I just got the student evaluations for the section that I TAed last semester. Here are my favourite two comments from the section on what I should have done differently: 1) “Correct a lot of the crap said more strictly” and 2) “He could stand to be less biased.”
– Sydney
So Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times, apparently thinks that the Christian right should not be tolerated, i.e., freedom of speech and freedom of religion privileges for them should be withdrawn. I gather that the reasoning is that (1) the Christian right is intolerant, (2) tolerant liberals do not need to tolerate the intolerant, ergo … My question: if liberals do not tolerate the Christian right, does that mean the Christian right has no obligation to tolerate liberals by parity of reasoning? It seems to me that we might want to be careful where we go with this reasoning on behalf of intolerance.
I also find it interesting how everyone reviewing Hedges’ new book makes a point of noting that he went to Harvard Divinity School. The idea seems to be that this establishes his expertise about the Christian right. But I would have thought that it would be good evidence for precisely the opposite. I would have thought that most Harvard Div students would know one and only one thing about the Christian right: that they’re not that, whatever it is.
– Sydney
Here in the land of ostensibly severe winters, we’ve been having highs in the 50s and 60s. Forsythias and cherries are blooming in places, frogs are out of hibernation, and the birds are singing the songs of breeding season. I’ve been wishing for some real winter weather, i.e., a snowstorm or two, but by now I’m a bit worried. If we suddenly got winter now, I would expect lots of things to die. So here’s hoping that winter comes gradually over the next month or so. And if I can’t survive without snow that long, perhaps I’ll have to fly out to Colorado.
-Sydney
In Sydney I’ve discovered a man who is happy to let grocery bills eat up an even larger portion of one’s income than I am – what I thought was an impossible task. Neither of us grew up in households of extravagant tastes (his family ate what they themselves produced, and mine were of the meat-and-potatoes variety), but the household we’re setting up now is one very concerned with food. We’re encouraged in our (addition? obsession? fascination? hobby? mild hysteria?) by the fact that we live in Ithaca, a place with a great farmer’s market, several quirky grocery places, a number of resources for organic/natural/local foods, and a gigantic, upscale grocery store that has everything our recipes might call for.
So, what does that actually amount to, you ask?
Our first Thanksgiving here was spent cooking, rather than writing term papers. Curries, breads, soups, and casseroles came pouring out of our kitchen. Our windowsills are often filled with bowls of beans and red-and-yellow peppers from Sydney’s garden, and the top of our filing cabinets holds a pretty large cache of fruit. I also put a few potatoes on the windowsill, until Sydney kindly explained to me that sunlight and potatoes are not a good mix. Oops. We have a great spice collection (thanks, Mom, for getting us started!) and throw onions, basil, and cumin in everything.
I’ll admit right up front that I have not discovered the joy of baking. Our oven is small and slightly temperamental, and I’ll take the smell of sauteed onions over fussy pastries any day. Besides, I balk at the amount of butter recipes call for, and so end up making so many substitutions that my cookies don’t even resemble the recipe with which I started. I can assure you that warm, sinfully-buttery cookies will not be rolling out of my kitchen any time soon. Besides, my husband thinks light, fluffy pastries are for the birds. He likes his desserts to resemble bricks (is it the German blood or Sydney’s sheer perversity?), so it’s probably a good thing that becoming a pastry goddess is not my heart’s desire.
I will also admit that I am not the lead chef in our house. Sydney outpaced me early on and has stayed there ever since. I frown over recipes and am easily dismayed, but he waltzes into a kitchen, throws things together, and comes up with really amazing dinners. Kudos to him. I am a very grateful wife – most likely the only time in my life that I will be happy to be shown up by Sydney 🙂
A couple of days ago Sydney whipped up a spicy tomato soup for lunch. I was pretty happy that I could come back with homemade pizza for dinner: basil pesto, onions, and red peppers on top of a rosemary-and-olive-oil focaccia. Needless to say, we ate well.
This afternoon we left our apartment for the first time in days, spent two hours and a lot of cash at the grocery store, and then Sydney whipped up a creamy lentil soup that is, simply, wonderful. Alrighty, he wins, no contest.
Erin
I’m not in any position to be handing out book recommendations.
After all, I was the 19-year-old who thought Mrs. Dalloway would make great reading for my mom; she was working full-time, going to school full-time, and still taking care of my brother. Yup, I recommended abstract, heady Modernist reading to my busy mother. After several attempts she said, “Maybe some other time, Erin. But for now I need something I can read in bits and pieces.” I, who spent an entire Saturday in college wallowing in the book, then wandered to the dining hall in a daze and explained my behavior to my best friend with “I’ve been in a book,” couldn’t understand that different books are for different moods and times, much less different people! And, I’ll admit, “a trip” is the first thing that comes to mind with Virginia Woolf, rather than “casual bedtime reading.” I can only say that that was a moment of stupidity on my part, and that I was much better with my library patrons, and have become much better when recommending books to those close to me since then.
But as I’ve spent the last couple of days on the couch, reading books, I thought I would pass along some thoughts, just in case something sparks your interest.
Being laid low by a bit of a cold allowed me to polish off Crime and Punishment, which I’d been working through for the past few weeks. NOT the best choice to try to read over Christmas travels, but oh well. Amazingly quirky writing style (oh how I wish I knew Russian and could try it in the original), but being inside a crazy man’s head tends to leave you a bit skittish in your own life. I’ve yelped with surprise recently before realizing that the movement I saw was made by Sydney, who is near and dear, and quite allowed to move around in his own house without fear of a yelping wife. I’m going to tackle The Brothers Karamazov next, which I understand is more likely to be considered “enjoyable” and not simply “classic.” I’ll admit I’m ready to see another side to Dostoevsky . . .
A recent “find,” however, is Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. I know, I know, I just got through telling you that Woolf may be an aquired taste, but in my defense, the back cover claims this is “the most accessible of Woolf’s novels.” Woolf’s reassuring narrative voice (man, she has quite the presence in her novels) makes a crazy story somewhat comforting, quite engaging, and actually a very quick read. I also swallowed this one in a day’s reading, although I didn’t come out of this one in a daze, as I did with Mrs. Dalloway. Instead, I set aside the last 30 pages to read in the morning because I was reluctant to have it end so soon. It’s just a lot of fun. Oh yes, and there are some interesting feminist aspects to her writing (read: old-school feminists from the beginning of the 20th century, not the breed that we see now) that I actually really liked: those small intrusions on the story keep you aware that this is indeed a story told by someone with her own perspective. In other words, it gives you a personality to pit your own arguments and your own ideas against.
Alright, the two sickies are going to summon the energy for an outing: to the grocery store!
Erin
Carwardine talking about the “culturally programmed hostility of Democrats to the party of Lincoln”: “Many continued to dismisss Republicans as Yankee-Puritan fanatics, bigots, zealots, meddlers, and ideological imperialists,” without whose imperialism there would have been no Civil War (Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, p. 167). Some things do change. For example, Democrats now are a bit more interested in African-American rights. Also, we would need to replace “Yankee” with “Midwestern and Southern.” But some other things apparently have not changed much.
To praise the book as an excellent biography of Lincoln would be to tread close to the fallacy ad verecundiam, so I will refrain. But I did find it a fascinating read. And it made me wish that I had time to read more history books.
-Sydney
Reading Arthur C. Brooks‘ Who Really Cares reminded me of a bit of extracurricular research I did along these lines as an undergraduate. The resulting chart, which I used to rile up some of my fellow students at Yale, can be seen here.
The book is interesting and well worth picking up (though you might only need to read the first couple of chapters to get the idea). The book’s main topic is to show that, contrary to popular wisdom among both liberals and conservatives, conservatives are both more likely to give to charity and to give more. Once that datum is established, Brooks goes on to explain why this is so. This explanation is significant, because it shows what is misleading about saying that conservatives are more compassionate than liberals.
It turns out that religious people are much more generous and compassionate than the secular types. Furthermore, if you divide the population into four groups rather than two (religious conservatives, secular conservatives, religious liberals, and secular liberals), it turns out that the secular conservatives are the least compassionate, with religious liberals a close second to the religious conservatives. So the reason that conservatives are more compassionate in this country is because religious folk here tend to be conservative. That’s rather brief — Brooks identifies three other significant factors besides religion — but you get the idea. This point about how it is not actually the political conservativeness itself that fosters compassion is a point that a number of Brooks’ critics failed to pick up on, with the result that some of the reviews of the book say some rather silly things.
The striking difference between religious conservatives and secular conservatives reminded me of Brad Wilcox‘s research into religion’s effect on marriage and parenting (Soft Patriarchs, New Men is also well worth a read). For many of the measures that he looked at (e.g., wives’ happiness with their husband’s affection and understanding, couples’ socializing time, wives’ likelihood of escaping domestic violence), conservative Protestants who were active in a church ranked significantly higher than mainline Protestants who were active. Interestingly, however, conservative nominal Protestants, i.e., ones not actively affiliated with a church, ranked lower than both active and nominal mainline Protestants.
All this goes to show that dividing society into two groups is often exceedingly unhelpful and misleading. I could now start a rant about two-party politics in the U.S., but perhaps this post is long enough already.
-Sydney
A post about our cat. Why?
– Unlike many of you, we don’t have kids, so she’s the only small, cute thing in the house. (Sad, but true)
– Many a happy moment is spent petting her, and many a sleepless night is caused by her nighttime bursts of energy (skittering across our bed, gaining a foothold in various tender parts of our bodies along the way), so she has a pretty noticeable effect on our lives.
Arwyn is a strange cat. We picked her up from the SPCA last January, and since then we’ve had a lot of time to notice some of her rather odd habits. She doesn’t eat food if we put it out on the counter, but she does find rubberbands, all plants, and corners of papers and books quite tasty.
She also spends a sizable portion of her life upside-down: instead of gracefully curling up into a ball, she flops out on the floor, full-length, upside-down, so that all of her underside is exposed to the elements. Obviously this cat has had no reason to think she should always be prepared to flee or defend herself.
Sydney and I are in for a cat-style day, ourselves. Both a bit under-the-weather, with an overcast day outside, all we want to do is sleep and maybe read. Oh yes, and eat 🙂 So here’s to cats, for setting a good example.
Erin
Erin and I just finished one of the more pleasant tasks around here: cataloguing and shelving the books acquired over the course of the past semester. Cataloguing? Yes, all the books we acquire get a record, are assigned an LC call number, and receive a slip of paper with the call number on it. I enjoyed my job in the cataloguing department at the Yale Divinity School Library and was loathe to give up the pleasure of finding the precise slots for books in a grand classification scheme. The LC (Library of Congress) system is certainly grand, at least if sheer complexity and size count for grandeur. The print guide to assigning call numbers runs to 42 volumes. Anyway, I quite enjoy finding out where books fit into this scheme and so am using it for our home library. And I recently heard Erin say that I am unorganized and messy …
With the box full of books that we bought at Loome Booksellers (newly added to my list of favourite bookstores) in Minnesota last week, we now have 1174 books. In case you really don’t have enough to do, you can browse the list of our books here.
Now, all I need to do is to find time to read a few more of these books.
Sydney
“You’re not making any sense. Okay, so you never make sense, but today you’re really not making sense.” (Sydney to Erin)
It’s amazing that two language-oriented people can have such difficulty communicating with each other . . .
– Erin
Alan Schmierer