For grammar geeks...

...and other guardians of the language. (The following material was culled from several posts in the M-mv archives.)

From The Underground Grammarian:

Do not boo and stamp your feet when some barbarian [misuses the language]; it will bring reprisal, for barbarians are vindictive. Simply mutter, just loud enough to be heard, 'Clickety-click-click.' This requires no lip movement and suggests a wind-up toy. With a female barbarian, an equally good response is 'Ding-dong,' familiar to all television-addicted barbarians and suggesting some more appropriate career in cosmetics.

An incomplete list of errors to avoid:

Explanation not explaination

Voila! not Wallah!

Used to (and only if you must) not use to

Vengeance not vengance

A lot not alot

Advice is the noun; advise is the verb.

Loan is the noun; lend is the verb.

Too many exclamation marks. How many is too many? More than one tacked to the end of sentence? Too many. More than one exclamation per thousand-words? Too many. And, yes, I've erred here, too. I'll heed my own advice, ne'er fear!

Heh, heh, heh.

Care to place a wager on how many folks will write in about that last exclamation mark? "You just broke your own rule!" Ah, well. It's a public blog. No telling who will click in, right?

Newly added: A garment can be loose, and so can a woman, but we lose our place in a book when distracted by the latter. Do you see the difference? Please, you don't want to loose weight. That could prove dangerous to those around you. No, you simply want (perhaps, need?) to lose it.

Newly added: Cuz for because. Gentle readers, no educated writer over the age of, say, fifteen should regularly employ this or any other 'net shorthand in his or her writing. No, really. There is no excuse.

And, yes, I know: "Barbarians are vindictive."

Here's another site for grammar geeks and other guardians of the language.

From "The Grammar Curmudgeon":

Nothing makes a confirmed curmudgeon crankier than misuse of the English language, especially if that curmudgeon has devoted his adult life to studying and teaching English – and even more so if he has spent countless hours editing bad prose. This site is an outlet for an old guy who is tired of hearing teenagers punctuate every sentence with a half dozen likes, baffled by the apparent inability of many presumably literate adults to distinguish between it’s and its, and a little tired of explaining to college freshmen why “Mary and me went to the movies” is wrong. I hope that, in the course of venting, I can also contribute some useful information – and perhaps even add a little fire and wit to that dull-as-proverbial-dust subject, grammar.

The Curmudgeon also blogs: "Curmudgeon's Corner."

Let us be the first to remark on this coincidence: "The Grammar Curmudgeon" (Rich Turner) hails from the same home state as "The Underground Grammarian" (Richard Mitchell).

The Garden State yielded a crop of grammarians.

Heh, heh, heh.
_______________________

M-mv on grammar, language, and writing:

On writing... and thinking (12.03.2005)

The writer's bookshelf (Part I) (12.02.2004)

"Rules are important, no question about it." (5.16.2004)

Your writing fool (4.24.2004)

The recommended daily allowance (4.13.2004)

"Scared silly by the Underground Grammarian" (3.23.2004)

Heh, heh, heh. "Ding-dong!" (3.22.2004)

Two things (3.8.2004)

Ayup. (2.1.2004)

Not for grammar geeks only (12.15.2003)

The recommended daily allowance (12.15.2003)

Hab SoSlI' Quch! (12.13.2003)

The Underground Grammarian (12.3.2003)

The recommended daily allowance (11.15.2003)

Per una selva oscura...

N.S. and his son are reading Dante's Inferno.

And in every circle, every ring and sub-ring -- and this is the most delicious part of the book, for me -- Dante recognizes some former real-life rival or Florentine politician, despite the steaming excrement covering his face, and asks him, ever so politely, to explain just what he did to earn his spot in eternal damnation. It is the crowning achievement, the columnist's dream, to create this hell and stick your enemies in it.

Scroll down a bit in today's column for the rest.

Birding

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.

(Chinese proverb)

The ten birds most frequently spotted at feeders:

Dark-eyed Junco
Mourning Dove
Downy Woodpecker
House Finch
American Goldfinch
Blue Jay
Northern Cardinal
White-breasted Nuthatch
American Robin
House Sparrow

This morning, we spotted all but the Junco (due to return soon) and the Robin, which we haven't seen for a week or two.

Backyard birders, even those new to the pursuit, are encouraged to participate in Project FeederWatch, a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders anywhere in the United States and Canada.

More about birding here.

"[T]he biggest and most successful fraud"

From "To Be or Not to Be Shakespeare" (Smithsonian, September 2006):

At heart, the Shakespeare debate is about more than missing records. It's driven by an unquenchable need to slip past Shakespeare's verses and locate the real-life artist behind them, whoever he or she might be. Little is known about Dante or Chaucer either, but somehow that isn't as nettlesome. "If Shakespeare hadn’t been metamorphosed into a god, nobody would think it was worth having an authorship controversy about him," says Jonathan Bate, a Shakespeare expert at the University of Warwick, not far from Stratford.

It's certainly curious that the creator of such vivid, recognizably human characters as Falstaff, Lear and Hamlet should himself remain as insubstantial as stage smoke. The most detailed description of the man left to us by someone who actually knew him, it seems, is a less-than-incisive sentence from his friend and rival, the playwright Ben Jonson: "He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature." That covers a lot of ground. As for Shakespeare's appearance, none of his contemporaries bothered to describe it. Tall or short? Thin or chubby? It's anyone’s guess.

Images from "Searching for Shakespeare," an exhibition about the visual side of the quest to "find" Shakespeare, complement the short article.

Related M-mv entry here.

"[I]t's a good disease to have."

From Joe Queenan's article "Why I Can’t Stop Starting Books" (NYT, August 6, 2006; registration required, but it's free):

But I am never reading fewer than 25 books. I am not talking about books I have delved into, perused and set aside, like “Finnegans Wake” or Pamela Anderson’s first novel — that would get me up way over a hundred. I am talking about books I am actively reading, books that are on my nightstand and are not leaving there until I am done with them. Right now, the number is 27.

Like any addiction, the insatiable desire to start new books provides immense pleasure.

True confession

When the video rental store opens, four-fifths of Family M-mv will be just outside the door, waiting to be the first to rent...

Yeah, three of us are suckers for movies about dancing, one of us is a big Banderas fan, and one loves movies about good teachers.

"Jolt Culture"

J. Peder Zane's piece "Jolt Culture has twice the trivia" (News & Observer, August 13, 2006) appeared in yesterday's Sun-Times. From the article:

Jolt Culture is often conflated with the "dumbing-down" of America. They are, undoubtedly, partners in crime. Trivia books -- which strip meaning from knowledge, providing us with information but the not the context we need to apply it -- embody this relationship. At bottom, they provide us with fleeting sensation. It is not only neat to know that Luxembourg has the highest gross domestic product per capita of any nation ($58,900 per person, according to the 2005 CIA World Factbook) or that an average apple has 47 calories. Such trivia is also strangely satisfying. Like celebrity shots in People magazine, or a Keith Olbermann rant, it holds our attention to the point of mesmerism. Until -- a few seconds later -- it's over.

Zane concludes:

As someone who likes challenging movies and complicated books -- there are still a few of us out here -- what can I say except: Not good! But I do know that the rise of Jolt Culture is not something we can shrug away with a dismissive "so what."

Speaking of jolts...

Coffee is a new health drink! (I know; we've heard something like this before.) Jean Carper (USA Weekend Magazine; the Sun-Times Sunday supplement) maintains coffee is a heart saver, liver protector, diabetes foe, and Parkinson's fighter. Wow. Let's brew another pot, eh? Scroll down for the short aricle.

National Library Card Sign-Up Month
A library card is the most important school supply of all, maintains the American Library Association.

Studies show that children who are read to in the home and who use the library perform better in school and are more likely to continue to use the library as a source of lifetime learning.

Ayup.

National Book Festival
Last week, I received information about the Sixth Annual National Book Festival.

Organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by Mrs. Laura Bush, the Festival will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 30, on the National Mall in Washington , D.C. , between 7th and 14th streets (rain or shine). The festival is free and open to the public.

Participating authors include best-selling novelists Khaled Hosseini and Geraldine Brooks, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize; novelist and essayist Joan Didion; historians John Hope Franklin and Doris Kearns Goodwin; biographer Taylor Branch; Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, winners of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for their biography; authors of books for children and teens, including Andrew Clements, Stephenie Meyer, Richard Peck, and Louis Sachar; award-winning illustrators Bryan Collier, Betsy Lewin and Mark Teague; Donald Hall, the recently named fourteenth Poet Laureate of the United States; and poet Dana Gioia, the director the National Endowment for the Arts; best-selling mystery and thriller authors, including Michael Connelly, Lisa Scottoline, Kathy Reichs and Alexander McCall Smith; science fiction award-winner Spider Robinson; and Elmer Kelton.

For more information, check out the Festival website.

Worth repeating

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 Sunday papers, a local and a regional. Read more than the funnies.

Let the service wash the car.

Better, participate in a community carwash fundraiser.

Swim. One last time. They close the pool today.

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.

Breathe deeply.

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.

On the nightstand

Or on the kitchen counter. Under the pillow. In the knapsack or, more recently, the messenger bag. On the shelf behind the cat. Atop the toilet tank. Under the front seat in the mini-van. And so on. This is the thirty-fifth "On the nightstand" entry.

Let's begin.

Nature
I discovered Gordon Morrison's beautiful books via The Imponderabilia of Actual Life. (Each book cover represents a separate link.) These may be precisely what elementary school teachers seek (need?) on Fridays, when formal lessons are sometimes set aside, and learning is born in discovery, inquiry, and adventure.





Words
I've discussed poetry many times before (here, for example), and the shelves dedicated to poetry already sag under the weight of our many selections, but I was still thrilled to discover another worthwhile volume: A Child's Introduction to Poetry.

The subtitle -- Listen While You Learn About the Magic Words That Have Moved Mountains, Won Battles, and Made Us Laugh and Cry -- tells you everything you need to know about Michael Driscoll's treasure.

I invoked Emily's spirit here, which reminded me of this workhorse of a biography.

Dickinson was frugal with time and didn't like to waste it in small talk with people she barely knew... Over time, she avoided involving herself in such boring situations and public places increasingly, until she managed to live almost exclusively in the relaxed, intimate company of her family, her dog Carlo, and the workers around her home. She maintained friendships through written correspondence where she could carefully compose her thoughts. She cherished leters written to her in reply, rereading them over and over in the solitary freedom of her room, behind a door she locked from the inside.

Shakespeare
All of us have managed to memorize wide swaths of Hamlet, thanks, in no small part, to this and this. We're planning to see a live production next month, though, so I decided to ensure that the Misses M-mv are absolutely clear on the plot essentials. McKeown has served before, and he does again.

The Chicago Shakespeare Theater will present Troilus and Cressida next spring (Barbara Gaines directing), but I, being in a Shakespeare sort of mood, decided to read it now. Part of our Shakespeare "formula" involves listening on the maiden reading.

Non-fiction
Virtual friend SFP at Pages Turned always delivers good recommendations. Recently, she discussed Judith Levine's Not Buying It: My Year without Shopping.

The job of consumer culture (and all culture, in order to see the light of day, must be to some extent commercial culture) is to blur the line between need and want.

Ayup.

Don't miss

Be inspired
Did you catch "The Ron Clark Story" on TNT? It's still playing in encore presentations. A year ago, I mentioned the following texts:

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 here) is the finer text. Yet, the Clark texts are quick reads with an upbeat tone. Perhaps the dose of encouragement some of you seek?

There are more books (of course), but I'm racing the clock, folks.

Read. Think. Learn.

A reminder
Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

Fine Art Friday

"Autumn in the Village"
Marc Chagall

One of my favorite places in all the world:
A bench in front of this.

Books or people?

Virtual acquaintance C., who introduced me to Nock (here) and who blogs at Romans Go Home, writes:

I wish I had written this...

It would be a hard choice, but if I were forced to choose between books and people, I would choose books. In any case, a book is a man at his best. So it is in one sense a false alternative: choose books, and you get people, distilled, reduced to their essence, and in a form that makes it easy to 'close the book' on their irritating particularisms. But people without books? That would be hell.

And then elsewhere in his blog, he [explains] why he doesn't permit just anyone to leave a comment on his blog...

The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.

Thanks, C. In addition to nodding my head in agreement, I was delighted to see someone else extolling the virtues of the best episode of "Twilight Zone" ever.

The Saturday Review of Books

For the last few Saturdays, Semicolon has hosted "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

Being idle

My mother-in-law had finished reading her August Ladies' Home Journal before the end of her visit with us, so she tucked it into the reading rack. I grabbed it for poolside companionship yesterday.

In "The Rewards of Relaxation," Margaret Renkl quotes from two books I've pressed on M-mv readers: How to Be Idle (Tom Hodgkinson; in this entry) and In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed (Carl Honore; in this entry).

If you haven't had time for these two volumes, at least read Renkl's piece:

For starters, the problem-solving mind actually functions best during unstructured time. Think of the resting brain as an automated version of an old-fashioned card catalog: When we're engaged in "mindless" activities -- taking a stroll, listening to music, soaking our feet -- our minds are free to sort through the accumulated information stored there, making connections and finding answers that a focused, directed mind is too busy to make. That's why that bit of data you've been struggling to recall -- the name of a childhood friend, a song lyric -- often comes to you as you're falling asleep or taking a shower.
...

The idle mind literally pulls together seemingly unrelated fragments of information stored in disparate regions of the brain and combines them in a way the focused mind can't.

Of course, not all idle moments result in creative genius, and sometimes we squander them... but there's something liberating in the idea that I've been espousing for three years: Stop being a slave to the to-do lists and chore charts and schedules and just, oh, look up! Dream! Think. Breathe deeply. Take a nap. Wonder.

Happy Wednesday, folks.

Added later: The incomparable R.T. writes:

Related to your "Being idle" post today, I recently read this poem by Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day." If you haven't read it, she reminds us of what we might miss through our business, stated in an unassuming and universal way.

From Oliver's poem:

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.

The recommended daily allowance

84 Charing Cross Road

Helene Hanff: Here I am, Frankie; I finally made it.

What fresh hell is this?

A Book of Days for the Literary Year, which I pressed on M-mv readers here, reminds me that on this date in 1893 Dorothy Parker was born in New Jersey. Challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence, Parker, a literary figure known for her "instant wit and cruel humour," once quipped:

You can drag a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Heh, heh, heh. Read the 1956 Paris Review interview Marion Capron conducted with Parker, who was then living in New York City. From the article, which is available in a PDF file:

Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, "You’re all a lost generation." That got around to certain people and we all said, "Whee! We’re lost."

:: More book talk
According to this Times article, Dale Carnegie, a "failed Missouri farmer, failed teacher, failed journalist, failed actor, failed novelist, failed husband and, most spectacularly, failed investor," penned How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie) seven decades ago. Richard Morrison writes:

Rather as Jean-Paul Sartre was to do a few years later in Being and Nothingness (but in less pretentious prose), Carnegie put forward the thesis that we can all choose to control our lives if we wish, rather than being buffeted around by the blustery winds of fortune. He believed that most of us utilise only a tenth of our potential, and that the key to unlocking the rest is to develop our skill at dealing with other people.

How do we do that? Well, Carnegie had a brutally mechanistic view of human nature. He believed that words and deeds are largely shaped by genes, upbringing and circumstance. “You deserve very little credit for being what you are,” he tells the reader. “And remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.”

This apparent denial of free will may seem chilling. But Carnegie thought it could be turned to advantage. If you know the right levers to pull in other people’s psyches, he argues, you can make them respond in an entirely predictable way, like puppets. Which, of course, is the fundamental principle upon which all cunning salesmen base their techniques — whether they are marketing soap powder to housewives or (at the time when Carnegie was writing) the concept of Aryan supremacy to Germans. [Emphasis added.]

:: How big is your family?
From "Sibling smarts" (Prevention, August 2006):

What does affect aptitude: genetics, nutrition, family environment, and, surprisingly, family size. Kids with three or more siblings tended to have lower test scores, though the oldest's and youngest's still matched.

:: Well-Read Stuffed Siminans, Part II

Part I found here.

:: Added later
Thank you for asking. You can purchase one here, or here or here, if you prefer. Top sellers, to date:

Do you sort yours, too?

The recommended daily allowance

Another RDA culled from from the archives.

From Envy (Joseph Epstein):

Whatever else it is, envy is above all a great waste of mental energy. While it cannot be proved whether or not envy is part of human nature, what can be proven, I believe, is that, unleashed, envy tends to diminish all in whom it takes possession. Wherever envy comes into play, judgment is coarsened and cheapened. However the mind works, envy, we know, is one of its excesses, and as such it must be identified and fought against by the only means at our disposal: self-honesty, self-analysis, and balanced judgment.

If theological thinking is unavailable to you, if the very notion of "sin," original or unoriginal, as damning simply makes no sense to you, I would invite you instead to consider envy less as sin than as poor mental hygiene. It blocks out clarity, both about oneself and the people one envies, and it ends by giving one a poor opinion of oneself. No one can see clearly anything he or she envies. Envy clouds though, clobbers generosity, precludes any hope of sincerity, and ends in shriveling the heart -- reasons enough to fight free of it with all one's mental strength.

Envy is the first in the Oxford University Press/New York Public Library Seven Deadly Sins series. Sloth (Wendy Wasserstein) was discussed in the March 2005 "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" entry.

I also covered Envy in the July 2005 "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" entry.

We all exist on at least three levels: there is the person as he or she appears in public; the person as he or she is known to intimates, which include family and dear friends; and that person, deepest of all, who is only known to him- or herself, where all of the aspirations, resentments, fantasies, desires, and much else that is not ready for public knowledge reside. At this last level, where envy also resides, the wattage tends to be kept low, making self-knowledge not all that clear and the law of contradictions carries no authority whatsoever.

Pigs flew.

From "Discord demolition: Steve, Garry reunite" (Chicago Sun-Times, August 19, 2006):

Pigs flew, lightning struck twice and hell froze over Friday when former radio superduo Steve Dahl and Garry Meier teamed up on the air for the first time since their acrimonious 1993 breakup.

For Chicago radio fans of a certain disco-despising era, it was like the reuniting of Martin and Lewis -- minus Sinatra.

Later in the article:

Despite the well-publicized bad blood that followed the collapse of their 15-year partnership, civility ruled. As the broadcast ended, Dahl bid his temporary sidekick farewell, saying, "Garry, good to see you again. We're gonna be off next week, 'Best Of.' Garry, you'll be on with Roe Conn Monday? This is your reunion tour 2006, isn't it?"

"Niagara Falls!" Meier exclaimed. And they were out.

Related M-mv entries:

We miss Garry Meier. (2.14.2004)

We still miss Garry Meier. (5.19.2004)

"Say it isn't so, Roe." (5.27.2004)

More on Garry Meier (6.01.2004)

*heavy sigh* (6.04.2004)

From the (e)mailbag (6.06.2004; scroll down for my observations on Meier's interview with Bob Sirott)

Disco died that night. (7.13.2004)

Garry Meier (3.24.2005)

The recommended daily allowance

Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Fourth Season

Chapbook entry

To See Every Bird on Earth
(Dan Koeppel)

p. xvi
Speciation is evolution. Evolution is at the heart of who we are, what life is on this planet. I hope that this book shows how the pursuit of birds relates to—and grows from—science's quest to explain our existence. I hope it shows what that science means to those of us who are content to simply watch at our backyard feeders. And I hope it shows why birds—especially birds—can lead to these understandings; the same reason Darwin chose finches to illustrate his theories—birds are active, colorful, and musical, all easy-to-differentiate evolutionary traits—are the reasons for the more general romantic love of birds. It shouldn't be a surprise that humans are fascinated by creatures that soar, sing, nest, and battle.

p. 58
What happens when the people we love and depend upon expect from us that which we don't want to supply? The choices range from rebellion to quiet acquiescence.

p. 73
Most of us have met that moment where we suddenly realize the things that we once sought are now falling into a different order of priorities. Sometimes, we have to find a way to change our lives, to re-embrace that which seems to be vanishing.

Other times, we simply abandon our dreams.

p. 79
A bird on the lam from a zoo isn't native.

p. 100
The birding community Dad consorted with in the United States didn't exist in Germany. Though the country's penchant for order might appear to make it a fine candidate for development of a listing culture, it actually exists, along with other non-English-speaking nations, on the second tier of fanatic avian hobbyism. Why are Americans and Brits seemingly more interested in counting birds?

p. 104
The Wallcreeper's characteristics are emblematic of what birders prize: its physical uniqueness is an environmental adaptation; what makes the bird fun to look at also makes it hard to see.

[Note: This passage dovetailed neatly with the article I read in Birder's World (August 2006): "Cliffhanger" by Ted Cable. "Some birds fly off the field-guide plates and into the dreams of birders. For me, the Wallcreeper was such a bird."]

p. 140
There are about eight hundred bird species found in the United States. Seeing them all is a huge goal, and one that many listers spend years trying to achieve; there's a subgroup of competitive birders who try to see as many of these species as they can in a single year.

p. 225
Snetsinger wasn't yet fifty years old, and she was facing a precipitous end to her life—the end to an idyllic, if outwardly typical, existence as a suburban housewife with a husband and three children. (The truth about Snetsinger was far more powerful. She'd always been a restless intellect, and was the heiress to a fortune left to her by her father, legendary Chicago advertising executive Leo Burnett, who'd created the Marlboro Man.)

p. 229
After the Costa Rica earthquake, during which the building where the group was staying partially collapsed, Snetsinger turned to the group—now standing on open ground—and said: "Well, we're outside. We might as well look for owls."

p. 248
Obsession is filled with anxiety....

p. 251
Ornithology is a unique science in that it is so wedded to a hobby that provides it with so many dollars... Splitting is a real science, but on trips like outs, where the evening listing session resembles a frenzied auction, the hobby dominates. At such moments, it's easy to forget that all the splits are about something important—the definition of species, the heart of evolution—rather than the numbers. "No question," Jim Clements told me when I asked him who the splits benefitted most, listers or ornithologists: "They're good for both," he said, "but great for listers."

p. 265
He even instructs me in proper binocular technique (you locate the bird with your unaided eyes, then life the binoculars to your gaze, so you can focus on the same spot).

Two Old Women
(Velma Wallis)

p. 26
"We are like babies," Sa' responded. The older woman looked up in surprise at such an admission. "We are like helpless babies." A smile twitched her lips as her friend started to look slightly affronted by the remark, but before Ch'idzigyaak could take it in the wrong way Sa' went on. "We have learned much during our long lives. Yet there we were in our old age, thinking that we had done our share in life. So we stopped, just like that. No more working like we used to, even though our bodies are still healthy enough to do a little more than we expect of ourselves."

Ch'idzigyaak sat listening, alert to her friend's sudden revelation as to why the younger ones thought it best to leave them behind. "Two old women. They complain, never satisfied. We talk of no food, and of how good it was in our days when it really was no better. Now, because we have spent so many years convincing the younger people that we are helpless, they believe that we are no longer of use to this world."

Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World
(Carl Hiassen)

p. 18
Imagine promoting a universe in which raw Nature doesn't fit because it doesn't measure up; isn't safe enough, accessible enough, predictable enough, even beautiful enough for company standards. Disney isn't in the business of exploiting Nature so much as striving to improve upon it, constantly fine-tuning God's work.

p. 20
Beyond the rare movie flop, Disney is unaccustomed to failure. It prizes its reputation for profitability almost as much as its reputation for wholesome entertainment. No other company so zealously endeavors to live up to its own hype—and manages to come so close. Success after success has turned Team Rodent into a ravenous, fearless beast, and that's why many of us now cheer those infrequent occasions when it is rebuffed, humbled, or gored.

p. 43
The parents who dashed out to buy those dogs should have known better; they should have steeled themselves against sentiment. They should have known that captivation is the mission of a Disney film, a Disney theme park, a Disney merchandise store, a Disney anything. Charm, captivate, and conquer—that's how the empire advances. In the case of 101 Dalmatians, Mom and Dad's imagination got as carried away as the kids'.

p. 48
Escape is what most ordinary folks want and deserve—escape from the threat of dope, guns, crime, poverty, pollution, random violence, urban unrest. So why not a carefree Castaway Cay? What's the harm? Maybe none. Be assured that the flora and fauna of the former Gorda Cay never received such tender loving care as they do now under Disney.

84, Charing Cross Road
(Helene Hanff; a reread)

p. 42
I write them the most outrageous letters from a safe 3,000 miles away. I'll probably walk in there one day and walk right out again without telling them who I am.

p. 44
You may add Walton's Lives to the list of books you aren't sending me. It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on, but you can't even get Walton's Lives in a library over here.

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street
(Helene Hanff)

p. 55
A few years ago I couldn't write anything or sell anything, I'd passed the age where you know all the returns are in, I'd had my chance and done my best and failed. And how was I to know the miracle waiting to happen round the corner in late middle age? 84, Charing Cross Road was no bestseller, you understand; it didn't make me rich or famous. It just got me hundreds of letters and phone calls from people I never knew existed; it got me wonderful reviews; it restored a self-confidence and self-esteem I'd lost somewhere along the way, God knows how many years ago. It brought me to England. It changed my life.

p. 56
Peter Brook's production initially a shock, half play, half noisy circus. Mrs. G. Was immediately entranced; I kept worrying about whether Puck was going to fall off his stilts or drop the plates he was juggling. Halfway through the second act I was suddenly moved, and I though, "I resent it but I love it." Stimulates you to death, seeing Shakespeare explode all over a stage like that.

p. 73
I despair of ever getting through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you life it you go to a bookshop and buy it.

p. 111
I'm always so ashamed when I discover how well-read other people are and how ignorant I am in comparison. If you saw the long list of famous books and authors I've never read you wouldn't believe it. My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realize I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years.

p. 121
From the quality of the silence that followed, I think writing in that notebook was a kind of desecration. I had a horrible feeling the notebook was a one of those antique items you're not supposed to use, you're just supposed to look at ut. What the hell do I want with a notebook you can't use? I get in trouble this way all the time.

p. 135
It's amazing how alike and anonymous all suburbs are, as undistinguishable from one another as highways. Maybe that's why I love cities. There's not a row of houses in London that could possibly be mistaken for New York. There isn't a square block of Manhattan that will ever for a moment remind you of London.

p. 136
They may admire Shakespeare more but it's Dickens they love. Maybe the average Englishman, being neither king nor peasant, identified less with the kings and peasants of Shakespeare than with the lower and middle-class upward-mobility types in Dickens.

"Effortful study"

From "The Expert Mind" (Scientific American, July 24, 2006):

Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player's progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study.

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind's box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields.

Later:

The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. What is more, the demonstrated ability to turn a child quickly into an expert--in chess, music and a host of other subjects--sets a clear challenge before the schools. Can educators find ways to encourage students to engage in the kind of effortful study that will improve their reading and math skills?

"Experts are made," eh? Now that alone should be motivation enough for the coming school year.

The recommended daily allowance

First recommended 6.26.2004.

We press William Armstrong's Study Is Hard Work on anyone who will listen. It makes the rounds here regularly, for gems like this:

What is study? Study is, above everything else, hard work. It has always been hard work, and there are no indications at present which hint that science is going to accomplish a vitamin-capsule method of learning that will eliminate study. Study is the total of all the habits, determined purposes, and enforced practices that the individual uses in order to learn. People have objected to study for a long time.

And this:

The three basic tools of education are: (1) time, (2), and (3) teachers. Time is the most limited blessing we have on earth. Time is one of the great responsibilities that life places before us. In life you will meet few people, indeed, who have learned the value of time. People fail to finish allotted tasks; they are late for appointments, meetings, and classes. These are the people who have developed little or no appreciation of their most limited blessing on earth.

And if you appreciate the vigor of Armstrong's treatise, you may also enjoy our 11.26.2003 RDA, Richard A. Watson's The Philosopher's Diet.

Fine Art Friday

"Self Portrait with Arm Twisted above Head" (1910)
Egon Schiele

As I wrote here, this image is precisely how the narrator of Knut Hamsun's Hunger appeared to my mind's eye. (More about Hamsun, Hunger, and all here and here.)

What do you think?

From J.B.

Regular readers of M-mv already know J.B. from his insightful remarks here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I received another message from J.B. today:

Drop an allusion, and no one picks it up. It is a bit like being at a party alone. But the loss isn’t as much to me as it is to them: those who walk around without the harmonic possibilities of recognition.

To them, each new thing is completely, utterly new – and formless. It has no place to reside. It is a bit like walking down an endless party corridor and meeting new people every few feet, and they are people you will never meet again. How can they matter? They have no relationship to you, and you have no use for them.

Walk that same corridor with the understanding that the people dressed in red are on your team, and you will mentally place each of them, evaluate them, and recognize their use to you – your brain is firing, filing, and planning.

I sometimes, when a piano is available, demonstrate harmonics – the sympathetic strings that vibrate in recognition of a note or a chord. Students recognize the largeness and richness of the sound and also notice the relative flatness of the sound without harmonics.

An uneducated mind, I point out, gives the student a world without harmonics – no sympathetic synapses firing across the brain, no embedded memories rising to the surface. No pleasure, in short.

But so much has been lost: Most of my students don’t recognize common Bible allusions (and many, many of them are wearing Jesus t-shirts, though “building a house on sand” falls on crumbling brains), and a reference to Alice in Wonderland falls flat. (Didn’t dad read to you? Nope, he was off doing important things like making money.) How does one experience the strange wonder of life without Alice as a guide? A reference to 9/11 increasingly falls on a vacancy: Wasn’t that something that happened a long time ago and had something to do with Iraq?

Yesterday in class (we’re in our first week here), I was giving my biography, especially as it relates to the civil rights movement, which happened in miniature form right before my eyes in southern California. I am not surprised that students flinch when they realize I was alive for the assassination of JFK (they thought he was a seventeenth century guy, which makes me even older than dinosaurs), but their blank faces when I mentioned M L King made me realize something worse. They don’t even know who he is despite the incessant special sales at Ambercrombie on his holiday. A mention of the VN War draft raises the only connection they have: “But they couldn’t make me go in the army because I don’t want to.”

Many kids are bored, finally, because their brains don’t have anything to play with. New facts flit through and have no place to rest because they have no context, no relationships – nothing to rub together to make fire.

So they grab experience: a louder iPod, a flashier video game, a drug, fast sex – each in the hope that it will provide a relief to the incessant flitting through their brains. They are hungry, and they know it.

Too many parents – and our merchandisers, who have discovered there is good money in this relentless and tragic search for nutrition – are feeding this hunger with more flits: more toys, more TV, more lessons, more games, more violence, more perversion, so it becomes habit to fill up on the mental equivalent of French fries. Stuffed to capacity, many kids are still starving. And they are sad.

Read. Experience. Think. Learn. Rinse. Repeat endlessly.

Take your brain out and play with it.

Thoughts on education and parenting

Many folks are beginning or preparing to begin a new school year. Perhaps one or another of the posts collected ::here:: will prove helpful.

Pushing the fat man off the bridge

From "Blood on the tracks" (The Boston Globe, August 6, 2006):

Greene and his colleagues described the finding as a partial victory for David Hume, the British philosopher who wrote that reason was a "slave to the emotions." But more precisely, they described moral decision-making as a process in which reason and emotion duke it out within the mind. The finding, they added, was also a blow to older theories of human development, which held that as we become adults, we stop making moral decisions with our emotions, as children do.
...

Philosophers often caution that how we act in real life, never mind the laboratory, shouldn't determine how we ought to act. But Greene, Valdesolo, and DeSteno point out that, at the least, the results should lead us to be skeptical about our snap moral decisions, however natural and obvious they seem, as they may be very much affected by the mood we happen to be in.

More about David Hume here.

"[T]he 'stupid and boring' hive mind"

From "Poking a Stick into the 'Hive Mind'" (Newsweek, August 28, 2006):

[S]ubsuming one's identity into an electronically aggregated mass (even by such innocent acts as tweaking a Wikipedia item or giving a rating to a comment on the Slashdot discussion board) is akin to the rabidly destructive mob fervor seen in China during the chairman's rule. "If you look at the history of youth cultural movements, they tend to go one of two ways," he explains. "One is in the direction of individual expression and creativity; the best example is the '60s. The other way is to lose themselves in the collective, binding themselves into a gang—as in the Cultural Revolution."

Lanier's widely circulated online rant was the equivalent of poking a stick into a beehive—or, more specifically, the much-celebrated "hive mind" of the modern Internet.
...

[T]he output of such efforts, says Lanier, is often a mundane reflection of the lowest common denominator, an inevitable consequence, he writes, of the "stupid and boring" hive mind.

Heh, heh, heh. Last year, I waged (and lost) a minor skirmish when I wrote against the use of the phrase "hive mind" to describe bright, earnest (in theory, anyway) online forum contributors.

Pooh-poohed by the Borg, I was. Resistance is futile, and all that, right?

As the thinkers in M-mv's readership must realize, it certainly was heartening to read that someone else decries the "wisdom of crowds."

Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know! *

Related posts

The Stepford Forum (12.21.2004)
The Stepford Forum Redux (12.26.2004)

Still reading

Have you seen this autodidact?
She's hiding behind old black sunglasses and a stack of books. If you spot her, remind her to write something about her reading. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm still reading. Still thinking. Learning. Watching autumn stalk summer, Jenny Linksy stalk the chipmunks, the blue jays stalk the peanut feeder. I dragged the following up from the archives. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow.

Revealing
SFP at "Pages Turned," wisely observed, "There is nothing less revealing than reading someone's top ten books list when the list contains nothing but classics." Her remark followed this quote from Alan Warner's essay, "The curse of the classics":

Today, someone's taste for the "classics" can cover up no discernible individual or original taste of their own. Classic trumpeting can be a refuge for philistinism or nationalistic indolence. Unlike the word masterpiece, the classic category only pretends to be an aesthetic valuation.

I can (and have) named some of my favorite companions, but a top ten books list? I'm not sure I could confine my sprawling list of recommendations to so small a number. And I won't.

But a list of ten books that reveals something about you... that's a challenge.

Ten books above all others that have shaped or even defined you.

Can you do it?

I tried.

The annotated list

1. Children's Guide to Knowledge
I've written about this treasure before. It is, as I have said, "the one book largely responsible for preventing my young mind from atrophying in my parents’ blue-collar, “we-have-the-largest-newest-clearest-color-television-in-the-neighborhood” home."

The subtitle of the book is Wonders of Nature, Marvels of Science and Man, and it was published by Parents’ Magazine Press. An aunt gave it to me when I finished third grade. Her inscription notes that the book would help me complete fourth-grade reports. Thirty-two years after its publication, Children’s Guide to Knowledge continues to deliver a compelling world of animals, plants, history, geography, and scientific achievement (through early space exploration, anyway). The spine is crumbling, and the book has a damp, forgotten smell, but it still seduces.

2. Blubber (Judy Blume)
My closest friend in fifth grade, Mary Ann, pressed this book on me. "It is just like this class," she said. "It's true."

Mary Ann and I formed a two-student workshop led by our newly minted teacher, Miss T. Miss T. had identified us as "advanced" readers and writers. ("Well, no kidding," Mary Ann muttered.) But we suspected from the beginning that the "workshop" was about isolating us from the other students when she was teaching. She didn't do well under our scrutiny. "But Miss T.," coming from Mary Ann or me was capable of reducing her to tears.

(An aside: My preoccupation with exposing mediocrity began around this time.)

Mary Ann was also adept with numbers... and one-liners. I admired her often venomous wit and was fortunate to have grown reasonably thick skin by the time she attempted to inject me with it seven years later, when we were seniors in high school.

She and I read difficult books like The Red Badge of Courage and collections of O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe stories (most of which I reread in adulthood and realized, "Man, I never appreciated these until now"). And we (over)wrote and illustrated wildly creative stories about our secret lives as witches.

We didn't spend much time trying to play well with the other girls in our class.

And our fifth-grade teacher watched us carefully.

Anyway, the ease and truthfulness with which Blubber unfolded resonated with me in a way that the Little House books or even A Wrinkle in Time hadn't. I knew I was a writer by the time I was in third grade. With Blubber, I became fascinated with writing "the truth."

Mary Ann and I didn't write many more stories about witches after that.

3. Harriet the Spy (Louise Fithugh)
I popped the lenses from my sunglasses, donned an old hooded sweatshirt, and took to carrying a composition notebook wherever I went. My classmates never read the notebooks. My mother did. Let's leave it at "That wasn't the best day of my childhood."

4. Ronnie and Rosey (Judy Angell)
By any standard, this book is, if not ridiculous, then overwrought, as many "problem novels" are. But when I first read it, what, nearly thirty years ago, its truth electrified me.

I reread it a couple of years ago, anxious to see if my early-teen recollections would bear the harsher light of adult scrutiny. "Would I recommend this to my daughters?" was the question I was trying to answer. As it turns out, I would, although more for its sentimental value than for its (dubious) literary merits.

Simply put, Ronnie and Rosey was the first book I had read that made me realize, "Someday, perhaps someday soon, I will feel strong enough as a person to act and think without worrying about what Mom will say and do."

Yes, I credit this sometimes silly book with helping me grow up.

Which means, of course, that at the time, it wasn't silly to me. At. All.

5. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

E.B. White died when I was an undergraduate. To mark his passing, I reread Charlotte's Web.

And cried.

Again.

I have, since that time, read it no fewer than two dozen times.

And cried each time.

And, yes, I've read every collection of his essays.

At least twice.

Rereading Charlotte's Web as a young person hovering between childhood and adulthood, reawakened in me the desire to arrive at essential truths through clear, measured writing.

6. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
I am no longer able to discern if this is a good book, but through it, I met Arthur, which set me on a quest that has filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.

And so it is important to me.

A belated thank-you to Ines, who recommended the book to me as I headed home for the summer between sophomore and junior years.

7. Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
I read this during my final semester as an undergraduate. Mr. R. insisted. It is heresy, I know, to mention these two books in the same entry, let alone the same sentence, but, like The Mists of Avalon, Slaughterhouse Five sent me on a journey of discovery that, again, filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.

Years later, while in grad school, I spent the day with Vonnegut. I was a grad assistant in a small liberal arts school where he offered two workshops for the English department and a ninety-minute address followed by a book-signing for the general college population. By then, I had read everything of his that was in print. My assignment that day was to help usher him from here to there. Trust me, faculty members vied for his attention, and my services proved non-critical.

But I sat beside him for both workshops. "And this is enough," I thought. "To know that he is a real person who grows impatient and smells old and loses his train of thought sometimes. This writer is real."

Perhaps that is the essence of my reading and writing life: discerning what is real and true for me and recommitting to it periodically.

8. (Wo)Man Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (Joyce Carol Oates)
I can and have written volumes about Joyce Carol Oates. She is partially responsible for my success in graduate school: One of two scholarly essays of mine to capture honors in my second year of study there concerned JCO, and part of my oral defense concerned Oates and the Burkean pentad. It went swimmingly, thanks. I was, after all, an energetic and earnest student.

Plus... shhh.

I brought snacks to my appointment.

Yes, the professors who awarded me "Highest Honors" had a hint of chocolate-covered strawberries in the corners of their mouths when they left my final presentation.

Heh, heh, heh.

More on Oates' place in my reading, writing, learning life some other time.

9. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, 10. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (Harold Bloom), and 11. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.
(Yes, I'm aware that this actually makes eleven titles.)

I've amassed a collection of thousands of volumes, but if it were all lost tomorrow, the only books I would need to replace immediately are these three.

Nothing has reworked the geography of my imagination like my (re)discovery of Shakespeare.

(Except maybe parenting, but that's an altogether different subject, no?)

Shakespeare. Talk about a recommitment to what is real and true.
_________________________

And there you go. A list of books that (I think, anyway) actually says something about the reader.

Are you up to the challenge?


The material in this post first appeared in our 9.08.2005 entry.

Fine Art Friday

In an interview with Jean Neyens, Belgian artist René Magritte discussed "the use of the hidden" in his 1964 painting "The Son of Man."

At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.

For further discussion, visit the Magritte art gallery.

Journal notes
The same group of older, "arty" thespians who pressed No Exit on me when I was just a sophomore, shoved a folder of Magritte prints into my hands over lunch one day. Even now, two decades later, Sartre and Magritte stride amiably along, companions in the the landscape of my imagination.

"Amazing, isn't he?"

Until that moment, the ridiculous faux colonial American portraits in my parents' livingroom had represented the depth and breadth of my "fine art" education.

"Yes," I said softly. "Yes, he is."

And so I spent weeks of lunch periods in the library, hunched over art history books and the folders some ambitious art teacher had assembled to interest students in something other than album cover art.

In the end, our greatest discoveries are the result of solitary pursuits; our autodidactic achievements are a string of parties of one.

My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question "What does that mean?" It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.
~ René Magritte

File under "No! Really?"

From "Soda may be reason we've packed on pounds" (Chicago Sun-Times, Wednesday, August 9):

Americans have sipped and slurped their way to fatness by drinking far more soda pop and other sugary drinks over the past four decades, a scientific review concludes.

An extra can of soda a day can pile on 15 pounds in a single year, and the ''weight of evidence'' suggests that this sort of increased consumption is a key reason that more people have gained weight, the researchers say.

More on work

K., who blogs at Girl Detective, muses on the work entries, which begin here and continue here, here, and here:

I wanted to write and let you know that I continue to mull over your entries, long after they're done.

On Flanagan, yes, all us stay at home mommies rolled our eyes that she let her nanny clean up the barf, but can we all solemnly swear that if there WAS someone else to do it, and if we had sufficient funds, that we would still clean up barf? I can't promise that I would.

And related to that, Hirshman's point demanding accountability from home moms that their daily lives are complex and meaningful. It reminded me of your adjuration to avoid talking about motherhood in Hallmark terms. I think Hirshman has a point, though she screwed it up by insisting that she's some kind of arbiter of what's worthwhile. Instead, her argument would be strong if she'd encouraged moms to take a hard look at their lives themselves, maybe take a tally of the menial versus the sublime moments. As the mom of an infant and a three-year-old, there are far more of the former than of the latter. Yes, they're apples and oranges, but Hirshman has a point that much of mommying is menial--changing diapers, negotiating with toddlers, defusing tantrums. Many would argue that stuff is only menial if you let it be, but I think that's a little more zen-balanced than most people actually are. Just because something is worthwhile (like laundry, taking a kid for a walk, keeping them clean, fed, dressed, etc.) does not mean it's intellectually stimulating.

Perhaps, then, that's my response to Hirshman. Some of us feel that mommying our own kids is important enough that we struggle to find our intellectual growth in it where we can, and elsewhere than at a conventional workspace when we can't.

Finally, no matter how hard I struggle to do the right thing by my kids, I find there's more that I can be doing, or doing differently. I took my kids to their six- month and three-year checkups yesterday. Though in many ways they are doing great, I left with a laundry list of things to consider that only made me think more on Hirshman and realize that sometimes this parenting thing is the nastiest combo: It's menial, yet it's difficult. Is that an oxymoron? Probably.

As always, thank you for your message, K.

On the nightstand

Or on the kitchen counter. Under the pillow. In the knapsack or, more recently, the messenger bag. On the shelf behind the cat. Atop the toilet tank. Under the front seat in the mini-van. And so on. This is the thirty-fourth "On the nightstand" entry.

Let's begin with a recommendation for poolside reading:

:: I Hate Other People's Kids (Adrianne Frost)

The unending permissiveness and passiveness with which parents treat their kids ends up dampening your enjoyment of everyday life.

Ayup. Like, oh, at the pool? Chuckling at the occasional spot-on observation in this slim read helped me survive amidst OPK (Other People's Kids) today, and for that, I am grateful.

(By the way, my fear and loathing of OPK has a rich history, including, for example, the episode that inspired this entry.)

:: Triangle (Katharine Weber)

Over the years, Rebecca had come to feel that some of their friends with children, and they had many, both in New York and in New Haven, were threatened by their apparently voluntary childlessness--as if children were the obligatory glue necessary to hold a couple together after a certain number of years--and in their unlamented failure to bind themselves with babies, they were breaking some unwritten rule.

SFP recommended this. Like SFP, I appreciated the writing, but by the inclusion of Robert Pinksy's "Shirt" particularly captured my imagination. Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States (1997-2000), was one of my assigned topics some months ago, and when I listened to him read "Shirt" that work-night --

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--

I remembered that the 1911 fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Manufacturing Co. building, which resulted in the death of nearly one hundred fifty people, mostly female employees, had been the subject of a television movie, "The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal." I would have been about sixteen when I saw it, but I still recall how frightening it was to learn that one could be treated so poorly at work and pay for the privilege with her life.

(I've written about the synthesis of my reading, thinking, learning, writing, watching, working lives before; it never ceases to interest me.)

:: My Man Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)

"Jeeves," I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished looking at the comic section of the Sunday Star. "I'm an optimist. I always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest before the dawn and there's a silver lining and what you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for instance. There was a fellow, one would have said, clear up to the eyebrows in the soup. To all appearances he had got it right in the neck. Yet look at him now. Have you seen these pictures?"

"I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you, sir. Extremely diverting."

"They have made a great hit, you know."

"I anticipated it, sir."

I leaned back against the pillows.

"You know, Jeeves, you're a genius. You ought to be drawing a commission on these things."

If there is a more delightful literary pursuit than Wooster and Jeeves, I have not yet discovered it.

:: PG Wodehouse: A Biography (Frances Donaldson)

No boy who is good at games ever has a bad time at school. He is assured the admiration of his fellows, and, to those who are physically well coordinated, there is nothing in the world more exhilarating than regular games.

:: Wodehouse: A Life (Robert McCrum)

The story of these years is work, work and more work. His childhood had left its mark. Better to be alone than take the risk of company. Better to enjoy the fiendish complexity of plot than the troubling complexity of everyday life. Better to exert control over an imaginary world and keep the demons at bay than suffer the manipulations of fate and allow the intrusion of melancholy.

Of course, I must know more about the mind that yielded Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and his man.

:: Q's Legacy (Helene Hanff)

But that night I dreamed of the bookshop. I'd never dreamed about it before but I'd never had a concrete picture of it in my mind before. Now I saw it vividly.

In this memoir, Hanff describes her discovery of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's volume of lectures and her desire to read every book he recommended. "Then I set out to buy the books he'd taught me to love." Only most were out of print... which lead Hanff to her legendary correspondence with the proprietor of Marks & Co., Antiquarian Booksellers, the subject of the beloved book 84, Charing Cross Road.

:: The Art of War (Sun Tzu)

Therefore I have heard of military operations that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen one that was skillful and lasted a long time. It is never beneficial to a nation to have a military operation continue for a long time.

Master M-mv and I are reading and discussing this.

:: My Latest Grievance (Elinor Lipman)

I got my parents' attention the old-fashioned way: by falling off the honor roll. Of course we had to dissect every psychosocial factor, and the coincidence of my taking up with a boy just as double form duty was watering down their parental intensity. Thus the weekly family meeting in our Griggs Hall kitchen, instituted since the bifurcation, had only one unwritten item on the agenda: the correlation between Ritchie Almeida and my C in Honors Chemistry. They spared me the relations-are-a-beautiful-thing speech, which I'd been hearing since I attended my first coed party at eleven, and went directly to their true quandary: What did I possibly see in a boy like Ritchie, who played hockey, who wasn't going to college, and didn't ever--as each of my parents had independently observed--make eye contact with adults? Was it a daughter's cry for help?

Lipman has been one of my favorite authors since I "discovered" her seven or eight years ago. Her latest is pitch-perfect.

While searching for the Amazon link, I found Fay Weldon's review of Lipman:

Elinor Lipman is a far more serious novelist than she pretends to be or is allowed to be by reviewers. (I learned a long time ago that to be taken seriously you need to cut back on the funny lines. I once all but won the Booker Prize for a novel from which, on Kingsley Amis's advice, I had removed anything remotely mirthful. Alas, it was still "all but," so I reverted to my old ways.) Lipman, declining to learn this worldly wisdom, goes on making jokes and therefore tends to get described with adjectives that are good for sales but bad for literary reputations: "oddball," "hilarious," "over-the-top," "quirky," "beguiling" or, worst of all, "summer reading." The prose slips down too easily and pleasantly to allow her to rise into the literary top division, where the adjectives become "piercing," "important," "profound," "significant," "lyrical," "innovative" and so on. Dull, in fact.

But up there at the top is where this enchanting, infinitely witty yet serious, exceptionally intelligent, wholly original and Austen-like stylist belongs. Delicately, she travels the line where reality and fiction meet. Reality being more oddball, quirky and chaotic than fiction can ever be, Lipman inures us to the truth about the way we live by making it up as she goes along, cracking jokes and pretending it's all fiction.

That about covers it.

Read. Think. Learn.

The recommended daily allowance

Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Third Season

"They don't want to be girls."

I read the following article in the Chicago Sun-Times, Sunday, August 6, 2006; it ran under the title "The Feminized American Classroom and How it Hurts Boys." The article first appeared the City-Journal.

From "How the Schools Shortchange Boys":

The notion of male ethical inferiority first arises in grammar school, where women make up the overwhelming majority of teachers. It’s here that the alphabet soup of supposed male dysfunctions begins. And make no mistake: while girls occasionally exhibit symptoms of male-related disorders in this world, females diagnosed with learning disabilities simply don’t exist.

Speaking of school...
From N.S.'s column this past Friday:

As the Sun-Times has shown several times in its "Critical Years" surveys, one of the school system's major challenges is exactly that: The kids who begin kindergarten are messed up at the start.

Half arrive at their first day of school unable to identify the colors red, blue and yellow. Half are unable to speak in complete sentences.

Half do not know how to hold a pencil or a crayon, never mind write with one. Half can't tell you their last names -- heck, some kids show up for school and don't even know their first names, only a street tag -- "They call me 'Lil Man.' " It takes a special parent to send their child to school without knowing his name -- actually, not so special, which is heartbreaking.

The surveys were last taken a dozen years ago, but the situation hasn't changed. Students are "messed up" at the start -- angry, unaccustomed to learning, unaccustomed to discipline, and ready to fail.

And now [the Rev. James] Meeks is going to address the situation by blaming the mayor -- whom impartial observers laud for doing so much with a school system that was on life support when he showed up. This is Meeks' first step, no doubt, in the same cynical shake-down scam that worked with such great effect on Gov. Blagojevich, who folded like a paper fan.

Just what the black community needs. Another demagogue to bang the gong of grievance and tell his audience that all of their problems are some powerful white guy's fault. Education is one social issue where each individual can make a huge impact. Good parents know that. They'd laugh at anybody who told them to sit on their hands until the government cooks up a program to teach their children their names. For Meeks to spread that message for his own selfish political reasons is a betrayal of the people he purports to serve. [Emphasis added.]

The rumors of summer's death...

have been greatly exaggerated. Summer, the season, ends September 22; summer, the event, ends on Labor Day, which is, at this writing, twenty-eight days away.

Please, no more, "Summer's practically over!" Yes, I love back-to-school supplies as much as the next autodidact, but their reduced prices at Target do not herald the end of summer, only the end of the "summer fun" aisle.

Okay?

Okay.

Jenny Linsky and the Canada Goose

In the spring, a tiny black cat paid social calls on the late-departing juncos, the still groggy chipmunks, and the quivering voles that call the yards of the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie home.

Yes, she took them to breakfast... or lunch.

And while we shuddered at her manners, we also (reluctantly) admired her skill.

Spring yielded to summer. The juncos are long gone, of course, but the chipmunks and voles still bound about -- until Jenny invites them to breakfast... or lunch.

She's such a dainty cat.

"Jenny Linsky!" the Misses M-mv determined. "She looks like Jenny Linsky in soft, white boots."

And so she does.

But Jenny is a feral stray. She wants neither our coaxing nor our kind words. No, she gingerly steps about our yards, seeking any treats we've left out, stalking her prey, and all but sticking her tongue out at us -- and our beautiful, bookish cat -- as she walks past.

"But he's an inside cat," she daintily sneers, then minces away.

And so it has gone for most of the summer.

But today a young Canada goose landed in the back yard.

We tossed the wanderer some day-old crusty French bread, and Jenny Linsky, who had been napping under one of the pines when the intruder arrived, grew indignant.

For the better part of an hour, the goose ignored the dainty black cat in white boots.

For the better part of an hour, the dainty black cat licked her lips and followed the goose.

Did you know geese have tongues?

Our visitor showed us this goosely feature when it reared up and flapped its wings menacingly, letting Jenny know that while she might take juncos and chipmunks and voles to breakfast (or lunch), there would be no goose on the menu.

So Jenny made do with the tuna we tossed out.

It all ended rather well.

Tonight, though, we're wondering, Where is the goose's family and flock?

Family

Sandhill cranes, male, female, and juvenile

Has it been a year already?

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

They live in the barn pictured above 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 -- just as we did a year ago -- we spread a blanket on the clipped meadow apron in front of the barn and looked up.

Amazing.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers.
Referees, hit the showers.
It’s my game.
I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases.
At sunset, I’ve won or lost.
At sunrise, I’m out again, giving it the old try.
~ Ray Bradbury ~

When was the last time you enjoyed the sunset?

It had been a while for me, too.

August is laughing across the sky
Laughing while paddle, canoe and I,
Drift, drift,
Where the hills uplift
On either side of the current swift.

The above verse occurs in "The Song My Paddle Sings" by E. Pauline Johnson. August is laughing. Isn't that a wonderful image?

August is laughing.

Dip, pull, swish, up. Dip, pull, swish, up. Has it been more than a decade since Mr. M-mv and I steered a canoe through silent lake waters? Yes, but the rhythm returns when coaxed. Dip, pull, swish, up. Dip, pull, swish, up. Dip, pull, swish, up.

Miss M-mv(ii) adores the adventure, but Miss M-mv(i) believes the canoe precarious. Neither gentle words nor sure strokes can persuade her that this is a grand time.

August is laughing.

Fleet flight across the still lake.

A paddleboat, with its fat-bottomed assurance against the water and its seats high above the action, suits our baby bird better.

August is laughing.

And as the paddleboat slap-slap-slaps away from the shore, I remember former selves, young and laughing, and an old wooden canoe silently skimming across the glassy surface of the wide water.

August laughed then, too.

Happy weekend.

A fat-bottomed paddleboat

Fine Art Friday

"Dancing Girl," 1940

Note: As I mentioned last week, Quiet Life and Seasonal Soundings first set me on the idea of a "Fine Art Friday" entry.

I'm afraid I'll never possess the vocabulary of art. Taken separately -- the muted colors, spare lines, simple subject -- they don't seem to amount to much, do they? But, together, the elements comprise a happy composition -- one of my favorite works of art. Paul Klee, I learned, was frequently inspired by children's and folk art.

Can you see that?

I can, too.

The Art Institute of Chicago holds several works by Klee. For more about the Swiss painter, watercolorist, and etcher, see this Guggenheim biography and this Artchive entry.

"Is that the UPS truck I hear?"

A short list of some things that make me happy

Amazon.com Associates program
Amazon.com Prime
A largish package delivered by a man in brown

A note of thanks

Affiliate programs have become ubiquitous; everyone and his mother now feature links and subtle (or not so) requests that visitors buy using said links. That is the nature of business, of course. My only recourse is to thank you, again and again, for your business and your loyalty.

A fond adieu

Five thousand polished words to submit by Monday. See you on the other side (or after I finish today's bit, anyway). Until then...

Read. Think. Learn.

Hey, and make time, okay?

From the archives: Making time

How do you have time to read, write, keep house, etc.?

Over the last six years, I've fielded some derivation of this question too often to count.

There exists in me a curmudgeonly inclination to lob this back into the inquirer's court: How do you not? But some readers are too sensitive for this bold an approach.

Heh, heh, heh.

Look. My writing is my work. Asking me how I find time to write is a bit like asking a barkeep how he finds time to tend bar or an information systems engineer how she makes time to develop projects. It's what I do, and in order to be paid -- well and on time -- I must get the work done.

The rest? The reading, learning, living, blogging even? Well, I sleep less to read more, and I have, quite simply, never understood the big deal about keeping an organized and comfortable home.

But if you require something more specific, consider this list of don'ts the next time you find that you haven't enough time to do it all. Something here may prove helpful.

Unless you're training for a marathon or pursuing a career as a model or professional athlete, don't spend a lot of time working out. Just do enough to maintain good health.

Don't fuss with complicated hairstyles or "busy" clothes or make-up.

Don't answer the telephone. Turn the ringer off. When/if you have time for telephone conversations, make a call. Amazing how much time this alone saves.

Don't waste time complaining about the commonplace (e.g., the way your son forgets to turn his socks right side out before dropping them in the hamper, the way your spouse this, and his or her mother that, and your mother ... and the neighbor ... and the people at the library ... blah, blah, blah). Energy- and time-sapping stuff, that.

Don't go shopping. No mall walking. No window shopping. Keep a list. Pick up the items on the list. Work the clearance racks at the end of the season, in one maybe two trips. But hit the mall or Wal*Mart or wherever for no particular reason? Perish the thought. Bookstores are, of course, an exception.

Don't read junk mail.

Or catalogues. 'think this is a trivial suggestion? Consider all the time some folks waste paging through the Christmas season's offerings. You know you don't have $75 for a letter opener from Levenger. Drop the catalogues in the can before the mail deliverer has sped from the mailbox. Clothes catalogues? Why? If you want to dream of opulence, read a Victorian novel or certain Shakespearean plays. Why waste time mulling over the Nordstrom's catalogue when the best sales are in-store at the end of the season? You get the idea. Book catalogues are, of course, the exception.

Don't join clubs.

In general, don't say, "Yes," to anyone. This is harsh, but grow adept at looking nearly every person (excluding your children, spouse and/or significant other, and boss (or editor or client)) who thinks you owe him or her a piece of your time in the eye and saying, "No, but best wishes with [insert time-sucking activity here]." Trust me, this isn't going to cause any death-bed regrets. "Oh, how I wish I had spent more time organizing that [insert time-sucking activity here]!" Yeah. No.

Unless you are particularly gifted in one or another craft such that your creations make anticipated gifts and/or money, don't scrapbook or craft.

And don't compete with neighbors in the "who can out-decorate everyone else" during Halloween and Christmas seasons. Display simple, pretty decorations. End of story.

Don't indulge in home and/or garden magazines.

Or home and/or garden shows. They only inspire time- (and money-) sapping projects that keep you from family field trips, game nights, books, and the occasional lazy morning in bed with coffee, muffins, and two papers.

Don't cook elaborate meals.

Sometimes, don't even cook. That's why god made takeout. Really. So readers, thinkers, and autodidacts don't starve.

Don't waste time on doubt. Why invite discontent by perpetually glancing at what he or she is doing?

Similarly, don't dabble in self-doubt. Much. (See this entry for more on this topic.)

And then there will be time to read. And read some more. And to write and learn. And to keep a home that makes your family happy. A home in which you will have time to live and learn and laugh too loudly.

A new slogan, then: Just don't.
___________________________

This material, culled from M-mv entry 10.21.2004, has also been posted in other forums over the last two years. When three regular readers wrote within the space of an hour to suggest that it was time for a repost, I figured something was in the air. (Added later: Several more messages and a link later, and I now understand the concern -- unwarranted, I believe, but greatly appreciated.) Thanks for your interest, folks. Here's looking at you.

The recommended daily allowance

Donnie Darko

Donnie: I made a new friend today.
Dr. Lilian Thurman: Real or imaginary?
Donnie: Imaginary.


Frank: 28 days... six hours... 42 minutes... 12 seconds. That... is when the world... will end.


Gretchen: You're weird.
Donnie: Sorry.
Gretchen: No, that was a compliment.

The "blessed miracle of Wodehouse's prose"

Stephen Fry, who portrayed Jeeves in the series "Jeeves and Wooster," wrote in a 2000 article in The Independent:

I think I should end on a personal note. I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today -- whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me. But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.

He mocked himself sometimes because he knew that a great proportion of his readers came from prisons and hospitals. At the risk of being sententious, isn't it true that we are all of us, for a great part of our lives, sick or imprisoned, all of us in need of this remarkable healing spirit, this balm for hurt minds?

Read the complete piece here.

Ninety in the shade

The 31st Carnival of Homeschooling

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