Kinds of Poetry - Tolkien vs. Jackson

Jackson apparently thinks the characters Tolkien gives us are too simply good to be fully believable to modern audiences, and so he feels obligated to "complicate" them, to give them internal conflicts other than the ones they actually have, in the hopes that we will better be able to relate to them.

I'm quoting from this article in the Nov/Dec 2013 Touchstone Magazine, in which Donald T. Williams explains how literature, while delighting us with its art, is more powerful than history or philosophy to nurture our moral vision, or to corrupt us with false images.

With the help of quotes from Sir Philip Sidney, who wrote Apology for Poetry in the sixteenth century, he shows how "Tolkien was very consciously and deliberately following the literary tradition that flows down to us from Sidney through Dr. Johnson and C. S. Lewis."

Peter Jackson the filmmaker seems to be flowing in a different stream. But he is an artist, and of course will impart his own soul to his work. I wouldn't expect him to give us The Rings, because that has already been done, and he is not J.R.R. Tolkien. But it is unfortunate that he has changed things to the degree and in the directions he has. Williams points out specific ways in which the characters who inspired us in the books disappoint us in the movies, and makes these general remarks:

By this process of negative moral transformation, in other words, we reach the place where beloved characters are unrecognizable to Tolkien's fans, and those fans feel betrayed. And they are right to feel so, though mostly they do not understand why. It is because the difference between the books and the movies is not just one of necessary adaptation to a different medium. It is that the author consciously followed the Sidneyan tradition while the adaptor is either ignorant of it or doesn't understand it or has rejected it.

Read the whole article here.

Mountain Air - smoke and writing

GJ in the Tuolumne River

I returned this week from a solitary trip to the mountains, where I stayed in a cabin off the grid for four nights. I could easily write a book about my five days of journeying and lodging, probably a philosophical novel. Or would it be a how-to treatise with packing lists and suggested activities and prayers?

I'm always saying, "I could write a book about ____." And it just occurred to me that I am always writing, as I endlessly analyze events as to their significance, and organize my thoughts, composing and reworking the lines in my mind. If I have a pencil or keyboard handy and hands free I might scribble down some of it, often in a notebook or in the margin of the book I'm reading. But the process has begun long before that.

It wouldn't be a lie exactly, when people ask me what I do, to say, "I write." Because I'm a process-oriented type, I can't see a book ever resulting from my work, but no pressure -- no one is clamoring for a discussion of the things in my pocket or the interrelatedness of the last ten books I read.

I thought I might do some sort of scribbling during my getaway, but I didn't make much visible progress on my "books." Many things that are fascinating to my self-centered self consumed my hours and my thoughts, and I do want to reflect on some of that here, hopefully without rambling on and on.

Evening with brown haze in north

Today I just want to mention one sad thing about my experience: Smoke. The brown cinders from that horrid Rim Fire, the largest wildfire on record in the Sierra Nevada, had drifted south and made the air murky around Our Lake. One day was so bad that my eyes and throat and head hurt from the pollution. But I didn't have to come home early, because it cleared up a little by the next morning.

Another bad air day

I can't imagine what the landscape will look like, the next time we visit our beloved Yosemite and drive through the scorched forests. One thing I know: On August 25th the fire destroyed the Berkeley City Camp Tuolumne where my sisters and I as children vacationed with our grandparents.

It has been many decades since I did water ballet in that swimming hole in the Tuolumne River, or even visited the camp, and it won't change my life that it is wiped out. But what a heartache for the people who spent dozens of formative summers in the context of that special place, and those for whom the rustic cabin life in an idyllic setting was a very recent tradition and expectation. I'm very thankful it was only smoke that invaded our family's lake and village.

Camp Tuolumne in the old days

I communicate vintage style in small bits.

This week the discussion of Hidden Art of Homemaking is on chapter 9 - Writing Prose and Poetry. I haven't kept up with the conversation at Ordo Amoris for a week or more, and for this chapter I'm just re-posting this from August 2009. Don't be misled by the now-obsolete references to postage rates!

Old-Fashioned Correspondence

To introduce the postal theme-- and for a few moments just forget about the concept of mail that can't be carried in from the mail box in one's real hands--I show you this T-shirt we bought in Yosemite last month, at the post office. It was the best clothing deal in the park, and an unusual and historic design: a reproduction of a stamp that was issued in 1936, showing--Yes! my beloved El Capitan! If you have ever beheld that rock I trust you won't find its frequent appearance here tiresome.

I mostly wanted to tell about postcard-writing, and the shirt isn't very pertinent to that...though it just occurred to me that one might buy the shirt at the Yosemite post office and then write a postcard sort of message on the fabric before mailing it in its more personalized form. I don't think I'll run right back there and pick up a few more, though.

When I was a child, my maternal grandmother would send postcards to me and my siblings from wherever she was traveling. I recall receiving word from Turkey, Norway, Mexico, and Hawaii. She also wrote very entertaining letters from home. As she has been a major role model for me, it's no wonder that I feel it a natural activity as a human being to share my life in this way with those I love.

It's easy when on a journey, away from the usual housekeeping duties, to remember friends and family and take the opportunity to let them know I do think of them. A trip just doesn't satisfy if I haven't dropped a dozen cards in the letter-box.

This picture was taken at the Grand Canyon. When others in our party were hiking down into the gorge one morning, I walked all over the place looking for a picnic table with a view, from which I might write my cards. That was not to be found, but in a sheltered courtyard I did find a good spot, away from wind and next to a big stone with rain water pooled in a depression on the top. I didn't notice this rock until I was startled by a raven who swooped down to drink.

Postage "just" went up again. It now costs 28 cents to mail a postcard. On those first envelopes carrying my grandmother's address in the corner, the stamps on the other corner said "4 cents." I can't imagine that a postcard was more than a penny.

One thing I inherited from my father recently was the stamps from his desk drawer. There are some pretty old ones, from when a letter was 25 cents. If they still have stickum on them I use that, and if not, I apply a little Elmer's glue and save my pennies by using these old stamps.

I also "inherit" stamps from my father-in-law, who gets them (less and less, now that he responds infrequently) from charitable organizations that want him to send donations. They come to him already sticking to envelopes, but I cut them off and glue them on to our own bill payments. Some of my collection are in the photograph above. If you want to see the stamps up close, just click on the picture and you can see an enlarged version.

In California it seems that every town is a tourist town. At least, I find postcards in all the stores. But in some locales, the market has yet to be discovered, and I have to make my own postcards, which I learned to do from Martha Stewart, who gives us this handy template and instructions for using it. I've made these one-of-a-kind cards with photos of someone's backyard, or a lake that is small and unknown, or a town that is seemingly too plain for the professional postcard people.

But why restrict this fun habit to traveling days? I started sending postcards to the grandchildren and friends any old time. A postcard is small enough that I can find time to write a few words while the iron or computer is warming up or perhaps even in the middle of the night when sleep won't come. I don't think old-fashioned correspondence of this sort will ever become obsolete or unwelcome.

I consider my difficulties.

My current difficulties stem from these realities:

1) The world is so full of a number of things
    I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
     This rhyme has played in my head a million times since I learned it as a little girl. Maybe even then I suspected in my childish way the layers of truth in the sing-song, the irony of too-muchness.

2) I have been traveling a lot, and that brings me into contact with even more numbers of "things," like real people, people in books, ideas in books, and new places I've visited. This summer, for example, I sat on airplanes for more than ten hours, and many of those hours were spent in the company of Alain de Botton as I read his book The Art of Travel. As I drifted off to sleep at night in a house not my own, I was soaking up the coastal delights of George Howe Colt's childhood summer place, The Big House.

In the spaces between these literary adventures my more physical self was learning to reach right instead of left for a stirring spoon, and to relax in the hot tub of the Eastern summer atmosphere.

3) I need -- o.k., I feel the need! -- to write about at least some of the experiences in order to process the information and be restored from the overload/exhaustion of so much excitement. As Alain and I were musing together over the meaning of our travels, I scribbled notes in the margins and made a list in the back of the book of all the blog post ideas that were generated from our "discussion." Every night for a week or two I have spent at least fifteen minutes writing and rewriting in my mind, in the dark, my review of the Colt book.

Even Archimandrite Sophrony is reported to have said, "Arrange whatever pieces come your way." I don't know what the context of this quote was, but the urge is a basic, human, compelling one, and applies to just about everything I know.

The Milky Way

4) When I am on the trip, just returned from a trip, or packing my bags and boxes to set off again, there is less time than ever for this kind of writing, and also less mental energy. When I hear Thomas Mann say, "A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people," I feel that I am certainly one of those. I could coin my own saying: "A homemaker-writer with a large family is somebody for whom writing is even more more more difficult than it is for other people."

I hope I am not complaining, by using the word difficulties. I could say challenges, or pieces. Or thoughts, as in "Bring every thought captive to Christ." In my mind I have more challenging pieces of thoughts and prayers and connections to be made than there are dust bunnies floating up and down the stairs.

This morning it all seemed too much, as I add another item to the list of things that make us happy as kings: We are going to the cabin! There will be stimulating conversation on the way, as our numbers will be doubled by the presence of our dear Art and Herm. (That will add pieces, to be sure.)

Stars will shine crisply in the black sky at night, and in the mornings chipmunks will scurry in the brush below the house. Humans will eat cookies and bacon and drink coffee on the deck while we watch the hummingbirds squabble, and we'll paddle our canoe quietly over the lake.

(Past posts about our Sierra cabin: 2009  2010  and  2011 )

Though I have picked up only a few pieces here to tie in my bundle, it's been quite comforting. Now I can face my lists of more practical things like dinner menus, shopping needs, and what to put in my book bag. That won't be too difficult.

Sorting lentils and words and....

A Woman Cleaning Lentils

A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.
A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.
A green one, a black one, a green one, a black. A stone.
A lentil, a lentil, a stone, a lentil, a lentil, a word.
Suddenly a word. A lentil.
A lentil, a word, a word next to another word. A sentence.
A word, a word, a word, a nonsense speech.
Then an old song.
Then an old dream.
A life, another life, a hard life. A lentil. A life.
An easy life. A hard life, Why easy? Why hard?
Lives next to each other. A life. A word. A lentil.
A green one, a black one, a green one, a black one, pain.
A green song, a green lentil, a black one, a stone.
A lentil, a stone, a stone, a lentil.  

— Zahrad

I found this provocative poem on this blog post, and have been keeping it in the back of my mind until today when I read a comment by Celeste on this blog post, about her own need to "re-sort."

The household and garden chores that I pile up around me every day, the practical love for husband and children and grandchildren, the worship of God in His Church such as I enjoyed this morning, the good books and blogs I read, the writing I am compelled to do -- they all seem to be represented and connected for me in the images of these lines.

Here I am, once again in the middle of trying-not-to-be-frantic trip preparations, but God gave me an extra hour this afternoon, which meant I could eat some leftover frittata and read a comment on a blog, and look what happened! More sorting of thoughts and realities, with the unspoken urge to order my affections aright and find His peace and strength for the next few hours and days.

Suddenly a word. 

A life.

Grandma didn't make pesto.

My grandma of renown was no slacker, and she was the person who taught me by example how to prepare for a trip. When my sisters and I stayed with her in summertime, we usually went with Grandma and Grandpa on a week's outing to a cabin or camp in the mountains.

Everything was ship-shape on the home front when we drove off early enough in the morning to have breakfast at the Tracy Inn on the way. There was not a speck of dust on the furniture, and the beds had been made up with fresh sheets as soon as we were out of them. Certainly Grandma would have made sure that Grandpa deadheaded his prizewinning flowers.

Liam, whom I'll see tomorrow!

But Grandma would never have thought to drive down the state to visit one grandchild for a few nights, and then turn around to fly across the country the very next week to sojourn with a passel of other grandchildren for more than two weeks. The way I am doing. I have to keep reminding myself that in a myriad of ways I am not Grandma.

I am blessed to the point of unbelief having so many grandchildren, and Grandma only had a few of us whom she saw twice a year. Grandma didn't do the gardening, and she didn't write any blog posts, though I daresay the wonderful letters she wrote are worth more per hour invested than what I put out.

If there had been basil growing in the back yard, I know she would have arranged things so that the pesto was made at least a couple of days before departure, giving her time to sweep and mop the kitchen and get to bed at a reasonable hour the night before. She wouldn't be complaining, because she liked traveling and had Everything Under Control.

Not me. I have mostly been whining about everything, including the reality of all the work undone and how I hate leaving home. I was standing at the sink this afternoon whimpering as I pulled leaves off stems, when it hit me that making pesto is one of my most favorite things to do. How wonderful is it that I have a garden that grows basil, from which a woman can create one of the wonders of the culinary world?

And the people in my life -- oh, my! Preparing for and going on trips with my grandma was one of the happiest activities of my childhood. She was so good to provide that for us. Hugging and holding my children and grandchildren is necessary food for the maintenance of cup-running-over happiness. Right now I don't really care if the floor is still dirty and the bed unmade (and a hundred other negatives I won't waste time listing even to myself) when I drive off tomorrow morning. What do you know -- I'm not Grandma!

If Grandma had been washing basil and found a Japanese beetle in the sink, she'd have said, "Tch, tch!" with disgust, but I saw it as a photo opportunity. I could feel this way because this summer I'm not growing green beans. Japanese beetles have ravaged many a crop of green beans here, and in the past I developed a quickness in squishing them between my fingers.

Grandma would not have written a letter or recipe or anything the night before a trip. But writing is also one of my favorite things to do. So here I am.

I see that I blogged about pesto three years ago without giving my recipe, so I will put it up this time:

PESTO

3 cups packed basil leaves

2 large cloves garlic

1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts 

1/3 to 1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Mix in the food processor, adding the oil and cheese at the last. Add more salt if you like, or more oil if you need it to be runnier. I've had this keep for weeks in the fridge, and years in the freezer, and still be flavorful.
 

It's probably easy to guess what is another favorite activity I will indulge in before the sun goes down: gardening. I need to spread some manure around where I thinned the perennials yesterday. Maybe I will run out of energy to clean up all the basil-tinged oil smeared around the kitchen before I fall into bed, but it's very comforting to have a few little tubs of that tasty stuff in the freezer when we haven't even got to August.

Grandma wouldn't understand my style of housekeeping, but she would love me anyway.

April Has Nearly Blown Through

April is almost past, but we are still in the Paschal season, thank God, and I say, CHRIST is RISEN! Indeed He is risen!

Since Pascha I have been able to spend time debriefing myself on our trip to Maui that was completed a month ago today, and I'm ready to start sharing with the world some of the highlights of that exalted holiday excursion. The posts will be labeled with "Maui Diary," so that anyone not interested the topic can know to pass on by and wait a couple of weeks for something different.

Yes, I'm afraid I do have about two weeks' worth of posts on this one trip!

So...here we go....

Bog Cotton and Other Book Encounters

It's been a long time since I've posted a real book review. I read, but never feel that I can do justice to any book. If it's bad, just what makes it bad? If it's at all good, how do I assess it thoroughly and convey the worth of it? I don't, obviously, do any of that lately.

Still, it is no fun keeping all the books to myself. So I'm going to try brief mentions of a stack of them, and tell only a little bit of what got my attention. So as to Get Something Done.

Bog cotton by Loch Glenbrittle

A Shine of Rainbows is one of many enjoyable books by Lillian Beckwith. Everything I've read by her has been set in the Hebrides Islands of Scotland, and most of her writing is light and humorous. This one was more serious, about an orphan who finds a good home, and the unwilling adoptive father who is eventually greatly helped by having a son. The thing I liked best about the story, which was fairly predictable and mostly an aid to falling asleep at night, was the mention of "bog cotton."

When I read that name immediately a picture came to my mind of the plant that Pippin and I saw in Scotland years ago. I scribbled the name on a post-it note next to my bed and months later got around to looking it up; indeed, it is the very plant, a fairytale sort we encountered on the Isle of Skye as we began to hike up from Loch Glenbrittle into the Cuillin Mountains.

It's also called Common Cottongrass: Eriophorum angustifolium. This plant is in the sedge family and is said to grow all over North America, but I've never encountered it before or since. These photos are by Pippin, from way back then.

Nothing to Do But Stay: My Pioneer Mother is by Carrie Young, the author of a book possibly more famous, The Wedding Dress. It's a small book about growing up in a community of Norwegian immigrants in the Dakotas. The pioneer mother, Carrine Berg, grew up in the last decades of the 19th Century; the author graduated from college in 1944. Carrine was a plucky lady who homesteaded on the plains as a single woman, then married another homesteader in her mid-30's and managed to bear six children, of whom the author was the last.

All the stories of these hardworking people were well-told, but perhaps my favorite, that made me laugh out loud, was about when Carrine decided to raise turkeys as a moneymaking enterprise, in spite of the fact that her husband did not like the meat. The author and her sister were to "keep track of the turkeys" all summer long for four years, until their mother quit the business. "We soon learned that turkeys are congenitally indisposed to the principle of herding. Neither are they compatible with chasing, shooing, or rounding up."

I also enjoyed reading about the way this extended family celebrated July 4th, as a children's holiday focused on churning and eating as much ice cream as they could all day long. The vicarious experience of their family life makes me want to read The Wedding Dress, too.

Dust to Dust or Ashes to Ashes by Alvin Schmidt is a historical critique of the practice of cremation. This is likely the most poorly written book I've read in my life. The main points were well taken, but repeated over and over, with whole passages quoted almost verbatim from one chapter to another. The author has decent credentials, and I wonder why the publisher did not insist on some editing. Even the syntax is convoluted and confusing, and though Schmidt mentions the Orthodox view on cremation and the book is (I was ashamed to see) published by an Orthodox publishing company, he is not Orthodox himself and fails to convey the Orthodox understanding of burial.

Since I read that book, I bought another, newer book that promises to be a better treatment of the important subject: A Christian Ending: A Handbook for Burial in the Ancient Christian Tradition, by J. Mark and Elizabeth J. Barna. I also attended a lecture and discussion of the subject at a nearby monastery, which included the reading of many Bible passages that lament the breaking and grinding of human bones. One of the unchristian things about modern cremation is that it includes the grinding up of the bones. I still hope that some day I will find the time to organize all my thoughts on this subject.

Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman I had read about 20 years ago, a public library copy. This time I ordered my own book online and got around to reading it when my brain was too tired for anything more strenuous. "Mr. Mike" is a Canadian mountie who takes his very young city-raised bride to the northern reaches of America, where they live through a lot of adventure and suffering along with the natives whom they often serve. It seems to be based on the life of a real woman, whose story is told honestly enough to be believable and to keep me turning the pages. I was glad to read it a second time but probably won't again.

Echoes of a Native Land by Serge Schmemann: I picked up this book because it's written by the son of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, one of my favorite authors. Serge was able to spend a decade living in the land of his forefathers and even in the very village where his mother's people lived before the Russian Revolution, and this is the fascinating account of the genealogical history and the current residents, against the backdrop of 200 years of Russian politics and culture. Schmemann was a journalist for the New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the reunification of Germany. He's always very readable and fair in this very personal history, which I liked very much.

I will let myself off the hook for a while, having mentioned a handful-sized stack of recent reads. Now turn aside from these brief and dull accounts to hear George Orwell on the subject of book reviews, even if it might be hard to connect what he says to my particular assemblage:

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

California Mountains - Directions and Points

Mr G. with shooting stars

The point of going to the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada was to take a hike out of South Lake, above the town of Bishop. When my husband first proposed this trip, I liked the idea of driving to a trailhead that is already high up there; I knew that our day hike would likely not be too strenuous.

After spending the day driving down from Tahoe, mostly on Hwy. 395, we stayed at a nice motel that made luxuriating possible. Making the most of our relaxed schedule, we didn't get to the trailhead until what was to us an embarrassingly late hour, and I'm not going to publicize it here. When we left Bishop, though, it was already 80°.

shooting star

A mere 22 miles up the road, the temperature had dropped to 60° -- because we had gone in the upward direction 5,760 feet. We got nice and warm, hiking for six hours close to the sun, but the thermometer never rose above 75°. When we stopped to cool off or take a drink, we could quickly do that in the shade of a boulder -- but the mosquitoes liked the shade, too.

I couldn't begin to photograph all the flowers and many of my pictures came out too bright owing to that midday sun. Anyway, Mr. Glad and I had made a deal that I would leave some space on the memory card for his shots of larger landscapes and peaks, so for ten whole minutes at a time I would try hard to pretend that I didn't have a camera with me.

I did think many of my readers would appreciate the one mountain picture I took myself, of this brown peak (at right). Now ladies, does it remind you of anything? How about...a heap of cocoa powder, maybe? It's called Chocolate Peak.

It was odd that I didn't feel a need for the boost a dark chocolate bar might give me, hiking along a trail that continued to ascend in the direction of Bishop Pass for our first few hours, up where the air is thin.

I did need to stop pretty frequently to catch my breath, but all in all I was exhilarated, and my mind was composing about 20 different blog posts in an effort to process all the beauty and excitement of the dramatic topography.

When we got back to the car I quickly wrote a few notes to work from when back home in front of the computer. Sadly, when that time came a few days later, I found that without the context that stimulated such a fervent response in me, I couldn't even recall all the main points that were to flow from the title of this installment.

Since he was a young boy my husband has liked to hike up to mountain tops or mountain passes where he could get a view, and know that he had reached a specific goal. I, of course, would be happy to sit by a field of flowers and work on taking close-ups while getting whiffs of pine needles on the breeze.

That's partly because I long ago found that orienteering is not my thing, as was well demonstrated on this hike. During the outward bound portion I felt, without thinking much about it, that we were hiking in an easterly direction, but looking at the map later, I learned that our path led pretty much due south.

And every few minutes the mountains change position relative to one another, as it seems when you are getting closer to one and seeing the other side of its neighbor, so I never learn to recognize them. This is one reason to hike particular trails until they become familiar.

paintbrush and columbine with granite

That is probably not going to happen, considering how our hikes are less frequent these days. As for reaching a panoramic viewpoint or summit of anything, on this hike we didn't try to accomplish that goal. At an unremarkable spot along the trail, Mr. G. merely said, "I think we should turn around now and go back."

Of course, he knew that the next day he'd get fantastic views of many of the particular mountains he's come to love during his life. And that is a hint as to the upcoming posts on California Mountains.

(Previous posts in the series: Getting Over,
  Tahoe, Rivers and a Song )

Journaling about footling

When I'm writing in Word, the program often tells me that I am spelling a word wrong, or that it doesn't exist. So I head on over to dictionary.com and check it out for myself. Today it was journaling, which even they tell me doesn't exist. Oh, yeah? Just look at my blog and you will see that it does indeed exist, though I of course did not invent it. Even dictionary.com can't keep up on everything.

While I was on that page, I noticed their Word of the Day on the left sidebar, and footle seemed to me a curiously cute and appealing word (which Word also does not know), so I took the time to read about it. This is what I read:

footle \FOOT-l\ , verb: 1. To act or talk in a foolish or silly way. 

noun: 1. Nonsense; silliness.

Quotes:

Sometimes, on a good day, I would go upstairs with my duster and footle around the parlor, adjusting paintings and straightening cushions, knocking them into shape with such military precision that even my mother would have saluted them.
-- Marion McGilvary, A Lost Wife's Tale: A Novel 

"I say, Charlie, for any sake do play up tomorrow, and don't footle."
-- Rose Macaulay, Abbots Verney; A Novel

Origin:
Footle has an uncertain origin. One candidate is the French se foutre, to care nothing." Another possibility is the Dutch vochtig, "damp or musty."

Not much to go on here, and it's confusing. What the narrator in McGilvary's book (I wonder if she is the Lost Wife...that might pertain to my discussion.) is doing doesn't seem to me either silly or foolish. It just reads like housework, done with energy.

I don't quite know what "play up" means, in the other quote given, so how am I to infer the meaning of what is given as the alternative behavior?

(One thing is clear, that people who add the subtitle "A Novel" to their book titles are more likely to use the word footle in the text.)

This all matters to me, because I've long been on a quest for a word for what some of us housewives do sometimes, on those days when I'm not under a deadline or working doggedly on a single big project. Instead, I do a little of this, a little of that, one thing leading to another; I am not in a rush, nor do I have urgent goals for the day, but I end up accomplishing quite a lot.

Do we just call this "housework"? I used to call it puttering, until I learned that there is too much of aimless, ineffective, and loiter in the definition of that word. When I am engaged in the behavior I am trying to find a word for, I am never aimless, and if I am not getting any physical work done for a few minutes, I am at least thinking hard or praying. And another question: As my computer and word processor are in my house, shouldn't I consider the work I do using those tools "housework"?

It gets complicated. Keeping the housewife healthy and able is part of the maintenance of the house, just as taking care of tools is a necessary part of the work of a carpenter's shop. So all those things I do that restore my soul are also housework. Voilà!

Once I was discussing this issue with my friend Herm, and told her about a word I coined to describe my style of puttering. It is serendipping. But it hasn't proved terribly useful to me, since only two of us in the world know it. I don't often need the word anyway, do I, if I am busy doing it?

Anyway, it appears that footle will not yet be of any help. Discovering it was part of my serendipping today, but did it accomplish anything? It gave me something to think and write about, and whether it was work or play, it was not aimless and it was fun!

Soul-nourishing gift from Mr Glad

More Writing and Friends

The last year flew by, and now my blog is TWO years old. I feel like giving a party for all my blogging friends, to celebrate. But that kind of thing does not belong to Blogland, so the best idea I can come up with to mark the occasion is -- what else? -- to write a long and possibly boring blog post.

What did I ever do before I started writing a blog? I wrote long e-mails, and real letters with ink, and articles about this and that which hardly anyone read. (And there was a homeschool newsletter.)

When I started Gladsome Lights I expected it would give me a convenient format for sharing recipes and garden happenings and such like with my longtime friends and family. At the time I did already have a manila folder full of scraps of paper on which I'd written thoughts that might turn into something, if I ever took the time to sit and ponder over them with pen in hand, but the potential was for more thinking with myself.

Suddenly I was connected with people who for various reasons actually take time out of their day to read what I write, or at least to check in and look at my garden or pie pictures, and it's not just because they are my children or feel otherwise obligated. I've always had several real-life friends like this, but there wasn't an easy platform for sharing. I've also had the third kind of friend, the authors with whom I interact, but reciprocity is lacking in that case.

If you are reading this, you might be one of these people who has been wonderfully stimulating to my mind and heart, just by offering occasional feedback. At some level you know me better, from reading my ramblings, than my nearby friends who aren't the blog-reading type, because it's a rare personal encounter in which I can find the words to express the things I do in writing.

Of course, words aren't everything. It might be wise to ease off, and spend less time exulting in the fun of working to crank out a few decent paragraphs every week. But my manila folder has only been getting fatter, and my Blogger drafts folder is virtually overflowing. Reading other blogs of homeschoolers, philosophers, gardeners and homemakers (some of you are all of those together) gives me even more things to think about, to read, to try and to do.

It feels like I'm just getting into the swing of this writing life, and I don't think I'll stop anytime soon -- unless God makes it clear contrariwise. It's an inestimable gift from Him, this time I have to think and to enjoy all the things I do, and to write. And if you are still reading this, know that you are a gift to me, too.

Grousing About Grammar - Bad Sentence

One thing I didn't tell you in my recent review of Wordstruck by Robert MacNeil is how he gave an admonition that made me wonder if I am the right kind of influence on people:

"If you love the language, the greatest thing you can do to ensure its survival is not to complain about bad usage but to pass your enthusiasm to a child. Find a child and read to it often the things you admire, not being afraid to read the classics."

MacNeil quotes a man named Hugh Kenner, who said of some people that they "took note of language only when it annoyed them." In the days when I frequently read to my children, especially when they were older, I must say in my defense that I do remember stopping at least occasionally to point out particularly well-written sentences. But when the bad sentences force you to stumble or pause or halt completely as you try to figure out what is going on, you can't help but be annoyed and take note of them, too.

This happened to me just today, and once again I will reveal myself in full nitpickerliness. The sentence that held me up fails in more than one way, so it's very useful. I'm not going to tell you where it came from, but the author has a (recent) doctoral degree in Intellectual History. I'm not sure why I think that should mean something pertinent to my complaint...but let's just get on with the beginning of his article:

F.M. [abbreviation mine] lived his life as a poet, a playwright, a novelist, a journalist, and a Roman Catholic. Born in Bordeaux during the year 1885 to a bourgeois family, M.'s mother tenaciously held to her religiosity. His father's side of the family, on the other hand, sported Voltairean, republican, and anticlerical sentiments.

You can probably guess what happened to me as I was reading briskly along in the first sentence, then cruising through the stop sign period and on to the comma in the second sentence, fulling expecting that M. would be there after the pause -- Oh! M's mother is here, how odd...that must mean the author was talking about the mother's birth in Bordeaux...strange that he would start out telling us about M., and then in the very next sentence start in on the mother...and there is his father in the following sentence...hmm...I don't know much about M., but I don't actually think he is recent enough that his mother could have been born that late...the author must be talking about M.'s birth, then. Too bad, now I have stopped thinking about M. and his mother and am all focused on this writer, poor boy, who spent so much effort in school and can't get his lovely article off to a decent start.

Before moving on to find out more about M., I had to skip to the end and read the blurb on the author... next I began a rewrite of his problematic beginning in my head -- so many times I have done this for myself and five children, trying out different arrangements of words and clauses so that you say what you mean and your reader can read you as effortlessly as possible.

What happened here is called a dangling participle or dangling participial clause. The "Born in Bordeaux" clause actually has no subject (it's dangling there unattached), but we naturally expect the subject to be close by, so we try to attach the clause to M.'s mother, but it doesn't really belong to her. The Wikipedia article to which I linked tells it all very clearly, along with other examples that are often funny.

One way that this particular beginning could have been rescued would be to make it slightly longer. Sometimes it just gets awkward, trying to pack too much into a sentence, and the best thing is to make one or two more sentence so you don't muddle things. To put his birth and his mother's religious attitude into one sentence seems to be hurrying along too fast, as though the author were just stringing his notes together.

And don't try to be too clever in switching the order of your clauses and phrases. That's partly how this writer got into trouble. It's only the second sentence of your whole article, so certainly you can afford another sentence with the direct and simple subject-verb order.

To say that M. was born "during the year 1885"....It must just be a careless wordiness, because "in 1885" would do nicely, and during gives the impression of an ongoing activity. The time of birth is a date, not a duration.

How about this re-do of the second and third sentences, putting the mother into the father's sentence, and we don't even have to add lines. Taking out some commas makes it a  little cleaner, too:

He was born to a bourgeois family in Bordeaux in 1885. M.'s mother tenaciously held to her religiosity, while his father's side of the family sported Voltairean, republican, and anticlerical sentiments.

Now that I've got that settled, I can go to bed. I'll take the article along and hope I can keep my mind on M. this time.

Stories of English - Wordstruck

A friend gave me a used paperback copy of Wordstruck, a memoir by Robert MacNeil, of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour that he hosted in different formats from 1975-1995 on TV. I had heard his name during those years, but our family didn't watch television, so we didn't pay attention until he co-authored the book The Story of English in 1986. It was quickly made into a TV series that we watched on our video player at home some time later.

I have often thought of renting the films again, because they were so fascinating in our fairly brief viewing. Now I find that Netflix doesn't have them, and they are out of my price range to buy. There are some excerpts on YouTube.

Wordstruck chronicles MacNeil's life up until the time he wrote the book in 1989, focusing on his love for the English language, including an account of the early influences that he thinks may have encouraged it. On the first page he describes an evening in chilly Nova Scotia when he was still a little boy, his mother reading to him while he snuggled in his pajamas on the sofa. She is reading the Robert Louis Stevenson poem "Windy Nights" that I read year after year to my own children -- so I knew from the beginning that I would enjoy considering the author's family life.

 

His parents loved books, and books were the main diversion of their life as "members of the large, scraping middle classes." Mrs. MacNeil's voice "was multi-hued, like glass fused of many bottles in a fire, with wisps of Lowland Scots and Highland Gaelic, Irish, Hanoverian German, Acadian French, and the many flavours of English deposited by generations of British soldiers and sailors," and "She sounded enthralled, as full of wonder and close-rivetted attention as I was."

And for MacNeil's father, "Whatever he was doing, his books were a constant; even when he was short of cash for anything else, like paying bills, books appeared. In fact, he used books to hide the bills he couldn't pay. Occasionally I found little nests of them when I pulled out a book. My mother said scornfully that was Irish--dealing with unpleasant reality by putting it away somewhere, out of mind. She never knew which books to look behind. It made her both furious with him and tender."

"He always wrote on the flyleaf of each new book the date and where he was, so I can follow him: reading Chesterton just after they were married in November 1929, Scottish poets the following spring, Conrad through the early thirties, and Proust at sea in wartime...." Ah, what a life people lived before television!

MacNeil the Shakespearean actor explains how the words and rhythms and story of a poem like "Windy Nights" were so effective at training his mind to appreciate poetry without him being aware of anything except that he didn't want his mother to stop reading. His grandmother loved that one, too, and made him memorize it on walks through the public gardens.

Stories of Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Winnie-the-Pooh and Peter Pan; authors like Kipling and Dickens--they all contributed to a rich mental landscape, as words and word patterns populate the mind:

 "They accumulate in layers, and as the layers thicken they govern all use and appreciation of language thenceforth. Like music, the patterns of melody, rhythm, and quality of voice become templates against which we judge the sweetness and justness of new patterns and rhythms; and the patterns laid down in our memories create expectations and hungers for fulfillment again. It is the same for the bookish person and for the illiterate. Each has a mind programmed with language--from prayers, hymns, verses, jokes, patriotic texts, proverbs, folk sayings, clichés, stories, movies, radio, and television.

"I picture each of those layers of experience and language gradually accumulating and thickening to form a kind of living matrix, nourishing like a placenta, serving as a mini-thesaurus or dictionary of quotations, yet more retrievable and interactive and richer because it is so one's own, steeped in emotional colour and personal associations."

Obviously MacNeil's mind has a very thick matrix, and the book is full of his sharing various experiences of his life in all its cultural wealth, riches I think are made more valuable by being able to speak and write articulately about them from a broad knowledge background.

So far I've just drawn from the introductory chapters, but there are a few incidents later on that I want to mention. During WWII when he was still a boy, MacNeil paid ten cents for a tour of a captured German fighter plane, and while he sat in the cockpit the inspection of the inside "convinced me that Germans were real people, human beings....The few instruments had German labels and the realisation that the man who flew this had to be able to read the words which I could not made him intelligent, alive--a real person with a name. So were the Germans who had designed and built this beautiful machine, even if it was no match for our Spitfires, of course."

From singing in the choir in the Anglican Church:

"There was poured into the porches of this child's mind a rich echoing soup of sound which made literal sense only when recollected years later. If scientists could examine my brain, as they do the contents of murder victims' stomachs, they would find that I had gorged myself when young on plum puddings and fruitcakes of this seventeenth-century prose; each word simple in itself, the combination rich and fruity, loved for the taste on the tongue, through years in the digesting; words for their own sake. That was particularly true of the often-repeated passages from the Book of Common Prayer, paraphrases of biblical verses that constitute English worship since the sixteenth century."

"All this exposure to the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the hymns seasoned me with the words and the forms that had launched British navies and armies into battle and imperial civil servants on their missions; the words that had christened the babies, married the daughters, and buried the dead of the Empire....It was like the tannin of English tea staining our souls for life. You do not lose it ever."

God willing, His words have not stopped their work on the soul of this man who loves them so dearly as mere words, and not for His meaning that they carry. MacNeil tells us also about many of his favorite non-church words, like reek, and how they came to be and to change over time. He says of Old English: "The words are usually small, like nuts, with strong vowel sounds for flavor and a hard shell of consonants."

In school the author was good at public speaking and reciting poems, and acting in plays. Then at seventeen, he fell in love--with Shakespeare. "On a winter afternoon in 1948....I didn't find God but I found William Shakespeare, a piece of God's work so extraordinary that he comes close to divinity itself."

"The ironic cast of Shakespeare's words released me a little from the prison of my self-absorption, and hooked me into a wider, grander scheme of things. They made me larger, freer."

Of course, it is the language and literature of Shakespeare that MacNeil loves -- but he also loves every other variety of English from limericks to slang. Being the author of The Story of English, he's not afraid to acknowledge that language is always changing, and quotes Otto Jespersen, who wrote in 1905, "The English language would not have been what it is if the English had not been great respecters of the liberties of each individual and if everybody had not been free to strike out new paths for himself."

There are some changes that do concern MacNeil: he wonders if we are losing our ear for the language because we have consigned good English to the printed page, and also started to depend on computers to choose our syntax and vocabulary. This makes us "more remote from the sound of our language, and therefore from a feeling for the weight of words."

"There must be some living connection between the weight of words and truth....Today, it seems, words increasingly mean nothing to the person using them....The public words of public men seem to be used increasingly like aerosol room fresheners, to make nice smells."

It was a very agreeable acquaintance to make, of Robert MacNeil and his love for the English language. I do like him, and spending time with him I was reminded of my own efforts to give my children a rich literary diet in their youth. I certainly did love to read to them; I even made them memorize poetry. But I know I haven't loved the language as much as this man.

I'm impressed with his writing skill and glad to meet someone who rejoices in so many aspects of his humanity, but it is the Creator of us humans who ultimately deserves our adulation and love. For a fact, Shakespeare and even Robert MacNeil are examples of God's handiwork and make us know something of the divine, because they are made in God's image. I can't revel in the language very long before I start to praise the God who gave us the gift of language and speech. 

Just thinking about speech and language brings Psalm 19 to mind. I pray that the literature of the Psalter is a powerful part of the matrix of my own children's minds and hearts -- now I feel that we didn't read from it enough. Here is part of that particular psalm to help me bring my review to an end:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
....Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

Washington - The Rain Forest

The rain forest surprised me. It wasn't chilly, even though it was cool; perhaps the humidity served as a blanket. The towering complexity wasn't too overwhelming, because my camera helped me to isolate and literally focus on various particulars.

My favorite plants were the exotic fungi, because they stood out from the multitude of mostly green colors.

They say there are several thousand plant species in there, and I imagined it would be a trial to take a day hike through all that jumble and jungle of green sameness. Instead, it was strangely invigorating. Is there more oxygen than average in a rain forest, what with all those plants exhaling? It was as exciting as the beach.

We had the slightest drizzle as we entered, but not enough to warrant covering my head. Even that amount of moisture waned and my hair didn't get wet -- only pleasantly fluffy, a welcome relief from the usual flat.

Autumn was beginning to give some color accents, especially in the form of the big leaf maples that arch throughout the canopy and drop their leaves over everything.




Hoh....the very name of this forest is like a mother's calming hush, or a version of the meditative Ohm. I got to thinking of the shape of the letters themselves as the circumference of a Sitka Spruce trunk with branches on the sides. It seems that just the word has endless possibilities, but in any case Hoh seems to be the only name possible for this place, so quiet and deep. The Hoh River runs through it.








Wherever a stump stands, several plants will use it for a seedbed, so that a conifer, a fern and a deciduous tree will often make a bouquet on the stump. But a log lying horizontal becomes a pasture of low and thick lichens and moss.

















These gray leaf lichens were lying all around, as well as growing on trees.










The brightest fungus I saw might have been this yellow one.

This area of the world boasts the tallest (Sitka) spruce tree and the tallest (Red) cedar tree in the world. I couldn't guess what most of the evergreens were, their lowest branches were so high up, and everything blanketed with spongy green lace. But I think this one is a Douglas-fir (it's written like that because it's not a true fir.)

 Leafy lichens abound. I guess this is one?

I was surprised when B. said we should turn around and go back out. We'd been hiking two hours and it didn't seem to have been more than about 40 minutes. By that time I wasn't living in the moment, though. Time was flying because I had caught a whiff of the moist rain forest scents. Funny I didn't notice right away. But when I did, I couldn't just enjoy the mystery and deliciousness of these smells, but I had to start thinking about how I would describe them, if only to myself, so I could remember them.

I will probably never come back here! was my thought, and I will never smell this again. So why did I waste time thinking about it, I now wonder. Why not just drink of the thrilling sensory Now? And why were the disciples not content to just be in Christ's presence at His transfiguration?

They were trying to make provision for the future, and prolong the experience, as I was hoping to provide myself with some words to take with me. I couldn't hope to make the moment last, as we were walking fairly briskly by then, getting closer and closer to the outside where the opportunity would be gone.  I was lagging behind and noticing that the mix of wild aromas changed with the changing terrain, but they were always bewitching. Do people get addicted to smells? It could happen here.

 Time was running out, and it did run out, ten days ago now. I kept thinking about the words for several days, but as expected, there was no way to improve on whatever poor metaphors I came up with while my senses were being bombarded. 

The smell of the rain forest was something like eating a cookie fresh from the oven, a cookie made of fermented wild mushrooms and hazelnuts, with one's head in a bucket of vanilla ice cream.

This was a new smell for me, with no links to my grandmother or anything in my past. There was no way to focus on it the way a camera helps one to focus visually -- and no way to deliberately preserve it, though my mind has no doubt filed this input in a purer form than the silly image I worked so hard to invent. Perhaps elements of that exotic forest atmosphere exist elsewhere, and if so, they might someday come to me on a moist breeze and I'll be taken back to the Hoh.

Animal, Vegetable, Weed

When my husband saw the sizable box of books I had packed for this trip to my daughter's house, he wondered why I would need so many. My answer, "Because my brain is so tired right now, I can't imagine wanting to read any of them, so I can't know what my appetite will be when it returns, and I want to be prepared."

I came prepared for the journey, too, with The Message Bible on CD, My Antonia, Miles Gone By, and the latest Mars Hill Audio Journal on CD's to choose from. I started out with the Mars Hill disk, because it's usually very relaxing for me to stretch my brain, gentle as the exercise is when one is only eavesdropping on other people's conversations.

This edition had a lot of discussions on the topic of beauty, the host said in the introduction, and in a small panic, I hit the button to eject. No, I wasn't up for that--it sounded too difficult to even follow along with. What would be easier? How about, Tell Me a Story, and one I am already familiar with. My Antonia was a good choice, as it turned out, very soul-nourishing in the story and the lovely writing. And it was Beauty--not discussed, but the reality.

The last few days I've been living in the reality of beauty and a lot of other things that people, including me, like to theorize and philosophize about. I haven't picked up any of those books that I thought I might read or think about or write thoughtful reviews of. I've been chasing around a ten-month-old who is a major explorer of his world, and maybe it is in two ways keeping me in the Grammar phase of my stunted version of classical education. You know, where you learn the facts and language and data that you will work with later.

It's always a blessing to have little children around who are discovering everything for the first time, as it makes me notice the details of my surroundings freshly. Today I gave this guy, whom I will nickname Scout, a piece of used waxed paper that wasn't really dirty, and after he fiddled with it a minute or two it tore in two. He had been looking at one piece of paper, and suddenly there were two pieces, and he was obviously surprised to see the smaller piece move in his hand far away from the original.

Babies aren't wondering philosophers. They are scientists without even a theory, in the research stage, gathering information. I've been able to do some of that kind of mental work this week, as in learning the names of oak trees. I also took a picture in the forest of a bush with pink flowers, and when I went looking for oaks in the shrub and tree guide there was a picture of it, and I have now memorized it--well, at least for this week--Douglas spiraea.

Douglas spiraea

When Scout was exploring the back yard he came upon a weed (spurge) that I knew I should know the name of, so I looked it up in Weeds of the West, a marvelous tome that I am very pleased is now in Pippin's collection. It's a book several of us in the family had our eye on for a long time before someone actually took the plunge to invest in such an unappealing title.

I looked quickly through the whole book yesterday, and learned quite a few facts that have no relevance to any philosophical book review I might write, but they were so pleasing to me! My objective was to make a list of all the weeds that I already knew by sight, which surprised me by how long it was. A whole series of Weeds blogposts could be written on the links to childhood memories and events.

Then I was surprised to find in the weed book a flower that is also always in the mountain wildflower guides I've been consulting for years, Corn Lily or False Hellebore. It was about then I suspect I was moving into the Logic Stage, making connections and comparing one word with another, drawing conclusions using my data.

This plant is deadly and noxious, for a fact (Here's a historical bit about that from Wikipedia: "The plant was used by some [Native American] tribes to elect a new leader. All the candidates would eat the root, and the last to start vomiting would become the new leader."), but some of the things I thought I knew about it aren't true, and in the middle of writing this blog I am realizing that I still don't have the facts straight enough to tell any more about it.

About other weeds, I learned that what I thought was Black Mustard was actually Radish; these are cousins someone got mixed up and taught me wrong. Nutsedge is a cute name for an ugly weed in my own garden. I'll be content to study the most broad Grammar of Plants for the rest of my stay here on earth.

Which brings me to the second reason hanging out with children keeps me at their level: time. When I am scurrying about during naptimes to do little pieces of chores, just keeping up with the physical bare necessities, my mind is flitting about and not in the mood for a certain kind of thinking, which I hesitate to call "higher."

I don't seem to be able to settle in, under deadlines, and tackle a question of theology or philosophy in such a way that I can write about it. I'm using all my mental resources doing philosophy and theology on a fundamental level that is more in keeping with my stage in life, when my body demands more sleep, and my brain loses thoughts instead of holding them. When I wake up from a nap, or when Scout goes down for a nap, the names of the flowers are still there in the nature guide, the trees and clouds are still handy for contemplating right outside the door.

Play--what Scout does--is when you do things with no immediate goal in mind. I can't have an agenda or a syllabus when I am minding Scout while he experiments. So I try to look around and pay attention at least as well as he is doing. I'm glad I've arrived at a place in life where the order and complexity of the universe are certainties to me, and every flower and rock is a gift from the Creator with the potential to draw me to Himself. It might even be an advantage to have a tired brain when enjoying that kind of Beauty.