The Power of Positive Thinking

I've been fairly down about my dissertation/grad school all semester. I decided while I was at home with my parents for Thanksgiving that I'm done with that and that I'm now invoking the Power of Positive Thinking! I'm not sure if it will make any difference, but I'll let you know. So, for the moment, I'm super excited about my particularly brilliant dissertation!!

The Roots "Sleep"

My favorite song from The Roots' new record, Undun (I really like the whole thing, except for the next to last song).

Before Sunset and Midnight in Paris

Before Sunset and Midnight in Paris are two wandering-around-Paris movies.

Before Sunset is the sequel to Before Sunrise. In the first film, Jesse and Celine meet on a train in Europe, and spend an evening together. They part with plans to meet up after 6 months without exchanging contact information.

In the sequel, we find out that Jesse, who, incidentally still has the goatee, showed up at the planned meeting, but Celine couldn't make it because her grandmother died. They meet up in France when Jesse tours Europe promoting a book he wrote about the night. It's interesting that in this film, the twist is at the beginning; the ending is simply purposefully ambiguous.

They have an immediate connection once again, and discuss their sexual escapades and life changes from the intervening years. The movie is in real time, a conversation between two people (this is an improvement, I think, over the last film). The end is, once again, uber-ambiguous: it is unclear whether or not Jesse will make his flight home or stay with Celine.

I think Celine is great--she's witty and snarky and opinionated. Jesse gets on my nerves--he just agrees with everything she says. He doesn't have much strength nor opinions, other than the fact that he's bowled over by her.

Midnight in Paris, the newest Woody Allen movie, is a similar wandering-around-Paris-while-continuously-chatting film. It is really surprising in its ability to make you believe that the Owen Wilson character actually time travels to the 30s (you of course don't want to doubt him like his unimaginative, cheating fiance). At times, I think Midnight in Paris devolves into a name-dropping fest, but the point--that nostalgia can go on forever, like two mirrors reflecting each other--is a good one. At one point, I was convinced that Owen Wilson was Woody Allen--he looked exactly like Woody Allen when Woody Allen's hair was not white. The character that I liked the least was Owen Wilson's fiance, Rachel McAdams. I thought she was terribly unconvincing. But I suppose it's hard to play a spoiled, shallow woman convincingly and nuanced-ly and complex-ly.

The most adorable moment of the film was when my mother exclaimed surprisedly upon seeing a shot of Shakespeare and Company: "I went there! Stearns bought a book!"


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Twitter

?uestlove, Ke$ha, where does this all end??

Quote

Me: "I'm so depressed about being grown up and that you have to work all the time..."

Stearns: "You don't have to! I'm reading Thoreau..."

Mass Changes

This article got me all worked up because it seems to be affirming change for the sake of change:

"As Catholics of the archdiocese prayed in new and unfamiliar ways at Mass last weekend, parish leaders say introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal has enhanced attentiveness and worship even though it will take time to break habits developed during 40 years with the old text.

While congregations learned prayers and adjusted to music settings reflecting the new text that English-speaking Catholics worldwide began using in liturgies for the first Sunday of Advent, many area parishes also appreciated the chance to slow down and think more about meeting Christ.

At St. Michael in Prior Lake, a sense of unity developed during the liturgies, despite a few minor mistakes, said Angie O’Brien music director. “There was kind of a renewed sense of worship because everybody was just attentive and listening and absorbing it in a different way,” said O’Brien, who also directs the Saturday teen choir at Pax Christi in Eden Prairie. “It kind of breathed some new life into our worship.”"

Quite aside from the question of the content of the changes, I didn't find that paying attention to differences and trying not to trip up enhanced my appreciation of the mass. The liturgy is built on the idea that once the words are familiar and slip off the tongue, you enter more fully into the worship. Otherwise, you should just change the liturgy up every week to keep people guessing.

I'm certainly not saying that the changes are bad, nor that the liturgy should never change; I just think this is a great example of why there are and should be pretty weighty reasons to change the liturgy. (My experience with the new mass translation was not helped out by the fact that the pamphlets that were used at the parish I attended in Williamsport were terrible--some of my tripping up was because the directions were not clear. My experience with the Magnificat guide was much better.).

The Graveyard

People Will Talk

I love Jeanne Crain. I love the way she throws her head way back, overly dramatically, when she kisses a man. I love the way she distractedly says, "huh-uh" and "uh-huh." I love her way of talking over people during arguments. I love her way of talking fast and about random things when she's embarrassed. And I love her sassyness when she thinks she's right: "You are not being objective!" "We are discussing my husband; not a kidney!"

I want to be Jeanne Crain when I grow up.


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Manayunk.2

(This statue is perfect Philadelphia to me: an industrial-looking pretzel mounted on a Greek-looking column.)


(Manayunk.1 here)

Quote

Me: "I mean, he has an earring and a beard..."

Mama Leopard: "You have an earring and a beard!"

Thanksgiving

This year we spent Thanksgiving on the mountaintop (of Little House on the Prairie comes to DC fame). There were goats and four-wheeling


and chicken eggs scattered around


and chickens and bunnies. (Although we're definitely missing Stearns and Ilana and #1tomatolover!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Paul Muldoon Critiques Ke$ha's "Tik Tok"

Quote

From email correspondence with a professor after his recent lecture and follow up Q & A (I think this sums up what awes me about him--his intelligence and his way of challenging the way I typically think about God):

"God knows things -- all things -- as they happen. God exists outside of time in a kind of eternal present in which all time -- past, present, and future -- exists to Him. So, what are future events for creatures that exist in time (like us) are present to God, just as the past is present to God. God does not know things before they happen because God does not exist in time: God "sees" all of history in an eternal now which is beyond the categories of temporal succession. Thus, God's transcendence means that God is beyond the categories not only of time, but also of space, and of any dimension. [If God were to exist in time there would be yet-to-be realized features of His existence: new realities which, when they occurred, would change God's knowledge -- but God as perfect being does not change.] Thus, it is not appropriate to say that God has foreknowledge; God simply knows.

Thomas Aquinas discusses the various features of what it means to be God (including God's existing outside of time and God's omniscience) in the first part of the Summa theologiae, beginning with question 4. You might also look at Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, which Thomas also uses on this subject."

Baldwin's Book Barn

Baldwin's Book Barn in West Chester is endless stories of wood-stove heated, hard-covered old books. The place is full of cats (healthy cats, which is unusual for a barn, in my experience). I asked the two old men who were relaxing at the entrance how many cats there were and they had a brief argument: one insisted five; the other insisted seven. It was never resolved.



Downtown West Chester is also lovely. We had lunch at Limoncello, a cozy Italian restaurant with a popular lunch buffet (there were loads of Zagat stickers wallpapering the door).

Unaccustomed Earth

Unaccustomed Earth is Jhumpa Lahiri's latest collection of short stories, lent to me by Sayers. (I write about Lahiri's novel, The Namesake, here.) The collection begins with a quotation from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Custom-House": "

"Human nature will not flourish, anymore than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."

I get the impression when reading Lahiri that she personally experienced the cultural and generational conflicts, and that she's writing about those conflicts from both the side of the parents and from the side of the child in order to understand both. It's as if she's looking for catharsis and clarity through writing. I think it's a clever tactic--there's no way to better have sympathy than to portray the other side in the best possible light. Lahiri is very persuasive at conveying not only the confusion of second-generation American children, but she is also incredibly persuasive at conveying the difficulties faced by first-generation immigrants.

She deals in these stories with death, with alcoholism, and with old love.

The pieces I like best are the three at the end, all dealing with a boy and girl who meet when they're very young and reconnect in their late 30s. The first two are addressed by each to the other, using "you," talking about where they first met. I love this. The third is written from a combination of their perspectives when they meet again. All three are melancholy, sympathetic, and practical. They are perfect.


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Book Corner

Today I visited Philadelphia's Book Corner, which is actually on a corner. I highly recommend it; I found: three Laurie Colwins (the most I've ever seen in one place at one time), the elusive Jhumpa Lahiri (Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies), Muriel Spark's Memento Mori, Barbara Pym's Quartet in Autumn, Somerset Maugham's novel about Machiavelli, Nussbaum on Patriotism, and Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea. I'm happy.


And here's Rose's Tattoo Cafe, just across the street. Just think--an espresso and a tattoo, all in one place. I love that the building itself looks as if it's been tattooed with roses.

Okay, so I thought I was being sarcastic, but it turns out that this place is just a restaurant filled with flowers...

This is a couple of days late, but in honor of 22 years of Slovak independence, the Slovak National Anthem:

Mondrian

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Assorted Food and Drink and Other Things

~ I firmly believe in embracing cheap wine.

~ Jhumpa Lahiri (of The Namesake fame) has done some food writing! Here she writes about rice and about her father. If I were to write about my father and food, it would be funny--from the rice cakes he often eats after dinner to absorb the acid in the food, to the quarters he used to pay us to try strange things (like squirrel). I would have to write about granola, which he makes frequently and carefully, with a recipe he invented that is never the same twice. My nostalgic food writing would also have to mention my Grandmother's chocolate cake and my Poppop's homemade ice cream.

~ Speaking of wine and nostalgic food writing...
~ All the hipsters, that's why. (Why does Philadelphia have such diverse restaurants?)

~ We all know that cigarettes are food, more or less. And these are great ways to hold them (via Hopkins).

Okay, who am I fooling? We've clearly moved on to the "Other Things":

~ Awesome people reading.

~ PAL on Pierre Manent.

~ Clothes I now need.

Bill Carroll

I went to hear a lecture down the road at St. Charles Seminary the other day. The speaker was Bill Carroll, an Oxford Professor, and the topic was Aquinas, creation and contemporary science (it was titled, "Creation and a Self-Sufficient Universe: Cosmology, Evolution, and Thomas Aquinas"). This was certainly the single most interesting lecture on the topic I'd ever heard. Well, quite possibly the only lecture on this topic I've heard, too. But it was still excellent.

He was arguing that you can know something, although not everything, about creation from metaphysics. Other things about creation are only known through revelation--that "the created universe has a temporal beginning, ... that creation is an act of divine love and that the opening phrase of Genesis, 'in the beginning,' also means in and through the second Person of the Trinity." His lecture, though, explored exactly what can be known about creation solely through reason and argued that the path to reasoning to a Creator is through metaphysics rather than the natural sciences.

He primarily negatively defined creation, which is to say, he explained many misconceptions about creation that emerge from the fact that we think about creation first from how man creates. He argued, however, that God creating is different in kind (not in degree) from man creating. He said a couple of things about creation--it means that things depend upon God as the complete cause; creation is not a change ("To cause completely something to exist is not to produce a change in something"); creation is not a distant event, but "the on-going complete causing of the existence of all that is"; creation is a "metaphysical dependence in the order of being."


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Twitter

I watched an episode of Pan Am the other night because one of my favorite fashion bloggers watches it and because I had run out of television; goodness gracious, that is the single stupidest show I've ever seen. To recap: the flight to Caracas has to land in Haiti because one of the passengers, who is flying for the first time at 80-ish, has a heart attack (they couldn't stop in Miami because there's a hurricane going on there). The landing strip is closed, but they manage to land anyway (although they discover later that the landing strip is too damaged for them to take off again). A stewardess gets a jeep from two men with guns and drives to find a doctor (she gets lost, but comes across a woman who shows her the way). The doctor tells her he can't come with her to help the man with the heart attack (who now, incidentally, appears to be doing more or less fine) because the people he's caring for will die, but gives them a nitroglycerin tablet and says, "If they knew I was even giving you this, they would kill me."

At this point, my computer froze and so I went to sleep.

Twitter

Guys!: Not only am I a hypochondriac when it comes to my body, but I am also evidently a hypochondriac when it comes to my car.

I took it in to my mechanic today for a little sound that I had been hearing when I was braking. The whole way over there, my car did not make that sound. My mechanic took it for a little drive anyway and said everything was perfectly normal.

Twitter

I do not understand the fuss about the Occupy Wall Street People's Library. Besides being in a tent, how exactly is it different from public libraries?

Twitter

Second time this month that I've lost my wallet (this time, it was my whole gigantic purse). Sigh. I'm just glad I live in an uber-safe area and it always comes back to me.

Wine and Yoga

Guys, I just invented something great. The yoga was "Candlelight Yoga," available on netflix. The wine was 2 buck chuck (which is now $3.29).

The woman on that yoga video is entertainingly condescending. She kept on saying things like, "For some people, this is a stretch!" and "You probably won't be able to do this..." It made me a little competitive--I wanted to prove her wrong, even if it involved breaking all of my muscles, which I know is not the point of yoga (she said about 15 times that the whole point of yoga is breathing).


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The Ides of March

Most of the time that I go to the movies, I go to see things that I want to see. And I'm not too hard to please, so I usually write happy reflections on the movies. I went to see this movie, though, for other reasons, so I will now proceed to ridicule it:

When the movie ended, I was floored--what we had seen thus far did not have anywhere near enough plot in it to end. Nothing had really happened. I mean, as all the descriptions of the film on the internet had noted, a naive and idealistic political campaigner (Ryan Gosling) had a brush with harsh reality and had become hardened in the process. But that's it! Okay, okay, so I exaggerate--an intern also has sex with a politician (it's quite possibly rape since she's drunk) and then gets an abortion after she discovers and shares with Ryan Gosling (who she's now sleeping with) that she's pregnant--none of this is well-developed, though, so it barely counts as things happening.

Basically, there's only one character who is dynamic in the whole show. It's this Ryan Gosling character. His eyes are close together and crooked, and he doesn't play the part well, in my humble opinion. He broods and mopes. He gets sad and hurt. But he does not express those things in a persuasive manner.

None of the other characters are well developed--the candidate is like any candidate--all about his television appearance and very little character. His wife (Jennifer Ehle!) has about two lines, and basically just sits there looking like Meryl Streep. The head of the campaign is persuasively slovenly and gives a not-very-convincing speech about loyalty (it's hard to believe anyone in politics is loyal). The intern looks slightly sad after her abortion, but her acting is never very believable.


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Twitter

Falafelling, v.: Piddling around and showing up late for a party.

Mad Men.2

When watching Mad Men tonight, I realized that Jane Sterling looks just like a vintage barbie. Compare:




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Penn State

I have to say something about the Sandusky scandal because Joe Paterno and Penn State Football are quite important in Central Pennsylvania and to our family.

It goes without saying that Sandusky's behavior is inexpressibly reprehensible, increased, if it's even possible, by the fact that he was picking his victims from his foundation, which worked with children from troubled backgrounds.

The fact that various people caught Sandusky in compromising situations, that there were warnings that were not attended to, is horrible. The fact that a graduate student observed him raping a child and almost nothing was done is unacceptable.

I don't know exactly how much Joe Paterno heard and I don't know what exactly he told his superiors, but regardless, I found his statement to be lacking:

If true, the nature and amount of charges made are very shocking to me and all Penn Staters. While I did what I was supposed to with the one charge brought to my attention, like anyone else involved I can’t help but be deeply saddened these matters are alleged to have occurred.

Sue and I have devoted our lives to helping young people reach their potential. The fact that someone we thought we knew might have harmed young people to this extent is deeply troubling. If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families. They are in our prayers.

As my grand jury testimony stated, I was informed in 2002 by an assistant coach that he had witnessed an incident in the shower of our locker room facility. It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report. Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As Coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators.

I understand that people are upset and angry, but let’s be fair and let the legal process unfold. In the meantime I would ask all Penn Staters to continue to trust in what that name represents, continue to pursue their lives every day with high ideals and not let these events shake their beliefs nor who they are.

This seems to me to be an effort to deny any wrongdoing and to protect his friends and to distance himself from the whole affair. While it seems that Paterno is, legally speaking, not liable, he should have apologized for the way he handled the situation. It is clear now that much abuse might have been prevented if Paterno, for instance, had followed up with the university administration to make sure that the information that came to his attention had been passed on to the proper civil authorities. In the face of that knowledge, I'm not sure how you stand up and say that you did nothing illegal and leave it at that.

It's a real shame that this is the note on which Paterno's career will end, either now or at the end of the season.

Manayunk

Manayunk is a neighborhood just across the river from me and on the outskirts of Philadelphia proper (not the "Ovarian Cancer - Be Vigilant!" sign above).


The website claims that "Strolling the street is like being whisked away to a European city." I don't know: It doesn't remind me of Europe; it reminds me of Pennsylvania, but of the best version of Pennsylvania. Something like a poor man's Georgetown, but with loads more character and grit.


There's even a toe path beside the canal and the railroad.


And, as is typical of Philadelphia, it's just loaded with outdoor artwork, tucked away (the painting above is hidden behind a walkway), waiting to be discovered.


It has, though, it's fair share of older women with expensive hair styles and expensive clothes.


But it's also more crunchy and hipster than DC or Alexandria.


I'm super curious about how you pronounce "Manayunk." I'm also super curious to try out some of these restaurants. I'm pretty sure I'll have to go for lunch, though, so that I can see the neighborhood, because it's so interesting looking.

A Positive Post for Mama Leopard!

Chocolate! Sunshine! Manayunk! 3 more degrees of heat from the boss of the heat! I'm happy!

(This post precipitated by an email from Mama Leopard:

"Alright already...enough negative comments on your blog. Say something positive or I won't read it anymore. Look at the past 5-6 posts (maybe more) and you will see what I mean.

I still love you,
Mom")

Dissertation

(but I will be way cooler because of the sunglasses and the scarf)

Post-dissertation plans (if it ever ends): Buy a freaking awesome camera and an around-the-world ticket with stops in: Cambridge, Cape Town, China, California, and the Cayman Islands (not sure if you can hop in and out of the U.S. like that...). In California, I want to drive up and down Route 1 in a convertible with sunglasses and a scarf in my hair.

John Adams

In the list of things that have been recommended for ages and I finally just got around to watching (namely because the whole house is watching it together) is John Adams, the miniseries (well, we're only half way through).

Initial responses: A) There are no cute boys in this! Possibly it's just that wigs don't do it for me. B) Watching that tar and feathering was traumatic. I always thought of tar and featherings were funny before; it hadn't occurred to me that the tar was hot. Did these people even survive? Other traumatic things include bloodletting, small pox, and cutting off a guy's leg (I didn't actually watch that one). Which is to say, it's rather graphic. C) I cannot stand the Abigail actress. I just remember her from Love Actually as the guilt-ridden girl who can't make up her mind. And I don't like how she looks. She sometimes has a British accent, but mostly it's American. The last time I heard an accent this bad was Jack Donaghy's red haired love interest from Boston in 30 Rock. D) Some of the historical happenings are almost funny in the way they're portrayed. For instance, when Ben Franklin admires a swiveling chair that Thomas Jefferson invented. I think it's hard to dramatize such well-known historical things in a way that doesn't look funny. E) I think it could be better done--there's some clearly computer generated stuff and green screens or blue screens or something.


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Twitter

I am not a big fan of google's move toward more pictures and fewer words in its new email layout.

Mad Men

I'm watching Mad Men. This is my first time straight through, although I'd watched several episodes before. It makes tons more sense watching straight through. My overall opinion of the show is similar, although now includes more respect for the quality of the show: It's awkward and uncomfortable to watch it, even if it accurately portrays the sexual and racial politics of the day. And I think you have to be really sensitive even when portraying things that actually happened. And the Mad Men portrayals of really bad behavior are sometimes too titillating to be really sensitive (for example, one time Don uses an overt expression of sexual power to convince Bobby Barrett to do what he wants). Also, there really aren't a lot of happy people in Mad Men (I can't think of any), at least in the first two seasons. I guess that Peggy is the closest to being a happy person.

Plus, all during season 2, I kept screaming at the laptop--"Don! She just wants you to tell her that you love her!" (Well, and she probably also actually wants you to love her.) But he ignored me (well, until the very end of the season).

I'm not sure I've ever seen flashbacks done well. They're an important part of telling Don's story, but they just always look like a poorly done period piece to me.

What I like about Mad Men: It is subtle, showing the good and bad sides of all of the characters (even maybe slightly of Betty, or at least it shows the way in which she was wronged and mistreated). The show makes the characters sympathetic, even when they're jerks. Betty still creeps me out, though. I mean, I get liking it when people think you're attractive, but she even likes it from small children. Creep-y!

Also: the intro and ending are fabulous. The music and pictures at the beginning are delightful and intriguing. And the song during the credits is always just perfect.


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Rant

Well, more like a complaint: I hate all of these silly pictures, with sayings under them, that are appearing on facebook. I read something about facebook changing its logarithm for how things appear in your newsfeed, and it's right--the quality of my newsfeed is going down the tubes. It sort of reminds me of myspace back in the day, actually.

The Clover Club

Philadelphia has its own drink! And Mr. Sayers made it for us the other night! It's a pre-prohibition sour drink (everything has a long genealogy in this city) that involves an egg white on top. I think there is (or was) an actually Clover Club in Philly after which it was named. Mrs. Sayers pointed out that because of the color, you feel like you're drinking grapefruit juice.

Here's a recipe:

1 1/2 oz. gin
3/4 oz. lemon juice
1/4 oz. grenadine or raspberry syrup
1 egg white

Shake ingredients with ice in a shaker (or in our case, in some tupperware) to emulsify.

Another recipe adds: "You may garnish it with a mint leaf, but be warned that that turns the Clover Club into a Clover Leaf."


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Eastern State Penitentiary.2

After my visit to Eastern State, I was looking up some of the art surrounding the penitentiary when I came across a photo study in black and white.


And I realized that black and white is a great idea and that in these new-fangled cameras, you can make your pictures black and white even after you take them.

Funny Girl

I think that I meant to watch Funny Face (with Audrey Hepburn) and accidentally watched Funny Girl. I kept thinking that Audrey Hepburn would join the movie at some point, but she never did.

Poor American with lots of talent (Fanny Brice--Barbara Streisand) meets aristocratic European (Nick Arnstein--Omar Sharif)--she's swept off her feet. He's attracted to her until she outshines him, and then he can't handle it, because at the end of the day he needs to provide for her and cannot let her help provide for him. It's definitely a tragedy, but also a musical.

What I enjoyed most about this film is Fanny's sense of humor when it comes to romance. I think it's pretty similar to my own, and I think it's hilarious.


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