Action Movie Nationalism

The long leg of my flight back from France was nine hours, and although I spent a lot of that reading, as the time zones slip by and the hours stretch out, I don't have the stamina to read that entire time. Eventually I turned to my seat-back video screen and the selection of movies to choose from. There wasn't much on the list that I was eager to see, but one title jumped out at me as something that I'd read about when it came out, a Chinese action movie called Wolf Warrior 2. Sitting on a plane for nine hours is dead time anyway, so I sacrificed two hours to Wolf Warrior.

It's not unusual for action movies to present a good deal of a country's idea of itself.

Independence Day famously has the US leading the entire world in freeing itself from alien invasion on the 4th of July, with the fighter pilot president giving a world-wide speech about how today will now mark independence for all. The movie conveys a strong sense of America as symbol of world leadership, can-do spirit, and freedom.

Numerous cold war era movies from the Rambo franchise to Top Gun conveyed a sense of how Americans saw themselves in the world and in contrast to their enemies.

Wolf Warrior is a sort of funhouse mirror version of this effect, as it is a product of the artistic imagination of the Chinese Government (currently celebrating seventy years of dictatorship over the world's most populous country.)

 Set in Africa, the movie follows Leng Feng, a former member of an elite commando unit of the Chinese People's Liberation Army called the Wolf Warriors. Kicked out of the army after beating up a crowd of construction workers and their sniveling boss, who was seeking to demolish the home of a fallen Wolf Warrior, Feng is now working as a freelancer in Africa. There, his friends among the workers in Chinese built and managed factories and in a Doctors Without Borders style medical mission come under threat from a bloodthirsty group of revolutionaries struggling for control of the unnamed African country where the action takes place. Behind these revolutionaries lurk (perhaps predictably) the core villain, an even more bloodthirsty group of American and European military contractors who seek to rule the country and get control of a deadly virus and the vaccine for it which has been discovered by a Chinese doctor working at the medical mission.

Massive action scenes ensue, with Feng getting together with an American doctor love interest who seeks peace and speaks fluent Chinese, a grizzled fellow veteran of the People's Liberation Army, and a spoiled but earnest young Chinese man eager to hear the sounds of AK-47s in the morning to lead a mostly nameless and faceless group of African characters in fighting off massive numbers of revolutionaries and mercenaries. A brave Chinese ambassador and a stick-to-the-rules Chinese navy commander fill out other keys roles in the cast and plot. They're eager to rescue Feng and the Africans he's taken under his protection, but only if they can do so with the full authority of the UN, where we are reminded multiple times China is a member of the security council.

What's fascinating here is seeing how the movie (which with $847M in Chinese domestic box office was one of the largest grossing movies of 2017 despite getting virtually no play beyond China) portrays China: as a brave people willing to stand up for themselves against a bloodthirsty West, tough and proud, but also generous in bringing medicine and technology to the developing world while rigorously obeying international law.

There are clearly a good many contradictions between that image and the Chinese regime which not only killed millions of its own people in the 1960s, but even today is known for using political prisoners for slave labor and organ harvesting, while silencing political opposition on the streets of Hong Kong and through some of the world's most effective internet censorship. But given that the Chinese film industry is under direct government guidance, what we definitely see in a movie like this is the image of China which the government would like to project to its people and to audiences abroad. Not, primarily, in the US and the rest of the developed world, but in the developing world in which China would like to position itself as a leader and protector against the existing international players.  And that image is clearly one of a global superpower which would like to edge out the existing ones, particularly in regards to the developing world. 

Lingua Franca

I'm at a sales meeting this week with one of the product teams from work. Location-wise, this would be nothing exciting to say at previous companies I've worked for, but this company is much more global, and this particular sales team is based at one of our tungston carbide plants in a town outside of Lyon, France. So the sales meeting is being held at a hotel which was a private house build around 1820 on the foundations of an older fortified house, surrounded by rolling French countryside.

Last night I was sitting over after dinner drinks with a half dozen other attendees. Our group consisted of: 1 from Germany, 1 from Australia, 1 from Italy, 1 from India, 1 from China, 2 from France, and 3 from the US. We all spoke English, as it was the one language that all of us knew. It's also the company's official language. Perhaps that's not a surprise, given that a year ago it was purchased by a US investment company and now is headquartered in the US, but back when the company was owned by a Swedish mining conglomerate, the official company language was English as well. Even now, the majority of people working for the company are not American.

English, however, is no longer just a language for catering to Americans. It's become, in a phrase which is ironic as I write in France, the Lingua Franka of international business. When the Chinese sales manager and one of the French operations engineers talked to each other over a smoke break, they did so in English, because it was the one language they both spoke. Even among the French, Italians, and Germans, English was often their most fluent common language, and you'll overhear them speaking in it even when none of the Americans are present. Their own languages are exclusively reserved for when they're talking privately with people from their own countries.

You would think this provides Americans (and Australians and Indians -- and Brits if we had any) a distinct advantage. Not so, one of our French hosts informed us last night. To paraphrase roughly, he said, "You get up there, and you think you know everything because you speak English. And you speak too fast, and tell a joke no one understands, and use slang, and use three different words that mean the same thing just to show that you know them all. And you don't realize that half the room doesn't understand a thing you are saying. They don't want to hear your fancy English. They want to hear the English they understand."

And indeed, international business English is not necessarily spoken with any special love for the language or the culture, it's spoken because it's the most convenient for all involved.

So this afternoon when I gave my hour-long presentation on pricing strategy, I asked people to let me know if I was speaking too fast and I made a conscious effort to speak slowly and clearly. It went well.

I always feel a bit guilty at these kind of events that I'm not fluent in any other languages. I could stumble through some German if someone was really patient with me (and would stand a better chance at reading it) and I can manage a few phrases of French and Spanish, but my foreign language ability is below the English ability of anyone in attendance. One can get all down over American laziness about this, but of course, we don't have the motivation. When your language is the language of international business and travel, all you have to do is show up.

Repost: The Boy and the Frog Potty: A Fable

Suddenly Paul (age 2 and 2 months) has shown, not only an interest, but an ability to go potty, and let me say that I HAVE EARNED THIS AFTER YEARS OF POTTY-TRAINING RELUCTANT 3-YEAR-OLDS. But Paul, though a great babbler and a many of many single words, is not fully conversant, so when I tell him the potty story below, the only response I get is "EW, YUCK!", which he uses at every available opportunity.

**

Once upon a time, there was a little boy, and his name was William. One day he sat on the frog potty. And along came a kitty.
Kitty said, "Whatcha doin'?"
William said, "I'm sitting on the frog pot."
Kitty said, "Why don't you go on the kitty potty?"
And William said, "What's the kitty potty?"
And Kitty said, "I poop and pee in my litter box, and then I kick sand all over it."
And William said, "EW, YUCK!"

Along came a dog, and the dog said, "Whatcha doin'?"
And William said, "I'm sitting on the FROG POTTY."
And the dog said, "Why don't you go on the dog potty?"
"What's the DOG POTTY?"
"I run around and poop outside, and then my owner has to pick it up in a bag."
"EW, YUCK!"

Along came a duck, and the duck said, "Whatcha doin'?"
And William said, "I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY."
And the duck said, "Why don't you go on the duck potty?"
"What's the DUCK POTTY?"
"I just swim around, and poop in the water."
"EW, YUCK!"

Then along came a big boy, and he said, "Whatcha doin'?"
"I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY."
The big boy said, "Why don't you use the big boy potty?"
And William said, "What's the big boy potty?"
"I go poop and pee on the toilet, and then I wipe myself, and then I flush it down."
And everyone clapped!

TELL IT AGAIN, MOMMY.

Once upon a time there was a little boy named WILLIAM, and he was sitting on the FROG POTTY.  And in came the cat and said, "Whatcha doin'?"
I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY.
"Why don't you go on the kitty potty?"
And William said, "What's the kitty potty?"
"I poop in the litter box, and then I kick sand over it."
EW, YUCK!
And then along came the dog, and he said, "Whatcha doin'?" And William said, "I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY!" And the dog said, "Why don't you go on the dog potty?" And William said, "What's the dog potty?" And the dog said, "I run around outside and poop, and my owner picks it up and puts it in a bag.
EW, YUCK!
Then along came a cow, and the cow said, "Whatcha doin'?" And William said, "I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY!" And the cow said, "Why don't you use the cow potty?" And William said, "What's the COW POTTY?" And the cow said, "I stand around and poop in a field."
EW, YUCK!
Then along came Jack, and he said, "Whatcha doin'?"
I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY!
"Why don't you go on the toilet?" And William said, "How do you go on the toilet?" And Jack said, "I pee on the potty, and then I flush it, and it's all gone!" And everyone clapped and cheered!
YAY!
And then William went peepee on the frog potty, and everyone clapped and cheered! Let's see, did you go pee like a big boy?
TELL IT AGAIN, MOMMY.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named WILLIAM! and he was SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY! and along came a cat.
Whatcha doin'.
I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY!
Why don't you go on the cat potty.
WHAT'S THE CAT POTTY!
I go in the litter box, and then I kick sand on it.
EW, YUCK!!
Then the dog came, and said Whatcha doin'.
I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY!
Why don't you go on the dog potty?
WHAT'S THE DOG POTTY?
I go outside, and my owner picks it up and puts it in a bag.
EW, YUCK!!
Then along came a... an earthworm, and he said Whatcha doin'.
I'M SITTING ON THE FROG POTTY!'
Why don't you go on the earthworm potty.
WHAT'S THE EARTHWORM POTTY?
I chew up dirt, and then I poop it out in the soil.
EW, YUCKY!!
Then along came Jack, and he said, "Hey Billy, I'm going potty now. Want to watch?"
YAY!
Willie, don't touch that toilet seat! Thanks, Jack, that was good. And everyone clapped and cheered. YAY! And then William went peepee on his frog potty! And everyone said he was such a big boy, and they cheered and clapped and kissed him. YAY! BIG BOY! Okay, William, are you going to go potty now?

TELL IT AGAIN, MOMMY.

Job and Transportation Woes -- And Yet

Darwin is currently at cruising altitude over the dark, cold Atlantic ocean, winging his way toward Lyon, France, for a week of business travel.

And I, on my first evening of single parenting, am decompressing after having to rescue my brand-new driver after the battery died in the minivan -- as she was driving, in the dark, down a deserted road. Fortunately this was an incident which technology (in the form of cell phones) removed almost all the danger, and yet, as I ponder our aging cell phones which barely hold a charge anymore, I realize how fortunate we were.

Still, I have a dead minivan sitting in the parking lot of a rather sketchy industrial park. Tomorrow we go down and see if the thing just needs a jump, or if darker forces are at work. And yet I cannot be angry about it, because my daughter is safe and sound at home.

This past Sunday, Ida, the 4-year-old daughter of Ben Hatke -- illustrator of Angel in the Waters, and author of the Zita the Spacegirl graphic novels and the Mighty Jack graphic novels -- was kicked in the head by horse, and later died of her injuries. And as they left the hospital where their daughter died, the family found that their vehicle was also dead.

If you've ever read and enjoyed any of Hatke's books, please consider donating to the family to help cover the medical and funeral costs for little Ida.

Last year, Ben Hatke illustrated a short picture book about Job, written by Regina Doman after her own little son died in an accident. It's an accessible and appropriate way to introduce children to the difficult story of Job. If you are looking for a way to discuss suffering with your children, check out The Story of Job.

And pray for your family, especially those farther above the Atlantic than the Titanic is beneath it.

Tears, Idle Tears

I haven't time to write a short post, so I'll write a short post anyway because I wish I had time to write a long post.

First, have a chart:

Several weeks ago a friend touched off a lot of discussion by sharing this image. As I looked at it, I realized that I myself was a perfect "Freeze", and had been so for much of my life. I bought and read the book this was based on: Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" by Pete Walker, about dealing with trauma that results from not just a single bad incident, but the trauma that is built up by children having to adapt to parental neglect or abuse.

More recently, I've been reading Emily Nagoski's Come As You Are, a book about women's sexuality. Do I recommend it? Yes, with caveats. It contains a lot of valuable, necessary, relationship-changing information about women's psychological approach to sex that is important for everyone to know. At the same time, the author has no use for sexual morality, particularly Judaeo-Christian morality (which is ridiculously misrepresented in the book). Her school of sexual morals is "Whatever floats your boat", and there's a dearth of acknowledgment about the reproductive repercussions of sex. That said, someone with a firm moral grounding who is able to sift through the chaff will find much here that can be of immediate application.

The result of all this is that over the past four weeks, I've cried more than I have in the past quarter-century (or longer).

This is a good thing, I guess. The books tell me, and I acknowledge that it's probably the truth, that it's necessary to complete a grieving cycle instead of packing everything inside. And grieving is going to hurt, and it's going to be raw, and tears are an effective way to accomplish that.

But here's the thing. I hate crying. I hate it not just because it's messy and draws attention to itself, but because what the authors would consider a real, cleansing cry -- and it's always an ugly-cry with me -- is so draining. It leaves me with a headache. I don't feel better. I feel drained and weary and almost deadened. Some people love tears. I hate 'em.

What to do with this? I don't know, in this space and time. I said I only had time for a short post, and this is it. Processing must happen, I suppose, and I have the perfect supportive environment and husband. If only there were more privacy! (She says on the internet.) If only when one felt like grieving, the external circumstances were perfect. If only, when one had peace and quiet, one could schedule in the emotion and the reaction.

So I make a gift to you of all these resources. Go forth and have your own ugly cry, and your own red eyes and splitting headache. I'll pray for you.

The Morals of Classical Liberalism

In this moment where conservatives are trying to figure out what principles they might be about in a post-Trump world, the self described "illiberal" Catholic right has taken it upon themselves to argue that the entire idea of classical liberalism is itself morally bankrupt and must be abandoned. We must instead, it is argued, pursue a political philosophy more in line with the old throne-and-altar ideas of a century or more back.

I'm not among those who thinks that the order of the past was clearly wrong. To each time its own thing, and there are things to admire about the Catholic kingdoms and empires of the past. However, there are also things to admire about the classical liberalism of which I think the United States, in its better moments, is an example, and it for that classical liberalism that I would like to speak up.

In a piece defending Sohrab Ahmari's notions of government, Susannah Black writes against classical liberalism, saying that in an attempt to avoid sectarian strife, it preaches of gospel of privatized religion which is not to be allowed to touch the public square:

OG liberalism wanted privatized religion, tamed religion, in order to avoid a reprise of the 30 years’ war, where men died for public claims about God. To avoid this, OG liberalism privatized those claims, attempted to tame the love that men have for the good– which is a terrifying love.

The French political philosopher and architect of the European Union Alexandre Kojève wanted likewise to make a world that was safe. It would be a world, specifically, where no one ever loved anything as much as the Nazis had loved Germany– and thus a world without eros or thumos, a tame world.

This is what the current right-liberal critics of postliberalism are worried about: the releasing of that energy back into public. But it can’t be kept out. That’s inhuman, and it simply doesn’t work. Men will love. The problem is what they love.

The problem with the Nazis was not that they loved, but that they were idolaters. The weapon against bad-illiberalism is not liberalism, but good-illiberalism. “Love God,” Christ says, “and your neighbor as yourself.” And that’s what postliberalism seeks to do, politically. “Do not love– at least not politically. That’s private. Hedge your bets. Be safe,” says liberalism– particularly right-liberalism; left-liberalism has some of the love of the public good that is in genuine leftism.

Bringing the Nazis into this seems to me an unforced error. I don’t think anyone ever claimed that the problem with the Nazis was that they loved Germany too much. The problem with the Nazis is both that they hated others too much and that the things they did could never be done rightly in support of any cause. To roundup, imprison, and murder millions of those whom the state decided to hate is something which no state should do, for any reason. These are actions that would taint any belief, even if it were a more right belief than the exhaltation of "Germanic" identity. But let's set aside that odd move and assess the accusation against classical liberalism.

Is the point of classical liberalism to privatize religion, the belief in the highest good, in order to tame the love that man has for the highest good and thus avoid the strife that could result from such love?

Perhaps a certain soulless kind of classical liberalism may think this way, but if the illiberal right is going to get to pick their favorite illiberalism, I think it's only fair that we who support classical liberalism from a Christian perspective may pick our best liberalism. And in that best Christian version of classical liberalism, I would say that the reason we hold the state should grant people freedom of religion and expression is not because religion is too unimportant to be regulated. Rather, we hold that man should be given the freedom to believe (rightly or wrongly) because we believe that it is against man's dignity to force him to attend a state church or to punish him for following some other creed.

The reason I do not want the state to insert itself into our choice of religion and our most basic moral actions is not because I think those actions are hedged off from the public square, too unimportant to be the subject of politics. Rather, it is because I think that our worship of God is too sacred to allow the state to dictate it. We are made in the image of God, and God calls upon us to worship Him. I do not believe that the state should insert itself into each person's seeking of the highest good. The state is too low a beast for that. Allow it to stick with determining the best tax structure. Let it pay for road and trains and determine what other states we should ally ourselves with. But it is no surprise that our religion is larger and crosses all the world's borders, for it is dealing with a truth larger than any nation can control. The state should step back and give room for each person to pursue the sacred, not because the sacred is too unimportant for the state, but because it is too important for such a mean tool to shape.

Porch, Altered

 Yesterday I had my first opportunity to speak to my contractor and mention that I wished the porch blocks had been sectioned differently, but I knew there was nothing that could be done about it now. And he said, "Do you want me to saw new lines?"

!!

So we marked off where I wanted to see the bigger blocks broken up, and I approved the lines, and that afternoon he came back with a saw and cut new sections.

The handrail has been set back in.

Dear readers, I feel much more satisfied, and I thank you for your forbearance with my drama. I feel like I've been a difficult person to live with this week. I've had to make my apologies to Darwin for brooding and moping and being self-absorbed.

I try to make it a practice, when something gets lost or broken or otherwise put out of commission, to react as I would have wanted to if the thing suddenly turned up or could be repaired. I don't feel like I followed my own internal rule this time. I didn't know that the porch could be altered, sure, but now that it has been, was my week of angst appropriate? How mortifying to be only human.

A Happy Update on the Porch

So, after my dramatic porch lament:

My contractor stopped by, and I expressed my concerns about the shape of the blocks. He said that once the concrete cures, he can saw new grooves to break up the shapes, and together we marked where the cuts should go. The whole interaction went pleasantly, and I'm feeling much more at peace about everything.

The Amphibious Landing That Wasn't

I've been listening to James Holland's book The Battle of Britain for the last few weeks, and enjoying it very much. (Thanks to whoever recommended it -- sorry I can't remember who that was.)

I'm near the end, and thus hearing about the events taking place exactly 79 years ago, in early September 1940, as Hitler was making the decision whether or not to stage an amphibious invasion of Great Britain. One of the things that has really been striking me is that German planning at this point in the war involved the incredibly methodical Wehrmacht attempting to follow the directives of Hitler, who was a very improvisational leader.

As recently as the end of May, it had looked as if France and Britain could be knocked out of the war at the same time with the massive envelopment which trapped French and British armies in a pocket in Belgium and northern France, encircled by the Panzer force which had cut across the Ardennes. However, due to strife among German generals and Hitler meddling in command, the British were able to evacuate most of their army (and some of the French) from Dunkirk, albeit leaving most of their heavy weaponry behind. Even then, many prime ministers might have sought an accommodation, which Hitler apparently expected.  But Churchill was not many prime ministers, he was the leader who had been raring to fight Hitler for years. And so, in July 1940 Hitler ordered his high command to come up with a plan to make a massive amphibious and airborne attack against Britain in August or September. They not only planned the operation, code named Sea Lion, but pulled together over a thousand barges to transport troops and staged the invasion force in French port cities, ready to go at Hitler's command. The first wave of the invasion was to be approximately 125,000 men, only slightly smaller than the 150,000 men that the Allies would land in France almost four years later on D-Day.

The difference in planning was huge, however. The Allies spent a year planning the Operation Overlord landings, from 1943 to 1944. They developed landing boat technology specifically for the landings, built massive portable portable harbor facilities which could be towed into place and then used to land the supplies that would keep the beachhead fed and armed, and perpetrated a massive deception designed to fool the Germans into expecting the invasion to be in Calais rather than Normandy.

That accomplishing such a massive landing with so little preparation was such a gamble is perhaps proved by the fact that even Hitler, the ultimate military/political gambler, flinched at trying to pull it off. He allowed himself to believe that Britain could be bombed and starved into submission by the combination of the Luftwaffe and the u-boat wolf packs and instead turned to planning a land invasion of Russia, a massive land operation which was much more the style of operation the Germans were comfortable with than a huge seaborne invasion.

Still, it's fascinating to wonder what would have happened if Hitler had made the opposite decision. Making an amphibious attack across the English Channel on barges, against the opposition of the Royal Navy and a Royal Air Force which was not nearly as weakened as the Germans had convinced themselves, would have the potential for spectacular failure. Amphibious landings are hard even with meticulous planning and huge advantages. Hitler's claim that attacking across the channel would be no different from a river crossing on a broad front suggests a level of delusion comparable with his invasion of Russia the next summer. Had he gone forward, might the German Army (which contrary to popular belief was actually pretty worn down after fighting first Poland and then France) have failed in the cross-Channel attack and brought Hitler's string of victories to a sputtering end? It's a fascinating question. I'm not sure someone has done a clear-eyed alternate history about how things might have gone if the Germans had actually tried their hastily planned invasion, but it would be a great read if someone did.

Set in Concrete

Once upon a time there was an old house, harmonious in its elements. This house had a stone porch, with many steps and levels.

Once upon a time, the stone porch had been strong and elegant, devised and constructed by master masons. Now it languished. After ninety years of service, it eroded with each passing season. Nevertheless, it was still beautiful, if only in the eyes of its mistress. And it was still in harmony with the house.

But the day came for it to be replaced. With much sorrow, the mistress -- of comfortable means, but not as wealthy as the homeowners who made such grand renovation plans in the heady days before the Stock Market crashed --- opted to reconstruct the porch in concrete. Her one request of the contractor was the porch should look as much as possible as it used to be. Of all things, she begged, she wanted the porch to look like it was made of stone. Such things were possible. She had seen it done elsewhere, with molds. Of course, said the contractor. It would be done.

Two days before the porch was poured, the mistress eyed the wooden forms warily as the contractor explained how he would texture the porch in one all-over stone pattern. The mistress demurred. She wanted the porch to look like stone. Many stones. Just as it used to be. Of course, said the contractor. But to stamp the stone with molds would cost more than his original estimate. What he could do was to etch lines in the newly poured concrete to make it look like large blocks of stone. It had been done elsewhere. He showed her photos. With trepidation, she acquiesced.

And the porch was poured over the ancient stone.

And here, friends, is where we leave tedious fairytale diction for the realm of the now. I have a concrete porch, one that is competently constructed and poured and will stand attached to my house for the next ninety years, indestructible. Never again will I have the option to improve my dear old stone porch. And I do not love it.

You tell me -- you tell me! -- whether any mason in the world would shape stone this way, huge L-shaped blocks. You tell me whether any mason worth his salt would lay stone in such a pattern, unstaggered or so barely staggered that it's an insult to proportion. You tell me whether this looks like stone blocks, or like a middle-schooler's simulacrum of a Mondrian grid.

I ask this explicitly because I find, to my horror, that it seems I am the only person bothered by this. No one loved the old decaying porch but me.Visitors ooh and aah over the new construction, congratulating me on well it turned out. These sincere and well-meaning compliments ring in my ear like someone leaning over your loved one's casket, exclaiming, "They've really fixed her up! She never looked so good when she was alive!"

That's just the word, alive. The stone porch was in sad need of repair, but it was gracefully alive. The concrete porch is shiny, regular, and dead, a huge slab of McMansion slapped on to my elegant old home. And no one sees it but me. No one grieves it but me. Even my loving husband, seeking words to comfort me as I lay in bed, stiff and quivering with rage, said that he didn't think anyone else would be appalled by it or think that I had ruined the whole facade of the house. "But if it bothers you, of course we can have it altered."

My marriage has never been so sorely tested.

At first my anger was pure and righteous, devoted solely to the cause of aesthetic integrity. But anger never stays unalloyed. All things became causes of fury to me. I bit my tongue. I retreated to my room. Sometimes I wallowed in my anger willingly. Othertimes I was consumed by it, even when I longed to be free of the burden. I could not dismiss it at will. And I realized that if I wanted to receive communion on Sunday, I had to be relieved, because my heart had become as hard as the concrete. So I hied me to confession on Saturday afternoon.

And you know what? I didn't feel instantly better. But the workings of grace had begun. I no longer feel sick to my stomach. I can look at the porch without crying. But I still mourn the beautiful thing that is lost forever, and I grieve the soulless thing now in its place. I'm still trying to find the right words to tell the contractor that his work is sturdy and professional as far as concrete goes, but that I am not satisfied with the admittedly unalterable surface. Instead of judging 99% of my acquaintance to be aesthetic cretins, I'm trying to be gracious whenever someone pays the new porch a complement. I'm trying to get used to it, because I'm going to have to look at it every day for the rest of my tenure here.

And I imagine that ninety years in the future, as archeologists poke at the crumbling concrete, one will beckon the other over. "Stanley, look at this!" he'll say. "There was stone under this concrete. Stone! Can you imagine? What idiot would pour concrete over stone?"

Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

Problems on a Spectrum

I was driving to the airport last week, setting off on my first business trip to Europe, and as I did so I was mentally running through the list of things that I had meant to do before departing and trying to think if I had done everything. It was thus that I realized that while the other toiletries that I had needed to use one last time and then pack (toothbrush, deodorant) had made it into my bag, the hair gel had not. Oh well, I would find some while I was traveling. Then I began to think about pulling my final things together downstairs. I remembered putting my laptop on the table and then bustling off to grab some other things. Had I put it into my backpack? I couldn't recall, and if there was one thing that I couldn't get through the trip without, it was my laptop. Better to check while I was still only ten minutes from home. I pulled into a parking lot, checked the backpack (where the laptop was indeed safely stowed) and then continued on to the airport only two minutes to the worse.

Someone may be thinking, "that sounds pretty OCD". I have a close relative who has actual, diagnosed OCD. Having lived with the experience of that person's serious OCD, I can tell you that it's actually very different. Not totally different in feeling, perhaps, but very, very different in effect. My mind likes to run through lists of things that may have gone wrong or been forgotten, especially when I'm already under stress. It will throw up questions like "Did you forget to pack that?" But when those questions come up, I have the ability to answer them clearly in my mind, and decide whether it's worth the time to check them based on a quick cost-benefit analysis. For my relative with diagnosed OCD, that ability to control worries such as that is much less developed. He'll end up doing and checking things multiple times because he can't shut down the concern that he might not have done them, or done them right, or done them enough. Getting out the door can take an extra twenty minutes as everything is done and checked multiple times. It's close to paralyzing. So what is really being talked about is not just having a mind that constantly runs through details and asks, "Is this right?" it's lacking the ability to keep those questions in their place and prevent them from taking over your life.

I think this is probably the case with a lot of mental conditions. In some ways, it can make those conditions feel more familiar: Oh yeah, I have those feelings too! But in another sense it's very different from actually having the debilitating effects of one of those conditions.

Often the feelings or thoughts we might associate with a particular mental problem are common, if not to everyone, at least to a lot of people. But what makes that condition a problem is when one not only has those thoughts but also has a decreased ability to dispatch them. On the one hand, this can give us a sense of common sympathy for those who suffer debilitating effects from some particular mental condition. Often we can see in ourselves similar thoughts and think, "Yeah, I kind of suffer from that too." And yet, while there are genuine similarities, it's important to remember that it's the ability to control these thoughts and feelings that is often what turns a mode of thinking into an actual debilitating problem. If you haven't suffered the overpowering feeling that you must give in to OCD-type questions, checking something again and again, you may have felt the stimulus of worrying about some topic, but you haven't felt what it is that people with serious cases of OCD actually suffer from.

Of course, the ability to resist giving in to problematic feelings is itself something that exists on a spectrum. Some people simply find it takes a lot of energy to overcome some particular set of fears, thoughts, etc. Others find it nearly impossible. But I think recognizing both the urging and the ability to manage it as two separate aspects of a mental condition is key to understanding whether one has the condition oneself or simply shares a few tendencies that way.

Family Economy

I'm fortunate enough to have Labor Day off, which gives me time both to rest up after a week of business travel and put in some much needed last minute work on preparing the older kids' homeschool plans for the next few weeks. (One of the advantages of homeschooling is that within certain limits one sets the rules, and one of ours is that school doesn't start until September, with the day after Labor Day serving as the first day of school.) That also gave me the unusual chance to go to mass alone with MrsDarwin, slipping off to weekday mass in the morning, and to think a bit about what work means in the context of our household.

For a number of years now I've worked in the American corporate world. These kind of jobs are often idealized. I've heard earnest MBAs tell me how this is the kind of work that they've always wanted to do and that they're inspired to be "part of the team". And while people sometimes put in long hours or spend a lot of nights away from family while doing business travel, they do it in comfortable hotels, doing work that doesn't leave you physically aching at the end of the day. Sure, meetings and bureaucracy can be tiresome, especially if one doesn't learn how to navigate them, but in general it's mentally engaging work, and it's work that society tends to treat you as respectable for doing. And it pays well. So in just about every significant way, it's a good deal. I'm very fortunate in those respects.

And yet, it often throws me when coworkers tell me that they'd probably do this work whether they needed the money or not, because they need the sense of purpose and the mental challenge. I particularly hear this from female coworkers when they learn that MrsDarwin raises and teaches the kids at home full time. "God bless her. I couldn't stand to do that. I need to get out of the house and away from the kids and do something important and challenging or I'd go nuts."

I'm not here to tell people how to organize their families. Ten years ago when I thought I had a lot more figured out in life, this would have been a piece on the importance on the single income family and one parent devoting himself or herself to raising the kids full time. But from the older me, my point is more general: work has a purpose in our lives, and that purpose is to provide us with the necessities of life and if possible some reasonable amount of comforts as well.

If I didn't have to pay our family's bills, I would not be spending all those hours every week sitting in an office. I like my job, it's interesting and fulfilling as jobs go, but it's not my purpose in life.

When God described to Adam and Eve the fallen world in which they would have to make their way among the consequences of original sin, he told them that a living would now come at the cost of the sweat of the brow. We labor for our food, our shelter, our clothing, and our possessions. We labor to take care of the young, the old, and ourselves. We labor directly, preparing their food, changing their diapers, cleaning their messes. We labor indirectly, earning the money that will allow us to compensate others in return for the goods and service they give us which we in turn need.

In some sense, all the work we do is to give someone the things they need or want.

This can be very direct, as when I change the two-year-old's diaper. Or it can be very indirect, as when I work with the our segment manager for rotary cutters to come up with a pricing model which allows our company to charge a manufacturing plant a per-cut price rather than a several-hundred-thousand-dollar capital investment for a carbide-edged cutting roller machine which in turn is used to cut out diapers on a high speed production line, which allows someone to buy a box of inexpensive disposable diapers in a supermarket, which allows them to change their baby's diaper -- and my part in all of that allows me to earn the money to buy a package of diapers for my own offspring. In the end, whether I'm working in the office or around the house, my purpose is the same: to provide for the needs of myself and others. There are things I do for the enjoyment of them -- writing here among other things -- but going to the office is not among them.

Too often, I think, in our work-obsessed middle class culture, we think of a job (a compensated "professional" job) as inherently ennobling. Those who work directly to care for those who depend on us are seen as somehow not doing "real work". Yes, we nod and call them selfless, but in some sense it's often implied that what's selfless about their caring work is that they've chosen to do something less important, less rewarding, less worth while because someone has to do it. They've drawn the short straw and accepted their lot cheerfully.

But I think we should think of work in a more basic fashion. Work is how we provide for the needs of others. The work we do around the house provides the necessities and comforts for our families. The work we do "on the job" earns the money which allows us to pay others for the things we need -- and for them to acquire the things they need in their turn. Even the creative work which I might otherwise think of as recreation (for me, at least) such as working on the community theater production or writing this post, is intended at root to provide others with the relaxation, the insight, the enjoyment which they need. To speak of the economy is to speak of the unimaginably complex network of interactions through which millions of people make these exchanges with each other. This can ennoble seemingly tedious work, but it also cuts seemingly noble work down to size. At root, we work to provide for the needs of others, whether we work for money or just to get something done. And so within the family, where we need both money and the direct care of others (and need to decide at times whether in some cases we will provide direct care or pay someone else to do it for us) we should do so with not some over-reverence for paid work, but with an eye towards providing the best case as best we can for all involved.

Not the Dummy

My dears, I have reached the pinnacle of my theatrical career. In October, I shall tread the local boards in the footsteps of the most beautiful, most elegant, most self-possessed woman ever to grace stage or screen. I give you my comedic hero, the finest straight woman in the history of straight women:

Margaret Dumont. Doesn't the name alone make your heart thrill? She was born Daisy Baker in Brooklyn, trained in theater and opera, and toured in America and in Europe. In 1910, at age 28, she married a sugar millionaire and retired from the stage.

Eight years later her husband died in the flu pandemic after World War I, and Dumont, childless, returned to the stage to play a new persona, the dowager.

After working on stage with the Marx Brothers in The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers, she went on to make seven movies with the crew. Groucho, who was simply unable to turn it off in real life, played up the image of Dumont as being able to keep a straight face because she didn't get the jokes. Dumont, however, was a seasoned veteran, and knew exactly what she was doing when the gags were flying at her head. She explained her technique thusly:

"Scriptwriters build up to a laugh, but they don't allow any pause for it. That's where I come in. I ad lib—it doesn't matter what I say—just to kill a few seconds so you can enjoy the gag. I have to sense when the big laughs will come and fill in, or the audience will drown out the next gag with its own laughter... I'm not a stooge, I'm a straight lady. There's an art to playing straight. You must build up your man, but never top him, never steal the laughs from him."

And even Groucho, Jerk-In-Chief, hailed Dumont as "the fifth Marx Brother".

If you're in Central Ohio in October, come see Animal Crackers. Various Darwins will be representing: Eleanor as Zeppo, Julia as Mary, the sweet young thing, and moi as Mrs. Rittenhouse. But I'll really be playing Margaret Dumont.

***
On Dumont in Duck Soup:

Dumont was indeed formidable. The comedic duo of wise guy vs straight woman is almost necessarily imbalanced, the straight woman (or man) getting less attention than the jokester. But Dumont subtly upset that power balance with her generous acting style. She may have been the slightly more glamorous cousin of the battleaxe archetype, but she was also warm, charming, delightful, befuddled, naive and, most of all, humane. She feeds the Brothers straight lines, reacts to every syllable, sputters and sings and plays the fool, no questions asked, while still commanding attention and respect, affection, even desire — no mean feat for the only woman in a group of hyperactive manchildren willing to do anything for attention. She appeared in half of the Marx Bros. films, and in the other half, her absence always resulted in hundreds of letters to studios asking why she had been left out.

Darwiniana

Did you hear the one about Cleveland Jim's Irish grandmother, who got married so that she could go down to two in a bed?

I'm 'bout ready to get married, myself.

I slept, if that's what we're calling it, wedged in the space between the baby, who coughed and flopped and threw arms, and the girl, whose pillow fell off the bed so she used mine. The older boy has been in my bed for the past two nights with the cough and the sore throat and the intermittent fever. The girl is worried about nightmares. The baby is worried about his space and will defend it with all his limbs.

Sunday night (or rather, Monday morning), the boy had a coughing fit which lasted two hours. This woke up the baby, who flopped and giggled until I turned out the light again. Baby snuggled up against me and wrapped his arms around my neck. "Mama!" he said. "Mama mama mama mama mama!" Then he hit me in the eye, and I saw a perfect ring of brilliant white light.

At 4:30 the boys finally settled. At 4:40 the girl came in because she'd had a bad dream.

Last night I dosed the boy with the cough syrup that causes oblivion. The girl decided to start the night draped across the bottom of the bed, which was no inconvenience to the boy whose feet don't extend down that far. Baby nestled up into a position in which he could cough in my face all night. By 6am I'd had enough. I never thought of myself as a morning person, but perhaps the trick is being too uncomfortable to sleep.

***

On Monday morning, I was up bright and early to see off my 17yo for her first day of school ever.

She's taking Chem 1111 and Stats 1350, neither of which I am equipped to teach her, or even help her study.

***

Ballet also started on Monday for my second daughter, who turns 16 next week.

***
The concrete guys are coming this morning to start demolition work on the 90-year-old eroding sandstone porch.

They're going to make it all look very elegant, I'm sure, but I am sad to bid farewell to the original stone, even if it is a major liability. On the other hand, having all the steps be at a standard height will be novel.

***
Did we ever show you the hole in the bathroom ceiling? I feel sure we've written about this. Certainly I've told enough people about it. This isn't a great photo for scale, but I don't feel like getting up and taking another one.

That's the brick wall of the chimney, and the stud to which the plaster used to be attached. Also, a mystery pipe, though not, apparently, the cause of the leak. The brick, too, is mainly dry. We believe that water is coming in from a missing slate above the nails at the bottom of the picture -- at least, that's where we were getting dripping during the rains the other day.

***
Still, we all take showers in this bathroom because it's better than the other working shower, which has no pressure. The plumbers just sent me an estimate for that, which on the one hand makes me cringe after college fees and class registrations and the porch work, and on the other... Time is money, and we could really use two fully functional, up-to-code showers with modern plumbing. The pipes of 1929 have done their time.

Someone once told me that houses need renovations at 25, 50, and 100 years. We're approaching the 100-year mark for the bathrooms. (The 1929 renovations were at the 40-year mark for the house itself.)

***
Looking forward to seeing Darwin again on Friday night. The idea of two hearts thrilling in unison across the globe is romantic, but the reality is more of a humdrum loneliness for the other. I'm sure Sweden is nice, but does it have decaying porches and crumbling plaster and three kids in the bed? I think not.

Where There's A Will

Darwin is far from home this week, and by "far", I mean Stockholm, Sweden. This was a trip we knew he was likely to have to make ever since he started his new job in June, but it didn't feel very real until perhaps a week ago. And then I started thinking again about how we don't have a will.

For about a decade, I've made a resolution each New Year that this is the year that we will make wills. As you may have picked up with your excellent reading comprehension, I'm not very good at keeping that kind of resolution, and so, as the years roll by and the children rack up, we have gambled, mostly subconsciously, that the risk of both of us dying intestate is pretty low. As that's a bet we've won for many years now, the idea keeps getting shoved into the background as more immediate concerns will keep popping up.

But a transatlantic flight and a week's stay in a Nordic social democracy will get anyone thinking about mortality. It is time, I said, that we make a will, before you leave, I said. And I took action, too: I went down to the library and had them print off some official-looking will forms, and brought them home. And Darwin and I sat at the table and made wills, as one does, with our children sitting around kibbitzing, as they do. And let me say that some sibling of mine will be very surprised to they find they've inherited seven children.

But making the will is one thing, and making it official is another. Friday, before Darwin left, I was searching around for a notary who could witness our signatures, and striking out on front after another. Finally, after the close of business hours, I found an explanation: notaries are not necessary for Last Wills in Ohio. They can notarize the witnesses signing, but the Will itself is valid even without that.

Saturday morning Darwin had to leave the house at 10am, no later, to get down to his flight. At 10am, therefore, we were knocking at the neighbors' door on the odd errand of getting them to witness our wills, as one does at the neighbors' house on Saturday mornings.

The girl next door popped out her head and said that mom and dad were both out running errands. And Darwin had to take off immediately, and I was left standing with two unsigned wills and a husband gone to Sweden for a week.

Now this takes people different ways, I'm sure, but for me it had an unhappifying effect. And why? If it had been so all-fired important to get this thing done, I would have done it years ago. If it had been a matter of life and death, I would have made it a priority last week, not two days before the flight. Nor is it likely to matter, since the odds of Darwin dying in or en route from Sweden and my dying in Ohio in the same week are infinitesimal. And if only one of us dies intestate, the other is provided for already. Observe, as well, that in the 36 hours that Darwin has been gone, I have not rushed out and gotten my own will witnessed by amenable friends, which argues that my priority here was not simply legal protection.

People with severe medical issues, people who live on life's edges, people in precarious relationships -- they know that everything is balanced on a knife's edge, and that what is now may not be soon. Those of us who live in a more established fashion nurture the illusion that we control a great deal more than we do. No evening is guaranteed to end the way the morning promised. But when, day after day, most things do adhere to a semblance of order, it's easy to fall into the error that not just the order but the ordering is of our making. In this light, a will seems like a magical contract: sign this document, and because you are prepared for the bad thing, the bad thing will not happen.

But right now I have no will, and I'm also left with the unedifying revelation that what I fear is not my children becoming wards of the state. I fear being left alone with a family to provide for and no marketable skills, having just proven that when a paying project did come my way, I failed to apply myself sufficiently to complete it. I fear I have become comfortable and complacent, and that if disaster should strike, I would not be able to rise to the occasion.

It's always useful to write things out and look at them. In the cold light of my computer screen, these sentiments are silly and bathetic, and they're not even what I actually believe about myself and my competencies. But the feelings from which they were distilled are real. How mortifying, to admit that feelings have power! To be weak and vulnerable in such an unreasonable way! To crave self-sufficiency, and yet not be able to attain it! And this is the temptation of Eden, to be like God, not because one is God, but because of a trick, a stratagem advertised to ward off the ills of death.

And how remote all this will feel when Darwin comes back safely on Friday, and our unsigned wills sit patiently in the important papers file in the kitchen until my next New Year fit comes upon me. Until then, I call you all as witness that Darwin is my legal representative, and if we die at the same time or in such a way that no one knows who died first, his will is to supersede mine, even though it's exactly the same.*

*Hey, it's part of the will form, so it must have been an issue for somebody at some point.

From What Foundation

The New York Times has been successfully generating talk with a series of articles they're calling The 1619 Project, referencing the bringing of the first African slaves into North America in 1619. Their stated purpose with the project is ambitious and goes well beyond simply documenting the many ways that slavery and its aftermath shaped the United States:

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

You can read the entire 1619 Project edition of the NY Times Magazine in PDF format here. (Which is handy, since reading it piecemeal on the NY Times site would deplete one's free articles for the month.)

Thinking about it, and participating in several social media discussions of the series, it seems to me that there are broadly two aspects to the project. The first is to convey historical events, and in this sense it is doing a valuable job. For too long, the evils of slavery and their extensive reach through the world economy during that era was not widely conveyed in popular histories. The second aspect, however, is interpretive: an attempt to interpret the meaning of the US and its history. Here I think it is rather more problematic, and it's in that respect that I'd like to write a bit more here.

As their purpose statement explains, the goal of the editors is to "reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding", making the selling of enslaved Africans to the Jamestown colonists the true moment at which the US became the country it is today -- not the moment at which the US defined itself as independent from Britain in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, nor the moment in which it defined its systems of government in the US Constitution in 1787.

What does it mean to say that a country's founding is to be found in a particular event? Let's think about two countries which celebrate clear founding events. France celebrates Bastille Day, seeing the storming of the Bastille by an angry crowd as the moment at the modern sequence of republics with their values of democracy, secularism, etc. can be seen as marking their origin in contrast to the older monarchy they displaced. The United States celebrates the 4th of July as its origin, taking as its birth the point at which the Continental Congress voted as a representative body to endorse the Declaration of Independence from the British monarchy.

What seems to make these clear origin points for the nations that celebrate them is that they contain values which the countries to point to as their central values, and also that they represent an event which sets the country apart from other countries. The US does not consider the signing of the Magna Carta as its origin, because although that document might be seen as a more distant origin of the principles of government which it holds today, that origin point is not unique to the US but is shared to varying degrees with the entire Anglosphere: Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, New Zealand, etc. Similarly, France does not mark as its founding the coming of the Franks into Western Europe, because although some of the modern French could trace their ancestry to them the Franks were also the progenitors of many other modern countries with the Frankish empire near its peak encompassing modern France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, northern Italy, Switzerland, etc.

So, is the purchase of slaves by English colonists in 1619 something which distinguishes the US from other countries? Does it represent core values which the US identifies with to this day?

Both of these seem to me deserve a resounding "no".

Let's start with the first. Was this purchase of enslaved Africans something which set the Jamestown colonists apart from other peoples, making them clearly proto-Americans rather than Englishmen or more broadly Europeans? No. Indeed, the slaves purchased by the Virginia colonists were not the first slaves held in what is now the United States. The Spanish had long been exploiting slave labor in the Americas, both enslaved natives and imported enslaved Africans. Indeed, the slaves sold to the Virginia colonists by English pirates had in turn captured the slaves from a Portuguese ship which had been transporting them for their own uses. As a piece in the Federalist mentions, the Spanish had taken enslaved Africans with them to found a colony in what is now South Carolina in 1526 (some of which slaves proceeded to carry out the first slave rebellion in North America.) Slaves were also held by the Spanish in Georgia and Florida prior to 1619, and the British had slaves in their Caribbean colonies prior to 1619 as well. Indeed, far from the slavery in the colonies that would become the US being unique, it was all too usual. The Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British all used slaves in their New World colonies. Nor was their use of them peripheral to their economies. The French considered the slave-run plantations of the sugar islands of Guadeloupe to be so valuable that in the Treaty of Paris which ended the Seven Years War in 1763, France ceded all of Canada to the British in return for keeping Guadeloupe because they considered Guadeloupe to be clearly more valuable. As a side note, reading about Guadeloupe, which is still a part of France to this day and thus a part of the EU despite being in the Americas, is fascinating. It went through multiple rounds of freedom, and re-enslavement as a result of the French Revolution until slavery was officially abolished in 1848. However, the French then brought in indentured labor from their colony of Pondicherry in India. The descendents of those Indians were not granted full citizenship and voting rights until 1923.

So it's incorrect to see the Jamestown colonists as acting in some unique way that sets them apart from other countries as being clearly American. They were not the first people to enslave Africans in the territory of what is now the United States, and in using slaves they acted exactly as many other Europeans of many nationalities were doing in the Americas from the 1500s to the 1800s.

But if they were not unique in having slaves, did the Jamestown colonists act in a way that points to the core values of the United States, acting in a way which modern Americans would point to and identify with? Clearly not. Indeed, the very point of the 1619 Project is to try to convince modern Americans that they should see their origin in this 1619 purchase of slaves by the Jamestown colonists despite the fact that this behavior is something that modern American loathe. It's significant that the two pivotal presidents in American iconography are George Washington, the first president who led the Continental Army in the fight for independence yet participated in the contradiction of fighting for liberty while owning slaves, and Abraham Lincoln, who led our country though the Civil War and abolished slavery.  In a real way we cannot see our national project as becoming the country we are today until the Civil War.

Indeed, choosing to see 1619 as the "true founding" of America would seem, at least to conservative eyes, as being a statement that the United States is an evil country which should be rejected or destroyed. In that sense, it seems like a confirmation that those on the left hate our country. That was certainly my own first reaction at first. Yet I'm not sure it's entirely accurate. After all, this idea is being pushed by progressives, who have in their way a salvific concept of politics. I expect that many who wrote for the 1619 project or who find themselves nodding as they read its mission statement would not in fact say that they hate the United States. Rather, they see themselves as offering salvation to the rest of us. If we endorse them and their "woke" views, we purify ourselves of the stain of racism with which all others are fouled from birth into "the system" which the 1619 Project tries hard to prove is tainted by slavery in every respect.

In the end, however, I think the whole interpretive framework simply fails. It's not correct to see 1619 as the founding of the United States. Rather, it's right to see the US like virtually all Western countries as having had deep historical and economic ties to slavery. What distinguishes the US from France or Britain is that rather than being able to wink at slavery as something they only did in their overseas colonies, which were either shed or became of far less importance as the slave economy was sidelined and replaced by the industrial economy, the US lives with the land and the peoples who were enmeshed in slavery, while European countries drew back to their own continent. Dealing with these echoes through our history is important, and in no way should we flinch from the facts about the role of slavery and repression in our history. But to see this as the uniquely American phenomenon which defines us as apart from all others is wrong.  Our founding was not in 1619.  It was in 1776, but arguably not complete until 1865.