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December 19th, 2007
12:55 am - Senior Semester #1
It was crazy, it was different, it was hell, it was a mountain, it turned itself inside out 3+ times, it was my best semester yet.
"When you've got enough mistakes behind you, and enough life ahead of and on top of you, you don't have time to worry about what was and what will be." -- Laura C.
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December 11th, 2007
03:49 am - Margaret Fuller and the Liberal Arts
Once upon a time back in the day, I asked my mom why it was OK for me -- or any woman -- to go to college. This, you must understand, was a very serious question -- we were close friends with a family who didn't believe in sending their girls to college, and there is a whole Christian homeschool sub-subculture out there that agrees with them. (There is also a more mild sub-subculture that thinks college is OK as long as the girl is still living at home, and an even more liberal variant that thinks it's OK as long as the college is very near by).
I rather wanted to go to college, wanted to go to one that would probably end up being a good distance from home, and desperately hoped there was some solid Christian, biblical reasons for doing so.
( Initial answers )
( The Answer of Artes and Margaret )
But, at root? I'm with the strange bedfellows of Dr. W. and Margaret Fuller.
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September 25th, 2007
03:44 am - Zombies, Ants, and War
Yes, this is my killer week of exams, papers, practices, guest lectures, and classes. So what do I do? Hahaha -- I decide to write a blog post. The first one of the semester. Oh, lovely time management, where hast thou flown?
But, yes. I want to rant about ants. I hate them. Especially the mutant-exoskeleton-zombie variety that we have here at The Strand. Normal tiny black or red squishy ants have nothing on these fellows. Our house's ants are giant, and black, and come back from the dead, and have NO squishy parts whatsoever, and enter the inside of our house by means of a crack in the paneling near the door of my closet.
( ANTS ANTS ANTS ANTS ANTS! )
I've declared a jihad against them. I keep a kill tally above my door. I've murdered nearly twenty the the past three days.
And I've finally acquired TERRO.
But I haven't used it yet. It seems to damnedly unsportsmanlike. We've been through a lot together this past month, and it seems like springing modern chemical weaponry on a band of Hoplite warriors. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. (Metaphorically, that is. Though I suppose it tastes pretty bad physically, too).
Actually, I probably would have used it anyway by now. In a far less romantic consideration, I just don't envy myself a giant, crusty pile of dead ants spilling out of my closet.
But Lydia says I should just get over that mental aversion and go for it. Because they breed a lot faster than I can kill them one by one, and sooner or later they'll find the kitchen and the food... :-/
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September 19th, 2007
12:42 am - I Am Busy
I am back at college, and I am very busy.
- music major
- history major
- accompaniment
- piano-violin-cello trio
- teaching piano lessons
- piano juries
- living off campus
- cooking
- grocery shopping
- keeping the house in order
- senior thesis
- joining SAI
- killing ants
Do I have time to put any stray thoughts into a publishable semblance of order? Um...no. Posts will be sporadic. Very.
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August 14th, 2007
12:41 am - Harmony and Poetry
Exercises in harmonic progression and voice leading resemble sonnets. Or any other strict form of poetry. There are weak chords and strong chords; there are chords that rest and chords that tend to push forward. For any given melody line, you have to write a sequence of strong, weak, moving, and unmoving chords that makes sense of the phrasing and ends of phrases. There's standard rules for how to match harmonies with melodic notes, and how to shift certain chords into others, but they can be broken for emphasis. At the beginning, there's many possible harmonizations for each note of the melody -- but the more of the form you fill in, the more limited your options become for the remaining measures.
The workbook I'm using gives an increasing number of chordal options each chapter, making the process an increasingly more creative endeavor than a mechanical one. Toward the beginning, you're pretty much limited to I and V...but throw IIs and VIIs and IVs and all their inversions into the mix, and it's possible to call the even the standard two-line workbook exercises "art."
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August 13th, 2007
12:39 am - Children's Church
If I ever, ever said anything against children's church in the past, I recant fully. I'm sure it can be abused. But so can any good thing.
The "families should always be together for the worship service -- we don't believe in children's church" is a lovely idea in theory. And STUPID in practice. Until the kids are old enough to sit still, and not pull their sister's hair, and not babble about sunshines and trains and cars during prayer time, or loudly declare that the lights are on or off during the next prayer time...nursery and children's church is a good idea.
And I'm not saying this because I give a damn about the people sitting next to the kids...they're not really the ones suffering from this. The one bearing the brunt of it is the mom who wants to be able to focus on God, and prayer, and worship for one hour out of her crazy week, and CAN'T because she's having to police her kids every two seconds to keep them from disrupting everybody else.
Most kids are not perfect little angles by the age of two and three.
I've decided I'm fortunate that I'm not a mom yet, and have the leisure of (theoretically if I were perfect) giving God undivided attention during a church service.
And, yes. This was spurred by the fact that I had to play mom for the neighbor's kids during church in church this Sunday. :-P
Maybe a caveat: if it were a cultural norm for kids to always be along in the service, and no one -- especially the pastor -- blinked when the kids cried and babbled and laughed, we just considered all that a part of what HAPPENED when the family of God got together to worship him...well, yeah. Then it would work. And maybe that more relaxed and communal atmosphere is what we should strive for. But it sure isn't what exists right now.
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August 12th, 2007
03:01 pm - Fluke of History
Why not start with a quote:
"Hurrah for women's lib, eh?"
"The lib?" Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. "Oh, that's doomed."
The apocalyptic word jars my attention.
"What do you mean, doomed?
She glances at me as if I weren't hanging straight either and says vaguely, "Oh …"
"Come on, why doomed? Didn't they get that equal rights bill?"
Long hesitation. When she speaks again her voice is different.
"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."
Now all this is delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone, the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead pigeons.
"Oh, come on. You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country would come to a screeching halt before lunch."
No answering smile.
"That's fantasy." Her voice is still quiet. "Women don't work that way. We're a—a toothless world." She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking. "What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine."
~ from "The Women Men Don't See" by James Triptree Jr.
Part 1
After hammering away for a while at the brick wall of feminism, and femininity, and gender roles, and patriarchy, and all that jazz, I do have a handful of conclusions. This seems as good a place as any to start, as I recently ran across Triptree again, for the first time in several years.
( Feminism and Progress )
( I'm Not Mentally Inferior! Just Very Confused... )
An endnote:
Apparently "The Women Men Don't See" is Triptree's most famous story. So I suppose it has a lot going for it, even though I don't really care for the thing as a whole (I just like a passage or two here and there). I personally like "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" better. Definitely won't appeal to everyone, but it's one of the most successful attempts I've seen of an author writing from the perspective of an alien consciousness.
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August 2nd, 2007
01:04 pm - Films and Links
Fantasy Films
I need to read The Dark Is Rising sometime soon...it's apparently one of the few books prominent in evangelical subculture that I haven't read, and now they're making a movie of it.
New Line (wow!) is doing The Golden Compass. Here's a wikipedia link about the books, the official site, and me mentioning the books two years ago. The girl they've got for Lyra feels spot-on...the site says they said looked at 10,000 girls, and I believe it. The rest of the characters I'm not as sure about.
Interesting thing -- the cinematography doesn't feel right. Too clean? Bright? Cartoony? Lyra's world has a bit more soot and grime and grittiness to it. And gobblers and soul-eating spectres lurk in unlit alleyways, preying upon the unwary. It's a bit of a grown-up place, and would be better off losing the antiseptic computer-animated feel.
I only notice this, because, recently, a lot of movies seem to have done a good (or good enough) job capturing the tone of their source books. This is the first one that's struck me as very wrong. One of the first things I noticed about the books was their "tone" -- hard to define and describe, but just as the diction of Lewis's Narnia laces the books with a sunlight and childlike joy, and Harry Potter keeps a tongue-in-cheek absurdity even as the books grow darker -- Pullman's style is a sober and achingly beautiful. I don't know if this selection illustrates it well, but it might.
I also think it's strange how many big-budget epic fantasy films have been made recently. And how many series are being tackled. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Narnia, Eragon, Golden Compass, The Dark is Rising...and just the other day I ran into Stardust, and have no idea how many other films are in the works out there. I know studios produced fantasy films made before, but they seem to have been few and far between, largely forgettable, and hardly ever given a blockbuster level budget. Big-budget (and/or memorable) sci-fi films have been going on for a long time; this seems like the first real corresponding wave of fantasy films.
YouTube
And now for two shorter clips...these guys are hilarious. Check out Rules of Sidewalk Etiquette and How to Give a Great Man to Man Hug.
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July 18th, 2007
11:26 am - A Link and Some Thoughts
***WARNING WARNING WARNING! IN-HOUSE IN-HOUSE IN-HOUSE!*** (or rather largely so)
Alastair Roberts recently wrote a good post, concerning worldviews, intellect, imagination, and liturgy. One point of the article: logic and the intellect work within and "fine tune" the larger imaginative picture we already have of the world. Thus logic will not tend to get one out of a wrong view of the world, only an exercised imagination. Another key point: we're incarnate beings, not body-shells where the truly important thing is the mind.
I liked his thoughts on anemic "worldviews":
( And I insert a cut )
Oh, dear. I don't hate Reformed/Calvinist theology. Really. I've grown up in it; I've gotten rather beat up by it; I don't think it's the ultimate final answer to everything; I think it gets a HECK of a lot righter than a lot of other traditions. I'm grappling my way through its systemic strengths and systemic weaknesses, and trying to figure out what it is about parts of Reformed thought that make me react so strongly against it at times. I have not tended to be entirely fair and balanced in the process. Harriet Beecher Stowe -- of whom I will post later -- humbles me by her ability to walk the same path with deep compassion and understanding, and I can only hope to someday come close to her insight and humility.
In either case, this section here doesn't mention anything about Reformed theology, and I think it's the best part:
( I quote some more, and add some comments )
Though I can't defend it at the moment, I'm going to step out on a limb and say that un-beautiful logic does not "ring true" to us at a deep level...and rightfully so. One can present a logically coherent system to a person, but if they feel that the system is all that there is -- that it's failed to catch up into itself the depth and messiness of reality and human experience -- it will not "ring true" to them. (And rightfully so.)
I should have the "rightfully so" part a bit better worked out eventually. It'll probably have something to do with George MacDonald and presuppositional apologetics and Job.
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July 16th, 2007
01:41 am - Hair, Reprise
For the record, I am now happily reconciled to my longer hair, now that it's stopped looking like a mullet.
A potential reason for the reconciliation: (female?) music majors can get away with long hair. In fact, they can do far better than "get away" with it: long hair is fitting for them, in a way it just really isn't for other majors and professions who are trying to look professional.
A final jumble of reasons: Erm...some marginal additional advantage in the mating game might not be so bad. (Why NOT maximize available external assets?)
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July 1st, 2007
01:18 am - Why TURKEY?
On the way back from Turkey, our groggy and exhausted group passed through Danish customs as we switched planes in Amsterdam. There the inspectors questioned us most thoroughly: "where exactly did you stay?" "did you pack your own luggage?" "so your roommate had access to your luggage -- do you trust her?" "do you trust all the people you're traveling with?" -- etc.
The most amusing and revealing question, however, was my inspector's response to the answer, "We were on a senior trip with my college's honors program."
"Ah," he said, "so why go to TURKEY?"
I mumbled through some kind of an answer. Something about a religion professor heading the trip, and early church sites. Which was indeed why our group headed out to Turkey instead of some other country.
But the question, "why Turkey, of all places?" was admittedly on my mind sometime before the trip as well.
Because...well...where do senior trips usually go? France! Germany! Italy! Greece! Plus, at my college, we tend to prize the Grand Old Western Heritage and Tradition. You'd think we'd end up at least in Europe. But, no -- we strike out for the Middle-Eastern just-pulled-itself-out-of-the-third-world Islamic country of Turkey.
So it's a good question, "why Turkey?"
After two days in Turkey I had half an answer. After four weeks I have a fuller one, which I shall attempt to mangle my way through. Because, right now, I can't think of a better country to have visited.
( Geography and Ancient-Modern History )
( Westernization! )
( And to Sum it All Up )
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June 24th, 2007
03:16 pm - Hair
I hate having long hair. I know it's a woman's glory and all that. And that, according to my friend Rachel S., long and unbound hair is (right after blue-jeans) one of the biggest turn-ons to the opposite sex.
But I do hate it. Especially right now in this medium inbetween stage, where the layers are growing out. It pulls down flat. It clings itches the back of the neck. It looks like a freakin' mullet. I want to take scissors and chop it all off in one fell swoop. Except that that wouldn't look so good, either -- the hairdressers all agree I need a layered cut to have a decently framed face, and my own experience confirms this).
Then there's the psychological impact of the whole mess. Aside from being damnedly uncomfortable, long hair says, "young and girly!" It makes me feel 14. And probably like a homeschooler, too. Many of the girls who graduated last semester got short haircuts....It's POWER, I tell you! I want my old haircut back, the clipped and layered one that makes me feel 22 and sharp and professional. :(
But keeping up a decent short haircut takes money, which I really don't have. So I'm bobby-pinning and headband-scarfing and clipping this whole mess into order as best I can, and hoping it gets a bit more manageable as it gets longer.
Hair, hair, and more hair...yay.
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June 19th, 2007
11:15 am - I Went to Turkey!
For the past few years, my college honors program senior trip has been a (highly subsidized!) monthlong visit to Turkey. We criss-cross all over the western two-thirds of the country, visiting early church sites, ruins, more ruins, museums, mosques, (nightclubs!), and beaches.
I went this year.
It was pretty sweet.
Many of my posts over the next few months will probably involve some thoughts on Turkey. This post here is just to give y'all a heads up about the whole deal, so that when you stumble across something like, "as we were dozing off on the bus in Turkey..." no one is befuddled and confused.
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June 11th, 2007
01:12 am - Back, Maybe?
Let's see if it sticks this time.
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April 19th, 2007
12:28 am - Women in the Church
Some additional thoughts concerning this point from my last post:
We need the strengths of women just as much as we need the strengths of men. When women's strengths -- such as dialog, communication, bridge-building, hospitality -- aren't seen as necessary and valuable to the life of the church, and given freedom to be exercised -- the church suffers.
If men and women really are different, then the tendencies of women have an important "fleshing out" role to play in the life of the church. Our proclivities for dialog, communication, bridge-building, hospitality aren't things to be afraid of and corralled into narrow limits, but important balancing factors to men's proclivities for confrontation, wall-building, aggression. I don't mind at all calls for the "masculinization": of the church - but people seem to forget in the mix that, just because the church needs a strong masculine element, this doesn't mean it doesn't need a strong feminine element as well. That the absence of "feminization" is just as much a problem as the absence of "masculinization." I have problems when "masculine" elements are associated with "good", and "feminine" with "bad." I have problems with it being fine and good for the life of the church when men are men -- but bad and damaging to the life of the church when women are women.
When our tendencies aren't valued, we have to become like men to get heard. And that's just not good for anyone.
It's much like John Henry Newman's view of education and reality. If we only get the ethicist's + chemist's perspectives on reality, we get a skewed and incomplete picture of the world. We need all disciplines and "ways of knowing" to contribute to the image. Likewise...if there really is a root difference between men and women, and if we only get the perspective of men on things, we've got a skewed and incomplete picture of reality. If men and women ARE truly different in how they approach and understand and value things in life -- and if those "ways of knowing" are indeed both necessary and important (equal, even?) -- if it is "not good that man should be alone" -- then kicking out (or treating as second-rate) what the women have to say on things gives us only a partial picture that will be eventually disastrous.
I just want my work to be seen as valuable and important, not dangerous. I want my proclivities for dialog, communication, bridge-building, and hospitality to be respected and valued as necessary aspects of the life of the church, in a necessary tension with more "masculine" proclivities. I damn well WANT to be a woman - but it's rather difficult when everything feminine and womanly is looked upon with suspicion as "unchristian" and "syncretic" and "weakening to the doctrine and life of the church." It's very difficult when, in one's life and theology, one has to act like a man to be seen as a true Christian, a defender of the faith, and "like Christ."
Of course we need aggression and defense and firm-standing and who knows what else. But give those free reign unchecked and unbalanced, an you'll have problems.
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April 18th, 2007
12:14 am - Women
So. I've been thinking a lot about the "role of women in the church." Partly because my friend Alisa is writing her honors thesis in defense of evangelical feminism and egalitarianism. Partly because I've heard about 50 gazillion sermons on Tutus 2, I Timothy 3, and Ephesians 5, all of them from a complementarian perspective. Partly because I wonder from time to time whether God is angry at me for going to college. Partly because I have no freaking CLUE what it looks like to be an academically inclined Christian woman.
And mostly because I think there must be a resolution to all this that is true and good and beautiful, and doesn't do violence to revelation. Or experience or reason. :P
There's several ways I've come to resolve the matter in my own mind. Probably not entirely right or complete, in any way -- but I do believe they ring a bit truer than most of the flack flying around in these debates.
( Four Important Points )
These four points aren't fully developed by any stretch of the imagination. But, needing some guideposts to steer by in this mess, they're what I've currently ended up with. More on them later, I suppose, as I keep working with them in the back of my mind.
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March 26th, 2007
09:07 am - Ah, well
So...this was not the time to start back up. ::sigh::
Fare thee well internet (and IM, too) for another few months. Hello, Shakespeare and Artes and History of England class and piano.
Also -- if I start introspecting and philosophizing, laugh at me, and tell me to go cook something or go dancing or tutor a kid.
See y'all at the other side.
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March 22nd, 2007
11:54 am - Artes Liberales
One of my central classes this semester is a study of the "artes liberales" ideal of education. ("The history and literature of a liberal arts education," according to the syllabus). We read selections from Plato to Cicero to John Henry Newman (and everyone inbetween), get a good bit of historical context and secondary sources thrown at us, and discuss any questions, big or little, that arise from the readings and lectures. It's quite a bit of work -- technically a 3-credit class, but people to say to consider it 4-6 credit hours of work. The profs inform us that it's basically a course with graduate-level reading requirements, but with (thankfully) undergraduate-level writing requirement.
I'm pretty much hooked, though -- mostly because the class raises and attempts to deal with some pretty important questions. Aka...
* What should an "education" look like? Vocational? Learning how to learn? For it's own sake? Proper proportion of "book learning" to "practical learning"?
* What makes a "wise" and/or "well rounded" individual?
* What is the relationship between education and life in the "real world"?
* What's the proper relationship between reason, experience, and revelation?
* Not everyone gets a liberal arts education...or wants to. Most people go the vocational training route. How does one avoid "elitism" -- or CAN we or SHOULD we?
Some main themes that keep showing up in the course:
- "Wisdom must be married to eloquence." Or "the true philosopher must be an orator, the true orator a philosopher." It is important both to know what is true, and to communicate what it true. Well-ordered speech shows a ready and well-ordered mind.
- A "liberal education" develops man's capacities for speech and reason -- both distinctly human characteristics, separating men from animals (and thus important). A "liberal education" also satisfies the distinctly human "desire to know." (Especially the desire to know the "ends" of things, and the "why" of things).
- A "liberal education" is both useful for many things -- and also good for it's own sake (in that it develops the uniquely human parts of man).
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March 19th, 2007
09:05 am - Catch-up
Yay for bullet-point overviews.
Last semester:
( some bullet points )
Christmas break:
I got a job working the cash register at Chic-Fil-A. The employees there are great people (though sometimes a bit crazy :)), and I had a blast. If you ever go there, get the chicken breakfast biscuit and a cookies and cream milkshake.
I also took a lot of long walks around the Air Force Base (some of them in possibly off-limits places). I saw a way of Christian living work and validate itself. I learned to understand and appreciate my church back home. And I got some cool presents.
This semester so far:
- "Virtue is in action." (Cicero)
- Wise men are slow to speak. They don't get angry easily. And I think they walk slowly, too, and take notes slowly. ("They know how to think about time," as Michelle says). All of these, I need a lot of work on.
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March 18th, 2007
11:25 am - Reintroductory Post
So...yeah. It's been a while since I wrote anything of substance.
I took a lot of time off -- good semester, and a Christmas break. And then some more time. 'Twas a most beneficial and necessary thing.
I'm sure I had some good thoughts about something during that time. It's all pretty much a blur, though, and I wish I'd kept a better record of it than scattered longhand scribblings.
I'll let my little sister Emily summarize the situation:
Emily: "So...hey! What have YOU been doing at college (besides exams and stuff)??"
Me: "Mmm...growing up, mostly."
Emily: "That sounds rough."
Me: "Yeah -- it kinda is."
Emily: "Well -- just think. In February you'll be 21, and able to DRINK! And that will be the biggest step of all."
Me: "I love you, Em."
Which isn't a half bad summation of the past few months. And, yes, I can now drink. :)
Anyhow. I do want to make a stab at writing in this thing again. Partly because being able to publicly articulate ideas means one understands them; partly because testing ideas in the public arena shows whether or not they're actually true and wise. And partly because I need to force myself to more effectively and eloquently and persuasively summarize a lot of the things I think about. :)
And also because I think John Henry Newman, Terry Pratchett, and the doggerel my sisters composed about my 21st birthday are damn interesting.
I still may be a bit sporadic. And, if this starts cutting into schoolwork and talks with professors and the stumbling steps of navigating the "real world," I'll cut back altogether again. But hopefully not.
Pretty much all for now. Here goes nothing...again. :)
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