Stearns, guest blogging: The unknown, remembered gate (Part 3 of 3)

As soon as we walked in the door after church, I thudded down the stairs in my platform heels to my Barbies. Poppop had built my sister and me a Barbie house that was admired by all our friends, and Grandma had sewn curtains and upholstered furniture. My sister and I were so committed to playing Barbies that we actually played in real time: Megan, my doll—who I consider pretty in an unconventional way, though I question whether Barbies can be unconventional—was in her eighth month of pregnancy. I even sewed maternity clothes for her. There would be no playing Barbies today though, not in this state.

I rooted through the box of dresses with a sense of urgent hurriedness, disregarding my own injunction to keep order in the Barbie box. I found what I was looking for: Megan, who was wearing a navy blue knitted dress with a balled-up curtain for a belly. This had not always been a dress. My mom told few stories about her childhood that didn’t have a moral. I knew well that she had only been spanked once, though she now wishes that it had been more often, and I knew well the story—the outline, none of the details—that prompts her to remind us often that nothing good happens after midnight. But she had only told me the story about the navy blue knitted rectangle once, though I begged for it often. Papo used to wear a worn navy blue pea coat. He complained rarely, but she once caught a brief hint that the collar didn’t keep one’s neck quite as warm as one might like. All on her own, she secretively measured the neck of his coat and began work on a perfectly rectangular navy blue piece. When she finished her knitting, she excitedly brought the piece to school, still hiding it in her pocket where she could touch it and imagine Papo’s pleased surprise when she delivered it after her last class. But that was the day she was called out of Biology and guided to the main office and told to sit in the chair that stuck to her legs and given the news of her grandfather’s death. She had always felt a little guilty, she told me, that her first reaction was to reach her hand to her pocket and wonder what on earth she was going to do with a navy blue knitted patch. For years, Mom had kept the knitted collar in a drawer in the living room buffet, along with pipe cleaners and napkin rings, more because one can’t throw that sort of a thing away than because it belonged there. I found it after my Barbie became pregnant, and since it was suitably stretchy, I asked my mom to stitch the edges together, and it became a dress.

I picked up Megan and pushed the navy blue knitted dress to my eyes. I didn’t bother to take it off of her—I was in an obsessively modest stage and didn’t like naked dolls lying about. The curtain-belly was dislodged and the rough blue tear-dampened yarn made my nose itch. The sobs rolled up out of my own belly in waves and jerks. I pressed Megan’s body to the back of my neck and thought about how Papo would have felt, with the scratchy rectangle warming his cold, wrinkled neck. The terror did not subside, but seeped down to a depth of me I’d never felt before, where it settled, calmly and terribly and peacefully. It became the numinous thing that anyone who has been near the ocean knows lurks below the sharp glinting surface, which with time becomes an almost soothing reminder that there is vast space beyond that which is fit for human eyes.

Stroking the rough blue dress made me think about my Question. This wasn’t one of my favorite questions—not the sort that I considered when I was in, or wanted to feel that I was in, a profoundly pensive mood. No, my Question was one of those that gnaws at the part of your brain right at the top of your spine, and the kind that when you finally get brave enough to ask your mother, she raises her eyebrows and tells you that you will have to ask Jesus or Solomon when you get to heaven. Why couldn’t I remember when I first learned what death was? Surely it must have been a traumatic revelation—goodness, I’d had nightmares for weeks when I’d learned about sex. I think it must have been something about the mysterious way that you can heart-achingly miss someone that you had never met that reminded me of my question. My sobs faded to an occasional weepy gasp. I readjusted Megan’s curtain-belly and pulled across the knitting to make gaps in the navy blue dress big enough to push her slender arms through. She had originally been a Disco Barbie, and was of high rank in our world because, unlike all the others, her elbows could bend. I sat her in the tiny living room on the blue corduroy sofa, curved her arms, and rested her hands gently on her round belly.

Stearns, guest blogging: The unknown, remembered gate (Part 2 of 3)

It turns out the picture I had in mind was not in fact of Papo, but was of Uncle Ralph. The first time I saw him after my mom’s hurried description was at a baby dedication at church. I sat perfectly still in my chair, only moving my eyes, too scared to say anything. I started to sweat, and despite my utter horror, in the back of my mind I worried about it showing up on my gray dress. Church was a strange and mysterious place, and so when I saw my dead Papo, it didn’t cross my mind that I might be confused about who that man was. My first thought was that the dead had been raised again. I ran—too rationally, I think—through the options of what this could mean. First, the rapture may have occurred and somehow that led to dead people walking about. Second, perhaps I was the only one seeing him—no one else was acting strange or surprised—and he had come back, or down, or whatever, to give me faith or otherwise fill up a lack in my soul. Third, maybe I had died and was in heaven. I suppose that I should have been disappointed that there weren’t many mansions or streets paved with gold, but I had the vaguest sense of relief that heaven was exactly like earth.

“Mom.” I finally forced the word out.

“Soph. We’re supposed to be praying.” The presence of the Lord was there, thick and heavy, the pastor told us. We were giving the Lord time to have his way.

“Momma. Why is Papo sitting over there.” My voice was shaky and I would have been crying if I weren’t so scared.

“Papo is dead, now shush.”

“I know, but he’s sitting over there, by the Litherlands.” In an effort to quiet me, Mom glanced up.

“That’s Uncle Ralph. He’s here to see Ruth’s baby get dedicated.”

I waited for the relief that should have come with that knowledge to flush my body. But it didn’t and the terror crushed down on me with even more force now that it was unexplained. The altar call came after the sermon. All my friends went down to the front to confess their sin of pride, but I didn’t. I tried to follow them. Even though I consider myself too full of anxiety and too lacking in confidence to ever be seriously threatened by pride, I always went down, to keep up appearances and in the off-chance that there was unconfessed pride that I didn’t know about. This time, I stayed in my seat, keeping the old bald man in my line of vision, pleading to God that no one would have a prophetic word that would expose my lingering terror to the whole congregation.

Stearns, guest blogging: The unknown, remembered gate (Part 1 of 3)

Scene: a family reunion


One of my great uncles—Ralph, the brother of my grandmother—pushes the screen door open with his back because his hands are full of my aunt’s baked corn, the dish she brings to every reunion and every Christmas. This is the uncle that still gives me a shock every time I see him, which is only once or twice a year. When I was younger, I asked my mother to tell me what my Papo looked like. Papo is Grandma’s father who died when my mom was in the ninth grade. My oldest uncle couldn’t pronounce the words ‘Grandma’ or ‘Poppop,’ and so they became Mamo and Papo.

“Sophie, he’s the bald one in the picture on Grandma’s TV.”

“The one in the green frame, or the gold?”

“You know the one, Sophie.” Her arms were half-way to the elbow in cold water with dead soap clinging to the edge and bits of cereal floating around. She was scraping out pieces of food from earlier meals that had clogged the drain. I had tried this several times and every time had rushed to the trashcan dry heaving, in part earnestly, and in part to ensure that my merciful mother never made me do it again.

“Oh, that one.” I didn’t know, of course. With a busy mom and an attention-demanding older sister, I just wanted her to talk to me, and even at this age I had a sense that if I made our conversations a stressful experience, she would be less inclined to talk with me—not on purpose, but just because that’s how it worked. I learned to manipulate early. I like to think of it as ‘training,’ or ‘conditioning’ in the pavlovian sense, but I’m not so sure that’s all that much better than manipulating.

“Yes, well, that’s Papo. Will you wipe off the table?” The dishrag was in my hands before the question was finished. I had given her knitted dishrags for the last two years on her birthday and on Mother’s Day. Besides scarves, rags were the only thing I could make. She insisted that she loved them: loved the way they got the food off the dishes, and loved the way they felt on her hands. She even wrote me little thank-you notes for them, which of course was in order to cultivate that practice in me. Later, when I read a story in which a son saves up his money and buys his exhausted mother a new mop and bucket for her birthday, I was still young enough to feel the sinking shot of despair, and ran to my mom apologizing. She still insisted that she loved the dishrags, especially the ones I did in multiple colors. Exactly what I’d expected. I desperately wanted her to laugh with me and tell me that of course she didn’t like getting dishrags for her birthday, but that it is the thought and the love that mattered to her. But she stuck to her story. I was certain that was because she thought I was still too young to know the truth, and so I noted in my diary: ‘In three years, ask Mom if she really likes dishrags.’


to be continued

From Wendell

There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lotta questions
And the bird always says,
"Never more."

For Whigwham

Dinner Party.3

"It tastes like a giant oreo!" --Warren, on his first experience of my woopie pies (they were burnt though, and, incidentally, looked rather unlike this picture). Forget about spelling bees and horse and buggies, this is what the Amish are (rightly) famous for.




I decided to return to my roots and embrace my quirks--the one/two thing(s) that grad school has taught me most clearly thus far--in the menu. This means Pigeons. Isn't this an unbelievably delightful name? It wasn't until after I assured Cordelia that there was nothing in them from any actual pigeons that she deigned to try them. The dish is stuffed cabbages, an old Pennsylvania dutch recipe that my mother and grandmother used to make, and I adored.

Additionally, I made a variation on the chicken and waffles dish I do love, serving chicken and biscuits (although, for reasons not clear to me, the biscuits were absolutely flat and Myrrh had to repeatedly reassure me that the world, in fact, was not ending, and that we would all eat them and that we would like them; and so we did). I forgot, however, the cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top that really shouldn't be forgotten.

Somehow all of this German food tended toward philosophical conversation (imagine!)--during the course of the evening, Aquinas, er, uh, Whigwham debunked the myth of essentialism by appealing to original sin (what a Calvinist impulse, I know!--there is lingering Calvinism in him, though). You know, my answer to this point is, Do we really believe in original sin? Especially if it prevents an essential difference between men and women's souls.

We also decided at precisely what point souls come into twins, whether those twins occur just days into a pregnancy or years after birth, whether in humans or in flatworms--the souls of flatworms are actually vitally important. As is the possibility of implanting a monkey embryo in Cordelia. (Cordelia: "And what would be wrong with implanting a monkey embryo in me?" Lenore: "It couldn't take! You're going to be a nun!")

Of course a priest and a Slovak were present; really, what sort of dinner party would it be without those two?

Quote of the night: While Myrrh was saving my biscuits and helping me roll them out, and I was reading the recipe. Lenore: "Roll out the dough 1/2 inch think and then cut them out with a two-inch thing." Myrrh: "A two-inch thing?!" Yes, of course--it meant the bell canning jar I was holding in my hand--a two-inch thing.

The Star Barn

The Star Barn is a Lancaster County landmark, although it technically isn't in Lancaster County. It's a Gothic Revival style barn (who knew that barn architecture was this sophisticated?! Of course, nothing in Pennsylvania should surprise you).

Dinner Party.2

Lenore: "I resent your being gone this weekend, because I'm having a dinner party this weekend and we need equal numbers of men and women, and, truly, it's difficult to find appropriate single men for dinner parties."

Whigwham: "I'm sorry; I have to go to the wedding of my roommate from when I lived in the state with the most misguided ego. ... Hold on a second! I've been at dinner parties at your house where you've been the only woman present."

Lenore: "Well, yes. You see if you can't throw a dinner party and invite all (or mostly all) men, you absolutely must be certain that there are equal numbers of men and women at the least."

It's true. As usual, Whigwham is right (I really only like him when he's arguing on my side as a result of his propensity to be right).

This made me think back to the dinner party to which he referred (it occurred some time ago). It was brave of me really--I invited a gentleman friend who I'd just stopped seeing as well as a gentleman friend I was hoping to begin seeing (incidentally, this was thwarted by his beginning to see a friend of mine; unbelievable, I know!), as well as all of the other men in my acquaintance (admittedly an exaggeration as there isn't room for all of those men at our dinner table). Thankfully, the first boy couldn't come. Problematically, the second boy was a vegetarian (!), and, as my cooking style comes from my mother, and before that from Germany, it is pretty predictably a type of meat (for ages it was chicken; lately it's been pork), a vegetable (for ages it was eggplant; Myrrh: "Remember the time when you used to cook eggplant at every meal." Beware: it hasn't entirely ended.), and a starch and lots of it. So I can't imagine that he was very full on a starch and a vegetable. Note my restraint here in not questioning his manliness as a result of his aversion to meat and me.

This makes me remember the meal in which I thought it was a good idea to make Eggplant Parmesan and Chicken Parmesan. At the time it seemed like a brilliant idea of foods that would go well together. That is like a poet using the same word to end two lines; I mean, of course it rhymes...because it's the same word. In retrospect, it was one of the poorer ideas I've had. Although, there were lots of boys present (surprise!) and they did like the eggplant, which was rather gratifying.

Hats

I wish we wore hats. When trying on my grandmother's old hats for a wedding this spring (they were all too winter-y for my dress), I discovered that she has one made entirely of pheasants feathers. My grandfather shot the pheasant and had it made for her. My life is clearly an inferior one with no pheasant feather hat. Aside from the pheasant part, it's a rather stylish hat.



I particularly like hats with veils.

















And then, of course, there are green ones:























And you have to love the feathers!

Reflections on Grocery Shopping

Grocery stores are one of my favorite topics of discussion. I love to talk about the pros and cons of different stores. I like to sing the praises of Trader Joe's. Oh wait, that's not me, that's Myrrh.

Grocery shopping ranks just above Greek on the list of things I like to do. Well, and I guess just above starving. So I go.

And then there's communal grocery shopping. "Wait, if you're going to go grocery shopping, then I don't need to go..." I never understand why that doesn't work. Why do people want to go together? I'll say right now, grocery shopping is the least romantic thing I can think of. I would rather go dumpster diving with a significant other. Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun. My new dear-friend-in-law came sheepishly and somewhat proudly back from the dumpster with a book on Sunday: "Do you think it's alright for me to take this out of the dumpster?" It depends on the book.

Another, parenthetic, dumpster-diving comment: During my days in, how do you say?, the state with the most misguided ego, I was absolutely intrigued by the dumpster divers. These people had dumpster-diving tools. This is so clever. What sort of person has tools like that? I used to sit on my balcony (this was the one redemptive thing about my time in that state--there is nothing like a balcony [even if it overlooks a very ugly parking lot]) and watch them and daydream about interviewing them (an urge hungover from my journalism days, I suppose). I had a (reluctant) partner for this, who only agreed so that I would be safe, but we were never together when I ran into dumpster divers.

Anyway, I have in fact been communal grocery shopping on the rare occasion, and at least once it turned out to be fun (only because, to sweeten the deal, Frankincense offered to make me hot cocoa, but we got sidetracked, anyway, and never made it to the hot cocoa until weeks later; fine, the sidetracking was also a sweet deal, but that's beside the point).

The biggest problem with grocery shopping is, I think, the overwhelming selection and the fact that the whole process is an exercise in choosing (which I hope to remain bad at for the rest of my life, especially when there are too many choices, as I think we can safely say is the case in the typical American supermarket).

A good shopping trip for me, then, is a fast one. And I choose my grocery store on the price of the spinach (which just got drastically raised at Safeway [they took away the huge $4 bags] and I know that I must find a new supermarket, only I'm reluctant as a new store in which I can't find a thing is an even more painful experience than usual). What you imagine, poor Emily (or we can call me Lenore, which, I was reminded today, is sort of my favorite nickname), wandering the isles, once, twice, even four times seeking the marshmallows or the tahini (they never have it) or the wheat germ (where is wheat germ even found?) is the truth. I am utterly incompetent.

Today, when I was checking out, the dear, dear checkout gentleman said, "You choose well--did you get everything on sale?" Yes, it's true I did! And while his compliment may have been a variation on the, "Miss Hale, thank you for shopping at Safeway; you saved $13 today; do you need help carrying your bags to your car?" (to which I inevitably want to reply, somewhat miffed for no apparent reason, "No thank you--I'm a strong woman!"), I took it as remarkably flattering that the cashier, who must checkout hundreds of people a day thought that I was a remarkably good shopper (or at least a cheap, poor one) and wanted to comment on it to me. And he wasn't even the cashier with mesmerizing green eyes who hits on absolutely every young female customer who walks through his line and somehow has managed not to be fired for sexual harassment.

On Loneliness

"I don't think SATC [Sex and The City] is just for girls. I am a reasonably well-adjusted bloke and I am looking forward to seeing the film with my girlfriend. I am then looking forward to poking my eyes out with red-hot pokers, burning my skin off, and rolling around in salt for a while."—Phil Mann, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Ah! With whom am I going to see this? As far as I can count, I have no friends in DC up for this. And as I don't believe in going to movies by myself...well, I'm in a bad position. And, I mean, who's keeping track?, but wasn't this supposed to come out in March?

From a conversation with my friend, Sayers, who this weekend wore a dress much lovelier than the one to the above: "I heard someone dies."
Emily: "I wonder who it is."
Sayers: "Maybe Samantha?"
Emily: "No, Samantha can't die--she's absolutely essential to the group dynamic, and way too lovable...It's probably either Charlotte or Miranda."
Sayers: "It can't be Miranda!" And then we both exploded in laughter as we realize that we've just attempted to save from death our own characters (don't be confused: those quizzes are right--every woman/person is a Sex and the City character, a Jane Austen heroine, an ancient Greek political philosopher, etc.).

Urg. Broken computer! Do we get to to request computer prayers? If so, I do...

Dinner Party

It is probably important to record these, since they are the best thing in life. And it is probably important to make fun of my guests, some of whom do and some of whom do not read this blog.

Past guests worth making fun of, first: The doorknob of our bathroom door is loose and although we not infrequently tighten it with our nifty screw-driver skills and have the maintenance man do the same about once a month; still, it traps people. Which is endlessly amusing!

Also, we've had a chair curse at our apartment: the last three fell apart, one by one (there were all from the same set). Then, one night at a dinner party in Lawrence's honor, he evidently had a rickety chair (from a new set). He was leaning back and forth (didn't his mother teach him how to sit on a chair, with all four feet on the ground?) and it absolutely collapsed right underneath him. Needless to say, we all had a good laugh.

In fact, it is arguable that the sole purpose of Little Gidding DP's (dinner party; thankfully not "dance party," although that is, I admit, the proper use of the abbreviation) is to laugh at our guests. Or make them cook for us, if possible. Saturday night was a Slovak cultural evening in which we flew in a real live Slovak to make Halushky (sp.?) to accompany the Demanovka and Slovak music that kept being subsumed into something Middle Eastern and belly-dance-y (thankfully, baklava was also on the menu). The poor jet-lagged Slovak had to retire early, but per normal the party did not wrap up early (Emily: "I hate leaving. It is my least favorite thing in the world." Wendell: "That's why I'm not doing it.").

When we can't make fun of our guests, Myrrh and I make fun of each other (actually, I just make fun of her, but I try to couch it in terms that make it appear that I'm including myself in the joke). Like the time I said, "Hi, how are you?" to our neighbor, eagerly trying to be kind and greet him (highly unusual, I know). And Myrrh responded, "Fine, how are you?" And we kept a straight face until our [highly awkward, crunchy (I know, what other sort of neighbors would we want?)] neighbor made it into the apartment building. At which point our laughter exploded.

And also there's the time that we were at a lecture and Myrrh didn't get a joke that the speaker told until about a minute after he'd finished. And she said, "Oh!" out loud, into the silence of the room. It is times like that that I pretend not to know her, although minutes before I'd been frantically scribbling notes to her in an effort to make her laugh out loud and break the monotony of the speaker (who is, to put it mildly, not one of my favorite people. Lawrence: "Emily, it's your turn to talk to The Tiger [who was supposed to be visiting with us all at a different dinner in a different time]." Emily: "Oh no, that's quite alright.")

Which leads me to a point that Sterns and I were discussing this afternoon (the sliver of the afternoon that I was awake to enjoy): Why would one ever speak to a random person who one will never meet again? Why be friendly? I really can't understand. In the category of random people, I am including bartenders, taxi drivers (although I occasionally really like taxi drivers and have an absolute weakness, as I've mentioned before in this forum, for mechanics--I always speak to mechanics. Mechanics redeem me as a person), people who are chatty on metros, graduate students from other political science subfields, and all people in cities in which you do not live; also people you meet in Europe while backpacking (here Sterns is softer than I am and has been known to yell at me for not being friendly; but I will say, I have in fact spoken before to people that I've met at hostels, although I'd rather not. For instance, if they share a room with you, you absolutely should talk to them. If, however, you pass them in the stairwell, you should not. Once, a man with whom we shared a hostel, accused my sister and I of stealing his vegemite. Have you ever seen or smelled vegemite? Who would ever steal it?)

Wit

Emma Thompson is one of my favorite actresses, ever since Sense and Sensibility--her head always seems to be on so straight! And besides making me wish I were on the way to being an English professor instead of a political theory professor (two degrees??), this film reminded me once again of the need for and difficulty of cultivating a Christian response to death: for the Christian, it is both not to be avoided at all costs, and yet not to be embraced too soon; it is a significant event between life and death, and yet does not involve a loss of self. With the movie's attention to Donne's "Death be Not Proud," and various readings of the poem, it made me think of Eric Voegelin's objection to Paul's "to be absent with the body is to be present with the Lord" as a downplaying of the significance of death in a way that immanetized (count, second use here lately) the eschaton. Anyway, I'm not certain that death is a comma (although I approve of Helen Gardener, and don't even know if any of the exegesis [not exe-Jesus] is true to life, anyway). I sort of think that it's a semi-colon.

I was reading a NYTimes article lately on "slow medicine," or some people's refusal of particular medical treatments as infringing on the dignity of their remaining life without offering sufficient hope of much good. I speak highly enough of this idea, particularly after seeing Wit, which I think was an example of a rather horrible death (as far as the physical dying process went, not Emma Thompson's character's response to the death itself). In the article, however, the "slow medicine" movement also embraced euthanasia (at least self-euthanasia). These two can and must be separated--uniting them just shows how difficult the Christian tension of loving life and looking forward to what comes after really is. Admitting that you (and all of us, for that matter) are dying is absolutely different from asking for that death out of its time.

I Capture the Castle

By Dodie Smith, no pictures

This book has been recommended to me strongly by almost all of my best [female] friends. Alas, I don't think I could enjoy it properly. The first half I couldn't put down--literally--it was 6:15 and finally the book turned sour, so I didn't mind pausing to sleep. I heard the birds (they always seem to start singing around 3:30 [they are bizarre city birds]) and saw the dawn come. Anyway, the problem was that I fell in love with Stephen and so was doubly struck by the tragedy of the book--that everyone loves someone he can't have (I mean, I really can't have Stephen; he isn't a person. But the narrator isn't even bright enough to choose him!). I thought that the narrator's Madame-Bovary romanticism would be outgrown and real life would be embraced, but that was too optimistic of me. And I am unspeakably wary of any storyline that includes one's sister falling in love with one's man.

Now, that's not to say that the first 200 pages weren't delightful, because they were. And that's not to say that there wasn't an isolated instance of non-selfish devotion in the book, because there was, and it was beautiful, and it was Stephen. The thing is, I think it was a tragedy, but not even tragedy at it's best (where a man's character is at odds with his society's notion of the good). Rather, it was an utterly individualistic tragedy in which the narrator (the absolutely delightful narrator who reveled in all of life, even in suffering; that's not to say that reveling is what we're meant to do with life) and her conception of the good were at odds with another character's conception of the good life, which included her, but didn't include her adequately enough for her own tastes (his proposal wasn't sufficient). All that to say, it was entirely distressing in a way that I haven't been distressed by a novel since I read the Brontes.

Why I Love the Catholic Church

Today is the feast of St. Isidore the farmer.

Perhaps I've Been Unconsciously Won Over by the Environmentalist Movement?

I'm really intrigued about the causes of my new-found crush on green. But alas, these things aren't always clear, and certainly must be given-in to. This installment: green shoes.

If I were rich, I think I would buy up all the green shoes that I could stand and wear a new pair everyday until I ran out (does this scream crazy old woman one day or what?). And I would count all the colors I felt like as green:

Okay, so that color is sort of Kermit-the-frog-ish, but I'm pretty crazy about the strap, which is fairly redemptive.

Who can resist the leather with flower patterns cut out?

Or sequins? If only there were small mirrors sewn in, too.

Once, I was walking down the hall at school in a pair of flip flops, and one of my professors called me out: "Are those the sort of shoes an agrarian would be wearing?" Alas, yet another of my inconsistencies. BUT, fear not, dear reader, I have discovered the ultimate agrarian shoe (or at least the ultimate Walt Whitman shoe [which I hope are two very different things]):

Tow Trucks.2 (I Will Always Hate Them Now)

My father told me from my childhood that nothing good happens after 11. I think he's right-er than he knew:










Tow trucks come out at night. Like hyenas and skunks and possibly dangerous large cats and scary men.

Serendipity and the Internet

Bible verses about tractors--I'm not certain that there are any, but if there were, I'm sure you could find them in either the "Antique Tractor Bible" or the "Compact Tractor Bible." Also, the fact that John was Christ's deerest, ur...dearest disciple could be relevant (with apologies).

do different gendered leopards have differences--ingenious! It had never occured to me that the animal kingdom was the perfect place to explore feminist ideas! I'm certain that feminist leopards would see their child-bearing capabilities as purely contingent.

leopard Christianity--aww! This led me to Dante's use of the leopard (from which Eliot's use derives) to represent carnal sins, especially fraud and malice. Poor! This is the lofty etymology of the title of this blog. But the white still makes it better, I think--that is a reversal of the leopard blending in in order to surprise its prey...at least, I shall hold to that line.

misli na tomas hops--Urg. Would that I knew any languages. This, and the fact that I never took calculas are the things that I hate most about myself.

Silver bells and cockel shells and x-files--I guess there's the fantasy overlap??

agrarian fug--Oh. I guess this would mostly involve making fun of overalls that are too low-cut or oddly colored or frilled and work boots that are too casual and (heaven forbid!) formal shorts and tights worn as pants.

For Cordelia

Wagner Apartments (Vienna)

I mean, I love Little Gidding, but if I were forced to move... (and they are right above the Naschmarkt!)

In Which Fr. Schall Points out the Political Implications of Denying the Holy Spirit (Whose Work is Tied to a Grace and a Recognition of Sin)

"Essentially, Newman pointed out, already in the nineteenth century, the dangers of misunderstanding the work of the Spirit -- which is 'unseen, supernatural, and mysterious.' Several contemporary writers -- I think of Eric Voegelin in the case of Christians, George Steiner in the case of Jews -- who have surmised that the root origins of modern ideology, from which our era has suffered so much, lies in this 'chief error of this time,' of which Newman spoke. The root of ideology is precisely in the Gnostic claim to produce by our own means, not that of the Spirit, what is promised to us by the unseen, mysterious, and supernatural gifts of grace. This is the most subtle of the political temptations, the one instance wherein the rejection of the Spirit appears in a tangible form of solving the problems of worldly society."

--The Secret Presence of God: The Holy Spirit, The Giver of Life

From Wendell, Mothers.2

"We were the only girls in the extended maternal family. The women-to-be....The women before us were Grandmother, Aunt Zarrin, and Mother. And where were they now? At motherhood, a place with suffering to the north, suffering to the south, suffering to the east, and suffering to the west.

"Motherhood was a melancholy affair. Mothers were martyrs. Everyone knew it. And no one expected less of them. Men suffered and sacrificed themselves only in poetry for the sake of love. In real life, women were the ones to perform those legendary acts.

"Every year on Mother's Day, the national radio broadcast this special message: 'Salutations upon all mothers, the promised paradise is under your feet!' Mothers would be delivered to happiness only upon death. So they rushed the inevitable. In sickness, it was Mother who, fearlessly, leaned close to me, stroked me, and whispered, 'May Mother never see your pain. May your aches leave your body and enter mine instead. May I die and never see you ill....' When she ran out of words of affection, she recited poetry, those tributes to motherhood she cherished....The most rhythmic--one we both knew well--was a poem about a son in love, who was ordered by his beloved to cut out his mother's heart as the proof of his devotion. But running to his beloved, the boy hurt his foot against a rock, and the still-beating hear of his mother lamented: Alas, my dear son's foot is hurt! Alas, my dear son has taken a fall!"

--Roya Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran

My Mother is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

Flip it over and it's "I Saw the Sea Come In," which, as the children needed to go to bed before we got through that half, I haven't yet read (believe me, I will--my copy is in the mail).



Written by Becky Reyher, this story is utterly charming and delightfully named. A little hardworking girl from a poor family loses her parents in the field. The only way she can describe them is by saying, "My mother is the most beautiful woman in the whole world." They bring the most beautiful women to the lost little girl, but none of them is her mother. When she finds her mother, we learn that her mother isn't actually the most beautiful, strictly speaking. But she is, in the sense that, as the proverb in the book teaches us, we don't love people because they're beautiful, we think they're beautiful because we love them. This is a truth I firmly believe (I get absolutely confused when it comes to the attractiveness of people I love). But this doesn't make beauty relative; rather, it shows that what is one's own is more important and more dear than what is abstractly, "objectively" the most beautiful. It is a lesson in the virtue of loyalty.



Also, you can't see how beautiful someone is until you know him well--in this sense, my mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.

Because Who Doesn't Like Looking at Pictures of Green Dresses?/My Obsession with Them Hasn't Ended

I also want a green car; have I mentioned that?

Deborah

Once a professor of mine asked me which woman in the Bible was my favorite. It was in front of the class, and I was nervous and the only woman I could think of was Ruth, and so I said her. But in retrospect, Deborah is actually my favorite woman in the Bible (and all of the implications he drew from me liking Ruth were false). I think that she embodies an important role of women--that of calling men to their duties. Her prophesy to him is a reminder of what he'd already been called to do and her accompanying him is a stronger form of calling him to his duty (however, as a result of his reluctance to perform his task, it was finally a woman [Jael] who killed the enemy commander).



We see that, at some level, the power of God to command had been questioned by Barak's negligance in obeying Him. Deborah called Barak to obedience, back into the ordering of society under God. Both Deborah and Barak joined together after their victory in affirming the rule of God over them and their society. In the song we see that A) Deborah is essential to the victory, B) she identifies herself as a "mother in Israel" (this indicates that she sees her actions as uniquely feminine, not as temporarily masculine).



There are four roles that Deborah plays in this passage: judge, prophetess, military leader, and poet/singer/rememberer.



Beside the two chapters in Judges, the only other time the name Deborah is mentioned, it refers to Jacob's wife Rebekah's nurse, who died and was buried in Bethel under an oak tree after Jacob cleaned out the false gods from among his family and buried them under an oak tree near Shechem (this is told in Genesis 35). The oak tree under which Deborah was buried was called "Allonbachuth: that is, The oak of weeping." After Deborah's death, God appeared to Jacob and changed his name. After this, Rebekah died giving birth to Benjamin.



Interestingly, in Judges we see that Deborah the judge dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah on a mountain between Bethel and Ramah. Here we see a redemption by the latter Deborah of the weeping caused by the first Deborah in a way that parallels, on a smaller level, Mary's redemption of Eve.

The Covered Bridges of Lycoming County

Evidently Pennsylvania is the "Covered Bridge Capital of the World," with more than 200 covered bridges (ah! although there used to be more than 1500!). Covering bridges made them last longer, protecting the wood from the weather. This illustrates the practicality of Pennsylvanians (okay, I know, I know--other states had covered bridges, too). These bridges are also, evidently, known as kissing bridges! This indicates the ingenuity of Pennsylvanians.