Elitism

Both Hermits and Hermit Spouses, on several occassions, throughout the history of Hermits, have been accused of elitism. FYI Mick, although thinking thoughts of you has prompted me to raise the question, you should be aware of the accusation's longer history: see, for instance, the really ugly exchange in our guestbook. Those are from the bygone days of Hermit Dave.) The question is simple:

What is elitism?

Up front, I mean the question very honestly, and, I admit, naively, partly because I see it as one of those criticisms that is levied but rarely defined. In that way it is offered as its own argument, kind of like the old paradoxical question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" I personally think the charge is indefensible both on the part of the accuser and the accused, and, moreover, for this web site it is silly since all the Hermits are too-educated for their own good, and, rather than being elite, are broadly invested in thinking about the world. I don't claim to be objective: I raise the question because I think here, and most places, as a charge, it is leveled unjustly, with too-great suspicion and too-little generosity. If it's too much to expect to do away with the charge in culture in general (it is), I would like to do away with the charge here. (Until of course a new collection of readers comes along.) If it helps, we could look at what others say, such as Tom Frank (on elitism in politics), or we could take a British "Are you elite?" quiz, or we could compare our definitions with the people who register on a news.google.com search.

But I'm more concerned to ask the question so we can poke holes in our own skulls and aerate our own brains. To those who accuse, to those who have been accused, to those who see people who accuse people of elitism, to those who want to deny elitism altogether: What do you see when you see someone be elitist? What do you hear when you hear the charge made? What do you say when you make it? Why do you think elitism is an empty charge? Why do you think you aren't elitist? Why do you think others are?

posted by Greg at 3:02 PM

coming into our own...

yes, hermits is coming into full blogg-dom now. we are broaching political themes and questions...last time we did this, people fled...or was that because dave took off?

i shoulda spent the last hour writing on my dissertation chapter...hermits suck! bad dog, bad dog!

For those of you who don’t know, depending on how you count it, I’d lived in 20 different houses by the time I’d left home for college. To bring the number down to size a little, that is 3 continents (Europe, Africa and North America) and then whatever the in between lands of Central America and the Caribbean are considered to be. In U.S. schools, I know they don’t fall under the geographic boundaries of North America; in Europe, I know that North and South America are actually considered to be one continent; in regards to the various in between countries, it all depends on the country. One of these in between countries was Nicaragua. We arrived there about 2 or 3 years after the Sandinista revolution that kicked out the second-generation dictator that had been set up by U.S. Marines in the 20’s or 30’s. Another was the Dominican Republic, a small island nation that was invaded 3 or 4 times by U.S. Marines during the course of the 20th Century. Both Nicaragua and the D.R. (and Cuba, for that matter) produce the best baseball players from down south, and the reason isn’t because it’s a fast-paced, aesthetically beautiful sport like the one that is played in every nation of the world.

I bring up my personal geographic history because it is intimately tied to my experience of nationalism and patriotism. It’s one of the forces that has shaped me and how I understand politics. 20 houses18 yearssounds a little extreme, as in extremely nomadic. But, take the 4˝ years in Italy, 3 houses and Africa for 6 months; the 3 years shared between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, 4 houses. We had just moved to another house in Managua, because the local vigilantism had gotten to the point of throwing rocks in our windows in the middle of the night, when my mom went blind and the Contra began killing foreign medical personnel because most were German, or Russian, or Scandinavian and our sponsoring congregation told my parents to get the hell outta there. So, two houses in 1˝ years. (Soon after we moved, she regained her sight…a blood clot. Lot’s of crazy stories from those years.) Anyway, I’ve allowed myself to get sidetracked, as I often do. (Chris, can I blame my short attention span on the hard Italian marble floor that my dad dropped me on? Just checking, ‘cuz I’d love to find something that it screwed up…though, not in any real major way…not like the monster from the Goonies kind of way. You know, just a nice little personality quirk. That's right you're just in social psych...:)- )

Back to patriotism. Having grown up in countries that have suffered repeatedly the blows of self-interested, exploitative U.S. foreign policy, during the Reagan era of Cold War us-vs-them rhetoric, I distrust patriotism. (Yes, I realize that every nation’s foreign policy must be self-interested. In order to survive as a nation, regardless of whether the dominant paradigm is capitalism, monarchy, colonialism, or whatever, nations must be self-interested and must compete with other nations. Personally, I’d love it if all nations got a VW bus, picked some daisies, smoked some ganja, and had a love fest. But, Woodstock is over and the one’s who've survived are busily being self-interested. I just wish it weren’t so exploitative—consider the Guatemala coup of ‘54, organized by the CIA, because we wanted our bananas cheap, that is, the secretary of state and the head of the CIA were major stockholders in the United Fruit Compnay.) Also, my early nomadism placed me in more than a few countries, which were not my own, in which I was an outsider, and so politics, until recently, was always a spectator sport for me. I got to see how, much like in Chris’ articles, every party claims that they are the true representative of the nation, and that anything else is unpatriotic.

Let it be known, I don’t have a problem with patriotism, if by patriotism we mean a heightened civic engagement; if by patriotism we mean a love of the ideals of democracy to the point of ensuring that it work properly; even if by patriotism we mean a love for the U.Seven if this world is not our home. In the end, there is something “natural” about patriotism. Someone like C.S. Lewis even considers it a virtue, but this is already too long to discuss his very Classicist, Eduardian, and post-WWII British take on patriotism.

I do, however, have a problem with patriotism when it is jingoistic, when it is equated with “a city on the hill rhetoric,” when it gets bound up, and tied up, and tangled up with God and with a childish “we are the best nation in the world, my nation can kick your nation’s butt” kind of rhetoric. I have a problem with patriotism when it exploits the natural emotional ties that bind people to place; ties which my peripatetic upbringing never fostered in me. (Granted, there are missionary kids who are twice the children of hell, precisely because they grew up outside the U.S. In my experience, though, this typically occurs in missionary homes where Christianity is equated with “how they do it back home,” that is, in missionary homes that idealize everything about the U.S. But, my dad himself grew up as a missionary kid and we have always been a very heaven-minded family, so that my sister believes politics to be a waste of time, except when it comes to the morality of the president.)

Let me tie this up: on the one hand, I would say that my approach to patriotism is much more rational than many of the patriotic Americans I know (and for the record, most of my very best friends in the world are die hard patriotic persons, to whom I bear no ill-will, how could I?), because I think I can see behind the emotion and the rhetoric of patriotism. But, as well, there are two things that undercut my belief in my own rationality…one of those is my own personal history as an itinerant child that informs how I think about the world and my emotional divestedness in regards to patriotism. In fact, this could even be thought of as a neurosis, or a stunted emotional development. The other, conversely, is the very emotional reaction that I have when I see patriotism being used for ends that I believe unjust, ill-advised, or just plain wrong. The greatest of these, in my mind, is the way in which Christianity so often is co-opted into the national religion.

posted by Jeremy at 1:04 AM

Hermit Public Offering

What with the flurry of attention (not to mention, money) surrounding Google's $2.7 billion IPO;

and what with the flurry of attention surrounding Hermits Rock's recent 75-100% increase in readership;

provided Hermit brand loyalty remains strong;

I suggest we begin planning for our own IPO. Some random thoughts:

1. Which sports franchise should we buy?
2. How much champagne should the IPO party buyand how much should we let other people drink?
3. What's our share price, and how many?
4. NASDAQ or NYSE?
5. Should Hermits be thinking about hiring a lobbyist in order to head off any anti-trust suits brought against us in Congress?

posted by Greg at 3:50 PM

the way it is

(Ed.'s note: Having noticed the recent upsurge in posting on this site, I feel certain we could support a readership of at least four and possibly up to six people. Our recent gain of Mick represents a 50-to-100% increasedepending upon how we categorize readers to whom we are married. We have handled this sharp increase by doubling or tripling posting productivity. Great work, everyone.)

Here's my understanding of the whole tax code argument from below. To me, it's really just a sub-area of a more engaging larger discussion. Specifically, I am most interested in understanding the psychological divide between the U.S.'s political left and right, and even more pointedly, how Christians rationalize their own places in the political spectrum.

As a start, I recommend two recent articles from the Washington Post, profiling stereotypical Republican and Democratic families, respectively. Although the author plays to caricatures and differences between the two, the core similarities seem more striking than the differences. Both families are similar to the typical American family (and probably the typical human), in that they appear essentially materialistic and interested in that which benefits themselves and their favored social groups. They both embrace a general political position that feels morally and economically comfortable to them.

However, in U.S. society, these positions are presented in terms of sloganish themes (and cartoonish enemies) that appear diametrically opposed (e.g., big vs. small governments). These broad themes are embraced by people across socioeconomic strata, across regions, and across religions. However, the parties that present these themes both appear fairly inconsistent (e.g., How is it possible to rationalize being "Pro-choice" and "Pro-gun-control," or "Anti-choice" and "Anti-gun-control" at the same time?) and ineffectual (e.g., Where is the universal health care, or why is abortion still legal?). In the end, we should probably be grateful that neither party will ever realize their slogans.

All this to say, it appears to me that political orientation is emotion-based and not intellect-based. Based upon forces both in and out of our control (e.g., heredity, socioeconomics, social posturing), we ally ourselves with our team and attempt to construct a rationale later. Although I do have a team I prefer, I feel comfortable saying that my team is not better (or worse) or more (or less) moral than the other. People who claim otherwise, whether preachers or politicians, seem foolish. Our motives and rationales behind our political affiliations are where our character and intellect are implicated, not in the affiliations themselves.

So, where does this leave the Christians? What are the Christians' obligations and best practices with respect to politics? I'm not sure, although I suspect they do not involve praying for Supreme Court justics do die. To avoid muddying waters, I'll save my more specific tax-code-related comments for another day.

posted by Chris at 4:42 AM

willie and the hand-jive

my title, relates to greg's fascination with the hand of mene mene tekel

and to the horror of renaissance bibilical scholars...let me share what i learned today

the book of hebrews relies on a mistranslation of genesis. the new testament book, despite its name, quotes not from the hebrew but from the septuagint. for the most part this isn't much of a problem, except when it comes to the word hmmtth in hebrews 11:21 (ASV). depending on how it is read, it can be hammatteh (scepter) or hammittah (bed). unfortunately, especially unfortunately for a whole mess of renaissance/humanist bible scholars, the translators of the septuagint (which according to philo is a god-breathed translation) mistranslated the word to mean hammatteh.

it really is a little innocent mistake.

joseph, after blessing his sons in genesis 47:31 (ASV), turns around and worships from the head of his bed (hammittah, or hmmtth, as it would appear in a romanized version of the hebrew script). but, in the septuagint, and thus in the book of hebrews, it reads that he turned around and worshiped the tip of his scepter...the vulgate reads, adoravit fastigium virgae ejus. (different translations will vary it a little. the Literal Translation of the Holy Bible (1976) puts the hebrews passage this way: he "worshiped on the top of his staff", whereas youngs literal translation (1898) says: he "did bow down upon the top of his staff"...the devil, of course, is also in, on, of, about, around the preposition).

the septuagint's translation presented rennaissance scholars with a quandry...joseph's actions were literally idolatrous (the worshiping of a scepter, an idol, an asherah pole) and could more than easily be read, especially given the penchant for these kinds of metaphors throughout renaissance society, as being very sexually charged...but this is what the word of god said: the patriarch worshiped the tip of his scepter. the poor, scandalized, renaissance biblical scholars were at pains to find some sort of explanation for why joseph would do such a thing as worship the tip of his scepter.

posted by Jeremy at 10:24 PM

so you've heard of the bible code

these guys are so up in arms that they will prove to you it's hooey

i can't tell if this guy is in earnest or just want's to have fun with it and create satiric art

but this guy takes it to a whole new level

my question is...look at his winning number...do you think he is an MOTC

posted by Jeremy at 2:59 PM

memoirs

My dad did this once with his child support payment. More dramatic was the time he welded his check in an unopenable steel and plexiglass box. After that one, mom sued him.

posted by Greg at 9:22 AM

m. propre

i have found parenting to be one of the rare situations that compel a person to always wash his or her hands before going to the bathroom. i had believed this to be a clever insight on my part. (see Jeremy's rule #5 about blogging, below.)

however, a quick google indicates that parenting is not rare with respect to its requirement of pre-bathroom hand cleasning. rather, there appear to be many comparable situations, including (but not limited to) nurses, chemists, police officers, people who have come into contact with poison oak, pharmaceutical scientists, painters, people who enjoy eating hot peppers, x-ray technicians, bicycle mechanics, wildlife rehabilitators, horseshoers, people who enjoy hot salsa (here, the sauce...but perhaps the dance as well), patrons of certain strip clubs, and (as attributed to jeff foxworthy) rednecks.

posted by Chris at 6:34 AM

coffee, with tax codes on the side

While I drink my morning coffee (3-4 ACU "College of Art & Science" mugs, black, & fair trade. I plan to post a love song to coffee in the near future.), I often read the web sites of a magazine or two, sometimes so I might decide whether I like the magazine enough to covet a subscription, sometimes so I might see what thoughtful (or unthoughtful) thinks are being thunk in the great magazine think-tank of America.

This morning I was reading the American Prospect, an unapologetically liberal magazine. (I'll let you decide what liberal means, and I'll even help with a list of definitions that I see and hear used on a regular basis: liberal means 1) left, 2) progressive, 3) more honest than CNN, 4) incapable of telling the truth, or 5) hateful toward everything we stand for, including God, Country, Apple Pie, and Strong Leaders. These of course do not cover everything, but they are sufficient for my purposeespecially the last.)

The Prospect reports this morning on the status of "Faith-Based Initiative" funding. Apparently, one Veterans organization, in order to receive the grant monies it once received from the DVA, has had to sign up as a faith-based program. Once it did so, it got all the money it asked for and then some, prompting the organization's director to quip, "I'm not getting out-Jesused for money ever again." Given some room to sensationalize the story (No matter how well it supports your thesis, one example should never qualify as evidence of a trend. I have fallen prey to this fallacy in the past.), the writer, Jeff Dubner, identifies the organization's shrewd manipulation of the faith-based initiative program as evidence that such funds are being doled out at the expense of otherand perhaps more appropriatedistribution venues.

As I understand it, the purpose of faith-based initiative funding is rooted in deep-seated, classically-liberal suspicions about state-sponsored foundationing, which, put another way, might be said, "Any society has the responsibility to ensure there is a material floor underneath even its poorest citizens." The claim is often vulgarized as a "welfare state," or (to some) demonized as "the slippery slope toward socialism." Politically, the championing of faith-based initiatives is intended as a way to stave off the claims of social-responsibility by upholding the virtues of private benevolence. The argument goes, roughly, like so: "Socialism undercuts the inclination of people to help others. If we buttress that inclination, it will undo the need for social programs, give benevolent (read: church) organizations the incentive to do what they are supposed to do, and ultimately do more good than harm." Ignoring the fact that those who support such arguments usually ignore the troubling fact that it completely contradicts their other big, mostly darwinist, claim, that the market and the self-interest it inspires is the supreme decider of human cause and effect, faith-based initiative funding is often touted as a means of leveling the playing field between different charitable organizations. The Pew Foundation fairly, comprehensively outlines most responses to such programs.

But what strikes me today, as I finish my coffee, is how such arguments about faith-based initiatives run contrary to Professor Susan Pace Hamill's admirable work to revise the tax codes in Alabama. (You can download a PDF of her full 112 page article here.) By all ethical standards (but those set by them who benefit most), Alabama's tax codes are the most unjust in the country: heavy on sales (which affects everyone, rich and poor alike) and light on property (which affects only property owners). Her argument is that the type of society inspired by Judeo-Christian ethics is one that must provide a clean floor for its poorest members. As she writes in the article from Sojourners,

When you start talking about community, taxes are an important element, because you're not going to run an infrastructure from charitable contributions; we're too greedy for that! You've got to run it through the arm of the law, and that brings in justice. Justice in the community means a minimum chance of improving one's lot if you're at the bottom. No matter how despicable you think they are, Jesus says you have to love them anyway, and that's that minimum bar.

To say otherwise is to tout a society that is not founded upon Judeo-Christian ethics.

Almost, anyway. I agree with her, but I recognize that to say otherwise must be qualified as a discussion about a society that is not based on Judeo-Christian ethics. There is a very certain argument that stems from a different kind of theology, however, one that emphasizes the very personal, individual, non-corporate way that God interacts with the world. To say otherwise is to tout a society that might be based upon a different theology than the other. To put it too simply, you might say the difference is that between Jeremiah and Isaiah: justice of the iconoclast versus justice of the institution. Of course, both prophets argued that everything was all shot-to-hell, but they located injustice in different places. From the standpoint of religion, the argument for faith-based initiatives, for example, often purports to enrich God's role in this world by limiting God's sphere of influence, as Doug Bandow does in this criticism of Hamill's work. Unfortunately, Bandow's claim is neck deep in theology that praises individuality at the expense of real community. On the other hand, the argument for Judeo-Christian inspired tax codes insists upon a confluence of society and God in what seems to be a means of permeating society with God. Unfortunately, this too often comes at the expense of community because it often results in the opposite move, where God becomes permeated by society, as in the case of the Pledge of Allegiance. (That link is not to the entire essay. The New Republic has unfortunately taken it offline for non-subscribers, but if you can get your hands on the whole thing, it's worth reading.)

That leaves us, of course, with the whole bunch of big messes that are made the moment we try to assist God with political theory. The greatest difference that I see between the support of faith-based organizations and Hamill's work, however, is that the former seems to argue from the position of a vaccuum: the ultimate goal is to withdraw the state (although that is a contestable claim) from everday life in order to allow humanity to fill the hole with something else. Hamill's claim seems to me positioned more positively: the ultimate goal is to conform the structures of the state (although that is possibly impossible) to allow humanity to function with it. Although I often doubt its wisdom, I like to think on such possibilities.

With that, my coffee has gone cold, and I must be off to write about Charles Brockden Brown.

posted by Greg at 10:40 AM

true to my word

since i don't have time to write, but feel that all two of you should be entertained...here are links

fascinating article by kristoff at the nytimes

he really is one of my favorite opeditors at the nytimes. he is one of the few that isn't afraid to touch religious topics...and i tend to agree with him.

i am sure that most of you have seen it the new accord commercial (but part of blogging is redundancy) story is that it is shot in real time, that it took 6 million to make, but that since its a 2 minute commercial they can't show it on national tv, though it did air in the uk, they used the parts of 2 accords to make it and it took them around three months to get everything right so that it would all work.

here is an article on tax reform for the most part i agree with it...there are a few places where she overstates the case, i will when i get back from dissertation hell, probably address this more fully...since now that i live in bobolandia and am a homeowner taxes are supposed to be important to me

have fun

posted by Jeremy at 10:33 AM

Five simple rules for successfully maintaining blog-sanity

1. Assume that what you write is gold, and if not gold then bat guano. That is, something worth its weight in gold that is one of the more potent fertilizing agents produced in the cool caves of wild neverland.

2. Assume that you are the most rational person on the planet and that no one can stand up to the rigors of your Superman like vision, not even the most hermetically sealed in a lead mayonnaise jar kind of intellect.

3. Assume that those 5 million other people out there that diatribe just like you, though maybe your punctuation is better, are also highly rational and thus linkable.

4. If there is something you don’t like blame the media for being too liberal, or too conservative, or in bed with the government, or big business, or whoever else it is. Assume then, that no one else is unpartisan, as objective, as insightful, as truth telling and revealing. You are the unbiased, critical voice that the world has been seeking, believe it and don’t keep your guano from them.

5. At the end of the day, even if all you’ve posted a barrage of one-liners that link to other people’s guano: know that no one is as eloquent as you, no one is as insightful as you, no one can sustain an argument and analyze any given situation as deftly and as penetratingly as you.

6. Yeah, that there’s gotta be a sixth one…just because. As you watch your polished prose sink down the page with nary a comment keep repeating 1-5. And believe, believe in your heart that the essence of democracy is people opining on everything from working at the local porn shop, to a collection of vegetarian recipes, to shameless self promoting under the guise of creativity, to a law professor who thinks he’s got da goods on American politics. In the end, you too could get a book deal, which we know is what American democracy is really all about! You’ve just gotta keep da faith.

posted by Jeremy at 11:57 AM

let's give a shout out

to our reader, mick. his site is real nice (i especially like the colors), and he is kind to link to us.

on the kindness of mick: when i was about to move to iowa but wasn't certain i would, i thought i might want to see the place. with barely a day's time to spare, i got ready to go. somehow i mentioned it to mick. i don't remember if i knew that he was from des moines or not. but he offered to come as company if his mom could drive the 90 miles and take us to supper. i said sure, then, when we got here, i got our hotel rooms messed up. she tried to call his room, and he was in mine, and he wasn't in his,

and the phone rang and rang and rang and rang

his mom sat in her car for two hours because of me. then we went to bennigan's at the shiny new giant mall. next day, i said we had to go home, and i made mick say goodbye to his mom much, much earlier than he or she wanted.

i was exhausted having to make up my mind about graduate school. little did i know that 6 years later i'd still be having to make up my mind about it. the weekend it was rainy and cold. i was underdressed. i was in a pissy mood most of the trip. i remember at one point dissing mick's "time out of mind" for no good reason, though it's a perfectly good recordone of my favorites now. part of that trip also featured some serendipitous stumble onto garth brooks singing "make you feel my love" on the radio. (brooks of course made a mint on the song.)

in the fall, mick told me he left me a surprise at the mall. it was poems. i still have them, but i'm in the library and can't retrieve them easily...

anyway, mick, thank you for putting up with me that weekend.

posted by Greg at 12:53 AM

kudos to MB

i'd love to hear more about your project

posted by Jeremy at 2:28 PM

what it is about the dissertation...

i don't know...but i can't read anymore...5 minutes is about all i can give to this or that book, poem, article.

i'm 2 months away from defense and i've got a chapter and half to write....arrrrggghhhhh

in other things...have yous seen the new honda commercial...it's supposedly shot in real time...they supposedly took 3 months to set everything up just right so that it would work...it's two minutes long, so check it out on broadband

also, this is a great site my favorites are truck-driver and welder (we just won't mention the student). i mean, wouldn't that be very uncomfortable for all involved?


can you come up with new titles?

as in He is with you creative accountant
or
even when you're constipated, he is there

posted by Jeremy at 1:58 PM

we are googlable

we are now googlable. the site has been on google beforemaybe a month or so agobut had somehow fallen from googlehood. now, for whatever reason, we are back.

google us today. for tomorrow,...

posted by Chris at 4:17 AM

resurrected obsession

with the (probably overzealous) purchase of a superbig harddrive for my powerbook, with my need (?) to make said powerbook do something productive (?) while i write, i recently put (almost) r.e.m.'s entire catalog on disk.
notable exceptions:

1. "chronic town"
2. other than what's on the "strange currencies" single, i don't have any b-sides except what's on "dead letter office."
3. i never bought "eponymous"
4. i never bought the newest greatest hits cd either
5. man on the moon sdtk

and notable inclusions

1. (not yet burned) "singles collected" g.b. import
2. a boot i once (foolishly) paid $25 for, which includes the mtv unplugged concert + a couple of numbers from their famous "bingo hand job" show

anyway, the point is that i now have an 173-song all-r.e.m. iTunes playlist that can run, without repeating, for 11.3 hours.

posted by Greg at 11:44 PM

Portugal

Here's a cursory glance back at our recent 10-day visit to Portugal.

• Lisbon: Our three-hour flight from Brussels took us to Lisbon, where our return flight originated at the end of our trip. We stayed here for approximately five days total (including a day at the end of the trip). Here we visited cathedrals, a castle, a massive monastary, a monument to the discovery of the New World, the largest shopping mall in Portugal and Spain, an art museum, a huge flea market, and other stuff. And we ate lots of pork. Jeremy will be glad to know that Mary Beth bought a table linen. One night in our hotel we heard our next door neighbors having gay sex.


• Coimbra: We took a train to Coimbra, where we visited a very old and famous university and a very old city center. We stayed in a cheap place immediately next to a cathedral whose bells tolled every half hour throughout the night. We stayed in Coimbra for approximately one day.


• Evora: We took a bus to Evora, which is another old Moorish, Roman, etc. city. The people here seemed much more affluent than the people of Coimbra or Lisbon center. By virtue of its more central location, Evora seemed to have more of a Spanish influence in the way people talked, etc. Here we saw lots of old ruins and stuff. We also saw a chapel of bones, which felt a little surreal. We ate well here. On her birthday, MB ate a wild pig "steak," which was amazing. We also ate pork-and-clams for the second or third time. We stayed here for a day and a half.


• Salema: We took a long bus ride down to the Algarve and then took a taxi to a little town called Salema that MB had read about in one of her guidebooks. We rented a third-floor apartment with a terrace for 55 euros a night. This apartment was right next to the beach. (One could spit from our terrace to the beach, if one wanted.) The door to the bathroom actually opened onto the terrace, so we literally had an ocean view from the toilet itself. The first day was warm so there were lots of people on the beach. The second day it was gray and looked like it might rain, so there was almost no one on the beach. We walked on the beach in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening, and at no time were there more than five other people on the entire quarter-mile long beach. Here we consumed sea bass, salmon, giant prawns, and other stuff. We also had green wine (vinho verde), which was really good. (I should note that at no time was any port drunk by uslots of Portuguese house wines whereever we went...but we never drank port, probably because we didn't go to Porto.) We stayed here for three nights and two full days.

Rose was very popular in Portugal. At least 10-15 strangers per day would approach us and talk to her. (This is approximately 10-14 more people per day than in Belgium.) Speaking of Rose, she is crying so I must stop now.

posted by Chris at 5:13 AM

Where oh where has my little...

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly (a show we don't get) publishes this poll of American evangelicals to kick off their series on the same.

Are you an evangelical? I don't mean, "are you evangelical," but do you think of yourself as falling under the blanket-term, evangelical? Whether you're an evangelical or not, what surprises you about the poll?

posted by Greg at 9:17 AM

signing off...for just a while

given that i really need to write two chapters in the next couple of weeks...yes, both herculean and rather insane. i only console myself knowing that no one, regardless of whether i take 5 years or 1 year to write my dissertation will ever read it.

anyway, given the pressures upon. i will be adopting one of hermit chris's famous low internet activity, high productivity regimens, combined with a high fiber, high carbohydrate, high fat diet, in the hopes that the thing will get written.

when i return, there will be more tales of living in bobo-landia, guilt-ridden gentrification, long SAND meetings in which we learn of people who were too drunk to remember what was taken from them when they got mugged, the woes of academic politics, and whether or not being a homeowner will actually make me a republican.

ciao for now

p.s.

i will read to see whether or not fado was enjoyed, port was drunk and the color of the table linen

posted by Jeremy at 4:53 AM

dissertation update...and job musings

so the chapter that i didn't turn in on time that lead to the snippy email penned by dr. good in the guise of dr. evil has been read. it turned out to be 40 pages times new roman script, 12 pt. font. yeah kinda long.

in fact, an english friend of mine, no not our lovable hermit that has a thing for bunnies, read it and told me that i should do myself and my committee a favor and cut ten pages out of it, besides what was the point. he is a person i consider to be freakin' brilliant. he is also, currently, but hopefully not for long, a casualty of the profession. he has a finished dissertation but no job. he did something in 19th century reader-response, of the quantitative kind, that followed 3 or 4 serial novelists of the mid to late 19th century. work that i find to be very important, though i don't do in the least. his comment coincided with my own opinion that the chapter was rather long.

i told my advisor that i was thinking of rewriting the chapter, but he told me that i must be crazy and that the chapter was one of the best dissertation chapters he'd ever read and that he was moved at various moments in reading it. (i've never moved anyone before...because i, unlike greg, have utterly given up hope of writing to impress) of course, i was elated. dr. evil all of the sudden became dr. newly-beatified. (but, this could be a bad thing...he's not a baroque scholar, he's a theory head and the two tend not to get along...of course, most of the animosity flows from the baroques to the theory heads than the other way around) since then, i have turned in another chapter and begun working on the third. the third and fourth really are one piece and the research/reading for each really flow into each other. however, i was supposed to turn it in this past monday.

nada happening. i am not horribly worried yet... though we are getting there.

2 weeks ago i got an email from hunter college in nyc asking for a video conference. unfortunately, i had to turn it down because not only have i accepted gsu, we've bought a house. i find this very strangeunless, of course, i am a 3rd, 4th or 5th choice, but hunter did everything slowly. application submission was 3 weeks after the mla, and this was the first i'd ever heard from them. calvin and wheaton, as well, drug their feet and i was close to number one on wheaton's list...even after writing an essay that critiqued christian literary scholarship as practiced at wheaton. what i don't get about it, especially in regards to places like calvin and wheaton, is that there are aggressive schools out there like mary washington who, in my case, play hard ball and pressured me into having a decision made by the first week of february, well before i'd even completed all of the campus visits i had scheduled before going to mw. granted, maybe whtn and clvn kinda think that the christian scholar will gravitate towards their schools and so they don't have to be aggressive. but the whole process is such a nerve wracking, uncertain process that i know of few people who would turn down a good school with even an okay offer for a possibility, even if that possibility is a christian school...oh me of little faith! i guess.

back to the writing...hopefully by this friday i will have a rough draft of chapter 3..

(so when i ran the spell checker these were it's suggestionsfreakin'>foreskin, beatified>beautified, clvn>cloven)

posted by Jeremy at 2:48 AM

Run, Harvey!

Little bunny Foo Foo
Hoppin' through the forest,
Scoopin' up the field mice and
Boppin' 'em on the head.

Down came the good fairy,
and she said:

Little bunny Foo Foo
I don't want to see you
Scoopin' up the field mice and
Boppin' 'em on the head.

I'll give you three chances.
If you fail, I'll send
The Glassport Assembly of God
to Whip You into Submission!

posted by Greg at 8:53 PM

the good earth...8 months from now

Now that we own a house with a bona-fide backyard, we are composting. I knew it was a science, but who knew that there is an entire subculture of composters, saving the world by rotting their kitchen scraps.

According to this more scientifically minded site, this is the precise way to build a compost pile:

Procedure:
Step 1. Start with a 4 to 6 inch layer of coarse material set on the bottom of the composter or on top of the soil.
Step 2. Add a 3 to 4 inch layer of low carbon material.
Step 3. Add a 4 to 6 inch layer of high carbon material.
Step 4. Add a 1 inch layer of garden soil or finished compost.
Step 5. Mix the layers of high carbon material, low carbon material, and soil or compost.
Repeat steps 2 through 5 until the composting bin is filled (maximum 4 feet in height). Cap with dry material.

But I like The Compost Guide. It, like ecochem, has a list of compostable materials (only slightly larger) and for the non-mathematically inclined it doesn’t give you the various ratios. (Who knew that dryer lint, that hair, as long as it isn’t clumped together, and that paper and cardboard are all compostable, but that ashes will inhibit the decomposition process?) I, since I’m not a farmer, nor a heavy gardener, though I may become one, don’t care too much about the ratios. But, I do want to know how to trouble-shoot my pile if it gets too smelly, or if a family of raccoons moves in to eat such delicacies as rotting lettuce or stinky broccoli. And the Compost Guide has a trouble-shooting chart as well. (Who knew that shredded newspaper would cure a compost pile from smelling like ammonia?)

In my dissertation avoiding research, I’ve learned that 45-55% of all landfill waste is compostable material and that 35-45% of all household waste is produced in the kitchen and is compostable.

In fact, we’ve now joined an international community of composters (no we aren’t crazy enough to pay and get fascinating updates and surveys, like How to get over the fear of asking Starbucks for their grounds.) But it is an international phenomenon: Canada has a composting council. England has an association. Australia, Germany, Hong Kong and Mexico all have groups. In New Zealand, it’s a whole government backed program, that is quite intensive. They even do the great no, no’s meat.

Mastercomposter.com has a page dedicated to letting people know where and how they can steal leaves and foodscraps for their compost pile.

Compost is saving the world: not only by creating fertilizer while diminishing waste flow, but it even is used to rehabilitate land poisoned by explosives.

Like with all things, there is an entire sector of the economy dedicated to the creating and selling of compost bins, or so it would seem with as many different products as are out there. One can even get bins to compost pet waste, with such names as “pet poo converter.” Something I am considering.

A site called EmilyCompost, pun no doubt intended, even has a whole quotable quotes section…with such gems as "Gardening is not a rational act."...Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg (1986) or "I want death to find me planting my cabbages."...Montaigne, Essays Book I (1880) even "Cares melt when you kneel in your garden."

My problem with composting is that I find the “rules” to be too cumbersome. So, who knows if I will ever get an appropriate ratio of browns to greens so that the temperature will actually reach 160 F in the center? Actually, I’d be happy with something around 140, even. Also, during the first month or so, I will no doubt obsess about it. In fact, if I do this like I do other things, I will create unnecessary kitchen waste just to have a compost pile, thus defeating the whole purpose of minimizing waste and sending our grocery bill skyrocketing. I can see myself buying vegetables just so that they rot in the fridge and have to go to compost pile. Or, using 5 carrots from 2lb bag and throwing the rest of the carrots into the pile. Well, that’s a little extreme. But, I have found myself cutting up my watermelon rinds and lemon peels into little slivers so that they will decompose faster. I have found myself obsessively emptying the lint guard and hairbrushes; I used do the first only after several dryer runs and the latter never. And, yes, I have even chosen to make tuna fish or egg salad for lunch simply because it involves eggshells.

posted by Jeremy at 2:32 PM

It's time to play...

Name that year of publication! I know this is about a year past the heyday of France-berating, but I believe there remains a healthy dose of Gallic mistrust left in our red-blooded American souls. Can you guess when the following was published? (the scene: the writer is reporting on a speech given in Boston) [There are enough clues, though I've edited out giveaways.]

In that of America, we behold a people... impelled by an 'ardent love of liberty, an unconquerable spirit of independence, a hatred of foreign dominion, and detestation of domestic oppression,' calmly and dispassionately resolve 'to resist the earliest incroachments of arbitrary power,' and, pursuing with moderation and firmness, that one legitimate object, preserving inviolate moral and religious institutions, the principles of justice, the order of civil society, and the rights of persons; and when their lofty purpose was accomplished return to the enjoyment of innocence and repose.

In the picture of France, every thing is the reverse of the former; and the diffuse and elaborate description of Mr. L. may be comprised in the sublime and forcible language of the poet, in depicting that doleful region,

"Where" virtue "dies," vice "lives and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things"
...
Mr. L. regards the spirit of faction as a base but inseparable ingredient in every free constitution. It is a noxious plant which thrives and propagates most int he genial and luxuriant soil of a popular government.... The 'Gallic faction,' in our own country, by a community of opinions, and a sympathy of views, have leagued with the irreligious, immoral, and disorganizing sectaries of French philosophy, to destroy the foundations of civil society, subvert our virtuous and venerable institutions, and overwhelm all religion, law, and liberty."... Those who still cherish the love of peace, and preserve their faith in the professions of France, he reproaches for their supineness and credulity, reminds them of the opinion of our chief magistrate, that there can be no peace without degradation and submission, and no security in negociation and convention.

posted by Greg at 11:20 AM

home

i love arkansas. really.

posted by Chris at 6:36 AM

render

i like the spirit of this treatment of Intelligent Design. i have often considered why some people are so consumed by the anti-evolution God-as-focus-of-natural-science approach, but i have never understood why God can't be an evolutionist.

posted by Chris at 5:49 AM

Egg-salad...hopefully, the sum is greater than the parts.

A week or two before hermit greg wrote his uber-controversial take on Mel's passion of the Christ, my dad and I had a conversation on the movie. Neither of us were going to see it, but for vastly different reasons?me for my dissertation, my dad because he grew up as a missionary kid in a Catholic country and has major hang-ups with the Catholic faith, or church, or religionespecially, religion, if this were to connote works oriented, saint-worship-laden ritual.

Our head Pastor, here at the Disciples where we attend, loves to speak of religion as man's (and he does say man) attempt to get to God, whereas, Christianity is God coming to man. He loves to bash religion and throws that phrase around all the time. I never knew where it came from till I did some reading in Karl Barth. I was shocked to find it in Barth, not that I was shocked that the guy would quote Barth, since Barth is blithely loved by conservative theologians and preachers, but that he had never given credit to Barth. I can only assume this is so because he takes it to be a universal truth that needs no author, and because he has probably been saying it since he read it in seminary 40 years ago.

My dad loves to religion bash, as well; and Catholics, for him, are the epitome of a 'bad' religion that piles up ritual on ritual and saint on saint, all in hopes that the right number of hail-Mary?s etc. will in fact get one into heaven. Which seems to me to be an oversimplification, a similar type of demonization as the Baptists cary out on CofC-ers because we don't understand grace, since we baptise instead of pray Jesus into our hearts. There may be some truth to it, but mainly it's a caricature.

I said that what I thought most interesting about the whole Event of the film was that Protestants were not talking about the patent theological differences between Mel's passion and their own belief. (But, how can you view a movie critically when the Christian establishment is using the film as a litmus test for whether or not one is a Christianthe Christian will go see the film; the Christian will have a certain experience upon viewing the film, because, after all, it is the Gospel truth; etc.) He was amen-ing my words, but not really listening to what I was saying. He believed me to be impugning the movie for being Catholic, thus wrong, or lacking, or a deviation from the truth. For a number of reasons, I chose not to correct him: it was already 1 o'clock in the morning and we've had similar conversations that go nowhere.

But I was simply pointing out that the film was rather Catholic in its theology and that Protestant theology has historically been different, and for more reasons than whether or not the Pope when speaking ex catedra is infallible or not. In fact, it is my belief that these differences should be talked about and talked about loudly. Not so that we all can come away from the discussion feeling smug about our own positions, but because only by putting our theology into circulation with one that differs from it can it actually remain alive. Only by listening to the other, despite our inability to hear them, despite our always understanding something different than what was said, can it actually remain vital and change us and those with whom we dialogue, should we be so lucky as to have a dialogue. And yes, I see the irony, or at least my own failure to diaglogue with my dad.

The conversation with my dad then turned to what he pejoratively referred to as the Catholicization of American Christianity, by this he means the celebration of Lent by non-Catholics and the use of other traditionally "Catholic," or what he deems as "Catholic," since Orthodox and several Protestant groups have historically observed these holy days, and festivals as well. I half-heartedly defended it, because by this time it was 1:30 and I needed to do some more writing that night. He understands "the Catholicization" it to be an unmooring, a lack of knowledge of the scriptures (which, of course, means a lack of being raised in the appropriate hermeneutic tradition rather than a mere lack of knowledge...which, there is that too) that leads to a search "for spirituality" vaguely defined and almost always a latching on to rituals and aesthetics in order to have a "spiritual life" filled with "spiritual moments." (Any reading of Paul, for him would disabuse the "ritual seeker" from seeking these kinds of things.) Since he is in the right hermeneutic tradition (and, couldn't this be understood as a form of ritual?) Church rituals be damned. Except forsaking the assembly, of course, and the five acts of worship. And, except those rituals that he, as patriarch of the family, decides that we should institute and keep, because he, too, at some deep level, knows that ritual is important.

His rebellion against the ritualistic practices of the Catholic church, aside from considering the Catholic faith to be heretical, is "the stuff" of American religionand here I use religion in the worst sense of all, as the hidden ideology that our culture reveres more than God, Godself. It's the "I did it my way" of Ole' Blue Eyes. Also, religion, if by this we mean ritual, as a private practice, because religion as evangelism is a must and is by nature public, but the rest of it except morality, of course, should be private, individual...don't let the Chruch impinge on my right to my own rites!

Let me lay things out on the table: I am an ecumenicalist who believes in the impossibility of ecumenicalism. What does this mean? It means that there are institutional claims and historical realities that cannot be overlooked, undone and easily overcome among the various branches of the Christian faith. There will never be a coming together of the various groups. This does not mean, though, that we shouldn't and can't come together and learn from eachother. I may never agree that the sacraments must be administered by a priest; Greek Orthodox may have problems with the individualism of personal Bible study; etc. But I, having grown up in a group that has done a horrible job of understanding the necessity of ritual in everyday life (unfortunately, it has understood all too well, and thus not really at all, the necessity of ritual in reference to the what and the how and the who of the assembly...2 on Sunday and 1 on Wednesday, thank you very much) can try and learn how to sacralize the quotidian from those groups that historically and institutionally have done a better job of this.

posted by Jeremy at 12:17 AM

Call me Humbert Humbert

When a new dormitory was being erected at the university in my hometown, we would mount its three-story scaffold and stare longingly into the windows of the women's dormitories across the street. All we paid to watch was a little bit of conscience, and, perhaps, a little bit of Kleenex. This guy paid $20.00.

posted by Greg at 3:27 AM

Fragments for Good Friday

I'm not much for complete thoughts, today. Only beginnings...

• I walked out of the house this morning angry. "See you later," I muttered to kl; I threw the newspaper up the stairs, and I slammed the door behind me. To tell the truthI must put it that way, not because I need to be cliché, but because I need to admit itlately, I've been angry a lot. Now I sit in the library; it's getting on evening, and I have no sense of when I will go home.



• Immediacy is swift resolution, the connection of subject to predicate, the construction of resolutions, even if those resolutions are ambiguous or dissatisfying, to construct, conclude. Immediacy is an interpretation of the present in time. Delay too is to interpret, but it is interpretation by way of time. Resolution suffers; the payoff is frustrated, withheld. The Aristotelian understanding of delay is that, when it is in ploy/play, the longer the predicate is withheld from the subject, the greater, more tragic, more powerful, more satisfying that resolution will be. Delay is thus a construct to manipulate response. In that sense, immediacy is a poem; delay is a novel.
  
  But immediacy is also without mediation; by that token, it is related to presence. Nothing is between me and you when we are immediate; your quickness comes every time I touch your cheek, mine with every word I speak. Immediacy operates with the understanding that we are imminently here, understandable to each other, satisfied in our handiness. The proximate is the first, and the first is in its own way most satisfying. Thus in this way, immediacy is a novel; delay is a poem.



• There are four primary ways that we describe the world: 1) the way the world was, 2) the way the world should be, 3) the way the world could be, and 4) the way the world is not. Can we ever describe the world as it is?



• I realized again today, as I realize every year at Easter, that I have a poor sense of Holy Week. I do not fault my upbringing, though I might. My long ex-Catholic wife even still has a keener sense of the week than I. Today is Good Friday. Instead of meditating on the Cross, I meditate on Edgar Huntly.

posted by Greg at 8:14 PM

Listening to Condi

What follows are a few notes I took during NSA Condoleeza Rice's testimony yesterday. Nothing here is the product of reflection, nor necessarily of good note-taking. You might want to watch some C-SPAN or read the transcript if you really want to know what was said.

Dr. Rice read a transcript of Pres. Bush's interview with Bob Woodward. "Did you want to kill bin Laden," Woodward asked. The president stuttered, and Rice interpreted: "Clearly this is a president struggling with what to say about his state of mind before 9/11.... He knew there was no silver bullet that would get Bin Laden." I wonder about this notion of the "silver bullet." What kind of metaphor is it that suggests bin Laden is a werewolf who only arises every full moon? Now it is Easter; now there is a full moon. Do we expect bin Laden to rise and howl at the moon?

And what is a silver bullet? It seems to mean that the metaphor means to suggest a possibility of action, that somewhere out there, somebody believes that there is one act that would have solved the bin Laden problem. What would a foray into press briefings about the Afghanistan campaign, or those releases when Hussein was at-large and missiles were dropped and convoys were destroyed on the Syrian border which might have carried him (it was gas smugglers, as I remember)? What's the difference between those "decapitation strikes" and these telltale silver bullets?

CNN's projection on-screen is at times of two talking-head video blocks. The large one is Condoleeza Rice; the small one, the examining commissioner (as I write this sentence, Richard Ben-Veniste (D)) Above Ben-Veniste's head, spins video of the inside of the Capitol Dome, taken at a dizzying angle. Condoleeza Rice is a slick talker. And she's a quick dodger. Her hair is styled like it was pressed out of a plastic mould. I've sometimes thought that she has really poor taste in lipstick color, often choosing what is brightest rather than what is complementary to her skin, but today her lipstick works. Anyway, maybe it's a misperception on my part. Her overbite is a huge part of her face.

Fred Fielding (R) is lobbing softballs. And she's using them to hit home runs: she took his final question and used it to ascribe all the credit for the waylay of the millennium threat to a customs agent in Washington! It's a misdirection against Richard Clarke's argument that "shaking the trees" from the top yielded good results in 1999 and could have worked in 2001, too. In other words, reascribe credit from the top to the bottom, and in the process, take away the ground that others have stood upon. It's the way arguments work, but it's got a bad smell. After it all, Rice concluded as she had to: "I don't think it worked, but, obviously, I wasn't there." In the midst of her statements to Fielding, she was even able to make a campaign push.

Jamie Gorelick (D) is articulate and candid. Rice responds to Democrats by talking through all their time with equivocations and protests.

Slade Gorton (R) is as innocuous as Fielding. His questions are directed less toward learning what happened than toward seeking advice about what to do in the future! There is of course a measure of partisanship at work here. When those from the Clinton administration came before the commission (I didn't take notes then) I am certain that the R's on the committee bared all of their teeth as they did against Richard Clarke. (Likewise, the D's fawned over him.) I don't begrudge it themafter all, it's probably the best way there is of getting honest answers out of these politicians on both sides. The problem with such fine bipartisan (not nonpartisan) action is the problem of influence: there is nothing that prevents a party leader from exacting revenge upon a "rogue" party member, and in this case, a "rogue" member might be one who pushes Rice too much. Well, so far, the R's aren't pushing Rice at all. Gorton's questions were useless. They shed no light on history and very little upon recommendations for policy.

There are consequences. Softballs by the R's largely force the D's to be hard-nosed. That's not to say that the D's wouldn't be hard-nosed by their own party logic; however, it leaves little place for Bob Kerrey (D) projects Iraqi civil war based upon American action there. Damn she is really, really slick. "Please don't filibuster me," he pleaded, and she kept talking. Rice's consistent response to Kerrey was to say, "We didn't have time to do all the things we needed to do! It's unfair to suggest it!"

John Lehman (R): "The real purpose of this commission is to find real recommendations for what we can do in response!" Lehman's a lot more pointed than his R colleagues. A lot of his time is devoted to a long series of "Were you aware" questions regarding the time-of-knowledge of events/possibilities/moments-of-interest/policies about terrorism. It was like a true/false test. Rice's face looked puzzled. Soon after, she wants to return to those questions. In doing so, she begins to defend post-9/11 government response. It seems her initial strategy for addressing this commission was to prop-up broadscale administrative policies, in particular, the Patriot Act. She concluded, "My greatest concern is that, as 9/11 recedes from our memory, we will unlearn what we have learned since then.... We need to restructure government on the scale that government was restructured in 1947.... This country, as democracies do, waited and waited and waited for something to happen," and needless for her to say though she said it, we have to act first.

But the problem with preemption is a problem of the basis of republican democracy! All the philosophy that this government was founded upon developed not on projection effects based upon possible causes! It's the other way around: that's enlightenment history. For better or worse, that's the science of history. We see effects and we identify causes for those effects. For 200 years philosophers have explained the problems with those structures. But they're the structures we've got. Proponents of preemption speak outside of those structures but they purport to act with the authority that those structures inspire. Does it have a philosophy to go along with it?

Timothy Roemer (D). Rice begins, "How do you act on, 'Something very very big is going to happen.'" (I missed part of this interview. At least thirty percent of it Rice spent defending the continued secrecy of the Aug. 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief. It's unsettling to hear so much said about a text and yet have no one be able to say much about it. Rice summarizes and defines it often, but refuses to let it be public.)

James Thompson (R). He lets Rice know he's going to go really easy on her by assuring the president that her appearance does not set a precedent against the separation of powers argument. He speaks of dead horses, then asks Rice to identify her relationship to Dick Clarke. They talk about the USS Cole bombing. Thompson looks to aim some criticism at Congress. Rice says that we've now "delegitimized" terrorism. When was terrorism ever legitimate? And who was it legitimated by? In conclusion, "I think we're better structured today than we ever have been, and we want to hear any recommendations you have to make, and this president thinks it is his highest calling to defend the security of the people of the United States."

I don't think that I learned all that much from this hearing, but I haven't been keeping a running tally of all of the "what we knew"/"what we know now" discussions. Most of what I heard today that was intriguing were hints toward other, still-classified information. Chris Matthews on MSNBC is focusing on the title of the August 6, 2001, PDB, "Bin Laden determined to attack within the United States." Rice's strategy was to stay on message and to whitewash administrative actions/inactions with claims of "hindsight is 20/20" (Madeline Allbright said that too) or "governmental bureaucracy sucked." I would have to watch the thing again to follow the nuances of Rice's equivocations and understand the forces of the commissioners' questions. I think there must be a secret oath of office that every administration official takes that requires them, when anything goes wrong, to blame the bureaucracy.

posted by Greg at 12:23 PM

we've been served

so, a week ago we got this note in our little red mailbox...for my one reader, if he, she, it (i wouldn't want to gender discriminate now), doesn't remember they can go to the archives from the end of february.

it said: that our cute little box was not up to code and the we need to move it to the road. this worried us because we haven't gotten any mail since our move...we've been wondering if the us mail has been keeping our correspondence hostage (not that we get any...just like we don't get any readers). our neighbors have no problem...they get their's despite the fact that their mailbox is in the same place as ours (though it's not red and adorable, like ours).

yesterday t called to ask why we hadn't been getting mail...aparently, the request hasn't been recieved. t told the guy that the request had been mailed over a month ago and that our old place had not been receiving any mail...t is very responsible and changed all the important things via the web...so credit card info and bills and the atlantic monthly will come to us...we hope.

the mailman told her: "what? you mailed it? you shouldn't've done that, it probably got lost. you've gotta take those change of address requests to the station in person. mailing them to the postoffice is a sure-fire way of losing the information."

posted by Jeremy at 10:45 AM

the dog...

the last time we moved, the dog got so nervous that she ate two very expensive library books. thankfully, she did not do this again...sorry dr. good...the dog ate my dissertation.

for the 7 years we've had her, she's always been a wall-to-wall carpet apartment kind of dog. now that we are in a house with a backyard, she still demands to be taken for a walk...which she gets. but there are things that have changed...

for one, she no longer has carpet. the first couple of days, before the living room rug was bought, this caused her some problems...she roamed the house constantly, we assumed it was the activity. but when we pulled out the two small kitchen rugs and she plopped down on them and would not move regardless of the activity going on in the kitchen...and there was a lot...my mother-in-love thought it important to wash every dish (despite their already being clean, for they had been in contact with wrapping paper). once we got the rug, we realized the reason for her roaming, for she didn't move from them for hours.

other things she has had to get used to:

more than one door. the first time the doorbell rang, she darted to the back door, since that was the one that had been used the most.

the bed has been raised, in order to store things under it, and she has, more than once, not made it onto the bed because of being used to it not being 4 inches higher. also, she is slower to jump off, since she doesn't want to slide on the hardwood floors.

last of all, despite having a backyard, we still have to accompany her out the door in order for her to do her...well, you know...

other than that, she loves hanging out on the deck and sunning herself.

posted by Jeremy at 12:46 AM

MACHOMER

So Friday night I had the choice: stay home and work on the dissertation..be an intellectual and attend the Latin American film festival that I have helped start (mainly by attending meetings and telling the real people in charge that they are doing a good job) and hobnob with a future colleague of mine...or make my wife happy and go see MacHomer with her. After much deliberation, because I really did want to go see Plata Quemada, a critically acclaimed movie, based on a critically acclaimed Argentine author, whom I really dig, I decided that the only responsible thing for me to do was to go see MacHomer.

In fact, it is a family tradition of never going to see any movie at any festival that has anything to do with my area of studies.

T's brother said MacHomer was one of the funniest things he'd ever seen. It's a one guy show, a "Montreal-trained actor" no less, whatever the h that means. He does all the characters of Macbeth as characters from the Simpsons. His voices are pretty much dead-on...every once in a while his Homer sounds like the Postman from Cheers, and that got annoying.

It was pretty funny...but a lot of the jokes were about 7 years old...Bart was the Bart of the "Don't have a cow-man!," OJ Simpson (as murderer, not direct-TV mafia king-pin) was the political satire, etc. Don't get me wrong; it had its moments of hilarity. The funniest stuff, of course, were those lines that effected a perfect merger between the Simpson character and the Shakespeare line: as in Banquo's Predid-lee-iction.

8 years ago, or so, though, I went to see a Shakespeare in the park (Little Rock, Arkansas park) production of the Taming of the Shrew done a-la-Seuss. Which was much funnier. I don't think, though, that the change is necessarily due to me, but to the two different types of humor. The Shrew was funny, in part, because its humor textual and linguistic. Dr. Seussian metrics and rhymes merge easily with Shakespearean metrics and rhymes...which allows for a lot of surreal, out of place, intertextuality that shocks the audience into a double recognition of both the Shakespearean text and the Seussian superimposition. The line that sticks with me is suggestive paranomasia: "Horatio fears a woo."

The Simpsons are funny because they are merciless send-up of American pop-culture. It's situation comedy at its best because it doesn't have to worry in the least about any kind of narrative progression...who really cares if Milo and Lisa get it on? Like so many apparently care about Ross and Rachel. The characters stay in character (though they have evolved over the years…Bart being the test case and the shift from him to a more likable Homer, being the other) and anything can be ridiculed as long as the characters are consistent.

It was funny to hear the voices and think about the Macbeth as Homer and Duncan as Smithers, but that really was the extent of the humor. This character as that character and the tensions between them often just made the one act, one man, 50 character play too much (Marge as Lady Macbeth, was only funny when Marge would go hmmm, but utterly out of character for Marge).

This leads me to wonder, is there such a category as funny? In Patristic aesthetics there is beauty and it is what causes desire and admiration. Likewise, it is both seductive and ennobling. But it exists; otherwise there would be no ability to recognize it. This granted, since at least the late Middle Ages, and this may have come from the Greeks, there has been the recognition that beauty is in the eye of the beholder…but this is the rule's caveat. And still, beauty resides not in the beholder but in the object and calls to something in the beholder. Is there such a thing in regards to funny? And is that why the scatological is almost always funny?

posted by Jeremy at 9:30 AM

a piece of me for all eternity...

Desirous of being good citizens we went to our local neighborhood meeting...yes, an hour and a half or so of boring talk and seconding motions and reports given by people we don't know. For some reason, I thought that it would be much better represented than it was. I mean, I fully expected it to be as unexciting as it was, so the lack of attendance shouldn't've surprised me, but we live in a highly educated, somewhat politically active area...and our association actually includes 6 neighborhoods. There are 400 plus adults in the 2003 directory, and it doesn't list everybody at that. But there may have been 20 warm bodies present, and five of those were speaking board members.

The library folks came by and let us know that a new ultra-hip library is slated for our area. They told us that our community has needed a library for a long time and they thanked us on our patience...yet, I remember driving around in the area where the library is going to go in when we first moved here five years ago...and it was the hood.

Self-righteously I tell myself, we weren't the first gentrifiers of our street...in fact, the neighbors Mike and Brent (yes, it is Brent and not Brett. They brought over an orchid yesterday.) have lived here for 7 years, the guys across the street for 18, just down the road a family with 4 kids have been here for 11 years and then there are about 2 or 3 grandparents who have been here forever and have seen the place slide into oblivion and slowly climb into Bobo-dom.

But the library, this way cool library, is going in that is built according to LEED standards: it'll have a green parking lot with permeable asphalt; it'll heat from the floor up so that it doesn't waste energy; its top windows'll scoop light and bounce it onto the ceiling eliminating glare; the side windows are some sort of space-age techie glass that reflects heat; etc. We were told we deserve this because of our patience and because we are a neighborhood filled with architects, designers, green-freaks and overly educated individuals who care about expensive amenities that will help the globe warm a little slower, despite our SUVs.

I'm happy about the library and all...but I ask where the patience has been. Historically, this has been an underserved neighborhood; that is, for the last 40 years or so when the working class grandparents stayed as the kids got educations and moved to the suburbs...but now the underserved persons are moving out as life gets too expensive.

So I am a torn gentrifier. On the one hand, neighborhoods move in cycles...anybody who's seen the "Back to the Future" trilogy knows this to be a fact of life...otherwise, it wouldn't've made it into a main-stream science fiction flick. On the other hand, the underserved remain underserved. Despite the lackluster attendance, our neighborhood association has political and economic clout. I.E. they recently, after an extended 10 month court battle, shut down a package store that had been caught serving alcohol to minors on 3 occasions...which may not sound like much, that is, such irresponsible selling, one would expect, would not go without impunity, but to actually get an alcohol license revoked almost takes an act of congress and our neighborhood has the money, the knowledge, and the connections to do this.

So, hurray, we've got a library for our children...which is a good thing. But, we've actually already got a library. One of its patrons referred to it as charming, well-stocked and underused. In fact, when he mentioned where the old library was, several blocks east of the neighborhoods in our association, I assumed that the new library would be closer to us. Especially, since we are supposed to move from our current meeting location, walking distance for anybody in our community, to the 75 person meeting room in the new library when it gets built. Yet, the new library will be even further east than the old library by a block or two.

This new library of ours will, in fact, house 40,000 items (items and not volumes): books, CDs, DVDs, books-on-tape, videos, magazines and newspapers. The coup de grace, aside from the meeting room and the 18-terminal computer center (both essential for the libraries mission of being a center for education and its understanding of itself as a pillar of democracy), will be the rotating art...the library has hired a local artist to do collage work of art created (produced? manufactured? constructed? fabricated?) by the library's patrons. The lady actually said: "You will create your stuff in workshops?and she will shellac it, or whatever she does...I don't understand artists, and a pieces of you, of your art work, will hang in the library for all eternity!"

BTW I recommend Brave New Library
Can Libraries Save Democracy?
Crisis in Scholarly Communication
and
The UNESCO Public Library Manifesto 1994

for those interested in libraries

posted by Jeremy at 8:44 PM

On my first taste of homeownership...

so you remember the magnolia leaves that got picked up the other day?

i also swept off the back deck from the neighbor's oak droppings.

that evening a big wind came through and both the deck and the front yard look worse now than after my 45 minutes of yard work!

in other news though, mormon women suffer less from depression...so says a mormon female psychologist

and, if you live in iowa and the surrounding states, you tend to binge drink more than if you live in sunny california or hip nyc...geez i wonder, wonder why

posted by Jeremy at 11:31 AM

The argument…

7 1/2 years ago, as a wedding present, we were given a dutch oven. In all that time we'd never even taken it out of the box. I had eyed it several times in the back of the cabinets wistfully, very much yearning for the day when I would have a kitchen in which to use it; I’d even picked out a recipe or two that called for such a pot.

The move came. I looked forward to getting to pull the pot out in the new house and cook something that need the specific properties of a dutch oven. T, who is not the cook of the house, on the other hand, eyed the pot thinking we can finally get rid of that thing we’ve never used. 3 weeks before the move the topic came up and neither of us budged an inch as to whether we should keep it or get rid of it. 2 days before the move, I finally convinced her to wait and see if we would have room in the new place, promising her that her taste buds would eventually thank me. Her mom arranged the kitchen, while I handled the study, since I still have a dissertation to write. The way she arranged it, though, didn't leave any room for prized pot. So, once again, I convinced T to let me try and rearrange the kitchen. Of course, since I have a dissertation to write (did I already mention that?, I wouldn't rearrange all at once but slowly as I cooked and got used to the kitchen. This way, I could find , out-of the-way yet practical and accessible places, for the peripheral objects, like dutch ovens, and it not take up all my dissertating time.

Yesterday, I’d found the place. So 7 1/2 years after receiving the gift, I unpacked our lovely dutch oven. Only, it was 2, rather ugly, green-fern print dishtowels, 2 chintzy, plastic purple plates, two glass wine goblets made in Turkey (ooooh! Nobody beats the Turks when it comes to pouring molten silica into molds), and a bottle of white sparkling Welch’s grape juice...which by now is no doubt vinegar.

I don’t know what’s funnier…our not having a dutch oven; that the major on-going argument of the move was about a dutch oven that we never even owned; or, Joe and Mary (or whoever they were) getting their mail and seeing a thank you card from us.

Mary says: Ohh, I do so hope that they enjoyed the sparkling grape juice…
Joe: Nothing like a little bubbly to start a marriage off on the right foot.
Mary: Come to think of it, maybe we should’ve added some cheese and bread to that gift…you know, make a meal of it and all.
Joe: See Mary...there you go, always wanting to give more than the occasion calls for…I’m sure that you’ll soon be wishing we’d added candles to round out the ambiance.
Mary: Oh Joe! Behave!….Huh! that’s funny…
Joe: What is it?
Mary: They're thanking us for a dutch oven...

posted by Jeremy at 11:16 PM