Reveiwing sentences and their effects

Philosopher Simon Blackburn writes an insightful and elegant review of Stanley Fish's book about writing and reading sentences.  The review is a joy to read for its well crafted prose, for its engagement with the substance of Fish's book, and for the ways it advances the ideas lurking in Fish's work.

Here is one sentence from Blackburn that illustrates his philosophical extension of Fish's position: If we cannot move peoples' souls, we cannot move their ways of living either." 

Read the review

On not failing

This poem says something very important beyond the trite "all good things come to an end."  This poem claims that the end of a good thing does not negate its goodness while it lasted.  Therefore, this poem asks its readers to consider that not every failure should be regarded as failing; at least, not every ending should reflect back upon what ended and cause its former joys to now be counted as failure.  And even beyond that, the poet urges us to consider that even imperfection can be a sort of flying.

Failing and Flying, Jack Gilbert

from Poetry 365

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights
that anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe that Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Grades and life

Diary of a B Student 

For a teacher to say that she is not a big fan of grades may seem like a shirking of responsibility.  I don't think so.  This little essay by mystery author Sujata Massey reminds me that one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of grades is that usually a grade is an evaluation of one small piece of a complicated life in isolation from the whole.

Now it could be that a grade on a Hindi quiz is useful in that limited arena: how am I doing in acquiring vocabulary?  Similarly the perfection or non-perfection of a triple chocolate with peppermint birthday cake may merit a grade of A+ or D in the arena of my baking skills.  But, the value of the cake is not only in how closely it resembles the photo in the magazine.  The cake is intended as a gift to the birthday kid and a message about how cherished he is.  If the layers are uneven and the peppermint garnish a bit stale, that might indicate deficiency in the baking department but it does not necessarily make the baker a bad mom.

Life is just so much richer and multi-layered than any letter grade can measure or convey.  I don't like grades because they tempt us to believe that such a small part of our activity is more important than the whole.

vision

"Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking." p. 8 Black Elk Speaks

Sometimes it is wiser to sleep than to stay awake too long fretting.  In my childhood we were told that homework not completed by 9 p.m. had to wait until morning.  We were trained to go to bed early and get a good night's rest.  In my sleep the tricky story problem about a train that left Chicago at 7 a.m. traveling west at 30 miles an hour, etc. was likely to have resolved itself; or, my unconscious imagination found its way through the tangle.

Sometimes our individual dreams and aspirations are more inspiring, even more true, than the carefully made plans that purport to take account of every variable as if our lives were merely story problems to be solved.  The dream can sustain us through unexpected obstacles and lead us to surprising places.  Having set out to be a librarian, one might end up as a baker.

Sometimes our national dreams are more authentic and honorable than the way we spend our waking hours protecting small treasures or being anxious over illusionary threats.

musical democrat, religious pluralism, non-polarization

"So one night the conductor of the high school orchestra took us both to Red Rocks to listen to some group of pros--I didn't know who they were--I didn't care.  Dad says I'm a democrat, as long as the music is played well, I'll listen to anything."

This is little quotation is from  two paragraphs included in a (Easter) holiday letter I received recently. (Allen Heggen is the author.)  The longer second paragraph describes the music and its effect on the speaker: "pure joy."


And this evoked Diana Eck's four characteristics of  religious pluralism which are:

1. energetic engagement with diversity
2. active seeking of understanding across lines of difference
3. encounter of commitments 
4. based on dialogue

This young musician, an aspiring jazz drummer was deeply engaged by the classical professional musicians.  A 'musical democrat', he was willing to be drawn in across the differences of musical genre and to encounter the music to which these players were committed.  And, perhaps, his rapturous listening was a sort of dialogue.  The last sentence.  "...then the chimes ring out three notes, and the strings sing again, pure joy, and the trumpets and horns and trombones and tuba punctuate the ecstasy and I know what I have to do, I know what I need to do with my life, oh, I known who I , who I want to be." 

So, lastly, the hope that Robert Putnam is right in American Grace.  Personal encounters across lines of difference are a counter to divisiveness and polarization.  Being a democrat about music, being willing to listen to anything played well, can be a model for being a democrat is social life.

"found" quotation: Democrcacy vs. Fundamentalism

"Fundamentalism, understood as an uncompromising stance, and democracy defined as a government by consensus and compromise, is by its very nature antithetical. . . . Insofar as democracy is understood as majority rule with minority rights guaranteed, there is no place for a minority, or even a majority for that matter, to let its own private writ run large."  Krishna K. Tummala in "Democracy vs. Fundamentalism: Religious Politics of the BJP in India" from religious Fundamentalism in the Contemporary World (2004)

This quotation from the fragment of this article included in the reading a student selected for my seminar, "One Nation; Many Religions."  We were meant to, and did, read the chapter on Islamophia and Western Media by Zohair Husain and David M. Rosenbaum.  Those authors include the observation that entertainment media, i.e. movies, present Islam and Muslims using the patterns conflict between cowboys and Indians in old western movies.  The odd juxtaposition of the assertion that consensus and  compromise are constitutive of democracy and this reminder of mythical power of conflicts in American culture was a bit jarring.  Of course this deep assumption that the powers of good and the powers of evil are engaged in competition, even armed conflict, is also characteristic of apocalyptic thought.  In a slightly altered way it is present in the patterns of personal religious conversion from sinner to saved believer and in the patters of social reform from corrupt systems to more ideal ones.

The question then arises, based on these sweeping generalizations,  if our deep cultural patterns of thought are fundamentalist in this sense of uncompromising competition between right and wrong, then how can we expect to operate a form of government that requires compromise?

Perhaps the definition of democracy posited here is inaccurate.  Perhaps majority rule is indeed a winner take all proposition.  And if so, are we suggesting that the power of numbers is what makes something right?  And is that so different from the power of force makes something right?

Back to the cowboys and the indians, back to Gast's painting:  there the popular view was that the might of guns, telegraph, and trains corresponded to another sort of right articulated as "Manifest Destiny."

USA Human Development index

link to map

Check out this fascinating display of information about quality of life across the nation.  The single index combines three factors: long, healthy life, access to knowledge, and standard of living.  Minnesota does quite well: 5.74 with the highest state figure at 6.30.   (Clearly snow in April is not part of the calculations.)

No doubt this index is linked in some way to notions of American Dreams of a "good life."

Anticipating our next focus on Black Elk and our general reading about Native Americans in the 19th century, I looked at the "stacks" page and discovered that Native American men have the lowest number by far: less than 3 on a scale up to 10. 

NOT more with less, just less: grumpy observation about stress

The St. Olaf campus is always plastered with posters about worthy causes and events entertaining and educational.  Many of these offerings are student generated.  Often they are connection with "Awareness Week."  Today I walked through a hallway covered with posters about stress.

Okay, I get it.  Students are more stressed these days.  So are faculty.  Some of that stress is good; without it we'd all stay in bed rather than putting our best efforts into our work both for classes and outside of classes.  And some of that stress is bad; it makes us want to stay in bed all day rather than putting any effort into classes or other admirable activities.

So, I'm reminded of Robert Bellah's urging us to "pay attention" to worthy subjects rather than be distracted by unworthy ones or obsessed by worthy ones.  His advise causes me to wonder how much stress we create for ourselves by our obsessions or distractions.  Might we reduce the stress level a bit by having an "Un-awareness Week"?

Isn't that sort of what many 19th century college founders had in mind when they located their new schools in the country-side away from the temptations and dangers of the city?  Let me be clear in my grumpiness, I'm not asserting that all those good causes and activities are dangers in themselves or temptations to immorality.  Neither am I suggesting that we abandon lectures, concerts, films, rehearsals, and the like entirely.   I'm only musing about how we might react if for a week each of us paid attention to half as many things as we do in a usual week.

a little boasting about my students

Yesterday I was part of a panel on the humanities at St. Olaf as part of admitted student days.  My appointed task, of course, to talk about the study of religion.  I did that willingly, making points about the importance of the human impulse to find and make meaning, the value of learning both about and from religion, the realities of BTS requirements and the opportunities for additional study, and just what I think we mean by theological literacy in the early 21st century.

And, I managed to also talk about the importance of the liberal arts as a connected, complex approach to learning that is so well illustrated by the work AmCon students do both in class and in their blogs.  Among the several benefits we have reaped from those blogs, I am especially grateful for the window they have provided me on the students' connective thought as they comment on the echoes between Am Con and other aspects of their education and lives.  This informed reflectiveness is a habit of mind that will serve them, and their world, well in years to come.

To talk or not to talk; to pay taxes or not to pay . . . .

Religion Dispatches

Julie Ingersoll writes about opposition to the anti-bullying, day of silence just observed at schools across the nation.  Her observations about the conflicting commitments and complications are reminiscent of our classroom discussion about Thoreau's non-tax protest.  Students asserted that not paying taxes was doing nothing, or very little, to make his position known and to change government policies.  Here we have silence as a mode of claiming freedom of expression and demands that students speak rather than remain silent in protest of bullying.  In addition the suggestion that other students stay home in order to be sparred the pressure of being in the same room with silent classmates has the consequence of reducing funding for that day.

All of which highlights the complexity of democracy which is not as simple or as clear cut as asking everyone who agrees to raise their hands.

Apples from Fruitlands

At the end of her satire "Transcendental Wild Oats" Louisa May Alcott suggests that perhaps rather than Fruitlands the communal experiment her family participated in should have been called Apple Slump.  The dessert is such an ordinary one, without any pretensions, that I wonder what she intended by this remark.  Is it that the experiment was too pretentious?  Is it that out of lemons (or apples) one ought to make lemonade (or a tasty, if ordinary, dessert)?.

Possibly Louisa May Alcott's Apple Slump

Serving Size: 8

Filling:

6 tart apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

Topping:
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp double-acting baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
Toss together the apples, sugar and spices and place in a buttered baking dish. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes. While this is baking, prepare the topping, starting by sifting together the dry ingredients. In separate bowl, mix the egg, milk and butter and add this mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring till just combined. Spread the topping over apples and bake at 350F for an additional 25 minutes. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Time

Karin's  Blog: Time: "If there's something I wish I had more of this week, it would be time. With room draw, registration, and tests this week, it's been bu..."

Here Karin puts one of the quotable and much quoted passages from Walden into the context of this week of the semester.  Thanks to her for doing so and for demonstrating why these writers are appropriate at this stage of the semester: a reminder that our busy lives and plans are perhaps of less ultimate significance than we are tempted to believe.

A similar sentiment was expressed by a more conventionally Christian hymn writer, Isaac Watts, in his hymn "O God Our Help in Ages Past""

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears us all away;
we fly, forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.

Its called an American gold finch

. . . . so perhaps I have reason to post this photo of the sort of bird I saw eating thistle seed outside our window this morning.  Since the temperature has dropped and snow is predicted for the weekend of mid-April, the bright color of this unexpected visitor cheers me to the day ahead.

Wind through the trees

From our back deck, when the leaves are off, I can see the St. Olaf wind turbine.  Now that we're having some mild weather I have sat out there to do my reading, mostly Emerson and Thoreau of late.  As I read these two on nature, I see the trees, Heath Creek down the steep bank, and birds.  I recall Thoreau's observation that he has caged himself in the bird's home rather than caging them in his.  And I ponder his comments on the train that he could hear as it passed nearby wondering how he might respond to the wind turbine that I see through the bare tree branches.  Is this another way to bend nature to our desires?  Might we do better to just reduce our need for electricity by sleeping when the sun is down and being satisfied to write with a pencil such as made in his family's factory?


I'm always torn when reading these works, torn between admiration for the seeming purity and perfection of intention and my skepticism about both the authors and the possibility of such direct contact with the universe and moral excellence.  There seems to be a whiff of privilege in the possibility that one could abandon responsibility for deliberate life in the woods or brush aside the obligations of social relationships in favor being a majority of one.

Lessons from reading Walden with American Conversation students

1)  Living deliberately is not easy.  Paying attention (a la Bellah) requires mental energy and discipline.  It may require saying no (a la sabbath practices recommended by  authors such as Barbara Brown Taylor).  Living deliberately is not easy.  It may require doing more physical labor rather than less.

2) Living awake may require getting enough sleep to be able to be up early in the morning and then staying awake through the day. Here HDT is in agreement with Franklin.

3) Living deliberately and awake may include being willing to stop paying attention to many things that other people want us to pay attention to and to be open to being surprised.  Deliberation is not the same thing as having a detailed five-year plan; indeed it may involve abandoning a plan in favor of a life. Here HDT seems out of step with Franklin.

4) Perhaps there are more to come, but this is what I have time for before my next obligation.

The Puritans and Emerson Argue

Katie's blog:: "Emerson: Hello, my fellow citizens of this beautiful world. I have come from the future. Do not be alarmed, it was a very ..."

Perhaps this speaks for itself!  Good work Katie, you have indeed entered fully into American Conversations.

If we want follow-up, it might be to go back to the article about activist pietism to consider how these two fit into that interpretive scheme.  Does one represent the stream of pursuit of "perfect freedom" and the other "perfect morality/obedience"?   Certainly there is a linage that flows from the Puritans to the Unitarians (which RWE was) to the Transcendentalists (which he becomes).  But, is this a linage with a 90 degree angle in it?

conversing about conversation

Our conversation (de-briefing), on Monday, about discussion prompted at least one student posting as well as the comments in class.  Some nuggets to recall:

1. In-class discussion goes best when participants are prepared.  This can happen before class as well as in class.  
2. Conversation is more satisfying when it has a focus.  This can emerge as the conversation unfolds or be provided at the outset by a question or assertion. 
3. Participation is more lively when the topic matters: that is, both when the people are passionate (to some degree) and when the outcome has consequences.  To the latter I add this: the consequences might be simply better understanding or more dramatic changes.
4. Some folks prefer to have a position and stick to it; others enjoy trying out a variety of views.  The first might be linked to conversation intended to persuade and the second to conversation intended to generate understanding.
5. add your own . . .. 
6. think about what you can do to strengthen your contributions and the conversations

Billy Collins and Sarah on cigarettes, trains, and the cost

Sarah's American Conversation Commonplace Blog: Billy Collins, cigarettes are bad.: "The Best Cigarette by Billy Collins There are many that I miss having sent my last one out a car window sparking along the road one ni..."

How could I have forgotten this great poem that ties together our early discussion about tobacco and our current interest in trains?!?  Thanks to Sarah for the reminder and for the comments that do a lovely job of drawing out the similarities.

But, we ought not miss that Collins is using the cigarette and the train to convey something about productivity and creativity.  He is not using the train to point out the health hazards of the cigarette; rather he is using the cigarette to signify the progress of the train and to link it to his own creative energy on that day. 

I also notice that in this case Collins is not in agreement with Qoheleth who uses a word like smoke or vapor, but often translated as "vanity," to dismiss what appears to be progress.

getting a collaborative project organized: one image

Toward An Introduction to World Lutheranism (before the bird chewed our plan)

Volunteering, long-term care, memories of bowling and of China

Athena's American Conversation: Bowling in Life Story: "Every Tuesday afternoon I go to the hospital to volunteer at the the Long Term Care Center. I enjoy spending time with the residents, and I'..."

You MUST read this post by Athena!  Here we have liberal arts education working in so many fine ways.  First, Athena is a volunteer at a long-term care facility as well as a student; so we see her civic engagement.  Second, because she has been reading about bowling and the decline of social capital, when one of the residents begins to recall her happy memories of bowling in an league and her disappointment that her kids didn't want to play, Athena has a larger social context for the individual experience.  Third, all this prompts her cross-cultural comments about  the state of bowling in China.    I'd say it is a strike (in the bowling sense, not the baseball one.)

WW: sleeping democracy and spring

Whitman wrote that democracy in America was still sleeping.  Here in Minnesota we are slowly waking from the winter into spring.  There are signs: that single robin, a large flock of tundra swans, tips of green flowers poking through last year's dismal grass, slack-liners in front of the Commons.  While it is the case that the news from North Africa reminds us of the democracy we tend to take for granted; it is also true that the rising of the sap in the maples and the longer sunlight remind us of our part in it and urge us out of slumber into participation.

Coffee for Tea: poetry month

With thanks to Poetry 180 for this lovely poem that rescues both tea and coffee from political rancor and restores them to symbols of human sociability and good will. Rios gives us access to an afternoon well spent. Perhaps its only value was the pleasure that was both liniment and balm, a sort of healing.

Coffee in the Afternoon 

Alberto Ríos

It was afternoon tea, with tea foods spread out
Like in the books, except that it was coffee.

She made a tin pot of cowboy coffee, from memory,
That's what we used to call it, she said, cowboy coffee.

The grounds she pinched up in her hands, not a spoon,
And the fire on the stove she made from a match.

I sat with her and talked, but the talk was like the tea food,
A little of this and something from the other plate as well,

Always with a napkin and a thank-you. We sat and visited
And I watched her smoke cigarettes

Until the afternoon light was funny in the room,
And then we said our good-byes. The visit was liniment,

The way the tea was coffee, a confusion plain and nice,
A balm for the nerves of two people living in the world,

A balm in the tenor of its language, which spoke through our hands
In the small lifting of our cups and our cakes to our lips.

It was simplicity, and held only what it needed.
It was a gentle visit, and I did not see her again.

from Atlanta Review (Volume VII, Number 1. Fall / Winter 2000)

Copyright 2000 by Poetry

Are trains still a symbol of progress?

 Why Liberals Love Trains - Newsweek

In this recent editorial George Will argues that high speed trains are a symbol of what is wrong with Progressive politics today. I'm fascinated that a mode of transportation that once symbolized the possibilities of westward expansion and increased personal mobility, albeit at a cost, now is offered as a symbol of government placing undue restrictions on personal choice. 

Isn't it possible that having more public transit would give more people more choices and more opportunities, for example to get from their homes to their employment?  All those years of graduate school when I did not have a car and the weather or the distance inhibited walking or biking, public transportation got me to church, to my volunteer site, to my job, to the grocery store, to the movies, even once or twice all the way to Fergus Falls. 

Trains: in Northfield! Exhibit

The History of Northfield’s Railways.

Here is a link to a current exhibit at the  Northfield Historical Society, located on Bridge Square.  And following here, a brief description.

an electric train from Northfield to the twin cities was proposed

Over 60 pictures and 40 objects document the significant Northfield events and stories around key moments during nine time periods from 1865 to the present, providing information of interest to train buffs, historians, preservationists and those interested in Northfield development. On exhibit are maps, as early as 1884, of the old west side that built up around the railroad. Activities for children include an informational scavenger hunt and a free train whistle when completed.

In view of the attention we'll be giving to trains in the next weeks, a walk down-town to see the exhibit seems like a good way to spend a couple of hours.  (Two hours because of the walk and stopping for ice cream; the exhibit it self won't take more than 30 minutes if you read slowly.)

Reading as paying attention

from Powell's Books: Review-A-Day

The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time by David L. Ulin, a review from Rain Taxi by Kevin Smokler.

 

What do you pay attention to?  What can capture your attention so that you are immune from distraction, perhaps for hours at a time?  Is there anything?

• A conversation with a dear friend about topics deep or trivial?
• An exciting movie watched in the theater?
• A long run along a country road?
• Maybe, if you are like me, a book to read on a Saturday afternoon?

When I was an elementary  school child I could easily lose myself in a book.  I would pay such deep attention to one of those blue-covered biographies of figures from American history that I would not hear the bell signaling time for recess.  Today is happens less often, but it still can.  A book can transport me out of the present time and place, directing all my attention through the page to another life.

Smokler's review suggests that Ulin's book helps us to think about the importance of this possibility primarily using Ulin's experiences of it. So, the book is not an exhaustive exploration of the ways that reading might promote paying attention.  Nonetheless, it appears to invite us to consider how reading could combat our frequent experience of distraction.

 

 

 

 

Redefining the Dream: more from the BBC series

Here is reporting on polling that contributes to alternative articulations of the "American Dream."

1) Traditional materialists
2) Secular spiritualists
3) Deferred Dreamers
4) Dreamful Dead



The story begins this way:
Veteran US pollster John Zogby says . . . .many have redefined what that dream means. Steadily over the past decade, I have witnessed in my polling a fundamental redefinition of the American Dream, even for that matter, the American character.  While fewer Americans believe that the American Dream still exists for themselves or for the middle class than before (57% compared with 74% just prior to the Great Recession), more Americans say that the American Dream means something different to them than it did before.

He also asserts that the generation now under 30 years of age are a major force in the increasing percentage of Americans who conceptualize the American Dream in terms other than getting more for themselves.  Rather, he finds that they see that "life [is] about being genuine, about achieving a legacy larger than one's self, about leaving this earth a better place for family, community, and planet."

If  Zogby is correct, then I want to quote Agree, quoting Dylan: "may you be forever young." 

Bob Dylan, non-linear paths, and the Nobel Prize

Thursday St. Olaf gave an honorary degree to Peter Agree, the Nobel Prize winner, chemist, and son of a former St. Olaf professor (of chemistry).   Two things about the event struck me: one in the commendation read by Matt Richey and the other in Agree's remarks.  [The event will be available at www.stolaf.edu in the streaming archives, but as of this morning is not yet posted.]

thanks Enich for this photo: just what I wanted

1)  Matt used the term "non-linear path" to describe Agree's career.  He studied chemistry, but he also traveled around Europe and Asia.  He didn't set out to win a Noble Prize.  In fact, the thing he won for was discovered almost by accident.  Yes, I thought!  There must be room in all our planning and our rubrics and our instructions and our assignments and goals for surprises.  Perhaps this is one of the messages from folks like the Hudson River School painters and Transcendentalists

2) Agree made a strong case for the liberal arts and ended with some lyrics from Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" as a blessing.  He suggested that the virtues extolled there -- may you always do for others, etc.-- are to be prized and that youth helps us remember the ideals that motivate our study and our work.

Both of these comments are important to our thinking about and participating in the American Dream.  The second is a reminder of the ideals and most laudable aspirations of the dream; the first, that pursuit of such a dream is not always best approached directly.  Sometimes the unexpected and unsought is what turns us in the right direction or leads us toward our goal.  Indeed, sometimes it is even the barrier to our plans, the seeming encounter with "un-freedom," that opens the way.