Response after reading a Newsweek review of an atheist's screed against irrationality of religion; hearing songs on my nephew's gospel CD by a group "Casting Crowns"; reading the latest issue of Weavings, a journal of devotional and thoughtful readings.
A rash of atheist books and commentators have been in the public eye recently, not to mention a series of articles about religion's distortion of public policy and an expose by a Bush White House insider about his former colleague's cynical manipulation of Bush's religious base. The message is direct: faith is irrational at best.
My immediate reaction is to assert that the best things in life are irrational -- love, music, watching a play, reading a story, enjoying rhymes, enjoying weather....
Then again, those eighteenth century conversationalists who are celebrated in a new book (reviewed in Weekly Standard's latest issue) were believers both in revealed religion and in rationality. I certainly hate irrational argument, irrational behavior of mobs, and political appeals prejudices and to irrational fears.
I see a way to integrate both rationality and religion without appeal to historical artifacts of Resurrection or supposed holes in Darwin's work.
Let's ask, is metaphor rational? We communicate often through metaphor, using a shared image to bridge a gap between people's objective experiences. Stories affect us as metaphors, some kind of analogies to our own experiences. Language itself is a metaphor, in which symbols "equal" things to which they are not at all related. Math is perhaps the ultimate language, for its symbols represent universal experiences -- its statements operative whether we're counting sheep, atoms, or stars.
Language of any sort helps us to manipulate our ideas of objective experience. Without math, we can't easily divide or multiply, predict the trajectory of a space craft, calculate the right drug dose for a patient of a certain weight.
Now, let's ask if religion -- a mix of "myth" with "rites" -- doesn't work as an all-encompassing metaphor, one on which all who share it can draw upon. The CD by a gospel group Casting Crowns (appealing to fans of the popular rock group Counting Crows, no doubt) uses images drawn from the Bible as a way to work through day-to-day conflicts. The articles in this month's Weavings magazine frankly look upon the horrific and fascinating imagery of Revelation as metaphors for ends-of-worlds that our civilization periodically has experienced (as when the old Catholic order fell under the weight of Reformation, Muslim invasion, and Renaissance humanism).
As one part of an answer to those atheists angry at the falseness of religion, I'd say, "It's no more false than HAMLET or ALL THE KING'S MEN, and most of us (except some religious fundamentalists) see the merit in using those fictions as a lens for viewing our lives." I imagine a kind of chain of language, each useful in a different way:
objective reality - experienced by one <-- ordinary speech <-- metaphor, image <-- story <-- religious myth <-- mathematics As we move on my continuum further to the right of "objective reality" (something experienced by one person), we move into language that communicates the essence of that experience to more and more people. Remember that language doesn't just express, but it allows us to manipulate thoughts, as math does. So, we can apply rationality to metaphor to reach rational conclusions. Work back from metaphor to daily life, and act. So, say that Jesus never existed. Say that there is no God. Regardless, we find that the stories of the Bible, and the perrennial drama of the Church year, are a helpful way to think about ourselves, our world, our shared experiences. Now, I would add something else: that, as Paul writes, the Judaeo-Christian myths run counter to "the wisdom of the world," and seem all the more true because of that. To me, that's a sign that there's a reality speaking to us through the story that was not arrived at through human intellection alone.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
Vermeer, Updike, and Poetry Editorial
(occasioned by reading an essay in the Oxford Companion to John Updike, a review of Robert Frost's notebooks in Weekly Standard Oct. 2006, and an editorial by John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation, in Poetry magazine, Sept. 2006)
Funny how an editorial castigating contemporary poets appears in the issue of POETRY that most annoyed me by page after page of obscure, pedantic, and coarse lines. John Barr's editorial in POETRY tells poets to live life first, and write about what they see, because (echoing Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter?) it's becoming insular stuff, poets writing for poets.
Robert Frost, in quotatations from his notebooks, reviewed in Weekly Standard, compares poems to jokes -- the insight that got me hooked a few years ago. Poems should do something. He adds that sincere feelings are not enough: the presentation must be made "queer" and messed around a bit for the reader to "get" them. Whatever, he's after a connection with the reader.
I turned from reading those articles to a collection of essays about John Updike, whose work I've read now for over twenty years. Updike's style builds on reporting what he sees, and second, on letting the seen world reflect faith.
I'm reminded of an exhibition of paintings by Vermeer that I travelled to New York to see. Updike idolizes Vermeer, and I'd read of the old Dutch master in Updike's Just Looking. Yet I was disappointed by the exhibit, "Vermeer and his Contemporaries." It was all slice of life, with some contrast and realistic depictions of streets scenes, interiors, daily lives in 17th century Holland. It took me a couple of rooms to realize that I was looking at work of his contemporaries, not of him. I saw one that looked familiar, and thought, "Here, at last, is the real thing." That, too, disappointed up close. Then I saw that this, also, was not Vermeer's, though it resembled one that he had painted.
In peripheral vision, I glimpsed the first Vermeer in the exhibit, and chills started at the back of my neck. I approached.
What was the difference? Style, subject matter, and true-to-life drawing -- these were all the same. But Vermeer's paintings seemed to glow from the inside. I felt there that I was seeing not just a slice of life, but that it was reaching out to me.
At Updike's best, he makes me see and feel places in realistic detail, but these places glow, and resonate still, though it may have been twenty years since I read about them. He himself writes of the mythological resonance of places he knew as a child; his writing has given those places to me.
Funny how an editorial castigating contemporary poets appears in the issue of POETRY that most annoyed me by page after page of obscure, pedantic, and coarse lines. John Barr's editorial in POETRY tells poets to live life first, and write about what they see, because (echoing Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter?) it's becoming insular stuff, poets writing for poets.
Robert Frost, in quotatations from his notebooks, reviewed in Weekly Standard, compares poems to jokes -- the insight that got me hooked a few years ago. Poems should do something. He adds that sincere feelings are not enough: the presentation must be made "queer" and messed around a bit for the reader to "get" them. Whatever, he's after a connection with the reader.
I turned from reading those articles to a collection of essays about John Updike, whose work I've read now for over twenty years. Updike's style builds on reporting what he sees, and second, on letting the seen world reflect faith.
I'm reminded of an exhibition of paintings by Vermeer that I travelled to New York to see. Updike idolizes Vermeer, and I'd read of the old Dutch master in Updike's Just Looking. Yet I was disappointed by the exhibit, "Vermeer and his Contemporaries." It was all slice of life, with some contrast and realistic depictions of streets scenes, interiors, daily lives in 17th century Holland. It took me a couple of rooms to realize that I was looking at work of his contemporaries, not of him. I saw one that looked familiar, and thought, "Here, at last, is the real thing." That, too, disappointed up close. Then I saw that this, also, was not Vermeer's, though it resembled one that he had painted.
In peripheral vision, I glimpsed the first Vermeer in the exhibit, and chills started at the back of my neck. I approached.
What was the difference? Style, subject matter, and true-to-life drawing -- these were all the same. But Vermeer's paintings seemed to glow from the inside. I felt there that I was seeing not just a slice of life, but that it was reaching out to me.
At Updike's best, he makes me see and feel places in realistic detail, but these places glow, and resonate still, though it may have been twenty years since I read about them. He himself writes of the mythological resonance of places he knew as a child; his writing has given those places to me.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Teachable Bytes
(Reflections during a meeting with representatives of the National Writing Project in Kennesaw, GA, today. Education )
I have this response to variations of the question, "Are you teaching technology, or are you teaching writing?"
I sometimes fear that what we used to teach has become obsolete. Who writes well-reasoned speeches anymore? Who debates with reason? Who but scholars look for scholarly warrant for opinions? Who appreciates writing that conveys nuances? Who even wants writing that doesn't move or have pictures?
Meanwhile, every child and adult today routinely encounters alarming claims, arresting images, instant messages and instant reactions to distant events, images that suggest more than they depict, easy access to information of dubious value, news filtered through various media and all squeezed by commercials to tiny spaces or short bursts. This isn't all on line, either; it's radio, bumper stickers, magazines, billboards, all-pervasive tv, and it's easily possible to encounter all of the above waiting at a stop light. It happens to me daily.
Let's add a scary element, too: that even images broadcast live on tv can be altered digitally, sounds and documents and whole websites easily copied and altered. (A technician admitted a couple years back that Whitney Houston looked too scrawny and unhealthy for her Grammy performance on TV, so she was "enhanced" to look rounder and healthier for the television viewers -- during the live performance!)
When we use technology to teach research or writing, we take advantage of what a veteran teacher today called a "teachable moment" in our history to achieve the goal of literacy - which I define as the ability to respond to whatever one encounters. Today literacy isn't a matter of words alone, but of images, of sounds, of forms and formats, of different cultures' values, of commerce and commercials, of numbers and statistics, and of technological manipulations of all the above.
We want the next generation of adults to be responsible, i.e., able to respond to new information, conflicting claims, emotional appeals, as well as to numbers, data, personal quanderies, and competing values. To respond, to investigate, to recognize context, to judge, to persuade others -- these should be the goals of education.
I have this response to variations of the question, "Are you teaching technology, or are you teaching writing?"
I sometimes fear that what we used to teach has become obsolete. Who writes well-reasoned speeches anymore? Who debates with reason? Who but scholars look for scholarly warrant for opinions? Who appreciates writing that conveys nuances? Who even wants writing that doesn't move or have pictures?
Meanwhile, every child and adult today routinely encounters alarming claims, arresting images, instant messages and instant reactions to distant events, images that suggest more than they depict, easy access to information of dubious value, news filtered through various media and all squeezed by commercials to tiny spaces or short bursts. This isn't all on line, either; it's radio, bumper stickers, magazines, billboards, all-pervasive tv, and it's easily possible to encounter all of the above waiting at a stop light. It happens to me daily.
Let's add a scary element, too: that even images broadcast live on tv can be altered digitally, sounds and documents and whole websites easily copied and altered. (A technician admitted a couple years back that Whitney Houston looked too scrawny and unhealthy for her Grammy performance on TV, so she was "enhanced" to look rounder and healthier for the television viewers -- during the live performance!)
When we use technology to teach research or writing, we take advantage of what a veteran teacher today called a "teachable moment" in our history to achieve the goal of literacy - which I define as the ability to respond to whatever one encounters. Today literacy isn't a matter of words alone, but of images, of sounds, of forms and formats, of different cultures' values, of commerce and commercials, of numbers and statistics, and of technological manipulations of all the above.
We want the next generation of adults to be responsible, i.e., able to respond to new information, conflicting claims, emotional appeals, as well as to numbers, data, personal quanderies, and competing values. To respond, to investigate, to recognize context, to judge, to persuade others -- these should be the goals of education.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Atlanta Opera: Elevation of Claptrap
Response to the Atlanta Opera's double bill of Pagliacci and Carmina Burana
Pagliacci is the worst kind of operatic humbug: there's no believable love, friendship, or reality in it, just a pretext for one ironic aria -- the emblematic tearful clown -- and the second act play-within-a-play. None of the other emotions are real, but somehow when they're replayed by the characters in clown makeup as "Columbina" and "Arlechino" and "Pagliacci" the stakes are raised and we can identify. Chills mount as the actors playing "Columbina" and "Arlechino" suddenly find their lighthearted scenario turning into something uncontrollable. There must be something in real life like that, or our reactions wouldn't be so strong.
The real surprise in today's double-bill, for which I had low expectations, was that I was thrilled by overly-familiar material (Orff's Carmina Burana) and ballet.
The director began Carmina Burana where Pagliacci ended - same actors, same set, same tableau. The chorus, in proletarian garb, sing "O Fortuna" as a kind of commentary on the bad luck of the earlier opera. Then a moon lowers and a tree raises, and dancers enter. The lovers become soloists in Orff's piece, each doubled by a dancer in identical clothing, and the whole cantata seems like an extension of the doomed love affair.
Children appear in the third part, "Court of Love," and almost make you cry, their freshness such a contrast to the very modern-feeling bitterness of the Tavern section. The lead singers, seated on opposite sides of the stage, meet through their dance doubles, and seem to consummate a relationship just as "O Fortuna" reprises... and they are swallowed up by the chorus as it sings about how youth and health vanish in time. The dancers in grey -- four couples, plus the main couple, and a woman with a live python -- impressed with athleticism (a woman at one point lifting the man over her head to twirl him... as he had just done to her) and humor.
It's all familiar, all cliche, and yet, performed with conviction and authority, and with precise diction and controlled orchestra, it all seemed fresh and strong and wise.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Terminally Cute: Kris Radish's Fabulous Funeral
(Reflections on Kris Radish's novel Annie Freeman's Fabulous Travelling Funeral, with some thoughts about Iris Murdoch's novel Bruno's Dream.)
Nearly every second paragraph of internal monologue in Kris Radish's novel contains a four-letter word, promptly repeated in italics for emphasis. Why? The novelist wants to write an irreverent, hilarious, grittily (wittily) realistic yet life-affirming story about facing midlife, terminal illness, and loss. Instead, she has written a tedious one-joke story. The joke is, "Annie Freeman's last wish was for her friends to cast her ashes (contained in her old sneakers -- how irreverent! how hilarious!) at different places that were important to her in life." Mostly her characters are thinking or saying variations on one thought: "Oo, dammit! Annie's gone, and I miss her." But that's unexceptional sentiment, so Radish throws in an impolite word to make it seem authentic.
After eighty pages, during which the initial situation is reiterated every five pages or so, I skipped to the last chapter, and found the same group of women, thinking more or less the same basic thought, and still those obscenities punctuating their thoughts, and, incredibly, still marvelling at the irreverence and hilarity of the initial premise -- a traveling funeral! ashes in sneakers!
Describing this book to a friend, I welcomed her short comment. "Can we say, 'belabored?'"
I'm a big believer in making lemonade from lemons, so I'll cite one sentence I liked. "Nothing's the same [because of the death of a close friend]. How wonderful is that?"
This was assigned reading for a group of teachers of a certain age who are considering issues of caring for parents through old age, Alzheimer's, and disease.
Iris Murdoch, the philosopher-novelist whose own descent into Alzheimer's (starting with her last novel Jackson's Dilemma in 1998) was chronicled by her husband and made into a movie (Iris with Judi Dench), wrote a more fantastic novel that was also more real, more deep, more wide-ranging. Bruno's Dream has a grotesque invalid at its core, a man who has become like the spiders he used to study. A web of relationships, old scores to settle, money, and guilt connect family to him and to each other. Fearful, he confesses to a nurse that he has so little reality left, it's like he's living inside his own mind, like a dream. "We all do that," says the young but wise nurse, drily.
I find more to contemplate about dying and old age in the very description of that novel than in Radish's book.
Another problem with Radish: She could only think that her "irreverence" is funny if in fact she is inordinately reverent about death. For an Episcopalian, or for a thoughtful agnostic like Murdoch, death is one big deal among many, and absolutely considered a part of what makes life worth living. Radish's view is shallow and secular, with death the ultimate obstacle to life.
For once, I don't recommend the book.
Fiction | Religion
Nearly every second paragraph of internal monologue in Kris Radish's novel contains a four-letter word, promptly repeated in italics for emphasis. Why? The novelist wants to write an irreverent, hilarious, grittily (wittily) realistic yet life-affirming story about facing midlife, terminal illness, and loss. Instead, she has written a tedious one-joke story. The joke is, "Annie Freeman's last wish was for her friends to cast her ashes (contained in her old sneakers -- how irreverent! how hilarious!) at different places that were important to her in life." Mostly her characters are thinking or saying variations on one thought: "Oo, dammit! Annie's gone, and I miss her." But that's unexceptional sentiment, so Radish throws in an impolite word to make it seem authentic.
After eighty pages, during which the initial situation is reiterated every five pages or so, I skipped to the last chapter, and found the same group of women, thinking more or less the same basic thought, and still those obscenities punctuating their thoughts, and, incredibly, still marvelling at the irreverence and hilarity of the initial premise -- a traveling funeral! ashes in sneakers!
Describing this book to a friend, I welcomed her short comment. "Can we say, 'belabored?'"
I'm a big believer in making lemonade from lemons, so I'll cite one sentence I liked. "Nothing's the same [because of the death of a close friend]. How wonderful is that?"
This was assigned reading for a group of teachers of a certain age who are considering issues of caring for parents through old age, Alzheimer's, and disease.
Iris Murdoch, the philosopher-novelist whose own descent into Alzheimer's (starting with her last novel Jackson's Dilemma in 1998) was chronicled by her husband and made into a movie (Iris with Judi Dench), wrote a more fantastic novel that was also more real, more deep, more wide-ranging. Bruno's Dream has a grotesque invalid at its core, a man who has become like the spiders he used to study. A web of relationships, old scores to settle, money, and guilt connect family to him and to each other. Fearful, he confesses to a nurse that he has so little reality left, it's like he's living inside his own mind, like a dream. "We all do that," says the young but wise nurse, drily.
I find more to contemplate about dying and old age in the very description of that novel than in Radish's book.
Another problem with Radish: She could only think that her "irreverence" is funny if in fact she is inordinately reverent about death. For an Episcopalian, or for a thoughtful agnostic like Murdoch, death is one big deal among many, and absolutely considered a part of what makes life worth living. Radish's view is shallow and secular, with death the ultimate obstacle to life.
For once, I don't recommend the book.
Fiction | Religion
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
7th Grade History and Current Events
(Reflection on rights from the 17th century to the 21st. Education News and History)
In the past week, my seventh graders have acted Mark Twain's PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, heard my own digest of English history, and read the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1640). All of these materials focus their attention on the idea that "even rulers must obey the rules" and especially on a right enshrined in Magna Carta, and confirmed in 17th century rebellions against a couple of proud kings, the right to challenge the government's power to imprison someone. The Body of Liberties, written against the wishes of John Winthrop and his ruling council in Puritan New England, guarantees this right and more even to "strangers" who just happen to be passing through the community.
These rights have been suspended or bent or selectively applied before -- by Lincoln (who wrote several pages of closely argued justification based on the Constitution), the US Government vis-a-vis Americans of Japanese descent during World War II, and racist regimes in our various states. Always there's the excuse that the troublemakers pose too great a threat to risk letting them roam free, and we should trust the authorities.
But at our best, we stand for "rule of law," something I've always understood to mean that our governors are governed by rules and procedures fashioned during times of careful consideration to guide us during times of hot feeling. This is what Ronald Reagan stood for, and he repeatedly cited the Soviet Gulag as the opposite.
Our President and a majority of Ronald Reagan's party feel that this emergency supersedes the old conservative ways, passing a bill that pays lip-service to law while allowing the President prerogative to rely on his own judgement.
This isn't what I voted for, and it's not what I've taught for twenty-five years.
News & History
In the past week, my seventh graders have acted Mark Twain's PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, heard my own digest of English history, and read the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1640). All of these materials focus their attention on the idea that "even rulers must obey the rules" and especially on a right enshrined in Magna Carta, and confirmed in 17th century rebellions against a couple of proud kings, the right to challenge the government's power to imprison someone. The Body of Liberties, written against the wishes of John Winthrop and his ruling council in Puritan New England, guarantees this right and more even to "strangers" who just happen to be passing through the community.
These rights have been suspended or bent or selectively applied before -- by Lincoln (who wrote several pages of closely argued justification based on the Constitution), the US Government vis-a-vis Americans of Japanese descent during World War II, and racist regimes in our various states. Always there's the excuse that the troublemakers pose too great a threat to risk letting them roam free, and we should trust the authorities.
But at our best, we stand for "rule of law," something I've always understood to mean that our governors are governed by rules and procedures fashioned during times of careful consideration to guide us during times of hot feeling. This is what Ronald Reagan stood for, and he repeatedly cited the Soviet Gulag as the opposite.
Our President and a majority of Ronald Reagan's party feel that this emergency supersedes the old conservative ways, passing a bill that pays lip-service to law while allowing the President prerogative to rely on his own judgement.
This isn't what I voted for, and it's not what I've taught for twenty-five years.
News & History
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Body, Spirit, and Embodying Spirit
Reflections after a second reading of Ronald Rolheiser's book THE HOLY LONGING: The Search for Christian Spirituality (Doubleday, 1999).
Theologian Ronald Rolheiser has wise observations about lots of topics, with apt examples and quotations to savor, but he has one insight above all that took me by surprise. He simply takes the familiar idea that we are the "body of Christ" and treats it as a statement of fact instead of metaphor.
His other insights relate to this physical body - including the obvious fact that has escaped me all these years, that food we eat becomes a part of us, and vice versa, that our body is what we eat. That takes the metaphor out of communion. As Flannery O'Connor said, "If it's just a symbol, to hell with it."
Now, I've been charged to write a very short personal note to parishioners I don't know to encourage them to pledge this year. I re-read Rolheiser to prepare. Let's see what I can do:
If you don't already pledge to St. James Church, I hope you'll consider a lesson I learned there. I used to pay the church every year for its "services" to me, a consumer of comforting ritual and teaching. But our true "service" is doing God's work in the community, being His face, hands, and voice. I hope you will consider pledging both money and time to help us serve our community.
If I can fit that on our little pledge note card, maybe it'll do some good.
Theologian Ronald Rolheiser has wise observations about lots of topics, with apt examples and quotations to savor, but he has one insight above all that took me by surprise. He simply takes the familiar idea that we are the "body of Christ" and treats it as a statement of fact instead of metaphor.
His other insights relate to this physical body - including the obvious fact that has escaped me all these years, that food we eat becomes a part of us, and vice versa, that our body is what we eat. That takes the metaphor out of communion. As Flannery O'Connor said, "If it's just a symbol, to hell with it."
Now, I've been charged to write a very short personal note to parishioners I don't know to encourage them to pledge this year. I re-read Rolheiser to prepare. Let's see what I can do:
If you don't already pledge to St. James Church, I hope you'll consider a lesson I learned there. I used to pay the church every year for its "services" to me, a consumer of comforting ritual and teaching. But our true "service" is doing God's work in the community, being His face, hands, and voice. I hope you will consider pledging both money and time to help us serve our community.
If I can fit that on our little pledge note card, maybe it'll do some good.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Celebrating Celestine Sibley
(response to world premiere of Turned Funny, dramatization of Celestine Sibley's memoir, performed at Marietta Georgia's Theatre in the Square this month. Drama )
As columnist Celestine Sibley, actress Linda Stephens generates great energy and warmth. More than anything, her character loves words. Stephens savors the elegant descriptions of places and the transcriptions of odd Southern dialogue circa 1950. The story is that of the daughter of white trash who rises to become a well-known columnist at the Atlanta Constitution.
There's a built-in problem in a birth-to-death play. Eventually, as the character ages in act two, it's going to be one tearful farewell to dying friends after another. It's a drag, not nearly so emotional as the actors try to make it.
I loved a comment early in the play, one which must come straight from the columnist, that actors learn the art of loving and leaving. No relationship is so close and intense as that formed among actors in a play during the period of rehearsal. When the show ends, most of them never see each other again. So true.
Also enjoyed seeing Linda Stephens again, remembering her from roles in the mid-70s Harlequin Dinner Theatre, when she performed the song "Old Maid" in 110 IN THE SHADE and acted in the company with her then-husband Larry Shue, now primarily remembered for his script THE FOREIGNER. She was believable and charming in progress from 5 year old girl to nonagenarian.
Aside from a small blue grass band that provided interludes, the cast was just Stephens and one man who played her father, stepfather, boss, suitor(s), and other men, and a woman who played her mother, neighbor, teacher, buddy, and other women.
The play was unremarkable as a play; it did open me to looking into Sibley's own work that I'd overlooked when she was at her height and I was a teenager in Atlanta.
Permalink.
As columnist Celestine Sibley, actress Linda Stephens generates great energy and warmth. More than anything, her character loves words. Stephens savors the elegant descriptions of places and the transcriptions of odd Southern dialogue circa 1950. The story is that of the daughter of white trash who rises to become a well-known columnist at the Atlanta Constitution.
There's a built-in problem in a birth-to-death play. Eventually, as the character ages in act two, it's going to be one tearful farewell to dying friends after another. It's a drag, not nearly so emotional as the actors try to make it.
I loved a comment early in the play, one which must come straight from the columnist, that actors learn the art of loving and leaving. No relationship is so close and intense as that formed among actors in a play during the period of rehearsal. When the show ends, most of them never see each other again. So true.
Also enjoyed seeing Linda Stephens again, remembering her from roles in the mid-70s Harlequin Dinner Theatre, when she performed the song "Old Maid" in 110 IN THE SHADE and acted in the company with her then-husband Larry Shue, now primarily remembered for his script THE FOREIGNER. She was believable and charming in progress from 5 year old girl to nonagenarian.
Aside from a small blue grass band that provided interludes, the cast was just Stephens and one man who played her father, stepfather, boss, suitor(s), and other men, and a woman who played her mother, neighbor, teacher, buddy, and other women.
The play was unremarkable as a play; it did open me to looking into Sibley's own work that I'd overlooked when she was at her height and I was a teenager in Atlanta.
Permalink.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Ask Not What Arts Can Do for Our Children. . .
(draft of a yet-to-be-published foreword to a school publication focused on the arts in our curriculum. Some of this material is adapted from a short address I gave on the same subject in May 2006, archived here at the Word Sanctuary.)
For a minute, let’s put aside stats about art students’ high achievements on tests, and just look at what our children do in their arts classes. Then you’ll know what arts do for our children.
You’ll see that art isn’t about career skills for a handful of “creative” people, but practice for leaders in any field.
Our children start from scratch. What teaches self-confidence more than overcoming the fear of making the first sound, word, move, or mark?
Of course, they’re also learning that old adage about inspiration and perspiration, starting over again and again until it – whatever “it” is – arrives at what they imagined. Forget about grades: they know when it’s right. People outside the arts think this is some mysterious talent called creativity, but it’s only the perseverance to find what you want. Michelangelo said that sculpting a horse was easy: You just chip away everything in the marble that doesn’t look like a horse.
Our children practice seeing what other people miss. Drawing is always about “seeing what’s there, not what you think is there.” Acting involves searching a text for clues, and noticing even the lines that aren’t written – what the character thinks while another character speaks. The musician sees a row of notes, but looks for patterns that are clues to phrasing. Outside the arts, we call that analysis, and it sounds pretty dull. In arts class, seeing and finding are a source of excitement and energy.
Our children combine things in new ways. That’s what composition means (Latin, “putting together”) and why that word applies equally to making music, writing words, and designing any visual art. Of course, outside of the arts, we call it thinking to look for connections where no one else sees them. Nothing mysterious about genius: it can be practiced, and that’s what art classes teach every day.
Our children try other perspectives besides their own. Our young actors imagine how another must feel, and practice making that feeling visible to an audience. Our children write and draw from particular perspectives, attending to place, mood. Of course, they’re always aware of the perspective of the viewer, and wondering how to communicate to that person. If we call this practice empathy, we recognize that this piece of arts education is the quality often missing in managers and leaders who don’t measure up.
Our children learn to collaborate. Often they work in small groups, and other times a director or conductor defines the overall vision. Either way, our students must take responsibility for their own parts. They identify problems, brainstorm solutions, respond to changes, and revise the project in progress in a way that everyone can live with. That’s what people outside the arts call leadership, and in the arts, everyone does it.
Finally, our children grow to connect their other classes to themselves and to each other through art. A graduate of the class of 2006 told me how he found interest in academics when he saw possible connections to his ongoing projects. His remark reminded me how the arts did something similar for me. For example, reading a soldier’s poetry from No Man’s Land brought all the names and dates of World War I home to me. Singing Renaissance motets in chorus and viewing early American art helped me to get into the minds of people who had seemed impossibly remote. Hearing a teacher’s comment that poets reduce complex experience to simplest terms, I suddenly understood what I’d been doing in math and computer programming classes. If you’ve had a similar epiphany, thank a good arts program.
So, in the pages ahead, see how Walker students pursue the arts every day, making art from everyday material. As Arts Month director, I’m making that the theme for this year’s Pursuit of the Arts Month: Art every day, Everyday art: finding the extra in the ordinary.
For a minute, let’s put aside stats about art students’ high achievements on tests, and just look at what our children do in their arts classes. Then you’ll know what arts do for our children.
You’ll see that art isn’t about career skills for a handful of “creative” people, but practice for leaders in any field.
Our children start from scratch. What teaches self-confidence more than overcoming the fear of making the first sound, word, move, or mark?
Of course, they’re also learning that old adage about inspiration and perspiration, starting over again and again until it – whatever “it” is – arrives at what they imagined. Forget about grades: they know when it’s right. People outside the arts think this is some mysterious talent called creativity, but it’s only the perseverance to find what you want. Michelangelo said that sculpting a horse was easy: You just chip away everything in the marble that doesn’t look like a horse.
Our children practice seeing what other people miss. Drawing is always about “seeing what’s there, not what you think is there.” Acting involves searching a text for clues, and noticing even the lines that aren’t written – what the character thinks while another character speaks. The musician sees a row of notes, but looks for patterns that are clues to phrasing. Outside the arts, we call that analysis, and it sounds pretty dull. In arts class, seeing and finding are a source of excitement and energy.
Our children combine things in new ways. That’s what composition means (Latin, “putting together”) and why that word applies equally to making music, writing words, and designing any visual art. Of course, outside of the arts, we call it thinking to look for connections where no one else sees them. Nothing mysterious about genius: it can be practiced, and that’s what art classes teach every day.
Our children try other perspectives besides their own. Our young actors imagine how another must feel, and practice making that feeling visible to an audience. Our children write and draw from particular perspectives, attending to place, mood. Of course, they’re always aware of the perspective of the viewer, and wondering how to communicate to that person. If we call this practice empathy, we recognize that this piece of arts education is the quality often missing in managers and leaders who don’t measure up.
Our children learn to collaborate. Often they work in small groups, and other times a director or conductor defines the overall vision. Either way, our students must take responsibility for their own parts. They identify problems, brainstorm solutions, respond to changes, and revise the project in progress in a way that everyone can live with. That’s what people outside the arts call leadership, and in the arts, everyone does it.
Finally, our children grow to connect their other classes to themselves and to each other through art. A graduate of the class of 2006 told me how he found interest in academics when he saw possible connections to his ongoing projects. His remark reminded me how the arts did something similar for me. For example, reading a soldier’s poetry from No Man’s Land brought all the names and dates of World War I home to me. Singing Renaissance motets in chorus and viewing early American art helped me to get into the minds of people who had seemed impossibly remote. Hearing a teacher’s comment that poets reduce complex experience to simplest terms, I suddenly understood what I’d been doing in math and computer programming classes. If you’ve had a similar epiphany, thank a good arts program.
So, in the pages ahead, see how Walker students pursue the arts every day, making art from everyday material. As Arts Month director, I’m making that the theme for this year’s Pursuit of the Arts Month: Art every day, Everyday art: finding the extra in the ordinary.
Monday, September 04, 2006
This Old Verse: Ted Kooser's Poetry Manual
After reading The Poetry Home Repair Manual by poet laureate emeritus Ted Kooser.
When I've seen an episode of "This Old House" on TV, the wood shapes as easily as butter under the adzes and saws of the craftsmen, and the remodeled porch is complete in thirty minutes. Then I try for an hour to hang a mirror, and make a mess.
In the same way, easygoing Ted Kooser makes writing poetry seem simple, just a matter of developing an initial idea and making some choices along the way, using the tools available -- the title, the first impression, the sounds, the senses, the form on the page, the metaphors and similes.
Kooser's examples come mostly from poets working today. He uses some of his own poems, and shows us failed drafts, too. Almost every example earned my seal of approval, "Ah!" in the margin... often with a "Ha!" too. Kooser's own story, beating the sun up to write at his farm each morning before his commute to the insurance office in town, is as inspirational as the text.
But, as with "This Old House," when I tried to complete the one poem I've had in mind for a few years, I bogged down.
This doesn't take away from his book's value. Kooser gently but firmly decries the critics and professors whose self-worth is based on perpetuating the perception that "baffling" poems are better than ones that are "accessible" at first reading. (He chooses examples that are accessible at first reading, that also reward repeated readings.) He preaches and demonstrates how poems "freshen the world," as he illustrates early in the book with this poem, "Fire Burning in a Fifty-Five Gallon Drum" by Jared Carter:
Kooser takes that first line to describe all good poems: "Once we have read and been affected by a poem, our awareness of its subject -- in this instance a group of men huddled around a barrel -- may be forever heightened and made memorable (p. 7)."
Near the end of the book, Kooser enlarges this idea still more to hint at a metaphysical or even religious function for poems. He admits that, if he lives another twenty years, he may even come to believe in a God who cares about what he does. Until then, though, he feels more and more certain that all things are connected, and poems -- especially through metaphor -- help us to see that.
He assures us that we won't make a living writing poems. At the end, though, he points out that we work on a poem hoping that this one will be memorable and touching and insightful; and out there are readers hoping to find just such a poem. Put it that way, the avocation of writing poems seems a hopeful one.
When I've seen an episode of "This Old House" on TV, the wood shapes as easily as butter under the adzes and saws of the craftsmen, and the remodeled porch is complete in thirty minutes. Then I try for an hour to hang a mirror, and make a mess.
In the same way, easygoing Ted Kooser makes writing poetry seem simple, just a matter of developing an initial idea and making some choices along the way, using the tools available -- the title, the first impression, the sounds, the senses, the form on the page, the metaphors and similes.
Kooser's examples come mostly from poets working today. He uses some of his own poems, and shows us failed drafts, too. Almost every example earned my seal of approval, "Ah!" in the margin... often with a "Ha!" too. Kooser's own story, beating the sun up to write at his farm each morning before his commute to the insurance office in town, is as inspirational as the text.
But, as with "This Old House," when I tried to complete the one poem I've had in mind for a few years, I bogged down.
This doesn't take away from his book's value. Kooser gently but firmly decries the critics and professors whose self-worth is based on perpetuating the perception that "baffling" poems are better than ones that are "accessible" at first reading. (He chooses examples that are accessible at first reading, that also reward repeated readings.) He preaches and demonstrates how poems "freshen the world," as he illustrates early in the book with this poem, "Fire Burning in a Fifty-Five Gallon Drum" by Jared Carter:
Next time you'll notice them on your way to work
or when you drive by that place near the river where the stockyards used to stand, where everything
is gone now. They'll be leaning over the edge
of the barrel, getting it started. . .
Kooser takes that first line to describe all good poems: "Once we have read and been affected by a poem, our awareness of its subject -- in this instance a group of men huddled around a barrel -- may be forever heightened and made memorable (p. 7)."
Near the end of the book, Kooser enlarges this idea still more to hint at a metaphysical or even religious function for poems. He admits that, if he lives another twenty years, he may even come to believe in a God who cares about what he does. Until then, though, he feels more and more certain that all things are connected, and poems -- especially through metaphor -- help us to see that.
He assures us that we won't make a living writing poems. At the end, though, he points out that we work on a poem hoping that this one will be memorable and touching and insightful; and out there are readers hoping to find just such a poem. Put it that way, the avocation of writing poems seems a hopeful one.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Guitarist / Composer / Lyricist David LaMotte
Thanks to friends Carol Fuller, John Fuller, and their colleague Zach, I attended a private concert in a backwoods venue behind a home north of Kennesaw, Georgia. We drove up a gravel lane, parked in grass, walked up past the mud and the railroad ties to a pot luck buffet, paid ten dollars to the host, and picnicked on the lawn where a long-haired guitarist sang in a little gazebo built for singers. Crickets, kids playing, and a frog were all part of the ambience.
The singer/songwriter was David LaMotte ( davidlamotte.com), fifteen years into his recording career, based in North Carolina but reaching worldwide into Europe and to a school named for him in Guatemala.
Early on, he sang an earnest and amusing song that played with a "conceit" in the old John Donne - 17th century style, taking a metaphor (my friend's brain is like a home) to a ridiculous extreme, yet taking it seriously:
Another song describes a Friday night high school basketball team. With meaningful triple-rhyme (slant, but consistent) and economy of expression, LaMotte pictures the scene. . .
Good as the lyrics were, and his witty patter, everyone with me was especially impressed by an instrumental number that he used to end his first set. Using his sound equipment's delay, he set up patterns of melody, chords, and rhythm (beating his guitar) that unfolded in canon over each other.
Long hair, casual clothes, Sixties persona -- but a serious musician and lyricist in the vein of Joni Mitchell, playing with different tunings and sounds, thick chords, and counterpoint. He's wise enough to know that not all poetry makes good lyrics, and not all good lyrics are poetry.
The singer/songwriter was David LaMotte ( davidlamotte.com), fifteen years into his recording career, based in North Carolina but reaching worldwide into Europe and to a school named for him in Guatemala.
Early on, he sang an earnest and amusing song that played with a "conceit" in the old John Donne - 17th century style, taking a metaphor (my friend's brain is like a home) to a ridiculous extreme, yet taking it seriously:
Gonna crawl inside your soul
Gonna cook you up a little meal
You've been feeding yourself this garbage
Makes you feel the way you feel
I mean you got junk in your refrigerator
That's way, way overdue. . .
Another song describes a Friday night high school basketball team. With meaningful triple-rhyme (slant, but consistent) and economy of expression, LaMotte pictures the scene. . .
Do you see 23? That whole row is his relativesThe grandfather "almost went pro" and the Dad had his own dreams, unrealized, "And it looks like the roots will take hold." La Motte plays by association, ""So it's root, root, root for the home team, / 'Cause if they don't win he'll be shamed. . . ."
His Mom looks sad, sitting over there next to his
Red faced Dad, trying to hold back the expletives
Good as the lyrics were, and his witty patter, everyone with me was especially impressed by an instrumental number that he used to end his first set. Using his sound equipment's delay, he set up patterns of melody, chords, and rhythm (beating his guitar) that unfolded in canon over each other.
Long hair, casual clothes, Sixties persona -- but a serious musician and lyricist in the vein of Joni Mitchell, playing with different tunings and sounds, thick chords, and counterpoint. He's wise enough to know that not all poetry makes good lyrics, and not all good lyrics are poetry.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
When W. Ruled the World
(Reflections on George W. Bush occasioned by an article, "The View from the Top" by Michael Gerson in Newsweek 8/21/2006 News and History )
For me and George W. Bush, it was disdain at first sight. Then he opened his mouth, and it was worse. During his debate with Al Gore, he did a clumsy job of expressing points that Reagan had made so elegantly and persuasively. He did say one thing I liked: That our "nation building" of late had been "arrogant." I didn't vote for him in 2000, but for the Libertarian candidate.
After 2001, it didn't get any better. Even when the media were approving his impromptu speech on the rubble of the twin towers and his strong speech before Congress, I was shuddering at the huge mistake of declaring a "war" on an abstraction, "terrorism," and the threat to go after nations that harbor terrorists. He was opening up a new cold war before our eyes.
Then, all of a sudden, Bush ruled the world. Saddam fell in about three weeks. Then the statue was pulled down, as Iraqis celebrated and said "Thank you, America." Within two weeks of that, as I recall, Libya's Khaddafi gave up nuclear weapons and became our pussy cat; North Korea's flakey dictator reopened talks; Egypt's autocratic "President" announced democratic reforms and new elections; Saudi Arabia's king announced a baby step towards giving some of his citizens a say in the choices of local officials; Israel made progress in negotiations with the Palestinians; Afghanistan's newly elected President seemed strong.
For that brief time, I had to admit that Bush's vision was possible, and he had deftly managed to make it happen, withstanding pressures and advice from people like me.
All this was brought to mind by Michael Gerson's short reflection on those days in the White House.
That things have gone wrong since then tells us about the management skills of the White House. But let's give credit where it's due to a President who had something we've lacked since Reagan and Thatcher: boldness of vision how things can be different, not just "managed."
Gerson finishes his article reminding us that "peace is not a natural state; it is achieved by a struggle of uncertain duration." He adds, "In that struggle, the cynical, the world-weary, the risk-averse will not inherit the earth."
For me and George W. Bush, it was disdain at first sight. Then he opened his mouth, and it was worse. During his debate with Al Gore, he did a clumsy job of expressing points that Reagan had made so elegantly and persuasively. He did say one thing I liked: That our "nation building" of late had been "arrogant." I didn't vote for him in 2000, but for the Libertarian candidate.
After 2001, it didn't get any better. Even when the media were approving his impromptu speech on the rubble of the twin towers and his strong speech before Congress, I was shuddering at the huge mistake of declaring a "war" on an abstraction, "terrorism," and the threat to go after nations that harbor terrorists. He was opening up a new cold war before our eyes.
Then, all of a sudden, Bush ruled the world. Saddam fell in about three weeks. Then the statue was pulled down, as Iraqis celebrated and said "Thank you, America." Within two weeks of that, as I recall, Libya's Khaddafi gave up nuclear weapons and became our pussy cat; North Korea's flakey dictator reopened talks; Egypt's autocratic "President" announced democratic reforms and new elections; Saudi Arabia's king announced a baby step towards giving some of his citizens a say in the choices of local officials; Israel made progress in negotiations with the Palestinians; Afghanistan's newly elected President seemed strong.
For that brief time, I had to admit that Bush's vision was possible, and he had deftly managed to make it happen, withstanding pressures and advice from people like me.
All this was brought to mind by Michael Gerson's short reflection on those days in the White House.
President Bush drew a fixed conclusion: as long as the Middle East remains a bitter and backward mess, America will not be secure. Dictators in that region survive by finding scapegoats for their failures -- feeding conspiracy theories about Americans and Jews, -- and use religious groups to destroy reformers and democrats. Oil money strengthens elites, buys rockets, funds research into weapons of mass destruction, builds radical schools across Africa and Asia and finds its way to terrorist organizations [that] exploit the humiliated and hopeless. . .
That things have gone wrong since then tells us about the management skills of the White House. But let's give credit where it's due to a President who had something we've lacked since Reagan and Thatcher: boldness of vision how things can be different, not just "managed."
Gerson finishes his article reminding us that "peace is not a natural state; it is achieved by a struggle of uncertain duration." He adds, "In that struggle, the cynical, the world-weary, the risk-averse will not inherit the earth."
Friday, August 18, 2006
Short Comment on War from Thoughtful Blogger
( News and History )
The author of the "Scientia est Potentia" web site (see links at side bar) wrote this on July 29:
I asked my own seventh grade students to question the Pledge of Allegiance. Does "liberty and justice for all" apply to everyone, or just to people living in the US, or just to US citizens? They opted for the third choice. Then I asked, "Why were we in France and Germany and Italy and Japan during World War II?" They changed their minds. We mentioned Guantanamo Bay. They changed their minds again. From the perspective of (1) someone familiar with the great rhetoric of our nation's shapers from Thomas Jefferson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan and (2) a Christian, I'd say rights are innate and the US is the first society to recognize human rights as its cornerstone. Americans are privileged to live here, but rights are not our privilege alone.
The author of the "Scientia est Potentia" web site (see links at side bar) wrote this on July 29:
Our War really isn't against terrorism. It's not a war against China, Iran, North Korea, Palestine, Syria, or Cuba and it has little to do with the "Axis of Evil". It's not a war against Kim Jong Il, Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, or even the would-be criminal who might live next door.
Our War is against ourselves. The War we face everyday is the struggle that is hidden behind the small choices that each of us make - the little things that slowly add up. Our War is about whether or not we'll defend the rights of those with whom we cannot seem to find common ground. It is about whether or not each day will find us having improved the community in which we live, or letting it slide. Will we improve ourselves, forcing our bodies and minds into that which is worthy of the opportunities that we have been given, or will we allow leisure and experience to soften us up for the inevitable end?
I asked my own seventh grade students to question the Pledge of Allegiance. Does "liberty and justice for all" apply to everyone, or just to people living in the US, or just to US citizens? They opted for the third choice. Then I asked, "Why were we in France and Germany and Italy and Japan during World War II?" They changed their minds. We mentioned Guantanamo Bay. They changed their minds again. From the perspective of (1) someone familiar with the great rhetoric of our nation's shapers from Thomas Jefferson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan and (2) a Christian, I'd say rights are innate and the US is the first society to recognize human rights as its cornerstone. Americans are privileged to live here, but rights are not our privilege alone.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Detective Novel "Skinwalker" Shifts Focus for Suspense
The plot of a murder mystery is scaffolding; the real fascination lies in the characters, the atmospherics, the dialogue, and, often, in what we may learn as we read. (See my earlier reflections on detective fiction.) Tony Hillerman's series featuring Navajo detective Joe Leaphorn is strong on what we learn about life on the Rez and on the tension between Navajo traditions and modern life. The novel SKINWALKER (a word meaning "witch") from 1986, earliest book in the series that I've read, introduces Leaphorn to a more traditional-minded detective named Jim Chee. Their complementary characters are interesting.
More interesting for me is the rhythm that Hillerman keeps up by shifting focus from one man to the other in alternating chapters. Each is picking up pieces of the puzzle, and sometimes not sharing what they learn -- so that we may know more than the characters do when they're heading into danger. In one chapter only, Hillerman also lets us see a killer planning to do Chee in. Hillerman discloses appearance, motivation, and the thought process that leads to strategy -- then drops the character until the trap is sprung. While it gets a bit tedious to read in chapter after chapter some variation of the idea, "Hmmm, this 'skinwalker' superstition is doing a lot of damage to our Navajo community," we can't help but feel suspense once we know about the killer. It stops being "whodunnit," and becomes "uh-oh, is this part of the trap?"
A foreword by novelist Sarah Paretsky mentions Hillerman's method. He does not write an outline for the whole book, but only "four or five moves ahead." It seems like a good idea, allowing for spontaneity.
Detective Novel Skinwalker Shifts Focus for Suspense | Fiction
More interesting for me is the rhythm that Hillerman keeps up by shifting focus from one man to the other in alternating chapters. Each is picking up pieces of the puzzle, and sometimes not sharing what they learn -- so that we may know more than the characters do when they're heading into danger. In one chapter only, Hillerman also lets us see a killer planning to do Chee in. Hillerman discloses appearance, motivation, and the thought process that leads to strategy -- then drops the character until the trap is sprung. While it gets a bit tedious to read in chapter after chapter some variation of the idea, "Hmmm, this 'skinwalker' superstition is doing a lot of damage to our Navajo community," we can't help but feel suspense once we know about the killer. It stops being "whodunnit," and becomes "uh-oh, is this part of the trap?"
A foreword by novelist Sarah Paretsky mentions Hillerman's method. He does not write an outline for the whole book, but only "four or five moves ahead." It seems like a good idea, allowing for spontaneity.
Detective Novel Skinwalker Shifts Focus for Suspense | Fiction
Sunday, August 06, 2006
"Fiasco" in Iraq: Plans without Point
( Reflections on Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks, longtime Pentagon correspondent of the Washington Post. News and History )
It's not so much that Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks and team didn't plan for Iraq and its aftermath, because we read about plans galore, days of war games to test consequences, and reports and critiques -- all the things that you'd guess military planners would do.
The main problem, according to Ricks, is the scant thought given to "strategy." How could this be? There are a couple of answers suggested in Ricks.
The first one is that the theorists who pushed for this war long before Mr. Bush did were, in Ricks' formulation, like 60s radicals. To them, what mattered was to put on notice all middle east dictators and nominal democracies that the USA could and would take out an unfriendly middle east dictator. If Saddam's fall brought in another dictator, or a theocracy, fine; if democracy could arise, so much the better; just so long as we break up the status quo in a region that has been a stagnant breeding ground for terrorists. So, strategy, shmategy.
The second one has to do with the personalities of the leaders who pushed for this war and carried through its first year. The planners, including Rumsfeld and Franks and Paul Wolfowitz, are said to be "smart" and "educated" but not "wise." We are led to believe that their planning for "Phase IV" (what would follow Saddam's surrender) was summarized in a power-point slide (supplied by Ricks) that outlines how "divisions of the people" along ethnic, tribal and religious lines will gradually be resolved by the military's "aimed pressure to achieve end state over time" until we reach little eggs labeled "ethnic, tribal, religious" safely ensconced together in one big egg called "strategic success." In between, there are stars listed labeled "mayors' meetings," "Joint meetings," "elections," and, listed first, "stability."
But officers are quoted again and again saying that "tactically" we're winning every battle, but "strategically" we're a mess. Our plans carried assumptions that contradicted what we actually did -- that Saddam's army and Baath officials would be converted to help our efforts within days of his defeat, for example. Yet almost immediately we disbanded the army and shortly afterward "de-Baathified" civil leadership. We bypassed large Saddam-loyal communities in the "Sunni Triangle" en route to Baghdad, where armed forces were waiting for battle, and declared victory when Saddam fell -- leaving dangerous forces all around the city. We assumed civilians' welcome of the US and then did much to ensure their enmity (outlined in chapters called "How to Create an Insurgency." It's Abu Ghraib, of course (a marine is quoted at the moment he sees the story on CNN: "Some a------ just lost the war for us"), but much more.
[Detour, here: Painful as is the section on soldiers' abuse of detainees and indignities inflicted on the people we're supposed to be helping, it wasn't the first time. Cruelty against Philippinos created a public uproar for awhile when we fought an insurgency there following our War with Spain in 1899. Just today, a news article reports on the recent release of classified data showing widespread cruelty, casual murders, and recreational mistreatment of suspects in Vietnam - including baseball bats and electric shocks that were news to us at Abu Gharib in Iraq. But George Washington's orders demanding dignified treatment of prisoners during our Revolution purposefully to differentiate us from our enemies establishes a baseline. Some have laughed at liberals for wringing their hands over prisoners in Gitmo who've been chained into uncomfortable positions - "That's not torture," scoffed an evangelical friend of mine, "and they don't have the rights of American citizens." Well, sure it is, and I believe our whole society is based on certain "self-evident" truths that "all men are created equal," a phrase explicitly made to cover citizens of the world.]
After the new wave of leaders come in, the story changes (Chapter 18). In Ricks' telling, General Casey (Chief in DC), Abizaid (Commander in Iraq), Mattis (Marine units, Fallujah), McMaster (Tall Afar), Petraeus (takes over training Iraqis from private contractors), and ambassador Negroponte all have made us proud. They all have in common a mastery of history and our language, plus an openness to discussion and change of their own views. Casey has a group of officers with PhD's prepare a plan for putting down the insurgency. They call themselves "Doctors without Orders" and produce a paper culling lessons learned from insurgencies of the past century. They start doing the right things and stop doing the wrong things, totally reversing practice in Iraq up to then.
A favorite example: McMaster works with Sunni leaders before his attack on Tall Afar, saying humbly, "When the Americans first came, we were in a dark room, stumbling around, breaking china. But now Iraqi leaders are turning on the lights." Then he adds: the time for resistance is therefore over. "This in fact was a threat, stated as politely as possible," comments Ricks. Then McMaster takes his officers and Iraqi officers out to tour the battlefield where Alexander the Great met the Persian Army, to give his American colleagues more perspective on the ancient pride of their Iraqi colleagues. (p. 422) In Tall Afar, the humvees that were driven pell-mell through streets to avoid attacks -- scaring citizens and looking out of control -- were replaced by 15 m.p.h. drives that gave Americans time to see where they were going, respond to developments, look calm. Instead of one big army base at Tall Afar, the Americans and Iraqis embedded themselves in 29 spread out bases to maximize flexibility and awareness.
But events within Iraq seem to have spiraled out of control. US presence is less an issue now that Sunni - Shiite rivalry and revenge have become, by Abizaid's admission, "civil war."
Almost absent from the book is George W. Bush. The caricature of him as a dumb puppet of Republican neo-conservatives got a big blow when Bob Woodward published Bush at War in 2004. From September 11 on, Bush appears to have been skeptical, determined to act decisively, and demanding of clear information. In this book, he appears to be willing to take time with Iraq, agreeing with Sec. of State Colin Powell that "Iraq isn't going anywhere." It seems in this account that Cheney got way ahead, saying that Weapons of Mass Destruction were known to exist in Iraq, etc. etc. etc. Bush is reported to have been surprised by that. He and Powell are both convinced, and Powell convinces others. Ricks allows us to think that the ones pushing for war (including Judith Miller of the NY Times) filtered the info that Bush saw, and showed him info that just wasn't true -- he was misled, and then he made the tough decisions and helped to sell the policy.
Late in the book, (p. 407) Bush is reportedly shocked to hear that the war isn't going well. This is following his reelection in 2004. He sharply questions the Pentagon briefer, while other Pentagon officials present try to downplay the critique. Bush keeps the information to himself a few more weeks before letting on of a change in public, and then starts to work the more realistic assessments into his speeches.
Ricks lays out scenarios for what could happen, finally. The best one is the Philippines model - we stay for years, but with cooperation and mutual respect and eventual independence. The worst ones look like World War I with Iran and Shiites v. Syrian Sunnis, with Kurds seizing oil fields and getting help from Iran when Turkey attacks them -- and everyone attacks Israel, I guess.
One interesting aside: Besides Ricks' interviews with Pentagon and DoD sources, he had access to the Internet, where he read thousands of pages of postings by soldiers in the field, reporters in the Green Zone, Iraqi civilians... their advice, their complaints, their observations. Has any war historian ever had such a range and multitude of sources available instantaneously?
News & History
It's not so much that Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks and team didn't plan for Iraq and its aftermath, because we read about plans galore, days of war games to test consequences, and reports and critiques -- all the things that you'd guess military planners would do.
The main problem, according to Ricks, is the scant thought given to "strategy." How could this be? There are a couple of answers suggested in Ricks.
The first one is that the theorists who pushed for this war long before Mr. Bush did were, in Ricks' formulation, like 60s radicals. To them, what mattered was to put on notice all middle east dictators and nominal democracies that the USA could and would take out an unfriendly middle east dictator. If Saddam's fall brought in another dictator, or a theocracy, fine; if democracy could arise, so much the better; just so long as we break up the status quo in a region that has been a stagnant breeding ground for terrorists. So, strategy, shmategy.
The second one has to do with the personalities of the leaders who pushed for this war and carried through its first year. The planners, including Rumsfeld and Franks and Paul Wolfowitz, are said to be "smart" and "educated" but not "wise." We are led to believe that their planning for "Phase IV" (what would follow Saddam's surrender) was summarized in a power-point slide (supplied by Ricks) that outlines how "divisions of the people" along ethnic, tribal and religious lines will gradually be resolved by the military's "aimed pressure to achieve end state over time" until we reach little eggs labeled "ethnic, tribal, religious" safely ensconced together in one big egg called "strategic success." In between, there are stars listed labeled "mayors' meetings," "Joint meetings," "elections," and, listed first, "stability."
But officers are quoted again and again saying that "tactically" we're winning every battle, but "strategically" we're a mess. Our plans carried assumptions that contradicted what we actually did -- that Saddam's army and Baath officials would be converted to help our efforts within days of his defeat, for example. Yet almost immediately we disbanded the army and shortly afterward "de-Baathified" civil leadership. We bypassed large Saddam-loyal communities in the "Sunni Triangle" en route to Baghdad, where armed forces were waiting for battle, and declared victory when Saddam fell -- leaving dangerous forces all around the city. We assumed civilians' welcome of the US and then did much to ensure their enmity (outlined in chapters called "How to Create an Insurgency." It's Abu Ghraib, of course (a marine is quoted at the moment he sees the story on CNN: "Some a------ just lost the war for us"), but much more.
[Detour, here: Painful as is the section on soldiers' abuse of detainees and indignities inflicted on the people we're supposed to be helping, it wasn't the first time. Cruelty against Philippinos created a public uproar for awhile when we fought an insurgency there following our War with Spain in 1899. Just today, a news article reports on the recent release of classified data showing widespread cruelty, casual murders, and recreational mistreatment of suspects in Vietnam - including baseball bats and electric shocks that were news to us at Abu Gharib in Iraq. But George Washington's orders demanding dignified treatment of prisoners during our Revolution purposefully to differentiate us from our enemies establishes a baseline. Some have laughed at liberals for wringing their hands over prisoners in Gitmo who've been chained into uncomfortable positions - "That's not torture," scoffed an evangelical friend of mine, "and they don't have the rights of American citizens." Well, sure it is, and I believe our whole society is based on certain "self-evident" truths that "all men are created equal," a phrase explicitly made to cover citizens of the world.]
After the new wave of leaders come in, the story changes (Chapter 18). In Ricks' telling, General Casey (Chief in DC), Abizaid (Commander in Iraq), Mattis (Marine units, Fallujah), McMaster (Tall Afar), Petraeus (takes over training Iraqis from private contractors), and ambassador Negroponte all have made us proud. They all have in common a mastery of history and our language, plus an openness to discussion and change of their own views. Casey has a group of officers with PhD's prepare a plan for putting down the insurgency. They call themselves "Doctors without Orders" and produce a paper culling lessons learned from insurgencies of the past century. They start doing the right things and stop doing the wrong things, totally reversing practice in Iraq up to then.
A favorite example: McMaster works with Sunni leaders before his attack on Tall Afar, saying humbly, "When the Americans first came, we were in a dark room, stumbling around, breaking china. But now Iraqi leaders are turning on the lights." Then he adds: the time for resistance is therefore over. "This in fact was a threat, stated as politely as possible," comments Ricks. Then McMaster takes his officers and Iraqi officers out to tour the battlefield where Alexander the Great met the Persian Army, to give his American colleagues more perspective on the ancient pride of their Iraqi colleagues. (p. 422) In Tall Afar, the humvees that were driven pell-mell through streets to avoid attacks -- scaring citizens and looking out of control -- were replaced by 15 m.p.h. drives that gave Americans time to see where they were going, respond to developments, look calm. Instead of one big army base at Tall Afar, the Americans and Iraqis embedded themselves in 29 spread out bases to maximize flexibility and awareness.
But events within Iraq seem to have spiraled out of control. US presence is less an issue now that Sunni - Shiite rivalry and revenge have become, by Abizaid's admission, "civil war."
Almost absent from the book is George W. Bush. The caricature of him as a dumb puppet of Republican neo-conservatives got a big blow when Bob Woodward published Bush at War in 2004. From September 11 on, Bush appears to have been skeptical, determined to act decisively, and demanding of clear information. In this book, he appears to be willing to take time with Iraq, agreeing with Sec. of State Colin Powell that "Iraq isn't going anywhere." It seems in this account that Cheney got way ahead, saying that Weapons of Mass Destruction were known to exist in Iraq, etc. etc. etc. Bush is reported to have been surprised by that. He and Powell are both convinced, and Powell convinces others. Ricks allows us to think that the ones pushing for war (including Judith Miller of the NY Times) filtered the info that Bush saw, and showed him info that just wasn't true -- he was misled, and then he made the tough decisions and helped to sell the policy.
Late in the book, (p. 407) Bush is reportedly shocked to hear that the war isn't going well. This is following his reelection in 2004. He sharply questions the Pentagon briefer, while other Pentagon officials present try to downplay the critique. Bush keeps the information to himself a few more weeks before letting on of a change in public, and then starts to work the more realistic assessments into his speeches.
Ricks lays out scenarios for what could happen, finally. The best one is the Philippines model - we stay for years, but with cooperation and mutual respect and eventual independence. The worst ones look like World War I with Iran and Shiites v. Syrian Sunnis, with Kurds seizing oil fields and getting help from Iran when Turkey attacks them -- and everyone attacks Israel, I guess.
One interesting aside: Besides Ricks' interviews with Pentagon and DoD sources, he had access to the Internet, where he read thousands of pages of postings by soldiers in the field, reporters in the Green Zone, Iraqi civilians... their advice, their complaints, their observations. Has any war historian ever had such a range and multitude of sources available instantaneously?
News & History
Thursday, August 03, 2006
"Crazy Busy" and the Gift of Attention Deficit
Response to Crazy Busy by Edward M. Hallowell, MD
"We all have ADD now." I've said that for years, whenever a student or parent was worried about the disorder. Now a specialist in the field confirms it. His recommendation: Learn how ADD can be a gift.
Self-help books that I've read have all spent roughly one third of the book telling stories to convince the readers that they need the book, one third or less with practical answers, and one third more of examples. Hallowell's earlier books Connect and Worry were excellent, even moving examples of the genre.
This one is short on moving examples, but certainly hits with slices of life that anyone reading or writing a blog will identify with, such as some modern maladies he calls "leeches" of our precious time and attention. One is "screen sucking," the addiction to screens that afflicts us, so that we are checking email, news, what's on TV every chance we get. He advises a 12 step program, seriously. Another is "frazzing," the illusion of multitasking, when all you're really doing is three things ineffectively at once for the power rush you get doing it.
The essential image of the book was his own experience as short order cook alone on the late-night shift, how he got into a rhythm - work food on the grill, look back for customers' signals at the counter, look up on the board for orders, repeat. When this was going well, he was in his "C-state" (connected, confident...) and his mind was free to work on other issues. This was effective multitasking. When the orders came in too fast, he went into "F-state" (frazzled, frantic, other f words) and made mistakes. Since we can't avoid some of this multi-tasking, he suggests that we learn to recognize when we're transitioning from C to F.
The cure for "F state" is "play," creative engagement in some off-task task -- a "gift" of truly ADD people like himself. He suggests that work is activity exerted for something that is of value to others, while play is the same thing -- when it is of value to the self. Play is thinking on tangents. He suggests exercises aroundp. 219 for encouraging "play" - such as going out in the car and intentionally getting lost. He swears that our thoughts while we find our way home will end up being creative ways to deal with problems.
It reminds me of my mother's experience. She told me that housecleaning was her problem-solving time: She'd start in one corner of the house with a problem relating to one of us kids; by the time she'd worked her way down stairs to the laundry room, the problem was solved.
Education
"We all have ADD now." I've said that for years, whenever a student or parent was worried about the disorder. Now a specialist in the field confirms it. His recommendation: Learn how ADD can be a gift.
Self-help books that I've read have all spent roughly one third of the book telling stories to convince the readers that they need the book, one third or less with practical answers, and one third more of examples. Hallowell's earlier books Connect and Worry were excellent, even moving examples of the genre.
This one is short on moving examples, but certainly hits with slices of life that anyone reading or writing a blog will identify with, such as some modern maladies he calls "leeches" of our precious time and attention. One is "screen sucking," the addiction to screens that afflicts us, so that we are checking email, news, what's on TV every chance we get. He advises a 12 step program, seriously. Another is "frazzing," the illusion of multitasking, when all you're really doing is three things ineffectively at once for the power rush you get doing it.
The essential image of the book was his own experience as short order cook alone on the late-night shift, how he got into a rhythm - work food on the grill, look back for customers' signals at the counter, look up on the board for orders, repeat. When this was going well, he was in his "C-state" (connected, confident...) and his mind was free to work on other issues. This was effective multitasking. When the orders came in too fast, he went into "F-state" (frazzled, frantic, other f words) and made mistakes. Since we can't avoid some of this multi-tasking, he suggests that we learn to recognize when we're transitioning from C to F.
The cure for "F state" is "play," creative engagement in some off-task task -- a "gift" of truly ADD people like himself. He suggests that work is activity exerted for something that is of value to others, while play is the same thing -- when it is of value to the self. Play is thinking on tangents. He suggests exercises aroundp. 219 for encouraging "play" - such as going out in the car and intentionally getting lost. He swears that our thoughts while we find our way home will end up being creative ways to deal with problems.
It reminds me of my mother's experience. She told me that housecleaning was her problem-solving time: She'd start in one corner of the house with a problem relating to one of us kids; by the time she'd worked her way down stairs to the laundry room, the problem was solved.
Education
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Back Words to “Forward” on Hispanic Immigration
E-mail makes it easy for anyone to forward messages to dozens of strangers via friends of friends. About one in every ten is genuinely uplifting and one more is genuinely clever. Others are just sentimental or standard talk-radio generalizations. But two recent messages stand out for ugliness. It took one minute of thought and two minutes on Google to de-bunk it. I’m going to deal with one of them here, now, and save the other for later.
One email began (in HYSTERICAL CAPITAL LETTERS) “IF YOU THINK HISPANICS ARE HERE FOR WORK..... YOU'RE NUTS!!” and cited the LA Times for statistics that are supposed to alarm us. For example, “ 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.” Granted, murder warrants are alarming, but we can relax, because there’s a healthy murder rate among non-Hispanic whites and African Americans, too. My search of the LA Times web archives, which go back to 1985, did not confirm this guy’s 95%, and he lost all credibility.
Besides, he has no historical memory. The author of the email tells us that “21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking,” and goes on to scream “WAKE UP AMERICA!” I suggest a little review of history. We’ve had this kind of hysteria every twenty years since the “Alien and Sedition Act” of the John Adams administration. News media in other national languages have had a large audience in American cities since the mid-1800s and have always been part of the system that eases new generations into the USA. I suppose this is someone who failed high school Spanish and is affronted by people who don’t just speak good ol’ English. I, for one, am excited to hear more than one language when I walk through a public place, and enjoy the ingenuity that it takes for me and, say, a waiter, to communicate.
I thought I’d check out Google for more balanced reporting, and found refutations for the rest of the ugly email in an article by Larry Kudlow, National Review’s Online Economics Editor, host of CNBC’s Kudlow & Company and author of the daily web blog, Kudlow’s Money Politic$. I’m reprinting pieces of his article, with my comments in italics:
People who take risks, endure privation, work hard and long, and keep for themselves little of what they earn to benefit their families – aren’t these the ideal Americans, paragons of “family values?”
Kudlow shoots down some other accusations:
He points out the shameful mismanagement of wealth in the corrupt Mexican government, a sad old story; and he points out the way the USA has opened our borders when it was convenient, and then closed our borders when alarmists like this emailer get the upper hand.
He concludes:
Next time you feel like forwarding ANYTHING in CAPITAL LETTERS that purports to uphold good old American values by ripping into someone else – just delete my name from your list.
Find Kudlow’s essay and more recent articles with other thoughtful opinions at NationalReview.com
News and History
One email began (in HYSTERICAL CAPITAL LETTERS) “IF YOU THINK HISPANICS ARE HERE FOR WORK..... YOU'RE NUTS!!” and cited the LA Times for statistics that are supposed to alarm us. For example, “ 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.” Granted, murder warrants are alarming, but we can relax, because there’s a healthy murder rate among non-Hispanic whites and African Americans, too. My search of the LA Times web archives, which go back to 1985, did not confirm this guy’s 95%, and he lost all credibility.
Besides, he has no historical memory. The author of the email tells us that “21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking,” and goes on to scream “WAKE UP AMERICA!” I suggest a little review of history. We’ve had this kind of hysteria every twenty years since the “Alien and Sedition Act” of the John Adams administration. News media in other national languages have had a large audience in American cities since the mid-1800s and have always been part of the system that eases new generations into the USA. I suppose this is someone who failed high school Spanish and is affronted by people who don’t just speak good ol’ English. I, for one, am excited to hear more than one language when I walk through a public place, and enjoy the ingenuity that it takes for me and, say, a waiter, to communicate.
I thought I’d check out Google for more balanced reporting, and found refutations for the rest of the ugly email in an article by Larry Kudlow, National Review’s Online Economics Editor, host of CNBC’s Kudlow & Company and author of the daily web blog, Kudlow’s Money Politic$. I’m reprinting pieces of his article, with my comments in italics:
Until Mexico’s economic malaise is cured, millions will continue to seek economic opportunity in the United States. Can you blame them?
Once these immigrants get here they work hard. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanic unemployment is only 5.5 percent, compared to 4.8 percent overall.
...As Center for Equal Opportunity chairman Linda Chavez [George W. Bush's first choice for labor secretary] has been pointing out, Hispanics are great entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and job creators. According to 2002 Census Bureau data, Hispanics are opening new businesses at a rate that’s three-times faster than the national average.
People who take risks, endure privation, work hard and long, and keep for themselves little of what they earn to benefit their families – aren’t these the ideal Americans, paragons of “family values?”
Kudlow shoots down some other accusations:
As for the claim that illegal workers don’t pay taxes, Princeton professor Douglas Massey estimates that roughly two-thirds of undocumented immigrants pay the FICA payroll tax. Overall, illegals have fed $7 billion to Social Security and $1.5 billion to Medicare. They are contributing to our wealth, not reducing it.
And what do they take from the system? According to Forbes magazine, only 10 percent of illegal Mexicans have sent a child to an American public school and just 5 percent have received food stamps or unemployment benefits. A U-Cal Davis study also shows that more immigrant workers leads to more economic growth. This is standard economics. Multiply an enlarged workforce times existing productivity and you get more economic growth.
He points out the shameful mismanagement of wealth in the corrupt Mexican government, a sad old story; and he points out the way the USA has opened our borders when it was convenient, and then closed our borders when alarmists like this emailer get the upper hand.
The only way to reduce illegal immigration, therefore, is to raise the unskilled H-2B visa level and bring it in line with job openings in the United States. This is the only feasible economic solution to the chronic problem of illegal immigration. The idea worked forty years ago with the successful Bracero program for farm workers. It can work again.
Today’s low visa limit of only 140,000 has caused illegal flows to skyrocket. This must be changed. Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute estimates that U.S. labor-market conditions can absorb about 400,000 Mexican immigrants per year. This would balance labor supply-and-demand conditions and illegal immigration would plummet.
He concludes:
Proper reform should combine stronger border security with higher visa levels and a path to citizenship. Yes, illegals should pay fines and go to the back of the citizenship line. Yes, employers must aggressively cooperate with the new rules. But compassion must coexist with free-economy principles and the rule of law.
Before he passed away, Pope John Paul II quoted Matthew 25:35: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” That is precisely the spirit America should seek when it comes to immigration reform.
Next time you feel like forwarding ANYTHING in CAPITAL LETTERS that purports to uphold good old American values by ripping into someone else – just delete my name from your list.
Find Kudlow’s essay and more recent articles with other thoughtful opinions at NationalReview.com
News and History
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Fiction: Updike's "Terrorist" Plot has Character
Perhaps John Updike's critics would like the master novelist NOT to try to understand how a teenaged Muslim is manipulated into becoming a suicide bomber?
Understand what, exactly? Updike's real subject here isn't terrorism, politics, jihad, or Islam: it's feeling the absence of God. A line from the Koran (Qu'ran) about God's being closer to a believer "than the vein in his neck" keeps recurring, as the young jihadist, who has no father or siblings -- thinks of God as a kind of brother whose presence he feels intensely. But much else of what the boy sees, feels, and learns makes him question that presence -- in a public high school, in a convenience store, in Islamic study with a cynical teacher, in the truck that he delivers furniture in, not to mention on public media and advertisements.
The teen Ahmad is the focus, but all the other characters are dealing with the same feelings, and their faith (or lost faith) is equally challenged. These include Ahmad's 60-something atheist Jewish "college counselor," the boy's lapsed Catholic Irish mom, the advisor's voracious and fat wife, her work-obsessed sister, and the sister's boss -- Secretary of Homeland Security.
At the moment of the story when Ahmad becomes aware that he is involved with a terrorist cell, he remembers the old school's motto, "Knowledge is freedom," and thinks, "Knowledge can also be a prison, with no way out once you're in." A couple of pages later, his mother is discussing Ahmad with Jack, the counselor, who suggests the same thing from another angle:
A few pages later, Ahmad admits that he fears how education might weaken his faith.
I won't spoil the ending. Suffice it to say, it's both a surprise and perfectly fitting, leading to a final sentence that feels exactly right.
08/01/2006 | Fiction, Religion
[Aside: In a response on another's blog (edrant.com), I wrote this succinct statement:Updike, whose earliest fiction has always focused on a love of life - and fear of losing it - "gets into" the mind of a teenager who could throw life away. Bigots blame Islam, but we've had suicide bombers in the West for over a century (read Henry James's novel about a suicide bomber, Princess Cassamassima, ca. 1895). We have in America numerous examples of terrorist-suicide teens in the last twenty years (Columbine ... Pearl, Mississippi...) Some bloggers derided Updike after he told an interviewer that the first draft focused on a Catholic priest -- and a blogger asked rhetorically, "He thinks a CHRISTIAN would do that?" Well, sure -- we've got examples of preachers and priests gone bad in this country, misguided followers who smuggled weapons, shot government officials, and / or poisoned themselves. So it's not a stretch to say that Updike's terrorist is no alien, and understanding him would be understanding something about ourselves.
Yes, “Updike dared to be sincere about his underlying humanism.” Ahmad is only more intense than the others in the book, but they’re all wrestling one way or another with how our American world makes it tough to believe in God or anything. Even that isn’t a slam on America, just an observation of the way it’s turned out in a country where everyone’s doing a pretty good job of being pretty good.]
Understand what, exactly? Updike's real subject here isn't terrorism, politics, jihad, or Islam: it's feeling the absence of God. A line from the Koran (Qu'ran) about God's being closer to a believer "than the vein in his neck" keeps recurring, as the young jihadist, who has no father or siblings -- thinks of God as a kind of brother whose presence he feels intensely. But much else of what the boy sees, feels, and learns makes him question that presence -- in a public high school, in a convenience store, in Islamic study with a cynical teacher, in the truck that he delivers furniture in, not to mention on public media and advertisements.
The teen Ahmad is the focus, but all the other characters are dealing with the same feelings, and their faith (or lost faith) is equally challenged. These include Ahmad's 60-something atheist Jewish "college counselor," the boy's lapsed Catholic Irish mom, the advisor's voracious and fat wife, her work-obsessed sister, and the sister's boss -- Secretary of Homeland Security.
At the moment of the story when Ahmad becomes aware that he is involved with a terrorist cell, he remembers the old school's motto, "Knowledge is freedom," and thinks, "Knowledge can also be a prison, with no way out once you're in." A couple of pages later, his mother is discussing Ahmad with Jack, the counselor, who suggests the same thing from another angle:
"There's a certain hunger for, I don't know, the absolute, when everything is so relative, and all the economic forces are pushing instant gratification and credit-card debt at [kids today]. ...People want to go back to simple -- black and white, right and wrong, when things aren't simple."
"So my son is simple-minded."
"In a way. But so is most of mankind. Otherwise, being human is too tough. Unlike the other animals, we know too much. They, the other animals, know just enough to get the job done and die."
A few pages later, Ahmad admits that he fears how education might weaken his faith.
I won't spoil the ending. Suffice it to say, it's both a surprise and perfectly fitting, leading to a final sentence that feels exactly right.
08/01/2006 | Fiction, Religion
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Original Intent: A Good Place to Start. but. . .
(Thoughts occasioned by an essay in The Claremont Review of Books (Summer 2006), "The Supreme Court v. the Constitution of the United States of America" by Michael M. Uhlmann, and the book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford Press, 2006). News and History | Religion )
So much of our political and religious strife comes down to one question about founders (of the USA, of Christianity): Do ancient texts have inherent authority that trumps any new developments in our understanding of the way we should live? My answer, in a word: No. Yet I believe above all in what conservatives call "rule of law" -- by which I mean, we go by procedures and guidelines created when calm people thought through a problem and came up with a solution. Much better that than the alternative, which would be rule by whim, rule by mass hysteria, rule by knee-jerk response. . .
The question has hit the blood-boiling point in two realms I think about often, in the Episcopal Church and in Constitutional law. The Claremont Review and other conservative groups -- and I! -- are worked up over the Supreme Court's recent interpretation that extends a municipality's "eminent domain" over property that could conceivably be a greater source of revenue in government hands. Then, in the Episcopal church, the appointment of a gay bishop a couple years ago and the more recent appointment of a woman to lead the House of Bishops has some parishioners in a tizzy.
Let's begin a discussion of "authority" with the historical observation that humankind made a great step forward when we learned to take original texts with a healthy dose of skepticism. That's what differentiated the Middle Ages from what followed, the notion that experience might be right when ancient texts (and, for that matter, present authorities in the church and state) were wrong. Petrarca, "father of the Renaissance," published a letter addressed to Cicero pointing out the ancient orator's errors and personal flaws that had been revealed in some recently-unearthed documents; Galileo used the telescope to demonstrate to those with an open mind that Copernicus had been right about the planets, despite what Scripture and ancient philosophers wrote. Martin Luther started the Reformation when he refused to accept the Roman Church's authority to tell him how to read what was plain in the text -- opening a can of Worms, one could say. The founders of the USA got their ideas and language from John Locke and others born in the English Renaissance who had to come up with a theory to justify decapitating King Charles I and later de-throning King James II, both of whom supposedly had Divine authority to rule.. . and they did it partly by giving new authority to something called Magna Carta they found in some trunk somewhere and by reading into it ideas about the common people that would never have occurred to the original authors, who were all self-interested aristocrats.
Let's say for argument that the founders were inherently authoritative, then we have the problem that they disagreed with each other. We have the Constitutional debate as proof, and disagreements among the heavy-hitters in The Federalist Papers, continued during Hamilton and Madison's days in early administrations, with fierce disagreement over the authority of the Constitution itself to bind states. A Civil War quelled the discussion, but it's still hotly contested in the limited realms of states' rights to limit abortion, for example. In Scripture, we see Paul v. Peter on Jewish law, Paul v. James on primacy of faith, and even Paul v. Paul on whether women should be leaders or just silent observers in worship. Does one person's inherent authority negate the others? Don't we still have to pick and choose?
Besides these, we possess dozens of writings -- gospels, letters, collections of sayings, apocalypses to rival Revelation -- that were once considered authoritative by at least some churches. By what authority did Church councils arrive at which ones of these to accept, and which to reject, five hundred years AD? Since those councils, other councils have picked and chosen some writings over others. During a parish meeting at St. James (Marietta, GA), one parishioner stood to accuse the bishops of betraying the faith by appointing the gay bishop: "you can't pick and choose which Scripture to follow." I was seated near the Rector, and we met eyes and whispered at the same time, "We've been doing that for two thousand years."
We also pick and choose which texts to read literally. Jesus and Paul state clearly more than once that the Kingdom of God would rise up within the life spans of their contemporaries. To insist that they did not err, one has to make allowances for either limits in their knowledge (i.e., Paul changed his mind), or some kind of rhetorical reason for exaggerration, or else they have to look at the loosely related congregations scattered throughout the Roman Empire and the persecutions of believers and call that "The Kingdom of God." Churches have long been embarrassed by the inclusion of The Song of Solomon in Scripture and have decided to read it as a ridiculously explicit allegory of Christ's love for his Church. In the Book of Job, "comforters" who spout the same ideas found in the Book of Proverbs come off looking like fools.
Lincoln was no originalist: he appealed to the Declaration and the Constitution, but he knew that others among the founders did not read these documents the way he was doing. Obviously, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt all read the words "All men are created equal" differently. Paul was no originalist: He interpreted literal stories as allegories whenever it helped in an argument, as he does in his discussion of "children of Abraham by faith" in Romans. Martin Luther wasn't an originalist: he advocated ripping James out of the Bible.
But picking and choosing makes originalists afraid. Most of all, they fear the "slippery slope," that we can't question part of the sacred text without questioning the other parts, and then, how will we stop a precipitous slide into the mud where nothing's sacred? And how do they know what to really believe?
"Slippery slope" is a logical fallacy that wouldn't earn points in a middle school debate. It makes no sense to say that A is okay but we must treat it as wrong because it might lead to D. Sorry, if A isn't wrong in itself, it's not wrong. Neither, for that matter, are B and C.
Originalists can relax. The authority of any text doesn't come from its being original or being somehow dictated by God. It comes from whether it feels right -- not to one person, not on a whim, but in a consensus of informed community, when experience, tradition, reason, and time have been used to make the decision. So, for example, the fourth-century council of Hippo didn't include in their Bible the ancient texts telling how boy Jesus struck an annoying neighbor dead and drowned his grammar teacher with a wave of his hand. That's not the Jesus that the Church was worshiping four hundred years before they'd had a Bible, so it didn't get into the Bible. In United States history, South Carolina claimed the right to nullify laws of the Federal Congress, and Andrew Jackson argued back -- with the threat of force. Eventually, force followed by reason prevailed.
On the plus side, there are other pieces of literature that do have this feeling of authoritativeness to them. My Bible would include St. Augustine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and C. S. Lewis, plus Shakespeare's KING LEAR, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and the complete stories of Flannery O'Connor. (An actor who is also an evangelist on the London theatre scene, speaking to a group of evangelicals here in Atlanta last year, cited Samuel Beckett as his favorite modern playwright: an atheist who wrote truth that a Christian can feel to be right).
As the Declaration of Independence wisely puts it, when a people decides to pick and choose which parts of an ancient authority to jettison, it should not be done "lightly," and reasons should be declared.
Let our disagreements over who can be a bishop or what "eminent domain" or "cruel and unusual" mean be decided the old - fashioned way: hash it out on the merits, taking into account what our predecessors thought, and what may have changed since then; let's follow procedures mapped out for making new rules, or for changing old procedures; and let's not let someone from centuries ago have the final word by default.
Original Intent: A Good Place to Start, but . . . | News & History, Religion
So much of our political and religious strife comes down to one question about founders (of the USA, of Christianity): Do ancient texts have inherent authority that trumps any new developments in our understanding of the way we should live? My answer, in a word: No. Yet I believe above all in what conservatives call "rule of law" -- by which I mean, we go by procedures and guidelines created when calm people thought through a problem and came up with a solution. Much better that than the alternative, which would be rule by whim, rule by mass hysteria, rule by knee-jerk response. . .
The question has hit the blood-boiling point in two realms I think about often, in the Episcopal Church and in Constitutional law. The Claremont Review and other conservative groups -- and I! -- are worked up over the Supreme Court's recent interpretation that extends a municipality's "eminent domain" over property that could conceivably be a greater source of revenue in government hands. Then, in the Episcopal church, the appointment of a gay bishop a couple years ago and the more recent appointment of a woman to lead the House of Bishops has some parishioners in a tizzy.
Let's begin a discussion of "authority" with the historical observation that humankind made a great step forward when we learned to take original texts with a healthy dose of skepticism. That's what differentiated the Middle Ages from what followed, the notion that experience might be right when ancient texts (and, for that matter, present authorities in the church and state) were wrong. Petrarca, "father of the Renaissance," published a letter addressed to Cicero pointing out the ancient orator's errors and personal flaws that had been revealed in some recently-unearthed documents; Galileo used the telescope to demonstrate to those with an open mind that Copernicus had been right about the planets, despite what Scripture and ancient philosophers wrote. Martin Luther started the Reformation when he refused to accept the Roman Church's authority to tell him how to read what was plain in the text -- opening a can of Worms, one could say. The founders of the USA got their ideas and language from John Locke and others born in the English Renaissance who had to come up with a theory to justify decapitating King Charles I and later de-throning King James II, both of whom supposedly had Divine authority to rule.. . and they did it partly by giving new authority to something called Magna Carta they found in some trunk somewhere and by reading into it ideas about the common people that would never have occurred to the original authors, who were all self-interested aristocrats.
Let's say for argument that the founders were inherently authoritative, then we have the problem that they disagreed with each other. We have the Constitutional debate as proof, and disagreements among the heavy-hitters in The Federalist Papers, continued during Hamilton and Madison's days in early administrations, with fierce disagreement over the authority of the Constitution itself to bind states. A Civil War quelled the discussion, but it's still hotly contested in the limited realms of states' rights to limit abortion, for example. In Scripture, we see Paul v. Peter on Jewish law, Paul v. James on primacy of faith, and even Paul v. Paul on whether women should be leaders or just silent observers in worship. Does one person's inherent authority negate the others? Don't we still have to pick and choose?
Besides these, we possess dozens of writings -- gospels, letters, collections of sayings, apocalypses to rival Revelation -- that were once considered authoritative by at least some churches. By what authority did Church councils arrive at which ones of these to accept, and which to reject, five hundred years AD? Since those councils, other councils have picked and chosen some writings over others. During a parish meeting at St. James (Marietta, GA), one parishioner stood to accuse the bishops of betraying the faith by appointing the gay bishop: "you can't pick and choose which Scripture to follow." I was seated near the Rector, and we met eyes and whispered at the same time, "We've been doing that for two thousand years."
We also pick and choose which texts to read literally. Jesus and Paul state clearly more than once that the Kingdom of God would rise up within the life spans of their contemporaries. To insist that they did not err, one has to make allowances for either limits in their knowledge (i.e., Paul changed his mind), or some kind of rhetorical reason for exaggerration, or else they have to look at the loosely related congregations scattered throughout the Roman Empire and the persecutions of believers and call that "The Kingdom of God." Churches have long been embarrassed by the inclusion of The Song of Solomon in Scripture and have decided to read it as a ridiculously explicit allegory of Christ's love for his Church. In the Book of Job, "comforters" who spout the same ideas found in the Book of Proverbs come off looking like fools.
Lincoln was no originalist: he appealed to the Declaration and the Constitution, but he knew that others among the founders did not read these documents the way he was doing. Obviously, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt all read the words "All men are created equal" differently. Paul was no originalist: He interpreted literal stories as allegories whenever it helped in an argument, as he does in his discussion of "children of Abraham by faith" in Romans. Martin Luther wasn't an originalist: he advocated ripping James out of the Bible.
But picking and choosing makes originalists afraid. Most of all, they fear the "slippery slope," that we can't question part of the sacred text without questioning the other parts, and then, how will we stop a precipitous slide into the mud where nothing's sacred? And how do they know what to really believe?
"Slippery slope" is a logical fallacy that wouldn't earn points in a middle school debate. It makes no sense to say that A is okay but we must treat it as wrong because it might lead to D. Sorry, if A isn't wrong in itself, it's not wrong. Neither, for that matter, are B and C.
Originalists can relax. The authority of any text doesn't come from its being original or being somehow dictated by God. It comes from whether it feels right -- not to one person, not on a whim, but in a consensus of informed community, when experience, tradition, reason, and time have been used to make the decision. So, for example, the fourth-century council of Hippo didn't include in their Bible the ancient texts telling how boy Jesus struck an annoying neighbor dead and drowned his grammar teacher with a wave of his hand. That's not the Jesus that the Church was worshiping four hundred years before they'd had a Bible, so it didn't get into the Bible. In United States history, South Carolina claimed the right to nullify laws of the Federal Congress, and Andrew Jackson argued back -- with the threat of force. Eventually, force followed by reason prevailed.
On the plus side, there are other pieces of literature that do have this feeling of authoritativeness to them. My Bible would include St. Augustine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and C. S. Lewis, plus Shakespeare's KING LEAR, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and the complete stories of Flannery O'Connor. (An actor who is also an evangelist on the London theatre scene, speaking to a group of evangelicals here in Atlanta last year, cited Samuel Beckett as his favorite modern playwright: an atheist who wrote truth that a Christian can feel to be right).
As the Declaration of Independence wisely puts it, when a people decides to pick and choose which parts of an ancient authority to jettison, it should not be done "lightly," and reasons should be declared.
Let our disagreements over who can be a bishop or what "eminent domain" or "cruel and unusual" mean be decided the old - fashioned way: hash it out on the merits, taking into account what our predecessors thought, and what may have changed since then; let's follow procedures mapped out for making new rules, or for changing old procedures; and let's not let someone from centuries ago have the final word by default.
Original Intent: A Good Place to Start, but . . . | News & History, Religion
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Don't Study Jane Austen's Work
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Don't study Jane Austen's work: enjoy it!
I read Jane Austen reluctantly, to fill a gap in my education. The very first line told me, "This lady is fun to be with." She writes, "Any single man with 10,000 a year must be in need of a wife."
When all is said and done, the plot is basically, girls meet boys, girls lose boys, girls get boys. Two elder sisters are curious about two rich bachelors in chapter one, and are married to both by the end. The obstacles to both marriages are mostly social class. The girls' family the Bennets are afflicted by an eccentric father -- jovial, but distant as he can be from the mistress of the household, a histrionic and blatant missus. There's a serious old-maid-in-the-making named Mary who spends a lot of time in her room drawing moral pictures. Then there are two 18th century Valley Girls, Lydia and Kitty, frivolous and man-crazy.
Austen's method for developing her story is almost like the music of her day -- when "classical" was modern. That is, she introduces, repeats, and manipulates contrasting themes. The younger sisters contrast the serious Mary; Mrs. contrasts Mr., and the pair of them contrast the intelligent, gracious, modest Uncle and Aunt Gardiner. Mr. Bingley contrasts in his amiability to his friend Darcy in his aloofness. And, at center, Elizabeth's spirited wit and acumen contrast to her older sister Jane's quiet modesty and determined good opinion of everyone.
Occasionally I got impatient --Ok, already: Elizabeth loves Darcy, Darcy loves Elizabeth; they misread each other and were misled by pride and prejudice -- bring this charade to an end!-- I enjoyed it page by page and was satisfied overall as by a classical symphony. I felt a rush of goodwill when Elizabeth and Darcy in one of their walks finally confess their feelings.
All along, I had extra enjoyment from getting into life of the time: the rhythm of visits and meals and letters; how a three-mile visit is a major undertaking; how a cold becomes a two-week convalescence three miles from home; how everyone' income (all inherited, it seems) is everyone's knowledge and might as well be advertised; how conversation is frankly a kind of competition involving everyone as players and judges.
Also enjoyed extremely boring Reverend Collins, hate his worshiped "Lady Catherine de Bourgh," and marvel at how young teenaged girls of today are so much like Lydia and Kitty.
-from notes I wrote before blogs existed in February, 1996
[The late P.D. James set a murder mystery among Austen's characters. Read my comments about Death Comes to Pemberley. ]
Don't study Jane Austen's work: enjoy it!
I read Jane Austen reluctantly, to fill a gap in my education. The very first line told me, "This lady is fun to be with." She writes, "Any single man with 10,000 a year must be in need of a wife."
When all is said and done, the plot is basically, girls meet boys, girls lose boys, girls get boys. Two elder sisters are curious about two rich bachelors in chapter one, and are married to both by the end. The obstacles to both marriages are mostly social class. The girls' family the Bennets are afflicted by an eccentric father -- jovial, but distant as he can be from the mistress of the household, a histrionic and blatant missus. There's a serious old-maid-in-the-making named Mary who spends a lot of time in her room drawing moral pictures. Then there are two 18th century Valley Girls, Lydia and Kitty, frivolous and man-crazy.
Austen's method for developing her story is almost like the music of her day -- when "classical" was modern. That is, she introduces, repeats, and manipulates contrasting themes. The younger sisters contrast the serious Mary; Mrs. contrasts Mr., and the pair of them contrast the intelligent, gracious, modest Uncle and Aunt Gardiner. Mr. Bingley contrasts in his amiability to his friend Darcy in his aloofness. And, at center, Elizabeth's spirited wit and acumen contrast to her older sister Jane's quiet modesty and determined good opinion of everyone.
Occasionally I got impatient --Ok, already: Elizabeth loves Darcy, Darcy loves Elizabeth; they misread each other and were misled by pride and prejudice -- bring this charade to an end!-- I enjoyed it page by page and was satisfied overall as by a classical symphony. I felt a rush of goodwill when Elizabeth and Darcy in one of their walks finally confess their feelings.
All along, I had extra enjoyment from getting into life of the time: the rhythm of visits and meals and letters; how a three-mile visit is a major undertaking; how a cold becomes a two-week convalescence three miles from home; how everyone' income (all inherited, it seems) is everyone's knowledge and might as well be advertised; how conversation is frankly a kind of competition involving everyone as players and judges.
Also enjoyed extremely boring Reverend Collins, hate his worshiped "Lady Catherine de Bourgh," and marvel at how young teenaged girls of today are so much like Lydia and Kitty.
-from notes I wrote before blogs existed in February, 1996
[The late P.D. James set a murder mystery among Austen's characters. Read my comments about Death Comes to Pemberley. ]
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