"Are we done being neighbors for now?"

Heh, heh, heh.

Hey, name the movie without reading another word.



Mr. M-mv and I watched As Good As It Gets (again) last night. In that film, Jack Nicholson created one of my favorite screen characters: Melvin Udall. Greg Kinnear's Simon Bishop is another character that dwells in my mind's rooms and halls. Helen Hunt's Carol Connelly, on the other hand? Not so much. Okay. Not at. all.

Those who can only loathe Melvin (and no one loathes Melvin as much as Melvin, eh?) will wonder, Why? Why is that one of her favorite characters? Why? Because in this anal-retentive, curmudgeonly loner the seeds of Melvin-ness lie -- dormant, perhaps, but there they are.

:: Are we done being neighbors for now?

:: Never, never, interrupt me, okay? Not if there's a fire, not even if you hear the sound of a thud from my home and one week later there's a smell coming from there that can only be a decaying human body and you have to hold a hanky to your face because the stench is so thick that you think you're going to faint. Even then, don't come knocking.

:: I'm drowning here, and you're describing the water!

:: It's not true. Some have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But, a lot of people, that's their story. Good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good.

Heh, heh, heh.

Ah, Melvin. Ah, humanity.
___________________________________

So, we were up until nearly 3 a.m. The witching hour can't jerk you awake when you've not yet been to sleep. My inner night-owl thinks I may be on to something.

Six hours later, the shhh-Mom's-still-sleeping murmurs and musings of the Master and the Misses, a kiss from Mr. M-mv, and the smell of coffee, hot and strong, roused me. And from my pink flannel pillowcase, this is what I saw:

And as the children bounded in with their Good mornings and Did you have any good dreams? and I love yous, I thought, "This is a good life. This is, in fact, as good as it gets."

Good morning.

Not that I can remember just yet.

I love you, too.
___________________________________

And so this is New Year's Eve.

Let me appeal to your petulant elitist side (as opposed to your lurking egalitarian side), and entreat you to make no "promises to self" that involve measuring your food or rearranging your bedroom to accommodate a large, ugly treadmill or other torture device. If rooms must be arranged, let it be to make way for more bookshelves or a roll-top desk with countless cubbies. Nordic Track, indeed. What, bosh. Walk to the bookstore or the library if you need to tone and firm. But invite ugliness into your home? Bleah. Never.

Avoid resolving to lose ten pounds, run two miles daily, and get up at 5 a.m. every day to accomplish it. These are resolutions built like Chevy Cavaliers and Nabisco Sugar Wafers (that is, not to last).

Similarly, avoid the dangerous slip-slide into self-pity and -recrimination that can be the thirty-six hours before January 1. (Hint: The slip-slide usually begins when you reluctantly switch from seasonal music, and in a desperate bid to find music to which you can relate, you put on a station or cd that violently jerks you back to your late teens and early twenties.) Folks, this is not where you want to be.

Stop the insanity!

Put on some jazz or classical. Relax with a cup of Trader Joe's French roast and a small slice of their New York cheesecake.

Ah, better.

Now.

If you must list and sort and promise, well, will these work?

(1) Resolve to read more, think more, write more, learn more. Update your wishlist at Amazon.com.

(2) Subscribe to a magazine that opens new worlds to you. (No, Entertainment and People don't count.)

(3) Promise yourself more than twenty minutes daily to think, a space-time into which nothing and no one can creep without your express mental invitation. It is in this quiet zone that you will uncover your creativity.

(4) Begin a correspondence with someone who will share your reading discoveries.

(5) Keep a reading log, noting favorite passages.

These are resolutions built to last.


The New Year's Eve material above originally ran two years ago in an entry entitled "'Death Planet,' prions, and suggestions for a happy (or at least not pitiful) new year."

Now, isn't that neat?

You might remember (see this post) that M-mv was nominated in the "Homeschooling Mom Blog" and "Informational Homeschool Blog" categories of the Homeschool Blog Awards.

Well, it appears that we've actually won in the latter category, folks.

Neat.

Many thanks to those who sponsored and ran the contest, many thanks to those who nominated M-mv and those who voted for us, and hearty congratulations to all who were nominated.

Autodidact

If you enjoyed this book once upon a time ago, and have often wondered, "Whatever became of her?" you'll be delighted by this post.

Let's go.

Mild insomnia.

Spurts of wakefulness, not necessarily anxiety-filled, either. Just patches of a-few-minutes-too-long wakefulness in the midst of otherwise comfortable sleep.

That's what I sometimes have.

I had it last night.

Which would have been fine if it hadn't been accompanied by a bold headache. Can't read with a headache, you see.

Pah.

We're "off" this week, in as much as a family that lives in home of book-lined walls can be said to be "off," that is. This "being off" coupled with the gray, wet days that are closing 2005 has (re)introduced us to the luxury of sleeping in, a luxury for which I was more than grateful this morning, given the headache and lost sleep.

Then I remembered.

Master M-mv, assistant coach and dedicated swimmer, is not quite as "off" as the Misses and I: He is due at the pool at 9:30 a.m.

Pah.

And pah again.

I could hear the man-boy moving about. Sooosh. Fiber cereal in his favorite green bowl. Chik, chik, chik. Banana slices. Swup. Fridge closing as he puts the milk and orange juice away. Slosh. Dishes soaking in the sink. Pad, pad, padding down the hall. Teeth brushed. Pad, pad, padding back to the kitchen.

I lost track of him for a minute. Then a gentle rap, rap, rap.

The man-boy bearing a huge mug of coffee.

"Good morning, Mom. I — "

"I know, cutie. Swim practice. I know. Thank you."

The next half hour passes in a flurry of bed-making and kitchen-tidying and home-making activities that anal-retentives like me must complete before leaving the house. It's just the way it is for some of us.

And while I do what I do, my headache sways and yawns and gapes and considers receding.

And while I do what I do, Master tops off my coffee at well-timed intervals.

And while I do what I do, the Misses M-mv bundle into their coats and hats and mittens and consider breakfast at Mickey D's.

And we arrive at the moment of departure.

Teeth brushed. Hair combed. House in order.

Another triumph over the daily. I am amazing. I am wonderful. I am...

I am still in my Nick and Nora pajamas, the ones with the grinning sock monkeys.

Standing at the door, with fifteen minutes to spare, I realize I have picked up the extra time not through masterful streamlining but through a failure to look at myself in the mirror. Well, I had looked. At my hair. At my face. At my teeth. The rest of me had failed to register.

This, I realize, in a moment of inward punditry, is what desperate housewives must really look like. They do not resemble Marcia Cross or Eva Longoria so much as they resemble me at this moment: flannel pajamas, simple haircut, capacious bottom, Sponge Bob booties, and all.

This self-talk and accompanying laughter, is, of course, what nearly always prevents me from tripping into the chasm — this ability to step outside myself and write me, so to speak; to observe and to comment and, finally, to laugh, sometimes with me, sometimes at me. "Here," I say to myself, chuckling. (Madly? Benignly? Does it matter? Just laugh.) "Take my hand, you fool. We're about to get through another day. Let's go."

Let's go.

Not one to waste time on the obvious, I don my coat with a purposefulness that dares anyone to say, "But, Mom. You're still...."

And we're off.

And as we stride to the van, I in my monkey pajamas and red plaid jacket and Grandma Dowdel boots and red ear muffs, Miss M-mv(i) takes my free hand and says:

"Mom. You look adorable."

Buy that girl some hotcakes and chocolate milk.

And laugh.

"Never Let Me Go is not a Christmas book."

J.B. warned me, but, well, it was too late. I had already succumbed to Kazuo Ishiguro's disturbing story.

"It is a book that has acted a bit like a lingering, repeating depth charge," continued J.B. "I read it months ago, but it keeps detonating at the oddest times. I may know more about reading that book a year from now than I did when I put it down. There is, in the 'use' of people, something profoundly inhuman. And all too familiar."

I finished it Thursday and found myself wondering about J.B.'s observations.

What is a Christmas book?

_________________________

Yesterday, after giving and receiving gifts, hugging and feasting, laughing and yawning (the 5'7" and up club greeted the wee morning hours by solving logic puzzles, watching Fargo, talking about what makes it one of the great films), the Misses created grand pageants and epic battles with their dragons, Master helped them with the more difficult building instructions and then tried one of his new computer games, and Mr. M-mv swashbuckled his way through the last one hundred pages of The Three Musketeers.

And I did what readers, thinkers, and autodidacts do when on holiday. I read and I thought and I learned.

I chose from books on my shelf, from books I've been meaning to read, from books that I think J.B. might caution me are not Christmas books.



More Than Human (Theodore Sturgeon)

"The mind makes us do funny things. Some of them seem completely reasonless, wrong, insane. But the cornerstone of the work we're doing is this: there's a chain of solid, unassailable logic in the things we do. Dig deep enough and you find cause and effect as clearly in this field as you do in any other. I said logic, mind; I didn't say 'correctness' or 'rightness' or 'justice' or anuthing of the sort. Logic and truth are two very different things, but they often look the same to the mind that's performing the logic."

While I can understand the allure of reading lists and reading plans, the serendipity that leads us from one book to the next attracts me to the reading life in a way no scheduled slate of must-reads ever could. That More Than Human should follow Never Let Me Go is right and good and, yes, satisfying.

And setting it aside with the day yet stretching ahead, I realized that I didn't need another otherworldly story. No, it was another complementary reading experience I sought -- this book dovetailing with that, thus, locking both of them forever in my mind's library of text and story and character and intent.

Evenings at Five (Gail Godwin)

"An outstanding cabbage," said Rudy, pretending to address Christina alone, though he knew perfectly well that his basso profundo voice could silence a room, "would be a welcome addition to this gathering."

She hated him fervently at that moment, so why was she now hooting with laughter until tears ran down her cheeks? The full force of his presence was often too much for her, especially when he was unleashing himself on his surroundings with that careless arrogance. But now the absence of that force she could never quite modify or control had left an excavation in her life that cried out to be filled with his most awful moments.

I purchased the hardcover edition of this wonderful book two years ago. The elegant text ("If arrogance is the refusal to squander yourself on the unpassionate and the unfascinating, then he is arrogant") is juxtaposed with deceptively simple line drawings by Frances Halsband. Regular M-mv readers understand, of course: I had been searching for something to follow The Year of Magical Thinking. Something to complete the reading. How lucky was I to have right on my shelf.

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (William Stryon)
"Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes know to the self -- to the mediating intellect -- as to verge close to being beyond description," observes Stryon, who suffered a crippling, nearly suicidal depression twenty years ago. Later he notes:

In depression [...] faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come -- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is this hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying -- or from one discomfort to relative discomfort, or from boredom to activity -- but moving from pain to pain.

But Stryon did emerge from the pain, a journey-end he attributes to the tireless support of his wife and the counsel of a friend who had also traveled into the black abyss and back, as well as to his eventual hospitalization, a surrender into someone else's hands for long enough to grow stronger.

It wasn't a Christmas book; it was a life book, though.

Last night, I fell into bed with Mr., Enduring Love (Ian McEwan), and The Feast of Love (Charles Baxter). Imagine: a winter break in books. Yes, it fills me with joy, too.

'Twas the night before Christmas

Merry Christmas, folks.
Peace and joy and happiness
to you and yours,
today and every day.

The recommended daily allowance

From Knut Hamsun's Hunger:

Despite everything, I was really writing well, wonderfully, and I was positive I could accomplish a lot if I only had the right conditions. If I only had some place to go to! I thought and thought, stopped right in the street to think, but could not hit on a single quiet place in the whole city where I could hole up for a little while. There was nothing else to do, I would have to go back to the lodging house in Vaterland which I had just left. I winced at that, and kept assuring myself that this scheme would never work, but I kept walking anyway and drew nearer and nearer to the forbidden spot. It was humiliating, certainly, I admitted it to myself, degrading in fact, yes, positively degrading; but that didn't help either. Pride was not one of my faults; if I might make such a large generalization, I would say that I was one of the least arrogant creatures that had ever existed to date. I kept on walking.

I "met" Hamsun in grad school, in a course entitled "Major Themes in Literature: Who's Who? Beyond the Pale of the Literary Canon." Remarkable stuff. The edition I read, studied, and, yes, read again was translated by Robert Bly and introduced by Isaac Bashevis Singer: "The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun. They were all Hansun's disciples: Thomas Mann and Arthur Schnitzler... and even such American writers as Fitzgerald and Hemingway." The edition I've linked differs only in cover art and introduction -- Paul Auster comments on the text: "Something new is happening here, some new thought about the nature of art is being proposed in Hunger. An art that is indistinguishable from the life of the artist who makes it... an art that is the direct expression of the effort to express itself."

Looking back, I find it rather remarkable that the 1920 Nobel laureate was considered "beyond the pale of the literary canon," but my graduate studies are, what, fourteen years behind me... I'm a better reader, thinker, and student now than I was then. Oh, how I wish I could tap on the shoulder of my younger self: "Ask him what he means by including Hamsun in this line-up. Go ahead. Ask."

Here's a biography of the Norwegian writer (for those who refuse to allow this day (or any other) to slip-slide into mindless ritual (e.g., precisely how many times must one watch A Christmas Story?)).

And here's the article that made me recall Hamsun today: "In from the Cold" (The New Yorker, 12/26/2005):

Hamsun’s narrator, a writer, is a careful cataloguer of his own psychological states—no victim but, like Hamsun himself, a subversive, generational voice. Not a great deal happens, and yet from the first line—“It was in that time when I walked around hungry in Kristiania, that strange city no one can leave without being marked by it”—the novel’s oddly joyful desperation never flags. Poor, ambitious freelance writers in Western cities may no longer be starving, but certainly they suffer the same humiliations as Hamsun’s narrator: editors pay them very little, make them wait endlessly for a reply, and are indifferent to their enormous God-given talents.

[Emphasis added.]

Ayup. That about describes it. Heh, heh, heh.
__________________________

That long-ago semester, the Who's Who? prof arranged for Henning Carlsen to speak to a group of us. Carlsen had directed a remarkable film version of Hamsun's Hunger (1968). If you can lay your hands on it (after you read the book, of course), I most certainly recommend it.

We watched the film and met the director the following night. Throughout his address, Carlsen maintained that we must not be so foolish as to dismiss a film as being inferior (or superior, for that matter) to the book that inspired it. They are separate, he argued, and, in many ways, unrelated creations or works of art. He learned this lesson, once and for all, he said, when he met Kurt Vonnegut on the set of the film he was making of one of Vonnegut's novels. (Jailbird, I think, but I'm not certain, and Google has not yet settled the matter for me.)

"I'm afraid I'm going to ruin your book," he confided to the author.

As Carlsen told it, Vonngegut tapped the book and said that there was nothing anyone could do to it. It was done. Finished. Complete. It existed no matter what other works it inspired. It stood alone. Nothing Carlsen or anyone else could do would "ruin" the book.

An important lesson that we must learn, Carlsen emphasized.

Time has smudged some of what remains of this episode, but I remember this much: Toward the end of the presentation, someone inquired further about the idea of translating books into film, the difficulties that challenge screenwriters and directors. In his lengthy and example-filled reply, Carlsen somehow came to refer to Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities.

His aside was something to the effect of, "Ah, there's a wonderful book that yielded a godawful movie."

(By the way, it is a wonderful book. If you missed The Bonfire of the Vanities all those years ago, find it. Just skip the movie.)

In the post mortem the following day, I remarked on Carlsen's mistake to my fellow seminar participants. The Who's Who? prof was eager to discuss it, too. Much of Carlsen's presentation had hinged on the idea that books and films, even those that are "related," are separate works that must be considered without one reflecting -- for good or ill -- on the other. Whether you embrace this idea or not is immaterial. It's the point that the speaker most emphatically made.

And then he contradicted himself.

Whoops.

The discussion died before it was completely born: No one but the prof and I had caught the speaker's error.

This still troubles me a decade and half later.

What were they thinking? Were they thinking? Ergh.

The following year, Vonnegut visited our campus. I've written about this experience elsewhere. I wish I could tap on the shoulder of my younger self: "Ask him if he recalls the episode with Carlsen. Ask him if he really believes related works are separate. Go ahead! Ask."

Read. Think. Learn.

Veni, veni Emanuel!

Captivum solve Israel!
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio.

Gaude, gaude, Emanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.

Veni, veni o oriens!
Solare nos adveniens,
Noctis depelle nebulas,
Dirasque noctis tenebras.

Gaude, gaude, Emanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.

Veni, veni Adonai!
Qui populo in Sinai
Legem dedisti vertice,
In Maiestate gloriae.

Best and perfect

This photo hardly does these homemade truffles justice. I neglected to post them when they arrived; the photo became "lost" in the digital shuffle. 'glad to have rediscovered it.

Many thanks, D.W.

Anatomy of a family illness

Two years ago, just after Christmas, I posted a version of the piece below in another forum. Yes, Family M-mv was sick for both Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2003, but this year and last, the country air (I guess?) has kept us healthy -- for which we are thankful.

May your holidays be healthy -- and happy.

_________________________

This story begins with a stoic father who, three days before Christmas, insists he is well enough to go to work, despite the tale his cheeks, which flame with fever, and eyes, which look wearier than usual, tell.

“What’s wrong? It’s not the flu, is it?” I clutch my worn-out bathrobe at the neck, as if this weak gesture will help me now.

My husband laughs at me, softly, not unkindly. “We’ve been sharing a room and a bed for nearly two decades.”

“What of it?” I sniff.

“If I’m sick, you’re going to get sick,” he cautions. “Take some extra C and some Cold-eeze. Try to get some rest.”

“‘Try to get some rest,’” I gently mock. Weekday morning farewells are conducted sotto voce; it is, after all, only 4:50 a.m. We certainly don’t want to wake the children — yet. “Oh, sure,” I whisper. “Three kids. Three days before Christmas. Rest. Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do.” I kiss the top of his head and propel him toward the door. “Leave those germs at work. Or on the el like everyone else does.”

I duck out of his embrace and close the door on Germ Man almost before he can pull his coat through. “Kiss me through the door, honey. I am not getting sick.” I press my ear against the wood panel to hear his muffled reply: “It’s just a little sore throat. I took some extra C. I’ll be fine.” He shuffles off to work in the predawn light.

And I spend the next two hours in a cleaning, disinfecting, you-germs-don’t-stand-a-chance-in-this-house frenzy. When the kids get up (“Is it Christmas yet?” “Are you sure?”), I’m dizzy from the smell of bleach, Mr. Clean, and Lysol. But I’m confident that we have won the battle and the war against cold and flu germs.

The kids make cookies and help me decorate. They enjoy the holiday read-alouds and the crafts. The days before Christmas at my house should be preserved between the covers of magazines, I smugly assure myself. What magic. What light. What wonder. What peace.

What? Yeah, well, he’s sick, but I’m taking care of him. I am! And he’s taking it like a man. Hey, if he’s well enough to go to work, he must be getting better, right?

Wrong.

On Christmas Eve, we’re able to turn down the thermostat because my husband’s feverish body is generating enough heat to warm the neighborhood. His attitude is good, though. I ply him with Tylenol, fleece coverlets, and cocoa. “But,” I admonish, “don’t even think about breathing on me or the kids.” He humbly agrees as he hands me my Christmas presents — after donning the mask and rubber gloves I purchased for him at Walgreen’s.

Once Germ Man is tucked into bed, I creep about the flat, enjoying the quiet Christmas Eve when... what!? A sneeze from one room. A rumbly cough from another. Oh, bother. I could wipe down the doorknobs again. I could give everyone another chewable vitamin C. Or I could just admit it: My throat is sore; I didn’t win the battle or the war.

No. No! Mind over matter. I am a healthy mother. Those are healthy children. My husband left his germs on the el. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

But I know there’s trouble, oh, yes, there is, when I awaken on Christmas Day — at 8:13 a.m. I don’t need a thermometer to know there are sick kids in this home. In addition to sleeping in on this of all days, they, well, they smell. Yeah, my kids stink when they get sick. And no bathwash or toothpaste in the world can help.

Bleah.

They’re well enough to enjoy the cinnamon muffins and the gifts. But when the oldest asks to go back to bed for a while, I resign myself to a week with a virus and begin laying old towels in a path from each child’s bed to the bathroom.

I’ll spare you the goriest details. Let’s just say that many loads of laundry and too little sleep for our protagonist follow.

By Monday morning, the guy formerly known as Germ Man is out the door again, and I survey the damage: a man-sized child sprawled on his bed, a fairy-light daughter asleep between coughing spells on hers, and the baby of the family wrapped in two covers on the couch. Somehow, despite being rooms apart, they all manage to call my name at the same time.

“Mom!”

My throat is still sore. I have a headache. An alarmingly large headache. And the coffee is taking too long to brew.

“Mom!”

This story ends with a stoic mother.

Mental multivitamin: Year in review

Via Semicolon: The first sentence of the first post of each month in 2005.

January: Night arrives before five now.

February: We first developed this idea last April.

March: A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window.

April: It's the Final Four for the Fighting Illini, who face the Louisville Cardinals tomorrow.

May: World's Best Mom ribbon (From Miss M-mv(ii).)

June: From "Great Dane" (Harold Bloom's April 20, 2005, piece at the WSJ): Many Americans still read Andersen's tales, whether as children or to their children, but tend to confound him with the amiable dreamer played by Danny Kaye in a not very adequate film biography.

July: That's the key to education, I've always felt: not the contents of the mind, but the ambience of the space in which those contents are recognized and welcomed, elaborated and set to work.

August: 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.

September: Under the sun butter-yellow in the crayon-blue sky, the first fallen leaves dance in the yards and skitter along the quiet street.

October: Life's Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way (Fred Rogers): I need thinking time when someone asks me a searching question.

November: 1. Set up a table with a puzzle that they can work on between lessons.

December: Read "The tall and the short of why caffeine works" (Chicago Tribune, December 1, 2005).


Top ten
And for Pages Turned: My ten favorite reading experiences, the 2005 edition. In no particular order, then...

Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)

Letters to a Young Poet (Rainer Maria Wilke; translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Education of a Wandering Man (Louis L'Amour)

Seven Types of Amibuity (Eliot Perlman)

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer (Peter Turchi)

Gertrude and Claudius (John Updike)

The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)

The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)

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

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

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

For this, our twenty-fifth "On the nightstand" entry, as for the last two, I will discuss only what is on my nightstand, under my pillow, in my knapsack, on my desk, under the car seat, etc. right now, today. As before, then, it's not the month in review, just a snapshot of one day's worth of books in various angles of repose -- being read, waiting to be read, being evaluated, being rejected. And again, I'll turn to page seventeen of each of the books, locate the fifth complete sentence on that page, and include it (or its reasonable approximation) with the title, author, and brief note on how it ended up on the stack.

Let's begin.

Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates)
Milly drew a section of her lower lip between her teeth and slowly released it.
How it ended up on the stack: A hearty recommendation from Book World.

The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)
At that unhappy period, it was important for the great to be surrounded by men made of such stuff as Treville.
How it ended up on the stack: As I mentioned here, this is our December family book club selection.

On Bullshit (Harry G. Frankfurt)
It is clear that what makes Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false.
How it ended up on the stack: A Common Reader catalogue recommendation.

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door (Lynne Truss)
Also, it was the dwarves who worked with gold, of course, not the elves.
How it ended up on the stack: Our fondness for Truss has been covered many times.

Life with Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)
The only blot on the thing from his point of view was that it wasn't doing a bit of good to the old vocal cords, which were beginning to show signs of cracking under the strain.
How it ended up on the stack: Oh, dear. Why ever would it not be on the stack?

Five Novels (Daniel Pinkwater)
Kids swiveled around to see who Leonard Neeble was.
How it ended up on the stack: Work, believe it or not. Pinkwater was one of the subjects about which I wrote over the past month. Interested? The author is author an NPR commentator; here's his bio. This article is interesting, too.

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
The poetry, for instance.
How it ended up on the stack: Just one of those authors I keep up with. Like Ian McEwan or Jane Smiley or Margaret Atwood.

A Short History of Myth (Karen Armstrong)
Some of the very earliest myths, probably dating back to the Palaeolithic period, were associated with the sky, which seems to have given people their first notion of the divine.
How it ended up on the stack: I read Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad last month (recommended); Armstrong's book is another of the titles in Canongate's The Myths series. (More information here.) Mr. M-mv picked this title from my "to acquire" list. So confident was he that this was one of my top picks, that he inscribed it (in pen!) before giving it to me. I love this man.

I. love. this. man.

The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life (Steven Leveen; yes, of Levenger's)
The adventurous, charismatic author of two hundred westerns, Louis L'Amour, explained in his memoir how he made a lifelong practice of examing the personal libraries of learned people the world over; after the Bible, Plutarch's tome was the one he most frequently came across.
How it ended up on the stack: Recommendation from somewhere. Skip this for another we've already recommended -- the same autobiography in the quote above, Education of a Wandering Man.

Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide (Maureen Dowd)
Because I received How to Catch and Hold a Man at a time when we were entering the Age of Equality, I put it aside as an anachronism.
How it ended up on the stack: Saw it on a display at Borders. So glad I borrowed it from the library because a good question here would be, "Is this book necessary?"

What Are People For? (Wendell Berry)
At that time he joined the Sharecroppers Union.
How it ended up on the stack: M., card-carrying member of M-mv's best and perfect audience, has mentioned Berry (more than once) during the course of our (virtual) acquaintance and (most satisfactory) correspondence.


Previous "On the nightstand" entries
11.11.2005
10.21.2005
9.26.2005
8.25.2005
8.5.2005
7.6.2005
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

Last-minute holiday shopping
Get cool M-mv gear. Browse in our original shop or or the Read. Think. Learn. shop (mugs only) or the "best and perfect" audience shop. Just drop us an email if you have any questions about the designs and/or products.

Or shop Amazon.com via any M-mv link. No matter what's on your gift list, Amazon delivers. We appreciate your business.

Three links

Two courtesy of M., an original and card-carrying member of M-mv's best and perfect audience.

"Taking the Kids, Guided by Gut and Guesswork" (New York Times, December 16, 2005)

"This bit reminded me of you," writes M.

And of course the ratings contain no warnings about stupidity, cynicism or reliance on cliché, attributes that many parents - this one, at least - find as offensive as naughty words, "intense action sequences" or "thematic elements," whatever those are.

Heh, heh, heh.

And from "Where Have All the Howlers Gone?" (New York Times, December 18, 2005):

As the grand follies are driven to extinction, so too are the cheesy, campy, guilty pleasures that used to bubble up with some regularity out of the B-picture ooze of cut-rate genre entertainment. Those cherished bad movies - full of jerry-built effects, abominable acting, ludicrous story lines - once flickered with zesty crudity in drive-ins and grind houses across the land. B-picture genres - science fiction and comic-book fantasy in particular, but also kiddie cartoons and horror pictures - now dominate the A-list, commanding the largest budgets and the most attention from the market-research and quality-control departments of the companies that manufacture them.

And one from the incomparable R.T.

"The Overpraised American" (Policy Review, October 2005).

"Interesting reading," writes R.T. "Unfortunately, not very hopeful."

Although it is true that [Christopher] Lasch allowed himself to make sweeping generalizations about the quality of the American character, The Culture of Narcissism has nevertheless remained one of the more useful critiques of late twentieth-century American life and has outlived the feverish criticism it once spawned. The book challenged many of the core assumptions that elites and non-elites blithely accepted as facts at the time: that human beings would continue to devise more sophisticated means of controlling nature and its effects (such as aging) through technology and science, and that these would bring inordinately positive results; that democracies inevitably continue to progress in their development rather than stall or regress; that extremes of individualism and secularism would free people from the supposedly restrictive confines of family, religious, social, and political obligation. Such sentiments were hardly new, of course, but Lasch outlined the weaknesses of them keenly.

M. and R.T., my brilliant virtual friends, since neither of you seems about to start your own (un)blog, won't you both agree to contribute regular columns to M-mv?

Wallpaper angel

Donna asked about her readers' favorite ornaments. As the children decorated our tiny tree this morning, I decided that the wallpaper angel Aunt M-mv sent many Christmases ago deserved some recognition.
_________________________

Mr. M-mv's favorite ornament comprises a tiny bride and groom standing in front of a large number one. Our names and the year of our first married Christmas (1986) are engraved on a tiny brass plaque affixed to the front of the ornament.

"Yes, I've always been partial to that one," he maintained when Master asked about his preference.

Twenty times have Mr. M-mv and I put up a tree together. Twenty times have we unpacked the ornaments. Twenty times have we concluded the ritual by nestling the angel treetopper -- who looks as brilliantly white and fresh as she did when we bought her in November 1986 -- onto the uppermost branches.

Ah, yes.

We are growing old.

Together.

Snow falling faintly through the universe

Taken from the back patio yesterday in the late afternoon.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

We've recommended it again and again and again and again. If you still haven't read it or if you haven't reread it recently, go now. Read James Joyce's "The Dead."

"Where's Elvis?"

"Where's Elvis?" I called from the kitchen.

Which was, of course, shorthand for, "Where is the Elvis Christmas Album, dear children? It is almost time for the midday meal, and I should very much like the crooning coolness that is the King to complement our dining pleasure." But in the busy bustle that is the family-centered learning project at 1:23 p.m. (lunchtime, folks), one would think, "Where's Elvis?" would suffice, no?

Um, no.

"Dead and buried. In the ground, dear mother. Poor Elvis."

"Yeah, poor, poor Elvis."

Good-natured chuckling from the little ones, who, I might add, were not at all involved in the intricacies of tripling the fettucine alfredo recipe. It's math, people. Don't you know? Mom needs to concentrate.

"That's just a myth, girls."

"What?"

"It's a myth that Elvis is dead."

"Really? A myth?"

"Like the Odyssey?"

"Sort of. You see, I saw Elvis at Burger King. Yesterday. He's alive. Elvis is alive!"

"He is?"

"Sure."

"That's not true, Boy-boy. You're lying."

"Yeah! You didn't go to Burger King yesterday. Liar, liar, pants on fire!"

My muttered contribution to this goofiness was a lesson in the permutations of American dialects, subsection: angry slang. (Think, "Jersey Turnpike rest stop.")

Fortunately, the young 'uns missed it.

"What was that, dear mother?"

Deep breath.

"Please locate the Elvis Christmas Album, dear daughter, and put it in the CD player in the bird room."

And, yes, they really do say, "Dear mother." They don't do it all the time, and it wasn't my idea. From their mouths, though, it sounds nice. Sincere. Sweet, even.

Some days, I sort of, well, I sort of like it.

Other days... ergh.

Anyway, we feasted on fettucine alfredo (enhanced by fresh, delicious peas and diced prosciutto; ayup, a Trader Joe's opened near enough to put me in Chevalier Noir on a weekly basis) and our version of saltine toffee (which, we have decided, works best with 1/4 cup light brown sugar, 1/4 cup white sugar, and Land o' Lakes butter (as opposed to the store brand); a few fresh chopped pecans on top, too).

This is, of course, reason number two for home education: good food. Elvis in the CD player while eating lunch? Reason number twenty-eight.

And you thought it was all about academic excellence and bardolatry.

Heh, heh, heh.


For those of you who need an excuse or permission slip...
From "Enjoy! " (U.S. News & World Report, 12/19/05):

Nutrition experts like Willett point out that, like tea, coffee is rich in antioxidants--substances in vegetables and fruits that deactivate disease-causing byproducts of the body's metabolism. "Coffee is by far the largest source of antioxidants in our diet," says Joe Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. That's not just because we drink so much. In tests conducted at Vinson's lab, coffee topped the list of foods that are densest in antioxidants, surpassing blueberries, broccoli, and most other produce. Only chocolate, dried fruits, and dried beans ranked higher.

Healthy, schmealthy. Coffee gives me a buzz. Face it: That's why most of us drink it. Java pushes us up and over those sluggish humps.

The end. No need for a validating discussion about antioxidants and the prevention of disease.

It's coffee, folks, not a wonder pill.


The columnist who must not be named
Attempting to put the ignominy behind him, N.S. continues in the comeback-kid vein. This made me laugh this morning:

Again with the snow. Didn't we just have snow last week? You'd think this is winter or something. Which means it's time to revive the perennial debate about snowblowers -- luxury or necessity?

OK, it may not be a debate to you -- I seem to be the only man in the suburbs without one, a distinction in which I take a perverse pride. Shoveling is good exercise, it's quiet, environmentally friendly, and you don't have to worry about mangling your hand with a shovel.

There are drawbacks, of course. Shoveling takes a long time. Men of the age I'm approaching tend to die while doing it (although a surprising number also die while snowblowing, since it is work to muscle those things around). And then there is the risk of being seen as an eccentric -- I've already got a reputation for raking leaves, which my neighbors treat as if I were making my own clothing on a loom.

He can still crack me up.
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It is snowing again here. I'm going to throw some salt, then curl up with a book.

And another pot of coffee.

Nominated again!

M-mv has been nominated in the "Homeschooling Mom Blog" and "Informational Homeschool Blog" categories of the Homeschool Blog Awards. Many thanks to the kind soul(s) who nominated us. Click here or click on the image above to see all of the categories and nominees. Voting continues until the day after Christmas.

Character development

Four years ago, maybe a little more -- or a little less -- the idea that I needed a cloakish cape, a capish cloak, stole onto the wintry landscape of my imagination. Did it coincide with our immersion in elf, hobbit, and dwarf culture (i.e., reading Lord of the Rings for our family book club)? Maybe. I can't dismiss the possibility.

I Googled and explored. I discovered and pined. I favored the handiwork of Twin Roses Designs. I even ordered a swatch of the green wool used in the Celtic Dreams cloak.

But it seemed like such a non-essential purchase. There are, after all, books to buy, museum memberships to renew, bills to pay. And three people in my life have this fascinating habit of outgrowing their coats, overalls, and shoes.

A cloak? For what? What do you mean, "To float out behind me as I look out over the cliffs"?! You live on a prairie!

This is what we adults do, isn't it? Defer our dreams. Dismiss our dreams. Deny our dreams. Dash our dreams.
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Last October, at the Trail of History, many vendors offered beautiful walking sticks. Mr. M-mv had lost the one he carved during a camping trip in the Black Woods of Acadia National Park. (Remember? We did look out over cliffs.) "We should get walking sticks," we decided. But we didn't. I can't tell you why, exactly. But when we returned this year, determined that the day's first order of business, would be the acquisition of walking sticks -- sticks that fit in our hands like familiar tools -- we learned that none of the vendors was offering the sorts of sticks they had the year prior.

Hickory sticks, heavy and strong. Perfect for long explores.

And scaling (modest) cliffs.

None.

This is what happens to adults. Our dreams are sometimes (maybe often?) deferred, dismissed, denied, dashed. And we decide this is as it should be. What does an adult need with a cloak, with a walking stick?

Denying ourselves develops character, after all, right?
_________________________

What do you want for Christmas? asked Aunt M-mv.

I barely hesitated. A walking stick. I've already found a site that has exactly what I want.

Another conversation. Aunt M-mv has an idea that a walking stick calls for a cape... and the story of my search for a cloakish cape / a capish cloak leaps from my mouth as if it were just waiting for the right person.

Someday, I conclude, the practical overtaking the playful. Someday. In the meantime, the stick would be perfect.
_________________________

A heavy box from Twin Roses arrived in yesterday's post.

And while I danced and twirled (and laughed and cried) in my green wool cape with the pewter clasp, the UPS truck backed into the driveway.

A long, thin box.

Something about a walking stick and a cape.

_________________________

Thank you, dear sister, dear friend.

I love you... not for the gifts you give but for the gift you are.

The recommended daily allowance

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.

Family M-mv laughed and laughed.

It's just nice to meet another human that shares my affinity for elf culture.

Look, it's not all Shakespeare and Wagner here. If you've been laboring under that misconception, get over it. We quote from The Godfather, Hamlet, and Elf; LOTR, The Nightmare before Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas; It's a Wonderful Life, Heaven Can Wait, and Fargo; Citizen Kane, The Importance of Being Earnest, and, yes, Stripes.

You know who you are, you who mistake the pursuit of excellence for snobbery. You've grievously misjudged us. Grab a Dew or an ugly mug filled with French roast brewed dark and strong, and give us another look.

Read. Think. Learn.

And laugh.
__________________________

Name that movie

Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it's usually something unusual. But now I know why I have always lost women to guys like you. I mean, it's not just the uniform. It's the stories that you tell. So much fun and imagination.

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.

You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years.

I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou.

I know how you feel about all this Christmas business, getting depressed and all that. It happens to me every year. I never get what I really want. I always get a lot of stupid toys or a bicycle or clothes or something like that.

You've poisoned me for the last time, you wretched girl!

I feel thin... sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don't expect I shall return. In fact I mean not to.

What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form and moving how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a God. The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust. Man delights not me.

Do you spend time with your family? Good. Because a man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.

Former Owner: He got my team. The son of a bitch got my team.
Advisor to Former Owner: What kind of pressure did he use, Milt?
Former Owner: All I asked was sixty-seven million, and he said "okay."
Advisor to Former Owner: Ruthless bastard.

The material in this post originally appeared here.

It was a good day.

It was a good day because it was too cold for the snow penguin the girls made yesterday to melt. Their cries of delight this morning -- "Oh, she's still there! She's still there!" -- filled me with quiet happiness.

It was a good day because I had time to read, and think, and learn, and write.

It was a good day because my current slate of topics (for work) is an eclectic mix of people, places, and periods.

It was a good day because I have work. (Writing for money is always a good thing. Don't let anyone tell you differently.)

It was a good day because American goldfinches in winter plummage visited our new thistle seed bird feeder again. My son removed the screen door for the winter, so we had a wonderful view of our new friends gingerly selecting seeds.

It was a good day because my husband said, as he was kissing me goodbye, "I just want to stay here with you."

It was a good day because that same man caught an early train home.

It was a good day because it is hard to have a bad day when you smell like Suave's Hot Cocoa holiday body wash.

Heh, heh, heh.

It was a good day because my new monkey pajamas just popped out of the dryer.

It was a good day because I learned that "L&O: SVU" is new tonight. (Hate the reruns, man. Hate the reruns.)

It was a good day because I willed it to be. Because I woke up and made the choice: "Today will be a good day." Because I am here. Because given any other choice, I would choose this life, these people. So I must also choose to find and celebrate that which makes it worth choosing.

It was a good day.


The material in this post appeared in a slightly different form in another forum on December 6, 2005.

On thinking and writing

From "Truth vs. Theory" (City Journal):

Shakespeare was, of course, conversant with Galen’s theory of humors. This no more means that he must have had a university training in medicine than that a modern man who has heard of the germ theory of disease must be a microbiologist. But Shakespeare was not in thrall to Galenism as was his son-in-law: in other words, it was precisely his lack of university training that permitted him to be so acute an observer. While he needed a sophisticated basic education to be Shakespeare, the author of the plays, a university training, at least with regard to medicine, would have diminished rather than enhanced his work. A contemporary medical man can learn something from Shakespeare; he can learn nothing from Hall. As Orwell pointed out, it takes effort and determination to see what is in front of one’s face. Among the efforts required is the discarding of the lenses of excessive or bogus theorizing. When it comes to our attempts to understand the phenomena of our own society, I cannot help but wonder how many of us are in the grip of theories that are the equivalent of Hall’s Galenical theory, and whether as a result we do not prescribe the legislative equivalents of human skull, mummy dust, and jaw of pike.

The incomparable R.T. comments:

Good food for thought in this article, in which the author (Theodore Dalrymple) raises the question (using Shakespeare as an example of truth) as to "why people adopt theories that conflict with the most minimal honest reflection." He attributes much of it to fear of looking bad in the eyes of peers, friends, colleagues and possibly (my own deduction drawn from the examples he provides) a slavish devotion to what has been passed down from on "high" versus one's own common sense and powers of honest observation.

Pondering on this a bit further and following Mr. Dalyrmple's last sentence, I wonder if the unwillingness to acknowledge (or perhaps even look closely enough to discover) that the "emperor has no clothes" is a problem not only in medicine, but in just about every other discipline including politics, religion, the arts, and literature. The ability to see, to call a spade a spade despite common knowledge, theory or fact, is lost among many today, not just in Shakespeare's time.

What a more honest and productive environment we would live in if we all adopted the powers of keen observation and reflection, and then had the courage to say clearly what it is we had seen. In the process, I expect we would come to accept no less from our leaders, scholars, artists and journalists.

The Advice Column
J.B. (you've met him here and here) contributed the following:

"I want them to be able to speak with conviction, logic, compassion, and thought."

Your correspondent's desire is admirable; however, she has the wrong object in mind: She wants "them," the kids, to develop the skills. Naturally, she has to do it first. It is her modeling of this behavior that teaches them. They will come by it naturally with exposure; she has to come by it artificially since she wasn't taught this and is fighting against herself and her emotions.

Almost every adult I know requires some remediation in an academic skill: If it doesn't come naturally (it wasn't modeled, or it is contrary to one's own personality), it must come artifically through practice. (Believe me, I know: I had to learn math, which was as alien as sprouting wings and flying.)

Her topics need a formal, artificial approach for a little while until she begins to feel her way through argumentation. Here's one approach.

Brainstorming (in my opinion) is best on a big white board or, if necessary, huge sheets of paper.

Divide the board into four fields and fill them up. The trick is to refuse to edit what flows onto the paper. If what you wrote sounds silly, too bad. If it sounds prejudiced and makes you look like a terrible person, too bad. You aren't publishing your brainstorming session -- you are exploring.

If you discover that you are incomprehensibly outraged at bunny rabbits who wear watches around their necks, write it down. It is, after all, how you feel. You want everything about the topic on the paper, including all of the contradictions you harbor. And you do want to think about where these feelings, ideas, etc. belong on the paper -- is this an idea? or a feeling?

The four fields:

I feel (compassion & love --> rage & hate & revulsion, and anything in between)

I believe (faith --> prejuduce --> understanding, and any anything in between that forms the conviction)

I think (my knowledge, my inklings, my prejudices --yes, they straddle the line, though you won't recognize them until the same things show up in both fields. Your mind is a wonderful filter. It will convulse when it sees belief and thinking confused, but only when it can see the division.)

I can show (I can logically prove these things because I have the facts, the authorative opinion, and the experiences to back up what I feel, believe, and think.) Guess what? you just entered the realm of researching the topic, so as you read around, jot more stuff here.

First dump everything onto that board, perhaps over several days for a big project. And remember, "dump" is not an accidental term here. You really do want everything tossed into the fields.

Then wander back over and start erasing what doesn't fit, filling in what does, and especially moving things into their correct field. You cannot logically show that the watch-bearing bunny will actually cause the sky to fall, now can you? Even if you "feel" that it will? Keep the feeling, but put it in its correct field: feeling, not showing.

You are creating the critical space where the argument can be formed. The passion is there, but it is tempered and it serves the topic. Your beliefs are there, but they are tested against your thinking and by what you can show.

Do it in front of the kids. Let them watch a feeling become an idea. Let yourself watch as your passion is validated by logic. Especially, pay attention when you finally do sit down around the table and discuss this. Are you less passionate? Nope. Are you winning your points? Yes. Are you and the kids having fun? Absolutely.

With some practice, critical thinking and argumentation become habits of the mind -- and they become the source of great, passionate fun.

Thank you, J.B. This is excellent.

You could use someone else's links,
but we're thankful that you use ours.

Many thanks, dear readers, thinkers, and autodidacts.

Remember: Spend wisely.

It's not the size of the gift; it's the love with which it's offered.

Profound and pedestrian

"I almost always cry at the end of a play," Donna admitted Saturday. (It is funny that I have never heard Donna speak, yet I know—or believe I know—her cadences well. And had she not written another word, I believe I would have been able to complete (or at least complement) her thought: Not because the play concluded tragically, necessarily, but because it had concluded at all.)

"But I cry tears of joy for the participants."

Yes. Theater is a catharsis, and we laugh and we cry and we clap as the experience draws to a close.

How can it be over already? we wonder. We just got here.

Miss M-mv(i) learned this sometimes painful lesson in May 2004.

She wept after a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, her first live-theater experience. "It's over already," she cried softly into my ear. "It was so. wonderful."

Oh, I know, sweetie. I know. It almost always is.
___________________________

My a.m. internet habits are no secret.

I check my email, look over Arts & Letters, give either the NYT or the Trib a glance, read Quiet Life, Semicolon, Pages Turned, and Outer Life, submit my work from the night before, and post at M-mv, if time permits.

Yesterday, I only got as far in my morning ritual as Quiet Life when the day beckoned to me.

"I almost always cry at the end of a play."

As I tidied the kitchen, I began to sing a bit from a much maligned musical:

Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.

I don't know when it became popular to loathe Cats. Its poetry, after all, is no more or less ridiculous than, say, Carroll's "Jabberwocky."

I rather like it.

Ayup. I do.

Yes, I most certainly prefer

Mcavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.

to most anything, say, Jack Prelutsky concocts. And it takes an admirable sort of poet to rhyme this sentence

There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.

to another, no?

Heh, heh, heh.
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When Mr. M-mv and I were undergrads, our student unions often offered two-for-one ticket deals for Broadway shows. During those lean, so lean, years of college and early married life, we managed to see A Chorus Line, Cats, and later Les Miserables (four times). Our seats were always excellent, and what I remember best about Cats was that the players frolicked in the aisles—they were thisclose.

I loved it!

My early theater experiences (high school and college) were, I guess, rather pedestrian: They're Playing Our Song, Evita, Forty-Second Street, A Chorus Line, Cats, The Fantastiks (off-Broadway), Les Miserables. Some Gilbert and Sullivan. Arms and the Man at a Princeton U. theater. School and university productions of Carousel and Carnival and Anything Goes and Plaza Suite and Suddenly Last Summer. Regional theater productions of Fiddler on the Roof and The Fantastiks. And so on.

But the larger-than-life-ness of the experiences were anything but pedestrian.

Later…

Sunset Boulevard at the Civic Opera House. Rent. Othello and other plays (familiar and not) at smaller theaters around Chicago. Hubbard Street Dance Company. The Joffrey Ballet. Mikhail Baryshnikov and the White Oak Project. Mamet at the Steppenwolf. (Oh, I remember the production so clearly—the young boy in the cast was surreally wonderful—but the name, the name….) Signal Ensemble Theater. Shakespeare Project of Chicago. The American Ballet Theater. The Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

"I almost always cry at the end of a play."

Oh, yes, I, too, almost always cry at the end of a performance because unless it's the most dreadful production on Earth, the point of theater (and dance and musical concerts) is live—this is happening right now, so anything is possible!—performance. So, as it ends, Oh, wonderful! we cry. You did it! You did it! Thank you! Thank you! I loved being here!

I cry, too, Donna.

I think that's what makes us human, my friend.
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Last night, Mr., Master, and I watched Logan's Run. Why? a few of you are, no doubt, wondering. Because it's a sci-fi classic in its own right.

And because I wanted to.

Logan 5 and Jessica 6 have made it to the ruins of Washington, D.C. They marvel at the wrinkles and gray hairs of the old man they meet, and the old man talks to them about his cats:

"…[A] cat must have three different names. First of all, there's the name that the family use daily…."

And I thought, Yes, that's right. To a citizenry raised in a bubble, a manufactured city in which no one lives past thirty, this doddering old man's recitation from T.S. Eliot's The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats must ring in profound peals.

They don't know what cats are.

They don't know what old is.

They don't know what it is to be buried.

Or to fear dying without someone to bury (and remember) you.

To them, all of this is new, and immediate, and ever so much larger than life as they once knew it.

"Gus is the cat at the theatre door," the old man introduces one of his feline companions to this Brave New World's Adam and Eve. "His name, as I ought to have told you before, is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss to pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus."

Logan and Jessica nod, enchanted.
___________________________

MIRANDA: O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!

PROSPERO: 'Tis new to thee.

___________________________

There is, at the confluence of thought and experience, a moment of such clarity that we can hardly bear to look at it.

Life is both profound and pedestrian.

And I cry, too.

On writing... and thinking

L., a home-educating parent, wrote to ask for "a friendly kick in the butt to point in the right direction." She was particularly concerned with teaching her children to write and argue clearly and logically. "I never want for them to feel that they can't participate in a conversation or that their opinion is not one of value. I value their opinions, and I want them to be able to speak with conviction, logic, compassion, and thought."

Earlier in her message, L. had noted, "I am not able to logically argue my point on a matter. I often get frustrated, and my emotions overshadow my ability to think clearly. I hate this about myself. I don't see this happening to you... I need to know how you are able to see a matter for what it is and address the heart of it. Okay, now, I think I know what you are going to say. Read. Think. Learn. Right? Is it really that simple? Please be honest. As if you could be anything but."

My reply (edited slightly for privacy) appears below, but I realize now that I never addressed this idea of seeing a matter for what it is and addressing the heart of it.

Do I? Yeah, I guess. But, then, I've been writing and editing and teaching writing and editing and practicing writing and editing and (did I mention?) writing and editing for twenty-three years. For twenty-three years, words have been my work, professionally (yes, for money), part- or full-time. Twenty-three years. Putting together words and phrases and clauses is just. what. I. do. Seeing a matter for what it is and addressing the heart of it is what I've learned to do. Why? Because good writing is simply good thinking in print. How? By reading, thinking, writing. Sending it over the transom. Revising. Reading and researching. Learning. Rewriting.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I wonder if I were a cabinet maker... If I had been building cabinets, installing them, designing them, crafting them, professionally, for two decades, and someone approached me in, say, Home Depot, and asked, "How do you do that?" where would I begin? Perhaps it's just my sardonic (and reclusive) nature, but I can see myself saying something like, "Well, ya' see this hammer? And that wood over there? And those nails? That sandpaper? Yeah, well. I use them. To build cabinets."

Heh, heh, heh.

It's not lost on me that L. wanted advice about writing and arguing more clearly, and I chose a rambling, musing approach to address some of the points she raised in her message. Taut writing is the result of a lot of thinking and several drafts. So I apologize for the length of my reply. I did not have the time to write something shorter.


My reply
L.:

Some musings in reply to your recent message:

You wrote, "Okay, now, I think I know what you are going to say. Read. Think. Learn. Right? Is it really that simple?"

Ayup.

It is -- for me, anyway -- really that simple. And, one could argue, that difficult, right? After all, study is hard work.

_________________________

Read. Think. Learn. Write. Grow. Ponder. Read. Rewrite. Think. Learn. Work. Play. Laugh. Feel. Love. Read. Write. Learn. Think. Live.

_________________________

Clear writing is the product of clear thinking. That is most writing teachers' mantra. Clear writing = Clear thinking. Clear thinking = Clear writing. I heard that hundreds of times in high school and college. I have said it thousands of times in classrooms, writing centers, university lecture halls, seminars, and in my own home and library.

To think clearly, we must fill our heads with -- what else? -- good, clear writing and good, clear thinking. The good, very good, and great books are our finest sources of clear writing and thinking. It makes sense, then, that good, very good, and great readers are generally good, very good, and great writers, no?

When I taught writing at the college level, I shared my colleagues' frustration with students who aspired to writing careers but who refused to recognize the value of good literature. It was difficult to get them to spend time analyzing the style of E.B. White, let alone Montaigne or Emerson. (We had the same conversations in the communications department: about journalism and public relations students who didn't read one newspaper, let alone the two or three or four with which any journalist worth his or her (meager) paycheck must be familiar; theater students who didn't study Shakespeare; film students who, with no irony, said, "Orson who?" Argh.)

Heh, heh, heh.

I just realized something: Part of what I love about the family-centered learning project is that -- guess what? -- all of my students know White, Montaigne, and Emerson (to say nothing of newspapers, Shakespeare, and, yes, even Orson Welles). Sure makes my job easier, this building the scholar from the early reader up.

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What teachers can do to ensure that their students can craft clear prose is to (1) ensure that they are reading (and understanding!) good prose and (2) writing. A lot. Every day. Developing a clear, reasoned writing voice does not happen in the first, second, or thirtieth, or three-hundredth outing. Writing is a craft. To craft well, we must first apprentice and then practice. And practice. And practice.

Did I mention... practice?

Another writing teacher mantra: The best writing is rewriting.

_________________________

[Pausing. Thinking.]

Quite honestly, I'm not sure what you seek from me, L. I can tell you one thing: Hating your emotional response is unproductive. Writing sans emotion is, well, dead writing. Don't seek to eliminate feeling from your response; similarly, don't teach your students to eliminate it. Rather, learn (and teach them) to harness it, channel it into clear, reasoned delivery.

You'll want an example of that, I suppose. (*grin*) Let's see. The Preamble to the Constitution is one clearly reasoned piece of prose, no? Or how 'bout Lincoln's Gettysburg Address? Or Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech? Logical. Well written. Clearly thought. Clearly delivered. Is there any doubt, however, that each of these pieces are laden (dripping, bursting, PULSING) with emotion? See? Good writing and logical argument need not be stripped of emotion. On the contrary, emotion can fuel a clear, logical argument.

Perhaps, too, it is wise to learn (and to teach your students) that taking the time to think about our reactions to this or that provides us with the space-time needed to decide whether the issue even merits our response and then to choose (wisely) from our crafter's toolkit the words, phrasing, and emphasis that will best articulate our argument.

I'm sorry. Deadlines loom, L. I hope something here proves helpful.

Best regards.

P.S. You wrote, "I want to be the best teacher/mother/friend to my children that I possible can, but I feel I am lacking the tools to accomplish this."

There is no rule that says you must be the best teacher/mother/friend, L. This is a myth, a self-defeating myth. You must only be the teacher, mother, and friend that your children need; that is, one who is attentive to their needs, who loves them enough to take time to love herself, who works hard but plays harder, who thinks and feels, who learns and wonders, who finds joy more often than fault.

If some gap in your education, training, or even interest prevents you from teaching this or that skill to your children, feel free to outsource it. My oldest will take his maths and sciences at the community college. My middle will be taking art lessons. My youngest will take music lessons. I cannot do it all. I do not even want to. If your children's advanced training in writing or logic or whatever fills you with doubt, choose options that enliven your selfhood: Tackle the subjects yourself and pass on your new knowledge, or identify someone else to teach those subjects.

As I said, there is no rule that says we must be all things simply because we chose to home educate. If there were some rule, by the way, I would flout it.

Again, best regards.






______________________


Added (much) later: It's likely that if you arrived at this post, you're here for a Carnival of Homeschooling. I've compiled a list of other Mental multivitamin posts that may also interest you. Thank you for visiting.

One hundred words a high school student (and his parents!) should know (10.02.2003)

About college (11.16.2003)

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming... (2.25.2004)

Reading, thinking, learning (5.09.2004)

The monastic preservation of our culture (9.30.2004)

(Behind the scenes) at the museum (3.20.2004)

Parenting as performance art revisited (1.31.2005)

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

Be a sun. (5.05.2005)

Paying for college: A rant of modest proportions (5.20.2005)

Morning meditation: What I live for (8.11.2005)

Life is short. (8.26.2005)

Many folks think... (9.15.2005)

Parent-teacher (9.17.2005)

I think... (10.07.2005)

A typical night and day here (10.11.2005)

Simple ways to inject fun into your children's learning days (11.01.2005)

Advice to a new homeschooling mother (11.02.2005)

"Good teaching isn't about being the old bore at the front of the class with a textbook." (11.14.2005)

On writing... and thinking (12.03.2005)

Let's go. (12.28.2005)

Czeslaw Milosz

At a Certain Age

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: "That's me."

Here, the Nobel Laureate (1980) reads two of his poems. (English and Polish versions are available.) He introduces the tension between the ideas he evokes in each and maintains, "[T]he two poems taken together testify to my contradictions, since the opinions voiced in one and the other are equally mine."
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A personal favorite:

Ars Poetica?

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That's why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though its an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It's hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I've devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.

There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person....

Why coffee works

Read "The tall and the short of why caffeine works" (Chicago Tribune, December 1, 2005).

Now a team of Austrian researchers using advanced brain imaging technology has discovered that caffeine makes people more alert by perking up part of the brain involved in short-term memory, the kind that helps focus attention on the tasks at hand.

And Americans seem most in need of concentrating their thoughts, since their average daily consumption of 236 milligrams of caffeine, equivalent to more than 4.5 cups of coffee, is three times the world average.

"Almost all of us drink coffee or something with caffeine in it and we know why, because we want to be more awake or feel better," said Dr. Florian Koppelstaetter of the Medical University Innsbruck in Austria. "We wanted to know what effect one to two cups of coffee would have on short-term memory."

Added later: She was heard murmuring disingenuously, "I don't know why this word just popped into my head." POP!