to the body of a young man to be unfit for sustained physical effort.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

Master M-mv, reading over my shoulder, "'The classics.' 'Sustained physical effort.' Hmmmm. I've got it all going on, huh?"

I turn to observe him, and he grins at me over his big bowl of cereal.

"Are you supposed to be reading over my shoulder?" He takes an exaggerated step away from my desk.

"Well," he continues, "Don't I?" He flexes his free arm as he turns to make his way back out to the kitchen.

Summer swim team and the assertion of some nearly forgotten portion of the gene pool carved his thin, young arms into thick ropes of muscle over the last few months, and the many long hours of practice reshaped his back into an enviable V. As for "sustained mental effort," Master M-mv's summer reading list was two parts "serious literature" (e.g., Shakespeare) to one part "froth and trash" (e.g., Stephen King novels and comic books). But what this man-child has "going on" is something other than an athletic build and a firm grasp on his studies. It's...

"Good morning, Boy-boy," sings Miss M-mv(i) as she sails past. (We have already exchanged morning words and embraces.) "I love you!"

"Right back at you!" he says through a mouthful of his second bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.

"Boy-boy! I love you, too!" calls Miss M-mv(ii) from down the hall. "Good morning!"

"Hello, I love you! Do you need help making your bed? Let me finish my cereal, and I'll be right there."

"And what can I get you from the cabinet?" he asks Miss M-mv(i), handing her a clean cereal bowl. A flurry of activity and kind words exchanged, then, "Hey, do you need a yogurt, Mom? I can bring that to you."

"Well?" he repeats, handing me my yogurt, tiny chocolate chips sprinkled on top. He flexes his other arm at me and grins in the half-frame it creates. "I'm a pretty decent combination of mind and muscle, eh?"

Without waiting for an answer, he pads down to his sister's room to help her with her morning chores. I hear giggling and suspect that she's watching not working, but he won't betray her.

"Yes, you are," I say softly to the flickering screen of my laptop. "You are a pretty decent combination of mind and muscle, and you have it all going on."

He is kind and polite and easy in his skin. He is smart and funny and attentive to others' needs. He is affable and confident and aware of his power to lead and influence. He uses all of these gifts well; in fact, he uses them better than anyone Mr. M-mv and I have ever known.

And, remembering that we are letting go of our children from the moment we first hold them in our arms, I refuse to cry over the baby, toddler, and little boy who live now only in my mind's memory rooms. I resist the urge to slam shut the door to the room waiting for the man-child. Yes, the man is waiting to assert himself, and any month or week now, the man-child will finish ascending the stairs to his memory room. I'll do nothing to stop him.

Even if I could.

Until then, though...

"You may have it all going on, young man," I call down the hall, "but you also have socks on your bedroom floor, toothpaste on the bathroom counter, a dirty bowl in the sink, and a math paper to review."

Master M-mv pokes his head out of his sister's room. "'Can't fool me, Mom. You're being all stern and upset 'cause you just realized how much you're going to miss me when I leave." He chuckles and kisses the top of my head on the way to his room.

"Hey! Mom?" he calls over his shoulder. "When you're done blogging, can I borrow the laptop?"

I sit down hard in the rocking chair in the living room and a few moments later the chore-dodger (Miss M-mv(ii)) crawls into my big lap. "I love you, Mom."

"And I love you, sweetie."

"Do you guys smell the rain?" Miss M-mv(i) calls from the dining room. "That's one of my favorite scents in the world. I'm going to draw what that smell looks like."

And I'm going to write what this feels like, I thought. It won't work. Only I will appreciate it, really. Most folks will get to this point of today's entry and wonder, "Where is the RDA? the article link? the books? the wry observation? the field trip?"

Sorry, folks.

Some days it's just this. And this is what I live for.

___________________

Added later: For more entries like this, see our "Thoughts on education and parenting."

"Stupid cows"

"And what do you call this one?" I asked the artist.

"Oh... hmmm. 'Stupid Cows,'" she replied.

Heh, heh, heh.

Yeah. That'll work.


For the second cup of coffee
(Because green tea tastes the way that henna concoction I used in college smelled. [*shudder*])

From "Mindful of symbols" (Scientific American):

What most distinguishes humans from other creatures is our ability to create and manipulate a wide variety of symbolic representations. This capacity enables us to transmit information from one generation to another, making culture possible, and to learn vast amounts without having direct experience--we all know about dinosaurs despite never having met one. Because of the fundamental role of symbolization in almost everything we do, perhaps no aspect of human development is more important than becoming symbol-minded. What could be more fascinating, I concluded, than finding out how young children begin to use and understand symbolic objects and how they come to master some of the symbolic items ubiquitous in modern life. As a result of that fortuitous model-room experiment, I shifted my focus from memory to symbolic thinking.

The recommended daily allowance
From The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (Parker J. Palmer):

[A] good education may leave students deeply dissatisfied, at least for a while. I do not mean the dissatisfaction that comes from teachers who are inaudible, incoherent, or incompetent. But students who have been well served by good teachers may walk away angry -- angry that their prejudices have been challenged and their sense of self shaken. Thant sort of dissatisfaction may be a sign that real education has happened.

It can take years for a student to feel grateful to a teacher who introduces a dissatisfying truth. A marketing model of educational community, however apt its ethic of accountability, serves the cause poorly when it assumes that the customer is always right.

Postscript
M., who received one of the first five membership cards for M-mv's "best and perfect audience" club, sent a message last night that included this sentence:

I truly treasure it (precise writing and thinking, that is), which is why I'm such a big fan of M-mv.

Made my night.

"Welcome home, friends."

"Discovery Lands Safely in California"

The most beautiful library in the world

Have you seen this exquisite book?


Click image for link.

The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World

I requested that it be borrowed for me by our tiny town library; it became available over the weekend, so I picked it up this afternoon on the way to the pool.

"The Most Beatiful Libraries in the World," read Miss M-mv(ii). "Oh, how neat! What page is our library on, Mom?"

"Oh, I think the [insert town name] Public Library is a little too small --"

"And sort of ugly," cut in Miss M-mv(i).

"-- to be in this book," I finished.

"No, no! Our library. Did you send them a picture of our library? It's beautiful," Miss M-mv(ii) sighed happily.

"Yes," agreed Miss M-mv(i).

Beauty being in the eyes of the beholders, of course.


The recommended daily allowance

Click image for link.

So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.

Little brown bats

Volo Bog is home to the largest known nursery colony of little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) in Illinois.

Ayup.

They live in the barn in the photo above.

On the warm, humid nights that define August in rural Illinois, when insects thrum and stars multiply, the mother bats and their now-weaned young exit their home through the hole in the barn door. The last official count put their number at more than one thousand.

Last night, we spread a red blanket on the clipped meadow apron in front of the barn and looked up.

Amazing.


The affiliate program has become ubiquitous; everyone and his mother now features links and subtle (or not so) requests that visitors buy using their links. That is the nature of business, of course. Our only recourse is to thank you for your business and your loyalty. "Mental multivitamin" has never been about making money, but the money we do make helps.

Common-place

From "Blogging in the Early Republic: Why bloggers belong in the history of reading":

Yet as blogging has quickly become a cultural—and now political—phenomenon, speculations about the historical precursors to blogging have become matters of course. Tens of thousands of new blogs are now created every day, on subjects ranging from the highly personal to the political, from careers to crochet, from academia to art, from movies to "moblogs"—collections of photographs taken using mobile phones. Technorati, a special search engine that tracks links between blogs, now follows over ten million blogs. In the last few years, the dynamic growth and diversification of blogging has attracted attention from journalists, political pundits, and scholars, and many pixels are now being spilled about the political influence of blogs—as bellwethers of opinion, as sources of trenchant social criticism, as innovative forms of citizen journalism, or as tools for political organization.

We've recommended Common-place before (12.02.2003, the first time), and it's in the sidebar. No excuses. Read. Think. Learn.

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

This is our twentieth "On the nightstand" entry, and, yes, this month's survey of the geography of our imaginations will be presented chapbook-style (again).

On Literature (Umberto Eco)

Reading works of literature forces on us an exercise of fidelity and respect, albeit within a certain freedom of interpretation. There is a dangerous critical heresy, typical of our time, according to which we can do anything we like with a work of literature, reading into it whatever our most uncontrolled impulses dictate to us. That is not true. Literary works encourage freedom of interpretation, because they offer us a discourse that has many layers of reading and place before us the ambiguities of language and of real life. But in order to play this game, which allows every generation to read literary works in a different way, we must be moved by a profound respect for what I have called elsewhere the intention of the text.

The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (Parker J. Palmer)

Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves. The methods used by these weavers vary widely: Socratic dialogues, laboratory experiments, collaborative problem solving, creative chaos. The connections made by good teachers are not in their methods but in their hearts -- meaning heart in its ancient sense, as the place where intellect and emotion and spirit and will converge in the human self.

Uncensored: Views & (Re)views (Joyce Carol Oates)

Great literature springs from great, often thwarted or lost love. Where there is no yearning, there can be no fantasy; where no fantasy, no imaginative transformation of the "real" into art. The romantic vision has become somewhat debased in our time, but it might be argued that all works of art whether "romantic" or "realistic" are in fact the products of an intense, interior romance: that of the artist for his or her subject.

The Writer and the World: Essays (V.S. Naipaul)

Among the green and hilly islands of the Caribbean Anguilla is like a mistake, a sport. It is seventeen miles long and two miles wide and so flat that when Anguillans give you directions they don't tell you to turn right or left; they say east or west. It is rocky and arid. There are no palm trees, no big trees. Mangrove is thick above the beaches, which look as they must have when Columbus came. The forests that then existed have long been cut down; the Aguillans, charcoal-burners and boat-builders, are the natural enemies of anything green that looks like growing big.

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Thomas L. Friedman)

What you're telling me, I said to Rao, is that no matter what your profession -- doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant -- if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be outsourced to either the smartest or the cheapest producer, or both. Rao answered, "Everyone has to focus on what exactly is their value-add."

The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories (Christopher Booker)

To say that stories either have happy or unhappy endings may seem such a commonplace that one almost hesitates to utter it. But it has to be said, simply because it is the most important single thing to be observed about stories. Around that one fact, and around what is necessary to bring a sotry to one type of ending or ther other, revolves the whole of their extraordinary significance in our lives.

Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Edward J. Larson)

"Scopes is not on trial. Civilization is on trial," Darrow said upon leaving for Dayton. "Nothing will satisfy us but broad victory, a knockout which will have an everlasting precedent to prove that America is founded on liberty and not on narrow, mean, intolerable and brainless prejudiceof soulless religio-maniacs." Darrow would stand for individual liberty agains mindless majoritarianism -- and give no quarter ro Bryan. Both sides had worked themselves to a fever pitch.

Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare (Bertram Fields)

What I have described is simply my own opinion. It could be altered by newly discovered evidence; and it is only one of many possible solutions to this extraordinary mystery that has been with us for 400 years and may be with us forever.

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Parker J. Palmer)

Embracing the mystery of depression does not mean passivity or resignation. It means moving into a field of forces that seems alien but is in fact one's deepest self. It means waiting, watching, listening, suffering, and gathering whatever self-knowledge one can -- and then making choices based on that knowledge, no matter how difficult. One begins the slow walk back to health by choosing each day things that enliven one's selfhood and resisting things that do not.

Briefly noted
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (John M. Barry)

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (Bill Bryson)

Dragonology (Ernest Drake)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 2) (C. S. Lewis; Michael York, narrator)

Katie John (Mary Calhoun)

The Diamond in the Window: The Hall Family Chronicles (Jane Langton)

Utterly Me Clarice Bean (Lauren Child)


Previous "On the nightstand" entries
7.06.2005
5.28.2005
4.18.2005
3.20.2005
2.14.2005
1.14.2005
12.21.2004
11.21.2004
10.12.2004
9.13.2004
8.24.2004
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003


As always...



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A religious experience

We attended a 12 noon mass at

Our Lady of IKEA

yesterday.

Bulletin notes: They served Swedish meatballs at the potluck afterward, which was cool. We put $60 in the collection basket. An hour after we arrived home, three Flarks appeared in the work room.

Coincidence?

Miracle?

Or just another conversion in the blue and yellow cathedral?

Perhaps it's best not to probe too deeply into these mysteries.

Poolside

Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Edward J. Larson)

Newspaper

From "The art of solving crimes" (July 27, 2005):

It's not your usual urban crime scene. But now, in an unusual effort to improve observational and analytical skills, the New York Police Department is bringing newly promoted officers, including sergeants, captains and uniformed executives, to the Frick to examine paintings.

From "Artist's challenge: Painting state's smallest critters" (August 2, 2005):

Still or on the move, millipedes and centipedes are fascinating. Most millipedes are leaf-munching vegetarians; most centipedes eat smaller animals. Though both have many legs -- one species of millipede boasts 375 pairs -- millipedes have two pairs attached to each of their segments, while centipedes have one pair.