There Is No Shire Party

If imitation is a form of flattery, it must be some sort of testament to a writer's skill when partisans of both sides of an issue become intent upon placing each other as the villains of the same work of fiction. Some examples of this are, perhaps, unsurprising. The original Big Brother of George Orwell's 1984 is such a wonderfully universal government baddie that it is little wonder that those on both the right and left see each other as being like it.

However, one of the odder (to me) manifestations of this trend is the tendency of those on both right and left who are of a certain SF/F geek stripe (and political and genre geekdom do seem to go together more often than one might imagine) to identify themselves with the Shire of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and to identify their opponent with the modernizing and destructive elements who take over the Shire under Lotho Sackville-Baggins and "Sharky" (Saruman) while Frodo and his friends are away, and who are driven out in the Scouring of the Shire.

For those less familiar with those aspects of the story that didn't make the movie version: While Frodo and this three friends Sam, Merry and Pippin are off on the quest to destroy the One Ring, Frodo's cousin Lotho uses the influence and affluence of belonging to one of the Shire's leading families to run the Shire into a bit of a ditch. Most of the crops are exported, including nearly all the pipeweed, leaving Hobbits themselves with little left for themselves. Various "improvement" projects are undertaken, such as knocking down the picturesque old mill on the river in Hobbiton and putting up a large new brick structure which belches smoke and pollutes the river. Many trees are cut down, and dreary-looking brick buildings are thrown up. When people complain, "big men" (non-Hobbits) are brought in, and the previously harmless core of sheriffs is used to institute a half-penny police state. Finally, a shadowy figure known as Sharky is heard to have taken over, and Lotho is not heard from much, though he is said to still be in charge.

When Frodo and his friends return, the sheriffs attempt to arrest them for being out after dark and not following rules. However, they quickly unite with old friends such as Farmer Cotton (father of Rosie, whom Sam eventually marries) and his sons and raise the Shire. There is a brief battle between hobbits and the big men in the employ of Sharky, and it turns out that Sharky is none other than Saruman, who has slunk away from Treebeard's custody to cause what suffering he can for the returning hobbits by destroying the Shire as much as possible. Saruman is killed, despite Frodo's attempts to forgive and spare him, and the four friends devote much of their energy in their first years after returning to setting things to rights again in the Shire.

At first glance, you can see elements which both rightists and leftists can use to pin the spoiling of the Shire on those like their opponents. For the rightists, Lotho and Sharkey set up a "big government" with a centralized authority publishing rules on everything from when you're allowed out on the streets to the quantities of beer and fuel which can be consumed. Market freedom is also restricted, with the central authority collecting all production for "sharing", which mostly results in it being shipped out of the Shire for sale in order to line the pockets of those in charge. I think it's fair to say that Tolkien sees centralized power, economic planning and redistribution of resources enforced by the government as usually being tools for corruption rather than means towards the common good. He also clearly has a certain kind of limited government ideal (though not a classically liberal rights-based one) in that the right order which he sees are returning is one in which the King of Gondor keeps marauders away from the Shire and yet leaves it an essential un-governed area, while the post of Mayor in Hobbiton is a mainly honorary one whose duties center around presiding at banquets.

At the same time, leftists point out that one of the primary grievances against Lotho and the big men he brings in to run the Shire is that they set about maximizing production and exports while disrupting society and destroying the environment (cutting down trees, polluting the river and air, building ugly brick structures and generally making noise). They see this as an indictment of 'big business' and an endorsement of environmentalism. Further, the very same intrusive rule making and enforcement which rightists see as symbolizing intrusive "big government", leftists see as the jack-booted police tactics of rightists.

Perhaps there is some extent to which both sides can be seen as having valid points here, but I think the thing which one should be most clear on is that Tolkien's societal vision expressed in the Shire is one which does not fall within the spectrum of either modern leftism or modern rightism. In letters and interviews, Tolkien described himself as being a bit of a Hobbit, and in many ways the Shire represents an idealized version of the English country village life which Tolkien remembered from the turn of the century, when he was 8-10 years old. The Shire represents an admixture of Tolkien's memories of the few years of his childhood spent in a country village, in an area on the cusp of modernization, with a vaguely medieval era.

There is, in modern America, no political faction in support of a return to a pre-industrial society and economy -- and this is probably just as well since such a return is arguably both impossible and undesirable. There is, I think, real value to questioning whether all that is new is necessarily good and examining what we are giving up as we discard the old for the new. However, there is not (and arguably cannot be) an ideology in favor of returning to a Shire-like existence -- in part because such a society never existed in the first place. Further, I would argue that modern ideology, by its nature, is out of keeping with Tolkien's societal vision. The very idea of having an ideology is something contrary to the society portrayed in the Shire.

Into Great Silence

If things have been rather quiet from us of late, it's in part because both halves of the Darwin clan spent the first half of the week virtually without internet. I'm now in Columbus, starting my new job and living in one of these furnished "corporate housing" apartments, and the rest of the family is in Cincinnati at MrsDarwin's ancestral home -- where the truck with all our worldly possessions just arrived yesterday and buried everyone in boxes.

One of the things I can tell is going to take the most getting used to in this divided existence we'll be living during the week for the next couple months until we find a house in Columbus is the utter silence of living alone in an apartment -- something which, now I think on it, I have never done before. Coming home to the apartment Monday night, especially after the whirlwind of preparation and moving over the last two weeks, was disconcerting. I'd only got half-way through putting away my first load of groceries and setting out food to make dinner when I realized that the silence was pressing in hard from every direction. I could hear the neighboring apartment's TV like distant voices. The rain against the windows. The quiet murmur of the refrigerator. Even the internet, which can serve as a sort of ascii-only pub at which at least some of the regulars are always in, wasn't up yet. As I sat down with food, I found myself switching on the TV and watching a sitcom (something I haven't done in years) just to avoid the utter, oppressive silence.

Hello from OH

Yo.

We are here, kinda. The cars arrive today (in a few minutes, actually) and the Stuff shows up tomorrow or the next day or whenever. The kids take great delight in rattling around my dad's big old house -- we're certainly disrupting the bachelor routine of Pops and my kid brother. The cats are traumatized and cry all night, when they're not trying to jab a claw into my air bed.

Ohio in the fall is a good place at a good time. The trees are molting gorgeously, and the weather the day we arrived was made to order: breezy, cool, and about as un-Texas-like as September gets. Also un-Texas-like are the rather chilly evenings. We've spent our married life in Southern California and Central Texas, and so are woefully under-blanketed. Nor do we have the requisite pajamafication that an old house demands. Baby, having blown out on both her flannel blankets on Saturday, spent the evening wrapped in a big towel.

Darwin has already started work up in Columbus. He'll be driving back to see us in Cincinnati on the weekends and once during the week. This is working fine -- at noon on the first day. We'll see how we all feel about it on Friday...

Internet access is a bit sporadic until the computer gets set up, so we'll be in and out.

And our thanks to Jennifer and her husband -- not only for her kind words about us, but for her hospitality on our last night in Texas. We couldn't have asked for a more congenial send-off. I must lay to rest, however, the impression that I normally swan about in a fancy outfit and white eyeshadow, as per the photo Jen posted. No, dear readers, most days I look like this:

They're coming to take us away...

Today is it: they're packing us up for the Great Journey North. Never has the house been so clean. Never before has all the laundry been folded. Two years after we laid the floors and week before the move out, all the baseboards and transitions and shoe molding were nailed up. It's looking good here -- can't wait to see the pix after the house is painted and new carpet and faucets installed. Anyone want to buy a house near Austin, TX?

We lose home internet today or tomorrow, so posting may be light. That's all right, because all we'd be saying anyway is either, "Are we mad?" or "Are all the people mad?"

But before we go dark, let us call out a few of the fine Texas bloggers that we'll miss:

Jen of Conversion Diary
Dorian of Scrutinies
Opinionated Homeschooler
Brandon of Siris
Julie of Happy Catholic
Nicole of Words, Words
Tito and John Henry, contributors to The American Catholic
Kyle of Journeys in Alterity
Christopher of Sanctus Christopher

Prohibition -- The Lights Are Going Out

I read a reminder that as of 2012, the incandescent bulb design we've all known for so many years will become illegal, and we'll move into a yellowish future of little spiraly things. Even the designers of the ban seem to understand the idea of the lights going out -- first they'll take away out 100 Watts, then our 75s, then our 60s. By the time they take away our 40 Watt bulbs in 2014, we'll all be so used to it, we won't know the difference.

Oh sure, the new bulbs give light, and they're spiraly, and they last a long time and collect dust in fascinating ways. And I'll get that little surge of evil when I throw them in the trash instead of taking them to the hazardous waste dump, but I know that after a few years of prohibition I'll become desperate. I'll go to an unmarked door in a run down brick building and give a password, and enter a windowless brick room lit entirely by bootleg incandescants hanging bare by their cords from the ceiling. Their glowing filaments will burn little green and blue squiggles into my vision, and I'll sidle up to the bar, take off my fedora, and ask for a Scotch on the rocks. When I'll lean back and watch as the gangsters and their molls dance in the harsh white light of bare incandescents.

"Hey buddy, you look like a guy who can appreciate a good light, you know wad I mean? You have any interest in a case of 120 Watts? I got a guy who brings them over by the truckload from Mexico. Real stuff, you know wad I mean? You could heat your house with these things."

And I'll picture my house, blackout curtains down, with those round, curving bulbs radiating brilliant white light from every socket. But it's not to be. Going to the speakeasy is one thing, but bourgeois virtue prevails, and I'll shake my head. When the g-men raid my home, there will be no incandescents found.

And now we're done

Simcha has written. If this isn't the last word in the pants debate (did I just say "pants debate"?), it ought to be.

A few women in various comment boxes said that we must wear skirts because Mary did — that even if Mary were on earth today, she would never wear pants. They KNOW this.

Okay, you ladies who know what Mary would do. If you can’t imagine Mary wearing pants, then try this: imagine Mary wiping her nose, or yawning, or having heartburn. Imagine her giving birth. Or heck, imagine her having to go to the bathroom, but not being able to get up yet because she didn’t want to wake up the baby, who was nursing and allllmost asleep. . . and then He bit her! He always does that just as He’s falling asleep. Oh, and now He’s poopy again, and she still has to go to the bathroom.

Weird, eh? Not used to it, are you? But there’s nothing immoral about these images. If they bother you, because it’s not what you’re used to. It’s not what you’re surrounded with. Just like you’re surrounded with earnest, hard-working, kind, sincere women who have chosen to wear skirts, and so it seems utterly natural and obvious that Mary, too, would wear skirts.

...So would Mary wear pants? I don’t know, and neither do you — she was a strange and unpredictable woman, like no other. But she was a real woman. If you think that Mary actually always wore blue, always had a look of fond melancholy on her face, and always held her arms at a 45-degree angle from her sides, then you are paying homage to a statue, and not to God’s real-life Mama. And if there’s anything worse than a woman in pants, it’s an idolator. That’s in the Old and the New Testament.

O real life Mama of God, intercede for us. Help us to understand each other. And if I ever sit down to write another post about pants, please make the roof fall in on me before I hit “publish.”

The Problem of Pants

Yes, dear readers, if you needed proof that there are Very Silly People out in the Catholic blogsphere (and you didn't really need that, did you?) one need look no further than this sort of thing. What is the great threat to the world, to your morals, to your eyes, to your wife's virtue? PANTS! Don't believe me?

REGARDING NOT WEARING THE PANTS
...
1.Regardless of your size, shape, or age, the attractiveness of your female figure is virtually always enhanced, while adding to your modesty, when you wear a dress.

2. Do this for us, the minority of chaste men who merit the gift of enjoying your beauty in such a way as to be grateful to your creator without temptation. Make it so it is good for men to look upon you, rather than requiring us to look away (which is a tragedy).
...
4. Sadly, and we understand you may not be aware of this, but almost every style of pants reveals private information about your figure (by way of contour) what only your husband (and if not him, no man, including your sons, if you have sons) should perceive.

5. Thus, even a woman endowed with the most spectacular genetic form, in the bloom of her youth, can be given the illusion of ugliness, if not cheapness, by wearing pants. Likewise, pants rarely do anything but exaggerate extra volume on our figures.

Or more briefly: Ladies, you'll be much more pure and beautiful if you wear skirts (which holy men like yours truly will en-joy) whereas if you wear pants men will lust after you, because they'll make you look bulgy, you fat cow.

You know, I have to break it to you, but this whole question of whether skirts or pants is inherently more pure is just silly. Some women are hot, some are less so. Some outfits are hot, some are less so. Some guys are leches, some of us flatter ourselves we can enjoy a nice view pretty disinterestedly, and some are obliv. And all this goes on whether women wear pants or skirts.

Of course, who better to handle these difficult situations than the always-entertaining Simcha, who for those wanna-be patriarchs out there who are worried some lady they see on the street may be out in pants against her husband's wishes (because, you know, that would be terrible) has developed the pants pass.

Does it get better? I think not.

I am hereby issuing MrsDarwin (and, what the heck, all women -- What, that's bigamy? It's big of them too. Let's be big for a change!) a pants pass, a dress pass, a skirt pass, a high priority mini-skirts pass, and for use within the domicile, a lingerie pass. However, I'm taking her capris pass and putting it through the shredder. A man has to put limits somewhere, and by the power invested in me by my Y chromosome, I declare capris to be an offense against God -- but primarily against man.

Conforming to Type

Office life continues to ebb and flow around me even as I begin to disconnect from it.  My floor is going from being a marketing and ops floor to being an IT floor.

I always find myself wondering, when two groups bump up against each other like this, if people adopt a style of dress, fitness, etc. suitable to their departments, or if somehow different functions within a company attract not only different abilities but different looks.  It would make plenty of sense to me, for instance, given the relative cultures of the Marketing and IT departments that people in marketing would tend to spend more money on clothes, dress up more for work, etc.  But the differences seem to go deeper than that.

This seemed to stand out the most several years back when I sat in a building with large groups of both sales and customer service people.  Both jobs involved being on the phone with customers all day, but the types couldn't have been more different.  The sales people mostly looked like they spent all their time outside of the office partying or at the gym.  Most of the customer people looked like they spent more time on the couch. 

Perhaps it's that the propensities which draw people to one line of work or another tend also to guide their other activities.  Or maybe it's the other way around. 

Oh, and me?  Well, I look a little square to be in marketing, and don't spend as much money on my clothes and car as many marketing people do.  But then, I'm a marketing analyst.  I guess there's a little of IT in those of us who are more analytical.  And, in the most disinterested fashion, I will observe that the scenary is better in marketing and sales than in IT or finance.

Changing Jobs

So I'm leaving my job and heading for a new one.

Getting to this point has taken so much work, that it's only now (as I start writing up "everything I do" for my manager to make what I expect will be a futile attempt to get someone to do it in India, as goodbye parties are scheduled and people drop by to ask in hushed tones, "Are they hiring any other positions?", as I find myself doing monthly tasks and thinking, "This is the last time.") that I find myself gradually adjusting to the idea that in two more weeks I won't be here anymore.

Although I've changed roles a number of times, I've worked at the same company (mostly in the same building) for almost seven years now. At thirty-one, that's a rather major portion of one's life. When we moved out here and I started at the company, I was 24 and had two kids under two. A lot has changed since then.

At least in our modern world, a job is seen as a pretty transient thing. My employer could have told me I was out of a job at any time. Although the company tends to give a couple months' severance, that's not at all required. And similarly, while I've given them the traditional two weeks notice, in theory I could have simply said, "So long and thanks for all the fish," and walked out the door immediately.

And yet, for all that either could have, in theory, walked away with no notice at any time, in fact the bonds between employee and company run deep, perhaps oddly deep given that it is "only a job". Work friendships may not always be the deepest, but we spend far more time with co-workers than with most other friends. And even when a job seems three parts drudgery to one part interest, it becomes part of our daily mental landscape. The longest I'd worked at any one company prior to this was about three years, and even there I to this day remember a great deal about personalities, products, and daily routine. I have the feeling that this company has sunk even deeper into my consciousness.

As a result, the whole thing still has a certain air of unreality. It often throws me when large changes in life come quickly. Somehow, the fact that the offer of the new job came so quickly, a ten minute call outlining compensation, start date, etc., makes it seem much less real than the long process of talking to various employers, interviewing, etc. It probably won't be until several seeks into the new job that it finally sinks in that this really is where I work now.

Columbus Day

MOVING TO OHIO IN TWO WEEKS OMG ARE WE CRAZY SO MUCH STUFF TO FIX AND CLEAN AND TOSS AND ORGANIZE THERE'S NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY.

That is all.

Birmingham, sight unseen

Seven years ago we picked up and moved from Los Angeles (approximate) to Austin (approximate). We knew a bit about the area, having visited twice, and we had friends in town with a large extended family who embraced us and took us and became surrogate grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins for our children. This network laid enough foundation for us that was easy to get established in our new town. Not so easy, however, is moving somewhere completely unfamiliar with no one on the ground to orient you.

The family of a good college friend just moved to Birmingham, AL, for job reasons. She knows no one in the area and hasn't been in town long enough to find her way around. There are compensations that come with moving to a new place sight unseen: the ability to reinvent yourself (if that's what you want to do), the satisfaction of realizing that you can survive and thrive in an unfamiliar environment, the joy of having a nice big house in an area where homes are much cheaper than where you used to live (my friend moved from California; 'nuff said).

Still, self-reliance is a mixed bag. Being the strong one all the time grows wearisome. And that is why we have friends on the internet to give us the scoop. If you know anything about Birmingham, if you live in Birmingham, if you love Birmingham, help a sister out. Tell all.

Also, if you've moved to a new place sight unseen, share your tips for coping and thriving.

This place, right now

View Larger Map

Yesterday I was driving in a part of Austin I've never visited, coming up 1st St. from the south. We crested a hill and the city lay before us, steel and glass framed by trees. And I was overwhelmed by a sense of place -- this city, right now, our city; this, our view.

Later we approached I-35 and were confronted with the choice: north to Waco, south to San Antonio, exit only. Once again we were oriented in space, and possibilities opened up. I was seized with a desire to drive to San Antonio in response to the invitation of the south-bound sign. But we turned left and headed resolutely north.

Song, by John Donne

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

We're already winners!

Darwin was given a box of instant coffee by an Indonesian coworker who just returned from visiting his relatives back home. The coworker was more generous than he knew; inside the box was a packet that contained a 2000 Indonesian rupiah bill!



We've won 22.22 cents.

Seven years ago today, we received another surprise gift, unexpected but welcome. Unlike the rupiah, this gift was priceless.



Happy birthday, Julia!

Coolness by Association

Thanks to the repository of useless knowledge that is the internet, I learn that today, Sept. 2, 2010, is 90210 Day: 9/02/10. This is, of course, absolutely unsignificant, and yet the date acts much as Proust's madeleine, bringing back to me memories of my early teenage years.

This is not because I ever watched Beverly Hills, 90210. I don't believe I ever saw an episode in its entirety, and it was seldom that I even saw clips. But it held a kind of allure for me at age 14 or 15, because it was the Hot Thing. I read about it in the papers, I heard commercials for new episodes on the radio (remember when radio was big enough business that TV advertised there?), and people talked about it. I wanted to know what the buzz was about, and I had a sneaking feeling that I was missing out on something. Certainly it seemed like the characters on the shows, regardless of their Hollywood problems, had achieved some ineffable level of coolness. Could mere association by viewing grant me coolness by osmosis?

Time has wreaked its usual havoc, and the actors and characters of 90210 have all slunk off to obscurity. I live a far more rich and beautiful life now than any scriptwriter would have the courage or imagination to portray. Popular shows come and go, but I myself endure. And that's pretty cool.

Patent Nonsense

Perhaps someone will think this marks me at pathetically sympathetic towards business -- not exactly anyone's darling these days -- but reading this page one story in the WSJ, my first reaction was, "What a total a-hole."

Raymond E. Stauffer was shopping at a New Jersey mall when he noticed something peculiar about the bow ties on display at Brooks Brothers: They were labeled with old patent numbers.

Mr. Stauffer, who calls himself a "sharp-dressed man," also happens to be a patent lawyer. He sued Brooks Brothers Inc. in federal court, claiming it broke the law by marking its adjustable bow ties with patents that expired in the 1950s.

He figured the retailer would have to pay a nominal amount for violating a law that bars companies from marking products with erroneous patent numbers.

A federal appellate court ruling on Tuesday breathed new life into his case by upholding his right to sue—and could pave the way for hundreds of similar suits against major companies to move forward. A separate ruling in December raised the stakes in such cases, potentially exposing product makers to huge liabilities.

I mean, if you feel strongly about the topic, write Brooks Brothers' legal department a letter. But honestly, suing them because they continued to list an expired patent on a bow tie?

And of course, this sets off a litigation gold rush:

Already, lawsuits claiming false patent markings have been brought against companies that make turkey pop-up timers, toilet plungers, fabric softener, flashlights, staplers, Frisbees, kites, telecommunications equipment, bubble gum and a toy called The Original Wooly Willy.

Defendants include companies such as Procter & Gamble, Bayer Healthcare LLC, Cisco Systems, Scientific-Atlanta, Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc., 3M Co., DirecTV, Medtronic Inc. Merck said no one was available to comment. The other companies didn't respond to requests for comment.

Marking a tube of toothpaste or paper cup with a patent that is out of date or doesn't exist has been against the law for years. It is considered anticompetitive. Until late last year, the most a violator had to worry about was paying a $500 penalty for misleading the public.

But in December, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington ruled that defendants could be held responsible for up to $500 per offense.

Lawyers for product manufacturers now fear clients are liable for up to $500 for every tube of mascara or box of garbage bags marked with an expired patent—an error that turns out to be quite common.

I mean, seriously, can we say waste of time?

Natural Does Not Equal Good

"Unnatural, mummy? You tell me, what's nature's way? If poison mushrooms grow and babies come with crooked backs, if goiters thrive and dogs go mad and wives kill husbands, what's unnatural?"
Richard, The Lion in Winter

One of the claims to which people seem peculiarly susceptible at the moment is that if something is "natural", it must be good. "Natural" foods are believed to be uniformly healthy. The finding that some particular behavior (say, polyamory) is found in nature is taken to be some sign that it is a good thing.

I think a fair amount of this results from our culture having lost a sense of tragic vision in regards to nature -- we naturally assume that unless some active force comes along and makes things bad, that they will be good. This could not be farther from a traditional view of nature. While neo-pagans are sure that being "in tune" with nature would be a blissful and pleasant state, real pagans of the ancient world saw the natural forces that were bound up with their gods as capricious, sometimes cruel, and almost always unconcerned with the impact of their actions upon mortals.

We as Christians see nature as having been created by God and being something that He saw as good. Yet in a fallen world, I don't think we'd be far off in taking a fairly tragic vision, similar to the ancients, of how we relate to nature and what "nature's way" is.

This also comes up in the current debate over same sex marriage, where I've on a number of occasions had people tell me that if attraction towards members of one's own sex is "not a choice" but instead something "natural", then obviously same sex marriage must be a good thing and what God intended. It would be cruel, it is argued, if God allowed some people to have such an inclination but did not allow it to be fulfilled through marriage.

I don't know if I'm just particularly heartless, but I find this mode of argumentation entirely unpersuasive. It seems to me that there are lots of strong, sometimes seemingly irresistible, desires that we have which it would not be moral to fulfill.

A tragic vision seems an essential means of coping with the world as we find it. More Greeks and Norse, please.

School Day Diary

Started off the morning with a big argument over whether the instant oatmeal would be heated in the microwave or with boiling water. Kids eat breakfast while I check the email and read around. Reading around takes longer than it ought; kids are running around and baby is crying by the time I finish.

Take baby upstairs to nurse, while yelling at kids to come up and read in my bed. Kids take their time. Finally everyone is assembled, but Jack won't hush, and Isabel won't hush hushing him. It irks me no end to read aloud when there's so much noise it seems like no one is listening, so I order them out of the room, but they won't go. We reach compromise level and read: Sts. Monica and Augustine, and then some selections from Confessions. Lots of good stuff in Confessions for the kids (we read St. Augustine's ponderings on his infancy) -- I wonder if anyone's ever done a picture-book version for kids. Eleanor listens and is able to tell me what we read; Julia is busy making place cards for her birthday part. I notice in passing that she's spelled almost every one of her friends' names wrong; that's our spelling work for later.

We've been talking about the late Roman Empire, hence Augustine. Trying to buy some quiet time so I can take a shower, I assign Eleanor a chapter from a book about St. Helena ("Did you know that St. Augustine was born about forty years after Emperor Constantine decreed that Christians would not be persecuted anymore?") and tussle with Julia over what's she's to do. She doesn't want to read, she's tired of hearing about saints, she wants to do crafts. Fine.

I take my shower, though I don't get any privacy -- all five kids make their way through the bathroom at some point. Julia has done art: she's drawn a portrait of Eleanor with vacuum. Eleanor has read all of three pages of her book. Time to change gears and write.

Mutiny at the table. Julia refuses her copywork outright, glowering at me under angry brows. Jack scribbles on her neglected copy book and tears out a page. Eleanor doodles and misspells her way through her report on what she's read. Isabel sasses and pouts so much that she's sent to her room. I finally get it out of Julia that's she's not pleased about copying a nursery rhyme, so I write out for her Psalm 117, which we memorized last week. She's still angry but copies the first line. We discuss how even in regular school you don't get to do whatever you want and sass the teacher and refuse to work.

While they write, I call Isabel down and read to her on the couch. Jack tumbles all over us, but finally settles. Eleanor finishes her corrected paragraph and brings her math work (writing out some multiplication tables) into the living room, using a book on cheese to bear on. I realize I've gotten all the copy work out of Julia that can be expected, so I ask her to bring that in and I'll circle my favorite letters.

Julia is prancing and wriggling around as I read, and I realize that although she's tall for her age and mature about some things, she's young for the grade work I'm setting her. I need to revise down and make sure I'm not overburdening her with a constant stream of school work that's too hard for her.

After a multiplication bee, I give into Eleanor's request (formed upon flipping through the book on cheese) that we do a cheese-tasting. We compare Parmesan to Cheddar, and then we taste Cheddar by itself and with apples. Seizing the opportunity to make it educational, I have Eleanor write down the our descriptions of the cheeses and the apple. At last everyone is cheerful and engaged -- the way to a kid's heart is through her stomach.

The Days Are Just Packed

This is one of those articles I'd had sitting up on my desktop in a browser window for several days -- hesitating over whether blogging about it would be too great an irony given the subject matter. I suppose I'm actually more unplugged than many these days. I carry an old-fashioned flip phone, so although I can be rather reclusive at large gatherings I will not be the one you see bent silently over an iPhone, tapping away. Though I sometimes feel like, for want of time, most of my interaction with people who are outside my immediate family is via facebook, email, blog, etc., I have at least not reached the point where I compulsively check these while on the run. I don't have an iPad or Kindle yet, though I'll admit my keep wishing I had an excuse to justify the expense. And I continue to hold out against twitter, though this is perhaps an empty virtue given that I'm clearly too verbose for it anyway.

This is of little help in that my work puts me in front of a computer for 9-10 hours a day, and at home the computer is always on and available. A walk through the living room seems to necessitate a quick check to see if "there is any news" in the form of a new email or something going on on Facebook. At work, "taking a break" often means pulling a web browser up over my Excel window for a few minutes "browsing around". And when I have busy-work of some sort to get through I often end up listening to a podcast or audiobook while working.

And while I can at least claim to actually cover territory (walking, jogging or cycling outside in the real, non-air-conditioned world) or lift real weights while exercising -- I often do so while listening to an audiobook or music.

It's not so much even the desire to be entertained all the time, but rather the flailing sense that there is never enough time. It's hard to read even a portion of the books I'd like to have the chance to get through, and I don't get to spend time in person with friends as often as I'd like, and so I find myself trying to cram bits of reading and social interaction into smaller and smaller pieces of what would otherwise be spare time.

Though I can't help wondering to what degree this destroys time rather than optimizing it. For all that listening to Shelby Foote's monumental Civil War, A Narrative for an hour while covering four or five miles at a walk allows me to feel like I'm not "wasting" the time that needs to go into keeping my body from completely atrophying into an appendage of my desk, I wonder sometimes if I waste equal amounts of time with repeated five minutes checks of facebook, blog comments, etc. at intervals far closer than is necessary -- simply because it's a brief exercise that fits well into moving from one task to another on the ever-present computer. (Or perhaps more honestly -- serves as a timewaster during the 5-10 minutes I put off moving to the next task.)

A while back, a friend got me to take a couple hours out of a weekend morning to go play ultimate frisbee for a couple hours despite the Texas heat, and I was struck by how different it is, mentally, to spend some time doing physical activity without simultaneously having your brain engaged in some unrelated, information-based task. It was something so mentally refreshing I know in my heart I should find some way to commit to doing that sort of thing much more often. And yet, that would mean giving up time to just one thing...

Americans Are A Credulous Bunch

Via Ross Douthat, Many have expressed shock that 18% of Americans were found, in a recent poll, to think that President Obama is a Muslim -- despite the fact he denies this and there's no reason to think he is. However, this is perhaps put in perspective when you consider that 41% of Americans believe in ESP and 25% believe Astrology works.

Douthat quotes G. K. Chesterton, and there's a sense in which I see his point:

“It’s what I call common sense, properly understood,’” replied Father Brown. ‘It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don’t understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr. Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr. Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it’s only incredible. But I’m much more certain it didn’t happen than that Parnell’s ghost didn’t appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand … ‘”

However, I'm unwilling to give benefit of the doubt to thins such as Astrology the way I might be to a something more generally otherworldly such as whether than can be such thing as a ghost.